Hello My Little Lambs @murdersinthemaking - Tumblr Blog

Dec 10, 2025

Crawl Space

Part 1 and finally some actual things to announce! (11.8k + announcement)

Warnings - Paranoia (internal dialogue, thoughts), depictions of violence (both non-descript and descript), allusions to suicidal ideation or vague intent, very brief mention of mutilation (exactly 2.5 sentences), lots of implied death, mentions of drugs and being drugged, mentions of lost teeth (not describing how they're lost), a paragraph about the activities found in schizophrenic inpatient treatment, delusions of importance/grandeur, religious imagery (judaism), medical terminology and adjacent descriptions (not of procedures, just terms being used to describe scenarios).

Mandatory reminder: Schizophrenia is a complex and convoluted mental health disorder with various types of presentation and symptoms. The version presented here is not meant to represent the general experience of schizophrenia, it's a depiction of the both some of the worst and everyday elements from my personal experience, particularly focused on some of the aspects and experiences of not receiving treatment of being treatment resistant. It can be frightening to experience it from either end, but it isn't something to be afraid of. Again, a lot of projection and oversimplification, Murdock is not the poster child for schizophrenia.

Bits of this may be slightly disorienting to read (as in the way it's written, not in presentation). I promise it's intentional.

Between skin, skull, and the cerebral, it had lodged itself and took root between every layer. Heavy, dragging down through the pace of his thought whenever he tried to create his own set of thoughts. Splitting, trying to finish the job of cracking his head open from the temporal to the maxilla. Burning, an uncomfortable heat building across the bridge of his nose while his eyes watered with the effort of keeping them open. It ebbed in between his conscious and consciousness, spindly and spined, prying his head open. Plucking out little threads of subiculum and winding it through gaps of his skull, stealing what once had been his and only his. Support, he’d laugh, doubled over until it turned to dry retching into his palms. Until his lungs became agitated and raw but compelled to keep going. Don’t stop. Can’t stop. You’ll never be able to breathe again.

It lodged dully in the space between his jaw and neck, bruising the column of his throat the longer he refused to address it. Murdock could only vaguely recall the motion, a firm strike intent on splitting his temple in two and the cooling bite of metal that ushered him to sleep while disrupting the fracture's place of rest. Warmth pools around his face, hot and sticky, eventually running down his eyes and coagulating just beneath them. An anatomy textbook buried in the back of his mind insists upon the periorbital, the tissues just below the eyes. Trauma to the region causing a periorbital hematoma; a black eye. Bright and shining like graphite. Scratch them get it out get it out. Blood eventually starts seeping through closed eyes, forcing Murdock to open them and wipe them clean. Pitch black surrounds him, engulfing the architecture of the room. Thumbing across the delicate skin of his eyes, his fingers tracing up the tender flesh in search of the opening that continues to trickle down. Drops land on the back of his palm, an insistent drip from above.

Wiping his hands across the bottom of his jacket, his fingers end up catching something heavy wrapped up inside an interior pocket. Small and solid between his fingers, eventually brushing across the small, ridged wheel on top. There’s never truly a bad time to stop and have a smoke. Only as the skin of his thumb caught against the spark wheel did he realize that his gloves were gone. The lacerations and gouges crookedly healed and index finger slightly too far to the right. Nevertheless, he still fiddled with the lighter and began palming the rest of his jacket for a cigarette. It clicked but never lit. After a few more frustrated attempts, he eventually brings it closer to try and squint at the shape. Nothing, not even a spark. Flicking the wheel back and forth, thumb eventually slipping and rolling towards the flame. It burns, metal scalding the tip of his finger while struggling to keep hold of it.

Once he dug up a cigarette rolling loose in his pocket, Murdock tentatively holding it assumedly just above the lighter. Snapping the wheel back, the lighter clicks and the whispering crackle as the cigarette catches light fills the room. Pressed against cracked lips, the uneven rhythms of his breath open his lungs up to the smoke. Just like always, muscle memory. Not even the faint glow from the end managed to reach his bleary eyes, ashing it out to find nothing. Utterly black, vision consumed desire his attempts to blink it back. You didn’t do it right. You did it wrong. You could’ve stopped it, you should’ve kept breathing like before. It’s like pieces of his brain have been perforated, a horrible spongy mass left behind, left to be folded up and forgotten about in the back of his skull. Murdock wasn’t clean, he left his tools to fester in gore for days at a time, constantly wiping mixtures of blood off his face and drops landing in his mouth, the deer in the woods who staggered a little too weakly to have just been shot but could feed him for a while longer.

First, it dropped in his stomach. An iron weight that sharply pierced through, forcing him to buckle and plant both hands on his knees. Unseen embers brush down his leg, warm but not dangerous enough to put him down like a sickly animal. Infected cattle, Murdock thinks, shot twice in the head to sedate them, arteries severed and hung upside down until it drained out. Not worth the trouble, useless for their meat. They just have to pretend it’s a normal one before they dispose of it, hose down the abattoir and call it a day. It clawed at his chest, ripping away the small dignity of staying half upright and forcing Murdock’s thighs to his chest, barely balanced on the balls of his feet

Acid rose thickly in his throat, stinging his unseeing eyes as the discomfort rises. Pathetic, unable to bite back the tide crashing through his chest. Tears prickled in his eyes, another cry wrenched out of his agonized throat. A small chunk of his hindbrain still holding onto reality knows he needs to breathe, dragging Murdock’s hand back up to his mouth to take another inhale from the cigarette. One way to force him to breathe slower. Replacing the stale, burnt air of his lungs with the dulled scent of tobacco. Further drying out his mouth, he almost felt dust settling around his alveoli and sticking them together. You’re not breathing right. Do it again and again until you’re breathing right. What little dizzying rush he once dragged out from his quickest stress relief rapidly grows, the cigarette twitching between Murdock’s fingers. Eyes closed (or open, his eyelids feel heavy already), he slips away into his imagination.

Sweet, earthy tobacco would fill the air instead, thick and rich, settling into his skin. Decadent, something he wouldn’t dare purchase himself. A warm, careful burn that dropped him down further, already dead on his feet. Swaying side to side, dragging himself upwards despite the stabbing pain in his chest.

Murdock’s eyes darted around emptily, dragging his feet forward every step. Shambling forward until his head bumps into something solid, smooth and metallic pressed to his temple. Digging straight into his forehead, catching his pulse under his skin. One hand tentatively reaches up to loosely wrap his fingers around it; a pipe or metal bar bowed under strain. He temporarily revelled in the cold metal across his brow, wicking up a line of sweat bleeding through his fringe. A sigh escaped his lips, shoulders dropping down while he soaked up this momentary reprieve. Murdock can only truly focus on one thing at a time, managing to keep one hand steady around the pipe while the other picks up a violent tremor. A soft thud alerts him to the loss of his cigarette, now burning something on the ground with a crumbling pop. Music to his ears.

Rocking back and forth on his heels while clasping the pipe, the ground itself begins to groan. Crackling like dry leaves beneath his feet and punctuated by a sharper and heavier crunch. Between each piece of the decaying symphony, its seething tone lurking between the fermata. “No man is left in you,” it hissed, voice frayed and bleeding into the increasing, crumbling cacophony. Distant and slightly muffled like every other voice before, lurking in his peripherals and vanishing behind his shoulder. Rarely do they ever get physical, even in their most recent escalation. Ghostly hands would roam down his forearms with an angelic grace before slipping away once more. Keratinous fingers hook around his own, lifting one free from the pipe and twisting it back to the point it too joins the cracking and crunching beneath Murdock’s feet. “Drained and desiccated, how do you do it? There’s nothing there at all,” it spat, finally releasing his finger, exchanging it for a vice grip around his wrist. His mouth dries, lips stuck together as he tries to hold himself up by the bar. The ground beneath him was sunken into the ground, fissuring with every scrape of his boot. Forced onto his tip toes while the hand wrenches him upwards. “So tell me,” it paused, squeezing tighter to elicit another noise of discomfort from Murdock “what kind of a man are you?”. A cervine laugh barked right into his ear, unclasping its fingers and letting him drop through the opening in the ground. Concrete blocks shattered beside him, tumbling down through the floor.

