Enigma ~The Riddler's Daughter (_enigma) wrote in newalliance, @ 2014-01-03 20:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | enigma |
Who: Effie Nashton (NPC: Marcus Salvatori, Sammantha Salvatori, Unnamed Killer) (Narrative)
Where: Effie's Apartment, Gotham City, NJ
What: Effie has a nightmare about the death of her parents as the one year anniversary draws closer.
When: January 3rd, middle of the night
Rating: R (Trigger Warnings: Graphic Violence, bodily fluids, murder, grief)
She could still smell the paper of the envelope, the wood pulp and faint traces of cigerette smoke. She had slit the envope open absently, her head still bobbing to a song she had heard earlier that day on a friend’s ipod. The music slowly trailed out of her as her eyes had traced over the words, her heart sinking, fading inside her.
“Mom!” she screamed, paper dropping from her fingers as she turned, running towards her parents room, ankle twisting, sending her crashing to the floor. She crawled, pushing herself back to her feet, never stopping. She needed to find them...she neede this all to be a sick joke.
But her mom wasn’t there, the house pristine except for one small corner, where everything was in shambles, much like her mind at that moment. She stared at the disaster, her mind not wanting to face the reality of the situation.
Her parents couldn’t be gone...kidnapped.
That wasn’t possible. Crime and violence that was something that happened to someone else’s family...something you tutted about in the newpaper as you grabbed a bagel for breakfast. It wasn’t real!
But the blood on the floor, on her father’s shotgun...it was all pointing to how real it was. And she was losing time.
--
The instructions had been simple, come to this address, pick a door, save your parents. Or at least that was what Effie had remembered as she stared at the warehouse. There was only one door in front of her, which of course, meant she only had one choice. She gripped the knob tightly, not even thinking it might be booby-trapped or the sort, turning it and flinging the door open.
Only to find an endless expanse of darkness before her, consuming her as she stepped into it, the door shutting behind her.
Okay, so yes, Effie had known, under her fear and panic, that logically, the room had to have walls and thus there was an end to the darkness, but right then, that was the furthest thing from her mind. Mostly her mind was a gibbering mess of panic and the constant chant of ‘mommymommymommymommy’.
A light exploded to her left and she spun around, screaming in fright. There was nothing there, but Effie moved closer towards where she had seen the sparks, blinking as another light suddenly snapped on, raising a hand to shield her poor eyes. A dar figure stood above her on a catwalk, watching her.
“Where are my parents?!” she screamed.
“Pick a door,” the man...it had to be a man, said, his voice scrambled. “Pick the right one and your parents will go free.”
“Why are you doing this?!”
“Because I can.” The light above the man flashed out as he pressed a button, and instead two more lit up across from her, each one resting above a rather ordinary door.
“Pick one...just...gotta pick one,” Effie whispered, hugging herself as she walked towards the doors, her eyes darting between them. “You can do this, Effie...it’s just a puzzle any other. Daddy could do it...you can do it. Make him proud...you’re a Nigma...prove it!”
She swallowed thickly, her hand trembling as she reached for a knob. She paused just before she touched it, her hand curling into a fist. “The first choice...not always the right one…” She was mumbling to herself, trying to keep her spinning mind still long enough to think...to choose.
“Oh fucking hell, stupid, just pick one!” she had suddenly screamed, tugging at her long pigtails. Her hand shot out, grabbing a knob and turning it, opening the door. A
As it moved, a tripwire snapped, and as the door fully opened, Effie’s eyes lighting up as they rested on her parents, bound to chairs, twin shotgun blasts sounded. Marcelus and Sammantha reacted to the sound, their heads jerking up...before promptly exploding like so much ripe melon.
Effie started screaming, collapsing to her knees, staring, almost unseeing at her parents bodies. She could hear their killing running, but she couldn’t move, clutching at the cement floor beneath her, bits of tissue and brain squishing through her fingers as she clung to the ground desperately.
The smell of blood, of burnt gunpowder, of...everything hit her in a wave and she vomited, the smell making her retch again, gagging on acidic bile, swaying slightly before collapsing to the side, her mind shutting down and refusing to get back up.
--
Effie had been staring at her parents caskets, her eyes red, sore...and utterly dry. She couldn’t cry anymore...she coudln’t even think anymore. It hurt too much and she wanted it all to just go away.
She reached out, gently tracing her hand over her mother’s casket, nails scratching at the varnished and polished wood as she clung to it, gasping. Memories of what her mother looked like under the lid asulted her and she whimpered, falling to her knees, her nails leaving long scratches in the wood as she fell, until she was holding the bar at the side, desperately clutching at it.
She gave another shuddering gasp, just in time to catch a lungful of plaster, stone and coffin dust, the entire alter that her parents were resting in exploding around her, raining death, Hell and a pieces of wood at her.
She released the metal bar, her hands raising to cover her head and face, shielded from the worst of the blast by her parents coffins, even as they were utterly destroyed in the process.
Outside the church, a man tossed an envelope on top of the rubble, staying only long enough to see a blood smeared hand emerge from the crumbled rock before he started walking away, moving easily through the gathering crowd.
Wrong door…
--
Effie had leaned over the edge of the building, dead eyes watching the man beneath her. She studied his movements, his pace before moving away from the edge, stretching for a moment before she took off running, leaping over the corner of the roof, even the rush of falling to certain death failing to touch her as she reached out, grabbing a pole jutting from the side of the next building.
Pain screamed up her arm and Effie didn’t react, her body numb to the pain, physical or emotional. The movement, pulled on her already splintering bones, She released the pole, flipping through the air, landing in a crouch behind the man.
She had raised up slowly, whistling sharply to get his attention, before promptly kicking him in the face, following the sickening crunch of his nose with a fist to his mouth. Rage started boiling up in her, flooding her, fire racing through her veins.
It felt so good to feel something after being empty for so long.
She spied a worn baseball bat in a dumpster and dove for it as the man lashed out to grab her, her fingers wrapping around the wood with relief. Splinters bit into her hand, but that didn’t matter as she turned, bringing the bat up, out of the dumpster and into the man’s face.
She swung again, this time with more aim and force, hitting first his neck, then aiming for hhis kneee on the back swing. Pleasure roared through her at the sounds he made, the feeling of his body giving away under her asult.
Blood sprayed up across her chest as she hit him again and she licked her lips, tasting her sweat mixing with a few stray droplet before she hit him again. She stood over the crumpled, whimpering man, raising the bat above her head, eager to bring it down on his, to destroy him...to make him hurt
The bat shattered as it hit the sidewalk next to his head and Effie stomped on his stomach, throwing aside the broken pieces before she had seized his arm, dragging his bleding body over to a pipe and ziptying him to it before calling the police as she walked away.
That rage...that pleasure...scared her.
She had to get out of Boston.
--
Effie gasped as she jerked upright in bed, panting softly for air, hands searching before finding her blanket, clinging to them. She dres her knees up to her chest, trying to even out her breathing, to focus.
She was safe now...she was in Gotham. It had been eleven months since her parents died...since she had nearly killed the man. She was safe…
She retched, before promptly vomiting onto the bed next to her, whimpering and irrationally glad that Tim wasn’t spending the night considering she just messed up his side of the bed.
She swallowed, scrubbing a hand over her face, before gagging again, this time on the tears that started to flow. She hugged her knees tightly, sobbing into her knees. She shook as she cried, grieving heavily for the parents she had lost...that she had killed.
If only she hadn’t been so stupid...if she had been smart enough to choose the right door...