(no subject)

[not_mephistopheles]

💀 WHO: Christine and Erik
💀 WHERE: New Fort Frolic; six hours west of Little Hades
💀 WHEN: After New Hancock, Chris, and Liz return to Little Hades post zombie adventure.They plan an expedition search of Booker, and then this shit happens. Also, after this
💀 WARNINGS: Violence, torture
💀 SUMMARY: Christine embarks on a sudden desperate adventure to save Erik from a fate worse than the stinking hot afterlife; things do not end well.



The first thing that raises from the dark waters of his unconsciousness is the hard biting scent of steel-like metal. The shadows under his eyelids are stripped with static-colored-black against black-as-pitch. His head feels as though full of cotton, his lean slender body crumpled with a plethora of superficial aches and pains. One by one, Erik's senses awaken, feeding him a steady stream of disconcerting details. He's crumpled on the floor with his back to something solid, and for whatever reason, the air smells like a fog of blood and flesh. When he realizes which way is up, Erik lifts his head and peels open his eyes, peering through the distorted blur of his vision. No, it can't be, his eyes must be playing tricks...

But as his sight clears, he knows it's really real.

He's inside a cage.

Erik wants to squeeze closed his eyes, to shut it out and smother the sick instinctive panic pulsing inside his gut. But that would be cowardly-- stupid. He has to deal with this; he is better than this outgrown fear; he can escape any dire situation so long as he uses his superior mind. Or at least, this is what he hazily tells himself as he pushes to stand before he is even fully conscious. The floor seems to sway and he stumbles, catching himself with a clash against the bars. His boney fingers weave around the solid metal shafts and pull; he doesn't make a show of useless flustering, he only wonders if his strength has increased enough in Hell to allow an easier jailbreak. And while the bars creak and groan, they do not buckle.

"The old songbird is awake," Cohen's voice flutters with eerie delight as he descends into another fit of wheezing giggles. "Boys, boys! It's time to welcome our guest! Get up," and then, with sudden seething rage "I SAID GET UP!" Much of the room is obscured by the congealed dimness, but from what Erik can see, he's on the stage of sorts in some decrepit abandoned theater. Everything is splintering, crumbling, molding... and there are at least 15 white rabbits hopping placidly around the isles. Perfectly normal, simple white rabbits. At least part of the smell has context now.

Five men slither from the isles, including Cohen himself. They climb upon the stage which creaks in complaint, and circle the iron-like cage like frenzied wolves, grinning as though they are proud of thier fangs. In the further isles and upon the balconies there are yet more smirking observers (15, at the very least), nursing smudged glasses of red wine as they peer from behind thier white rabbit masks.

And suddenly it hits him; they're all wearing those masks. Erik needn't place the implications to know that they do not bode well. At the very least, this appears to be some kind of cult.

Cohen approaches with wide strides, wringing his hands as he comes close enough to be just out of Erik's reach. A good judgement call, considering Erik would take great pleasure in splitting the man's skull on the unyielding bars.

"Well well well, the ruffled old raven joins us at last!" Cohen doesn't take his eyes of Erik; the hunger in those bloodshot orbs is something Erik knows he mustn't flinch from. He cannot show weakness, he cannot yield, and he cannot allow this White Rabbit Man to continue to abuse him. But before he can say anything at all, Cohen points his palm flat towards the cage, and releases a torrent of bright brilliant flames. The dark specter of a man doesn't even flinch, glaring daggers at the other masked man as he floods the cage with tendrils of hungry red flame. Demons are fireproof, is this not an exercise in futility?

Yet as the moments creep and kindle, Erik comes to understand. He is fireproof. His clothes-- his mask, are not. The fabrics of his elaborate outfit glow orange at the edges before flaking and crumbling away; tiny tongues of fire lick away the silk of his mask; it's as though he can feel each thread unwind and burn, and he tries so hard to keep Cohen's deranged gaze. He will not show weakness, he cannot-- but it's been so long since anyone other than Christine has actually seen his face. At a time, he had been forced to parade his ugliness on display... but that felt like lifetimes ago, and even before he had died Erik knew he never wanted to subject himself to the judging gaze of the masses ever again. His hands ball into clenching fists as his gloves burn away, and it's as though every inch of naked flesh upon his face stings in revulsion at the open air. Erik barely manages to hold the man's eyes, barely manages to conceal the tremble of his shoulders. His sheer rage is a fuel he can burn on; for the moment, it scorches away his programmed shame, and his frightened apprehension.

