Who: Liesel and Sol What: Being crazy Where: Some alley somewhere When: Late, around 2 AM Warnings: Sol butchers a body in his first tag. It’s nasty. Then there is making ‘sociopathic, murdering fwends 101’ with Liesel and Sol. Take care.
There was no blood on the walls. The Sadist was too controlled for that, too viciously elegant to splatter someone on the bricks when he could crush a delicate brain in his hands. He stood beside the writhing victim, one hand each holding the man’s limbs to the pavement. Another hand stroked languidly through the man’s stomach, creating bruises under the skin. A smile turned up his lips as he crouched beside the man. "How did her body feel under yours?" he asked, his voice too soft, too gentle. "Did she scream?”"
The man shook his head, thrashing it from side to side. His eyes were wide, leaking tears. The Sadist had no interest in tears. He turned his head, watching the bruises spread across the man’s abdomen. The blossomed, like delicate purple flowers, tracing their petals across skin. He could feel the man’s organs beneath his phantom hands. Their warm slippery smoothness was alluring, intoxicating. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine he was rubbing his hands with lotion.
"She was your daughter." He could have waxed poetic about the horrors of raping an eleven year old child, but there was no reason. His psychic hands made the point for him. Quite effectively.
Slipping his hands from the man’s abdomen, the Sadist allowed him some relief. A mouth slipped up the man’s naked thigh, lips whispering over flesh. Another mouth pressed against the man’s chest, and then another. The Sadist tipped his head back, watching the cloudy skies as his hands caressed and teased, playing the man’s body with a skill acquired from years of practice. When the man trembled with pleasure, the Sadist turned to him with a chilly smile. While the fingers and mouths slid over the man’s body, and the man stared at him with huge, wild eyes, he slid his psychic hands into the man’s head and dug the fingers into his brain. There was a curious squishing feeling. The man twitched once and then lay still.
No, one didn’t need to paint the walls with blood to make a point. It had been nearly two months since Liesel Hartwig had last left her apartment. One thing she certainly hadn’t missed was the cold. It was a Seattle winter, and as she wandered through the streets she pondered whether she should have worn a coat that night and after realising yes, she then decided as she could feel her toes anymore it wasn’t really going to matter. Dressed in her nightgown with a heavy jumper over the top that slipped down over one shoulder, she carried nothing. The thought that had made her leave the house hadn’t been a pleasant one; predominantly, she couldn’t take the inevitable beatings that followed when she was in a mood like this. There was punishment, then there was something that could leave her in the hospital. That accomplished nothing.
It was as she heard something whispered in a dark alley that she stopped, eyes dark with something inhuman, and she turned with an animalistic motion to where the ever-so-quiet commotion was coming from. Muscles stiff from lack of exercise, blood encrusting her bangs and an obviously dishevelled look about her, she walked plainly down the centre of the alley to whatever was happening. Whatever it was, it now involved a voyeur.
It was as she closed in on the scene that she realised she potentially didn’t want to be there. This was either a midnight tryst, or a sexual assault. In either instance, this did not bode well for her; the only thing that gave her comfort was that both participants were male and she may just end being shot. She stood silently, farther away for a few seconds, before stepping closer. Whatever the man on top was doing, it was impossible to tell whether he enjoyed it. Liesel tilted her head to one side as she studied the sight in front of her.
"Oh my." She murmured, eyes wide but otherwise, no recognisable expression on her face. Lifting his head at the sound of a woman’s voice, the Sadist surveyed the body before him. A woman. She looked of an age with him; he couldn’t imagine her being much older. But he doubted she had anything on his true age. His eyes slid over her with only the vaguest interest. She was bloodied. She moved stiffly when she moved at all. He pulled his lips back in a snarl, but it wasn’t to warn her off as much as it was to let her know he knew what she was. That he recognized something in her that was the same as what was in him.
