Disclaimer: The Rapture universe and ect. do not belong to me. It's just the original characters that spilled out of my brain. This is the first story I've done in a while. I hope you enjoy it :)
Norman Phelps sat on the water soaked wooden floor in the corner of his ransacked apartment building of the Sinclair Deluxe. His sanity was gone along with his body. The skin of his face sagged and was riddled with scars. A few patches of dirty brown hair clung to his scalp. His once clean black pants and light gray shirt was now torn and stained with blood and grime. His shoes were missing the soles and were beyond repair. He had gone blind in his right eye and the color of his left eye had changed from its original blue to almost black. An ulcerous tumor clung to the right side of his waist. Tears streamed down his check and he was rocking himself slowly back and Hughes. In his misshapen hand he held onto a dirty, old blue dress with a long tear up the middle in it, stained by old dried blood.
"Eva…why was it you? Why not someone else," he whispered to himself with his scratchy voice.
It had been years since his fiancés death and yet he can't stop mourning, he'll never stop. She was all he had and cared about in Rapture and a spider monster had taken her away from him. They had been on their way home from the Fish Bowl Diner, laughing and talking about their future together. Eva wore a bright blue dress that Norman had bought from a small second handed clothing stand. He wished he could have gotten her a nicer dress but it was all he could afford. He was not paid much working as a mechanic for the Atlantic Express. Especially since the express wasn't used much these days. Bathyspheres are the way of the future they say.
A crawling creature leapt from its dark hiding spot in the corner of the ceiling. It landed on all fours and screamed at them. The bystanders nearby all backed away. They knew that when it came to a spider splicer it was never a good idea to risk it. Self-preservation it was called. Norman went for an old revolver he had tucked in his belt and aimed but the quickly splicer pounced, knocking him to the ground. The splicer sliced Norman's face with its steel bloodstained hooks. It leapt off him when Eva had gotten Norman's pistol off the ground and fired off a shot at it. The splicer leapt towards Eva and she tried to fire the pistol again but it jammed. The splicer swept her up and, with incredible strength, carried her to a perch hanging from the ceiling.
Norman lay on the ground still phased from the splicers attack and all he could hear was his Eva screaming in horror. The splicer lifted her up and jabbed a hook into her stomach and began to slowly pull upwards. Eva's screams turned into gurgles and blood spattered out of her mouth. The splicer shouted down at Norman, "Norman! I finally got your precious lovely on me hook! All that time I spent shadowin' you and your bitch! Ah, the satisfaction! I suppose you'll be wantin' 'er back now! She's a beaut, Norman! That she is!"
The British splicer flung Eva off his hook and toward the ground. Her body hit the ground slammed the ground hard. The splicer crawled off laughing as Norma rushed to Eva's side. Her crumpled body lay motionless on the floor. A pool of blood was forming quickly. He held her in his arms and whispered to her, "Eva…Eva please, don't go. You're all I have. Don't leave me alone. I love you." But he knew it was over. He held her close and cried as a small crowd of bystanders began to form around them both. The next day Eva's body was taken to the Medical Pavilion for cremation. Norman was the only one to attend her funeral. He was all the family she had. He kept the blood stained dress he bought her as a reminder.
Since then he had spent what money they had saved to start their life together on plasmid's and Adam. Time passed and his sanity began to fade but the face of the splicer that had killed his Eva remained, burned in his mind. He had a sickly green face with sunken eyes and an un-kept mustache. He worse a dirty and ripped black suit with white pinstripes. Norman had found out after some digging that he was once and employee of Fontaine Futuristics who started to sample the product a bit too much. After he was found bashing a poor fellow employees head against the bathroom stall door, Fontaine covered it up and had him thrown into Pauper's drop to be forgotten. After the Adam ruined him he became a spider splicer and committed numerous murders in Paupers Drop. His name was Milton Hughes
Norman still had a face and name and it stuck with him through the years. Along with Norman's Adam addiction came, the hallucinations. A ghost. Her ghost. He would see it in the apartment or while he would be out scavenging for food. He had gotten good at telling when she would appear. He remembered coming back from a scavenging trip to see her sitting on the bed. She was smiling and she said to him, "I know this place isn't much but it'll do until we can gather up enough money to get out of the Drop. Think about it Norman? We'll have a new start and we'll get married. Won't that be grand?" Then she would fade with a parting joyful giggle. Just a sad haunting memory of what once was. Sometime it was too much.
