Chapter Summary: In which the cords binding Karl to Marianne and Ken are finally severed...literally.
Warning: Death, blood, and gory moments head.
X
1963
Daniela
Daniela twisted and turned along the walls of the underground passageway. Her sense of direction was terribly skewed, and already she was becoming discombobulated with the effort of keeping herself together. The passageways were just cold enough to frighten her, but not cold enough to interfere with her movements.
Yet.
Long ago, a series of underground passageways had been built beneath the village. These passageways connected all four of the main domains within the village: Guglielmo's lands surrounding the factory, Berengario's fields, Nichola's houses upon the docks, and her very own Cesare's castle. It was necessary for the four founders to stay connected thus. It provided an easy escape plan and was a much-needed safety measure. After all, the four tyrants hadn't exactly been popular in the village
The parchment mapping out the underground passageways had been hanging above her mother's fireplace. Though Daniela hadn't had a reason to pay it any mind, she had come to subconsciously memorize it over the years. Never in her life could she have thought that one day it would come in handy.
There was a door at the end of the tunnel.
She flew beneath the crack and stood there stumbling before it as her human form solidified. The noise and smell of the factory overpowered her immediately. She whined as she covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. The smell of metal and rust was simply too much to bear. A cold draft was whistling in from several windows, and she realized that she'd have to keep moving to keep from getting burned. She lifted her head and sniffed the air: dead bodies, things burning, and fresh blood.
This last scent was so faint that she almost missed it. But it was there, curling through the air like a snaking ribbon and leading to the upper levels.
Man blood. Fresh. There was no way that she could ignore it.
She burst into a million small insects again and whizzed her way up the grand staircase, careful to avoid the open windows and whitish drafts gusting through the air. Steam burst across her from some unseen machine, killing off several insects. Such an injury would manifest as a scar on her human form, one that she'd have to be careful to hide from her mother.
That is, if Alcina didn't kill her upon sight when she got back.
The smell of blood was growing stronger now, strong enough to send her into a disjointed frenzy. God, it had been so long since she had had a taste of man-blood. But she wasn't there to eat. She had to remind herself of this constantly.
There it was!
The smell was positively oozing from beneath the closed door at the end of the hall. There was something so foreboding about it as if the aura of the man within was leaking out of the cracks within the wood. Karl Heisenberg. She had never met the man before, but she had seen him many times beyond the castle window. Judging by the scathing way that her mother spoke of him, he was nothing but a poor pathetic loser and a villainous cur. But Daniela did not believe that. Not at all. She had her own reasons for needing to speak with him.
The insects that made up her body siphoned beneath the doorway. As soon as she was in the room, she stumbled dizzily into a darkened corner and attempted to catch her breath as she transitioned into her human form. The rancid and musky smell of an unwashed man's body was everywhere in the room, positively drowning her in its pungency. She braced her forearms against her nose and breathed in the familiar smell of her sleeves: cotton dabbed with the smallest drops of lavender.
The man in question was crouched upon his hands and knees in the middle of the room, surrounded by a scattering of papers bearing lines and lines of inky text. She opened her eyes in time to see him drag his nose along the ground and give a long sniff. He was shirtless and his pants were hanging low along his hips. The sight of his waist bubbling along the edges of his belt was offensive enough to make her nauseous. Vulgar man-thing. Above him, a window stood open with its yellowed curtains fluttering in the wind. She gave a nervous whine at the sight of it and he looked up in alarm.
"Oh shit," he uttered as simultaneously she cried, "close the window!"
There was a smattering of white dust beneath his nose. As she stood there shivering with her arms on either side of her face, a thin line of blood rolled across his lips. The sight of it made her stomach rumble cavernously, but her fear of the opened window prevented her from doing anything rash.
"Close the window!" She screeched again. "Do it! Do it now!"
"Who the fuck are you?" He said, jumping up. "How the hell did you get in my room?"
It was obvious that he was too dumbfounded by shock to do anything. She'd have to close the window herself. She grit her teeth, shielded her face, and trudged blindly towards the window. A sharp stinging spread all along her arm as she reached into the light. It felt as if her skin was burning and peeling off. Frantic now, she waved her hand in the direction of the window. But it was too much. The moonlight spilling in was tearing the very flesh from her arms, causing it to erupt into gusts of sparkling gray dust.
Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore, a presence filled the space behind her. That overwhelming scent of unwashed body wafted around her again before Karl reached out from behind her and slammed the window shut. The curtains were drawn swiftly and she let out a shaky sigh of relief. The wound on her arm didn't look too bad, now that she was looking at it. With any luck, it would heal within the next few days. She'd just have to keep her arms covered.
A soft pressure ran along her back and she realized with a shiver that the man-thing was running his finger along her body. She whirled around and set a stormy gaze upon him that didn't seem to perturb him in the least. He gave an animalistically toothy grin and the sight of his oddly dilated pupils zoned in on her face made her wonder if he really was as crazy, as her mother claimed. But it couldn't be denied that his eyes were beautiful, beautiful enough to make her fall silent and gaze back at them in wonder.
"You must be my guardian angel," He proclaimed, somewhat salaciously. "Hate to be the one to break it to you, but you've come about forty years too late."
"I'm-"
"-another fucking Dimitrescu," he said. He braced his hand on the wall behind her and leaned in close enough to take a shameless sniff of her hair. "You don't smell like one, but I can see it in the way that you're looking at me…those damn Dimitrescu eyes." He gave a weighty sigh. "Guess you're not much of an angel, then."
"What is that? Under your nose?"
