On the dreary morning of October 31, 1902, as patients around him died from the last waves of Yellow Fever, Alastor Louis Bechard was born to Mr. and Mrs. Marius and Genevieve Bechard of New Orleans, Louisiana.
The nurse clocked his time of birth at 3:33 am, as unfortunate of a time as the day he was born, but on paper it would be recorded as 3:40 am due to her religious superstitions. Otherwise, his birth was nothing of note. He weighed in at a normal 7 pounds and 3 ounces, having no birth defects or birthmarks, and had brown hair like his father and the same light, blue eyes as his mother. He cried when he was born, his lungs emptying themselves of fluid like any other baby, and when placed in his mother's labor-weakened arms he fell soundly asleep all the same. The day passed like any other but, unbeknownst to all in the room, it marked the beginning of another dark chapter in New Orleans' history.
October 31st, 1902 was the day 58 people would unknowingly begin the countdown to their untimely and gruesome deaths.
The first time Alastor held hunting rifle was when he was 10 years of age. His father, a man who'd rather spend his time at the bottom of a bottle than with his family, had a rare moment of sobriety and took his eldest son out on their land to show him how to run the family business. The Bechard men were butchers, always had been, and since the land Marius had inherited was rife with deer, their shop's specialty was fresh venison. Due to his specific and skillful way of preparing the meat Marius Bechard had earned himself a large and loyal customer base. That, combined with the work Genevieve did as a Stenographer, gave the family more than enough money to live comfortably off of.
"One day you'll be the man of the house," Marius tells his son. "And you'll need to know how to hunt and provide food for your mother and brother if I'm not around." He adjusts the gun against Alastor's shoulder and aims for the trees. "Leave the young ones alive, especially if they're with their mothers. What you want to do is-"
Alastor's eyes drift off to the side as his father explains the ins and outs of hunting, settling on his mother as she rocks in her chair in the living room while nursing his brother. Every day at the same time before Edward was born she had sat at the piano and played, filling their house with the gentle melody of her music. Genevieve Bechard was a small thing, only measuring at 4'10 in height and 110 in weight, and took the heavy end of his father's drunken violence. She was soft spoken yet firm, and had the only loving touch Alastor had ever known. In the moments his father was out hunting and left them alone Alastor loved nothing more than to sit beside her on the bench and listen to her play. It was the only time he ever truly saw her lose her almost ever-present smile, trading it in for a look of pure, relaxed serenity.
Despite the many dark, almost ever-present bruises that blossomed across her skin like spilled ink on a blank page, his mother always reminded him to smile, lest his father see and get angrier. One thing he never tolerated in his house was visible negativity, which only proved to make his volatile mood even worse. In public his rule was even stricter, commanding his family to be the picture of happiness even if their life at home was anything but. To him, appearances were everything.
"Smile, my love." She'd whispered to him one night, gently wiping the tears from his cheeks as he shook in fear of his father's angry yelling in the next room. "Remember, you're never fully dressed without one."
"Are you listening boy?" Marius gives Alastor a rough shake, snapping him back to the present.
"Yessir." He hadn't been, but admitting as much would've lead to a beating.
"Wednesday morning I'll be taking you out with me on my early hunt then." He continues, filling Alastor with relief that he hadn't pushed him on what he'd heard. "Be ready after breakfast."
As the months pass after that day, instead of spending the mornings with his mother at the piano Alastor begins hunting and butchering lessons with his father. The months bleed into years, and before he knows it, at the age of 14 he's almost as skilled of a hunter as his father. The only thing he hadn't perfected was his father's way of preparing meat, which was frequently brought to his attention through quick smacks to the head and harsh words of displeasure thrown his way when he was being taught and tested. Though his skills had improved his relationship with his father hadn't, and it wasn't until one night as he lay in bed listening to the sound of his mother crying after one particularly bad fight over the sudden death of his younger brother, did Alastor realize that he hated his father. Deeply.
His father had blamed his mother for Edward's death. Saying she hadn't nursed him enough, that she spent too much time on her piano instead of feeding him. Influenza had taken him, but even trying to remind his father of that had earned Alastor a punch in the mouth. The taste of blood from his busted lips still lingered, salty and almost metallic, in his mouth. As he lay there, he could feel the rage that had been building for years inside him began to bubble over...
...And it was then that the voices began.
The first problematic trickle of intrusive thoughts clouding his head until they were all he could hear.
What if I killed him?
I could follow him out into the woods one day and put him down like the deer he butchers.
One quick bullet through his head and we'd be free of him.
He slapped his hands over his ears, shutting his eyes tight against the barrage of violent thoughts. But it did him no good.
In his mind he saw his father in place of the corpse of a deer laying across the butchering table, cold, dead eyes staring up at nothing, hands still, never again to leave bruises or draw blood from either Alastor nor his mother. The more he began to visualize it, the more gruesome the thoughts would turn.
