::WARNING! WARNING!:: Will get descriptive and gory. ::WARNING! WARNING!::
How long had it been? I wondered as my breath came out in small puffs of steam. How long had it been since I left home? I was beginning to miss everyone, even though I'd just seen them on Thanksgiving, even Rien joining us. I was glad I had my new found friend, a hawk that had taken a liking to me that I cared for back at home, but I still missed my family. It was a very nice visit, but now that I was back in school; two years in with two to go- I felt the call for home ring loudly within my heart. I missed father and mother, I missed Sam and the weird neighbor. I missed my room and Sam coming in when he was troubled, I missed home. I thought to myself as I continued my trek down the streets of the city, glancing down alley way's here and there with nervousness as I clutched at my shard necklace, a habit I seemed to have since childhood.
I couldn't believe I had left my truck at home, it being a nice day, and opted to walk today. This was a grave mistake as I had left my wallet in my truck and now had no buss fair to return home. Leaving me with no other option but to walk. Night fell quickly, and the shadow's danced in a mocking way with every corner I turned causing fears to rise. Was I being followed? Would I be mugged? My trembling nervous hand stayed within my coat pocket, clutching desperately at a can of Mace for a small form of comfort. If my horrible aim would actually miraculously find its target I would be very much grateful... The city at night loomed over, like intimidating mountains looming over and the gargoyles upon some buildings set my nerves a flare.
Silly fears would take over, every sound causing me to turn in its direction skittishly only for a cat or mouse to come racing by, or even a harmless starving elderly gentlemen who gazed up tiredly at me, his worn and haggard eye's boring into my very soul and showing me the woe's of his inner being. Small lithe arms wrapped around raggedy and ripped cloths in a desperate attempt for warmth in the cold winter's air. There were a lot of those, homeless and down trotted people, all through out the city begging for help or food with a select few who did not bother for begging or asking. Because they felt they had no hope left, and lay out their day's in the dismal alley way's unnoticed by all around them who were to busy with their lives to care for the ones in need that cried out to the heavens for an Angel or Savior.
Trying hard to keep my wits about me, I turned another corner and froze at my sights end. I had traveled down a wrong turn and ventured into an alley way, but that was not what made me freeze. No... it was the body that lay inside that alley way sprawled about the floor with a red substance oozing out of their form. Panic rose and I felt my breath hitch and my body tremble as the most agonized groan sounded before being followed by a choking sound and the body seize. Quickly I ran over to the prone figure, dropping my bag next to me, as I moved his form carefully and screamed in shock. There lay the man, filthy dirty blonde hair lay about as pained brown almost black eyes stared up in agony into the darkened sky. Gashes led from each corner of his mouth up into a Cheshire like styled grin, the flesh red a puffy as blood pooled down in streams and his throat constricting. He was choking.
Acting quickly, all the while murmuring to myself, I yanked my bag close and pulled out my first aid kit. Yes, I kept one. I had a habit of keeping a supply of survivalist items like a fire starter, pocket fisher, pocket knife, first aid kit, and other things that stayed in a bag in back of my truck. Grabbing my lighter, I pulled out a needle and thread and burned the tip, then using my fresh water from my water bottle to clear away the blood a bit and then sewing as best I could.
"God." My voice trembled. "What happened to you?" I wondered as he cried out with every entrance of the needle into his already agonized skin. "I'm sorry, I know it hurts. I'm sorry, just hold on." I soothed as I continued to try and fix up his cheeks. When finished, I frowned at my work and knew I needed to call an ambulance. I used a bit of my left over water to clear off my hands a bit as my trembling fingers skid across my phone to dial 911 when a hand gripped harshly on mind causing a shriek to fall from my lips.
The man on the floor, growling in his pain, was staring at me with eye's clouded and a scowl upon his face. "N-no." He spoke, struggling as he spit up a bit of blood only to groan at the stinging sensation it brought him. "Leah... C-call Leah."
Frowning, I wondered who that could be to him but cringed as his head hit back onto the cement and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, obviously passing out from the pain. I quickly, and carefully, searched his many pockets of the dirtied brown jacket before pulling out his wallet and inspecting his ID.
Jackson Oliver Kerr, Age twenty four.
I looked back down to him before searching his pockets more and pulling out his phone, flipping it open and staring at the back ground image. There was Jackson, dressed snazzy with his arms wrapped around a blonde girl possessively. Her sparkling blue eye's and shining smile matched the happiness in Jackson's eyes and I felt a little intrusive for viewing a private happy moment. Ignoring the picture, I went to his contacts and searched through them, questioning quite a few of them that seemed fishy, before finding her number. I quickly dialed it, listening to the rings while my heart hammered in my chest. I hoped he'd stay okay... I felt so worried for him.
