Chapter Summary: An explanation for Karl's knowledge of the outside world, as well as his budding paranoia.
Warning: drug use and bloody moments ahead.
X
1960
X
Mother Miranda.
Cool water flushed through Miranda's hair, running down her neck in rivulets and spilling into the bucket beneath her head. She shivered at the feel of it and let out a shaky sigh, closing her eyes as she did so. Cold fingers descended along her brow and then slowly slid back along her scalp, massaging her skin. A single tear dislodged itself from her lashes and rolled along her cheek where it eventually meshed in with the water spilling along her face. Her cheeks would be blackened by it, and it would not do to have herself appear so indisposed before her council. She gave a sniffle and wiped the black tear away before sighing deeply again.
It had been over forty years since Eva had died, taken so cruelly and suddenly by the Spanish Flu. It pained Miranda to think that her daughter would have been - no, should have been - in her fifties by now. She would have been a grown woman - older than Miranda when she had stopped aging. Though she had tried many times, she simply couldn't picture her daughter's face anymore. What would she have looked like in her fifties, she wondered. Most likely, Eva would have retained the broad cheeks of her Romanian father, as well as the deep black irises and intimidating brows: a homely woman with a piercing gaze and quick smile. Would she have grown up to rear horses like Mihaela? Eva had always had an affinity and fascination with horses. Or maybe she would have become the quiet, studious type…perhaps a physician upon the docks like Salvatore. It had certainly been in Eva's nature to show love and a childish, considerate curiosity for those less fortunate within the village.
It did not escape Miranda, the fact that she had been thinking in the past tense. There is still hope, she reminded herself firmly. And, currently, that hope was locked away in the Heisenberg factory.
The cool water descended through her hair again and she blew a stream of cool air from between her pursed lips. She could tell that Alcina was being deliberately gentle, and at the same time watching her carefully. Though Alcina knew better than to voice any sort of concern for Miranda, it was obvious by her silence that she had seen the blackened tear roll across Miranda's cheek. Miranda pushed herself into a sitting position and dabbed at her wet hair with the towel that Alcina offered her.
"May I be so bold as to tempt you with a drink, Mother?" Alcina asked, betraying her appraisal of Miranda's mood with the kindness of the gesture. There was music playing from Alcina's gramophone: an emphatic and upbeat piece produced and recorded some thirty years ago by Alcina's very own jazz band. The sound of it was lovely, but not lovely enough to drown out the rancid sweetness of Alcina's voice. Miranda smiled, lightly, fully aware of the fetid grudge that Alcina still harbored in her heart.
"I'd be a fool to decline, now wouldn't I?" She said as she slid a strand of her glistening wet hair through the towel. The subtle nuisances of their powerplay were incessant and obvious. She was testing her ego with the wording of the question, and Alcina knew it.
"Oh. Well. No. Of course not, Mother Miranda," Alcina said a bit too quickly. "My offer was made with," Alcina sighed. "…utmost humility."
"Very well," Miranda said. "Let's see what you've got."
Alcina turned away from her and blew smoke out the corner of her lips with her hand on her hip. Then, she called out her daughter's name with such haughtiness and bravado that Miranda knew that she was attempting to sound bold for her sake. As she watched with disinterest, a twitchy formation of black bugs filtered into the room as if siphoned from the very shadows. The black bugs took the form that quickly became humanoid and then solidified into the shape of a young woman in a heavy black dress. Cassandra Dimitrescu bowed hurriedly in Miranda's direction and turned to face her mother.
"Yes, mother?" She asked in a tinkling voice that turned Miranda's stomach.
"Go, now, and fetch Mother Miranda some of our special wine."
"You mean-" Cassandra started before Alcina cast her an annoyed glance. The young woman quickly bowed her head again before looking back up at her mother with a gaze that was almost bashful, and very pretty. "...the special wine, Mother?"
"Is that not what I just said?" Alcina asked heatedly and Cassandra tucked her chin in again.
"Of course! But-"
"No buts, darling! Go, now!"
"Yes, mother."
The woman's body unspooled into a cloud of glittering bugs again before disappearing completely. In less than a second, she was back and cradling a wine bottle in her pale hands. As Alcina watched from the corner of the room, Cassandra knelt at Miranda's feet and poured out a cupful upon a silver tray. Miranda watched her with a carefully veiled dislike. The loss of her own daughter made the acquisition of Alcina's own very difficult to witness. She leaned down and snatched Cassandra's chin in her hand. The young thing gave a terrified squeak as Alcina's eyes bored holes into the back of Miranda's neck.
"So pretty," she said, tilting Cassandra's head this way and that. "Do you consider yourself a loyal daughter?"
"I…I do!" The poor thing said from beneath squished cheeks. Miranda squeezed her face tighter, aware of Alcina shifting uncomfortably behind her. She dug her nails into the girl's skin, just enough to satisfy her desire to make the other mother nervous.
"Loyal enough to withstand the beckoning of a cruel and cold death?" Miranda asked as the girl began to shiver.
"...I…I think so-"
"I suppose that's what my daughter thought before she died," Miranda said. She finally let go and the girl tumbled back to the floor in terror. "But the loyalty of all is tested at the end, when the careless clutch of death comes along and strangles out all familial ties. But! Lucky for you, my dear, you're not even truly alive!"