And the more welcome they started to become.
He began to smile a lot more immediately following, the idea of being truly free giving him almost a full-blown feeling of elation that lasted through each passing day. He finally understood why his mother could smile so widely despite the abuse she endured: It was because she knew one day she'd be free from it.
His feelings only grew as time passed, ultimately forcing him to give in to the urges and begin plotting to accompany his father on one, last hunting trip into the deep Louisiana woods.
Days trickled by as he bided his time, until finally, the fateful day arrived. Almost too soon, it was time.
The air was thick, the buzz of mosquitos loud around them with the sun barely lighting their surroundings enough to see by. The two walk deeper and deeper into the forest, the only other sound being the quiet crunch of the dead leaves below their feet.
Alastor loads his gun and cocks it, watching his father ahead of him quietly stalk a buck they'd seen a few days prior, unaware that it wasn't the prey Alastor had in his sights. With his mind set, his plan unfolding before his very eyes, he had expected to at least feel a small tug of... hesitation, maybe, as he aimed the rifle at the back of his father's head. He expected to possibly feel sadness at the idea of killing his father. But even when his father unexpectedly turned to speak to him and instead found himself staring down the barrel of his son's gun, meeting his fearful eyes did nothing but fill him with excitement.
The voices in his head began to scream at him.
Do it. DO it. DO IṪ̶̜͂̃́͂̉͛̃̚.-Ḓ̸͙͎̮͔͔̘̳̅͊̒͛̐̂ͅÖ̷̢̮͙̩̣̋̾͛̕ ̶̹̱̐̋Ì̵̡͓͙̪̲͓̪̝͉͉͋͗̎̒͋̓̈́̚͝Ţ̶̮̪̣̝̩͍̠͆̏̐̐̍̓̊̋̕͜͝.̸̧̢̰̲̺̖͎͓͂͒ ̷̛̪͔͈̭̣͇̰̯̋̐͆͗̓̏̓̈̄ͅḐ̵͉̗͎͗O̶̬͉̮͛̑̒̌͝-̶̧̧̭͚̻̈̏̽
BLAM!
...And all at once,
The voices in his head that had plauged him for weeks...
s
t
o
p.
In place, a mind-numbing wash of unfiltered euphoria fills his body. Everything around him goes silent, giving way to a high pitched ringing that slowly begins to grow in his ears.
Alastor watches his father's body tumble to the ground almost in slow motion, bits of brain matter, skin, and teeth spattered across the tree he'd been using as cover only moments earlier. He drops his rifle, staring down at the mess of blood and gore around him, painting the foliage a brilliant crimson red. It was... messier than he'd expected it to be, the shot having been taken at closer range than he had originally planned. The buck they'd been tracking crashes off into the forest, startled by the sound, lucky to live another day.
The laughter starts off quiet at first, almost like a nervous tic that begins to punch through the loud ringing in his ears. Then the laughter quickly progresses into full on hysterics. Tears and sweat run down his face and he falls to his knees, clutching his sides as they throb in pain from lack of air. He can feel the blood begin to soak through the knees of his trousers, but all he can do it fall forward onto his hands, trying to force himself to take in some air before he passes out.
The world tilts sideways for a moment, threatening to topple him over before he can manage to pull in a deep gasp of hot, humid air into his lungs. He takes another. Then another. He steadies himself, sitting back on his knees before staring down at his reddened hands, coated in wet, sticky blood and dirt.
But even with the horrid sight before him, all he can do is smile.
And smile he does, all while cutting the body in front of him to pieces on the forest floor. He buries the clothing beneath a shrub, shoving all the rest of what he can into the bag he'd been carrying. The small pieces of meat and broken bone fit easier than he expected them to, but the overwhelming amount of blood is more... inconvenient, than he'd realized it would be. Deer bled a fair amount, but it was nothing compared to a human body. He messily cuts open the chest, turning the torso onto it's side to drain as much blood as possible.
It takes a couple hours for the scene of his crime to be clean enough for him after he's done, and he leaves his father's gun where it fell beneath the same tree that was still spotted with blood he couldn't clean. It was no inconvenience, however, with the threat of rain from the dark, heavy clouds in the sky above him looming. Once he tightens the strings of his bag and tosses it over his shoulder, his slender frame almost bucking from the weight, he begins the long trek through the forest to his father's shop, where he picks out all the leftover bone before he feeds the meat into the grinder. Once he's through it all, he packages up the output and stores it for later in the ice chest.
Most of it, at least.
Giving into one last intrusive thought, Alastor roasts a piece of it over an open fire in the back before popping the roasted meat into his mouth. The flavor isn't even remotely similar to a deer's...
But somehow it still tasted all the more sweeter.