16 seconds, easy to count out the moments of the fall through the floor. Unmoving, his body paralyzed as he drops through the floor. Nothing hit him, falling unobstructed. Nothing flashed before his eyes, still the same endless darkness swallowing his vision whole. Murdock didn’t hit the floor, instead opening his eyes to the tiniest pin pricks of light flooding through beneath a door. From falling to being slumped on the floor, never making impact with the concrete beneath him. His sunglasses press awkwardly against the bump of cartilage across his nose, reaching up to shove them back into place. Nothing moved. He repeatedly wills the movement but not even the muscles beneath his skin do anything but the occasional twitch. Like his nervous system has gone entirely numb, he just managed to move his eyes and squint through the darkness. A weight sat in his hand but wasn’t visible, and the light behind the door never wavered. You’ve taken something. You’ve been poisoned you’ve been drugged they’re letting you see how it ends. Paralytics like he kept trying and failing to use on every Serotonin murder, how his fingers would tremble and the doses never set in quick enough. Dumping the vials down their throat and breaking open their chests in frustration, everything inside still and catatonic.

“Murdock?” A shadow passes the door, hurried footsteps eventually stopping in front of it. You’re not dying fast enough. God knows he kept losing it whenever they weren’t dying the right way for Murdock. Spasming on the table when they were supposed to be still, hands slipping out of restraints and managing to stumble a little too fast when he hadn’t sliced through their tendons enough. Adrenaline was one hell of a drug. It knocks once, pauses, then begins to pound against the door incessantly. Jiggling a deadbolt with every hit, the latch shuddering and the bolt itself threatening to give way. On his side of the door. One set of steps becomes two, three, then four. All walking around the door, some rushing back up the stairs to meet with distant, panicked voices that bleed into the air. Eventually, he’s drawn back to the ones still pacing outside the door

“Baby, it’s me! Please, sweetheart, talk to me.” They won’t stop, every hit shaking the door. Murdock’s eyes stayed wide, flickering around in his paralysis. No matter how much he strained, he couldn't move an inch. So as one arm raises, leaving the knife on the floor and begins dragging him off the floor, he tries to scream. Nothing, just the same tensed muscles forcing his jaw shut, nearly cracking his teeth open. Stuck in the back of his brain, numb to frantic attempts of moving any direction other than forward. They’re lying. There’s no one there. You don’t know him. “Murdock, please…open up the door, I’m here.” He strains to listen, watching his legs move from underneath himself and start dragging him forward. A passenger in his own skin, feeling it crawl through his flesh and wrench him forward. A little closer to the door, he finally starts making out the vague shapes filling the room. More pipes, concrete flooring, storage racks that are stocked like a doomsday prepper. Murdock shambles forward until he hits the door, hearing a soft thud on the opposite side. Murdock doesn’t recognize the names, clunky and heavy as they’re recited in his head. It’s usually just Bates, Murdock if they’ve met enough in person, or whichever alias was being covered by the news again.

“I’m here darling.” Just like his body, the voice leaving him isn’t his own. Trapped in the epidural space, he can feel the vibration of his vocal chords against his throat. There’s no ‘darling’, the word sinking to his stomach. He doesn’t get involved like that, he’s never wanted to. Murdock thinks he might be sick, at least then he’d have some autonomy in his body. Stay separate, independent, safe. In protest to every thought in his head, one hand raises and seeks out where he thinks the other man would’ve knocked on the door. ‘Not comfort, just intrigue,’ he tells himself, burying the sense of liberation when he thinks he’s right.

Pressing his hand against the door, he’s met with another muffled thump on the opposite side. One or both of them are panting, shallow breaths sneaking between the cracks in the door. They’re quiet as Murdock’s palm presses flat against the door and his fingers brush against the latch. Somehow, he locked himself in the room, the reasoning lost in the ringing of his ears. Someone else's house, their makeshift safe room invaded by him. It’s by the grace of God, a space jaggedly carved out for him to drop in.

“Hey, baby…I’m here, just like you told me to be.” His head knocks against the door, like if he tries hard enough, he won’t have to open the door; just fall through to the other side. He keeps calling him ‘baby’, nerves hidden behind the panicked soft tone like he’s trying to coax a stray dog. Talk someone off the ledge. Open the door. No one’s there. This one’s not real. “I know you are,” he croaks, voice escaping him without his control. Another sigh on the other side is choked off, maybe a laugh or more raw than that. Both their voices sounded shot, wrung through something neither of them wanted to acknowledge but both quietly understood. Hours must pass as he stares at the lock, glinting in the sparse light. He could just check, rip the bolt open and be sure. It’s a far better security setup than his own; boarded up doors that bow with rot and barbed wire in the smaller gaps. The door could hold him back, the nothing outside wouldn’t get through.

It slides out smoothly, unlocked but unopened. Murdock waits to see if he’ll push the door open, rush through and finish him. Unsticking himself from the door, finally releasing his hands and waiting. No movement. It drags him back, fingers coiled loosely around the handle and opening it. There’s nothing. You know you hear things all the time, can’t you be smart for once? No one is there. Light floods the boiler room, curving around his sunglasses as he stands in the doorway. Facing him and only slightly looking up. Bloodied and bandaged, dirt spackled across a white dress shirt; Murdock momentarily worries if this is one of his victims escaped from the workshop or a home job gone wrong. The man is his type, his type of victim in the superficial. But if any of his victims started calling him ‘baby’, he’d trade places with them and pray it was quick.

They both stare, Murdock’s gaze frozen and distant while the other’s is so tired and soft it rips fondness out of his heart. God his head hurts. There’s no will to move, static while he watches, his eyes flickering behind his sunglasses. Blood cakes the other man’s right arm and he can’t stop his hand moving to squeeze the bandage above it.

“Murdock,” he starts, hunched over as the weight of the world crashes across his shoulders. Murdock can only watch how his throat seizes, strangling the remaining sound. Shrinking into the shadow of himself, one Murdock can almost see haloed in the light around them. Without the door, he can hear the accent clinging to every vowel. He had half the mind to ask how real it was, but his tongue is still dead and useless. Something in his face burns, vision swimming momentarily as he watches the man move. One hand reaching for his face and all he can think of is the blood stuck to the other man's head. Maybe they match; blunt TBI with lacerations to the face. A thumb presses just below his eyesocket, across the thin scar that frames the dark circles under his right eye. He can only mentally brace for what the hand might do while his body remains uncooperative and relaxed, and it never comes.

“I…” his fingers stay threaded in his hair and grasping the junction between his head and neck. Craniocervical comes to mind, stability of the head and stops spinal cords from snapping with mild motion. Injuries to the area primarily caused by car accidents. Touching it’s sick it’s sick it’ll keep you here forever until it kills you. In his mind's eye, he can see the dissection and the mass seeping through. It’s what vulnerability is supposed to be. Murdock’s sure.

