"Are you sure you can keep him on a short leash?" The red siren asked the blue one.
"Do we have to talk about him as if he's not here? I think actually acknowledging him once in a while would do him good. What do you think?" She turned to the man, sitting with legs pulled close, hunched on the couch. He cocked his head at the women, seemingly pulled from a daydream. The red siren snorted,
"See, I don't think it even really matters. It's like your presence sedates him."
"Short leash, huh?" The blue siren crossed her arms, "I'll keep him in my sights, don't think he'd mind. Or do you, buddy?"
"Buddy? Don't tell me you don't know his name."
"Have you ever had a decent conversation with a psycho before? For fuck's sake, he introduced himself as the conductor of the poop train." He grunted and shrank, missing the smile in her voice, then smacked himself.
'What did I tell you pal, don't shout poop. Hey, look at it this way, at least she's smiling.'
He physically shook off his previous thoughts as he squealed at the latter, garnering more odd looks from the sirens.
"Fair enough, but we can't keep calling him either, figure out his name before I give him one. Curiosity is killing me and I'm feeling very creative today." She took a firm hold of the blue siren's shoulder, "Stay safe Maya."
"Likewise." She watched her colleague meander onto the balcony, joining Roland, her own pet-man project. Returning her sight on the psycho, she found him still mesmerised by her, not at all distracted by her friend, a maiden fair as herself. Maya stepped around the holo table as she initiated smalltalk, as careful as she was graceful in approaching him.
"So, why don't you tell me a little something about yourself?" Leaning back against the table, still facing him, her open palms danced between them, to the flow of her words,
"Your name would be a great starter."
She followed his trailing eye, as it darted to the right and back between grunts, she unknowingly cocked her own head at him,
"You struggling with your thoughts? Or the voices?" His eye shot up to meet hers,
'The voices, tell her it's the voices! Fuck, tell her it's both!'
The lips behind the mask prepared for speech, but the tongue in his mouth forced itself between his teeth, and as his jaws clamped down, he grunted between the shoots of pain,
"Somebody still cares?"
'A coherent sentence with inquisitive intent, good, that's a start.'
"Oh you better believe it, you saved my ass out there. I wanna know why, and why aren't you murdering anyone right now? Why are you sitting here instead, looking at me like some lost puppy?" She leaned in to whisper, curiosity vivid in her voice,
"Why haven't you screamed anything in the past 20 minutes?" The psycho didn't think, however, his former self couldn't stop,
'Woman, have you forgotten yesterday morning?'
They wished the pretty lady could hear him.
"Do I need to start worrying? If this is about the poop train thing, it's okay, I won't report you for impersonating a conductor." Her smile was infectious, however timid, and had him drift into a giggling fit of hyperventilation,
"The pretty lady doesn't mind tasting the bloody hatred?!"
"Not at all, I'm quite the potty mouth myself, in case you hadn't noticed."
A smirk crept onto her lips, and behind his mask as well,
"Besides, you've seen me fight, I don't shy away from a little blood and gore, let alone some dirty words."
Maya knelt in front of him, placing a hand on his knee,
"If there's anything you wanna tell me, or just shout into the ether, fucking go for it."
A dirty word from delicious lips, smiling scrumptiously. His heart rate shot up, beads of sweat rolled from his scalp and chilled along his spine. All the words he ever could manage to make him utter wanted to jump off his tongue immediately, but they jumbled and what came forth instead, well...
"Hngbrlffrfrlrkgrglfkrrrrrip out, the throats of my enemies... The words from my head! TAKE THEM, NO BACKSIES! HA HA HA!"
'Stop laughing you fool, this is a serious moment we're having with her. We need you to gather yourself, can you do that for us?'
As though on instinct, his palm met with his face, halting the laughter. The forceful smack had Maya cringe, Lilith doubled back from the balcony, Roland on her 6 and under her lipstick, gripping his rifle,
"Everything okay in here? Maya? Eh, Buddy?"
"Yeah, just peachy."
"Peaches in pee-buckets! Just pouring our PAINS into each other's SOULS!"
Maya's eyes smiled somewhat sadly at him, she saved the grin for Lilith as she turned to her,
"You heard him, no backsies."
"Okay then, we'll just, go back out here then." She pointed to outside, where the weather was clearly having none of their pouring pains. The blue siren looked back to her new friend, having mulled his words and her own.
