(A/n: Trigger Warning: child abuse and mentions of it in the past)
Chapter 33: The Vampire Hunter's Worst Nightmare
"W-where the hell...am I?"
A decaying ceiling that was originally a healthy white is the first thing that greets Chris when he opens his eyes, his pupils round like a humans. Next comes an overwhelmingly foul stench, causing his stomach to churn uncontrollably the instant he took a whiff of it. He sits up slapping his hands over his nose and mouth, swallowing deeply twice to keep the upcoming bile down. He takes a couple of minutes to recuperate but only lowers one of his hands from his nose and mouth, he scans his surroundings. Despair instantly setting in.
"T-this room is...mines..."
A ray of sunlight gleamed through a window behind the right side of Chris, underneath it is a dresser with nothing but a lamp on top of it. Seeing the wooden floors smudged with splotches of dried blood isn't what makes Chris nearly want to throw up again, it's the big stain of days old blood splattered across the corner of the wall near the door. The door is positioned in the middle of the room. Swallowing once again so as to not recall the day of 'that' incident, Chris glances down at himself to see that he's sitting on a grungy looking mattress on the dirty floor, his body size aged down to that of a preteen, and his clothes consisting of a bloody and dirty grey tank top and black shorts. His feet are bare and also filthily.
If it wasn't for this dreadfully familiar place, Chris wouldn't be so repulsed by neither the fetor nor the bloodstains. In fact, this room helped him become immune to such revolting smells and scenes prior to turning into a vampire, later becoming a vampire hunter. He never would've thought that...being tortured would've developed into a beneficial outcome for him in the future.
Which leads him to questioning why he's back in this hellhole.
"So not only were you a mortal, but this was the lifestyle you'd been living in during that time," a voice muses, resounding around the quiet room. "How absolutely pitiful."
Shock and confusion are the first two emotions Chris experiences. But then realization hits him, and he becomes enraged. "This is that Japanese bastard's doing! I'm under his illusion!" Fear no longer hinders Chris from getting up on his feet.
Kurai chuckles at his newfound, or rather, returning confidence. "I wouldn't look so courageous if I were you, wouldn't want your 'mother' coming in thinking that you've suddenly grown some balls now do we?"
Chris' eyes widen and his pupils constrict in horror at the mention of his mother. He can feel himself going numb in the legs when he hears footsteps approaching his way outside the door.
"Christopher? Are you awake?" The woman's tender voice asks.
Chris remains silent and motionless in place, sucking in a breath when the doorknob rattles then turns. Slowly, the door opens with a creak revealing a woman with disheveled grey and black hair and dull blue eyes. She's wearing a spaghetti strapped black dress that went past her kneecaps, and matching colored flats on her feet. Her dead fish eyes widen with joy when they spot Chris standing in equal alignment of the doorway. The moment she enters her son's room, the boy drops to his knees.
"Christopher?!" His mother rushes over to him, placing a cold, gentle hand on his shoulder. He flinches at the realistic contact. "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?" Numbly, the boy shakes his head no. "Are you sure? You look pale."
Chris strains a small smile on his lips. "I-it's nothing, mom. I-I'm just happy to see you," he stutters, his heart pounding strongly against his chest.
There's silence as the atmosphere around them becomes eerie very quickly. "...Do not lie to me," his mother says in a low threatening tone. Chris loses his smile with a whimper, his mother's nails start digging into his skin. "I am going to ask you one more time. What. Is. The. Matter?"
Tears well up within in Chris' eyes. "N-nothing. You're hurting me, please stop."
His mother grits her teeth in anger. "Don't tell me what to do, brat!" She slaps him harshly across his cheek. He's sent sprawled onto his side, the mattress cushioning his short descent. His cheek and shoulder are tinged a bright red though his shoulder is on the verge of bleeding thanks to the woman's nails. His mother stares at him blankly although the anger lingered in her eyes. "Look what you've made me do," she accuses him emotionlessly. "You know I hate it when you lie to me, Christopher. You've done it far too many times now." With a blink, she cocks her head to the side slightly. "Unless you like getting beaten?"
