Okay, my first submission to the Black Lagoon category. Hope you all like it. I own nothing.
Rosarita Cisneros is not her true name any more than Roberta is. In truth, she can't remember the name her mother bestowed upon her when she was first wedded to the air and she's not sure how the master knew that she was her father's child. It's not important anymore.
Rosarita and Roberta were both born into darkness, the only difference being the location and the circumstances.
She who became the Bloodhound of Florencia was born in the darkness of gunpowder and dank sewer walls. Rosarita Cisneros was in her infancy at fourteen and was rendered comatose at twenty. She was fed on blood and rain and the tears of her victims. She was darkness given form and flesh; she was vengeance incarnate; she was Death come to earth.
Roberta was born in the darkness of a world that no longer had any place for Rosarita; she stretched her eyes over night and saw only pinpricks of stars.
Then, there was the moon. That moon had two faces, the master and the young master, and Roberta stared up at it all the time. Beautiful and mesmerizing it was. So pure, so full of life. Maybe there was something to live for.
Now, the moon is cracked and shattered, and she has only the light of sputtering, dingy candles to guide her.
If you were to start scratching away at the skin of Roberta, it would not take long for it to start to slough away. She's like plastic, really—plastic that's been melted by fire and then twisted to form a new face, but it's only plastic, so you can tell on first sight that it's not quite real. Roberta reeks of artifice and falseness, and only after you take a look at the face beneath hers do you understand why.
There's a killer lurking beneath that unassuming face.
Rosarita screams for release at every moment. Roberta could never escape Rosarita and what she had done during the war—these are small wounds never felt during the fighting but afterwards, they fester and metastasize and Roberta can barely walk for the tumors. She can barely hear for all the screaming, can barely sleep for all the faces that assault her when she shuts her eyes. Blood rises in her nostrils constantly, and her stomach heaves.
How strange; this used to be my bread and butter, my ambrosia, my breath of life.
And Rosarita is another twisted plastic mask.
There are so many, like snake skins waiting to be shed. You peel and peel and peel and they come off, stinking like festering scabs. Not just Rosarita and Roberta, but so many other masks that have never been given a name. There are so many that when you're done there's nothing left of her, not the demure maid nor the ruthless bloodhound. There's just the emptiness that's never quite escaped her eyes, a screaming void.
Nothing can hope to live there.
Now, there is darkness.
The engineer sits behind her (she can never look at him, can never bring herself to drag her eyes to his sight, and she lives in fear of the thought that he might force the issue), the smell of blood rising off him. His voice is hollow as a rotten tree trunk; his sadness is abhorrent; his pity, an abomination.
Beneath the candles lies the pill bottle. RITALIN. Nothing else to cool her veins but that.
The war goes on. The faceless masks have been vanquished, and it is only Roberta and Rosarita who remain standing.
No, the war is over. Roberta lies defeated; the plastic has grown so brittle that it shattered upon the lightest touch, a mirror that could never hold.
Let the hammer fall on injustice…
Now, Rosarita will have her way.
Let the world burn in her rage and drown in the blood of vengeance.
