AU - Real world.
TW: Death. Murder. Suicide attempts.
Rated M for the aforementioned, plus language.
AN: I don't think I've used this account to write for another fandom, though this very much started off as a Super Smash Bros. fic, before I realized all the characters I used were Legend of Zelda.
Hello, hello? I coughed. No, that wasn't it. I must've whispered it. That must be why nobody was looking at me. Hello?
I've to try harder but the blood in my veins, there's no more. It's coming out too fast, little shocks of electricity coursing through my arm and oh God, it hurts. I want it to stop, but I know that the pain stopping would mean I was dead.
Do I want to be dead? Haha. Hahaha. Ha.
Don't give me that look, you son of a bitch. It's supposed to be funny. See, the joke is that of course I don't want to be dead. That's the whole joke. But I don't think you'd know that. My sense of humor's only funny if you know who I am. Do you? Do you really know me, or am I getting ahead of myself?
Hello? I gasped. That had to be it. A gasp means I was desperate enough to say hello, but a gasp means that it's possible nobody could have heard it. By all means, I don't think I screamed it.
...
They told me I could write whatever I wanted, so I think I probably ought to.
What about the truth?
The truth? Probably not. If I were to tell the truth, then that means I'd be admitting it was true. I don't think I know what it is yet; just the facts. Instead, I'll tell you about the time I was four years old. You probably don't remember when you were four because when you're four people tell you that you're happy all the time and when you're sad or angry you're not sad or angry about the important stuff.
But you are sad and angry and agitated at the important stuff. Being scared of the dark only means you're scared of the unknown. A monster under your bed will probably kick you in the ass later on when you refuse to confront the problems that lie beneath the surface so don't you tell me kids are scared for no good reason.
Me? Well, I was scared that someday a house would swallow me. Craziest thing, right? Houses aren't alive.
Wait, that's not how it's supposed to happen. I wasn't scared of houses. I was scared of homes. Homes are alive. Every fracture, every splinter, every table that's been polished a thousand and fifty times with lemon-scented wipes tells a story that I never wanted to be a part of. Like the blood on the carpet is about the time I got into Ma's make up bag and pulled out her scissors and accidentally sliced my tongue open with it. I don't remember the pain, just the taste of blood, so warm and metallic and sinuous against little shark teeth. Blood. Haha, they say it's thicker than water, you know? But there're a bunch of other things thicker than water like milk or cum.
Fuck, did I mess up? Gotta start over.
...
Remorse? The only remorse I had was that I didn't get to die. If I died, I wouldn't have ended up here.
But maybe I am dead. Maybe this is hell. Taking a child's life, that's a surefire way I'm going to hell, right? But I heard suicide's also a sin, so there's that.
Maybe this is hell.
I'm thirsty. It's been a few hours since I had a cup of good water. I've tried to describe how water tastes about twelve times already but it's hard to explain. All I know is that some of it tastes like shit, some of it tastes like cardboard and some of it tastes good. There's no good water here. Maybe that's what makes people go crazy in here.
Twelve times. Now why did I say twelve?
...
Some facts.
My name is Ganondorf Dragmire. I was born on July seventh. I have red hair and no freckles but sometimes I wish I did. Redheads are supposed to have freckles, I'm told.
Also, I'm told that redheads are supposed to have no souls.
I heard that one a lot after they found me in the tub, about twenty miles away from death. Well, gingers you know them. No souls.
I find myself agreeing. Never met a redhead that had one but I think I'm the only redhead I'm acquainted with, and I don't think we've properly met. Hi, I'm Ganondorf.
...
They forgot about me so quickly, you know? The people that say they know you, keep up with you in the magazines, but they never saw you in person. The only Dragmire boy to be born in centuries. If they did, maybe then they'd stop wanting to be with you. Maybe they wouldn't want you to sign their breasts. Maybe they wouldn't be climbing over each other's corpses to say hello.
Hello?
...
I've had plenty of homes. My first isn't important, but now people are trying to find out more about it. Where did my mother and father go wrong in raising this child? But here's a secret; there's nothing to suggest I was going to kill when I was little. I was in the little league, did markedly well in school. Classmates called me shy, which is what all the psychologists zeroed in on and what the news looked at and it was all very amusing. It's always the ones who are shy and withdrawn and friendless that do the killing. The losers without the girlfriends. The ones with a revenge story. But I had plenty of friends after I graduated high school so my shyness doesn't matter much. I never even did the animal torture thing.