He lifted his hand, scrubbed his upper lip, and then stared at the powder on his fingers unseeingly. "My other guardian angel," he mumbled to himself before wiping his hand across his pants. "And just how the hell did you get in? I didn't even see you open the door!"
"I went under it," she said as if his stupidity was gravely testing her patience. They stared at each other uncomprehendingly before Karl gave a rather ungainly snort and spat into the fire wriggling around his stove.
"Oh, I get it," he said in his disconcerting baritone. "You're just a hallucination! I knew there was something off about the powder…" They stared at each other again, until his face finally fell. "It was too minty."
This last part was said as if her stupidity in the matter was testing his patience. It was then that she realized they truly did come from two completely different worlds. He reared back and began to slink along the edges of the room, watching her like a snake would a trembling mouse. "No…you're not a hallucination. You're a spy sent by Miranda to see if I really do have the guts to leave this village."
"What? No! You have to listen to me-"
"No. Heh. Nonono. You're…one of Marianne's friends! That's it! You've come to get a good look at me so you can report back to her and gossip all about how poor, Lunatic Heisenberg is still trawling around his room trying to gather up the pieces of his heart!'
"Wait! Please-" she tried but suddenly he gasped and braced his hand against his forehead.
"You're the damn Duke in disguise! All that talk about shape shifting! Maybe he's the one who's been shape-shifting all along to…to keep tabs on me for Miranda. The black airplanes in the sky, following me around with their lights on the factory. I knew it-"
But what he did or did not know, she never found out. For, with an enraged snarl, she burst into a cloud of insects and descended upon him. Karl gave a frightened scream as he was lifted from the ground and suspended among the chittering cloud. He paddled his legs and swiped his hands around in desperation but he could not escape her as she flung him around the room with no discretion. It was only when she grew tired from the effort that she tossed him back onto the ground and slid back into her human form as he backed away from her in fright. Quickly, he thrust his hand out and several knives slid through the air towards her. But they never reached their mark, and instead were enveloped in a vortex of insects that shifted and closed around the blades.
She couldn't help it. A small smile crossed her lips as she placed her finger in her mouth and swiped his blood across her tongue. "Mmmmm," she said after biting her lip. "Man blood."
"What in God's name are you?" He asked again as she opened her eyes and gazed hungrily down at him. His chest began to heave as he panted with an open mouth, every delicious vein pulsing madly beneath his skin. Again, he tried to scoot away but his back met the wall and he realized that he had nowhere to go. "And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved," he said as he snatched up the pendant hanging from his neck and pressed it to his lips. "For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved-"
"Oh, please," she said in a light voice before falling to her knees in front of him. His eyes widened at the sight of her sharp fangs exposed within her gaping mouth before she lunged down and bit into his shoulder. He gave a blood-curdling scream as her teeth broke through his skin, filling her mouth with a decadent saltiness that she had been craving for so long.
She would have sucked the very life out of him. His twistings and failings did not affect her, as she had latched on tight to his shoulder. But - like a crack of thunder across a black sky - the face of Mother Miranda flashed through her mind and she remembered why she had come in the first place. She pushed herself away from him with a gasp and threw her head back. Blood was blooming all along his bare shoulder as he fell forward with his knuckles between his teeth
"I am sorry," she said. The hand that she wiped over her mouth only served to smear the blood along her skin. "I am sorry. You were talking so fast! I did not know how else to stop you-"
"So you fuckin' bit me?!"
"It was only a little bite - not even enough to have a true taste!"
"Well, aren't I just fucking lucky!?" He growled as he angrily tore a strip from his jacket and wrapped it around his wound. She crawled hand-over-knee towards him and lowered her face closer to his. It was obvious that her proximity made him severely uncomfortable, but he tried to hide it.
"Please, Mister Heisenberg. You must listen to me! I have come to deliver a warning-"
"What? To avoid women in black dresses who slip under doors and turn into bugs and go sucking the blood out of men's shoulders for no good reason!? Hey!" He suddenly yelped, seeing her lip curl slightly over her fang. "Whoa! Just hold on now - put that thing away!"
"They are going to kill her, Mister Heisenberg."
"What?" He muttered as he tore away another strip of cloth with his teeth. "Kill who?"
"Misses Marianne!"
He fell still at this, the cloth still hanging limply between his teeth. For a moment he held her eye, but Daniela got the sense that he wasn't seeing her at all. He unclenched his teeth and the cloth fell with a flutter between them.
"...what are you talking about?" He asked in a grating octave, the deepest that his register would allow. She wedged her hands between her thighs and twisted her lips, rocking slightly back and forth as she contemplated what to say next. She had never been very good with words, as Cassandra was fond of reminding her, but she had to try. Marianne's life depended on it.
"M-mother Miranda," she tried. "She told my mother that she is awfully upset with you. But she also forgives you. I…do not think that she has it in her heart to forgive Marianne as well."
"You're wrong," he said. "Marianne never did a damn thing to Miranda. She has no reason to kill her."
He reached for the strip of cloth on the floor, but she quickly blanketed her hands over his. She could feel the pulse within his veins growing quicker, as well as the slight tremor in his fingers. "She thinks that Marianne took you away from her," she whispered urgently. "Mother Miranda sees you as a son, and she blames Marianne for you running away to the...the America-place-"
"Pardon my bluntness, doll, but I've spent forty-two years here on this green earth. I'm a bit too old to fall for women and their dramatic jumps to conclusions."
He stood up with a groan and she quickly rose with him. She watched helplessly as he wandered over to the other side of the room and began to shrug his shirt on. There was a stiffness to his lips that betrayed the fact that he was anxious and thinking something over. But he hadn't been convinced fully, not yet. Time was of the essence and every second that she spent standing around trying to think of ways to convince him brought Marianne close to her execution.