He's about to speak, to say-- he doesn't even know what, but something about the childish excitement that Cohen shows at the intake of his breath bids Erik to stop. His eyes narrow suspiciously, and Cohen smiles, sheepish like he's been caught in a trick. Slow deliberate actions draw what appears to be a golden pocket-watch into plain view; for a few moments, Cohen dangles it on the chain while he finally allows the river of flames to die by the curling of his fingers.

Erik isn't quite naked, but his decency is barely covered. It's a tactic, he understands, to make him feel vulnerable. To make him comply with whatever these cultists desire. Nevermind that removing his mask makes it an incredibly effective tactic; Erik is still soul-bound to fight tooth and nail against another will dominating his own. Nothing will make him lie down an submit. He'll stare a hole through that bastard's mask before he yields.

"Don't look so sour, my friend! I am more than happy to release you promptly. All I ask in exchange... is a song. My boys and I are fans, of course! One little diddy, that is all I require..."

Erik clamps his jaw, stabbing Cohen with a defiant glare. Anyone who knows Erik understand this is probably the least effective way to make him comply, but maybe it's not supposed to be easy.

Oh, of course it isn't.

Cohen looks like a cat with a rat under his paw, licking his chops and preparing for a meal. "I was hoping you'd be stubborn; I want to see the beautiful crescendo of your pain." A deep unsettling chuckle gets caught in Cohen's throat, and he waves a hand to signal one of his 'boys'.

"Mr. Cobb, if you please?"

"You got it," the man all but purrs. Stepping forward, Jacob Cobb summons a weave of lightening between his hands, sparking between the blue extrusions jutting from his palms. Knowing what will happen doesn't make it any easier when those volts start to pour through him. Some instinct in the deep primal part of his mind wants him to cry out, but that yearning in Cohen's eyes... he wants him to scream. That's somehow important. Erik grinds his teeth as the searing paralysis takes him, confusing his nerves and stabbing him with a million tiny needles of pain. Still, he doesn't make a sound.

"Cobb, the stick!" Cohen's voice is watery in the distance; in too few moments the jacked splicer steps forward, reaches into the too small cage, and clamps his hand directly onto Erik's skull. His mind falls to pieces, broken memories and buried regrets crashing into one another and falling into a mound of muddled shards. He sees Christine, and Lacie. He sees Sasha's bloody face. He sees Ayesha trembling on the muddy ground, and he sees Rezza sick in his bed. The gleam of massive diamonds upon that Persian throne pour like dew over a million other splintered recollection, and despite himself, Erik feels a cry start to well in his chest. It's so difficult to keep focused on damming his voice; he's suddenly thinking of the attic in his mother's house, the bells he struck as a babe, the gypsy girl who threatened to accuse him of rape, and the man who almost raped him. It's too much, all at once, running by in a blur and circling back to bite him.

But the second Erik opens his mouth, he feels an unnatural force pour like semi-liquid fingers down his throat. They grab, scratch, seek... tearing into his flesh until Erik closes his jaw once more. Cohen is waving that damn watch in front of the bars and it's swaying back and forth, back and forth... it's pulling him, calling him... like it wants him. Or, wants something from him. And the way that greedy magic pushed down his throat, the way Cohen praises his voice while peering at him with hunger... maybe it's the electricity to the brain, but suddenly, Erik thinks he understands. Cohen wants his voice. It seems like he needs Erik to sing, to take it; and apparently a scream is close enough for the spell to cruelly rip his voice out.

Well, that sure as hell isn't happening.

Things start to go fuzzy; memories bleed into his view, flickering and skipping and running on repeat like a busted scratched CD. He only realizes the charge must have stopped when he feels the ground come up hard beneath him. His skin sizzles, his starkly blue eyes spotted red with so many popped blood vessels. He breathes through his teeth, trying to focus on what is immediately real. Still his mind feels scrambled, and it's difficult to follow Cohen's voice as he speaks.

"... boys and I will keep encouraging you to sing! Come on now, don't disappoint your captive audience!"

This time, it's two of Cohen's boys that strike him with an unrelenting wave of jagged electricity. Erik isn't sure if minutes or hours pass in the agonizing scramble of his mind; he's not even sure he's managing to stay quiet... but he must be, because the pain keeps going.

Until finally, finally it stops. Erik is on the ground again, unable to stifle the confused twitching of his limbs as excess electricity crackles down his nerves.

Cohen seems vexed, now.

"It doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all! I'll still win you hear me, I'll still win! Go ahead and be stubborn, it won't make a difference!" the many rings on his fingers gleam as he snaps and calls "Finnegan!"

