[[ x..x on iPod so no read more. Gomen. Uh TW: torture, and what ever else goes with torture warnings]]
Rose opens her eyes and it’s pitch black.
Everything feels like it’s upside down and there’s a small pounding in her head. She blinks but there’s only darkness. Something hard and firm is wrapped around her skull, some kind of headgear that prevents her from moving her neck to much. It feels like metal when the cold hard knob scratches against her neck. The more aware she becomes, the more her memories come back to her, helping her remember what made her pass out in the first place.
He said his name was Clover.
The next thing Rose knows, there’s a door creaking and swinging open. The lights flicker on and she’s blinded for a moment from the brightness. She realizes that she’s upside down. The flat bed she’s strapped to is angling her whole body downwards, head first and that explains a lot. She doesn’t know how much more she can take of being tortured. The headgear was enough. She was ready to get out. Desperate to just leave. The green skinned man walks in and approaches her. He’s smiling.
He’s always smiling.
Rose knows that if she ever escapes from this alive, his smile will haunt her nightmares. It’ll stay with her forever and she won’t be able to escape it. It’s because the smile isn’t forced. He isn’t a paired mask of gaiety. She can see, even from down where she is, how much he’s enjoying the situation. How well he’s just taking everything in and not letting his excitement affect his work. The dizzy sensation is just everywhere at once for her. She isn’t even moving or turning her head but she feels nauseous.
Every sensation and appearance goes tipsy and her whole body begins to settle a foreign feeling to her. It’s as if she’s going to be ejected from herself at any moment. Sounds are the same however and even her eyesight is unimpaired despite how drunk she feels. She starts getting tired of the nausea and just wants to leave this place, even as the blood slowly rushes to her brain. But struggling is futile. She wouldn’t be in the situation if it were easy to escape. To leave.
He swings something metallic into view. It looks like pliers, but Rose is almost certain it can’t be that. Her heart is hoping it isn’t. But then something cold touches her fingers and her eyes water with fear. She can’t see what he’s doing, not without straining her eyes down to look. Rose doesn’t think she wants to watch because he looks calm. He’s too nonchalant, his expression blank and telling. Normal people release hints but there’s nothing there but his fucking smile. It’s horrifying.
The panic inside doubles when she can feel the way the pliers wiggle and clamp down under one of her nails. Her eyes bulge in terror, body already protesting as she jerks against her restraints. She doesn’t want to die here. “Please, please, please, you don’t have to do this!” She rushes out quickly in a desperate gasp, her voice hoarse with dehydration. Her heart races as she twists helplessly in her bindings while he keeps the pliers steady and ready to pull. “Please, l-let me go, you don’t have to do this, you don’t-“
“Ssshh, sshh. You’re ruining the moment.” He finally speaks. His voice is soft and warm and gentle; all those safe ridiculous things a person feels when they’re with family and cherished ones. It’s all a lie. Which just makes it as equally deranged as someone at a slaughter. She’s so afraid right now. She doesn’t want to feel safe with him. She doesn’t want to be safe here. Because she knows deep down she isn’t.
“Please,” she whimpers, eyes filling with water while her breathing quickens and he stalls more. Her mind is racing with ideas. Maybe she can convince him to let her go. Maybe she can pray to his humanity. Maybe he’ll pity her. Maybe she can—In the second of her racing thoughts, Rose’s nail is pulled off. It tears from her finger with a horrified shout. Her whole body begins to shake and he doesn’t stop. He takes one more, then two and then the last one until her right hand is bleeding from her fingers.
He moves onto her other hand and she screams at him, practically wailing for him to stop. “No!! No, please! I beg of you, please! Stop!!” Three nails one after the other and she’s choking on her sobs. She cries out, the sound tearing through her throat until he’s finished. Her throat aches, scratchy and worse than before, she thinks she’s going to be sick. She’s never cried this much in her life. The stinging pain in her fingers is distracting. Her fingertips pulse and there’s enough blood that it’s pooling around her wrists and spilling down her forearms.
She can hear how some of the blood brood onto the concrete floor below her.
Drip
Drip drip
Pluck
Clover bends, short but not enough to be at eye level with her. He’s grinning more and just watching her before his hand comes out to touch her face. He forced her to look at him. “Hi,” he starts, giving an air of obliviousness. “Do you know who I am?”
Rose whimpers and she opens her mouth before he’s placing the pliers onto her upper lip. She stops, the tears drenching her bangs as she stares at him with more panic and fear. “I didn’t say you could speak,” he states in a matter of fact tone. He stares her down until the whimpering quiets down and she’s just breathing in a difficult manner. It’s all the crying she’s doing, he thinks faintly. He smiles though at her, giving her face a gentle caress, wiping a trail of her tears away with a gloved hand covered in splotches of blood.