If she hadn't been executed already.
The only reason why Daniela even gave a damn was because she had heard tales of Karl's and Marianne's ill-fated tryst. There had been many different versions of it, carried into the castle by numerous visitors such as the Duke, Salvatore Moreau, and even Mother Miranda. Though the details often changed, the essence of the story remained the same: the village bedmaiden and the local devil boy had fallen in love despite all odds. Theirs was a captivating story of forbidden love, heartbreak, and danger - reminiscent of a macabre Shakespearean romance. Daniela had listened in with dreamy interest whenever Alcina launched into a disgusted tirade about their history. Neither Karl nor Marianne had ever set foot in the castle, and yet she had spent many years in her room imagining what they must have looked like: Marianne with almond-shaped eyes and Americanized clothes, Karl with a gentleman's smile and a ringed finger looped around the trigger of a gun. Oh, how Daniela wished that she could have ridden along beside them on proud horses, exchanging jokes or gunfire - whatever came to mind first - and clutching their wide hats against the whistling wind.
It was the very reason why she wanted to save Marianne. She would not see their love lost, even if it meant betraying her own mother. For, in a way, she had come to think of them as her only friends - even though they didn't even know that she existed.
"You are so naive," Bela would have said if she was there. But so what? There had to be more to life than wandering the confines of the castle, avoiding cold drafts and burning moonlight. If her life was meant to be lived vicariously through others then so be it. It was better than having no life at all.
Karl was still standing with his back towards her, muttering under his breath as he shoved his boot against the desk and began to retie its strings. She thought hard, trying to recall the conversation she heard between her mother, Miranda, and the Duke.
"And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel," she recited silently, repeating the very words spoken by Ken before he set out to murder Marianne.
Karl froze in place, his shoulders hunched around his ears. Then he whipped around with a fury that frightened her and stared her down in silence. Everything about him at that moment seemed tightened and coiled as if he was the hand of a clock winding itself up into a frenzy. There was no way of knowing if his anger was directed at the message or the messenger.
Daniela had never cried before. But there was hopeless desperation in his eyes that made her feel as if she was the one on the verge of losing a loved one - and maybe she was. "Go," she muttered so quietly that the sound of her voice was lost beneath the ethereal hum of the factory. She held her palms out, reaching for his chest. "Go and save her. Please, Mister Heisenberg," she whispered before disappearing into a black, glittering cloud.
X
Karl
Karl didn't bother putting on his hat or glasses, as was his ritual whenever he left the factory. He didn't know what the night had in store, but it was highly likely that it would require two pistols and a shitload of courage. Daniela's words hadn't even sunk in yet, but her harrowing and vacant-eyed recitations of Jezebel's fate had been like a bolt of energy delivered straight to his heart, forcing him to act on instinct and throw his door open with a mechanical jerk of his arm.
Down the factory stairs he ran, throwing a cursory glance around as was his custom. The forges had long since fallen into disuse ever since he had murdered the very people who had devoted their lives to tending them. In a detached and bleary state he took in the state of his surroundings: empty hooks sliding along on pulleys, soot climbing the cracks along the walls, smudged imprints of boots dragged along the cement floor. There was a distorted and unpleasant sound bouncing around in his head: words spoken as if in a distance. They snapped between head-splitting clarity and muffled obscurity: Mother Miranda…She told my mother that she is awfully upset with you. But she also forgives you. I do not think that she has it in her heart to forgive Marianne as well.
Fuck.
Narcissism and the sick pleasure that he derived from hating Miranda had prevented him from seeing what was in front of his very eyes. She was her own woman, with her own agenda and selfish grudges. Her vendetta was hot and feminine for, truly, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And, by attempting to take Karl away from the village, Marianne had scorned Miranda irreparably. The relationship between the two women was akin to a match meeting a large bale of hay: it had been burning slowly, right beneath his very nose, only to now reach a flaring and theatrical end. Maybe if he hadn't been so blinded by his own ego, he would have picked up on the smell of smoke years ago. Maybe he would have been able to stop what was on the verge of happening…
….or what had happened already.
He flung open the door to the factory and immediately two hands wrapped around his neck. He stumbled backward with a sputter as Ken pushed him away from the door, his eyes flashing with a lively hunger that Karl had not seen in a long time. There was an odd smell like rust rising off of the damp patches splattered along Ken's shirt: patches that Karl immediately recognized as blood.
There was nothing that he could do as Ken lifted his leg and shoved him back with his boot. Karl fell to his bottom and immediately scooted away as Ken sauntered towards him, the cigarette between his bloodied fingers trembling as he lifted it to his dry lips. There was so much blood on him that his clothes were clinging to his skin, outlining the shift of his bones along his narrow chest.
"You wanna know what sickens me the most, brother?" Ken asked. Before Karl could even respond, Ken lifted his boot and stomped it along Karl's ankle. He heard the crack before he felt it, and when the pain finally did hit, it made his voice hitch in his throat. Ken bent down and pressed the cherry of his cigarette into Karl's cheek, making them both hiss for different reasons. "Sharing a likeness with you. Y'ever think that God regretted making man in his image? I would, seeing as you were made in mine."
"Where's Marianne?" Karl said between his teeth. Ken grinned at this and squeezed his skeletal hands across his shirt, causing blood to splatter between Karl's legs.
"She's dead," he said simply, and something in Karl's chest gave a breath-stealing jolt. "Or…not dead," Ken continued. "You read the papers, so you should know all about a fella by the name of Erwin Schrodinger-"
"Where is she, Ken!?"
