Benjamin – Citadel #1 ‘Keep Out’
My thoughts weighed heavy as the me's sat and waited. As if our immobility and inaction was a penance that could replace what.
NO. Not what, WHO...Who was lost...
All three of me strained at the invisible shackles of duty and responsibility that restrained us, despite the wrathful thoughts of revenge that raged within us all.
Over and over again we unilaterally planned and discarded the proportionate means to make those responsible pay for what they had done and who they had taken from the world...From us…
And as those thoughts spawned and extinguished like hate filled fireworks in an eternal night, the occasional pathetic voice of passivity would surface within one of us. Mule-ing that death only begat death and served to only continue a cycles of destruction, that we should instead attempt to contrive courses of action around what Gérard would have wanted.
However such thoughts were near instantly snuffed out by the fact that the best Frenchman any of me had ever had the honor of knowing was dead. His end vanquishing any long lived want or wish for anything good...Forever...
We collectively became aware of our charge after one such sniveling bout of humanity was unceremoniously extinguished, on account of her standing statue like in the doorway. Watching us in silent and intent accusation.
Giselle was no longer battered and bruised, nor clad in tarnished and torn clothing. Evidenced by the fact that before us stood a woman who had somehow, some way rebuilt herself since our vigil began and all of me could only sit in awe of her as we could never hope to be half of what inhabited our gaze.
Yet when one of us had courage enough to meet her eyes, we found the triplicate knowledge of her re-clad and healed exterior was but a façade of artifice only made possible with the systems tarnished gift of magic.
Within the windows to her soul we could see that no matter how upright or rejuvenated her worldly boundary appeared, the inside was most assuredly a fractured chaos held together by the barest of margins.
Neither of us spoke as we watched one another, as if we were two opponents waiting for the other to divulge their weakness first.
But when we'd made our choice to speak it seemed that she was of the same mind as a me began.
“How ar-“
She blurted.
“Wat wi-“
The void of sound that followed was an oppression near unbearable as we both immediately halted our words of approach. Then our rebellious throat bypassed our selves as it released a chuckle.
Thankfully, our utterance was joined by a feminine giggle from the rooms other occupant as we surveyed each other in bemusedly blasphemy.
Not wanting to quash whatever words it had taken her so long to provide, a me extended our hand in an encouraging manner and relaxed in no small part when she nodded and obliged my's gauntleted gesture to take up a gaudy seat directly opposite, while realigning her features to an impassive rest she probed.
“Wat do you plan to do?”
A cowardly me considered talking evasively of recuperative things, of the benefits of leaving such topics for when she had taken stock and moved to a ‘better place’.
Yet My other two selves shredded the thought for the craven minded hypocrisy that it was, as all three me’s near instantly re-ratified the fervent 'no bullshit policy' we had always endeavored at Bruce’s behest.
“Make them suffer as much as I can before they die.”
Despite our internal bracing for the expected backlash to the inhumanity of my's statement, a visceral grin cracked her impassive facade.
Giselle’s eyes then took on a manic quality whilst she demanded.
“I wish to see et.”
Taken aback at bringing one of our few remaining charges, Gérard’s still breathing and precious daughter. In the vicinity of what is to be a glacially paced flaying, was not going to happen. At least if some of me had our way...Silence starts to drag as my minds split their quorum, wishing to adhere to equally opposed plans.
Once the triumvirate rests though, one me pathetically offers.
“I-I can’t…”
Worse than incoherent screaming, the woman across from me asks in a far too even tone.
“Why not?”
Treading lightly like we're in the middle of a Cambodian minefield, a me furthers.
“T-there’s no way I can guarantee your safety whil-”
Scorn enters her voice as Giselle spits.
“Where waz zis noble concern for my safety lazt week!?”
More startled at the apparent passage of time than her accusation, another less alarmed mind counters.
“If I had of known what they had planned, I would’ve hunted them down well before this whole thing be-“
Snorting in derision she rejoins.