Miranda laughed joyously at this as Cassandra and Alcina shared a nervous glance over her shoulder. She was being wicked and unapologetically nasty, but she didn't care. Alcina would never know what it was like to lose a precious daughter and, for that, Miranda would make her pay with cutting insinuations and elegantly veiled insults.
Though, it was possible that jealousy had nothing to do with it. Maybe, Miranda was only being cruel because she was enraged by the fact that her experiments on Alcina had ultimately failed.
Yet another heart-breaking disappointment in her search for Eva's vessel.
Alcina cleared her throat daintily behind her as Cassandra quickly, and gratefully, disappeared into a vortex of winged insects. Miranda took a long sip of the wine and savored it slowly, rubbing its thick richness along the roof of her mouth with her tongue.
"Sanguis Virginis," Alcina offered. "Or, in its English form-"
"Maiden's Blood," Miranda said. She paused and pulled a black strand of hair away from her tongue. "Hmph. Judging by the taste, it's been rather hard for you to find ripened fruits within the village."
"My family's vineyards-"
"Do not try and deceive me, daughter. We both know the type of fruits I am talking about."
Alcina's rage was mounting. Miranda could feel it all along her shoulders, as well as the twange in the air as if the string of a banjo had been suddenly plucked. In her mind's eye, she saw Alcina standing behind her: clutching her cigarette holder so hard that it crumpled in her abnormally strong hold. Miranda ran her thumb around her bottom lip tiredly, smearing the blood of Alcina's 'ripened fruits' across her lips.
"You're disappointed in me," came Alcina's strained voice and Miranda laughed at this.
"My dear, the wine is not that bad-"
Alcina gave a sudden roar as simultaneously something in the room was violently overturned. Miranda watched calmly as tubes of lipstick, picture frames, and jewelry went scattering around her feet. There it was - that sudden, untrammeled rage that Alcina had failed in hiding behind her highfalutin demeanor.
"It's because of the experiment, isn't it?" Alcina asked in an uncharacteristically unladylike growl as she sauntered around to face Miranda. "You think I failed you. You think I am not worthy…"
"Lower your voice, Alcina. Do not cast accusations my way when it was your body that could not handle what I offered it."
"Mother, please," Alcina moaned. "That is not something that I could have ever controlled, much less anticipated!"
"What you can or cannot control nor anticipate no longer concerns me," Miranda said smoothly. "You were cast into a trial by fire and returned without victory. Rejoice, daughter, for at least I was gracious enough in making you part of my council."
"Alongside that hideous creature, Moreau," Alcina spat back. "If the company that you'll have me keep is any indication of how you truly feel-"
"Truly feel?" Miranda asked venomously, suddenly sitting up. "I truly feel as if my heart was ripped right from my breast by that cursed disease that tore through our lands forty years ago! I truly feel as if I have devoted my life to trying to take back what was rightfully mine - trying to take back my daughter! And all I face is mistake after disappointment after heartbreak! So next time you're sitting around in your chambers dining on man-flesh and sipping blood with your doting daughters, why don't you take a moment to sit back and think about how I truly feel?"
Miranda reared up and marched over to the window. Without warning, she flung the heavy curtains aside and held her face up to the sunlight as Alcina recoiled from its burning touch. "You must learn to cast your solipsism aside, daughter of Dimitrescu," Miranda warned as she leaned back against the windowsill. "None of this - do you hear me? - absolutely none of this has anything to do with you."
Alcina had been cowering in a corner, all nine feet of her curled upon herself as she shielded her face from the sunlight. For a moment, the two women simply stared at each other in tense silence - each of them hating the other for their own personal reasons. Then, Alcina slowly straightened herself up. She wiped the wrinkles away from her dress and flushed her black fur scarf around her shoulders.
"Of course not, Mother Miranda," she said in a tepid tone as she fixed her lipstick in the mirror. She rolled her lips together and then pursed them daintily. "I would never be so vain as to think that I was any more than a -" she popped her lips. "...humble puppet. In accordance with your desire to have me cast my solipsism aside, might I inquire as to your progress with the child, Karl Heisenberg?"
There it is, Miranda thought to herself as a genuine smile crept along her lips, that blood-red boiling bitterness so common to her bloodline.
"Jealousy does not suit you, Alcina," she said in a sardonically sing-song voice. Alcina scoffed at this.
"Mother Miranda, I will not have you insult me by insinuating that that vulgar and pathetic excuse for a low-down minstrel showman has anything-"
"You don't understand, do you?" Miranda said quietly before giving a small, derisive laugh. "You just can't comprehend why I've spent over thirty years chasing after a man who has nothing but scorn for me. You've put your trust in me, laid your very loyalty at my feet. The thought of me giving a damn about someone like him just tears you apart, doesn't it, daughter?"
"I understand that he is strong," Alcina said evasively. "Perhaps more in body than mind, nowadays. You think that you can still save him - scavenge the pieces of his broken mind and use him as your final experiment. You think that he will be your crowning victory…your magnum opus," the last two words must have tasted sour on Alcina's tongue, judging by her expression.
