I've wanted to write this kind of story for a pretty long time and so one day, while sitting through my brother's lengthy graduation, I just planned it out in my head. Initially this was supposed to be my submission for a horror contest, but due to time restraints and length, I wasn't able to. Fortunately for me, Archduke Artisan's Suspenseful Contest was being held with a lengthy extension, so I thought, why not? I wrote this prologue several weeks ago, and edited it to submit now as I will be out of the country in a few days time. Therefore, I won't be updating anything for awhile, much less this fic. I figured I just might get a headstart.
This is set in an AU. I shouldn't have to explain the setting as it should become apparent the more you read, but think of a time in the early 1900s, late 1800s in a heavily industrialized city. Hopefully this should become clear as you read it, but if not then just refer back here. Also, with the exception of the Pikachu, Pichu, Squirtle, Ivysaur and Charizard, all Brawl characters will be human regardless of whether they are in real life or not.
SOME OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE OOC DO NOT KILL ME.
This stuff is a little heavy and therefore not for the especially faint-hearted so viewer discretion is advised. I'd argue that in some cases, it toes the line of the T-rating.
By the time my body was found, fourteen hours had passed.
To be exact, it was fourteen hours and twenty-one minutes, and if you counted my last desperate burble of air, twelve seconds since I had died. Nobody had been around in my final moments; my killer apparently decided that my last words weren't important enough to be heard. Once my death was ensured, my killer had whisked away into the evening leaving me neatly halved in two.
I could see the irony in this, of course. Sawing me in half, I mean. How many times had I climbed into this coffin as confident as can be, sure that the steel walls, nor saw would penetrate my skin? Of course it wouldn't, how could it, after I practiced the trick over and over again? The trick of it was of course, to be extremely flexible. A contortionist able to bend and fold into creating something that your eyes could not believe. Sometimes, the biggest tricks have the most simplest solutions. A true magician understands that in order to be one, you had to distract the audience and charm them into believing that what was onstage was truly magic.
Of course, there were always skeptics in the crowd but the point was to dress it up so thoroughly that even they would be tricked into trying to think of complicated solutions and machinery to explain the gap of air where my torso should be. Marth and I knew that all it took was a well-timed flourish or a perfectly placed mirror.
But this time, as the pain began to ebb away and the lightheadedness from the extreme blood loss began to settle in, I understood one thing. This was no trick, and I had nothing up my sleeves in that wretched coffin. I was dying and panic had never set in this deep.
After shows, people called me fearless. It was not uncommon for men to ask me to dinner because showgirls are often more attractive on the stage than they are in real life; it is our ability to smile and to preen onstage despite the odds that makes us desirable. These men would beg me to divulge Marth's secrets but I charmed the audience as best I could. "A magician is only as good as his secrets," I'd say with a wink. A cliché, to be sure.
But wasn't it true? Weren't we all just as good as the secrets we managed to conceal so thoroughly as we walked down these grimy streets? To give away a secret is to lose desirability. It was something I had seen on the stage over and over again, something I had witnessed with Marth. But it wasn't until my body began to undergo rigor mortis, my limbs becoming so brittle and stiff, that I realized how painfully true this was.
I was just Marth's showgirl before all this. I was just a pretty face holding secrets so thoroughly concealed, that nobody knew I carried them. A well-placed smile and a confident tilt of a chin was all it took to fool those around me.
But then, I was knocked into the box and when the lid slammed shut over my flailing arms and my desperate curses, I knew that all was lost. A small part of me understood, as the saw bit into my torso with its serrated edge, that the spotlight was on me because suddenly these secrets I held were thrust onstage, and they posed a challenge to the most level-headed of skeptics to figure out the trick, the secret, the cause of my death.
And it was strange how the challenger that took on the case was a woman whose voice I had not heard in many years. The last time I'd heard her, she had simply stared down at me, as though she could not really see me. Her eyes were almost bitter. Almost, because in that dim lighting, her blue eyes merely looked icy to the point of incontrollable madness. "I'll come back later," she had said tonelessly, but she hadn't been speaking to me at the time and I hadn't seen her again.
Funny, how she had fulfilled that promise seven years later, while I was lying in my own pool of congealing blood. But then, as a magician's top assistant, I also knew that there are no coincidences in life.
For non-fans of first person, do not worry; this is only the prologue. Everything else will be written in the third person, with the exception of the epilogue. If it's not apparent whose narrating this, you'll know in the next chapter, so stick around!
Reviews are like crack to me (If I ever did crack, I imagine they would be at least...) so please review and make my day or you don't have to ;_; but I'd be happy if you did!