"Not with Schrodinger's cat." Ken gave a girlish giggle. "More like…Schrodinger's dogs."
The coldness erupted along Karl's back teeth as simultaneously his hammer came flying down the stairs. But Ken had seen the flare in his eye seconds before it happened. The hammer collided with the wall hard enough to crack it as Ken wrapped his arms around Karl and shoved him away.
"Nonononono, bad boy," Ken hissed in a venomous warning as he held Karl down. The hammer fell uselessly a few feet away from them as Karl struggled violently against his brother. Though Ken's years spent wasting away beneath Miranda's clutch had weakened him severely, there was a murderous passion in his heart that strengthened him. Karl's arms remained crossed before his chest as Ken held him down, his every word spraying sour spit across Karl's face.
The soft blue glow was beginning to rise along Ken's chest, followed by the eerie lift of his patchy hair. His touch was both searing cold and burning hot as he clasped Karl in place with a suffocating embrace. There was something both feral and sensual about their proximity, and the fact of it being their first time embracing did not escape Karl.
"I am done with you," Ken spat. There was a rattling rumble all along the walls, growing louder by the second. "I am done with you crawling around in my shadow…I am done with feeling sorry for you…I am done with sharing my title as a Heisenberg Son. This is where it ends, brother. Only one of us will walk out of that door….only one of us will make it out alive and it's not you."
Karl realized where the rattling was coming from two seconds before nails started shooting out of the wall. Ken jumped up and away as Karl curled into himself with his forearms braced along his ears. Several nails plunged into his skin but he was able to stop the rest and keep them suspended in the air around him. By then, he had come to realize that he could best control metal when he didn't think about it. But his thoughts were jumbled and disjointed, which diminished his powers substantially. Ken's laughter was wafting all around the factory as Karl forced himself up, just in time to be hit in the face with a wayward rotor blade. He grunted and stumbled back as various machine parts began to hit him all at once. He was blinded and thrown off balance as they stuck to his body and began to weigh him down, though he tried his hardest to take a step forward. Ken's laughter was above him now as the man balanced upon the stair railing.
"Brother, catch!" Ken yelled jubilantly before sending a metal grate cover his way. Karl ducked his head and stuck his hand out, sending the grate back using the force spreading through his forearms and radiating from his palm. He realized that if he wanted to survive then he'd have to act on reflexes, or the panicked thoughts rollicking around his mind would slow him down. Marianne, he thought to himself as he crawled hand over knee towards his hammer, his body completely enveloped in various pieces of metal, I…have…to save her.
But he was too weak, having only just honed in his power a few years earlier. He fell splayed upon his belly just a few inches away from his hammer, feeling fatigue completely overtake him. The metal pieces were beginning to crunch around him, crushing him to death slowly and painfully.
"Alright," he said with a shudder as he closed his eyes and let his cheek rest on the floor. There was blood coming from somewhere on his head. He could see it rolling in a lone rivulet along the floor. "You win. There. Are you happy, you rat bastard?"
"Not until the very breath is crushed out of you."
"Won't be long," Karl rasped before giving a heavy cough. His vision was beginning to blur over. He could just barely make out the staff end of his hammer through the red haze. Slowly, he untucked his hand from beneath him and began to reach for it. "Do this old boy a favor, before you kill him?"
"You're in no position to ask for favors, you son of a bitch."
"Ironic…" Karl sputtered blood across the floor. "At least I'll die knowing that you're still scared of me."
"I don't blame a dead man for clinging to false hope-"
"No?" Karl sputtered again. His fingers brushed along the edge of his hammer. "Then c'mere. Look me in my eyes as I'm dying. Prove to me that you ain't scared of me."
"Hmph. Whatever."
Ken leaped off of the stair rail and sauntered towards Karl, his hips swinging like a dancing woman's. The musk emanating from him was heavy enough to make Karl nauseous but Ken couldn't see it beneath the metal pieces stuck to Karl's face. Ken braced his hand upon his jutting kneebone with a smile and dipped down close to Karl.
"Clo-ser," Karl said, his lips pulling a hidden smile. His fingers tightened around his hammer. "Clooooo-seeeerrrr…wunderbar!"
Karl sprang up and swung the hammer as hard as his muscles would allow. For a second, he saw his brother's face fall comically in shock before the hammer caught him straight in his guts. All of Ken's limbs seemed to spring out at once around the hammer as he was thrown backward off of his feet. His collision with the wall was so violent that Karl knew, immediately, that the back of his skull had been shattered. Karl yanked his hammer back to his side and watched in satisfaction as Ken's body crumpled to the ground, his eyes rolling frantically in his skull as white froth began to bubble around the corner of his lips.
"You got blood on my hammer," Karl said in a disgruntled voice as Ken began to convulse. "And brain matter on my wall! What, are you gonna fuckin' piss on my floor too? Oh-"
Karl's face fell as he watched the ground beneath Ken turn dark. "Spoke too soon. Where's Marianne? Where is my woman?"
Ken gargled something and then put his hand to his mouth. Karl leaned down as close as the stench of the other man's piss would permit and cupped his hand around his ear. "So sorry…what was that?"
"Kill…me…"
"No. You don't deserve it! Now, one more time, brother, before I ram my hammer's staff down your throat-"
"V-v-village center…pig pens…"
"Fuck-" Karl lifted his boot and stomped it down on Ken's ankle, shattering it. Ken howled in pain as simultaneously Karl realized that his own ankle had already healed. "I'll be back," Karl said, pointing his gloved finger at Ken, "and if I don't have Marianne by my side then you'd best pray to God that he delivers you from my vengeance."