"Hey darling." A musical voice cooed in the phone. "I just got off work and got home just a bit ago, where are you? I thought you'd be home by now." I could hear the pout in her voice. "I made us an anniversary dinner and everything."
"Uhm.. Leah?"
"... wh-who is this?" There was a small accusation like tone in her voice.
"My uh My names Jennifer and I need your help. It's Jackson."
"What is it?" Her voice rose an octave higher in alarm. "Is he alright?"
"I-I don't know." I murmured. "I was returning home when I found him wounded. I tried calling for an ambulance but he wont let me..."
"I'll be right there." She spoke, asking for directions to which I gave to her. Though I myself was a tad lost, she knew where I was by the description. "I'm on my way, try to keep the wounds sterile."
I nodded, though knowing she couldn't see said nod, and hung up the phone as I adjusted Jack's head to my lap, trying to keep him calm. I pet his forehead, hoping it would sooth any possible nightmares he would have as I waited. Getting a few fair odd looks from raggedy passer by's who didn't bother to see if we were okay. I was starting to greatly dislike this city, with all the dark going on's of the un-ventured parts, and felt that after this I would never venture without my truck again.
"Ah!" I flinched, staring wide eye's at Jack who gasped for air as if he was denied the ability to breath and his body tensed up as a scream left his chapped lips.
"No no!" I started, brushing his bangs. "Shh, shh it's okay." I tried soothing as he began squirming.
"No, stop!" He cried out as tears began streaming down his face. "Stop!" He screamed more and he started becoming violent, body flailing and feet Kicking as I tried maneuvering around him to pin him down so he could not self harm. This was a mistake on my part as his hit smashed into my stomach, the powerful blow sending me back and smashing into the cement wall of a building with a pained 'oomf!'
"J-Jackson." I cringed at a pain in my ribs. "It's okay calm, I wont hurt you. I'm helping you, I'm hear to help. Leah's coming, she's on her way."
"L-Leah... Leah!"
"Jack!" I heard the screech of tires and turned to see an old pick up trick with a cream blonde girl in a nurses uniform coming running over. "O-oh my god." Her voice rose another octave as manicured lithe fingers covered her mouth in shock. "Jack." Her voice cracked.
He kept calling for her, despite her trying to sooth hm, and screamed more.
"He's being tortured." She murmured. "He was calling for me, he's reliving what happened a-and he had been screaming for me." Her make up smeared with her tears as her hands gently set to work to check over the sewing I had done before she looked at me with desperation. "P-please, can you help me?"
"Anything." I felt compelled to help her and the guy, a deep instinctual urge screaming at me to help them.
"I-I need you to help me get him into the truck so I can take him home. Please..."
"Right." I agreed as I helped carry the now limp Jack to her truck before hopping in.
The drive was nearly silent, the only exception was the haggard breathing of Jack and the sniffles of Leah as she drove a long the road. The quiet was getting to me, causing me to fidget as I constantly looked back to check on Jack before peering back out to the bleary lights of passing vehicles, my nerves shot as a ringing sounded in my ear.
"What are you doing in these parts?" Leah asked, hoping to dispel the awkward air. "Y-you don't look like the kind of girl to normally be in the area."
"Collage." I murmured. "I forgot my wallet for the bus."
"I'm glad you did." Her voice hitched. "If you didn't Ja-Jack would be..."
I nodded silently, casting glances to the back of the truck for a visual on Jack and then turning back around, feeling my phone vibrate.
Judy- How was school today?
Me- It was alright.
Judy- Are you going to call me or what?
Me- I love you mom, I'm just going out with a friend for a while and then I'll call you tonight. Promise.
Judy- Sissy! It's me Sam! I'm texting.
Me- I see that, Tell mom I love her and Dad too. I'll talk to you tonight kiddo.
Judy/Sam- Okay I love you.
Me- Love you too.
I closed my phone, putting it into my pocket before glancing up as we neared a house and stopped before it. Leah seemed to much in shock as her eye's only stared at the road and not the surrounding area. However I did, and I gasped in horror. "Leah, is that your house?"
Leah's attention snapped up as her eye's set upon a shocking eight, she let out a horrified gasp before stopping her truck and quickly leaving, me following her. "No!" Leah cried as she ran forward, her home that lay before her was up in flames. Her small form was running towards the building and I had to quickly grab around her waist as she screamed about her home, body squirming about as her sorrow filled cry filled the air. Not only was she maybe losing Jack... but she had just lost her home too.
I held onto her tightly, eyes clenched as I tried calming her and whispering soothing words to try and calm her while we listened to the roaring flames and crackling wood as the house began to fall apart. Neither of us noticed the dead body in the drive way, nor the words on the cement written in the bodies blood.
'You will be erased.'
...
...
...
"Are you sure?"
I looked up from setting my things down, Leah frowning as she looked around my apartment. It was a decent sized place with a guest room, master bedroom, 2 bath, kitchen and living room.
