Frankie is a damned miracle worker. He already had my first two playmates taken to the Toybox and I just couldn't wait to get started with them.
He drove me to the Toybox about an hour after I'd gotten up. It may have only been for myself, but I wanted to look and feel good for what I was going to be doing that day. I made sure to dress carefully in my harlequin outfit after showering and shaving. Instead of using the white makeup on my face, I just crafted the mask with the black makeup, so my tattoos would show.
I texted the guys at the Toybox so my friends would be exactly where I wanted them when I arrived., and the boys didn't disappoint. When I walked into the knife room, they were tied to chairs and facing each other.
"Ah, we finally meet!"
They looked to me in terror. I'm pretty sure this is their first time outside of Massachusetts. Well, it's certainly their first time being kidnapped, that's for sure.
"Lester and Chelsea Quinzel. It's so good of you to be here today."
"Who are you?" Lester's voice shook.
"Don't interrupt, it's rude. Now, where was I... That's right. So good of you to be here today. It's been a long time coming and I'm just pleased as pickles you're here. We really should have met a long time ago."
"What are we doing here?" Chelsea pleaded.
"RUDE. Honestly, how have you made it this far being such a rude couple? No matter. As I was saying, I've been planning this for a long time. You could probably say I've been planning it my whole life."
"What is this?!" Lester again. I punched him and Chelsea yelped in fear.
"This is me getting mad. Ya know, I had this whole monologue planned out and you're just ruining it. I thought you were supposed to be good Christians."
"How do you know - " Lester began
"Oh, I know plenty. I know that you're 65 and 62, respectively. I know that you've been married for 46 years. I know you had one daughter. And I know you murdered her."
"How dare you!" screeched Chelsea. "Our precious child - "
"Is dead because of you. She died because you monsters refused her treatment. You refused her love. You refused her kindness. Now it's your turn."
"Who the hell are you?!" Lester shouted.
"What's wrong? Can't you see the family resemblance?"
"Family?" Chelsea just looked confused.
"We don't know you." Lester said gruffly.
"Obviously. You could have. You could have known me from the second I was born. Instead you ostracized and killed my mama."
"You're the baby?!" Chelsea was horrified
"The baby? The baby?! Are you saying that you didn't even know the gender of your only grandchild?!"
"You were a mistake. A product of rape. We wanted you as far away from our daughter as possible so she could heal and move on."
"Heal and move on? Heal and move on? You stole her child! Tore her away from the – admittedly evil – man that she loved. Ostracized her from her friends. Refused medication and therapy. Left her in the pit of despair and you thought she was going to heal and move on?"
"We spent hours praying with her and for her! We did everything we could!"
I glared at Lester. "Well, tell you what, Grandpop. Now I'm gonna do everything I can."
I took a blade from the wall and slowly started to carve. First came "Love" on their left forearms. Lester screamed at me to stop while Chelsea just screamed in pain. When it was his turn Chelsea couldn't stop wailing from her own pain while his voice bellowed as it joined her in wails of agony. Then came "Hate" on their right forearms. Their screeching cries were pure music.
I started with Chelsea again, making long cuts across the "Love" carving to X it out. "All you have in your hearts is hate. Don't even deserve to look at the word love."
Their screams as my knife sliced through their flesh were directed at each other. I'd had them placed so they were directly in front of each other, and I worked from their sides. They were forced to watch each other bleed and scream and cry.
"Stop this!" shrieked Chelsea. "Please!"
"You just need to pray for Jesus' forgiveness and you'll be fine."
Lester took me seriously and began a fervent prayer. I lashed out, catching him across the cheek with my blade. "Don't you fucking say that name in front of me!"
"You said, you said," he moaned.
"I told you what you needed to do. But don't you dare invoke the name of the one you used to murder my mama."
"We didn't kill her!" Chelsea wept, "She took her own life."
"Because you gave her nothing else!" I snatched up a set of brass knuckles and punched her in the face. "You took everything!" Each word was accentuated by another punch.
"You could have saved her and instead you drove her to her death. You could have saved us both and instead you left me to the Nelsons."
"We just wanted our daughter to be ok." Lester cried.
"She wasn't ok. And instead of helping her, you left her to meaningless prayer."
"Prayer isn't - "
"Oh, no, Grammie? Is prayer not meaningless? Tell you what. Why don't you spend the next couple days praying. If I come back and you're gone, then you'll be right, won't you? But if I come back and you're still right here in this room, then you'll have been left to the same amount of saving grace as my angel of a mama."
"We never meant to hurt Frances." Chelsea was still weeping, her nose running, "We just wanted her to be ok."
"We did what we could."
"We didn't, Lester! We were angry and thought if she just sought Jesus we wouldn't have to deal with what she had done. We were wrong."
"Chelsea! Don't let this psychotic - " he broke off into a yelp when I used the brass knuckles to break his nose.
"Don't interrupt. I think Gram Gram is starting to get it."
"I miss her every day."
"Shut up, Grandma. We all do."
I tossed the brass knuckles onto a table in the small room and picked up my mallet. I hit Lester's knee first, completely shattering it. Then I moved on to Chelsea's. Their screams were a cacophony bouncing around the room and it was more music to my ears. Ever since finding out what happened to Mama, I have hated these two people more than any other people I've known. And in my career at Arkham I met some real awful people. Still, no one topped my hate list more than these two.
"I want you to know that you're going to end up like Mama."
It took a while for them to quiet down after being hit with the mallet. But I was patient. I'd waited nearly three decades for this. And I could see that they didn't understand.
"When someone decides to take their life, there's a process. It's not always the same for every person, but almost everyone thinks about it before hand. And by the time they're in the act, they've known for a while that they were going to die. So, I want you to think about that. Every second of the rest of your miserable little lives. Think about the fact that you don't have much time left. You are going to die. Soon. By my hand."
They were weeping. Pitiful monsters. "If your faith is any good to you at all, then your prayers will be answered and you'll get to live. Own up to what you've done and beg for Jesus's forgiveness. That's the only hope you have left."