"You really shouldn’t be here, my lady," he said, his voice low and soft, a rumbling purr. As he spoke, he removed a calling card from his jacket pocket and placed it in the man’s clothes, piled beside his body. A name, a crime, and a message. For remembrance. As a reminder. So no one would forget what had been done to the man’s daughter, now a broken shell of what she could have been. At his snarl, Liesel simply tilted her head, the same odd look in her eyes. There was some unspoken agreement between them there, she would not scream and he would stay where he was for now. It was a silent contract; they would both behave. Neither of them would behave in a way the other would consider inappropriate if they could help it. Or at least, Liesel certainly wouldn’t. And she was treading on uncertain, very interesting ground in this instance.
On a quick, further examination, the man below her curious new subject was definitely dead.
Looking past the man who spoke, she looked down at the victim of whatever it was that he did. Her voice was slow and hoarse, but relayed her society manners in such an infuriatingly passive way to those around her. "Potentially not. But I don’t think that is the issue at hand." There was an ever so slight twitch on her part, a movement of the head before she brushed a stray tendril of hair idly back. "I believe the man beneath you is dead." She murmured plainly, eyes flicking up to meet with this interesting character. The Sadist watched her for a long few minutes. Then Solomon laughed, rising from where he was crouched beside the other man. "He is." He slipped his hands into his pockets, regarding the dead man at his feet. Shifting his attention from the body to the woman, he gave her a rueful, almost boyish, smile. "You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?" he asked, in a tone more befitting a chastised child than an adult man.
He hoped she wouldn’t tell. It would be sad if she told; he’d have to kill her. If there were other Creations, he doubted he would stay anonymous for long. The Sadist didn’t wear a mask. He didn’t usually need to. He didn’t usually leave people alive. But he couldn’t indiscriminately murder people here. No, he had Cora to think about. Cora. If this woman compromised his relationship with Cora, she would die. Slowly. Painfully.
Sliding a hand through his hair, he pushed his bangs from his face, waiting for her answer, hanging on a knife’s edge. She was close enough, if his estimation was right. He could grab her and destroy her. It would break the Sadist’s M.O. People would notice. But Cora. Cora would be safe. As the man stood, Liesel stayed completely still. She didn’t need to start playing on guilt just yet. In fact, he didn’t seem to feel all that guilty. It made the whole exchange much more intriguing. In any other case she would’ve used her ability or walked on by now. A combination of that fog still hanging over her mind and a genuine curiosity begged her to continue on with whatever this actually was.
His smile didn’t phase her any more than the death had. She studied him from head to toe, eyes half closed to disguise her intention, and decided that he was a typically attractive type, probably the same age as her, definitely intelligent. He didn’t look like a murderer. She spoke quietly. "It’s unlikely that I will. Police statements bore me. Someone died in my building recently, it was a tiresome incident I don’t wish to repeat." That girl who lived close. That had been interesting. Someone had knocked on her door, she had certainly had to clean up before she greeted them.
She looked down to the body again and made a slow sign of the cross against herself, before looking up to the sky. "This is a good day for a murder. There are so many now, you’ll almost certainly not be caught." A small sigh passed her lips as she clasped her hands behind her back, before looking down again. "Was it intentional?" Best he didn’t know how little she cared about this yet. She was beginning to feel as if she wanted to go home now. But to turn and leave certainly gave the wrong impression in this scenario. The fact that he liked her startled him. He hadn’t expected to like her; generally, he hated women on principle. But this one. He liked her. He liked her sassy attitude, her blase manner. It wasn’t intriguing in a way that made him truly interested, but he was interested. A cursory interest, he told himself. Simply because she seemed like him. Nothing more.
He had to fight to press a hand to his head. He wanted to return to the Bathos complex, to find his way into Cora’s room and curl up in bed with her. He wanted to hold her. But he couldn’t lead this woman to her. No, no, no. Never. Not that. "Of course," he murmured in a voice like silk. "He was a rapist. He raped his daughter." He raised his voice to mock the man. "Such a pretty face. Her mother’s lovely face." A sneer curled his lip and he started to move, suddenly, with great energy.