‘Stop touching me who are you are you ok-?’ His thoughts form a cacophony trapped in the orchestral pit of his stomach. He’s in an upright coma, helpless to anything that might happen to him. Murdock is half-heartedly hoping the mivacurium is just taking a little too long.

“Please…say somethin’...” His eyes burn into Murdock’s, the tint of his sunglasses not enough to completely obscure the deer in headlights look he returns. It would be easier to just crash into him; pretend he understands what’s happening now so the guilt stops branching out through his veins. With his pulse rising in his cheeks, burning against his hand, Murdock finally manages to move through the static haze of his nervous system. “Yancy?” It pops into his head, piercing through the blood likely leaking into his brain. And he smells like cigars and metallic and motor oil and so many stupid decisions. An ounce of colour attempts to creep back into Yancy’s face, breathless as he clutches Murdock’s face. Stiffly turning his neck, Murdock's nose brushes against the ‘I’ tattooed on his left hand. Bits and pieces of filmy memory float behind his eyes and he laughs despite the rawness of his throat. A phone call, crowded around the dissecting table, uncomfortably close at the side of the road, the idleness and look of knowing in the darkness of an office.

“That’s not right now, is it?” It whispers, creeping around the corners of his eyes. Stalking, skulking around his vision but never more than a missed blur. “Not how that goes. You break the rules? So can I.” Searching for external acknowledgment and only finding Yancy’s exhausted frame, he tries to continue through the apparent split. Soothed by the brushing against the bandages and tightly squeezing the tender skin, Murdock momentarily slips away. Just freaking out in the basement while convincing himself that they’d all be bleeding out into the street, just delusion.

Despite his eyes, seeing’s easier than hearing. While there’s no way to really discern the differences between sounds outside of his head and the relay within, he has to be exhausted and primed for a meltdown to fall for the jagged shapes of people and objects dancing in front of his eyes. Murdock sees; other people hear. Fractions of a second that don’t serve any purpose.

Yancy recognized the metallic clicking quicker than Murdock, well-practiced and his nerves frayed. One second of slightly widened eyes is all he gets before the shot rings out. It might’ve been John, he’d never had the misfortune of meeting him. Bile burns in his stomach, the added pressure of the other man stumbling into him almost tips him over. Sinking into the ground, sat on the boundary between the concrete and hardwood flooring. All that to die in a safe house? Or worse, slowly keeling over from peritonitis? Laughing wetly, he pulls them together, sagging head pressed into bloodied neck. Something presses into his leg, tucked into Yancy’s pocket. They’d been meaning to go down to a shooting range, Murdock was overdue and he couldn’t drug a bullet. It’s just too small, a box with rounded edges and soft velvet catching his skin. Sick to his stomach, he tries rising to his feet to drag them back into the boiler room.

Blood slicks the floor, spilling out from both of their abdomens.

One of them is worse off, he just can’t figure out who. The weapon being left in should be a good thing and his back feels dry. They’ve just got to move, Murdock pushing his hands onto the reachable side of Yancy’s wound while watching him slowly follow suit for his. It’s sharp, twisting and skin pulsing like he’s being gutted. Enough pressure to spawn spots in his vision, blinking in and out of the basement.

—-

“Please…say somethin’...” The light flickers, dimmer and dustier, the air thicker and drenched in old, yellow light. Pressure still stays firmly against his stomach, piercing through his lower abdomen and twisting a little too high. Penetrating abdominal trauma, causing cavitations from the sheer force of the object and destroying tissue like a targeted black hole. There’s something inside you. It felt a little more realistic, less of a delusion and more a narration. There is something more solid filling the bleed, Murdock tries opening his eyes to see if they’d ended up in a hospital, Hell (what chance did Murdock have of heaven?), maybe Gehinnom. He’d always wanted the comfort of that; temporary hell, God's waiting room. They’d have to burn with shame for a while, which would likely scar him more than classic brimstone and fire. You’re everyone’s idea of hell.

Yancy’s grips gone soft, the hands that were supposed to be pressing into his stomach barely ghosting around it. His own fingers twitch, lightly atop an arm. ‘C’mon big guy, put your back into it. I know you spent too much on the floor to let us both ruin it,’ he thinks, the moment of autonomy seemingly passed. First, his vision doubles, then parallaxes into an unrecognizable sight before blurrily re-merging. Different man, different room. It was him talking this time, eyes just as wide as his had been and already shiny with fear. A quiet groan breaks past his lips, ‘If this is who you hired to be a medic, fire them’, but the rest stays caught in his throat. Stubbornly, Murdock’s head refused to turn to get a bearing, leaving him staring and occasionally flinching in pain. With his head lulled forward, it leaves him the perfect angle to check the first-aid. Lodged in place of the entrance wound is the handle of a knife, deep enough that the metallic gleam is hidden somewhere between his left iliac and matching kidney. They’re here to finish you off. Salt in the wound.

Another groan emanates from the opposite side of the room, a little less tangible than his own. Echoey in the smaller room, sight of the other person blocked off by a large slab of a table. Practically fused to the floor, a metallic block with straps dangling down the side. Workshop. Another victim overpowered you. Pathetic. Weak. And was now hesitating on pulling the knife out from the other murderer. Murdock's hands fly to his stomach and he’s only half sure it was his own movement. Shifting the blade a little deeper, something viscous tearing as the handle started to sink into the wound. “Just a little accident…don’t worry…” he slurs, watching a new gush of blood run down his side in steady rivulets and drench the lower half of his sweater. Sighing, he hears a wet suctioning sound squelch in his stomach. Somewhere between getting shot and stabbed, he’s lost his precious sunglasses and has to squint to find the details on the other man's face. All fuzzy around the edges, like he’s bleeding into the air. There’s enough detail in his body that he can be sure it’s real, just blurry as his eyes continually refuse to adjust.

“Do not lie to me, don’t.” A pulse of blood weakly spills out, flesh contracting around the blade in a meager spasm. Though he’s numb to the movement in his body, Murdock at least felt whatever sensation met him. Distantly, as the searing pain starts to numb and spread across his stomach, he thinks he’s fucked. An organ or two had to have been pierced, bleeding into all the spaces in between and pushing the air from his lungs. All of it eagerly rushed through his ears, deafening him to the remaining panicked noises spilling out of the other man. Another automatic, unheard reply falls from his own mouth, unable to break from the script. Whatever it was, it earned him another hand against his face, thumb overtop the scar and forcing his head upright. “I love you Oliver..so much. It’s alright, I don’t mind...do what you think’s best.” Another part of him dies in disgust like he’s infected with full body necrosis. Not even the name drags up the phantom sensation of reciprocation like before with…Yanetz? Something like that.

Movement stirs from behind the table, a hand reaching up to yank a tool from his repurposed crash cart. There’d been someone else in the basement, bleeding just like him. The name had already escaped him like smoke through a window, a face all scrambled and mutilated. It could’ve been him; slowly clambering to his feet and puzzling over Murdock and the other man (Oliver apparently). “The fuck was that? Who the hell’s talking?” Even with two hundred milliliters of blood steadily dripping from his body, Murdock could at least understand that there had to be a man in front of him, it was too clean to be a delusion. You’re getting worse. Sicker. Sick sick sick sick man. Disgusting your heart’s going to give out. Circling around and around again you’ll always be sick. Kicking out his legs, either actively trying to move away from either of them or another prerecorded movement.

“I love you, I love you so much.” Oliver sobs, clinging to Murdock's skin and trying to keep his eyes open. It’s only in the back of his head where he can truly recoil and uncomfortably twist away. He wants to claw his way out of his skin whenever someone starts to cry; it’d ruined numerous kills when they started ugly-crying, heaving and retching through their swollen faces. Even he had his boundaries.