X
Karl mounted his horse and galloped towards the village center. The evening was upon them and the torches had been lit all along the village. Blotches of firelight whizzed past him like spectral orbs as he rode along the avenue, slapping viciously at his horse to keep it from stalling in confusion. A woman's ear-splitting scream was riding the wind and the sound of it sent a cold chill through his body. He knew that scream, both the identity of the woman and the fact that such a scream could only come from someone staring Death in the face. The villagers had congregated around the rickety pig pens at the center of the market. As he approached, their heads raised in unison like many disturbed meerkats before they all looked away again. He whipped his head side to side as he took in their faces: all of them guilty as if they were children caught with their hands in a candy jar. Several mothers quickly snatched their children away from the frantic horse as the men who had been sitting on overturned boxes rose quickly from their feet. The sound of several dogs snarling and growling low in their throats reached him at once and he flung himself off of his horse with a curse. The villagers parted before him as he made a bee-line through them, revealing the pig pens and the horrible sight within.
"Oh fuck," Karl whimpered in a broken voice before bracing both hands along the edge of the fence and swinging himself over. "Oh fuck -Marianne! Marianne! Jesus Christ, NO!"
When he was a young boy, his father had owned a group of several dogs. He had raised them from birth, but not too kindly. They were scrawny things that roamed around the factory fields on too-short chains. Whenever Karl passed, they lapped at their jowls hungrily and bared their broken teeth at him. They were supposed to have served as a sort of security for the factory but had quickly descended into a hungry, competitive madness and killed each other off. Seeing the way that Karl glanced nervously every time they passed by, Jebediah had taught him a trick to handling them. "Come up behind them," the old man had said as he snuck up on one of the dogs. "Grab their hind legs - like so - and wheelbarrow 'em around. They c'aint do much when you got their legs."
Now, Karl charged fearlessly through the dogs, stopping every few feet to swing away the most fearless of them by their hind legs. Several of the dogs lunged at his calves or heels but were ultimately too cowed to do anything more than test him. He unhooked a lamp from above the pig pen and swung it in an arc around his body, the glow of the flames glinting in their eyes and keeping them at bay. He kept his eyes and lamp trained on the snarling group of dogs as he wedged his other arm beneath Marianne's body. She gave a rattling groan as he lifted her up and over his shoulder. For a moment, he didn't understand why he couldn't get a good grip on her. Then it hit him all at once: she was covered in blood, so much that it was making her skin slippery.
"Back! Back, you filthy animals!" He roared as stumbled out of the pen. He could have been talking to the villagers quickly backing away from him or the dogs that were closing in on him from behind. Hand shaking, he pushed Marianne up onto his horse and hopped up behind her. The horse gave a surprised whinny as he smacked at it again and set it galloping through the night. The image of the villagers' faces had been burned into his mind: all of them standing there and watching as if it was a play and he was some silly actor who had forgotten his lines. They had relished in his horror, watched in sadistic and detached amusement as he had stumbled to his knees before Marianne's body. It was all that he could think about as they rode at a dizzying pace through the village. He would kill them all, he vowed to himself as he neared Miranda's home. He would watch them all burn. He would mangle them and their children for bearing gleeful witness to Marianne's destruction.
Finally, he reached the ramshackle and steel-plated building that made up Miranda's testing site. He pulled Marianne off of his horse and slung her over his shoulder before trudging his way laboriously through the snow. The woman hadn't said a single word the entire time, instead wheezing and whimpering incoherently as he moved her around. A swift kick opened the door to Miranda's lab and he stumbled on unsteady feet across the doorway. Something within the dimly lit room shattered and Miranda herself emerged from around the corner.
"Karl!" She said in alarm as he looked wildly around the room. There was a heavy desk laden with various knick-knacks and equipment. He brushed his arm across it - knocking everything to the floor - before setting Marianne gently upon the desk and leaning over to peer into her face.
"Hey, doll, it's me," he said, squeezing her hand as she attempted to focus her eyes on him. "You'll be okay. You'll be fine, just don't fuckin' - don't leave me again. You can't-...Marianne, you can't fucking die on me!"
"What is going on?" Miranda must have been fresh out of the bath, judging by the steam rising from her glossy skin. She tucked the edge of her towel modestly along her chest before reaching out to touch Karl's shoulder. "Karl. Son. Talk to me. What has happened?"
"Did you tell Ken to set his dogs on my woman?"
"What-?!"
Karl stormed up to her and put both hands on her neck, forcing her backward. The towel slipped a few inches off of her chest, exposing her pale breasts. She put one hand on his face and used the other to try and maintain her modesty. "I have no business with Marianne, nor your brother-"
"Don't lie to me-" he warned. He didn't know what he wanted to do. All he knew was that if he let himself go - and he was very close to doing so - Miranda's desperate attempts at staying covered would be the least of her worries. "You've always hated her from the start. You orchestrated this, didn't you!? Stop staring at me like that and fucking answer me!"
"What would I have to gain by killing Marianne?" She said back. "I know that your mind was made up - you would have left for America regardless of her influence. She means nothing to me-"
"You wanted vengeance-"
"Enacting vengeance upon her would have been a waste of my time. You may be obsessed with her but, I guarantee you, son, I am not-"
Karl growled and swung her around. Her back collided with the desk and Marianne gave a low whine as the jars above her rattled together. For once, Karl could see the fear in Miranda's eyes. She held one hand to the towel hanging from her chest and the other to Karl as if warding off an attack.
