The cell door stands open, a rectangle of burnt orange rock outlined with a thick nibbed pen. It's been like that for days. Is this a new torture technique? Jason doesn't like to get into a rut, torture or kills wise, so you can outlast his latest trick with enough willpower, and that's what Emily decides to do. Ignore the open door and it will go away.
It doesn't. It remains open, the door like an arm ushering her to a fancy restaurant table. Oh, for some Mcdonald's. Maybe she's hallucinating. From pot or mine gas or the pressure of captivity. Who knows. The light doesn't change all the way back here, no shadows dance, the door doesn't move. Blinking doesn't remove it and her baby is asleep, so she tries to read, sitting propped up under a clump of fairy lights. Aaah, people getting up to no good on holiday. Canapés and cocktails, how nice. She'd like some wine, like a bit of relief from the weight of herself, if she could receive a guarantee that Jason loves his boy and would never harm him, a guarantee she has not received.
On that front she suspects she has some news to share, but can't. A hand drifts over her stomach, still flat. Over her breasts. Tender, and not because of milk. Either she or he, or both, is highly fertile. Probably it's Jason, considering his talents and raw ability in almost everything else. Finding out that she's pregnant again hit her hard, but it hit a corpse. It's simply a fact of life now, and to be expected when one's assailant goes about things the old fashioned way. Jason either doesn't mind procreating in the process, or is actively interested in procuring biddable offspring, frightening as that is to consider. A weird watery hiccup bubbles forth from Emily's lips, but goes no further than that. Giving in to the urge to sob for herself is for later, when she's safe. Or never. Either way, she has children to protect. You can sleep when you're dead, well, you can cry when you're dead too.
Glancing up from her poolside read, she finds the door still open. It's not funny. The joke is bad. But obviously it is, when at most she could say is that Jason is sarcastic, if his opportune head tilts and loaded stares are anything to go by, but he certainly has never made a joke, let alone laughed in any way that wasn't nasty. Yeah, he's laughed at her in his razor voice. You can't reach the top ranks of the Evil Leaderboard without laughing at your victims, the more helpless the better. He really liked to do it in the early days, when he kept her naked, dirty, and heavily bound, now, not as much…Thinking about it, he's really slipped quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time…hmm.
The door remains open as day morphs into night above ground, and a man and his machete silently weave through foliage.
Incipient madness frames the edge of Emily's vision, thick black borders on an old film. She sees them there, growing wider each day, and tries her best to concentrate on things that help shave off the millimetres. Things like enjoying nature, getting lost in a book, playing with her son, praying, singing, thinking of home and happiness. It's an ongoing wrestling match in which she is always on the verge of being pinned by an opponent who looks suspiciously like a certain man in a mask.
The door remains open until a dark monolith slides into the gap, bricking it up almost entirely. Feeling the stare as an itchy weight on the side of her head, Emily prepares herself to extend the warm welcome she's developed. It's similar in brittle tone to that of a cartoon 50's housewife for her high earning husband, except it's Jason who makes the food and does the cleaning. The shadowy tower strides through the door, prowling over to Emily, who springs into her act, a grotesque, closed lip smile carving up her lower face, without reaching her eyes. She knows this, and thinks about Kevin in order to make those all-important eye muscles crinkle. The expression jerks, and settles into something more or less lifelike.
Only one woman ever smiled at Jason, so her hack job passes for real, getting tangled in the nest of putrid lies that a serial killer calls a mind. Lies, lies, self justifications, lies, woe is me, lies, excuses, lies. No one falls for lies like a liar. Jason smiles, like an animal does. It's a grimace, but that's not to say he isn't pleased, pleased with himself that is. Having his victim fail to leave when she could, and be happy to see him is quite possibly the ultimate form of domination. Especially as she's a pretty woman. He's won this little game. Nothing declares that you're a man like breaking down a pretty woman. Feeling good from his place of superiority, he feels like dishing out good to the peasants. His gaze lands on the cot. Hmm.
After getting up to you know what, he leaves, locking the door this time, before returning, bearing gifts. A bunch of pink, purple, and yellow flowers. At first Emily blinks in extreme confusion, before realising. Taking the flowers from his hands, she uses them to decorate the cot. Shit. She definitely needs to thank him for this. Shit shitshitshit- Jason solves that problem by picking her up round the waist, pressing his mask to her cheek, his eyes closed, before pulling the thing off. It lands on the bed, and falls down the side. Sitting down, he places her on his lap like a young child, not doing much beyond caressing her and burying his nose in her hair. This could be him acting out something he's seen, or it could be the prelude to a brutal slaying, with this sort of person it's best not to presume they will act in the way decent people do, in anything. It's all about what gratifies their inflamed ego and soothes their many inadequacies, but Emily doesn't know much about the particulars of bad man psychology, either in general, or in Jason's case in particular, so she obeys her body and remains limp while he pets her, a pretty possum playing dead. Incidentally, that's the best thing she can do. A bit of forced affection tenderizes the steak, but too much and Jason will feel less like a domineering adult, and more like a vulnerable child. One who needs care. Weak. More like a victim. And making him feel like a victim is the absolute best way to catapult him into a frothing fit of rage.