Miranda let her head fall back into the sunlight as she gripped the windowsill, thinking of Karl Heisenberg. "I've performed the experiment on hundreds of villagers, and of those hundreds both Ken and Karl Heisenberg proved most favorable. Excellent hosts from a strong bloodline, with powerful bodies that could withstand implantation and nurture the nematodes. And! They wielded their blessings with such perfect subconscious precision - truly, they were miracles greater than that of Jesus's Resurrection."
"And so why not seek out the brother, Ken?"
Miranda's lip curled slightly. "I've personally witnessed Ken become a bawdy, violent, stupid drunk of a man. I no longer desire him."
"Bawdy, violent, stupid drunk," Alcina repeatedly musically, overjoyed at the opportunity to slander her 'brother.' "Well! Cannot the same be said of Karl?"
"It could be said of him soon if I do not stop the chain of events unfolding. Karl was born a gentleman in the Devil's garments. I have personally witnessed his acts of compassion, seen the dignity and pride that ignites his heart. This…insanity that he is suffering from out in the fields was manufactured by the cruelty of his father, brother, and villagers who turned their back on him. It is not who truly he is."
"But there is something between you," Alcina said smartly. "One final obstacle barring your path to him?"
Miranda's fingers tensed around the windowsill, causing her nails to rake pale tracks in the wood. "That little…brown…thing," she growled, her voice coming out guttural and echoey as black tears of rage descended across her face. Alcina gave an observant 'hmmmm' as she lit a cigarette.
"Marianne Wilder," she said before blowing smoke at the ceiling. "The Mark of Cain. An adulterous, snakish Jezebel…Eve holding an apple to Adam..."
"She has corrupted him with her seductive ways, forced him to rely on her with promises of drugs and America. She seeks to take him away from me. I am running out of time, Alcina. Every day, her whispers in his ear grow louder. I fear he may fall prey to her dark charm."
"Dark indeed," Alcina said pensively. "Kill her, then."
"What?" Miranda said, opening her eyes and sliding her gaze over to Alcina. "So you can siphon her blood and craft a fresh batch of Vinum Nigrum?"
"No, Mother Miranda. The taste would be abhorrent."
"And yet I still desire the taste of her blood on my tongue. Ugh," Miranda flexed her fingers and then drummed them across the sill. "Killing her would not be enough. I need for Karl to hate her…I need him to turn upon her of his own accord…I need for her sins against him to be irrevocable. Only then will I gain his loyalty."
"So what will you do?"
"Whatever has to be done."
"I'd imagine that there is no sin more irrevocable than that of a woman breaking a man's heart," Alcina said, thinking back to her own past. "That, or challenging his manhood and pride…stupid man-things," she added beneath her breath, tapping her cigarette ash into an abalone shell tray. Years later, after the terrible events that were to unfold, she would look back upon that moment and wish that she had held her vengeful tongue. Miranda was peering at her from beneath downcast eyes, her expression either full of pride or pity.
"You make a fair point, daughter," Miranda said, relishing her next words. "Manhood and pride….the targets of Jezebel's arrow. Yes…you make a very fair point indeed."
X
"Mr. Heisenberg…please, sir. W-where am I?"
Karl ignored the young man on the operating table below him. An array of rusted medical equipment was set out upon the tray beneath him: whirring plastic suction tubes, metal pincers, a clamp with a crank set upon its end, a small hammer, and one glowing red reactor core that he had spent months developing. There was a tickled smile hanging around his face as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack behind him. Beyond the window that made up the entirety of the wall behind him stood a row of men: thick-skinned bastards who had gravitated to his factory following his takeover. They were an impressive lot, all of them, and would make excellent fodder for his experiments.
Too bad they didn't know that.
"'That makes three games in a row!'" he said in time with the voice of the program actor playing in his head. "'And I suppose I should feel flushed with victory, but I find absolutely no satisfaction in beating a half-hearted opponent.'"
"W-what did you say?" The boy whispered and Karl shushed him.
"Sorry - just hold on a minute. This is my favorite part." He hummed along with the voices, bouncing his head slightly with his lip between his teeth before another broad smile crossed his face. "'No, you listen. You asked my opinion and I'm going to give it to you. I've seen cases like this before. A man goes on year after year, doing his job, then suddenly one day he asks himself why. Sure he gets paid for it, but he has to feel that what he's doing is important. That the person he works for appreciates his efforts. If he doesn't, all the spunk goes out of him, and he begins to think maybe he should find something else to do!'" Karl chuckled. "Truer words have never been spoken!"
"Mr. Heisenberg?" The boy whimpered again. He lifted himself as far as he could before the restraints of his wrist cuffs pulled him back down. The sight of his own twisted leg jutting from beneath him made his face turn an odd shade of green before his cheeks ballooned out. "What is happening? What happened to my leg?"
"Oh, come on now. Don't worry about it," Karl said in what he thought was a very soothing voice. He clicked the button of a small, hand-held rotating blade and held it appreciatively to the light. "You had a bit of an accident while out on your bike. Don't worry, really. I'll have you fixed up in no time!"