"Am I up, Sander-baby?" Another of Cohen's four immediate follows steps forward. Martin Finnegan's skin is an unhealthy shade of blue; in fact, it resembles ice more closely than skin. Erik's expression must have stumbled into something unimpressed, because the ice man grins like he knows something Erik does not.

"Yeah I know; you're the man who's always cold, right? So what if you get covered in a little ice? Gotta be a vacation, after that. Like free air conditioning, right?" The splicer's smile is ugly with cruelty as he leans closer to the bars.

"But it's not the ice itself that's gonna break you; that would be too easy. Could freeze you, shatter you into a million pieces... done in two seconds, tops, but that's not what Sander-baby wants." A small spiky blizzard darts around Martin's fingers before he flings it casually at the base of the cage, creating a cascade of ice-spikes that encourage Erik to keep his back to the other side of the cage; he's barely aware enough to comply, and a few of the spikes bite red into his thin pale skin. He barely even feels it, with his nerves so fried. Martin is speaking, but he has to focus determinedly to decode the sounds into words.

"...your memory. That's what I'll freeze right out of your head. Make you forget who you are, where you came from, why you wouldn't wanna just give Sander what he wants. It's gonna happen either way. Why don't you just sing us a little song, so I don't have to erase the memories or your precious childhood pet and your goddamn first kiss."

The fact that these things were said of blind mocking means nothing to Erik. He hardly has perception over his own limbs (though it is returning, little by little) and yet somehow, he feels the satisfying curl of fabric inside his fist as he grabs the ice man's vest. One quick brutal pull has Martin crashing against the cage with enough force to split his mask off his face, and completely shatter his nose. Enraged, Martin reels back with a shout.

"Son'ova bitch!" he snarls, and despite everything, Erik cannot hide the tiniest of smirks. Beneath it, he is trying so hard to ignore the petrifying fear of forgetting, and take pleasure in the small act of sadistic revenge while he can.

(He can't forget her, he can't!)

---

[ooc: For my personal reference: Martin Finnegan (Ice, Houdini), Kyle Fitzpatrick (Possession), Silas Cobb (nitro/shock jockey), Hector Rodriguez (nitro/shock jockey)]

Comments

[lethermindwander]

Christine has carefully planned her every move as thoroughly as she could in the little time she has been given to prepare. She has multiple escape routes thought out and an escape vehicle sitting a little ways down the road. She is forever thankful for the extra eyes that her crows can now afford her. With their help, she has the entire layout of this decrepit old theater committed to memory. Every twist, every turn, trap doors, the catwalks above the stage. She has a decent idea of how many people are in there, how many might be particularly dangerous, which ones simply seem like the audience.

She knows from experience though, no amount of preparation will ever be truly adequate for a situation like this. Still, she closes her eyes and focuses on one of her birds, trying to see the scene through its eyes. Erik still seems to be in the cage, unconscious but unharmed. The image flickers from her mind. No use in wasting her energy yet, then.

Getting into the theater is as easy as sneaking her tiny form in through a crumbling hole in a wall. Of course, the moment she is back to her feet and brushing the dust from her clothing, a rabbit-masked man is approaching her.

"Hey! You ain't supposed to be in here!" He growls at her and his volume is enough to alert anyone else nearby that something might be happening. As he grows closer, Christine says nothing. She simply stares him down, takes a step forward and slides one of her longer daggers right through his throat. There’s the sickening sound of gurgled blood as she drags it through his flesh and right out the other side. The red splatters on her face as he crumples to the floor. Within seconds, he is convulsing from the loss of blood.

If this wasn’t the afterlife, she would have just made her fifth murder.

Nearly decapitating him should keep him down for a while and keep him quiet with such mangled vocal chords but for good measure, Christine stomps on his knee, feeling the bones crunch beneath her heel.

So this is how it’s going to be then, isn’t it. She had a feeling in her gut that this is how she’d react but the confirmation of it sickens her. Who is she to cause such pain?

She checks on her crows again. Nothing she hasn’t seen before, nothing seems to have changed, no other guards or anyone seem to have been alerted to her presence-- But there’s a change. One of the men is shooting fire into Erik’s cage and she only catches a glimpse of his clothes burning away and leaving him nearly nude before the image fades.

Who are these men to callously strip away her beloved’s dignity? Instantly, her remorse fades away. She picks up the man’s bloodied rabbit mask and wipes it off on her sleeve before putting it on. It’ll help her blend in.

