Crispy Ben is crispy. (dontcallmeleo) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-01-27 21:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1980-01] january, ! npc, leoben yaxley |
Who: Leoben, Vitus and Acacia Yaxley
When: 27 January, 1980; 6:30 pm
Where: Yaxley Manor and then a dark alley in muggle London.
What: A long awaited crime.
Rating/Warning: R for lots of blood and gore.//No REALLY! This is GROSS.
Status: Completed narrative!
There was no real reason why Leoben had decided that it would happen today. While the act was premeditated, the date and time clearly weren't. His dinner meeting had cancelled and moved to Friday, which made his evening clear. That was all. What better time to attempt to "reconcile familial differences"? Leoben arrived at the Yaxley manor just before dinner time. The meal itself was relatively quiet, a thick tension polluting the air. There were no house elves, Ben noted. Vitus must have gambled them away, as well. He didn't eat much. The invitation into the sitting room came after Vitus had finished eating. Leoben gave a small nod, a flash of a smile. "Of course, Father." The old man poured a glass of scotch for each of them and motioned toward a chair. "Please, sit." Ben sat. "I would just like to thank you for coming tonight, Leoben," Vitus said, easing into the opposite chair. "It means a lot to your mother." Ben sipped his scotch and listened in silence, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. "And I would like to let you know that I will win all our things back." He couldn't contain himself this time. "Oh?" Ben asked, lifting his brow. "How do you intend to do that? Are you gambling? You hardly have a galleon to bet, Father." Vitus glared at his son and stood up, letting his scotch sit on the table between them. "Don't you talk to me in that tone, boy," he spat, "Or you'll be sorry." He was old. And sick of being criticized by his only son. Leoben was on his feet in a second. "You'd better watch your tone, old man," he all but growled, "Or I will break you." They stared at each other for a second, and then Vitus whipped his hand across Leoben's face, a dull smack resonating in the room. Ben stared at the floor, jaw clenched. His cheek stung, but more immediate was the surge of adrenaline in his veins. Vitus sighed. "I told you not to, son," he said irritably. The look in Ben's eyes when he found his father's face again could only ever be described as 'absolutely murderous'. But Vitus never saw it coming. In a fluid motion, Ben pulled one of the knives Walden had gifted him out of his belt. His hand shot forward, closing around the old man's wrist. And in a split second, Ben drove the knife straight through the palm and deep into the wooden table that their glasses rested on. Vitus screamed and fell to his knees, staring his hand. Weakly he tried pull at the handle of the knife. But to no avail. His screams attracted Acacia, and she came running into the room, paling as she saw her son standing over her husband with a knife and a wand. Ben glanced up, a pleasant smile pulling at his lips. "Oh, good of you to join us, Mother. We were just getting started. I just have to take care of a few things before we begin properly. Your wands, please." He held his hand out for them. Neither of them moved. Ben sighed. "Accio wands!" One floated out of the kitchen, the other was torn out of Vitus' robes. Ben took both, snapped them in half and tossed the fragments into the fire. Acacia stared and then went to her husbands side. Ben stepped between them. "No, Mother," he said softly. "You can't help him now." With a flick of his wand, he silently cast a full body bind, catching the woman just before she crashed into the floor. Her eyes were wide and scared. "Leave her alone," Vitus yelled, pulling at the knife embedded in his hand. Ben set his mother down carefully and then sat on the chair he'd been occupying earlier. He paid no real attention to Vitus as he re-warded the manor. There wasn't much protection to the begin with, cocky as his father was. Ben just changed them to contain the room. Neither parent was going anywhere. When he was finished, he sat back and picked up his glass of scotch and stared at Vitus. A long moment passed, the silence only broken by the clink of ice in the glass and the old man's whimpers of pain. And then Ben suddenly sat forward, a smile playing on his face. "All right," he said putting his glass down. "Listen. We're going to play a game now, okay?" Ben conjured a simple deck of cards and set themselves to shuffling. "Blackjack all right with you? That's your game, isn't it?" "Why are you doing this?" Vitus asked, giving up on the knife. It