"Oh, God bless you, sir." The young man said, falling back down to a supine position upon the table. "But, I must admit, that sharp thing in your hand…it's scaring me-"
"Hey, listen. Y-you ever heard of the radio show Gunsmoke? It first aired in 1955, far off in a place called America. Out there they call it a, uh, western drama." Karl leveraged the tip of the spinning blade along the boy's chest, making him scream. "It was great stuff, let me tell you! They had William Conrad play the voice of the Marshal, Howard Mcnear as Doc and, uh, Georgia Ellis as Kitty. One helluva lady, I'll tell you that. Hold still!"
Blood began to gush from beneath the whirring blade as the boy hollered and thrashed against his restraints. Heisenberg gave a huff as he braced his forearm along the boy's neck and applied pressure just long enough to get the suctioning tubes. He hooked them beneath the parted flaps of the boy's chest and continued his work with twisted lips.
"Great stuff," he continued as he retrieved his scalpel. "You wouldn't know, though. It's not like you can just tune in to foreign radio broadcasts like your…gracious host can. Damn you, I said hold still, boy!"
"MERCY, MERCY, PLEASE! MR. HEISENBERG, PLEASE-!"
"'I'm caught between a shoooooot-out and a sawmill!" Heisenberg recited grandly as he made quick work of the boy's inner tissues. "Gotta love good ol' U.S. Marshall Matt Dillon! Here's a personal favorite of mine…' if you're gonna use that gun, you better start on me!' Ha ha ha, classic!"
"Sir - p-please look at me." the boy sputtered around a mouthful of blood and lifted his body as far as it would go. His pale, shaking hand suddenly caught Karl's wrist and Karl recoiled with a snarl. It hadn't been the blood nor the pulsing flesh that had disgusted Karl, but the intimacy of human touch brought upon by the boy reaching for him. Karl shoved the boy's hand away and tightened the restraints with a frustrated yank, reminding himself that the unfortunate patient below him was no more than a means to a greater end. "Why are you doing this?"
"You're Jonathan's boy, aren't you? Isaac." Karl said. Giving the broken bag of flesh below him a name was slightly unnerving. He reminded himself that, in order to proceed successfully with the procedure, he'd have to do away with thinking that the body below him had any sort of Christian identity. He roused himself with a shake of the head and retrieved the pincers and hammer, setting the former between his teeth and readying himself to do away with the boy's sternum. "I remember Jonathan. Part of my papa's congregation….followed 'im around like a horny Jesuit on the scent of angel pussy. Heh. There ain't no angel pussy where he's at, I'll tell you that now, kid."
"S-sir…" Isaac said in a weak voice as his pupils rolled beneath his flitting eyelids. "W-wh-where is my papa? I want-"
"Who knows? Probably burnt to scraps with the other unfortunate bag of bones who tried to get between me and my factory." Karl paused and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't worry. He didn't suffer. I shot him in the head," he said tiredly, and wrongfully assuming that his bluntness would provide comfort to the boy. The boy's body began to quiver as he broke down in tears. Unaffected, Karl began to break apart his sternum and pick the pieces away delicately. "I'm doing him a favor, actually. You know, God sacrificed his only son so that mankind would be cleansed of its sins. Not sure that your death will cleanse anybody of anything, but it's the thought that counts! Consider yourself…your father's sacrifice to the…progression of my medical understanding. It's not like you'd have been very helpful to anyone anyway, since you went and decided to break your leg on your little ride through the village. Ah!" He said after setting the clamp upon Isaac's split ribcage and cranking it aside. "Now that we've done away with the manubrium, the sternebrae, and the xiphisternum we can…leverage apart the-" he grunted as the crank met a shuddering resistance. "-thoracic cage and reveal the…cardiac muscle…"
He paused, panting, as he stared down at the pulsating mass of muscle now visible beneath the boy's opened chest. There was something so arousing about the way that it throbbed and shuddered - its glinting fleshiness and bulbous shudders reminding Karl of a hot, wet pussy in the middle of climax. Unable to control himself, he thrust his hand down and moaned as his fingers curled around the beating mass. The boy's life was now - quite literally - in Karl's hands. The obvious power play fueled his quickly budding God Complex and turned him on immeasurably, so much so that he could not think of anything else but the thumping against his palm.
"-or, as it is colloquially known: the human heart," he said beneath his breath.
But he had to get to work, and fast. The boy had begun to convulse with froth gathering on the edge of his lips. Karl had seen this before - after all, this was not the first time that he had performed this experiment. The frostiness crept along his teeth as he took a deep breath in, feeling the presence of his inner electricity flushing up and down his spine. For a brief moment, the hair along the back of his neck rose before the familiar pins-and-needles sensation exploded upon his hands. The boy shuddered as he was hit with a bolt of electricity, straight to the heart from Heisenberg's palm. The air escaped Isaac's mouth in a burst and Karl watched with a spark of pity as dampness spread along the boy's trousers.
"Wh-wha-" Isaac said and Karl lifted his other hand to point at him.
"I didn't give you permission to die yet," he warned in a low growl before turning away to retrieve his recorder. He clicked a button and held it to his mouth as he began to gather a new set of medical equipment. "Chest incision complete," he said as he began to pace around the room. "The heart has been removed…next, will be the vital organs…then I'll be able to implant the core reactor and - aw, wake the fuck up!"