"I would not incur your wrath by killing the woman that you love," she said with careful deliberation, her every word clipped and measured. "Your brother is a villainous rogue with his own agenda. I do not align my purposes with his, and have long since severed our ties. Whatever Ken did tonight, he did of his own accord. But! Son, look at me - look at me, Karl! We can fix this! Just…tell me what you need me to do."
Karl hadn't even realized that he had been crying until he saw the softening of her face. He spun around and glanced all along the walls as she tied her towel in a knot beneath her shoulder. Many glass jars were lining the racks above Marianne's body. He recognized the fleshy mass of the Cadou suspended in several of them, bobbing and rocking slightly in the murky liquid.
"That - there!" He said, pointing at one of them. "The Cadou. You can implant it in her, right? Make her stronger or heal her fast or…something like that?" He perked up and turned to look at her with a hopeful glint in his eyes. "You can use your miracle mold to save her, can't you?"
Miranda said nothing to this. She took several timid steps towards Marianne, glanced back at Karl, and then looked down again. The sight of her seemed to awaken something in Marianne, and the woman's eyes became suddenly alert as they followed Miranda's every move. Miranda put her hand to Marianne's shoulder and trailed it down her bloodied arm.
"Can you hear me?" Miranda asked and Marianne uttered a soft mm-hm. "Where all are you hurt?"
Marianne lifted a shaking finger towards her legs. Karl took a deep breath in and forced himself to follow Miranda's gaze. Marianne's pants were much too mangled and bloodied for him to be able to decipher the true extent of her injuries.
"J-j-j-just m-my legs," Marianne said. The sudden sound of her voice made him exhale deeply and press her fingers against his lips. "I was able to f-f-fend them off. But m-my legs and m-my arms…"
"Shhh, shhh, shh. I see." For no reason that Karl could discern, Miranda placed her hand over Marianne's mouth and glanced off to the side. Then, "You've lost a lot of blood., my dear girl."
"But the Cadou-" Karl started and Miranda silenced him with a pointed gaze.
"-will not implant properly in a body going into shock. And, make no mistake, son, she is going into shock."
"But-"
"Karl. I need you to be strong."
X
Miranda.
Lies, lies, lies. All of it.
Karl was a medical man. He should have been able to see through her deception. But he had gone into a sort of shock himself and was staring at her with a gaze so raw that it seemed to have drained the very years out of him. She forced herself to hold his eye calmly. She needed him to trust her - no, more than that, she needed him to recognize her authority in the matter. Even though her authority had been built on lies, lies, lies.
She knew that Marianne would make it. The dogs hadn't latched on to any vital parts. As it was, the wounds along her legs and arms were quite superficial. All they'd have to do was stop the blood and keep the wounds clear of infection for a few weeks. The dogs hadn't even gotten close to Marianne's face, which was a shame. Miranda had been hoping that they would tear away at that pretty little face strip by strip. But Marianne was a fighter, Miranda should have known that. She had fought her way through forty-two years of hell. What more could a couple of mangy dogs do?
But there was an opportunity to be made, Miranda had realized it the second that she had put her hand on Marianne's shoulder and looked into her eyes. The young thing had a will to live, and no doubt her brush with death would only rekindle Karl's love for her. But, if she died…well, then Karl would be broken. He'd find himself alone in the village once again, searching desperately for something or someone familiar to hold on to. More than ever, he'd need someone to fill in the space that Marianne would leave in his heart. The type of love that he had felt for the young whore was irreplaceable, which was exactly why a man like him would spend his life trying to replace it, if only to prove to himself that he could.
Miranda looked down at Marianne, taking in the life-giving obstinance in her eye. Yes. There was an opportunity to be made. Marianne would, truly, have to die.
And he'd have to be the one to kill her. That way, he wouldn't be able to blame her death on anyone but himself.
"Karl. I need you to be strong." Miranda bent down and pushed aside the papers on the floor until she found a long medical knife. Several strands of hair unclasped from her bun as she straightened up and held it to Karl. He looked down upon the knife as if he had never seen such a thing before, and then looked up at her. She had never seen him so unsure or lost before. Such an ordeal had turned him into a little boy all over again. "The back of the neck, at the base of her skull," she said, somewhat impatiently. "Sever the spinal cord quickly, between the vertebrae, and she will not suffer. It will require immense precision, which I know you are capable of, son."
His eyes widened and he stumbled back, crashing into the desk. By this point, Marianne had lifted herself weakly onto her elbows and was staring mutely at the knife. Miranda gave the knife an emphatic shake, forcing him to keep his eyes on it. "Now, Karl."
"I can't…"
"You must. Would you rather her bleed out, here, in front of you? Would you subject her to such torture?"
"Wait, no-," Marianne suddenly said. The effort of speaking so suddenly exhausted her and she fell back onto the desk with a sigh. "It's not like that - I'll be okay! Karl, baby, I'm gonna be just fine - look at me, Karl!"
"Karl, look at me. She has gone delirious, she knows not of what she speaks" Miranda said, glancing at Marianne with an expression that she hoped didn't betray her disgust. "Karl. Do it. Now. God will forgive you for showing her mercy, as will she-"
"K-k-Karl, please, look at me!"
"Karl! Look at me!"
Karl whipped his head between the two women. Hopelessness and fear were etched along every inch of his face as he backed away into a wall. There, he slid down onto bent knees as he shoved his knuckle in his mouth and bit down hard enough to draw blood. He squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate attempt to block out the horrors of the world before giving a cry that made the glass jars above her desk shake.
