Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters. I do not profit from this writing.
Prompt 004
Scream
He watches her as she sits calmly, the little Moogle in her lap. She's named it – or, him as she so humorously keep correcting him – Angel (and he finds it ironic considering he'd like to drop-kick the little thing more often than not; why were Moogles so inclined to relieving themselves under his desk?). But back to Angel, and more importantly his darling Terra, who is curled up in a chair two sizes too big for her, legs tucked to one side. The rode – sorry, Angel is squeaking happily as she lightly brushes its fur with her fingertips, puffing it out by pinching tufts of it gently.
If the Emperor had it his way, Terra would not be allowed to have the Moogle – she would not be allowed in this part of the castle, let alone in Kefka's quarters. The emperor, fortunately, has learned to pick and choose his battles with Kefka, and if Terra asks for a Moogle, regardless of how much he doesn't want to continuously wipe the fur from everything he owns, she will have one.
She catches him looking at her and smiles – and it is a smile she reserves only for him. It meets her large eyes, and for a moment she forgets about the Moogle. He smiles back, but as much as he tries the warmth falls short of his eyes. It is fortunate that Angel begins to vie for Terra's attention at that moment, because he has to drop his eyes back down to his parchment before she notices something is wrong.
His fingers curl around the quill, and he reads the same paragraph four times, the sounds of Terra speaking sweetly to the little animal his background noise. He smiles in spite of himself, but when he flicks his blue eyes up to see what adorable thing she's managed to do now, the room... changes. The mage-lights comfortably illuminating every corner in a soft orange glow are negative-images of themselves, harsh and haunting blue bathing once-grey and now-black walls.
The desk has become a body; an androgynous body with no head, bent backwards at an unnatural angle. His parchments curl at the edges and smell of burned flesh, and he can feel things swarming around his feet. When he looks down, he realizes they are the rotting corpses of rodents, and he leaps up with a cry of disgust.
He snaps his head back as a sound catches his ears, and in the mirror to his right is a reflection that moves with his, but is not his. It is a man of his height, but so much more gaunt; rotted and sallow, with sunken cheeks and wild eyes. The face is covered with makeup not unlike a jester, and as he nears the mirror, he realizes that it is him and he is laughing. In the room in the mirror, there are bodies littering the floor and there is blood painted on the walls. Things he does not understand are written, and the laughter floods his head and threatens to break his mind.
When he turns to his room, the real room, the bodies are present and the blood is seeping. His beautiful Terra is slumped over in the chair, the Moogle she once held a demonic and twisted beast who is chewing on her flesh.
"No," he whispers, hands raising to his face. He is unable to comprehend what he is seeing, and the horror of seeing her dead body before him pushes his limits; he forgets to remember that it is not real. The monster-Moogle looks up at him, a yellow shimmer in its eyes even in the darkness. It bares its teeth at him and makes a vicious noise.
He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing save an incoherent roar of fury escapes. He crosses the floor in one-two long strides and grabs up the Moogle by its neck. He shakes it as hard as he can, breaking its neck as he flings it against the adjacent wall. The sound of screaming brings him back to reality.
He is standing in front of Terra, hands outstretched. She is in the chair, pinned into the corner and shifted to one side with her forearms covering her face. The Moogle is no longer on her lap, but laying motionless in a ball across the room. Terra is screaming. And screaming. And screaming.