Karl slapped the boy in the face just as his eyes began to roll back up again. The damn thing was convulsing again, and Karl was sure that another bolt of electricity would overstimulate and kill him. He crossed his arms and gave a mighty pout, watching from narrowed eyes as the boy's hands fell limp from the table.
He sighed heavily, leaned against the wall, and lit a cigarette.
"Ending recording," he said before clicking the recorder off.
He stood there for a long time, staring at the boy's lifeless body and wondering where he had gone wrong. The solution to the problems that he had been facing with his experimentations was so close that he could practically taste it on the tip of his tongue. It was like he was missing something - one last puzzle piece to complete the picture. But what was it? And where in the damned village could it possibly be found?
He lifted the gold cross hanging from his neck and gave it a swift kiss. "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith," he muttered as the men beyond the window watched with sullen eyes. "And so I'm asking you, Lord, what the fuck am I miss-"
The hair on the back of his neck pricked again. At first, he thought it was a wave of electricity suddenly rising in his body. It happened like that sometimes - bolts of electricity suddenly flushing through him like a rogue wave when he was emotional. But he hadn't been emotional about anything - or so he thought. The death of the boy must have hung heavier upon his conscience than he thought. He rubbed his hand over his face, down his neck, and then turned around.
Marianne was standing behind the window, staring straight at him. He hadn't seen her in a few years - gone, as she had been, on one of her many trips back and forth to America. The sight of her bright gray irises flashing back at him was enough to make his heart skip a beat, like he was a little boy again. Though she was uncommonly short, there was a presence about her that made her seem taller, stronger than the men that she now stood wedged between.
As he watched with a genuine smile spreading across his face, she exhaled a stream of smoke and crushed the cherry of her cigar against the window. Never, in a million years, would he be able to forget how she looked just then in her tailored black suit and high, flashy heels. Everything - from the way that she held her cigar pinched between her thumb and forefinger to the black Panama hat - screamed American. He swore to himself that from then on out he'd only smoke cigars, and look just as cool doing so.
She looked back up at him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes before rapping impatiently on the window with her knuckle. He flung himself away from the wall and opened the door, pulling her into a long embrace before she could even descend the stone steps.
"God-duh bless America," he said after swinging her around and placing a swift kiss on her cheek. "Marianne Wilder! I thought last time you left, you'd be gone for good! Not satisfied with that fatty American beef they got out there, aye, Wilder? You like what this village has to offer instead?"
"Fuck your euphemisms, Karl. And watch the hair. I just got it straightened." Though she was trying to hide it, it was obvious that she was charmed by his affections. She stood there nervously patting her hair into place as he tucked his hand under his chin and looked her up and down. He couldn't help it. In some way, and somehow, he was always seeking out ways to touch her. Perhaps it was from having lived on his own for so long. He took her chin between his fingers and gave it an affectionate wiggle.
"I quite liked your old curly mop," he said sadly, dragging his fingers along a strand of her faded black hair. It had a dry and lifeless texture to it that didn't feel natural at all. Karl had read enough American newspapers to know that racial tensions still lingered heavily around the fringes of American society. Her very survival out there in the land of the supposed free had forever hinged on her attempts at fitting it: starting with the harsh straightening of her otherwise curly hair. He remembered the days of her youth when her hair had so much volume that she could truss it up in two puffy buns on either side of her head. Back then she had been sickly, and the coppery dryness to her hair had reflected that. But still, he had loved it - found its kinks and coils unique, and loveable.
"You might have liked it but the villagers didn't," she pointed out. "At l-least in America, the white folks'll have pity on me if they see I'm trying to fit in. Here, in this village, they never feel shit for me…no pity, no respect, no nothin' - no matter how hard I tried to assimilate. There just ain't no winnin' here."
"So why did you come back? Why do you always come back?"
"Um…" For a brief second, she seemed unsure of herself. This was unusual as, over the years, she had become much more bold and brash with her speech. Her eyes wandered over to the glinting black briefcase that she had set in the corner upon her arrival. Something bounced beneath the skin lining her throat as she gave a nervous swallow.
He watched her suspiciously as she moved away from him and slowly circled the table bearing the dead boy. She reached up to the lamp hanging above the space and crooked its light along the pale body, regarding the face with passive interest. His experimentations with his human subjects had never phased her, but this shouldn't have been a surprise. She hated the villagers with a passion and was most likely living vicariously through him when he tore them to pieces in the name of his own, personal science.
"I know this kid," she mumbled to herself as she pulled the lamplight closer to the reactor core. "Isaac, or something? I fucked his father."
"Well, his father fucked me, too," he said. The only movement on her face was the crooking of her eyebrow and he quickly backtracked. "I mean, he fucked me over. He was one of the sorry bastards who ran me out of my factory."
"Mm. And his sins were cleansed by the sacrifice of his boy, Isaac."
"I, um…he was a worthless sacrifice," he said distractedly, quickly pinching the tip of his nose between his fingers. Her presence had triggered a desire in him, one that was becoming so strong that it positively twisted his stomach. He drifted closer to her, his nose twitching of its own accord as he stared at her narrow shoulders. He hadn't had a sniff of her so-called White God since the last time she had come around. The fact that she hadn't offered it already made him itchy and irritable. Judging by the length of her pinky nail she still partook in the drug and, if he remembered correctly, she kept a little pouch of it inside of her bra.
