Possessed
May

For Ciel Phantomhive, May was the calm before the storm. Things slowly, steadily began to improve for him. And it did not go unnoticed by his parents.

Rachael was delighted when she noticed him out in the house again, if only for a few minutes at a time, instead of shut up in his room. On May 3rd, he fetched a book from the library. A few days later, he returned it and swapped it for three more. On the 10th, he said hello to her, and didn't seem like he was about to start screaming in rage at the sight of her. They were small improvements, improvements Vincent mostly dismissed and told her not to get too hopeful, until one night Ciel came out to dinner. He binged, of course. He hadn't eaten in days up until that point, and he was so weak, not even hungry but terribly weak, and he needed food to survive. The hunger, not in his stomach but deeper than that, the hunger that had him scratching his face, shoulders, thighs, the hunger that snapped at his entrails in his sleep, the hunger he couldn't name but was always there – it had told him to eat. So he did.

But he didn't vanish immediately after binging. He didn't smash a plate or two, either. He sat still at the table, full and staring at the vase in the center, both of his parents sitting across from him and both of them watching him like he was a live, pinless grenade. But he didn't explode – he cried. He sobbed, his desperation carved onto his features like the many cuts on his cheeks, and any fear of him was abandoned when Rachael dashed around the table to hold him. To press him close. She cried too. Maybe she was hoping that this would be the end of it. That Ciel had fully realized all he had done, and that his tears were his apology, that he was confirming that yes, he was going to change, and everything would be alright. Vincent expected that was what she thought, because for a brief, brief moment, it was what he thought.

The next morning, Ciel accepted the plate of breakfast Rachael had left outside of his door. Usually, he didn't even both touching it. On this day, it returned to the hallway an hour later, with over half of it gone. Despite that his appetite was returning, Ciel didn't feel any better. Yes, there was a bit of energy to him, but having energy meant he was alert, and being alert was not necessarily a good thing. He was noticing things. Things that had to have been there before, but had he just never heard them? Or was this a new dimension to the insanity that had consumed him?

It started with the rats. Little scratching sounds coming from the walls, the ceiling, paws tearing into the wood of the Phantomhive estate, and it seemed to come from all sides. Their butler Tanaka had stopped coming by Ciel's room to get the laundry (too many aggressive responses, and Rachael's request) but he expected it was Tanaka who retrieved the dirty dishes from outside his bedroom door. So he left a note, mentioning something about the rats and telling him to set some traps. If Tanaka didn't find it himself, it would be his mother or the other maid, so the message would inevitably be passed on. But despite the note, and despite him being able to hear people setting them up around the home (a sound that was unmistakable, if the chorus of shrieks as they accidentally detonated the trap was any indication) the noise didn't cease.

Most frustrating about the rats was that he couldn't seem to hear them in the other rooms of the house. No, it was as if they'd boxed in the walls, floor, and ceiling of his room alone, always shuffling, tearing through fiberglass, cannibalizing one another when a food source didn't present itself. He could hear these things, these specific little interactions between them, or maybe he couldn't hear those interactions at all, but was becoming so stir crazy from the constant noise that he imagined it. Still, that constant noise, all those little claws scratching at the wood that boxed him in from all sides, it actually seemed to calm him at night.

Rachael could hardly believe her eyes when she passed by Ciel's room and found the door cracked. She thought it much too good to be true when she saw her son napping in his bed, the scratches in his face looking old now, well treated so they wouldn't scar. She hadn't seen a new one all month. Surely, she thought, this was too good to be true. Or maybe, just maybe, her Ciel was getting better. That was he going to get through whatever madness had taken him and come out the other side of it, as the same boy she always knew. Maybe. She watched him sleep for a moment, not daring to actually enter the room and maybe touch his face, play with his hair in that soothing way mothers do – no. She couldn't do that yet. But maybe soon. She'd been so happy she'd called Vincent at work to tell him, and even he, who had treaded on this whole affair with the lightest feet, sounded as ecstatic as she felt at the news.

Ciel was getting better. Whatever madness had consumed him, he was getting better.

By the second week of the month, he was eating daily, and not binging ever. Usually only twice a day because he ended up sleeping through at least one meal, and the trademark love of sweets his parents associated with their son had yet to return. But he was eating. He was sleeping, too. He still had nightmares, but Ciel noted it wasn't every night. It seemed to partially depend on when he slept. If he slept during the day, he slept dreamlessly, and often woke up sweaty and stuffy but otherwise rested. If he slept at night, he dreamed of monsters, of claws, of skin shredding and tissue snapping and organs bursting like tender fruit. Of greedy mouths waiting patiently beneath him as he was gutted, for their meal to fall right into their mouths, lapping blood and moaning in delight with it. Dreams of fingers digging into his chest, tearing apart his ribcage, pushing his lungs and heart aside, and looking for something else, something deeper.

So he slept during the day. He ate when he could. He even began to put back on some of the weight he'd lost, and his parent's couldn't be happier. Although he took most of his meals in his room, occasionally he'd have dinner so he could see his father, and he'd try to give him the sort of looks that say (I'm sorry, I'm sorry for what I've done) and he didn't know if Vincent understood it, but he hoped he did. He couldn't simply say he was sorry. It wasn't even a pride thing. He just… couldn't.