"Conductor, I will do my stinking best to understand what's coming out of your mouth. I will decipher every word, ask you a million questions, until we're clear on something. Is that okay with you?" The sweet in her voice could fuck up a Goliath's bloodsugar, and this guy too felt diabetes set in his carotid artery. A lump in his throat, his tongue juggling words, surprisingly he pulled away from her. His head slowly bobbing from left to right, it seemed as if he was trying to get the thoughts out of his ears as though they were water, or grains of sand, or bugs for that matter. Maya observed, she absorbed, his aura, his body language. His words,
"You're gonna scream, just like she did;" He turned from her, his knees nearing his massive shoulders. Forearms hugging his shins. With a slow rocking motion, he took his buzz-axe into his hand, then play counted its teeth.
"Open mouth, open heart, blood and noise forever piercing my skull, poisoning me with its psychopathic purple liquid."
Something in his voice, in his wording plucked at a sensitive heartstring, were these just ramblings? It came too close to her. She felt something creep into her eyes as they watered up a little, she knew she couldn't be too sure that these were just random rants or maddened confessions. So she bit the feelings away.
"We watched it all, and felt the knife edge split down the middle... CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"
Deep inside she wished he had looked at her as he asked that, instead of whacking the flat side of his buzz-axe against his forehead. Pretty hard at that, she noted.
"Please don't!" Her hand shot up. Before the big guy realised his buzz-axe wouldn't move, regardless of how hard he pulled, his inner-self halted him from hitting his head against the axe, with a realisation.
'This is it man, she's saving us, she is protecting us from ourselves! Look at it, it's stuck in a blue bubble in the air, turn to the girl! Look at the pretty lady! Thank her!'
He jerked his head towards her, his eye caught hers, red, moist, her hand still clenched in mid air. As though their souls connected between their blinks, the psycho was fixated on keeping her gaze on him.
"Please stop hurting yourself, for reals. I understand you might not be able to help it, or that it 'feels so good'..." His hands slid from his axe's handle to the couch's edge, leaving it levitating.
'Where are you going with this, big guy? Hey, answer me!'
He slid off the couch onto the concrete coldness, attempting to align his good eye with her right. Maya pushed the buzz-axe away, which punctured the seat cushions on landing, pulling her hands into her lap.
"I am tired of watching people torturing themselves. So much," He kept his hand from reaching in an attempt to catch a renegade tear, wanting to snuff it out of existence, never to return.
'If you even so much as scratch her, I swear to hell and back,'
"That, honestly, I'd much rather end it for them." Another tear rolled, he stopped short, but then even more careful he reached out. This one he managed to snub, summoning a blush at this surprise tenderness, a smile for his latent sweetness.
"Thank you, conductor." Her heels dug into her buttocks, her nails into her palms. She didn't falter in their staring session, despite arguing with her own inner voice. The words leapt from her lips before her thoughts caught up,
"I was raised in an abbey, by monks, mostly isolated. They had me threaten and abuse people, for a 'greater good'. I, don't know my standards, I'm still figuring out my role model, and this is the closest a man has ever been near me, that I didn't eventually kill. Accidental or otherwise. I don't know why I'm telling you so early on just hoping you'd understand. I just thought you should know."
He took her hands from her lap, not to hold in his own, no. It was to make space for his head to lay on, like a puppy, his arms awkwardly folded between him and the floor.
'What the hell are you doing, big guy? You're going to give her a heart attack, or at least a reason to stab us. Get back up, c'mon!'
Instead, the voice and the man were calmed and reassured, when a pair of delicate palms rested on his back. It seemed as though his inner voice had trouble comprehending the situation,
'I can, I can feel her touch? My skin, it's like fire...'
"Seeing as you are somewhat a puppy, which is fine, I guess. You seem housebroken enough," her fingers brushed the skin behind his ear, intentionally attempting to solicit some kind of primal reaction, and settling for a grunt-like purr, "How about we go for a walk? Take in the air."
3 years earlier
"Great. Great great great great fucking awesome! So glad you were honest with me, see... Now I don't have to feel as much guilt as I usually do when I order my bot friend here, to give you an unhealthy dose of Leadinthehead™!" Sarcasm seemed to be what this man in-, as well as exhaled, yet distilling fear in his subjects instead of irritation due to his infamous volatile nature.