As a reward for passing another one of his tests, Emily is promoted to housekeeper. Mother taught little Jason about proper behaviour, good hygiene, and accepted gender roles, despite the notable absence of a father in her son's life. Looking and smelling like a swamp creature is an occupational hazard, in a perfect world he likes his stuff clean. Although no needle and no thread will be given her, Emily is allowed to clean his shoes and wash his clothes, tasks which she completes with exactness, if not with love. Finally she gets to clean her own clothes, in two batches, because she only has one dress and one hoody. Jason retains the role of chef, because good cooking requires the use of a big knife, something he never intends for his woman to touch.
In preparation for domestic bliss, the lair has been victim proofed, so no Jason-repelling implements remain, or at least, none remain that Emily could conceivably make use of with the force required. With Jason's bulk and Jason's junk occupying the place, it's exceedingly difficult for her to move adroitly, and he has a habit of appearing around corners from the opposite direction from where she last saw him, deep black shadow pooled in the eye holes of his mask. He's not so much a micro-manager as a sword of Damocles, and she's never truly sure whether he's right behind her, or halfway across the map. Nope, not gonna trick her into killing herself, she's a good employee who receives good wages, room and board. While engaged in dipping her hands into the soapy water filling a steel tub, she now and then lifts one to flip a page of an old illustrated bird watching book she found in a book stash jammed up against a tunnel wall. Definitely going to teach Kevin how to read using this.
The problem of Jason and his non-bond with his son remains, a persistent worry within a mother's mind. If she can only get him attached to the boy, she'll be happy. Toleration is not good enough, even though that's far and above what the vast majority of people on Jason's land could ever hope to receive from him. Accordingly, she uses the boy's name constantly, and when she greets her captor when he returns home, she lifts the baby so that their faces form a double barrel shot of smileyness. It takes weeks before this course of treatment achieves anything, and when it does, Emily feels her heart lurch and skip a beat.
Jason returns, stalking through the door as evening falls into night, a shape like a hairless werewolf. A bear trap hand roots around a pocket of his jacket, emerging clutching a fistful of flowers. For this he is accordingly made much of, or as much of as Emily can bear to make. Lowering her child to her lap, she tickles his nose with a flower, which makes him giggle, giggle in a more hushed tone than that of most other infants. His father watches him bat at the flower with his chubby hands, then catch and chew on it, huge round eyes rolling up to stare at the faceless man he knows but doesn't know. Jason's massive head jerks, forcing Emily to anxiously study him, her arms tensing, moving to encircle the baby preparatory to diving away with him across the bed, but one of Jason's hands lifts, and propels itself forward slowly, index finger extended. Time passes, Emily unable to take a breath as that finger, participant in so much death, one of ten equally evil brethren, approaches her fragile little boy. Closer and closer it gets, borne on an arm of knotted muscle, its nail unbitten but cracked, a long white scar snaking up from the nailbed and down the pale length of digit, the rest of the hand a gnarled mountain with jutting knuckles for peaks, thick blue veins for rivers running along its back, through a great forest of birch trees made of pale hair. Jason is an entire world unto himself, swiftly becoming his captive's only one. A jaw muscle like that of a pit bull, twitches behind a mask. Emily gasps, breath rattling as she sucks it in between clenched teeth. The finger connects, alighting lightly on a baby's tiny foot. Kevin coos.
Having been surprised by the possibility once before, Jason is on the lookout for more calving, discerning the situation far sooner than Emily imagines. She doesn't realise he knows, until he brings her a new flower spangled dress, one meant for use during maternity. The person he trades his dope to was rather perplexed by the order, scribbled out in looping handwriting from a bygone era, and so similar to other weird requests from the previous year, but filled it without spending too long pondering. Go too far down the thinking path, and one's conscience might take a hit. Back home Emily doesn't know what to say, not that she's given a chance, as Jason vacates the area after dropping the item on the Turkish carpet. With two dresses and as many baby clothes, she needs some sort of container to store them in, although she could probably do what he does and drape her stuff over the nearest suitable piece of ancient garbage.
Winter begins heavy breathing down the neck of Autumn, and the machete gets a few more good runs in, Jason taking umbrage with yet another enterprising Camp deciding that Crystal Lake is the premier child friendly vacation area. Spooky legends bring in the money. He has absolutely zero problems murdering children, but people do so like to make themselves feel better, don't they? This time two cop cars show up, rather than one, so he crouches in a thicket, and watches the slow amble of authority change into violent emptying of stomach contents as they catch sight of his artistry. Waiting for the men to separate, as they inevitably do, he does his thang, his main thing, pulling the bodies underground through a trapdoor he has trained tree roots to grow around, before returning and getting rid of the cars, driving them into the forest in a wild, bumpy ride which ends in a soggy ditch. No more cops will come until the next bunch forget what happened to their predecessors. Bone fed, blood fed trees and underbrush assist him in his work, creeping inexorably onwards across the land, swallowing up territory, marching over the evidence, absorbing it into themselves.