“Spare me your liez monzter…Besidez, if I do not ave zis, I may azwell be dead an-“
Anger blooms as a me snaps.
“NO!...If you want it so bad get strong enough to do it yourself, but if its me doing the dirty work, no one gets to tell me how I get to bloody my hands,not even yo-“
Our all-too-righteous anger falters as her hate filled visage near instantly shifts into a demure, almost inviting guise. A near perfect replica of how we'd imagine her to look at us, should she deign to covet our own lust driven needs.
Following her startling metamorphosis her voice drips with ache and entreaty like we'd always imagined it could as she half whispers.
“I will let you fuck me.”
We unilaterally blink like a stunned mullet, whilst she continues.
“I know you ave wanted zis since you firzt laid your scarlet eyez on mine…You can do watever you want…use me until I’m red and ra-“
Our insurrection of an erection tears leather right before our plate mail groans as it warps in responsive protest at our enlarged and rebellious member before one of us barely manages to cobble together a pitifully defensive.
“N-no.”
A malicious glint suffuses Giselle's gaze as she scornfully goads.
“You can lie to me wiz your wordz monzter…But your poor cramped cock cannot…Zose…Men taught me well you see…How to pleaze somewan…let me elp yo-“
Anger at our freudian dick of a betrayal and the once innocent woman’s defilement being used against us universally flares, whilst a more present me strives to cut her off with a much more vehement.
“NO!”
Giselle’s shock at the volume of our far too loud riposte was short lived, even despite the blood that trickled down from her damaged ears.
Using some kind of green tinged glow of a skill on herself, she countered spitefully.
“No you are right…A somthsing like you would not doubt prefer a female monzter…Probably one of zose green skinned onez… ”
Fighting back the anger at her envenomed slur, borne wholly from our rejection, it requires two minds to reign in the neanderthalic need to break something. And while the gauntlets cladding our hands groan and crumple like tissue paper beneath our clenched fists might, another me counters.
“I get you need someone to hate…O-Of all people I understand that better than most...But I’m not going to put you in danger...Not again, NEVER again…No matter what you do...”
Having failed in her attempts of sweet and sour coercion, she begins to softly weep.
Much preferring this form of coping to her previous methods, all of us fight the urge to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, lest she misread my's intentions with our still uncomfortably erect member, still blatantly obtruding.
Then one of me gets dragged back to when I had managed to track down Amanda...
It had been years since I had gotten word of her situation.
Eventually wrangling it out through the overworked and underpaid gilt ridden caseworker, assigned to handle my installment within the foster care system.
When she had first been re-homed after she had told said worker about what Jack had attempted to do to her. I had relentlessly pestered the caseworker for even the slightest scrap of information about her current life. Even going so far as to completely forgo reporting my own discounted mistreatment on several occasions, mainly due to the caseworker Karen’s visits being so fleetingly rare.
Unlike me and my geographically lacking internment, Amanda had been bounced from home to home until she preemptively left the system for good by way of doing a permanent runner.
It was a none-too-long after Kelly had refused to see me for the final time and chosen the easy way out by way of strangling herself with the intravenous feeding tube that was supposed to be sustaining her life.
I’d just been released from hospital for the fourth of fifth time and with a fresh arm band to remind me off my place in the world i was smack bang in the middle of one of my post admission highs. It was a time where anything was better then the white walls and my own memories. So naturally productivity abounded.
During my stay at a run of the mill halfway house I learned from another equally transient resident, that he was looking for someone who matched Amanda's description to a tee. The guy was apparently after her because she owed him a couple of months’ rent money before she had just up and vanished.
Oddly, that little scarick of information allowed me to ignore my own demons long enough to chase the bread crumb trail that was the word of mouth tales from a few of the guys mates.
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Her life, much like mine at the time, was in the proverbial thunderbox. Apparently by way of her having taken up heroin to numb the neglect and contempt the world had and still apparently was intent to gift her, at least if the company she kept was anything to go by...
