Title: New Breed: DOG BYTE
Summary: Sometimes, love is displayed by moral execution. Brutality becomes a mask; the goggles are merely a security factor to strengthen his resolve. [GORE-PRONE MATT-CENTRIC!]
Disclaimer: I don't own DN or anything referenced.
Author's Note: I'm stoked to write something serious and dark, haha! (Written entirely while listening to ICP's Piggy Pie on a loop. LOL Strange inspiration, ne?)
Three little piggies, to make a piggy pie.
There's nothing like the sound when you hear a piggy die.
I might choose a gun (NO!); I might choose an axe (YES!).
The carnival's in town, come and get your piggy snacks!
...
INTRO
Red, the essence of life, slipped through his fingers like syrup, thick and goopy. The warmth pooled in his palms and he began to tremble, a horrified and almost manic smile spread wide between his cheeks and a devastating sound came out with a choked gasp. Eyes wide and wet with the salty tears he could no longer contain, he stared down at the lifeless heap of flesh and gore at his feet.
So much blood, it hardly seemed real.
"It's-It's okay," he found himself whispering, kneeling before the corpse. He pressed a hand to the victim's cheek; it was still warm at this point. He took a deep shuddering breath and spoke softly, expression dulling to something less terrified, more nullified and almost blank. "Don't worry, momma. It's going to be okay." On his knees, kneeling, he curled his form over the female body, taking her head in his hands and cradling it into his lap. "Shhhh," he cooed, "I won't leave you alone to suffer, momma."
Trembling, he drew in air sharply before releasing his breath in a burst.
"G-Gonna get you safe, momma," he said reassuringly, slowly getting to his feet and grappling his mother beneath the arms so that he could drag her by her upper body. He took a timid and wobbly step back, testing his ability to move with her weight before taking a second step. And then a third, gradually growing more sure of himself as he continued. With time and a significant amount of struggling, he slowly made his way from the kitchen that doubled as a crime scene, through the hallway, and into the bathroom.
As careful as possible, he lowered his mother's upper torso to the ground and surveyed the damage that had been done. Coated in multiple stab wounds, she'd been disemboweled, her body nearly split in two, only held together by bone and sinew; her grotesque innards left a trail of breadcrumbs behind, though he'd tend to that later.
His first priority was taking care of the woman who'd meant so much to him in all his nine years of life.
Leaving her on the floor, he stumbled over to the bathtub and felt fatigue wash over him; he crouched beside the tub, clinging to a rim of porcelain in a dramatic effort not to fall over and pass out. One hand gripping tightly to the tub, his head resting against a bent elbow, he reached his other hand to the water taps. With a flick of the wrist, the water came spurting through gurgling old pipes before flowing more steadily, starting cold and growing warm as the seconds passed.
Almost as an afterthought, his eyes rolled down to look at the water swirling down the drain; he moved his hand from the tap to the plug, moving it to seal the vortex-like drain. Once that was accomplished, he let out a whoosh of breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
The tub filled slowly; he let it run as he forced his tired self up into a standing position. One last glance at his mother's stilled form was all he spared before exiting the bathroom to gather supplies.
He trudged along, half-limping and half-stumbling, limbs feeling as if they were filled with lead. As if he was dragging slabs of concrete behind him. Going to the closet at the far end of the hall near the living room, he tore open the door and grabbed a white box with a little red cross on it.
A first aid kit. He smiled as he thought about the time he helped his mother put it together, explaining to her what they'd need to put in it... in case of emergency.
The smile vanished as the memory reached completion in his mind, now replaced by a cold, dark and unsettling reality. He ran his thumb along the handle of the first aid box in contemplation -rather, what should have been contemplation, though no coherent thought would stick in his mind long enough for him to accurately process it.
Shrugging off he matter along with the idea of thinking in general, he turned away and shut the door with a light nudge of his foot. Forcing his breath to come at calm even intervals, he made his way back to the bathroom, the filling tub, and his mother's foul-smelling mannequin-like corpse.
Setting the first aid kit on the sink, he reached over and turned the water off.
"Gotta... clean... you up, momma," he said, voice unrecognizable to himself, so much that he took a moment to look around, to see if someone else had been the speaker, only to find that he was alone, in terms of living, breathing, soul-having individuals of the household.
Slowly, he knelt before his mother once more, carefully, slowly, he began to peel off her tattered clothing. It took little effort and he was soon staring at his mother in all her nude glory. Her body stained with color, her eyes wide and glassy, lips parted as if she were screaming.