Pacing before the body, his hands flexed in his jacket pocket. "It always because they’re pretty. And no one protects them. No one avenges them. People look the other way. So I do." He paused, frozen in midstep, staring at her. "You won’t tell?" The question was nothing like his furious words moments before. He was a small child again, deceptively vulnerable. Liesel watched the man’s movements carefully, ready to act at any second if he had no way of explaining that his intentions were good. She wouldn’t call the police, of course, she would simply active her power and that would be punishment enough when he eventually took a knife to his wrists or put a gun to his head, and that would be the end of it. A simple end that required very little action on her part. She could walk away. In the back of her mind, she hoped that the figure had some reason to do it, because it would be a shame to do anything to him. A first meeting, and she had to do something like that? How terrible crass.
It took her a few seconds to speak after he froze, and even then her words were clearly just being thought out as she did. "How could somebody do that to a young girl; someone unable to defend themselves." She spoke softly, almost to herself, cogs ticking away in her mind. The man who had killed the other was now irrelevant. The man in front of her was evil, he would be punished in hell. God did not forgive deeds like his easily. There was a sudden coldness to her stance as she spoke again. "I assure you, I will not tell."
She looked up, her eyes filled with a righteous fury. She suddenly felt a pang for the young girl who had lost a father, even one who had abused her in such a horrific way. She had lost her real father long ago, and deserved far better treatment than that. "Is the child alright? She has somewhere safe to stay, she is taken care of?" The words came quickly as she brought one hand to her mouth, biting down on the side of her index finger in thought. "Her mother. Is she a good woman?" Liesel’s mind tried to grasp this concept of an evil family who allowed their child to be tortured in such a way, and decided it was only Christian to make sure she would be fine. Hopefully, her companion would know. Relief washed over him. The woman wouldn’t tell. He could see it in her eyes and hear it in her words. She was with him. She sided with him. Her words affirmed it, the look in her eyes confirmed it, and he sagged slightly. Words could lie, but the face and body couldn’t. Gestures and expressions could undermine what someone said; the body never lied.
"The mother is a good woman," Sol said softly, his smile cool. "Timid, but good." The reason the girl had been raped by her father was her mother’s timidity. But now the woman was free from an abusive, dangerous husband. She was free to, he hoped, make a better choice. If she didn’t, if the girl was hurt a second time, the Sadist would visit the mother and take the child. He would remind the Creations in the city why people in Musings had feared him. And he would enjoy every last minute of it.
Stepping toward the woman, he offered his right hand, palm up so she could see he was unarmed. Not that it would matter. The Sadist didn’t need to have a weapon in hand to make a kill. "Thank you for your silence, madam," he said in a silky voice. It wasn’t his bedroom voice, wasn’t a voice meant to cajole or seduce. "I’ll be keeping an eye on the girl. She’ll be fine." The threat against the mother was in his words and tone. If the girl wasn’t fine, the mother wouldn’t be, either. The irrationality of her thoughts faded as soon as it had come; she no longer desired to hurt this mother who may injure her child. She took the man in front of her seriously, for some reason; maybe due to a shared affinity for justice, maybe because it was unwise to argue with a man who had just snapped another’s neck, she wondered if she would’ve felt the same if she had met him in the street in broad daylight and he told her the same story, perhaps not with a body underneath him.
Liesel, all blood and caution and frailty, looked down at the man’s hand as he offered it with a tilted head, face blank again. There was nothing there, but she had a distinct feeling that whatever had happened had not happened with the hand he was holding out to her. She slowly reached out a pale hand to him, letting the two limbs lightly touch as she bent her knees, turning it into an oddly fitting curtsey. There was grace in her movements, her training had not been forgotten so easily. A man who killed in a suit should be treated with the respect a gentleman warranted. She looked up. "I have no doubt of that, sir." Her hand slid from his and she turned with the confidence of a woman who didn’t particularly fear death when they gained eye contact, let alone when he was close enough to snap her neck. “Good night.”
As she padded along out of the alleyway, onto a deserted main street, the woman stopped to wonder for a second whether she would see him again. It had certainly been an interesting night to see a murder, and even more of one to speak to the murderer and live to tell the tale. She reasoned it was not wise to think of such things while still close to him (he was still a stranger, albeit one with the airs and graces of the old world she read about in her beloved books) and after becoming irritated with how cold her bare feet were becoming, she walked home without pausing to think again.