wasn't going anywhere unless removed magically and Leoben was the only human being within a five mile radius that had a wand. "Quiet," Ben snapped. "Since you don't have any money - and I have no interest in anything that's yours anyway - we'll be playing with minutes." He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at the time. "Okay, it's just about seven o'clock. You'll start out with an hour to play with." The cards dealt themselves out. Vitus stared at his son. "What happens if I run out of..." he trailed off, comprehension dawning on his face. It was quickly followed by terror. "Time?" Ben finished his sentence with an amused smirk. "You'll die, just like everyone else." Vitus was panicking, eyes darting around the room. "How do I win? This isn't a fair game," he protested. Ben sighed and rolled his eyes. "No, you lose either way, that's what I'm saying. But it's not a bet if there isn't anything at stake, right? Even you need the illusion of a chance." He glanced down at his cards. Nine and five. "All right, Father, the bet is on. What are you playing?" Vitus swallowed and looked at his cards. Ten. Jack. "Ten minutes," he rasped. Ben stared at him across the table and then drew a card for himself. Ace. One more. Nine. Busted. "Ten minutes to you," he said mildly and dealt another hand. It went slowly, a few minutes here and there. Vitus was by far the more experienced player. But it didn't matter. The original hour passed and Ben looked at his pocket watch. "You're down to what? Six minutes?" It was a rhetorical questions. Numbers were second nature to Leoben, he could do this all night. But he had a meeting early in the morning and he still had to deal with his mother and the bodies. He looked at his cards. Ace. Jack. Blackjack. Vitus lifted his. A king and a three. He was going to try to bluff his way out of this one. "Six minutes. Stand," he said, looking as challengingly at his son as he could with a knife in his hand. Ben scoffed, a smirk playing at his lips. He sipped his scotch, refilled it, and sipped it again. And then he flipped over his jack. All the colour drained from his father's face. "Game over, Father," Leoben said smoothly and flicked his wand at the cards. They collected themselves and disappeared. Vitus was panicking now, pulling futilely on the knife again. "Leoben. Leoben, please," he begged, looking up at his son for some kind of mercy. Ben ignored him, walking over to where his mother lay, still bound by the body-bind he had cast earlier. He replaced it with a leg-locker and an incarcerous. He needed her to talk. The suffering mute were boring. "Your dear husband is dead already, Mother," he said, kneeling by her head. "But we'll play another game. It's a family game." Ben levitated her into a chair. "Father can play too, so he doesn't get bored." He picked up his scotch and took another drink, studying Acacia in her chair. "Were you paying attention to the game we were playing earlier? Father bet away his last six minutes of life on a bluff, so right now, he's living on my time. Unless you want to take his place, do you?" He tilted his head curiously. "Do you? I don't mind. If not, I'll give you a chance to make this easier for him. The rules are very simple. It's just a guessing game. I'll ask you a question and I'll give you three tries to answer correctly. If you win, I'll just use a quick avada kadavra. It's probably almost painless. But if you're wrong..." Ben took the remaining two knives out of his belt and showed them off. "I received these for Christmas. I haven't had a chance to test them out yet. But they look very sharp. Are you ready to play?" Vitus spoke up from his spot near the table. "Don't answer," he said dully. "That's enough, Leoben." "Enough?" Ben turned to look at his father, a slight lift of his brow. "I don't know." His eyes slid back to Acacia. "What do you think, Mother? Do you think it's enough, or do you want to keep playing?" Silence. Ben rolled his eyes and after another beat, backhanded Acacia. "Wake up," he growled. "You're not interested? You don't want to play? Fine." Irritably, Leoben put his scotch down and pulled his wand out. With a flick, the large knife pulled itself out of his father's hand. But with another curt swish, it sliced back down, cutting through muscle and bone like warm butter and thudding dully back into the table. Fresh screams filled the room as Vitus clutched his stump of an arm... leaving his hand on the table. Acacia burst into tears. Leoben could only look bored. With a few more choice spells, Vitus was prone on the ground, the largest knife pinning his remaining hand to the floor. "Ugh, you're making such a mess of