08-08-2019, 05:21 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]Red was born in Hell but recalled nothing of it. If he did, it would go a little something like this: Being ripped from the bloodied womb, eyes focusing in an absence of light that doesn’t quite match the familiarity of his mother. Screaming - a child screaming, a thousand spirits wailing, a clamoring pile of burnt witches reaching to pull him limb from limb. One day they’d get their wish. For now, the child is crowned and held aloft.
And then, where the memories start to filter into view in a hazy blur, there first comes movement. Then light, too much light, and the taste of holy water salty on his tongue. Cold, cracked marble underfoot. Rain-drenched fur and the sudden, cold steel of a gun muzzle to his chest. Panic buzzing across unfamiliar faces. Noise, a cacophonous symphony of voices above the rumble of the cracking earth. Arms, human arms, pulling him away from the cold ground and bundling him close. Warmth, safety, like mother. Rebirth.
“Father,” he once said, “I think I would like to go home, now.”
There was a silence that sounded like heartbreak. The doctor responded, carefully, “This is our home.”
“No, I mean my[b] home. Before I was here. That home.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his father knows it, but the conviction is there, all the pain and yearning of a lost child searching for their mother. Though his father spent day in, day out pouring over texts of old, he finds himself trapped between the calligraphic lines. He pushes his magnifier up onto his forehead and rolls his chair back - and his son is there, strange as he is and not of his blood, eyes wide and seeking.
”...I don’t believe you would enjoy it there.”
”Well, what was it like?” Red’s voice is taking on a cutting tone, almost accusatory - as though his father was keeping him away from something he deserved. At his side, the child’s fist clenches, stone grinding together like nails on a chalkboard. ”You’d go with me, right?”
There’s a pause in which it feels as though he is about to spoil a bitter secret. It all feels better left unsaid - all of the things Red would never have to worry about until he was older needed to stay under wraps for as long as possible. He deserved a chance at innocence. ”You recall the books we’ve read together, yes?” There’s a frown, a nod. His father thumbs the rosary on his neck. ”It is much, much worse. Evil creatures will eat you alive, down there - they’ll take everything you hold dear and crush it, until the only thing you have left is that fading memory of your love. And then they will take that, too. They’ll burn it -”
”I’m not afraid of fire,” Red spits, frustrated.
”- But they’ll burn you, too, with weapons worse than fire. And I would never see you again, child. They’d take you away from me and hurt us both until we forget each other’s names. And then what? I wouldn’t be your father anymore if I could not remember you.”
His father was a Catholic - among other things, he’d always say. He’d taught his child every psalm, every rite, and after that they’d spend hours reading through the grimoires circulated throughout human history: books of magic, books of demons and creatures spoken of only in myth. He’d been taught to fear these beasts, and as the moons cycled onward he was taught to fight, to kill them. He wasn’t - could never be, not after the years they’d spent as a family - one of them.
The child looks unconvinced, but angry tears still prick at his eyes as he shakes his head. ”I don’t care. I want to go home,” it comes out choked, desperate. He already knows the answer. Fighting it won’t do him any good, but it makes him feel stronger. Strong enough to make decisions for himself, maybe, even if he lacked the maturity his father was painstakingly trying to instill in him. Perhaps he is just tired of living by others' choices.
“We can’t. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way without -” (No, he doesn’t need to know. He cannot know.)
As his father reaches to take him up in his arms the child jerks away, roaring out a pitiful scream, ”I wanna go [b]home!”
He was destined to reign in hell, and brought to life to carry the world into hellfire. He was a creature built to kill, built to destroy. He was saved from this violent fate by a man he came to know as his father - his nature was to burn, and yet he was nurtured into humanity by someone who saved him from his own naivety. When that man was lost to time Red went into hiding, only because every other living being on this Earth was put in place by the holy beings above to hunt him for sport.
Until he faces that question of choice - to serve humanity or damn it to hell - he bides his time. He kills the creatures that call out to him. Avoidance is the key to survival, he thinks, and he’d rather die than see the world fall at his fingers. He wasn’t going to fail his late father now.
