Method to the Madness
Chapter One: Outcast
There were bitter winds blowing through the village of Canabrava tonight. The kind of winds that killed anyone who wasn't wearing the thickest clothing possible, the kind that could freeze a man stone dead. It was nights like these that the elderly died and people starved, with the most determined folks eying their axes and carving knifes while carefully studying the necks of their friends and family. But nothing's set in stone, right? Eat the morning snow and you find the fresh corpse of a mountain goat.
Most folk in Canabrava would've preferred to live anywhere else but there, but it was a harsh reality they were forced to live with. No outside contact, no other villages, nothing. All there was It was a regular sight for mothers to throw their newborns off the cliff side to save them the torture of the merciless mountains.
Those mothers just didn't have the spine, did they? They didn't have thecare or mercy in their hearts to save a child. Selfishness in Canabrava gets you boiled alive, and everyone gets a piece of you so you wouldn't die entirely in vain.
But no one would dare boil an expectant mother alive, or any mother for that matter.
That night, a son was born to a widow named simply as Moon. Her husband had been a little too selfish one night, but even in his death he nourished and supported her. Any good husband would. She was old, one of the village elders, and with that age came some problems.
She had been a woman fair of face, someone the young village boys would fawn over and fantasize about. Unfortunately, she had made the choice to carve
up her face one night. She wasn't mentally ill, no. She just wanted to have a little fun.
She turned herself into a horrid sight, the scars that adorned her face made her look more like the twisted image of death itself, and she couldn't have been happier.
She couldn't care less about her son, but she supposed that it was her responsibility to take care of the little vermin. It did come out of her, after all.
So, she dubbed her son the unfortunate name of 'Rat'.
"Rat!"
Like an alarm, the bellowing voice of Moon jostled young Rat from his peaceful sleep. A shame too, he was having the greatest dream.
Rat groaned as he rose from his fur bed, scratching himself with disinterest. "What do you want?" he said, refusing to look at his mother's disgusting face.
As expected, Rat felt his head slam against the wooden walls of the family house as his mother punched him in his jaw.
"Make yourself useful and go feed the chickens!" said Moon, dropping a bag of chicken feed on her son's bed. "I have to do everything around here."
Rat rolled his eyes, rubbing his jaw in attempt to soothe the pain. He always got a good chuckle out of his mother telling him that she did everything, when in reality it was him doing everything. She was an old, senile cunt. She probably couldn't remember her left foot from her her right without his help.
As he walked through his home, Rat noticed the mirror that hung on the wall next to the door. He supposed that he should make sure he was at least a little presentable.
Rat, like most in Canabrava, was pale and muscular. His short, blonde-brown hair had a slight wave to it, and looked greasy from lack of wash. He was considered to be fairly handsome, but he had a weather-beaten look from toiling under the sun every single day.
The morning snow crunched underneath Rat's fur boots as he exited his home and walked towards the chicken pen, dragging the bag of feed behind him carelessly. With his free hand, Rat opened the gate and closed it behind him as he entered. He counted each chicken silently, ending up with a total of thirteen. Seemed one of the chickens fucked off.
"Brought you shits some feed today. Eat up." Rat said, pouring about a quarter of the bag's contents onto the ground.
Rat stood still, watching the chickens peck at the feed. Then, he got an idea.
Quickly, he grabbed a random chicken by the neck and hoisted it into the air. As the chicken squirmed and squawked, Rat's lips curved into a smile.
With his other hand, Rat grasped the head of the chicken, and began slowly twisting. The chicken squirmed and struggled more and more, scratching at the air with its feet.
A sickening crack later, the chicken fell limp in Rat's hands.
Rat laughed, tossing the corpse at the other chickens. "Gotta keep an even number." he said, watching the chickens scatter from the corpse.
He picked the bag of feed back up, and exited the chicken pen. On his way back, a pale-faced, blonde-haired boy came running up to him. He was short, reaching Rat's waist in height.
It was some village boy named Sky, better known to Rat as 'the idiot who wants to be everyone's friend'. Ever since the two had learned how to speak, Sky was intent on becoming Rat's best friend for some reason nobody with half a brain could fathom.
Sky beamed at Rat with that same stupid smile he gave everyone in the village. "Hey, Rat! Beautiful day today! Congratulations on your tenth cycle!" he said, a distinct chipper tone in his voice.