You ought to look at my last home. But this home wasn't really a home. I mean, it was. It swallowed you like a regular home did. Whole, complete, like a snake, like a mother from a fairytale, and then it digests you, breaks you down into tiny little bits until there's nothing left but small corkscrews, springs and cogs. Then, when it's time to go, they shit you out and that's what you are. A massive brown heap with nowhere to go but the ocean.
What do you do with a piece of shit? Haha.
Get it? The joke here is that I'm a piece of shit, but I think you knew that.
Just like he did, that stupid fuck. Came to me like we were friends, his eyes drawn to a point much like his ears, his mouth looking like something an artist had no time for. Funny thing is, people ask me if I know him and I say I don't but they all think I'm lying since he lived a few houses down. He knew what I was though, saw it in those eyes.
I really didn't know him.
But oh how he bled.
...
Actually, it wasn't so much of a bleed. It was more like an explosion, the way his face still had that expression of disbelief. Not at first, though.
I wouldn't say it was fun, but I will say it was comforting, like the cool side of a pillow on a hot summer's day. To be more succinct, it was a major relief. Is there a difference between the two? Took me some time to distinguish but yeah, I think there is. It's really hard to tell what I'm feeling apart. See, when I saw that boy going onto the man, I think what I felt was injustice but I didn't know until I was bleeding out in that damned bathtub.
And why wouldn't I feel injustice? Don't tell me I didn't deserve to feel that.
I deserved to feel that molten white golden liquid force its way through my veins, to look at him, a halo of destruction clouding my vision, letting me pause for one small second just to give him a measured smile, and say -
I didn't expect to see you here!
Except I did.
...
I wasn't a doctor, so I didn't know you were supposed to make the cut vertically, like Doctor Borville told me after everything had happened. Horizontal means a cry for attention. He spat those words at me, didn't even want to look at me, couldn't really.
How very boring and predictable of him. It made me kind of smile, actually. It's one thing if a doctor has to treat a killer they don't know. But when it came to me, he played the hero and acted disgusted. Heroes are boring, don't you agree? That's why a lot of things on the television are dark and gritty. That's why serial killers are put on a pedestal, that's why people remember their names. Nobody remembers the victims' names over time. They're black and white faces that fade away with time.
They'll say about boy, about how he was a courageous little boy capable of doing extraordinary things, even more extraordinary than he'd already done. Probably in the obituary or some shit. I might read it when it comes out in the paper. I watched his friend - was she his lover? - on television. Before his death she looked regal, like a pink princess in need of saving. Now she looked like a little vixen in that black skirt, talking to that crowd that hung onto her incoherent words like leeches. Do you think it's a coincidence that black is not only the color of mourning but also the color that looks sexiest on people?
Wait, am I thinking about red? Doesn't matter, red is the color of blood and death. Did I tell you my hair was red?
...
I offered him a big glass of wine which he accepted. He couldn't be older than seventeen, the low rumble in his throat sounding new, uncertain and a little raw, like he'd screamed his disobedient voice into behaving. A late bloomer, then. Ah, I remember when I was going through puberty. It was easy, a necessary sacrifice to what I'd become later on. The girls giggled, like they normally do, those bitches. Never had a shred of compassion for me 'til I fully transitioned. Then they treated me like the fucking God I was.
The boy, he took a whole sip, letting it rest on his tongue, and then spat it out. Didn't even know the correct way to drink it. Gross, he said before he asked how I was doing. Wrong question. But I smiled, said I was doing okay. It wasn't really a lie. I felt that I'd be eventually be okay if he was gone.
My gun was silver and it glittered in the sun. Glittery things are so pretty.
...
About the weapon:
It was a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol and it fit into my hands easily.
I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I use my sword? My magic? After all, I'm good at the sword. Good at magic. Huh. Good question. Why didn't I use my sword? Let me think. It's hard to say.
My sword felt right on me, always has, but that's it. Didn't feel right on him. Does that make sense?
...
I should have gone after the princess. A lot of killers go after girls. More tragic if it's a girl, maybe that's why people pay more attention. I thought going after the boy set me apart from the rest. Still, the princess. I toyed with that idea. I suppose that princess would've been too smart. Had an eye to stay out of trouble, I was told. She couldn't string a sentence on the television, sniveling and sobbing and yeah I know you're sad, you little cunt. You're sad he's dead.
Pity? Only that she looked like she really loved him. That was her mistake, that she loved him. I pitied her for that and nothing more.
...