Tears begin to slide down the boy's cheeks. "I'm s-sorry..."
The older noirette maintains her empty expression, disregarding his meek apology. "Sit up, and let's start over." Hesitating for a moment, Chris pushes himself back up on his knees. "Tell me what's wrong."
Chris lowers his head, the uneven black fringes of his hair hanging past his tear-leaking eyes. "I'm fine, really. I wasn't lying to you," he says softly.
All of a sudden, a hand roughly grabs him by the hair, and forces him to look up at his mother. "Look me in the eyes, and say that again," she orders darkly.
"T-there's nothing wrong with me. Please let go!"
She glares at him silently for a couple of seconds, then releases him. Afterwards, she walks out of the room.
Chris sits there crying inaudibly, weakly soothing the persistent sting in his shoulder that's now started bleeding. He hates that he's reliving the life he had so desperately erased from his memory decades ago. Up until this point, he'd completely forgotten he even had a mother...
No.
He shouldn't even refer to her as that anymore. That woman is a monster.
His father passed away three years after he was born, but that wasn't the start to the woman's abusive behavior. It was when things started getting too much for her to handle that she started taking her frustrations out on Chris, he was 6 years old at the time.
"I warned you, didn't I?" There was no ounce of sympathy in Kurai's statement. "Blame your arrogance for landing you in this nightmare."
Chris' body tenses, his eyes once again narrowing behind the bangs of his hair. "You fucker." He grits his teeth tightly, unconsciously applying pressure onto his shoulder. "I'll make sure to kill you when I get outta this."
"You're all bark and no bite 'human'," Kurai scoffs. Footsteps sound once more, and they're coming back to Chris' room. "You can't even stand up to your own mother."
"I didn't want to have to resort to this," Chris' mother says in the hallway, her caring tone back. "But you've left me no other choice." She reenters her terrified son's room, this time holding a brown and red leather belt in her hands, the red being leftover dried blood. She stops before Chris, staring down at him with hollow sadness in her eyes. "I care about you, Christopher - so much, that I'm willing to beat the answers out of you since you refuse to be honest with me." Chris snaps his head upwards at her, his eyes pleading for her not to hurt him again. Seeing the look of absolute hopelessness on his face sparks a sick sense of pleasure throughout her entire body, and she smiles creepily at the boy. "I'll give you one last chance to answer me truthfully, otherwise..." She lets the intimidating thwack of the belt finish her statement for her.
"B-but I wasn't lying to you in the first place! Why won't you believe me?!"
The woman's fake smile morphs into a frown. "How dare you raise your voice at me." She raises then brings the belt down with one hand, striking Chris' thigh forcefully. He screams out in agony with fresh tears streaming down his pale cheeks, but his mother doesn't stop after just one hit. She continues to whack every part of his body as the sadistic grin resurfaces, and grows with each and every strike.
All Chris can do is endure the beating until his mother tires herself out, as he always had in the past. Laying curled up in a trembling fetal position, his screams eventually dwindle down to whimpers then to silence. The tears' flow remain ongoing. When he hears giggling amid the loud, painful smacks, he vows with steely determination that he will surely kill the vampire who's making him undergo this torment again.
/
"Utterly disgusting."
Those were the only words Kurai could think of as he watches the scene before him through the whiteboard inside one of the classrooms, his arms crossed. His katana is resting on top of the podium behind him. Although he still despises the vampire hunter, witnessing him getting abused by his own mother is simply...inhumane. What could possibly posses a child's parent to beat them as if they were some kind of animal? No reason will ever justify this sort of mistreatment.
"But maybe this will serve as a lesson to Christopher," Kurai then thinks, acquiring a complacent glint in his eyes. "No matter how many vampires he'd faced prior to encountering me, it's apparent that he still needs to learn not to take his opponents so lightly." However, the more he observes the pure enjoyment on Chris' mother's face as she continues to whip the child with no remorse, empathy slowly but unfortunately settles itself within Kurai. He frowns at the feeling.
(A/n: Wanted to keep this short cuz...ya know. The next chapter will be up soon)