At first I hadn’t wanted to believe the miss matched tales I had purchased from the addicts with the remains of my pitiful dole payments.
Near every garbled one told of the once effervescent and bubbly Amanda, selling herself to fuel an all consuming habit.
Initially though, I managed to allay my fears by attributing them to how falsely my own actions had been characterized by those around me.
If only that self delusion had continued to hold true...
The information I had purchased with a tenner from someone far twitchier than I, directed me to an abandoned warehouse in the suburb of St Peters, where she was apparently chosen to hole up in for the week.
It was a simple thing to scale the chain link fence. Even easier to ignore the tearing of my ratty jeans and stained flanno shirt on the rusted barbed wire as I dropped awkwardly to the ground.
The graffiti plastered roller door which didn’t quite reach the cracked concrete floor of the aged brick building was even less of a challenge. Resulting in me only having to shimmy along the muck on the ground, to enter the warehouse proper.
When my sight eventually adjusted to the gloom of the interior, the stench almost managed to drive me away as threats of violence and degradation continued to hound me in the poorly lit ex-loading bay.
Tension easing as I found no physical evidence to match the habitual lies my mind gifted me, I pushed on toward the flickering light that emanated from deeper within what had once been a large textile factory. I almost tripped a few times along the cautious journey on the haphazardly strewn moldy mattresses and equally fetid blankets, as i tried and failed to completely free my mind from its eternal trickery that every lump and shadow was an imminent threat.
Coming to the door frame of what looked to have been at one time or other the places office, I looked in to discover there was a man leaning over an unconscious woman.
Moving to sneak up on him, I didn’t notice the empty beer bottle at my feet, its clinking roll causing the emaciated man to jolt ferret like before fixating on me in fear. Clearly counting me as no immediate threat, or more likely because of it. his skeletal features turned from me to renewed his rough rummaging with increased vigor in the moaning woman’s stained, threadbare jacket.
Closing on the man I almost reached him as he found whatever he’d been searching for and bolted, heedless of my demand for him to wait.
Moving to the still moaning woman, I recognized her instantly.
How could I not?
Under the grime encrusted gaunt features and behind the cracked lip sores and sporadic bruising was the girl I once affectionately new as ‘Manda’.
Crouching beside her and refusing to recoil from her stench, I announced myself to her glassy eyed stare.
Recognition flickered somewhere within her sunken eyes as she murmured my name back at me. In turn I asked if there was anything I could help with, unsure if she even understood the words at first.
Then to my disgust she put her boney arms around my neck whilst trying to put her putrid and half toothless mouth on my own.
Reflexively I broke free from her feeble hold and scrambling backwards as she fell to collapse weakly on her stained and reeking mattress.
As I stared at what she had become and my heart hammered in my chest, her body began to shake.
I thought she was laughing at first, as her matted blonde hair served all too well to hide her features in the gloom. However, I gradually realized it was crying, as her convulsions gave way to apologizing in a wheezing voice.
I told her it was alright.
That she’d just startled me.
I told her everything was going to be ok.
She didn’t believe my attempted self delusion any more then i did as she continued her broken sobbing.
Slowly, I approached the wretch she’d become. Shakily extending a hand to grip her skeletal counterpart, in a bid to reassure her. Her sharp intake of breath and flinch from the touch led her to look at me like I’d just hit her.
Frozen in indecision I desperately wanted to try to bridge the gulf between us again but instead looked to her scrunched hand, finding it to be riddled with puncture marks and bruising.
It was my turn to apologize to her as I told her how I’d tried to seek her out over the years. Never stopping in my wonder as to where or even how she was.
She broke into hacking laughter that devolved into a coughing fit at my admission before fixing me with a contemptuous glare from between the fetid straggles of her hair.
She told me I was full of shit. That if I really cared about her I would go to the house on the corner one block down and tell Frankie that I needed a tenner for a friend.
Amanda obviously knew I wasn’t going. Or maybe it was because she saw the pity in my eyes.