Before the armed man could fully cross the room, he froze, coughing and wheezing out lungfuls of air. Uncomfortably flushed, beet red. Maybe he’d managed to dose him with something; there’s a row of half filled syringes with contents spanning saline to blood to whatever he’d bought from uncomfortably confident men at two in the morning. Just a delayed death, until Murdock spots his feet. Both dangling a few inches from the ground. He clawed at his throat, raking welts down his neck. Down on the ground, he could even see the indents of fingers in his flesh. Squeezing the skin tightly, a vice that the man can’t pry away. Eventually, his face shifts from a boiling shade of red to nearly purple, finally going slack in the air before crumpling against the table.

As his vision continued to degrade in spite of his harsh blinking, he barely managed to catch Oliver's head turning back towards him, one arm lowering and sliding underneath his legs. “Always more tricks-” he groaned, before screeching like a stuck pig as he’s lifted from the ground. They’re moving, the steps jostling him and the knife. “No…no, please-” Something rises up his throat, spilling out of his mouth and dripping down his neck. Murdock barely tilted his head down, transfixed by the newest pulse of blood out from his stomach. Weakly pumping out from around the knife, slicking his fingers that tremble around the handle. The fight had bled out of him.

Spots danced across his vision and he couldn’t be sure if he preferred death or the next hallucination, but either would’ve been better than this humiliation. Murdock glared up at the man carrying him, waiting for the faux-pity to wear off so he could try kicking him away and finishing the job himself. He watched the edges of Oliver bleed out into the air, almost entirely corporeal. A more sensible part of his head, one somehow shielded from the head trauma and blood loss, told him that it’s his vision drifting. They never look like this, so detailed and interactable. They’re wild shapes and outlines he never managed to catch a full glance at, vivid for a few seconds before relegating themselves to the corners of his eyes.

The path was recognizable, the same few steps and stairs through his home that lead him to the bedroom. It’s too furnished, too neat. Murdock's eyes caught glimpses of paintings hanging on the wall, masking the degrading drywall. His house felt embalmed, forcibly resuscitated and kept on pitiful life support. He’s eventually laid on the sheets of his bed, paralyzed as his hands stay frozen around the knife. Pull it. Get out of here. It’s just below your skin get it out carve it out it’ll eat you alive. Murdock couldn’t even manifest a singular twitch of his fingers, left staring at the far wall until the man walked into his line of sight again. He crawled up the bed, sitting on Murdock’s knees and trying to pin him down. Maybe this was one of the men he’d buy the sedatives off of.

“…squeeze my hand, alright?” Murdock wanted to break his fingers. End the tenderness and go straight to the bruising like he’s supposed to do. His body was endlessly non-cooperable, letting go of the knife and slipping his blood-soaked fingers against his hand. The handle jiggled, sticking the blade in further to his stomach. He’s supposed to be a man, bite his tongue and grit his teeth, yell at the other man to get on with it; instead he screams, hot tears scraping down his face. A hand—deathly cold—pressed against his face as Oliver shushed him.

”I know, I know— I can’t keep this here, darling. I need to pull it out. You have to be strong for me, just for a little longer. It’ll be over much sooner once this is taken care of. Do you trust me?” Whatever scream his body squeezed out from his lungs could never match the protests dominating his mind. ‘No, no don’t touch me. No one touches me, you're going to do something stupid. Just put me down, take me out into the backyard and shoot me.’ A never ending onslaught of hands roamed across the wound, fingers prying at his own to break through his weakened defenses. They tore through his clothes, revealing the slowly draining colour of his skin and the weakening pulses around the knife. It's lodged firmly in between subcutaneous tissue and a cluster of muscle that burns with each attempt of a breath. There’s a faint squelching sound when his stomach rises, the blade twitching and narrowly touching a number of organs.

Unwillingly, his hand clutched at Oliver’s, digging white crescents into his palm as he’s forced to watch the knife be slowly unsheathed from his body. Murdock couldn’t remember the exact rate blood should flow, but the weak little spurts that pool against his skin seem too slow. Running on empty.

“You’ll fall asleep in my arms, just like every night before. I’ll keep you safe, I promise.” A needle pierced through his skin, the thread caught in the fissures of tissue and pulled it taut. He’s put something inside you it’s trapped in you now it’s a parasite it’s listening. Murdock’s mouth stayed clamped shut it’s controlling your body it’s in your skin and felt the cries ripped from his throat. It’s not even his body, God he hoped it wasn’t anymore.

The pounding in his head disguised the words being dragged from his mouth, the voice his own but so pathetic he couldn’t accept it to be real. Murdock felt it, declaring his love repeatedly to the man until he choked on the backlog of blood and spit accumulating in his throat. Eventually, his vision started to fully speckle out, praying that it’s finally over. Water splashed against his stomach, a towel pressed into his skin and a hand smoothed back the sweaty strands of hair stuck to his face.

Murdock forced a glance down at his stomach, slightly surprised that the stitching was immaculate, the pinched skin pieced together to a T. Fuck, he’s still alive. He should’ve been dead, gone, lost to time. Not so sickly and pale like a ghost.

Like a ghost in his own home, stretching out in the sunlight and reaching towards it like a sunflower. “Oliver…am I still alive?” It’s hoarse, but it’s his own. Rough and painful against the soft and musical tones—he missed the sound of Oliver playing, would he play Vivaldi for him again?—the last ray of light in the derelict house.

It still pulsed against his skin, pushing against the surface and trying to scratch through the fresh stitching. Hadn’t stopped, hadn’t left. He’s really done something awful to you. Murdock immediately digs his fingers into the fresh stitches, scratching the seam of his skin. Yanking and twisting through the thread until it finally splits, fighting against Oliver’s hands trying to pry him away. “Don’t try to shift too much…I’ll be here to keep an eye on you.” There’s greater desperation in his voice than he absorbed, hyperfocused on getting that thing out. His fingers reslicked with blood, spilling up to his wrist.

“You can’t leave me!” Oliver’s screaming echoed through his head as he triumphantly raised his hand above him. Clutching onto the slick, squishy thing that had been implanted in him. Murdock’s vision splits, fading in and out as he watches the small chunk of flesh slip from his hands. Hands were already across his chest, pushing hard into his sternum and stuffing the towel back into the wound.

He’s the victor. He’s always the fucking winner.

—

“You can’t leave me!” There must’ve been some lingering infection in his skin, twisting and pulling at his abdomen with agony as he stares down at the floor. Different room. No person. Furnished for the first time. Murdock's fingers kept digging deep into the fluff of the rug, kneeling in front of a coffee table. Someone’s behind you, can’t you hear them? But his head is impossibly heavy, keeping him hunched over an upturned box as a voice trails off behind him. It ebbs and flows out of his ears as he slowly focuses on the contents. There’s an absurd amount of cash and a credit card with the name ‘Blackthorne’ inscribed. Enough to run away with. Halle-fucking-lujah, he’s in the money. All he needed was his body to finally start cooperating and he could skip over state lines.

Stitches, it must just be them pulling themselves taunt at the awkward angle. You’ve really let yourself go. There’s a softness forced onto his body, overtaking the muscle and scar tissue he’d spent so long building. Oliver started it, appalled at the diet only describable as ‘army rations’. He’d know, after all. There’d been a box buried under the floorboards, dully thumping and shuddering until the blood had been scraped off that telltale heart of his. He’d been a lawyer, declaring Murdock’s insistences as noll and void.