"Yeah." I murmured as we set Jacks sleeping form upon my couch. He'd woken up on the way to my home, groggy and in a lot of pain. Leah explained to him what happened, to him and their home. She told him how I was letting them stay with me for a while, to hide them.
Her and Leah, after calming down, had found the body and the message to which scared Leah to no end because she knew who it was from and it was from the sweepers. A nasty gang that Jack had been involved in for the money to survive, only Jack didn't fall through with his last mission and ran which set the gang on him for cowardice. They must had found him in the alley way and did that to him, assuming he would die from his wound's long ago from blood loss. Until I found him that is... I knew the cops didn't care for gang member's much and I decided to help them, listening to this odd whisper that demanded I help them. So I did, I took them with me to help hide them. I wasn't sure why I was compelled to listen to the voice, but I was and so here we were... with me making them something to eat.
I decided to make a beef stew with bread rolls, making it up and taking one over to Leah who just returned from a shower and then over to Jack, kneeling before his form and gently waking him with a groan.
"You need to eat." I murmured, handing it to him only to receive a growl in response and a dark look. What did I do?
"I don-don't need you help." Came his rough voice in disdain.
"Yet you need it." I responded, getting a dark look in reply.
If he liked it or not, he needed my help.
I don't know how long they lived with me as time passed on and we grew accustomed to each other's presence, though Jack still greatly disliking me and his entire demeanor was dark and filled with anger. Not that I blamed him, as every time he left people would stare and whisper about his scar's. However, one day as I was working on a project of mine with my hawk watching in the window who I'd now deemed Laserbeak. Odd name but it was as if it was whispered to me when we met. I continued messing with my project, a suit of armor for Comicon. It wasn't any normal suit, but one made of metal. As I was messing with the suit, my shard began to grow quite hot making me cry out in pain as I touched it to try and get it off my neck, only it seemed to attach to the armor I was making and the armor suddenly flew forward, clinging to my body like a well fitted glove. I didn't understand what was going on, fear coursing through me at the strange phenomenon. But when I did a voice whispered in my mind and information suddenly began flowing through. How to utilize it and use it, how to fight in it and how to fuel it. I wasn't as understanding of it as the information was trying to make me, and for the next few days I would take the suit and practice outside... until one day Jack and Leah found it, touching it as well and having the same thing happen again. I don't know what happened to Jack but... instead of studying and trying to learn from it as me and Leah... he went down a path I wish I could have saved him from.
The path of revenge.
...
...
...
"Jack..." I murmured from within my metal suit, decked out in dark mauve armor covering from head to toe and a matching helmet with a black visor hiding my eyes and face. Black blades came from my helm, making a hedgehog metal hair look, body armor clinging to my form well, showing curves and smooth on some parts.
Jack looked back to me through his own suit, somewhat similar with me but with out the hedgehog metal hair and his coloring was green and purple. I could feel his glaring through the outfit of his before he walked on wards.
I didn't want to recall that night, the memories nightmarish... Jack had run off and I followed, he was hunting the ones who carved the scar on his face. Gathering them up like cows to the slaughter. Then, one by one he taunted them in a dark and demonic tone that sent chills down my spine and maniacal laughter left his form as he taunted them.
"Please." A man begged, body shaking.
"Please." A high pitched laugh left Jack as he almost skipped around them. "Oh please!" He laughed some more in the same pitch before his voice lowered drastically. "Don't beg createn." The snarl left him, making the men before us flinch back. "Did you listen to my plea" Voice light once more. "No." Back to demonically deep.
"We're sorry..."
"Sorry." Jack sneered. "Their sorry." He told me, though I quietly stood in the back, watching and waiting. Silently praying he wouldn't go through with this though a force held me still.
"They're sorry... They're sorry!" Jack began laughing before he flung his fists out. " Sorry! They're sorry! They're sorry, they're sorry! I'LL SHOW YOU SORRY!" Jack flung his hand out and a gun appeared from the armor, shooting the man in the head, yet only grazing his cheek but taking his ear and making the man scream in both fear and pain as blood oozed out and he clung to the hole in his head. Hoping to stop the bleeding.
"You should be." He continued. Walking around the tied up men, continuing his torture and ministrations until one stood.
"You'll pay for this!" One snapped.
Jack dropped his previous victim and a snarl left him. "Oh I've payed all right." He walked up to the man, slamming his fist on the victims Neck. "I've lost my home, my job, my girl." He growled the last word. "There's nothing else you can take from me, but I can take much from you."
"What are you going to do Jack?" They growled at him. "Ain't no one going to take you in! You'll be finished in this City! You'll be nothing but... but a Joke!"
"A joke... a joke? Hmmm Did you know." He trailed as he ran his finger over his knife in boredom. "My full name Jackson Oliver Kerr... could be initialed as J. ?"