Rat raised an eyebrow, and craned his neck to at the sky. As usual, it was red.
"Idiot." Rat pushed Sky out of his way so he could continue his walk back.
"Hey!" Sky ran in front of Rat again. "You didn't have to-"
Before Sky could finish, Rat's clenched fist slammed into his eye, sending him reeling. Sky started to cry, holding his eye in pain as Rat stepped over him on his journey back.
Rat noticed some of the other villagers rushing to help the child, all the while giving Rat some glares of disdain and disgust. Rat shrugged in response, an evil smirk on his face.
Entering his ramshackle home, he set the bag of feed down next to the doorway and walked to his room.
Well, it wasn't technically his room.
He and his mother slept together in the same bed, so he was always unfortunately close to her. Her advances on him while he tried to sleep didn't help either.
Of course, he found his mother doing what she always did. Sleeping.
Rat sighed. "Typical." he whispered, turning and going to the dinner table and taking a seat. A bottle of some kind of alcohol sat in the middle of the table, easily accessible if he so wished.
He heard creaking from the bedroom, like a heavy weight being lifted off the bed. His mother must of gotten up.
Rat steeled himself for what was to come as he heard his mother breathing behind him.
Slowly, she put her hands on his shoulders. "Hey baby, sorry about punching ya. I was hoping you would climb into bed with me." Her hands moved downwards along his arms.
Rat twitched in disgust. "I'm not tired. Leave me alone."
Moon leaned down and kissed Rat's cheek, and continued moving her hands down. "Oh come on, you seem so pent up. Mommy's here to help."
Rat shot up out of his chair, and turned around to face her. "Listen here, whore. I will not be taken advantage of by some hag past her prime, especially you." Rat spit on the floor in front of her. "Last warning."
Moon crossed her arms. "Why do you never accept my love, Rat? Isn't that what you want?"
Rat shook his head. "No, you dumb bimbo. Now kindly fuck off."
Moon grabbed Rat's arm in protest. "Son, you will respect your mother. Now, come to bed."
Rat looked her dead in eye. "Let. Go. Now." His voice was cold, and there was definite venom in his words.
Moon frowned at her son, and her grip tightened. Her son had always done this ever since she claimed him, so the fact that he was doing this was of no surprise to her. Even when Rat now visibly shook, his pupils dilating and his breathing becoming quicker and heavier, she just brushed it off as him just being nervous about her touch.
As Moon moved her other hand to restrain Rat's free arm, Rat suddenly reached for the bottle on the table and swung it at his mother's head.
The bottle shattered, glass embedding into Moon's already scarred skin. She gasped in shock, and fell to the floor clutching her face, blood leaking through her fingers. She stared at the blood on her hands in utter disbelief, unable to understand what had just transpired.
In all of their time together, Rat had never fought back. Now he stood looking over her like a hawk with fresh prey.
Rat stared at the fallen image of his mother, and then at the now broken bottle in his hand. Now, the glass had a sharp point on the end, a makeshift blade.
He looked back at his mother, and slowly approached her, bottle in hand. Rat pulled her hair upwards, exposing her neck and forcing her to look at him.
If he could of, he would of saved every little second of that precious fear that he saw in those beautiful eyes of hers. It was as if the Gods made it his destiny to experience this moment. An act of revenge so desperately deserved, some redemption maybe. To him, this murder was sanctioned by the Gods, they supported the death of this whore that now laid so low before him.
Her mother stared at her son with tears in her eyes, horrified of her son who now looked at her like a predator. "Rat, my son, please. See reason!" she said, her voice cracking.
Rat only smiled ear to ear, his eyes widening in anticipation. The Gods's will shall be done.
Slowly, he dragged the sharp glass across her throat. Rat took in every little bit of her death; the hopeless look in her eyes, the flood of crimson from her delicate neck, the sound of her gasping for air as her tube was cut. Rat felt a feeling he could only describe as pure bliss as he watched until the very last second as life finally left his mother.
Rat let go of his dead mother's hair, and dropped the bloodied glass. Rat dusted his fur coat, accidentally getting some of the blood in the fur, and turned to leave.
That's when he saw Sky staring at his mother's body in horror. He only glanced at Rat before breaking into a sprint out of the doorway.
Rat sighed, deciding to give chase to the troublesome boy.