"Clean you up," he said, voice sharp, determined as he reached beneath the woman, hooking his elbows beneath her armpits and hoisting her up. He maneuvered her closer to the tub before spilling her body into the basin head-first, causing her legs to stick up at unnatural angles. Frowning, he grabbed at her ankles and turned her 90 degrees, so that she lay length-wise on an imaginary fulcrum. Finally, he positioned her properly in the tub, her knees bent as he pulled her head from the water and leaned her back against the tub's walls.
The water quickly went from clear to a murky pink, slowly getting muddier in color with little prompt.
He grabbed a wash cloth from a rack beside the tub and dipped it in the water. He added soap and wrung the cloth between his hands before pressing the rough fabric to his mother's face.
"Y-You're pretty, momma," he said softly. "So p-pretty." Washing her face, he leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead, giving her a kiss -the kind of kiss she used to give him every night before bed... after she'd check under his bed for monsters.
Drawing another harsh breath of stale air and the stench of decomposition, he forced his memories back into a memory vault and continued to wash his mother, steeling his face to avoid a grimace when he went as far as to clean out his mother's exposed intestines and a kidney floated up in the water, buoyant.
When the woman was decidedly clean, he did his best to maneuver her out of the water before pulling the stopper from the drain.
His mother resting on the floor, he pulled the med kit to himself, opening the box and peering inside before setting to work with gauze and bandages, wrapping his mothers gaping abdomen and exposed duodenum, but not before repositioning the dislodged kidney and staring in admiration at the discoloring segments of liver.
Once he decided that she was taken care of, he gripped her under arms and proceeded to drag her out of the bathroom and into the living room, her body and hair wet and so much heavier than before. Once in the living room, he sat his mother's body in a recliner.
He frowned when her head limply lolled to the side.
"It's okay, momma. Get comfortable. I'll get a blanket for you." He offered the body a sad smile before tightly pursing his lips and going to retrieve a quilt that had been previously draped over the back of the sofa. He carried it back to his mother and draped it over her cold form. "Warm you up, momma," he said, trying to ignore the twinge of despair that started to tug at his heart. He pulled the lever to raise the foot rest of the recliner, trying to make his mother as comfortable as possible.
Once this was accomplished, he dropped to a kneel, his head lowered as he measured his own condition. Unlike his beautiful mother, he wasn't injured or hurt, but he was covered in blood; he was physically exhausted and his lungs hurt from the exertion of racing against his thudding heart. Raising a shaky hand for inspection, his nerves were on fire, quivers racking through his small frame; he let out a grunt through gritted teeth, unwilling to cry or sob or reveal his building desire to wail.
He would not wallow, not when his mother needed him.
Still kneeling next to her chair, he rested his head against the foot-rise, his temple able to feel the cold seeping from her body through the blanket. Like a personal cold compress, a medicine to his headache, stress, and heat.
Allowing a small watery smile, he let his eyelids close. He took slow deep breaths and soon found himself drifting.
Sleep claimed him, pulling him into a drowning pit of exhaustion and moral judgement.
If he dreamed, he did not recall, but he awoke to the sight of a seemingly sleeping woman with red hair that flowed down in waves, and he smiled.
Because, despite everything, he could take care of her, love her, and make her proud.
Feeling a strange and comforting feeling igniting his insides, he got up and turned the TV on. A movie was playing. Cujo, an old favorite. He climbed into his mother's lap and rested against her depressed frame, eyes practically glued to the screen.
And everything was okay. It had to be. His nine year old mind wouldn't let it be anything but fine. And as his rational mind dissipated, an infectious idea began to form, take root and suffocate his innocence - an almost literal mind-rape; rather, since he was doing this to himself, would it be more like ill-consented mental masturbation? Could there be such a thing, ridiculous as it was?
A deranged giggle tore from his core and stole through his lips before turning into an uncontrollable laugh, only to come to an abrupt halt as he fell slack against the corpse.
"Tired," he reasoned. "Tired, momma. I wish you could tell me a bedtime story... but you can't. Your mouth is open but your lungs won't work. So... I'll tell you a story. Then I'll protect you from monsters."
...
Not entirely sure what I'm doing with this. This is just an intro, and I need to follow through. I want Matt to pretty much lose his sanity and become a rather violent vigilante. And of course, I wanna have Mello in here later; I haven't decided if he'll be a comrade or adversary. But, baby steps; I wanna take my time with this, keep it evenly paced and with a good flow.