Regardless of the reason she broke into vitriolic ranting. The highlight of which was how I had always been a useless sniveling cunt who was never good for anything other then keeping Jack distracted.
I let her words wash over me on account of generally experiencing worse before breakfast on any given day.
Predictably her anger ran dry and she returned to her fitful sobbing.
I let her wallow in her grief before it eventually gave way to her own admission.
She apologized again and again. Blaming her behavior on being without her medicine, and whilst confirming the stories I’d heard from the junkie-vine, she also filled me in on how she had tried to make a go of it. Bouncing from place to place with the catalyst for a change of scenery being someone else’s misdeeds.
Unfortunately her heartfelt revelation didn’t end with a rough chronological recounting of her habitations.
I listened passively only offering grunts or the occasional word of agreement with the tale of her travails until eventually, she rambled into how she was running out of good veins and the needle clinic people didn’t think she had long because of her HIV.
Being honest with myself, I don’t remember much of what she said after her admission of having Aids...At least up until she began to beg...
At first I wasn’t quite sure what she was asking in between the repetitions of ‘please Ben’,
‘It hurts so much’
‘it’s the only way’.
However after I’d willed my panicked brain to push through my cognitive block and decoded the missing garbled phrases of
‘make the pain stop’
‘kill me’
I froze again.
Except worse.
I don’t recall how long I endured her pleas for release.
But I’ll never forget when my trembling ha-
The me that is still just barely in the now and not consoling my other self while it relives our past, registers Giselle's crying has reached a crescendo and a bone deep dread fills us.
As it begins to wonder what she'll ask of us next
Unwilling to let the potential of the words to even occur it stammers.
“I-I think I...I need to leave…”
This seems to only make her tear inducing sobs take on a more wretched quality, whilst getting to her knees and shuffles to where I’m sitting, where upon she tries and fails to pry free my strained plated leggings.
Caught momentarily like a rabbit in the a shooters ute light, the rest of me snap back to the now to collectively freeze in horror at what the once effervescent and strong woman has been reduced to by this callous and cruel world. The recently recovered and rejoined triumvirate quashes all insidious thoughts of using our [Mind Vault] trait to free us from our past learnings, if only so such mistakes cannot be repeated and in doing so helping this arguably-less-broken creature not have to suffer alone.
Refusing to let her become less then she already is a more proactive course of action is ratified amongst the incensed me's.
Throwing our ruined gauntlets to the floor a me startles the poor creature causing her to flinch backwards in fright. Moving just fast enough so that we can correct her shame but slow enough so our intervention does not bring her injury...Or worse, end. We take to standing as a me holds a half curled up Giselle aloft, likely before she even knows what’s happened.
Staring at our charge as me hold her suspended by her armpits, as gently as the position will allow. She looks to us in searching fright. Slowly we walk her back towards her seat and lower her back into it.
Only when she realizes what just happened does she resume her sobbing whilst clutching her knees to her chest.
All a me can do now is offer weakly.
“I’m sorry...I’m sorry it happened to you Giselle…”
Knowing she can’t be left like this the three of me elect to go find an appropriately sexed delinquent to watch her and as we turn to leave she croaks.
“I ave nosink now…My…My papa iz dead...Everythink I ad…Evethink wiz C-Calvin was a lie…And…And I can’t forget wat zose men…what zey did to me… B-But you know?…You know ze worzt part of it?”
Unwilling to let more of our words hurt this already broken being, one of me woodenly shakes our head at her swollen eyed gaze.
In turn, she barks out a mucus filled laugh before adding.
“Of courze you wouldn’t…Ze worzt part of it…Ze worst part iz zat even somzink like you doez not want me now…”
While the Frenchwoman resumes her wracked sobs one of me pathetically offers.
“S-sorry…”
Before another mind cowardly opens a [Lesser Dimension Portal] and steps into the entrance to the delinquents head quarters in frantic search of appropriately sexed salvation:
You have entered Citadel #1 'Keep Out!'