“…to take care of you. To share what was mine with you. I love you, Murdock. And I am sorry.” A series of clicks and crackling proceeded, the tape perched somewhere behind him marched on. Eventually, it goes silent. Something wells in his left eye, dripping down his face and burning tracks bubbling into his skin. Just a recording. Real but not, switched on and off. A ghost in the machine, just a lost soul in time.

He’d only ever liked classical music for the superficiality it gave to his persona. An eloquent serial killer with fine tastes, nothing like the real life horrors. Fantasy. Fiction. Carmilla was filled with an assortment of CDs, only purchased because they were left in the classical music sections of the store. But Vivaldi is beautiful, achingly slow as it broke his chest open—‘would she have liked that?’ It’s distorted, dropping every uplifting sharp and falling into A minor.

It started to drag him back, the strange external contraction of his muscles moved him to turn around and face the voice recorder. Murdock could barely recognize the cassette in its age, dragging his fingertips along the edge before pressing play once more. Every note dragged something viciously sharp from his chest, pressing into his sternum before bursting through. Knocking him to knees, the melody carefully settled in his bones.

At first, his body bites back the first set of sobs. Fighting back against the strangling cries until it rips through his throat. Murdock felt the screams, the gasping, hiccuping breaths he made to compensate, but it was just slightly disconnected. A dampened sensation, trapped in his head while every inch of his body fights against him. Shuddering and jolting, his hands clamped around the edge of the coffee table and threatened to snap either fingers or legs. Each ragged breath was shallow, barely enough to fill his lungs as he forcibly mourned. Heat settled across the tightness of his jaw and poured off his skin, blooming down his neck. Murdock’s eyes burned, trying to blink through the induced fit.

His fingers twitched against the table, just far enough that he attempted to flick his wrists away from the edge. It’s sluggish, uncontrolled and dizzying, but he moves. Knocking himself back onto the floor, Murdock ignores the droning buzz starting to fill his head in favour of clawing at the carpet to pull himself further away. The smell of industrial sanitizer hits him as he drops face first into the floor, cutting through the rolling fog choking out his thoughts.

Move.

Better before it gets worse. Adrenaline rush before you die. It’s barely a crawl, his fingers scraping the floor and his knees stayed heavy. If he had to die, it’s on his terms; in the backseat of his car with a cocktail of sedatives. Quiet and warm, though he still hadn’t decided if he would have his makeshift notes in his hands or if he’d let the police solve it themselves. They’ll see it in your head. They’ll leave it in there, not even freed when you die.

A side table was close enough for him to try hauling himself up, eventually planting his feet on the ground. Once more, the dull thumping started back up in his head, blood pulsing past his ears and a pressure building up in his jaw. ‘Just a little further,’ he thought, wrenching his head back up to search for a door, ‘it can be over. Quiet’. Every movement had to be mechanically executed, another train of thought merging with the constant babbling stream of his own internal dialogue. Like a newborn faun, Murdock stumbled through the hallway, clinging to the wall until he saw the flicker of gaudy cherry-red through an open door.

Smacking into the side door, Murdock speared his keys through the lock until the door broke open, letting him snatch the reused prescription bottle from the glovebox and clamber into the backseat. Death wasn’t novel to him, not even his own. Peace had been long ago, that he’d go unnaturally no matter what. A police shootout, a victim overpowering him, the loan sharks hitting him in the head at just the wrong angle, locking himself into the house until he wasted away like a houseplant. All he’d wanted was a little bit of control, a final act of agency. But curled up in the backseat, he shakes the empty bottle like it’ll get unstuck. Empty. He wouldn’t have tried using it for a victim, it had been so carefully crafted to send him to sleep without feeling a thing. Murdock dropped fully onto the seats, the heaviness of his fingers slowly returning while he tried to turn the bottle in his hands. It’s not fair. He wanted to know.

A possible mercy emerged as he stirs in the backseat of Carmilla. If he had to guess, he’s fallen asleep in the car more often than his own bed. There’s a greater sense of peace, better than the open space of the house that could be filled with people. Comfortably claustrophobic. Night after night he’s been soothed by the gentle hum of the engine duetted by the fizzling crack of the radio. It’s left him stranded more than once, usually halfway through a job with someone stuck in the back. Or some of someone, if he’s been efficient. Murdock stays sprawled in the backseat, face pressed into the soft leather. Vivaldi echoing through the speakers, likely invading his sleep before. Once the car goes over a bump and the signal light clicks on, he started shoving at the seat to push himself up to no avail. There’s barely a twitch in his fingers, even though the skin of his hands goes white with strain.

“Not now, Herschel. All this effort…all this and I have to drive you around? I’m keeping you self-contained for the rest of this, heavens above. You better be worth the trouble.” A hand dismissively waved into the rearview mirror before ashing a cigarette in a cup holder. As the car slowly began to brake, Murdock’s head slumped to the side, turning to face the back of the driver's seat. Nothing but polished leather staring back at him, his eyes searching through his limited field of vision. Rapidly jumping between the stitching, moving so fast that another wave of sickness threatened to invade his chest. Opening and shutting his mouth, teeth clacking and snapping against each other as he kept trying to scream. You’ve been drugged you’ve been poisoned he’s going to ruin your car.

White particulates puffed out from the engine, matching the smoke curling out from the cupholder that’s slowly snaking towards his face. Thick and acidic, clawing down his unwilling throat and scraping down his esophagus like spoiled food. “If you aspirate in the backseat, I’ll bring you back and make you clean it.” Murdock tried to nod his head, only able to blink off-sync and barely suck in a breath. In spite of his distress, the gentle hum of the car soothed him slightly, the air smothering him to sleep.

Abruptness would be the newest concept he’d have to understand. There’s no in between, no respite. Just awake again, the world reappearing in front of him within a blink. From suffocating in the backseat to suddenly sitting up on a couch, facing a woman mid-conversation. "...darkness again. Then...I watched them leave with my damn body, watched Damien make it his own while I was trapped in that fucking prison. He promised it would be alright, he promised me." She carried an air of familiarity, leaving Murdock to wonder if they had met before. Maybe he’d killed her husband, another violent bastard that promised he could change. He hoped he did.

It felt entirely out of order, like he’d invaded the body of a real man and got front row tickets to watch his life unfold. Trapped in a prison, stuck eternally. God, he wished he could laugh. Murdock felt the motion of his mouth, slowly tuning out the frequency of a voice he thought was a few octaves lower. They know something’s wrong with you. Instead, his eyes drifted around the room until he caught something curling out from her housecoat; an ethylamine group tattooed on her shoulder. Murdock only ever bothered with biology, but he could pick out the elements of his favourite chemical, serotonin. Now that was out of order.

“I'm sorry...that was so much, I just...you deserve to know...I love you..." she’s soft spoken, squeezing his hand and drawing him in closer on the couch. There were things never meant for him. Murdock couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Three chairs faced them, sat silently and patiently. Stuck in his peripheral, their jagged shape jumping in the corner of his eye. All behind the thickly tinted lens of his sunglasses, eyes flicker and twitch in their sockets.

Movement. Both of them rose from the couch, finding his hand interlocked with hers and pinchingly tight. The easy movements of his body felt strained and sluggish, lagging behind the real world. For a few moments, it almost feels natural. Murdock’s pulled behind her by his uncooperative hands, a hum reverberating through his jaw.