“Good girl.” And Clover’s relaxing, sitting back on his heels; his outfit an ever elegant picture of proper suit attire. He’s not wearing his outer jacket though, he doesn’t want to get any blood on his sleeves. He brings his hands up, showing them to her and the pliers aren’t anywhere in sight. Smiling, he wiggles his fingers before touching the complex headgear. He starts untwisting the spears from her head while he talks. “Now I hate to have done any of this to you. Really I do. Such a pretty little thing doesn’t deserve to be treated in such a way..”
And Rose doesn’t know what he’s planning on but he sounds sentimental. Somehow he’s managing to get her to relax, let her guard down because oh god, he’s going to let her go. Rose can’t see past her own frantic thoughts that the next words he speaks go right over her head. “I’m going to try to make this as painful as possible for you. And who knows if we’ll let you go after. It’s not for me to decide.” He says it and she isn’t paying attention.
It’s ultimately the downfall of her sanity.
Once the headgear and spears were taken from her head, Rose let’s out a quiet sigh. She expects him to let her go and Clover is just shaking his head, chuckling as he begins to whistle a little tune. He places a cloth over her face and leans down to whisper in her ear. “No p e e k i n g~”
He sings and Clover’s humming his tune. Happily tapping his foot in time while he walks around the girl on the flatbed. He stops at her bare feet, on the opposite end of her angled body. The pliers are back again and he sings his song, lyrics drifting from his mouth like a music box. His words are smooth and he plays with the pliers like a pair of knifes. He actually wishes he had brought the butterfly knives. Things would have been much more fun that way. However Clover digresses in his own thoughts, taking the pliers to her toenails and ripping them off as well.
There is no warning but there is a lot of screaming. The girl knows how to use her lungs and all it does is rile Clover up more. He wants to hear more and with each unceremonious pluck of her nails, he gets just that. She screams bloody murder, trying to twist away from him but the bonds are tight and her struggling does nothing to deter him. He starts to hum his song louder before getting to his favorite part and sings. “Every morning.. Every evening. Ain’t we got fun~. Not much money, oh but honey, Ain’t we got fun~. The rent’s unpaid dear, we haven’t a bus. But smiles were made dear, for people like us. In the winter in the summer, don’t we have fun~.”
By the time he’s moving to her other foot the cloth over her face is gone. Rose begs him to stop but Clover continues to hum, ignoring her as he tears off the rest of her nails. He’s gotten splatters of blood all over his suit. It’s not easy pulling at the tiny suckers and his gloves are drenched in her blood. He’s still smiling though, whistling until he can sing the next chorus. It’s almost like he’s singing to her, while he tick tocks his index finger from side to side in a wag.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” He picks up the rag, placing it back over her face as Rose tries to bite him.
“You’re crazy!! I want someone else. I want someone else in here!!!” Clover snerks—as if she has a choice—loudly enough that it makes Rose stop for a minute before he’s back to whistling. He pulls at the rags ends and holds them with one hand while the other tips a pitcher of water over the rag and the girl’s face.
“Twins and cares dear come in pairs dear, Don’t we have fun~. We’ve only started…Are we downhearted…Ain’t we got fun.” His singing fills the room along with the distinct noise of splashing water hitting the floor. Rose’s sounds of protests are more muffled as he holds the rag tight and continues to spill more water to stifle her.
“Times are so bad and getting badder. Still. We have fun.”
The blood rushes to her cheeks and spills out of her nose when you hit her with your fists.
Warm smiles. An exchange of words.
Her name doesn’t fit her face. Well. Not anymore it doesn’t. Not when you’ve gone and gotten it all bruised and broken.
She introduces herself with a soft, almost educated voice. His tone is open, welcome even and hey look at the cute kid trying to hit up on someone, what five times his senior? What she doesn’t know is he’s older. That his smile is fake and how much trouble she’s really in for.
The red’s a nice touch though. A small glimmering homage to her name, smeared all over her face and neck. She doesn’t talk. Not that it matters. You both sit in silence.
There was a lick of silence before when she touched his face. Fingers gliding over pale green skin. She says something about his freckles and he laughs. It’s broken and full of amusement. She seems to like it enough and that’s how he gets her.
The silver chain wrapped around your hands and knuckles is covered with her blood. Neck snapped, you’ve decided to set her back down in the chair she was sitting in earlier. There are no prints. There is no sign of forced entry, or any entry at all. You’re so tiny, that you barely leave an imprint in the room.
He doesn’t know why Scratch wants her dead.
You never question the man who practically brought you into something you’ve always wanted. He gave you a family. You kill and do his bidding.
Shame the girl has to die. He doesn’t feel normal emotions like regret or sadness in this instance.
Shame she basically got in the way. You know better than to make attachments. She was just another liability.