"Joker?"
"Oh I like the sound of that! That is what you carved my face to look like isn't it? Like the Joker! Well, since your such big fans... why don't I play the role for you tonight, hm?"
Jack roughly grabbed one of the more timid men who screamed in fear. "Wait no!"
"Wanna know how I got these scars?" Jack taunted. "I had a job see." He pulled his hand forward as his gun reactivated. Shooting the man in a none vital spot and laughed at his cry. "I was quite good at it, being a hit man and all." He continued, shooting the man here and there in none vital areas before snickering as he shoved his finger inside the bullet holes and taking pleasure in their pain. "But one Job didn't sit well with me." He shot the man in the head, watching the body drop before turning to another and dragging him forward and ignoring the plea for mercy. "I had to enact the punishment for another member. For not finishing his Job right- look at me." Jack snarled at the next victim who refused to look at him. "I said- LOOK AT ME!"
The man, more terrified of the depth of the voice and the pure malice in it then he was of actually dying, looked up into those crazed brown eyes.
"Where was I? Oh yeah!" He laughed. "I had to punish him for not doing his job right? Well, his punishment was decided by our boss. Lovely guy he is, gave me a nice suit and his wife makes a mean lasagna. I had to kill his little boy as a reminder not to disobey. Innocent little thing as he was, well I couldn't do it! Me! The best hit man the Sweepers had ever known! Oh but, my decision didn't go well for boss see." Jack took the mans arm, snapping it and laughing in glee at his screams. "No, no no, shush shush shush. I'm not finished with you yet." Jack hushed but the man continued screaming as Jack put more and more weight upon the broken bones.
"Jack.." I weakly called, still frozen and glued to the scene. Why wasn't... why wasn't my body obeying me? Why couldn't I help?! "Please..."
"Hmmmm no, so he waited knowing I was paranoid of being found and on the dreary days where my money ran out, wife and I going hungry as she worked double shifts at the hospital, he sent his lackeys to do his dirty work. They didn't like that I fought back, nor did they like that I argued back. Oh no no no!"
Jack flicked open his knife, shoving it against the mans face who's eyes widened in realization. "You won't get away with this."
"Oh I don't plan on getting a way with it. You see," Jack dragged the blade lightly across the mans cheek who winced when Jack applied a slight pressure. "After I take you out, my jobs complete. Nothing can happen to me that is worse then what you did. You... I think you need to be shown exactly what I had felt like and went through, don't you agree?" He pressed the blade deeper making the man cry out.
"No! No!"
"You made me like this." He snarled, shoving his scared face closer as a show to the man who carved him. "You did this! While they held me down." He pointed to the dead and bloody bodies. "All the while threatening to take my girl next."
"No no!" The man continued crying and pleading as Jack roughly pinned him to the floor, pulling his switchblade out with a malicious smile.
"I'm not done with my story yet cupcake-ah!" Jack sneered. "So! They took a blade, like this," he mockingly wiggled his little blade in the air. "and put it to my mouth." Jack mockingly licked his lips like the character would. "Like this and-"
"Your a sick freak!"
"I'm like the joker now right?" He gave a semi hysterical chuckle. "Hehehehe... Tell me Gregory." Jacks hands forced the man to look at him, digging deeply into his skin enough to cause bruises. "Why. So. Serious?!"
"No! No! AHH!"
Why was I watching this? I couldn't move... I couldn't stop him even if I tried... and I shivered at the maniacal laughter escaping from his lips as a sick part of me continued to watch as the knife ripped at its victim. That small part of me, whispering to me how they deserved it for what they did to him... My body cringing at the sound of tearing flesh and the screams of the man would haunt me... but this was just the beginning.
Jack panted over the body, coming down from his high as his eye's went blank and reflecting nothing but the dark brown empty void he felt. He shifted, pulling his knife from the ground and listening to the scrape upon the cement, and slowly got up; peering over to me with an unreadable expression as he became deathly silent.
I said nothing, not that I was sure what to say, but decided to act and walked forward. Neither of us said anything as I got closer, pulling Jack back and wiping his hair out of his face; seeing a haunted look take over him. Gently, I pulled him out of the building and towards his truck before picking up a jug of gas from the victims garage and re-entering the house. I couldn't let Jack get caught, I worked so hard protecting them... and... a-and they deserved it for what they did to Jack and who knows how many more... right? I felt tears stream down at what I was doing as I spread the gasoline through out the house and over the bodies, planting cigarettes everywhere and trying to make it look like an accident.
I'm a criminal for this...
But they deserved it right?
I was an accomplice to a murder...
But they deserved it... didn't they?
I was a bad person.
But. They. Deserved. It. The voice whispered, always hissing in my ear.
And that this, I lit a match as I exited the building, was just the beginning.
And I set the house up in hellish fire.