She struts down the hallway as if she belongs here and the two people she passes pay her no mind. Good. She’d rather not have to waste time taking them down, too. She does, however, take the time to light up a cigarette and quickly smoke it before she enters the auditorium proper. It’ll be her last chance to do so.

She doesn’t admit that it is also calming her nerves. There’s no room for error and that is a lot of pressure.

The backstage area has too many rabbit masks, it’d be far too risky to use that path towards the stage. She can, however, go up and around to make it there. She lets herself into one of the private boxes near the stage. There’s two people sitting there, watching this abhorrent show. With cat-quiet steps, Christine approaches them. She reaches into her coat and pulls out that sharp violin string. Before the first victim has any chance to protest, she has wrapped that string around his throat tight enough so that he cannot scream, cannot breathe and moments later, has lost consciousness before his date has even noticed. She repeats the process, digging that catgut into this poor woman’s throat deep enough to draw blood. Still, this is not enough to guarantee the quickly falling angel enough time to rescue Erik. She runs her blade through both of their throats.

Six and seven. (It’s curious how intimate the act of murder can be.)

She leans over the edge of the box to get her first view of the stage with her own two eyes. What she sees is troubling, to say the least. Nothing she has ever seen in Hell has ever angered her like this sight does. None of the blatant, unashamed nudity, none of the thoughtless murders. None of the atrocities that have been committed directly against Christine have ever elicited a reaction quite like this out of her. The sight of Erik being tortured, electrocuted and uncontrollably twitching enrages her. These men-- These men will pay. She can almost feel the electricity surging through her own veins as she watches, perhaps some twisted testament to the unnatural bond shared between her and Erik.

Christine is running out of time, she has to get to the stage before they manage to do even more damage. She climbs up onto the ledge of the box and jumps to the shadowed column to the side of the curtains. Hiding in plain sight, she pulls herself up to the level of the lights and grabs an errant rope. From there, it’s rather easy to swing herself up to one of the catwalks above the stage. Unfortunately, her landing is not as silent as she wishes it to be. Fortunately, her ability to blend into the shadows works to her advantage when the masked stagehand comes to investigate.

Her knife get buried to the hilt in the warmth of his side. The cry that escapes his lips is drowned out by Cohen’s mad, deranged ranting below. Before he has a chance to make another, Christine brings him to his knees and to the perfect angle for her to cut his neck open, too. She pushes him away, his skull clanks against the metal and his blood will very likely drip down to the stage, now.

Eight.

Like a hunting lioness, Christine carefully descends a small spiral staircase leading to the lower level of catwalks above the stage. It is here that she finds the perfect perch, crouching down to watch. To wait. She cannot just barge in, she has to wait for the precise, perfect moment to finally reveal her presence. Still, she pulls her pistol from its holster and cocks it. There will be little need left for stealth once she is being burned under the heat of the spotlights.

But as a consequence, she is forced to watch as Finnegan taunts Erik. That...that can’t be possible, can it? You can’t just freeze someone’s memories out of their head, they’d just grow back in the afterlife...right? In her abject horror, Christine nearly misses her cue. She sees Erik’s hand dart out towards the icy man and she instantly knows that it is now or never.

With everyone on the stage distracted by Finnegan reeling back from having half his face caved in, Christine swoops down from on high for her own attack. Before she even lands on the stage, she is pulling the trigger at a point blank range, the barrel of her pistol aimed for the back of one their heads. He hits the ground before Christine does.

Nine. (It’s not really murder when everyone is already dead.)

She lands on her feet with practiced grace and stands to her full height. In any normal circumstance it is barely worth noting at all except in how miniscule it is. Though somehow Christine manages to exude an ethereal amount of power and strength. Perhaps it’s the flowing, black brocade patterned coat draping her form. Or maybe the dark, leather boots with high heels shaped like sharp bones. Most likely though, is the glowing golden eyes sitting behind that blood stained white rabbit’s mask.

She takes two steps forward, doing away with that horrid mask and tossing it aside. There’s no purpose in it now. One of the remaining henchmen has stepped to meet her in the middle, his hands sparking with electricity. Christine kicks him back in the stomach and that brief stumble gives her enough time to aim and fire. She feels blood running down her face but it’s impossible for it to be hers.

Ten.

Without a word, she raises her gun towards Cohen. Her eyes are full of so much hatred, so much tenacious malice that it gives credence to the phrase ”If looks could kill.” Christine can’t help but imagine giving this man a particularly drawn out, painful end.

If they thought dealing with Erik’s stubbornness was going to be a particular treat....

Well, boys, let him introduce you to his wife.