At night, when he was awake, he usually watched TV, trying to ignore the rats. He made a point to not watch the news, and he tried to masturbate less and less, because he felt like whatever sickness had consumed him, the thrill he got from seeing those soldiers die was a part of it. Instead, he watched a lot of American television, since English television wasn't entirely interesting. He found he liked late night TV, it was mostly talk shows, and they were trying to talk about anything but the war.

As difficult to ignore as the rats were the odd things he saw out of the corner of his eye, when sitting up watching TV well past midnight. Again, it was hard to determine if he always had seen these things, or if this was a new development, but the rational part of his mind insisted that of course, they'd always been there. It's what happens when you sit in the dark. You see something that shouldn't be there. Couldn't be there. Out of the corner of your eye. Then you turn to look, and there's nothing. It happens to everyone, Ciel reasoned. But the less than rational part of his mind feared the day when he'd turn to look and it would be there, that nameless, ageless fear.

Over halfway through the month, things seemed normal. Normal, except for the fact that Ciel slept during the day and stayed awake at night, but aside from that… they were almost normal. Ciel joined them for dinner and sometimes breakfast, if he wasn't already asleep by then. He asked Vincent about how the business was going, how Rachael was feeling, and when they ran out of things to say, discussed how bad the weather was. Summer had begun, and with it, all the rain they could stand. Things that no one talked about included school, Elizabeth, and the assault on Sister Anna, which both Vincent and Rachael agreed would be too much for Ciel's unstable psyche. In turn, Ciel didn't bring up any of these things either, and hoped daily it wasn't the day when his parents would demand an explanation for everything that had happened.

Because he simply didn't have one.

The bruises came last. Ciel didn't know how he had gotten them, but they started appearing, none particularly large or frightening but certainly phantom in a way that made him uncomfortable. Scatters of them on his thighs, a couple on his shoulders, and on his torso. They were never too large, and within a matter of days they'd vanish. It was what it was. He never mentioned the bruises to his parents – they'd worried enough in his name – and after a while, he stopped actively noticing them himself. They were, after all, just bruises. Aftermaths of pain he did not remember experiencing. And as long as it was pain he didn't experience, how much could he complain? He was okay. He was getting better. He was going to get better, he just had to.

May was the calm before the storm. Most of it, in any case. And for a moment, Ciel had dared to think his madness was over. His parents, too, had dared to think his madness was over. But the madness of Ciel Phantomhive would never be over, not until he died seven months later, leaving behind him a trail of human wreckage and loss.

The storm came the last week of the month. He'd tell the doctors later that he didn't really know how it had happened, that one minute he'd been fine and the next, it was as if he'd been out of his body, watching himself do what he did. These words are not uncommon from the mouths of the insane, disassociating themselves from their own actions, but Ciel's own testimony is important. Because people tend to forget that not three months before this happened, he had been a completely sane, fifteen year old boy. And of course, not superstitious. People forget that. Of all of the books that have been written about this incident, his story, people always forget that before everything happened he had shown no sign of mental illness. He spent the weekends with his girlfriend, did very well in school, and had a close relationship with his family.

Ciel, at one point, was very, very normal.

He'd been sitting on his bed, reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, when he'd felt his toes begin to go numb. It was no cause for alarm, of course, he'd been sitting cross legged, so he'd shifted, but the sensation continued. It crawled slowly up his feet, to his ankles, relaxing a little bit of discomfort he'd been feeling there into nothingness. It was nice. It was like his feet were made of air. Then his legs. If he couldn't see them, he wouldn't believe they were there. True numbness to most people is a terrifying feeling, but at this moment, for Ciel, it was comparable with orgasm. Not in terms of ecstasy, but in the… relief. It crawled up past his thighs, and it was only when he couldn't feel them anymore that Ciel realized how much pain he was in. Setting down the book, he touched his knee, and although he could feel himself with his hand, there was no response in his leg. His hand could feel his leg, but not vice versa, and it was… it was nice.

The numbness crawled up to his hips, and he turned to lay down, content to let it have him. Being completely numb sounded perfect, if only for a while. It occurred to him for a moment that maybe something was wrong, that he might even be dying, but if dying was this bliss, it'd be alright. It crawled up his torso, the near constant tension in his back disappearing, and he let out a sigh. This was good. Up, up his torso, then in his fingers, up his hands, up his arms. Sensations were pesky, he decided. If this was what not feeling was like, why feel at all? If this was what people who did drugs felt, why had it never occurred to him to try them? This was…

It climbed up through his face, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was staring at himself. He was still numb. Wonderfully, blissfully numb. And still in bed. But he was staring at himself. The other self was on the floor; his body contorted and eyes dilated black, breathing raggedly. With every moment, he heard something crack. Crack as the figure snapped its shoulder out of place. Crack as it broke one of its own fingers, shuddering, spitting, feet digging into the hardwood floor. Ciel couldn't move. He couldn't move because he couldn't feel, which was probably a blessing because crack! went another finger. He watched, glazed and breathless, as the figure trembled, delighting in its work, and god, he wanted to wake up. He wanted to wake up. Why wasn't he waking up.

The figure snarled in his direction, raising its hand again, two of the fingers on it twisted savagely in impossible directions, and all Ciel could do was watch as it drove them into his right eye.

xx

Hey all! Sorry for the delay in release; my beta is having some family issues. Please keep Ms-Psuedo-Writer in your thoughts and send her kind messages, she's going through some really tough times right now. Thank you for all the kind reviews and constructive criticism! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'd really appreciate continued reviews to keep me motivated.