PRIVATE Snowblind || p, Xenti

[XANTI]

XANTI

Cruelty met cruelty, and the cheetah cackled. Xyr golden eyes widened until xe sighed. Project would be an entertaining one. By Requiem and Vayu, Xanti had tired of sadistic experiments from sheer boredom. There were only a limited number of responses to trauma. But humor? Project was entertaining. Xe checked the knots, made sure the rope was secure. Tools were tools. Xe’d ensured Project was caught between the bars to the left of the cell’s door.

Clearly, Xanti planned to enter the cell. Xe had already decided upon taking at least one of Project’s ribs as a trophy.

Xanti glanced between red and blue. Yes, xe thought xe’d take the red. The blue was pretty, wasn’t it? Xe’d have that one watch the horrorshow.

“Rude? Yes. But it seems you understand the point of all this. That’s refreshing. I don’t have the patience for idiots who can’t stop begging, as if I’m torturing because I enjoy the mewling.” Xanti’s eyes rolled. “I’m not interested in your pleas for mercy. I’ll make it obvious: you beg for mercy, I will take both eyes. We have a deal? It’s a win for both of us. You keep an eye. And I don’t have to tolerate mewling, ugh.” Xanti glanced at a hovering bone knife, then back to appraising Project’s blue and red eyes. 

“Giving you the illusion of control over your torture is generous, isn’t it? Or does that twist you up inside more? I can read philosophy books all day, but I’ll never understand how the defective think. And I used to be one of you! Strange, eh?”

While Xanti spoke, two slender bone knives slowly closed in on Project. Xyr head tilted, left then right, to get a good look and find the right angle… then, xe attempted to plunge the knives in the corners of the red eye. The knives were like levers, really. Itching around to cut that optic cable connecting the eye to the brain. Eyes were so delicate, after all. What was the point of severing one if it got all mushy?

“You’ve lived that long, eh? And yet you still cling to morality, to good and evil.” Xanti huffed. Then smirked. “At least your pain response will be interesting. I’m so bored of the thrashing, the screams, the shame.”

“My brother found comfort in the repetition, the predictability of killing. In this way, Seamus was like Kiekegaard. Needed to kill to balance the scales of good and evil… whatever that means.”

The red eye popped out with a squelch. Xanti tilted xyr head, and the two bone knives returned to hovering out of reach. The red eye—dangling optic cable and all—circled Xanti’s head in a slow orbit.

“Let me clarify another thing: I’m aware that, to you, I am evil, but I’d hate for you to think I’m a fool. I harbor no illusions about stopping evil with evil. Already told you that is how the defective think. But you killed my brother. This hatred eating me alive? I will bury my hatred under your heart.”

Xanti smirked. The orbiting eye passed in front of xyr maw, and xe snapped xyr teeth around the red eye. It gushed between molars. Xe licked the squelch off xyr lips. And smirked wider. “Any questions, comments, critiques, witty retorts… before I begin your true suffering?”