While looting the cars before finally abandoning them to his equally ruthless sister, Nature, Jason discovers a Teddy bear in the boot of one of them. Not old and partially flayed like the ones littering his house and lair, but new, and fluffy white. It attracts his attention, enough that he pauses, looking carefully into the steadily deepening gloom around him, listening to the night birds caw, before turning back to the toy. Everything has its use, nothing can be left behind that might cause some future fool to attempt some sort of idiotic witch hunt. Snatching the Teddy from the bottom of the trunk, he stuffs it into a pocket, the rest of the gear that he can't immediately haul back, he hides nearby.
Can't give too many gifts in too quick succession or discipline falls through, so for a month Jason goes about his business with a stuffed animal in his pocket. Whacking off deer heads, whacking off people heads, a Teddy bear slapping him in the side with every swing. Eventually the fear of being taken out while it's still in his pocket is enough for him to stomp over to his son's cot one day while Emily is napping, and drop it on top of the baby, before stomping away. A couple minutes of silence pass, and then his mud and gore splashed boots re-enter view. The bear is moved to sit in a far corner of the cot. The boots exit frame once again.
Emily is too careful a tightrope walker to allude to the appearance of a toy for her son, procured by the hand which holds the power of life and death over him, and herself, but Jason certainly receives the priceless gift of genuinely sparkling eyes the next time he returns home, and more. Love for her baby compels her to kiss his father, not on the mask, which is cold, dirty, and rough, but on the slice of cheek it can't cover, utilising another backwards hug as a delivery mechanism. Upon feeling her chapped but still soft lips touch his skin, Jason freezes. The immobility lasts for half a minute after she pulls away, and then his chest begins heaving, sweat pooling in the pit of his throat. He begins to look so bad that Emily fears she may have made a terrible mistake, but before she resolves to try and make a mad dash for the exit with Kevin, whatever was plaguing the man passes, or sinks below the waterline. Grabbing her, he pushes her down for a forced cuddle, an actual cuddle, that is, no quotation marks needed.
No one can tell when it happened, but at some stage the lair begins to look as if a woman's touch has been applied to it. The most egregious garbage is removed, or stashed in a room Emily doesn't visit. More lights are hung up, especially in her cell, where pink items and other suitable furniture begins proliferating. But the cache of bodies remain, as Jason has a process he follows with them, and Emily never goes near them unless under compulsion. The signs of environmental compromise by Jason are not entirely conducive to relief, as it becomes even clearer to her that this is a long haul thing, unless sudden death or rescue intervenes. So, he's one of those, a serial freak with domestic fantasies. One with a fixation on family, as opposed to a fixation on flesh. In hindsight, the head in the bathroom and the refusal to let go of a decaying home, was a large clue. Those sorts, at least, can become fairly tolerable to endure, apart from all the murdering, raping, and the captivity. They usually don't end up killing the person they've latched onto, so that's nice…and they can be moulded, just a little. Now all that needs to happen is that Jason needs to be subdued and put away…at this stage Emily questions her secret heart and discovers that it no longer wants him dead. She puts it in time-out. He ought to die, sooner rather than later, for his crimes and to prevent further ones, it doesn't matter what she personally feels about him. And she feels strange things, very strange things. Except for during the initial anger stage of the grieving process, she's never hated any of the men who have abused her, and Jason is the father of her children. For a soft-hearted woman, that fact is extremely compelling, dreadfully so. She greatly fears him, yes. Would very much like to be free, yes…But. She looks at him and sees two men overlapping. Both are very bad, but one has merged his blood, his life, with hers.
No one can tell when it happened, but at some stage Jason ceases torturing his captive. Yes, he still forces himself on her, but he stops the petty shit, the forced drug taking, the spite, random pain infliction, overly brutal assaults. It's not fun anymore, he doesn't know why, it just isn't. Torturing others is still pleasurable though, so it's not a problem with him, it's the girl, who absorbs his attacks as if she's made of rubber, only occasionally giving him the good stuff in the form of a yelp or weak scream. Probably he wore out her pain receptors or exhausted her emotional energy. That happens sometimes with that sort of victim, the extremely pathetic ones, they curl up and become comatose, like small animals, making no sound, paying no attention to him. Sometimes they die of heart failure without him so much as raising a weapon. Very bad. He tends to avoid them if possible, leaving and going after more vital prey…still, this one is not exactly like that, as he has the opposite reaction to her, interrupting his busy day to return home in order to try and make her react to him. A bite rarely works. Flowers always work. The idea that she is slowly but surely tipping the scales on him by downplaying negative reactions and exaggerating positive ones, does not occur to him, because of all people in the world, only he is capable of manipulation. It has been proven time and time again that he is the only intelligent or even real being on the planet, and that doesn't change even in the cases where he's outsmarted, beat down, or otherwise deceived. No, like a gambler, a serial offender only ever becomes more confident after setbacks, returning stronger, more arrogant, and yet more certain of ultimate success.