Her shoulders stiffened as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. He slid his hand down the starched collar of her white button-up until his fingers came in contact with her nipple, and then a small plastic bag. She didn't put up a fuss as he swiped it up victoriously and gave it a little flick in the air.
"Y-you don't mind if I-" he said, not completely without manners.
But it was too late for her to object, as he had already pried the bag open and crumpled it clumsily across his nose. He took a deep inhale and suddenly the lights in the room seemed to grow brighter and sharper. Euphoria was a concentrated thing leaching through his blood as he stumbled back with his hand against his head. The radio broadcast in his head was louder and exceedingly pleasing. Except, this time it was playing music instead of shows. She looked back at him with a hard-to-read expression and he grinned at her from behind his fingers. Perhaps, if he wasn't high, he would have noticed the regret that had etched its way across her face.
"You know what it is, Heisenberg?" She said softly, looking back down at the dead boy as Karl began to sing at the top of his lungs. "Your smile. It shows all of your back teeth. That's why Jebediah was so afraid of it. But then again, you don't really smile, do you? You just bare your teeth at the world…"
She paused, biting the corner of her lip and lost in her own thoughts as she stroked the hair away from Isaac's forehead. What Karl didn't know was that she was on the verge of asking him for the one thing that he had so resolutely denied her for the past years. But this time it was different. She had promised herself that she would only ask one more time before giving up on him completely.
But, as always, he was too distracted by the allure of his own twisted mind to be reasoned with. Without warning, she punched the table hard enough to make her knuckles sting and then quickly swiped her hand over her face.
"Your experiment would have never succeeded," she said quietly as she removed her gloves and then wedged her fingers beneath the reactor core. One swift yank and it was detached from Isaac's heart. Blood gushed from the reopened incision as Karl danced around behind her, shuffling his boots toe-to-heel across the floor to the sound of Franki Valli blaring in his skull. "A body like Isaac's would have never been able to withstand the concentrated power of the reactor core. You would have been better off implanting a device that artificially controlled the heart rhythms, provided something like a gentle pulse…"
"You're just too good to be true," Karl sang in his rumbling baritone. "Can't take my eyes off of you…you'd be like Heaven to touch - what, you don't think I've tried? Drop the core and pick up a little faith in me, will you?"
She stiffened as he wrapped his arms around her again and began to rock her in time with the music in his head. "The village folk are w-weak and emaciated. Their bodies aren't strong enough to meld with your machinery. Mmmph," she squared her shoulders as he placed a kiss on her neck. "You could try to boost their bodies by introducing something like an artificial blood, with increased levels of albumin but-"
"You couldn't give a shit less what I do to these poor unfortunate souls," he growled low in her ear, making her shiver. "And you're talking funny - all American-like and proper. You're dancing around something….come on, spit it out, like you used to spit on my-"
"These bodies will need some sort of fortification." She spun around and placed her hands on his chest, pushing him back. But he was much stronger than her and had absolutely no intent on letting her go anytime soon. Once again, her eyes wandered over to her briefcase in the corner before snapping guiltily back to his face. "If you wanna retain any sense of their humanity, you're gonna need to buffer it…implant something self-sufficient and parasitic…create a symbiotic relationship between-"
"Again, you couldn't give a shit less. So stop wasting our time, will you, and say what you really mean. Marianne," he said, placing his hands on either side of her face. "Don't deceive yourself by thinking you can deceive me. I see that look in your eyes…you want something from me…and I'd be more than happy to oblige your-"
"Come back to America with me."
"...huh?"
"I said-"
"No, I heard you. Don't…bother saying it again."
The music faded away from his head as simultaneously his high began to die away. He was suddenly pressingly aware of the thunderous tick-tock of the clock hanging in the corner of his room. The sound of it was loud enough to split his skull in two, and so he threw himself backwards into a chair, spreading his legs out wide as he stared her down. There's something so peculiar about the words of women, he ruminated to himself as he linked his hands over his belly, they could either fill a man with energy or completely drain him of it in the span of mere seconds.
"Karl-" she said, her voice betraying that she was just as tired as him. But he raised his hand, cutting her off.
"I said don't bother saying it again. I heard you the first time…and the second…and the third…I've heard you make that same god-forsaken request in the ten years that you've been prancing your pretty ass back and forth between this village and America."
"Then don't worry. I don't intend to ever ask y-you again. My patience for your stubbornness has long since worn thin-"
"Your patience? Your…pay-shee-ins?" He repeated nastily, sitting up slowly. His hands were still interlinked over his abdomen, but they were starting to tense so much so that his fingers were drawing blanched lines along the back of his hands. The loving mood between them had quickly grown sour, so much so that the men waiting beyond the window could feel it.
"My patience has worn thin," he growled at her. "You know how many times I've woken up in the middle of the night and heard that god damn request ringing in my ears? I'm tired of you asking and, frankly, Wilder, I feel insulted. You think I have no god-given right to deny you - that me saying 'no' is stubbornness?"