"Sir, we swear! We did our best to contain him, if anything this proves the experiment valid. He was too strong for every kind of restraints we had prepared!" The lead scientist shook in his lab coat, a crown of beads of sweat. His technical assistant thankfully, had a more level headed approach to their employer,
"The results merely exceeded the expectations, sir. His escape an inevitability. If we can scale our facilities to our new projections, then all is not lost!"
"Fine, that's the only reason for keeping you alive. Today." If looks could kill, he'd never look in his mirror again. Lucky him.
"We might not even need him back, we could just make a new one." She coaxed him to no avail. The 'handsome' man paced as only he can,
"He's a dangerous weapon and he's mine! I want him back! He's already cost us more than enough money for me to assure you personally that we will get our every penny's worth!" The masked man poked the lead scientist in the chest, right where his heart would be cut from. The lead scientist collapsed to the ground, fear struck his knees. Having relieved just enough steam, he stepped back from the pathetic pile of man, and gathered himself, "Now that he has escaped, let's hope he's sowing at least some terror. How about the others?"
"We need new subjects for Project Pest, Hunger is resting in his holding cell, Project Tod is going according to schedule." The technical assistant offered him a datapad with all the stats and reports, but he waved it away with a look of disgust.
'Ugh, reading,' he thought to himself, and took a deep breath,
"Good, now, before someone manages to kill him, or worse," He shuddered at the thought, "tame him before I do... Go. Get. My. Psycho! Dismissed! Get your fat failing asses out of here!"
Present day
Descending the stairs, something this psycho hadn't done in quite a while, he leaned back a bit too far. His heel scraping the edge of a step, missing it completely. Instead of falling on his ass, his top loaded shoulders heeded most of the present gravity. On them he slid down the flight of stairs, overtaking an unsuspecting Maya. A split second reaction from her prevented his head from engaging in an unfortunate encounter with the concrete floor. Instead, with a perfectly looped arc he was set down straight onto his feet, meeting the siren's smile as she made her way down, ever so gracefully.
"Is that our newest recruit? I'm going to need a blood sample if he is, and a cup full of all his other bodily fluids. Today." without even looking, therefor not properly acknowledging either, the doctor correctly diagnosed her issues for today. Maya's brow furrowed,
"All his other fluids? You're kidding right? I don't remember-"
"Don't question me," Tannis waved her closer, "God knows where he's been. If you're gonna let him get close to you, at least make sure he's not contagious with anything. Psycho's tend to have more than questionable diets." Maya stepped back,
"Can't argue with you there, thanks Dr. Tannis, for looking out for me." Patricia cackled,
"Don't get me wrong, I'm mostly doing it for my own mental health. Knowing he's just crazy and not also disgusting is a comfort, and luxury I can attain." She stepped away to collect receptacles in a brown paper bag, and placed it on the table, "This will be here, whenever he's ready. I'd really appreciate it if you stick to the 24 hour window, I can draw his blood right now." She motioned them both closer,
"So, you two lovebirds going anywhere today?" Once more the siren guided him, and brought his arm within Tannis' reach.
"We were going out for a walk, maybe get out and find clues as to who he is." As she produced the needle his pulse raised though he was calm, it seemed he understood blood was required. Maya noted his discomfort, still holding his arm,
"It's okay if you want scream something. Go ahead." He shook his head fervently.
"This will only hurt a little." The doctor proceeded to insert the needle into his vein, his eye fixed on the needle. Biting his tongue was no longer enough,
"It's time to bleed! BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOOOD, BLOOOOOOD, BLOOOOOOOOD!"
Tannis sighed,
"I really hope he's not gonna be like this when he's filling those receptacles..." Maya bit her lips in a semi failed attempt to stifle laughter, as she hoped her imagination was not a vision or foreshadow, because how hilarious it may have seemed to her then, someone might have to clean up after him. The thought of that person being her though, still couldn't quell her humor,
"Well, if you can't hear it happen, I'll send you an ECHO of it."
"How thoughtful. Now either grab a receptacle, or shoo. This is still my workplace, and I still prefer quiet." The siren saluted the doctor and effortlessly drug him out of there, onto the streets of Sanctuary.