"Murder! There's been a murder! Help!" Sky kept running, but more villagers came out of their homes to see what all the commotion was about. "Rat killed her! Rat killed Moon!" Sky said, turning the villagers attention to Rat.
Rat skidded to a halt, glaring at the villagers as they stared holes into him. Realizing that there was no way to go forward, Rat started running back to his home, giving up on stopping Sky. Another day.
He heard multiple heavy footfalls behind him, and they kept getting closer.
Suddenly, he felt a massive weight land on his back, knocking him to the ground. Rat struggled and squirmed violently, but to no avail. Whoever had caught him had him completely pinned.
"Got you, vermin!" An unfamiliar and husky male voice, most likely belonging to whoever was on top of him now, kept Rat's head pressed in the snow.
Rat thought that this was, most likely, the end of the road for him. He would be boiled alive, hacked to pieces, offered as a sacrifice, whatever the residents of Canabrava thought up in their spare time. Oh well, at least he had finally got his revenge and enacted the will of the Gods who most likely now looked upon him in favor.
Rat found it odd that he wasn't dead yet.
He sat in chains before a collection of who were considered the 'wisest' in the community, most of them being old and decrepit fossils that probably shouldn't of survived the last winter. All of them sat in chairs on a raised podium above Rat, with one man in particular being raised higher then the others.
The presence of that man filled the air with a sense of dread, and it reeked so strongly of death and sweat that the judges around him had to cover their faces.
They called him Napron the Immortal.
Napron looked like someone had stretched skin over a skeleton without adding muscle, his leathery skin pale as the whitest snow. His few strands of equally white hairs were wispy and dead, most of it long fallen out. He was completely blind, his crystal blue eyes fogged over and looking around frequently.
Even though he had lived for multiple generations, his body simply did not. Now, he resembled the embodiment of winter itself.
Silence hung in the air like a disease until Napron opened his mouth. "Young Rat," Nepron's voice was shaky and strained, sounding like he was dying there on the spot. "You have been charged with the murder of your mother, Moon, as described by Sky. What do you say in your defense?"
"She deserved it." Rat leaned forward slightly. "You don't know what she did to me."
"You're right, we don't know," Nepron said, the slightest bit of disappointment in his voice. "But what did she do to constitute killing her? Did she really hurt you that much that she had to die for her mistakes?"
Rat glared at the old man, his frown deepening. "I have my reasons, and you aren't important enough to know them. You might as well kill me, so everyone in this disgusting village can bathe in the afterglow of my demise." Rat's face twisted into a wide smile, frightening some of the judges who now looked at him with clear disdain.
Nepron sighed. "I always knew that there was a darkness in you, boy. You are corrupted, and for that you must be exiled."
Rat raised an eyebrow. "You aren't going to kill me?" Rat's heart raced with anticipation. He knew that the Gods were in his favor now, and they would carry him to a new beginning outside of this pathetic court. Multiple scenarios raced through his head, images of the complete destruction of the village and the stringing up of its inhabitants all that he could think of.
Nepron frowned, as if he had heard Rat's thoughts. "You won't be walking freely so easily, boy. The people demand justice in some form, so I must give them what they want."
Nepron raised his hand, and almost instantly two men clad in plate armor appeared by Rat's sides. One of them held a long branding iron that had the visage of a wolf's head on the end that glowed an orange-yellow from heat, the other holding a simple wooden club as his tool.
Nepron pointed with a bony finger at the man with the branding iron. "You shall forever bear the Sign of the Wolf, a signature of your corruption and subsequent banishment from our village. May the Gods grant you mercy in the next life." Nepron nodded slightly.
Immediately, the man with the club delivered a hard blow to Rat's head, sending him to the ground.
Rat groaned in pain, his head spinning and his vision blurring as he lied there on the ground face-down. He felt himself be turned over, and through his blurry vision he could see the other man with the branding iron.
Before Rat could do anything to protect himself, the man quickly slammed the hot end of the branding iron onto his right pec.
Rat screamed in agony as his flesh sizzled and cooked under the branding iron, his eyes welling with tears as the scent of the burning flesh met his nostrils. For what felt like ages, the branding iron stayed against Rat's skin before finally being removed.
Throwing up on the stone floor, Rat rolled over in shock and pain. He felt his vision grow darker and darker, before everything finally went to an inky black and the voices of the men in the room were drowned out by nothingness.