But until then, he stands here.
Beck looks like shit. It’s the first thing that comes to mind, and Red almost spills it into the space between them before he catches himself. There’s a moment where he notices the brown-grey wounds that decorate the other’s arms, either a physical memory of death or something more recent, something worse. He looks away before it turns to staring, because across his forehead a twinge in broken horns tell him that they aren’t so different after all, no matter how hard Beck tried to ostracize himself. They both had their wounds exposed.
Instead, he focuses on the youth’s face. His expression doesn’t look much better either - the redness in his eyes and the slight pink across his nose tells him that Beck’s holding a lot of emotions back. He’s probably been crying, or doing his best not to. A familiar sympathy crawls snakelike in his chest - it’s like he’s looking at himself. Red shakes off the thought.
"Huh? Actually, I think I -" Red opens the bag a little, peering inside, "Yeah. I do." He’s carrying a fistful of plastic bags in the Right Hand of Doom - which serves an excellent purpose when it comes to carrying all of his groceries inside at once - so with his Left Hand of Normal he reaches over and thumbs open the box.
”Catch.” A single Twinkie sails slightly off to the left, because Red is a terrible shot. He looks at the bags again, then to the marshy shoreline, just beyond the trees. A plan is hatched. ”You’ll have to come outside if you want some more. I’m not letting you become the local hermit.”
He doesn’t really wait for Beck to follow, figuring that one way or another, he would eventually gravitate at the lure of free food. The demon makes his way towards the woods, where beyond the copse of trees lies a stretch of swamp.
The flora has long since died, the soil contaminated and the air too polluted to sustain life - normal life, that is. The few trees that separate Beck’s “property” and the marsh lack foliage, their few branches dotted with new growth but the mess of rotten detritus on the forest floor telling enough. On the muddied shore, a worn-looking dock protrudes into the water. It creaks underfoot, which leaves Red feeling a little wary (especially with the alligators that liked to sun in the shallows), but he nonetheless drops his bags and sits down on the edge. He looks over his shoulder, once, and gives a flick of his tail in gentle invitation.
Red picks at a bag of chips, and he waits. That poor kid.
And then, where the memories start to filter into view in a hazy blur, there first comes movement. Then light, too much light, and the taste of holy water salty on his tongue. Cold, cracked marble underfoot. Rain-drenched fur and the sudden, cold steel of a gun muzzle to his chest. Panic buzzing across unfamiliar faces. Noise, a cacophonous symphony of voices above the rumble of the cracking earth. Arms, human arms, pulling him away from the cold ground and bundling him close. Warmth, safety, like mother. Rebirth.
“Father,” he once said, “I think I would like to go home, now.”
There was a silence that sounded like heartbreak. The doctor responded, carefully, “This is our home.”
“No, I mean my[b] home. Before I was here. That home.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about and his father knows it, but the conviction is there, all the pain and yearning of a lost child searching for their mother. Though his father spent day in, day out pouring over texts of old, he finds himself trapped between the calligraphic lines. He pushes his magnifier up onto his forehead and rolls his chair back - and his son is there, strange as he is and not of his blood, eyes wide and seeking.
”...I don’t believe you would enjoy it there.”
”Well, what was it like?” Red’s voice is taking on a cutting tone, almost accusatory - as though his father was keeping him away from something he deserved. At his side, the child’s fist clenches, stone grinding together like nails on a chalkboard. ”You’d go with me, right?”
There’s a pause in which it feels as though he is about to spoil a bitter secret. It all feels better left unsaid - all of the things Red would never have to worry about until he was older needed to stay under wraps for as long as possible. He deserved a chance at innocence. ”You recall the books we’ve read together, yes?” There’s a frown, a nod. His father thumbs the rosary on his neck. ”It is much, much worse. Evil creatures will eat you alive, down there - they’ll take everything you hold dear and crush it, until the only thing you have left is that fading memory of your love. And then they will take that, too. They’ll burn it -”
”I’m not afraid of fire,” Red spits, frustrated.