"Fuck! Fuck! I can't! I can't!" He leaped up and stumbled towards Miranda with his hands held out. "You say you love me? You say you bear no ill-will towards Marianne? Then please, end her suffering. I can't take this anymore."
"Karl!" Marianne yelped as simultaneously Miranda thought, 'fuck.' She had bet so much on Karl's strength and inner fortitude that she hadn't even considered the possibility of him being too weak to do what had to be done. Miranda stood still with the knife still held aloft between them. If only Karl would just take it…
But he never did. And he never would. It was then that Miranda realized that if she wanted Marianne dead, then she'd have to kill her herself. Then and there. No more relying on weak and stuttery fools, such as were all too common in the Heisenberg line.
She flipped the knife around in her fingers, pointing its tip at the floor. Marianne screamed as Miranda circled her and braced her free hand against her chin. Karl watched with his fists clasped against his lips as Miranda tightened her hold with a sudden yank.
"K-Karl! Don't let her do it, p-please! I don't wanna die! Not like this!"
"Remember, Karl," Miranda said as she leveraged the point of the blade against the back of Marianne's skull. "This is the woman who betrayed you with your brother. Everything that has been done - and will be done - is for the greater good. You do understand, don't you, that you've always been in my favor?"
Marianne gave a weak 'hmm?' as the blade slipped quickly and precisely between her vertebrae. A small smile slid across her lips before she fell limp in Miranda's arms. But what she had smiled for, none would ever know. Miranda was forced to cradle her dead weight as Karl screamed over and over again behind his hands, the sound of it splitting her ears and quickening her heart's pace. Then, just to be sure that the young angel had been silenced for good, Miranda braced both hands upon Marianne's head and twisted her neck until it snapped.
X
Ken
Ken knew that he had precious few moments left before Karl returned. Hours had passed since he had locked Marianne in the pig pen and set his dogs on her. There was no way that she would have survived, not even with her fighting spirit. The sight that would greet Karl within the village center would forever haunt him: blood, mangled lips, the face of his lover torn to shreds and flung along the floor.
Ken had performed an irrevocable sin that night. Heaven was no longer welcome to him but he didn't care. He no longer feared God's judgment or Marianne's fate. Hell, he didn't even give a damn about Miranda anymore.
All he could think about was Karl and his coming wrath.
The plan had been to kill Karl, make it look like some factory accident so that Miranda would not suspect him. But, as always, his own bravado had gotten in the way. He had wanted to see Karl suffer, watch from atop the stairwell as the life was strangled out of his brother. Karl's weakness had always been a drag on his life, and he had wanted to sever the cords of pity that kept them bound together. Oh, how such pity had hung so heavily from his shoulders, like interlinked chains leading to the shackles around Karl's wrists. And somewhere along the chains was a single link made up of love. God, he'd rather kill Karl than love him any longer.
But no. The other man had been quick, smashed Ken's chest with the very hammer that Ken could not lift.
Fuck.
Ken wheezed as he dragged himself along the factory floor. There was an incessant pounding in the back of his head where his skull had been smashed. He could feel the unnatural shift and drag of each rib hanging broken in his chest. Not for the first time in his life, he wished for sudden death. But that was the problem - he couldn't die, not so easily. Miranda had made sure of that.
The door to the factory slammed open. Cold air gusted around him, carrying flurries of minuscule icicles that clung to the blood tracks spooling from his eyes. The very breath was knocked out of him as he ground his broken nails against the floor, pulling himself forward inch by inch. There was no use in looking back. So he had wished for death, and it had finally come.
He heard Karl's heavy footsteps growing louder as the man approached. He kept his eyes forward, attempting to navigate the blurriness obscuring his one good eye. There was a sudden pressure on his back as Karl ground his boot against him and gave it a shove.
"You can't even begin to imagine the pain that I will put you through," came Karl's voice. A match flared, followed by the smell of cigar smoke. Ken could smell the splotches of blood on Karl's coat. Marianne's, no doubt. "You would have thought that such torture wouldn't even be humanely possible!"
Ken was barely listening. He knew that crawling away to safety was no longer possible, but his instinctual drive to live was guiding his every shaking movement. He paused to catch his breath and let his forehead fall upon the floor.
"Don't…bother begging for your life," Karl said in the very voice that Ken had destroyed many years ago. "It'll just make things awkward for both of us."
"What are you going to do to me?" Ken asked. He couldn't help his morbid curiosity, all things considered. There was a soft sigh as Karl exhaled smoke behind him.
"I'm going to keep you alive, just long enough for me to enact my vengeance."
"You think my life is in your hands? You think that you're God?"
"No. I am not God. I am a greater showman than God. And believe you me, brother, I will put on a show."
The effort of trying to laugh made Ken fall into a fit of coughs. It was with some difficulty that he pushed himself up and turned around to face his brother. Karl was crouched upon his haunches, a cigar pinched between the two fingers of the hand hanging off of his thigh. Never before had Ken realized just how big his brother actually was. It had less to do with his physical body - though, by that time, Karl seemed to have finally filled himself out to capacity - it was the creeping, crawling aura that seemed to extend from him like heat waves. Karl had become the sort of man who could observe a room in silence and leave an impression on everybody within for years to come.
And though Ken hated to admit it, he was jealous.
But he couldn't let him win, couldn't die knowing that Karl had become greater than him. He had to be the last needle in Karl's conscience - not the other way around - and he knew exactly what to say to twist the knife that had long ago been wedged in Karl's back. And why not? Karl was going to kill him, sooner or later.
