A/N pls review or critique me. Not sure what im doing. How is this even supposed to end. I don't know where im going
I always wondered "how" and "when" the incident was conceived and planned, but I'm especially stuck on the way it was implemented: this required much more knowledge than you'd anticipate was easily available to the public. Did Freddie Lounds slide it under the table for an exclusive interview, did it get leaked, am I just not careful enough with my public image? Either way, I suppose, human determination has no limits, fiscal or physical.
I should be honored, now that I think of it. This case lingered on me like cigarette smoke, and the more I read into it, the more I realized that sacrificial victims aren't just pigs for slaughter; a thusia is chosen with utmost care and intent, revered as the God's flesh and blood manifested on Earth. You eat and drink the body of Christ in church, so I don't see how this is much different. Part of me supposed that it was my fate to die like this.
The Jadestone Ripper isn't as terrifying as I thought. Despite overwhelming evidence, my mind only conjured sloppy images of lopsided hunchbacks wielding rusty saws and bloodlust, carving people like glasgow grins ripped across pumpkins while chanting to anything that would bother to listen. He rang my doorbell just like anyone else would, meek and frail looking, a bird-like teenager with big brown eyes and a trembling lip. He spoke to me—it was palaver, the sort of shavings that you brush off the table and forget about until the end of time, nothing like the conversations I indulged in with the more meaningful individuals I've interacted with. I had half a mind to shut the door in his face and tell him I wasn't interested in whatever he was trying to persuade me to do when he said his name.
It sounded like Will Graham's voice when he told me the identity of the Chesapeake Ripper. Steady, slow, enunciated and perfect, every syllable rolled off his tongue with utter grace and intent, and that same tightening overcoming my tendons and limbs like a tourniquet choking the life out of a heretic dripped into my guts like lead.
Cozcatl. It lingers with the same sound as "Hannibal," the sound of tongue perched against teeth. He blows dust into my face, the substance being none other than the yoyotli that Beverly Katz had so expertly identified in the first autopsy we conducted together, and my double-vision conscious splits further like cells squirming to get away from each other after mitosis.
The groggy film that is delivered when sleep melds with waking grows over me like a steady mildew and mold; I turn my head and feel the veins in my neck stretch alongside my tendons, the slippery slide of muscle under flesh worrying me more than the rest of the situation. I clearly see Alana Bloom on my couch even when Cozcatl's hands hold my jaw and align my head properly, the image etched on the ceiling. "How does that make you feel?" she asks, companionable, curious, and my mouth is too dry to answer.
Hallucinations are supposed to be frightening. Mine are so banal. Is it wrong to be angry that I'm denied even the slightest bit of extravagant luxury when I'm so close to death? The drug is ruining my priorities, shuffling them like cards with splitting cardboard corners.
Cozcatl is shorter than me—I doubt that's his real name, but I don't have much else to go off of. I could move if I really wanted, but I'm so disgusted by the injustice delivered to me through my paltry delusions that I stay still. I'm the twenty-first century ambassador of peace: my position as a sacrifice is only going to open up a new era for earth of better everything. I feel my fingers curl even if I stare at them flat on the floor.
"I could help you get closer to God," Cozcatl frets, his voice tremulous and agitated, and I've suddenly got a spotty shred of vision that I know doesn't belong to me: Will Graham worked on a case about a man who thought he could carve people into angels to protect him, right? So is this the empathy that he feels? I had a grand four seconds in his place, bulky glasses and itchy facial hair and uncomfortable standing as I stared at some stupid crime scene that the real me could have deduced front and back in a matter of seconds. I hate him.
It smells like flowers, but flowers have always reminded me of the smell of rotting fruit. His hands are clammy when they clamp around my throat and try to fix the position of my head again, thin fingers and a wide palm, and he sets something beside my head with a loud "clack." I thought he shot me, but eyes grow out of my ears and I clearly see what it is: jadestone. A nice lump. It's bigger than the ones we've been finding in people's mouths, so maybe I'm special.
"I know you."
"You know me?" I affirm, groggy, my voice coming out in drowsy drips, and he pulls at the buttons of my shirt with increasing urgency.
"I've known you," he corrects, and I watch him through seven pairs of cracked glasses as he sits beside me and places his hand on my chest. His words make sense; I accept them, and he's suddenly my friend, and the trust I hold for him is growing like an ulcer. I know him. We know each other.
"I'm here to help you," he soothes, and I would have assumed he was a doctor if his voice didn't warble so much. He looks desperate, frightened, and I almost reach up and give his shoulder a reaffirming squeeze. "It's better this way. I know how hard you're taking this, how much you want to make a difference—action isn't only performed on this physical realm. You want to escape from a cycle and be more than biological mass, be more than matter, and we all understand that," he affirms, and my vision starts vanishing. I hear him with all of my senses, his words sinking through my skin and floating like oil in my blood. "Not a martyr. Not someone self absorbed. You've never been like that—your struggles are not for you to overcome by reaching the opposite. Just because you lack something doesn't mean you should attain it. You are fine the way you are—the rest of humanity is here to make you into something worth giving to God." He's said so much more than this, but I don't remember any of it.
I disagree. His reasoning is shallow. If I don't struggle, then I might as well just die. What's there to life except gaining experience? Just because he wants to make me poignant doesn't mean he can let me stagnant. I can be poignant through my own achievement.
"The most sublime feeling in the world is to take the burdens of another," he explains, and I hear a tangible, visible, audible "crunch" of my skin shredding. He drags whatever he's holding over my ribs like a kid trailing a stick over a fence. Blood smells like rust, and I can taste it bubbling in the back of my throat like syrup, and my dual vision suddenly comes into focus—I'm so certain that I will die.
Cozcatl means jeweled collar. He's not even a person, I think, just a dog carrying out some commands. That's so pathetic, to live your life with the only impetus being the pleasure of another.
The catalyst for my greatness will be none other than me myself, not my blood spilled in honor of someone better.
The door slams open, a vibrant thunderclap to warn this mismatched messiah of his impending ruin. Either he's a sham, or God didn't think I was worth the effort.