the carpet," Ben complained and pulled out the medium sized knife. With another swish of his wand, Vitus's robes disappeared, leaving his back bare and unprotected. Leoben sighed and watched the light glint off his knife. "You know, I never figured out where Grandfather went wrong with you. I thought that it was because you were sorted into Gryffindor - but I'm courting one and have had none of the problems with her that we've had with you. She's very supportive of the Cause." Leoben looked down at his father. "I always thought you were rather spineless. Always backing down from responsibility and duty. I think it's time we found out for sure." With that, he knelt and without another second of hesitation, buried the knife into the small of his father's back. It tore through the tissue with almost sickening ease as Ben dragged it up, parallel to the vertebrae. Vitus kicked and screamed, tried to roll over. Ben just shifted and used a knee to pin him down. Slowly, he carved out the outline of the old man's spine, oblivious to Acacia's sobbing and begging and Vitus's screams. "Hm," Ben mused as he dug his fingers into the wounds. He used the knife to wedge under the bone and then pushed it up, breaking several vertebrae in the process of separating the spine from the connective tissue. His fingers slipped over bone, but after a moment, he finally got his fingers around the spine. With a grunt of effort, he tugged. There was a sickening crunch as part of the bone freed itself. But that wasn't good enough. Ben shifted to his feet, put a foot on the side of his father's head and absolutely yanked. With a series of pops and cracks, Ben stumbled back, holding half of his father's spine in his hands. "It appears you do have a spine," he commented wryly, turning it curiously in his hands before dropping it. "Oh well. I've been wrong before." He smiled sideways at Vitus... who had stopped screaming. Ben shook his head. "Pity. You never knew, I'm sure." With a small grunt of effort, he took his knives back and slid into the chair across from his mother. She looked pale as a ghost and had even stopped crying. A few drinks of scotch, a puff on a cigarette (he didn't smoke often but he rather enjoyed it when he did) and Ben finally looked at his pocket watch again. It was eight-thirty. "What to do?" he mused, putting the watch away. "I have an early breakfast meeting, you know. And it's going to take a little while to get all settled again." He considered his mother briefly. Her crimes were not of the same magnitude. Perhaps the only thing she had done wrong was to stick by her husband. Would he not expect the same from Eva? Or any woman? Ben sighed and wiped his knives clean on his trousers before sheathing them again. "I am far too generous," he mumbled and pulled his wand out. He wrote a brief note and used a sticking charm to attach it to his mother's robes. Instructions. Without another thought, he muttered, "Obliviate!" And just like that... the last twenty years of Acacia's life disappeared. Leoben couldn't be bothered to try and replace them. He didn't have the patience nor did he want to spend the time. With another few flicks, he released her from her bonds and then walked her over to the fireplace. A pinch of floo powder and he shoved her in... and sent her off. France. To a contact that he had put there years ago to escape the law. She would be... alive, anyway. Which was more than he'd originally planned on when he'd arrived. Alone with the body of his father, Ben finished off the scotch in his glass and pondered what to do with the corpse. After a long moment of thought, he used his foot to turn the body over, blood pouring out of the wound in Vitus's back. Leoben frowned. The whole carpet was going to have to be replaced before he and Eva moved in. Sighing, he bent down and tore his knife through the stomach, wrinkling his nose a bit as most of dinner spilled into the cavity. "Gross," he muttered. Still, it would release all of those gases that so often caused problems. He straightened up and flicked his wand at the corpse. Clothes. Ragged and dirty. Good enough. Ben had killed enough muggles to know what their homeless looked like. He fixed the wards and hung onto Vitus's remaining hand. As an afterthought, he reached over and collected the dismembered hand and put it in Vitus's (new) patched pocket. He apparated the corpse to a dark corner of London, seedy even for muggles. He felt dirty just being here. But this would be perfect for the carcass. The muggle authorities could take care of it. For now, Ben settled down on a crate and pulled his journal out. After all, he couldn't go back to Diagon looking like this. |