"Squalo? Can you do me a couple of favors?"
Sitting at the top of the stairs, Belphegor slowly wipes the blood staining his free hand onto his black pants, staring blankly in front of him. His other trembles slightly as he holds the phone to his ear, waiting for the sleepy reply from Squalo. He feels devoid of all emotion and empty as the pill bottles in his trash can; he sees stars ahead of him, bursting silently in the synapses rapidly firing in his brain. Still, everything feels like slow motion; the colors blur like a smudge oil painting, and his hands are freezing.
Maybe he's a little shaken.
On the other end, Squalo yawns loudly and then swears under his breath in sharp irritation. "The fuck do you want?" He sounds uncharacteristically quiet, but abrasive as he always is at the same time. "It's four in the goddamn morning, dipshit." He mutters under his breath about hanging up the phone, but he doesn't. He never does.
An ice cold wave of dizziness washes over Belphegor. "I fucked up, Squalo. Real bad." Violently shivering, Bel scoots to the side so that he can lean against the wall while he sits; he considers the feeling of swimming, of floating listlessly in the green-grey Mediterranean waves. "Do you believe in Hell?"
Squalo's heart tightens. There isn't much he can do for Bel here, like this; Squalo lives on the other side of town, where the prostitutes walk at night and drug busts happen on a near daily basis. The bad side of town, where break-ins are rampant and children get murdered in their homes. Bel was fortunate enough to have been born to an outrageously wealthy man on the good side of town—nothing bad ever happens on that side, but the silver haired teen is beginning to think differently about that now. "Look, I don't have time for your theological bullshit. What do you mean you 'fucked up'?" Squalo's voice is low; concerned, but impatient. Bel is silent on the other line. When he doesn't receive an answer, Squalo presses, hard as steel. "What did you do? Answer me."
Bel can hear the sheets of the other's bed shifting in the background as Squalo gets up, the creak of the springs. It's 4:17 am, and they have school in the morning. His mouth is dry.
"I blacked out—I don't know what happened." He knows exactly what happened, but he doesn't remember actually doing it, except in vague snippets. It's fuzzy in his head, and no matter how many times he tries to think back to it, he just watches them die again. His arms hurt and there are gashes on both palms of his hands.
Stigmata.
"What did you do?"
Drop.
The metallic taste of blood greets Bel's senses after he bites the tip of his tongue, rigidly, nervously. He shivers again for a different reason; he feels it inside him, that illness that he never wanted. The blonde glances off to the side, and covers his mouth with his hand when he sees an arm outstretched towards him on the floor. He feels so sick, so sick, and the note wrapped in plastic, crumpled up in his pocket only causes his stomach to sink even further. "I'll tell you at the bridge," he whispers, voice hoarse. "But only there, okay? Just meet me at the bridge as soon as possible. It's important."
That isn't enough for Squalo; it sounds like he drops his cellphone onto the floor and scrambles to retrieve it. He knows something is terribly wrong, but it's hard getting it out of the brat when he gets like this. "Bel, tell me what you did." A door slams on Squalo's end. "I won't—I won't tell anyone else if you don't want me to." Desperation creeps into his tone. Bel feels worse.
Swallowing, the blonde stands and slowly, carefully walks down the stairs and trails his free hand along the wall. His blood follows like a painted shadow.
He can hear Squalo shouting to him over the phone while he goes about in a manic rush, saying reassuring things to him and pleading to know what the fuck he did. It's a nice sentiment, but Bel doesn't want to hear it. Everything is cold—the heating in the house isn't working right; his dad was going to call someone to fix it after lunch—and the scent of death is beginning to become hard to bear.
A shard of glass embeds itself into the sole of his boot.
He feels so goddamn sick.
He is so goddamn sick.
The synapses fire wrong, distort him. He feels like he's buzzing so loudly that no one else can hear it. Bel steps on a bloodied hand and almost trips. His feet are unsteady, and he swears he heard a bone or two crunch. Proximal phalanges, metacarpals. Distal. Twenty seven bones multiplied by four; scaphoid, lunate, triquetral, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate. Too much. "Hey," he suddenly interrupts Squalo's rambling, almost whimpering the word like a scared child lost in an unfamiliar place. "Send the cops to my house."
"What?"
"Just do it. I'm hanging up now. I'm sorry."
"Belphegor, wait—"
Quickly ending the call, Bel shudders and throws his expensive phone to the side. The clack that reverberates in the air as it hits the marble floor is enough to cause the blonde to double over at the bottom of the stairs, one hand covering his mouth again while his other holds his stomach. Don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up, don't throw up. Calm down. Calm down.
Calm down.
His father's head is facing him. The rest of his body is five feet away, next to Rasiel's corpse, as if he were still trying to protect him. He tried so hard to protect Rasiel, the precious one. Prodigal son.
Bel looks at their bodies and can't stop looking—it's been over an hour since he killed them both, and the smell is oppressive now and his father's eyes won't stop staring straight at him no matter where he moves in the house. Rasiel's golden hair is matted with rapidly drying blood, and his mouth is outstretched in agony. He can still hear the way he was screaming for him to stop, begging for help and for mercy.
God please let me die kill me kill me please kill me pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum thy kingdom come thy kingdom come thy kingdom
Belphegor shakes and his breathing gets rapid because he doesn't remember, why doesn't he fucking remember? Mammon would be so pissed at him for all of this—he made such a mess.
You're a disgusting piece of shit.
The synapses tell him to get out of the house when his phone rings, and it's much louder than he would have anticipated. It's Squalo who's calling him for sure, but there's no chance that Bel is going to answer. If Squalo phoned the police like he was told to, it should be about fifteen more minutes for them to arrive. Nothing bad ever happens on this side of town. The grass grows green and bright, and the houses are palaces in their own right—grand and beautiful, all painted picturesque white hues. The sun shines upon them, and the moon hangs sweet above them.
Belphegor feels sacrilegious as he steps over the bodies of his family, and he accidentally laughs when his shoes track their blood on the floor. It looks black in the absence of light in the house, and Bel knows he's going to Hell for sure; no one is supposed to laugh at their dead family, laying on the floor like animals. He clenches his fists, shaking still—he doesn't stop shaking, not once—and heads to the front door, ignoring the sound of his footsteps. The door opens silently, and he exits his house for the last time without looking back at the sin inside.
The air is fresh, and he has to blink rapidly when he feels tears sting at his eyes. This isn't supposed to be happening. This doesn't happen to sixteen year old kids—but the blood and guts on his clothes and skin and hair burn and stain and mar him like acid corrodes, and he hopes to God that Squalo will understand that he meant for none of this to happen. Belphegor takes off running down the street in the direction of the bridge, breathing raggedly, heart and legs pumping as fast as they can. This wasn't supposed to happen—not like this. Not like this.
He hopes he goes to Hell, wishes for it with all his damn body.
A/N: Welcome to the rather foreboding prologue of House of Cards! This is pretty much my terrible attempt at a deconstructed high school AU—actions will have real world consequences. Some character ages have been modified for them all to fit closer within the same age range, and they're all normal teenagers. No fantastic powers, no mafia games, and no outlandish backstories. That is to say, of course I will be drawing from canon to keep the characters as IC as possible.
As you may have gathered, House of Cards isn't going to be a happy story either, and it deals with numerous amounts of triggering subjects. To list things off the top of my head that are going to be involved in later chapters is murder/death, mental illness and trauma, various disorders, homophobia, verbal, physical, and mental abuse, drug use, alcoholism, graphic violence and gore, and maybe a couple of mentions of sex. Please proceed with caution if you find any of these things too hard to stomach.
Thanks for reading!