“Do you like strawberry? I’d prefer to make them, but store bought is good in a pinch. I haven’t seen these before, strawberry crumble bars.” While his body settles into the strange domesticity, dropping his head onto her shoulder and stuffing two of them into his mouth, something started to crack. A cavity probably, God knows he didn’t have the best record with his teeth—the golden tooth fixed in his mouth was made of melted down pawnshop jewellery. Strawberry pink crumbs catch on his coat, nearly luminescent against his strict uniform of wine-dark colours.

When he’d painted (he’s sure he felt turpentine slipping past his fingers), he could make burgundy with pink and violet. Then the resulting shade would be there. Nothing good could come out of the pigment, only shades of a rotten pink. Sick like you. It would ruin her life. There’s never a dull moment inside his head, no one point of just a single, focused thought. Murdock’s back twinged at a handful of them, paint rotting on a palette, a man going mad in isolation turning towards his family—-family. Just the three of them. It burned dully behind his left eye; a twitching sensation shot through every nerve ending as he desperately clawed at his face. Get it out get it out it's going to kill you it’ll make you sicker. Spots flickered in that eye like a faulty headlight, slowly stealing his vision.

“Where is she? Petal—oh God it really is you—where’s Eva?” The cottage was their safe house, the alternative to Murdock’s prior lockdowns on the house. But he’d gotten better, they’d gone a full year without issue, no repeats of the axe incident. She’d be 6, when the little gap between her front teeth was prominent. But then it couldn’t be right, she was already in college for animal health sciences. They hadn’t even had her yet.

You’ll hurt her. “Merrick, Merrick, they’re following us. There’s something in the car, someone’s found us.” Sick man, sick child. “Please, please I promise that it’s real.” It’s too dangerous out there to walk, you’re trapped. Murdock’s dizziness fueled his panic, clutching her shoulders as his knees kept threatening to give out and his feet felt numb. It’s out there, stalking and pacing back and forth and back and forth until it wears a track through their bodies. “It’s gotten inside me, you need to get it out, it’s inside me, it’s inside me!” Wriggling, sickening, parasitic mass embedding itself in his chest and drilling through his spine.

Pressure swelled behind his eyes, the bloody hyphemas pushing against his irises. Three seconds of splintering vision and for a moment there’s a thousand of her, reaching up at him with a reserved fear behind her eyes. They’ve done this before. He knows the voice that echoed could’ve only been hers. “I know you can see something, I believe you. Can you tell me who Eva is? Is she the one outside?” She’s hiding her from you. She’s scared of you.

“No, you don’t get to do this to me,” he breathed, eyes wide and blown out. “Merrick, please. You know I wouldn’t hurt her, I’ve been getting better. I’m not dangerous!” It felt like his skin was splitting, bursting at the scenes the longer he gripped at her arms. Eva was just a baby, but he can’t remember how long it had been since she was a baby. “They’re outside and they’re going to take her next, I know it. We can’t let them find her, we need to cut that thing out of me before it kills me. Come on, you have to believe me! You–you had that whole entity thing! That’s more unbelievable than this, so come on–why aren’t you listening to me!?” Murdock could feel it ripping through his skin, bursting through muscle and collagen to start infecting his blood. There’s not much time left. Didn’t she care? It was going to kill them and she was just staring.

Her eyes, he’d thought they were just purple, but they look more Violet. Brilliant and all-knowing, cutting through his gaze, accompanied by a flat laugh. They’d killed together; it’d been their sinister little meet-cute, going after the same victim and fighting over who got to claim it. They should’ve made a joint name to kill under, wouldn’t that have been romantic? Temporarily lost in the softer edges of his mind, Murdock didn’t catch the movement until she ripped his hands away and knocked him to the ground. Warped flooring dug into his spine, loose nails catching in his sweater and pinning him down like a preserved insect.

“How does it feel, hm? Can’t run to the misses like you usually do, Mr. Serotonin?” Violet’s veiled face leant over him–they never even got married, they didn’t even get engaged–cocking her head to the side as Murdock struggled on the ground. There’s no movement as his throat started to shut, esophagus collapsing under no weight. It’ll be a backyard service, loose in the dirt like roadkill or a sort-of-loved pet.

“It hurts,” he wheezed, the pulse in his eyes slowly fading.

—

“It hurts,” he spat, gagging on a chunk of clotted blood stuck halfway down his throat. An ugly pulse pulls on his sternum, drawing his eyes open to another basement. That’s three out of four; he’s started to get sick of these sets. The left lens of his sunglasses had shattered, leaving only his right eye covered and searching around the room. It’s the most claustrophobic so far, he could kick out his leg and almost touch the wall. A singular light stands in the corner, lent against the wall and casting unnaturally shaped shadows across the floor. Both his feet barely scrape the floor, the lip of one boot catching in a crack in the concrete.

She’d find him, he prayed that she would at least try. He wanted a comfortable death, where the edges of his skin faded into the air and her hands wrapped around his. Something in the warm expanse of the void to finally steady his hands without vice. He’d want to die with her every time they met, it would be heaven on Earth. He’d live for her if she asked.

Murdock's head fell back, eyes unfocused on the pipe his hands have been bound to. Greeted by a finger knocked to a fifteen degree angle to the right and half a fingernail, he groans and grits his teeth. Metacarpophalangeal joint dislocation, damn bastards. It would’ve been better if they’d just cut it off. Somehow, he’s already begun to miss the jarring disjunction of not recognizing anything.

It’s brain damage. Hallucinating as you go in and out, you’ve done it before. Lucidity isn’t his friend, pulling him to the forefront of his mind to bear the influx of sensation in his body. Delirium, nothing more. A tremor has taken hold of his upper body as a result of the constant stretch of the tendons in his arms. What if they snapped? Something flickers beside him, snapping his head towards the movement.

Eye to eye with another man, Murdock strains his eyes trying to recognize him. There’s something beneath his skin that screams familiarity, once known but now forgotten. A little too short to be Yanetz, too tall to be Noll, and it seemed too sudden for…Maria? Maria to have masculinized so suddenly. Squinting harder, he even tries leaning towards the man. Feet scraping the ground, thought matching his movement. This was the real stuff then.

“Oh thank G-“ Murdock tried to rip his hands from the bar, only to see the man crowd in on him with something heavy in his hands. It cracked against his stomach on impact, splinters from the bat weaving themselves into his clothes. It bruises all the way back to his spine, reigniting a network of pinching pain that burns across his body. Partially dangling from the ceiling and taking more swings of the bat, he can only think of himself as a very fleshy piñata.

“Where’s the money, Mr. Dock?” A thick strew of maritime consonants hits him nearly as hard as the bat and he’s hoping it knocks him out. “‘Magine tha bosses gonna be right pissed with you when he finds out how long you’ve been dodgin’ our calls. We’ll be needing some more…collateral from yah.” Smacking the top of his shoulder like they’re just buddies fucking around, the man—Jason, he thinks given the coarseness of his voice—sizes him up. “Jay-sus kid, you’re looking worse than usual.”

Sweat stuck to his skin, plastering strands of hair across his forehead. Cold and blanched, eyes sunken and twitching behind shattered sunglasses. He felt the paleness in his skin, the hollowness of his veins and the vague thumping at the base of his skull. Every breath burns, acidic as it goes back down. The bitter taste of decomposition sat in the back of his mouth, forcing his stomach to lurch. You need to get the poison out now before it kills you. Murdock managed to spit out a tiny thread of saliva, retching once more on an empty stomach. He’s forced to stop as the repeated cramping unearths a jagged stabbing pain in his side, left gasping and trembling on weak muscles.