Stepping out we collectively note that there are blessedly two people in residence, however our rebounding spirits plummet when one of us registers that a member of their duo is Canadian…And is named Olivia…
Resisting the triplicate urge to walk back into the still open portal we try to use all the situations elements to our advantage in spite of our emotional ogreload. One of me activates [Lesser Matter Manipulation] and locks the startled Initiate Clerics arms to her sides while levitating her to hover a meter in front of us.
Her black robed partner looks like he wants to interject, but with an incensed glare from a me his jaw clicks shut, instead wisely focusing on the white counter before him.
Predictably the young black mail clad woman before us also looks like she has something to say but a me holds a warning finger up to quell her questions as another me bites out whilst motioning with our free hand to the portal behind me.
“Through there is a severely traumatized woman, understand?”
She proffers a wide eyed jerky nod allow the me to continue.
“Now, you are going to take care of her for as long as she needs, ok?”
At this her brow begins to crinkle as she beings.
“Bu-“
However one of me moves our index finger closer and she shuts her mouth. Gritting our teeth a me reluctantly adds.
“In return for this favor I will do anything you want, whenever you want.”
Her eyes are no longer meeting my own, instead they are fixated on the still underway insurrection at our groin as she gulps before stammering.
“A-anything?”
The triumvirate instantaneously convenes an emergency summit.
The topic of debate is 'is whoring my self out to a Gemini Canadian for humanitarian reasons is worth the price of a potentially lethal encounter.' And as unctuous as the trade seems, and barely consoled with the fact that her main class is a healing one, the likely homicidal decision is unanimous.
As levelly as a me can manage, it grudgingly confirms.
“Anything.”
Quite rudely, Olivia continues to fascinate on our unrepentant member, whilst licking her lips as she prosecutes somewhat vacantly.
“A-as long as y-you do exactly as I say…I can w-work with that…do w-we have a deal?”
Forcing her blushed and tilted head up slightly with our trait, we successfully regain eye contact whilst another me adds grudgingly.
“Deal.”
And as the smile blooms on her cherry cheeked face, she beings.
“Ok, but just so w-“
And we collectively loose patience as a mind unceremoniously flings extortionist into the still active portal before hastily canceling our active skill, lest she try and clamber through to no doubt add further stipulations.
Turning to face the only remaining occupant in the reception area, he furtively averts his saucer like eyes when he realizes he has our unanimously glowering attention.
Collectively thinking of an up to date iteration of Tara Reid in an overly revealing bikini…Without make up…
Our swelling recedes rapidly enough that we're soon capable of donning our new, though predominantly ornamental defensive gear. Hastily changing into a fresh set of [Elevants Essential Gear] and [Dread Plate of Uji], courtesy of a fresh aperture to Mr Pocket, one of me almost feels like things may eventually work out.
However our sight finds the deferential teen trying to make his black robed form as small as possible in his seat behind the white paper like counter.
One of me huffs in annoyance at the fact that we're having to play messenger, as another me states.
“If Jürgen shows his face again, tell him that Toni, Peter and Gérard didn’t make it…And that by the time you relay the message, whoever was even remotely involved with it will be less than fucking paste.”
Counter to the scared acquiescence we were expecting, instead a me gets to witnesses the long yellow haired young mans face contorting through a series of none to positive emotions.
One of my minds points out that I just told him his leader and friend are dead, so this should have been a predictable outcome. Another me laments our abysmal people skills whilst another other me also notes that we have already exceeded our coddling quota for the day.
The three of me try and push through it to become a better post-human as a me offers.
“If you don’t want something like this to happen again, get strong enough that it can’t.”
He looks like our free advice just pissed him off even more, yet given we're unilaterally already over extended, a me instead opens a [Lesser Dimensional Portal] and leaves the incensed young man to deal with his emotions on his own.
As another me steps into the all-too-welcoming tear in the fabric of space to enable him to do just that.