"I'm not saying you don't have a right," she quickly parried. "I'm saying you don't have a reason. There's nothing for you in this village-"
"Nothing?" He stood up and stormed over to her. She didn't so much as flinch as he put his hand on the wall behind her and leaned in closer to her face. "I have everything: freedom to do what I want, my factory, my men. You've taken too many dicks up the ass, doll, because you've obviously forgotten that I had to kill countless people to get to where I am in his village that you think so lowly of. Or what is it? Do you think so lowly of me? That I can't hold out on my own in this society? I'll tell you one thing, Wilder," he said as he flicked her nose. "I'm not going to let you drag me away like a dog on a leash."
"That's not it," she murmured and he tented his brow.
"Then what is it? Oh…" he leaned in even closer, so close that he could see the dilation in her pupils. "You love me!" She was quiet for a long time, simply staring obstinately back at him. Then, she quickly averted her eyes as he began to clap his hands and laugh uproariously. "Marianne Wilder! You truly have fallen for me, haven't you? You love me!"
"Is it such a crime if I do?" She asked in a voice betraying the oncoming tears. She swiped irritably at her cheeks as he sucked his teeth. "Then I guess we're both guilty. Look me in my eye and tell me you don't feel the same way."
"Sweetheart," he said gently. "Look, l-let me get something straight: it's not safe to love a man like me. You see…I'm the guy who cuts open poor village boys and replaces their hearts with metal reactor cores. I'm not a good person!"
"And you think I'm a saint?" She repeated hotly. "Maybe you've taken too many dicks up the ass because you've obviously forgotten that I was there with you when we massacred those factory workers - I was the one who fired the first shot. Me, Karl! You and I have been the same kind of bad ever since we were young!"
He sighed. It was a good point. "Casting that aside…y-you can't convince me to love you back. Love isn't something that I'm willing to reciprocate. I loved my father, I loved Jesus - hell, at some point I even loved my bastard brother. You see where that got me?"
"And now you're deceiving yourself by thinking that I'd ever hurt you like they did!" They both glanced at the spot on his shoulder where she had stabbed him years ago and she quickly cleared her throat. "Christ, Karl! You know me! You know I've only ever cared for you since the day I first laid eyes on you. C-christ, it was me who brought you food and clothes when you were cast out to the Potter's Field! It was me who knelt with you in the trash after Ken kicked your ass so many years ago! And you think I did it just so I could have the pleasure of 'leading you around like a dog on a leash!?' I'm the 'doll' who has been crawling back to you for ten years, despite making a living in America! And what, so, now you're scared to love me? Scared to reciprocate the feelings of the one person in this world who has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with you through aaaaaaaaalllllllll of your trials, tribulations, and v-v-victories?!"
She had been yelling at the top of her lungs, loud enough to set the medical equipment on the tray rattling. He quickly covered her mouth and pressed his full weight into her, mentally willing for her to just shut the fuck up so he wouldn't feel so cowed looking into her eyes. Everything that she had said was like a knife twisting along the cracks in the fortifications around his heart, breaking him down piece by piece. Of course, he loved her - he had loved her ever since setting his eyes upon her crouching in a field when they were both six years old. But he couldn't admit it. After all that he had been through, he just couldn't bare his heart to anyone else - he couldn't risk being broken any further.
And so he tightened his hand around her mouth, digging his nails into her cheeks and convincing himself that she was toying with his mind like all of the rest and deserved the pain that he was inflicting upon her.
"I'm not scared to love you," he hissed between clenched teeth. "I'm scared that I might just wring your scrawny neck if you keep talking your kitty-cat bullshit-"
She tore his hand away and slapped him hard across the face. As he stood there reeling and wiggling his jaw back into place, she adjusted her suit jacket and sucked her teeth.
"I'm not like the other villagers, Karl," she hissed "The coarseness of your tongue has never frightened me."
Karl, stop. You know that I am not like the rest of the villagers. Your vile and weaponized tongue does not frighten me.
It was eerie. Miranda had said that exact thing exactly ten years ago. He could still remember her standing there in the middle of the street, wrapped in her feathered shawl and glaring up at him. There had been a look in her eye - an angry and resolute flame - that he now saw reflected in Marianne's gaze. It was then that he realized two things. First: both women scared the ever-loving shit out of him. And second: they both wanted him, and had been seeking him out ever since he was young. Though their reasons differed, they both shared a desperate desire to own some part of him. For Marianne, it was his heart. For Miranda, it was the strength in his body.
"You are never doing cocaine again," Marianne warned. "It's made you paranoid. Look."
Still cradling his cheek, he watched her cross the room towards her suitcase. His eyes roved over the outlines of her ass visible beneath her tight pants and he realized, with a restless sense of hunger, that she wasn't wearing any panties. It occurred to him that she might have possibly tried to convince him by more erotic means had he not been so bitchy about the matter.
She walked back towards him carrying a sheaf of papers. The sight of what she had to offer while bent over had turned him on, irrevocably so, and so he slunk his hands towards her belt. This only resulted in him getting slapped in the face by the sheaf of papers before she threw it down on Isaac's body.
"You remember that hiker who got lost up here, roundabouts ten years ago?"