”- But they’ll burn you, too, with weapons worse than fire. And I would never see you again, child. They’d take you away from me and hurt us both until we forget each other’s names. And then what? I wouldn’t be your father anymore if I could not remember you.”
His father was a Catholic - among other things, he’d always say. He’d taught his child every psalm, every rite, and after that they’d spend hours reading through the grimoires circulated throughout human history: books of magic, books of demons and creatures spoken of only in myth. He’d been taught to fear these beasts, and as the moons cycled onward he was taught to fight, to kill them. He wasn’t - could never be, not after the years they’d spent as a family - one of them.
The child looks unconvinced, but angry tears still prick at his eyes as he shakes his head. ”I don’t care. I want to go home,” it comes out choked, desperate. He already knows the answer. Fighting it won’t do him any good, but it makes him feel stronger. Strong enough to make decisions for himself, maybe, even if he lacked the maturity his father was painstakingly trying to instill in him. Perhaps he is just tired of living by others' choices.
“We can’t. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way without -” (No, he doesn’t need to know. He cannot know.)
As his father reaches to take him up in his arms the child jerks away, roaring out a pitiful scream, ”I wanna go [b]home!”
He was destined to reign in hell, and brought to life to carry the world into hellfire. He was a creature built to kill, built to destroy. He was saved from this violent fate by a man he came to know as his father - his nature was to burn, and yet he was nurtured into humanity by someone who saved him from his own naivety. When that man was lost to time Red went into hiding, only because every other living being on this Earth was put in place by the holy beings above to hunt him for sport.
Until he faces that question of choice - to serve humanity or damn it to hell - he bides his time. He kills the creatures that call out to him. Avoidance is the key to survival, he thinks, and he’d rather die than see the world fall at his fingers. He wasn’t going to fail his late father now.
But until then, he stands here.
Beck looks like shit. It’s the first thing that comes to mind, and Red almost spills it into the space between them before he catches himself. There’s a moment where he notices the brown-grey wounds that decorate the other’s arms, either a physical memory of death or something more recent, something worse. He looks away before it turns to staring, because across his forehead a twinge in broken horns tell him that they aren’t so different after all, no matter how hard Beck tried to ostracize himself. They both had their wounds exposed.
Instead, he focuses on the youth’s face. His expression doesn’t look much better either - the redness in his eyes and the slight pink across his nose tells him that Beck’s holding a lot of emotions back. He’s probably been crying, or doing his best not to. A familiar sympathy crawls snakelike in his chest - it’s like he’s looking at himself. Red shakes off the thought.
"Huh? Actually, I think I -" Red opens the bag a little, peering inside, "Yeah. I do." He’s carrying a fistful of plastic bags in the Right Hand of Doom - which serves an excellent purpose when it comes to carrying all of his groceries inside at once - so with his Left Hand of Normal he reaches over and thumbs open the box.
”Catch.” A single Twinkie sails slightly off to the left, because Red is a terrible shot. He looks at the bags again, then to the marshy shoreline, just beyond the trees. A plan is hatched. ”You’ll have to come outside if you want some more. I’m not letting you become the local hermit.”
He doesn’t really wait for Beck to follow, figuring that one way or another, he would eventually gravitate at the lure of free food. The demon makes his way towards the woods, where beyond the copse of trees lies a stretch of swamp.
The flora has long since died, the soil contaminated and the air too polluted to sustain life - normal life, that is. The few trees that separate Beck’s “property” and the marsh lack foliage, their few branches dotted with new growth but the mess of rotten detritus on the forest floor telling enough. On the muddied shore, a worn-looking dock protrudes into the water. It creaks underfoot, which leaves Red feeling a little wary (especially with the alligators that liked to sun in the shallows), but he nonetheless drops his bags and sits down on the edge. He looks over his shoulder, once, and gives a flick of his tail in gentle invitation.
Red picks at a bag of chips, and he waits. That poor kid.
[div style="text-align:center;font-size:10pt;line-height:9pt;color:black;font-weight:bold;font-family:verdana;"]IF YOUR FORTRESS IS UNDER SIEGE,
YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN TO ME
YOU CAN ALWAYS RUN TO ME