“Take it easy ‘Dock, don’t go ruining my shoes like that. You used to take it better, you already goin’ soft on me?” One of his shoulders was shaken to recapture his attention, knocking his sunglasses onto the floor. Murdock’s dimmed eyes grew wide, weakly shaking his head. “Nah, nah s‘course not. I’m good, I’m good.” Though still heavy, he could actually feel the movement of his jaw. Even the jagged remains of the golden abutment eroding against his tongue. It would’ve been easier if he’d just kept hitting until he got bored, called away, anything but a half-pitied pause. Murdock gagged, lifting his head up before it lulled to the side again. A thick cloudiness had settled across his mind, weighting whatever’s left between his ears and dragging it towards the ground.

“Get some Z’s kid, get to thinking ‘bout where you’re pulling that money out of.” Smacking his shoulder and abandoning the bat on the floor, the man left Murdock there, scraping the floor with his boots. He remembered Jason, faster than the others already fading into broken neural pathways. Their faces felt distant again, only occasionally focusing on a handful of features: tattoos, hands, eyes and teeth.

Time dragged on, spaced out by the dull thumping building in the base of his skull. Murdock could only wait, twisting his head to take in the shape of the room. The solitary lamp is shaded in moth-eaten fabrics, dispersing the light out in jagged rays. Illuminating the pinkness of his skin, still flushed from all the blood rushing towards the violet bruising blooming across his skin. A speckle of gold glints in the filthy lighting, likely still stamped with the miniscule seven hundred and fifty from the shoddy melting job. They told him he could’ve waited for a realistic tooth that wouldn’t look so off-putting, but Murdock could only think of how intimidating it would be. Numerous infections and bodily rejections had to be worth its weight in gold.

Forty minutes, the time needed for all Four Seasons to play out in his head. Numbness had started creeping up his forearms, overtaking the remaining sensation of his fingers. Murdock could sort of balance on his toes, slowly stretching one leg back until he’s frozen in an arabesque, awkward and angular. It would’ve been easier if he’d kept practicing, the movement fluid and smooth like shed velvet. Another life maybe.

You could shed your skin and run. You’re supposed to do something great. You’re a winner. You’re the smartest man in the room. You could outsmart them. Do it. Do it do it do it do it do it.

“Go on Herschel, prove me wrong. Just don’t let your hands get caught, that’s one of the best things about you.” Stalking behind him, its voice grating through the ringing of his ears. Gently pushing into Murdock’s thigh until his leg fell back to the ground, it tugs at his hips, trying to flatten his feet against the ground. Hanging there like meat. Strung up stupid little thing it’s your fault.

“Are you done yet?! I’d rather be bleeding out in that miserable little house than having a fucking acid trip!” Something must’ve been in the water, the food, anything that he touched must’ve been poisoning him. Permeating through his skin and diffusing into his lungs, endlessly contaminated. A specimen, poked and prodded again and again until they found something. Until it grew out of his skin and ripped out half his organs in the process. Out of his body, freed. It just wouldn’t stop moving.

Footsteps creaked down the stairs, slowly encroaching into the space like a predator moving into position. ‘He’ll see it too,’ he thought, scrambling to kick back while it bruised his hips. ‘He'll see it and I can kill it. Trick it. Scrub it out of my skin’.

“C’mon man, you gotta–you gotta let me out! Don’t you see it? It’s gonna kill me, don’t you see it?” The door slowly opened, the high pitched scraping of metal on concrete bleeding through his ears. Fingers, pointed and jagged in his hips, still dug into his skin, waiting to pierce through and skewer him. Real, solid, biting into bone. “Please, please-” he begged, raggedly breathing in between sobs. It’s going to kill him.

“Just look at me! Look at me! It’s gonna kill me, look at it!” Murdock gasped, staring incredulously at Jason as the door opened. It’s right there, he had to see it. It made him sick.

“Please, why aren’t you listening to me? It’s going to kill me, you need to get it out!” A sharp point finally pierced through him, his skin tightening across his body. It’s everywhere. Scars blistered up across his back, something metallic began to crawl along the top of his skin before piercing through into a vein, ink bubbled beneath his skin to redecorate his body, and something knocked hard enough into his side that he’s sure part of his hip shattered. ‘You shouldn’t have made fun of the dog.’

“Please, it’s gonna kill me if you don’t get it out! I can’t go like this, you see it, right?” His thoughts aren’t his own anymore, rewritten and removed and replaced until he wanted to crack his skull open just to pick out the last of his own thoughts.

“Get it out of me, it’s in me, it’s in me and it’s going to kill me! Oh G-” The wet crunch somewhere in his chest silences him, knocking the wind and momentum out of his panic. There’s an extra inch of space for the cap of the bat to press into, shifting slightly into his abdomen.

“C’mon ‘Dock, you think it’ll be that easy to worm yah way outta paying? Don’t care if you’re a fucking headcase or what, you’re a stupid kid who still owes us at least ninety-two thousand before the end of the year. And you know what the date is?”

It’s still there, infecting him slowly. Murdock could barely think, his stomach turning as he tried to remember. “It’s…I think, is it something in May?” It could be, he can’t remember the snow, just the cold. The bat was jammed further into his chest, shifting a fragment of bone down into his chest cavity. “Not even close. Bad luck kid.”

‘Just kill me, just make it stop, everything hurts’ Barely able to turn his head, Murdock looked for the slightest hint of it moving. “I’ll get the money, I swear!” Anything to make it stop, even for a few days. Release from life, release from near-death, whatever it’ll give him. His eyes stayed screwed shut as it wound up again.

–

“I’ll get the money, I swear!” Sensation returned first, suddenly overwhelmed by a wildfire of prickling pain encircling his lungs. Murdock's voice is shattered, wheezing as something climbs up his esophagus and drips down his chin. Foamy, pink, and coming up in little clusters. ‘Serratia marcescens’ he thinks. A mold, planted in his brain for no discernible reason other than being convoluted and pretentious. He must’ve been dropped, ropes cut so he could collapse against the stony concrete. Cold and solid, still there. He might not have been thrown about this time, stuck in the basement. Enough head trauma, enough coagulated thought dripping down the back of his neck, induced hallucinations that try and fail to be comforting in his final moments. You’re going to die, you need to move.

Above him, watching him with a half-bored expression, is yet another man. Different. Another concrete floor, just set in a larger room. Different. Nothing’s new anymore. Maybe it’ll get him here instead. Second location, wouldn’t he know enough about that? Murdock tried his best to avoid being taken. It’ll find you. No one believes you. Only you can see it. It’s real. A little more grit than he remembered from their usual drop-off zones, biting into the back of his head.

Murdock couldn’t bring himself to move anymore, refusing to budge an inch off the floor. There didn’t seem to be a point anymore; why bother trying if he could be disappointed? He stayed still, passive as the wound on his side slowly pulsed. It felt familiar, it would happen again. Phantom pains plaguing his stomach while the knife's handle slapped against forearm. A little more to the left than before, he was sure of it. Running his tongue across his teeth, he sighed in relief once he found all of them intact and whole. Small mercies.

“I tried, again and again, to see anything of worth in you,” he groaned, striding across the room until a leather shoe dug into Murdock’s bleeding side. A small gush of blood tops off the pool forming beneath him, the fabric around the knife oversaturated and dripping. Stars circled around his eyes, bursting like fireworks when he stared too long at them. You didn’t do it right. You fucked it. You’re going to die because you couldn’t get it out in time. At least that’s what he hoped explained the five inch blade buried in his chest. Too far to the right, Murdock could still feel it pulsing in his lower abdomen and creeping into his spine.

They’d put in him, the parasite bursting through layers of tissue now it was finished gestating. And the one time he could get it out, it’s too fucking far away. It wasn’t stupid, it wouldn’t escape any other way. It needed to be carved out whole, one piece, contained.