Ken began to giggle as Karl stared at him from behind his glasses. The man seemed unusually calm for someone who had just witnessed his lover torn to pieces. Though, Ken supposed, many fools had been inclined to call the clouds calm seconds before they erupted into chaotic thunder. Ken wiped the blood away from his lips and then spat between Karl's boots.
"I s'pose this makes you her new plaything, eh, Karl?"
In response to this, Karl smashed the tip of his cigar against the floor and exhaled with a bit more force than necessary. There was no need to say names, they both knew who he was talking about. Ken giggled again.
"What did Miranda tell you - that none of this was her doing? That she loves you? That you're her son? Did she spend the last several years calling me a rogue and a cur and a bastard behind my back? Did she make you think that I was a failure, and that you were worth more than me?"
"In so many words."
"No. No, no, no. You've got it all wrong, brother. She despised you from the start. She always has, and always will. Did you dream about her? Did you dream about us, lying inches away from each other on her work table as she drilled holes into our skulls and had her nematodes latch onto our brainstems-"
"If this is some pa-the-tic attempt to bide your time-"
"You don't get it…do you? She never wanted you. She was disgusted by you from the start…you and your Devil eyes and wicked voice…you were abhorrent, a freak of nature by nine years old! She took me in the hopes that she could resurrect her daughter in my body. You were a by-product….a safety net in case her experiments on me failed. Look into your memories, Karl. You hear her and papa arguing, don't you? You hear him pleading for her to take you in my stead - "
X
What's wrong with him?
Boy's got the Devil inside 'im. Can't you see it? Lookit 'is eyes.
I don't believe in the Devil, nor his devilish counterpart for that matter - the one who you so lustfully call God…
Then take 'im.
I will not. It's his brother that I want. Ken. Come here.
I won't sacrifice my blessing to your unholy experimentations, Miranda. Take Karl. Free me of the boy's curse. Yer charitable, aren't you?
X
"She had no hopes for you - no expectations of success. Your life meant nothing to her. She would not have flinched had you died on that operating table thirty-three years ago. I was to be her magnum opus - her crowning victory! Not you. Never you. Papa…took you from her, saved you from what should have happened. And before you go thinking that he loved you, let me make something clear. He only took you because he thought that you were me. He was trying to save me, Karl! You meant nothing to him! Sacrificing you to Miranda's scalpel was an act of charity to him! I am willing to bet my own fucking ballsack that he has regretted saving you instead of me, every single day of his miserable life."
X
"Which one are you?" Jebediah demanded in a rushed whisper. "Ken? Or Karl?"
Karl's arms wrapping around his father's shoulders...the door to the room opening...Miranda standing in the dim light….Karl screaming at the sight of her…dried blood crackling in his hair
"No, no, no! Papa, please! Don't let her hurt me! Mercy, mercy, please, papa!"
"Go on," Miranda, sticking a cigarette in her mouth...his father glaring back at her "Take him. I have no use for him anymore."
"What have you done to him, Miranda? "What-"
"More than he deserved. With any luck, he won't make it to see another day. You should be grateful. I am a charitable being, after all."
"Where is his brother?"
"Ken is mine from here on out. Take Karl…if either of you set foot in my laboratory again, I will kill you both with my bare hands. Go, now!"
X
"So do you get it now, brother? Miranda: the woman who you thought had loved you for so many years did, in fact, hate your guts. She would have watched you die as a child without a flicker of interest in her eyes. You think she chose you over me? You think that she had a change of heart and vowed to treat you like a forgotten son? No! No, Karl. She only started chasing you when she started to believe that I was unfit. If I had maintained my bearing she would have never sought you out. You were always a cast-off…a stupid, ugly lunatic whose experimentations only served as a form of insurance in case I was to fail. I see those tears running down your face - you know in your heart what I say is true. So kill me, Karl, and then take a good look around you. You will be lost and alone, because I am the last person on this here God's green earth who truly gave a fuck about you. Not Miranda. Not Marianne. Me."
Karl had gone completely still, save for the occasional sniffle. There, finally, Ken had broken him down. Karl didn't seem so big anymore - in fact, something about him seemed to have curled back into himself. Forty-two years old, and Karl was suddenly a little boy again sniffling over the bruise blooming along his heart. His dark glasses couldn't hide the hurt in his eyes. Ken could see the loss, the hopelessness, and the pain reflected every so slightly behind the odd green tint of his lenses. The poor man-child had shown less sorrow when he was a kid and Ken had boxed him in the mouth for the hundredth time.
Karl looked away and quickly ran the back of his hand over the wetness along his cheeks. Then he huffed and looked back down at Ken with a blank expression.
"Tell me you love me," Karl said. It was not lost on Ken, the fact that he had made this sardonic demand every time he kicked the shit out of Karl. He grinned as the blood pooled along his lashes and shook his head.
"I didn't say I loved you. I said I gave a fuck about you, like a kid gives a fuck about a dog standing in the rain. Nobody truly loves you, Karl Heisenberg."
Karl nodded. Something in his expression changed before his face fell to neutrality again. He fished around in his pocket and brought out a small, rectangular box. A recorder. Ken had seen something like it in the advertisement section of the American newspapers. Karl lifted himself with a groan, clicked a button, and then held the recorder to his lips.
"Subject Number 1921 is in less than satisfactory condition….it will require titanium plates and a few screws here and there to restabilize the ribs but…surgery upon the skull will be foregone, seeing as both the head and torso shall be replaced by more….reliable equipment, an aircraft engine and fan considered…here marks day one of Subject 1921s transformation or, as it shall be colloquially christened: Strum." Karl braced his foot upon Ken's knee and gave the recorder a swift click. "Ending recording."
End Part One