"Ugly-ass bloke who talked funny," Karl murmured, shifting aside the papers with his finger until he found a picture of a handsome young white man with graying hair and electric blue eyes.
"It's called a British accent, you uncultured swine. Remember we all thought that he and Miranda were fucking because they spent all their time locked up in her little laboratory?"
"Well, yeah…"
"I don't think that's the case. I mean, they probably were fucking…wouldn't blame him if they were…s-she's a bitch, but a hot, crazy bitch-"
"Get to the point, Wilder."
"Right! Well, one of my girls took a little trip around the world, and claimed to have met him in a place called Britain where he was studying in a university to become a physician."
"And so? What does any of this have to do with me?"
"Shut up, I'll get to it. Karl, back then, he was obsessed with virology and he had a lot of money. Think, honey. What do you think a dedicated virologist with inexhaustible resources would do if he found out about Miranda's Black Mold?"
"He'd probably want to bring a sample back to the civilized world and have it studied."
"Exactly!" She said, punching his chest. "Therein lies the meat of the matter. Heisenberg, listen to what I am trying to tell you: the village has been infiltrated by an outsider who has witnessed the miracle of Miranda's mold. The civilized world has never experienced something like it before. Soon, we will have thousands of nations and organizations crowding around the village gates, trying to get in on Miranda's knowledge. I've fucked around long enough in the outside world to know that it can get ugly when it wants something. I can guarantee you this, Karl. This village is now under the radar of several organizations. There will be further infiltration, and with that infiltration will come violence and opposition. It's not safe for you here anymore, not now that Miranda has revealed her secrets. So I can't use my love to convince you to leave with me - then let me convince you with reason. Karl. If you stay in this village, you will die."
"So melodramatic," Karl mumbled, though something in her words had struck a chord of fear in her heart. "What's this scientific guy's name anyway?"
"Oswell Spencer," she said. "He's planning something. I've had my girls surveilling him for the past few years. I've taken it upon myself to set up a line of communication between this village and America, with the help of a rather big friend. I'm collecting intel on everything that he does, and sending updated copies of it to this village for safekeeping. If something were to happen to me-" she paused and looked away, biting her lip. "They'll keep sending their information here. You'll have access to it."
"What's in the briefcase, Marianne?" He asked, tilting his chin at the corner of the room. She froze and glared at him in surprise.
"Aren't you listening? I just told you-"
"You've been glancing at the briefcase ever since you set it down in. You're not telling me something, again."
"Karl, for fuck's sake-"
He ignored her and wandered over to the corner of the room. She watched in heated silence as he bent over and unlatched the golden clasps. He stuck his arm in and rummaged around blindly until his fingers came in contact with the cool surface of a glass jar. He pulled it out and held it some ways away from his face as if what was contained inside would leap out and bite him.
It was a small jar with a strange, twisted creature suspended within the liquid inside. There was a piece of paper plastered to the side of it, with large black ink spelling out the word Cadou. He gasped and brought the jar closer to his face as her shoulders slumped in defeat.
"You're right," she said quietly. "I wasn't telling you something. I ran into Miranda on the way here. She told me to give that to you…said you'd know exactly what to do with it."
"A highly favorable subject," came Miranda's voice in his head. "The Cadou has taken to its host immediately. Already, the nematodes have begun to embed themselves in the stem-"
He quickly roused himself from the triggering memory and leaped towards the operation table. "A buffer…" he muttered to himself as he adjusted the lighting over Isaac's body "...an implantation of something self-sufficient and parasitic…to create a symbiotic relationship between the host and the parasite-"
"Karl-" Marianne said tiredly but he ignored her. He retrieved his scalpel and began to cut into Isaac's abdomen with one hand while using the other to turn on his recorder.
"The continuation of subject number twelve's experimentation," he said into his recorder. "We will…implant the nematode within the abdomen, instead of the nervous system…stitch it into place and await reanimation-"
"KARL!"
"-pardoning the wailing in the background…we are hoping for immediate adherence, and a positive assimilation between the-"
She leaned over the table and swiped the scalpel from his hand faster than he could have anticipated. He sat there frozen and staring at her with a challengingly level gaze as she leveraged the scalpel against his jugular. "He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck, will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy," she said in a low voice that rolled the room with its angry timbre.
"Proverbs 29:1," he said dutifully. She sneered and dragged the scalpel gently along his neck until the point of it was pricking the bottom of his chin.
"Let this be my final rebuke," she said quietly, her wide eyes never leaving his. "You are going to die in this village. I will promise you that. Your death will be sudden and swift and cruel. And you will be shattered by your disbelief as you are torn from your self-made pedestal. I will give you three years before I return to America. If you do not come with me, I will not spare another thought to your livelihood…I will not even return to spit on your unmarked grave. Let my love for you be a light that guides you away from the darkness of your madness. Or don't, and you will learn what it means to die alone."
With that, she withdrew the scalpel from his neck. He watched, his hands frozen in place above Isaac's body, as she straightened her suit jacket and marched away from him.
"Choose wisely, doll," she said, crooking her pinky finger at him over her shoulder. "I'll be waiting. But not for long."
With that, she was gone. And, for the first time in his life, he felt utterly frightened by the eerie portents hanging around him.