Re: Warning: All things
From the beginning, the second memory was different from the first. Oh, it was another man doing harm to a woman, and it made him sure that this was some sort of punishment. But this was something else entirely.
In all the years that he'd targeted men who hurt women, he'd done it knowing what it felt like to be rendered helpless, to be unable to defend yourself. He knew what it was like to watch it happen and be able to do nothing. He knew what it was to hate the men who did with every fiber.
But he'd never actually known what it felt like.
He knew who it was, the girl being violated, cut, bleeding, aching, sobbing. If possible, it made it worse. There was nothing but the pain, and the sense of being violated, foreign and yet sickeningly familiar. The physical pain suddenly seemed new, fresh, like nothing he'd ever felt. It wrapped around him, enveloping him completely, and even when it faded it didn't really let go.
His breathing was ragged. He'd drawn blood from his scalp with his nails, and the book was on the floor. He stared sightlessly at the sheets beneath him, and felt it, thick in the back of his throat, something he hadn't felt in a long time.
He wanted to kill something. Someone. Somehow. Someone who deserved it, someone that could bleed this poison out of him with the act, someone like the man who had attacked the girl in his memory, the girl he recognized.
And suddenly - there she was. She'd been gone for so long that he almost didn't recognize her. He'd seen her constantly in the years after the attack, until she slowly faded away, disappearing entirely. He'd assumed she left because he'd finally managed to move on, somehow. Wrong. She was sitting on the windowsill, blood dripping down her legs, smile stained pink. He turned his face away, choking on a short shout.
He knew what it was like, now, and now he wondered why he'd ever stopped. It didn't matter how he felt, or whether he was sure about anything. Anyone who did that, what he'd felt in that memory, to someone else, they should be dead. Simple. There was clarity in the world again. He'd been so foolish. How could he have ever allowed himself to stop, when the world so obviously needed someone willing to put men like that down? That he'd almost come close to it himself made him feel sick. He'd lost his way, somewhere, but someone had decided to lay it out for him again. Being around women was clearly much too dangerous if there was any chance, any at all, that he might hurt them. He'd simply stay away from now on, and devote himself to the work again.