At the risk of dragging this part out for longer than it has to be, I still feel I should set a few things in order first before I begin Part Three. The mods of this website pointed this out to me (and I completely understand where they’re coming from and absolutely agree with them). Part Two – and Part Three, which you haven’t had a chance to read yet – seem to come across as me perpetrating the horror rather than having the horror perpetrated upon me. Since I killed that man in the bar and since other, similar, actions happen in Part Three, I can see how it might convey me as the offender, not the offended; but I assure you, this is not the case. And I ask the benevolent mods and you trusting witnesses to suspend your belief for Part Three as what I have to say is imperative to the story. Think of it this way, a thoroughbred horse falls during a race and breaks his legs. You are forced to shoot the horse. You did not wake up that morning thinking to yourself, “I’m going to shoot that fine animal,” no. But that’s how your day played out anyway. The man at the bar, and the man in Part Three were not conquests I had set out with in mind. In fact, if you read between the lines, you’ll see I am just as horrified with myself as you are with me. No, the liquor didn’t actually kill your wife and kids, you did. But it sure as hell made it seem that way. Past Part Three, things will become a little clearer so please stick around until then.
It was full dark when we left Right-Side slumped and bleeding over the bar, the bartender in too much shock and revulsion to summon immediate help. The gentleman made no move to offer to set up lodgings for me for the night, nor did I dare ask. I was so desperate. I was so urgently desperate that I would not ask nor say anything lest he leave me to be devoured by the blackhole within me.
He turned left out of the pub and I followed. He walked at a leisurely pace, his cane making soft click-step-click-step-click-step sounds on the sidewalk. I didn’t know where we were going but, I tell you the truth, I didn’t care. I would have forged the River Styx if he so asked it of me.
I stole glances of him out of the corner of my eye. He was radiant under the glow of the stars and I was moonstruck. Not in a romantic way, though. My love for him was platonic, like the love between a father and daughter, or the love of a close friend; no, that’s not really accurate. It was much deeper than that. A hunger, a compulsion. The unignorable way that lungs need air.
I had no sense of passing time as we walked down the empty street; but suddenly, just up ahead, I saw my crude lean-to that I passed off as my home. No one knew where I laid my head down at night. Except for Ichor, apparently.
Jutting up beneath a clapboard bridge in the ghettos of Paris I had tacked a wool sheet that acted as the roof and sides of my pitiable structure, and was supported by pieces of wood I had pried from the bridge above me. There was barely room for one, and the inside was just as sorry looking as the outside, if not more so. Just a threadbare blanket, a small lantern, trinkets I had collected, a meager stash of Francs – my entire life savings – hidden in the dirt near my sleeping place, and my journal with a pot of ink that was growing perilously scarce.
“My shelter,” I said in a voice that begged for his approval.
“I know,” he whispered, “now watch.”
I squinted my eyes in the darkness trying to ascertain what exactly I was watching for when I saw movement coming from the inside of my tent. My blood ran cold and my stomach dropped into my gut.
“Bandits,” I said with a shaky breath, “Thieves. Hurry, we should leave this place at once.”
“No.”
And he walked on.
And I followed him. Old habits die hard, they say.
I was trembling at the fearsome fright I felt burning wildly inside my body. I don’t care, honest, I wanted to tell him. There are other things a girl can lose that are far more precious than a few francs. I can start again as I always have. Good sir, it is simply the game of the streets: we all must stay alive.
I turned, ready to walk away, when he grabbed my arm forcefully but not painfully. I turned to look at him and for an instant, a small blip of time, his face was horrifying. His lips quivered grotesquely as if the act of maintaining his wide smile was his very own Prometheus stone. His skin was pallid and loose and greasy. His hair hung in unwashed matted clumps and he looked at me with terrifying obsidian eyes. But it all happened within seconds and then it was over. And I loved once again.
“That man is stealing from you,” Ichor said, his voice like muted thunder heard from a great distance.
And when he said that, I could feel my skin beneath his hand begin to warm. Then grow hot. Then become scalding. And lastly evolve into the unbearable. And with every degree of heat that mounted, I grew more and more unhinged: a thoroughly mad, frenetic wall of rage and injustice. Those were my things. Sure, you’d probably deem them laughable, pathetic, junk. But they were precious to me. And they were the only things in the world that belonged to me and were worth something. The corner of my lip curled upwards in a felinely snarl.
My chest heaved, the hatred now hitting its crescendo, threatening to break my ribs if no outlet presented itself.
“He is stealing from you. So you need to steal from him.”
Ichor’s words were vague but I understood their meaning at once.
I stalked towards my camp with murder in mind.
My violent passion was an all-consuming, unquenchable thirst. Barely breaking stride I grabbed a thick and sturdy branch from the ground and stood at the opening of the tent.
“Looking for something?” I asked, malice dripping from my words like daggers. The old man startled when I spoke, knocking over the last of my precious ink. And I snapped. I was only a waif of a girl, but within my anger preternatural strength blossomed. I grabbed the man by the neck of his tunic and threw him with such force that he landed and skidded into the filthy gutters that were a yard or two away.
“What did you take? What did you steal from me?” my voice was a low growl.
“N-nothing, mademoiselle. I swear this to you. Please,” the small old man began to weep, “Please. Spare me. I-I was,” he let out a mewling groan and covered his eyes in shame, “I am hungry. That is all. I mean you no harm. I am just hungry.”
I laughed at him then; a mean, malicious laugh designed to inflict shame and humiliation and self-loathing; a laugh that hurts you in the deepest part of your soul. But his cries only served to boil my wrath to new and evil concentrations.
Before the weak and frail creature before me could utter another word, I brought the heavy branch screaming down onto his gut. His eyes bulged and his mouth opened and closed, struggling vainly to draw breath. I raised the piece of wood above my head and the fear I saw in his eyes will forever haunt me.
I beat him unrelentingly until his face was a pulpy mash and I was speckled with his blood. When it was finished I stood over the prone dead body and breathed in mouthfuls of air because of the energy I had exerted.
As if a veil had been lifted from my eyes I dropped my weapon, coated in the old man’s blood, and viscera; it landed with a thunk and a clatter that reminded me of a death knell. In a dreamlike stance I took in the scene set before me. I saw the poor emaciated man, elderly, frightened, and vulnerable.
And I screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed until my vocal cords were raw.
I wheeled around to face Ichor, still sporting his ghastly grin, leaning on his walking stick as casual as anything despite bearing witness to the depraved atrocities I had just inflicted on the old man at my feet.
“Who are you?” I screamed at him, but he did not even flinch or show any kind of emotion at all.
“You’ve done this to me! How?” I cried. “How are you able to ruin one girl’s life in the matter of an evening?”
“Esme,” he intoned as he took a step towards her.
“No! Do not come near me. I do not love! I do not love! Sweet Jesus, what have you done?”
“I have done nothing. It was not I who beat a man’s head into a bar top. It was not I who picked up the branch and turned the old man’s face into so much bloody ground beef. That was you, Esme. That was you, little girl.”
I shook my head and backed away from Ichor. I could feel my sanity slowly begin to melt between my fingers.
“Be gone from me. I never want to see you again, you filthy harbinger of desolation, you eater of souls.” My voice cracked with the terrible weight of unshed tears. I turned on my heel and ran. But just before I was out of earshot, I heard Ichor say,
“You’ll come around sooner or later. They always do.”
And a soft laugh followed me as I left Ichor beneath the bridge I once called home.