He’s closer now, reaching down towards the knife buried in Murdock's chest. Glorious saviour, outstretched hand of God to free him from infestation. Remembering who he was didn’t matter, not if it would finally draw the last of the poison saturated into his skin.

“I really did. I made an effort, which is more than what can be said about you.” Cold and cutting, surgically precise. ‘I did try,’ he thought. ‘I did everything, tore through it all until it felt like there were spiders crawling beneath my skin.’ Murdock choked on a mouthful of blood, spitting it up onto the man’s shoes. Disgust cuts through his face, crushing Murdock’s sternum with the heel of his boot.

Outstretched, his hand carefully wrapped around the blade trapped in Murdock’s paralyzed body. Freedom, it’ll be finally cut out from the wretched shape of him and the missing chunk will make him whole. Dissect him, carve out his chest in two easy lines that meet at a ‘V’.

It twists, a curved point buried in his abdominal walls catching fat and muscle, ripping something heavy inside of him. Murdock squealed, curling in on himself as pressure started to build in his chest. It distended the skin, raising ridges and valleys like an omnipotent god creating the first plains. With the next cry, there’s a heavy, sucking sound emanating from his chest. Thick and wet, squelching as he exhaled.

“Well, if anything, you were a lucky son of a bitch for a while, huh? Feeling up my brother whenever you wanted,” he chuckled, tapping the handle. One quick, one long, two more quick taps. Then he flicked the blade twice in rapid succession, before one last twist. He knows what’s wrong with you.

Despite all the blood rapidly pouring from his body, the name comes quickly to his tongue. Ace. Not the man above him, the Ace he remembered the most was only threatening when he didn’t understand why Murdock wouldn’t listen to him. It was suffocating, the clingy little bitch, but the money was good. Did it make him a very complicated type of prostitute; getting paid as his bodyguard, dating him, and then begging for money after getting roughed up.

‘Not whenever,” he thought, his jaw falling open and spilling out the clumps of coagulating blood. ‘Took him ages to start putting out.’

“Using him as a fucking shield. Should have killed you months ago, and you always managed to squirm away. Fucking worm.” And Adrian: the man who was supposed to be his next step up the ladder. Ace was fine enough, sweet and dumb. But the little involvement he had in the family work wasn’t enough to save Murdock forever; he was barely making it by the skin of his teeth. A better meal ticket, even if he felt more like a strange bed warmer to the man.

His movement was sporadic, rough and jerking, but the impulse was finally his own. Murdock pressed his palm into his right eye, gasping in an empty breath. “Oh G-d…please, please save me,” he whispered, wasting his last breaths on a prayer he no longer could pronounce.

Adrian wrenched the knife from his chest, wiping it down across Murdock’s forearms. There’s no dramatic arc, no glorious cinematic. A pathetic pulse, the pressure relieved only from his circulatory system.

“I told you once: you make him frown, and I’ll end you. His love won’t save you now, Murdock.You’re all mine.” Sick. Unsalvageable. Too far gone to be helped.

Years ago, he really had tried to get help. When he could remember what was wrong with him, when he was living in the backseat of Carmilla and receiving the first of hundreds of notices from the loan sharks, when he could still feel the radiating pains coursing across his face. There’d been a tiny clinic at the edge of town, he checked himself in and sat through the intake. They started it. They made you sick. Scheduled his days. New trial, gluten-free toast, monitored swimming, blood pressure, stop smoking, try nicotine gum, stop taking nicotine gum, vocational training, yoga, group therapy, individual therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, take care of a cat to learn structure, it’s too much responsibility no more cats, plain whitefish and cauliflower rice, try not to think about how they’re always watching you, don’t forget to take your vitamins You don’t remember what was in them, remember to never be aggressive in front of staff or they won’t let you out to buy your sacred honeycomb chocolate this week. He lasted barely a month, discharged himself and never refilled the prescription.

It’s standing behind Adrian, just out of view. Spindly and poisonous limbs gently running up and down his back, whispering to him with venomous intent. It made the man laugh, dragging bloodied fingers down his face.

“And on top of all that, God, do you know what they asked us to pay? As an apology for the inconveniences your presence has brought on? 92 thousand dollars. 92-fucking-thousand dollars of debt, and that’s not even all of it, is it?” Adrian looked like he was going to split at the seams with his manic laughter.

“Thank fuck they said they’d happily take your washed up corpse over payment. Look at that, maybe there is something valuable about you!” There’s not a pulse to hammer through his skull, to remind him of his imminent death. Quiet, silent and suffocating and running through his body like a live wire.

“Please, please don’t kill me! I don’t want to die, please!” Murdock’s voice had been screamed raw, hiccuping and retching as he finally stopped being able to take air in. It’s not heaven, it’s not the beautiful end. It’s the death of roadkill.

—

Split and unpeeling, his skin felt half-rotted away. It wouldn’t go, still retaining a muted pulse and feeding off of him like a malignant parasite. Some days it would go graciously silent, retreating from the surface of his skin to lie dormant. Murdock would tense, waiting for its return each time. It had really just moved, worming through his stomach and branching away from his spine to form thickened knots of muscle that burned with the slightest stretch. He knew it had to be him. They told him in patterns how special he was, if he followed the rules he’d never be caught. One night, curled up alone in a hostel bed on Valentine’s Day, he’d spotted them in the pixelated graphics of a magazine article on his phone. Only days after his first ever intentional murder–the one who kept screaming so shrilly Murdock eventually butchered their tongue out and got dropped in the alleyway between a shuttered pet store and a pharmacy with half-shattered neon signs–it popped up on his phone. Tongue ties, shortened muscles in the tongue that made it harder to speak and eat. They’d known.

He’d tried it again months later, a little cleaner that time. Severing connective tissues before forcing it down their throat, bloodied saliva clinging to his fingers. In the morning on his bi-weekly stop in the public library to clean his face and fail at getting through another book from the middle school section, there’d been a display set up for murder mysteries. ‘The Silent Patient’, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, ‘The Hunting Party’; then ‘Cat Got Your Tongue’, published nearly a year before to date. It was right there. They knew. There wasn’t even an investigation into either deaths, they must’ve protected him. They liked him. He was special.

Okay! So, here's why this monster of a text exists. For the last year or so, I've been working on a horror concept surrounding Murdock and his lore, and it recently escalated from being a long fic, to being a set of models, to a website, to now an honest to god coded game. I would say it's because I'm insane but it feels a little insensitive to use that kind of language after writing this. There's five other short stories that are mostly written, which I'll post with each milestone of development! It's nothing crazy, it's a point-and-click, not Dark Souls. I've finally got some concept art I'm happy with and partially coded bits I wanted to share. It's really silly, but this blog and the people I've met over the last three years have meant a lot to me. It's why all these short stories will be featuring their characters in a multiverse round robin (i think that's what a round robin is either that or a very overfed bird).

How long will all this take? Your guess is as good as mine. I'm working on this in between my job and social life (currently in the process of prepping to move in with my girlfriend of nearly 7 years), I have very little coding experience, even with the platform I'm using it's a learning curve. Probably before 2030 (i don't think it'll take that long but knock on wood). But I'm too deep in to stop (the entire script for the game is finished and nearly all location thumbnails), so it'll be done.

Thank you.

Bruno, the mold

Here’s a fun little mock-up! (I tried coding it the version in engine to work so I could be extra cool instead it freaked out so. Edited together the exploded corpse)

#violent visionary (event)#a stab at it

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