Humans are structured weird. I realized that when he bled all over my graying carpet unapologetically. That was when I shot him in the leg the first two times. To be more accurate one went into his thigh, and the other into the foot. He stumbled a little, his head slamming a bit into the arm of the chair he was sitting on. The next ten came a little later, after I got to see his eyes water, drowning his blown out pupils. I respected him a little, the way he looked me in the eye and tried to mask his pain, tried to be the calm one. Asked me to let him go a few times and he would swear on his honor that he wouldn't tell anybody what happened. What is honor anyway? There is no honor with men who have their life on the line. I told him to shut the hell up and drink his wine. I'm giving you a last drink, you ought to be grateful, asshole.
He gulped it down, didn't even spit it out. Like a good boy. Strange how much people listen when you've shot them already. It's exhilarating but also very pathetic to want to cling to life that much. I'm sorry, Ganon, he said, but I thought it wasn't sincere enough so I added one more bullet, this time to his shoulder. I was aiming for the glass in his right hand. Well, my aim wasn't the best.
It wasn't sincere enough, I'd surmised, because I still wanted to kill him. I shouldn't have at that point, but I did. There was nothing wrong with me. I wiped my brow with the mouth of the gun, slightly bemused at how hot and needy it was. I watched him at my knees. Four shots.
I could let him live. It would be the decent thing to do. But if I let him live, then he would tell somebody that I wasn't okay and I couldn't have that because I was. I really was okay with being a pile of shit. I didn't need help.
He looked into my eyes but his pupils were so wide, that I didn't see anything I was looking for. I guess in that sense it was a little disappointing. I was expecting to see something else when I added the rest. Movies kinda sensationalize that stuff, seeing the shock and pain and betrayal and...
...Well, I think I wanted somebody to feel that for me.
...
I imagine death would be so silent.
Death would be-
...
And her eyes are gleaming, kind of like her dead hero's except not as stupid and a little more purple. But you can't really tell they're purple unless you really pay attention. There's a smile easing into her face, brittle and frozen, acting like a barrier. I think about the many ways I can shatter it, but she's strong.
I don't know why she's here but I don't give a damn. She's pretty and soft and hard and everything at once. There in our maximum security prison, hers entirely constructed in her mind, mine, well... a literal actual max security prison.
Cross my arms. Uncross them. Look her in the eye, really look. But I see nothing. The waiting is fucking terrible. I hate waiting. I am not a patient man, I've been patient for too long, for my whole life. I've no regrets, I tell her.
She exhales, as if she's won a small victory and maybe she has because we were playing a silent game and I was the first to breach it. I know. I think I've always known, but never paid attention. I think everybody knew but didn't pay attention. She rubs at the inner corner of her eye, plucks at the dried rheum gathered up there, wipes it on the table. I stare at it for one long moment, utterly fascinated and disgusted.
Should have been you, I stab into her viciously, and I know that this attack signals my defeat, because I want to break her and she knows I want that. It should have been her. Should've gone after the princess.
She says nothing, but her silence opens up to me, a gigantic maw in which the inside is an empty, vacuuming void of infinite, tearing, sadness. The sadness of a girl who has lost the closest thing she'd ever have to a soulmate. So that's when I know, she's agrees with me. It ought to have been her.
And all I feel is relief. Because she finally understands me. No, to understand would be to put into words. She does not understand. She feels.
...
But the cost is that she feels and she hates me. Long after she's left, I hear her words and think about them.
You're batshit crazy, you know?
I am not. I am not crazy. I just want to toe that delicate line between the mania and the depression. I just want to hop off that bullet train filled with ghouls and djinns and eidolons and poltergeists. I want to be left behind with the rest.
I just needed to know what the worst thing would be for you.
And what's your conclusion, princess? Think you know?
Not to die. We won't be arguing for death penalty. Only for a life sentence. And you can be sure, you'll be getting it.
Didn't think humans could predict the future, but I saw the way she looked at me and I didn't think to doubt her at all.
...
Sometimes, I think about the way my mother smelled when she pulled me tight against her. There was the booze of course, always the booze, but underneath that, if you really smelled hard enough you smelled Mother. Strange. I can't describe it better than that.
And then I think about my father, and the way he screamed, and broke glasses and raged. I think about the madness in his eyes and it's all quite normal. A portrait of a happy mother and a happy, handsome father with their arms wrapped around a successful, brilliant little boy.
...
I did it only because I had to.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then I can't tell you anything more. If you know what I'm talking about then there's nothing I can tell you.
I'll try again somehow, and this time I'll be successful.