He still kept his pistol in his apartment in his top dresser drawer. He had spent many lonely nights sitting in the corner with the barrel in his mouth and finger on the trigger. He could never bring himself to go through with it. As of now he just sat in the corner clutching to the dress thinking not of suicide, but revenge. His head began to hurt and he knew another ghost was coming. He got up and turned to face it. Right on cue Eva appeared in front of him. She looked into his eyes longingly with love and compassion. Norman tears fell like rain. She slowly approached him and held out her arms. He held out his in return, still holding onto the blood stained dress. As he came to embrace her she disappeared and the ghost was gone.
He dropped his head and watched as tears hit the floor and disappear into the cheap damp wood. He brought his head up and looked at the dress. He could feel his anger rising and he gripped the dress tight. "He'll pay...he'll pay. I-I'll see to that," he mumbled madly.
Norman laid the dress carefully out on the bed and looked at it for a moment. "I'll leave it here for you darling. Just in case you want it back," he said softly.
His attention turned to the dresser where he kept his gun. He walked over, pulled the old pistol from the drawer and checked the chamber. It was full. He stuffed it in his belt and grabbed his moth eaten gray coat from the rack and went out the door. In no time at all he was standing in front of the Fishbowl Dinner. No one was out walking around like they used to. There was the occasional passing splicer though. A woman wearing a torn cocktail dress who once was beautiful but now had an ulcerous face with sagging skin stepped in front of Norman. In her hand she held a blood stained crowbar.
"Hi baby," she said, posing as seductive as possible. "I'm all yours for five bucks."
Norman grimaced and her "I have a woman," he snapped.
"Ain't she a lucky bitch then," the splicer replied. "Come on, I need money Mister."
"No, go away," he yelled. "I have my Eva!"
"Don't you tell me what the fuck I'm going to do," she screamed at him, raising her crowbar.
Norman, filled with anger, drew his pistol and the female splicer immediately retreated. She shouted, "You could have just said no, you bastard!"
Norman watched her run into a nearby door and he turned his attention to the ceiling and looked around. It wasn't long until he heard the unmistakable 'clink' 'clank' of splicer hooks.
"Well, well, well," a voiced hissed from the darkness. "Here's a little fish I 'aven't seen in a while." A figure with long limbs dropped from the ceiling wearing the remnants of a pinstriped suit. It was more creature than anything else. Time had taken its toll.
"Norman," the spider splicer said, smiling its yellow sharp rotting teeth at him. "It's been too long. 'Ow's Eva? Oh yea, tha's right. I popped her bubble long ago and now 'ere you are lookin' for me."
"You took her away from me, Hughes," Norman shouted. "She was all I had and you took her!"
"Awww, 'ave I upset you? Sorry. To tell you tha' truth mate, I was gonna 'ave a bit of fun with her before I killed her." Hughes licked his lips sickeningly then frowned. Norman screamed in rage.
"She's haunting me," Norman wept, raising his gun. "She's always watching. You sonofabitch! You took the only thing in my life that mattered!" He fired and Hughes dodged the bullet. Hughes screamed and crawled towards Norman. Normand fired and hit him in the stomach. He growled in pain but still kept coming.
He quickly leapt and attacked. Norman dodged to the side and Hughes missed. Norman turned and blindly fired his gun and hit Hughes in the leg. Hughes went down. Norman tried to steady his gun and aim with his good eye. He aimed for Hughes leg and fired, but he accidentally shot his right arm instead. Hughes screamed and dropped his hook. Norman quickly fired another round hitting his other arm. Hughes dropped his other hook. Norman managed a smile. Lady luck was finally on his side.
Norman sprinted forward and hit Hughes with a hard punch that knocked him to the floor. Norman quickly grabbed one of the hooks and shoved it into Hughes's stomach. Norman grinned when he saw the expression of fear on Hughes's face. Norman said madly, "This is one for my baby." And he pulled the hook up as hard as he could.
Hughes let out a blood curling scream of pain.
In a last fit of rage he threw Norman off and he tried to stand up. Hughes staggered forward. His guts began to spill out onto the floor from the large open cut that Norman had made. Hughes eyes rolled back into his head and he fell forward onto the floor. Norman began to breathe easy and he grinned. He had done it. He had gotten what he wanted after all this time. He looked over at his pistol lying on the ground and got up. "But not everything I want just yet," he thought. He picked the pistol up and checked the chamber. One round left.
He walked over to the Fish Bowl Dinner and looked at it and realized how much it changed. The windows of the dinner were shattered and the door was boarded shut. The inside of it was in shambles. "Never really liked that dump anyway," he mumbled to himself. He dropped to the ground and put his back against the outside wall of the diner. From somewhere he heard 'Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away)' by Django Reinhardt playing and it echoed throughout Poppers Drop. He began to tap his toe, enjoying the happy tune. He hummed along and picked up the pistol. He stuck the rusty barrel in his mouth. He smiled one last time and pulled the trigger.