Which Monster Is Worse?

Magic, Blood, and Broken Dreams

Many miles from the school, Adam sat alone in a cabin, shirtless with whiskey in one hand and a joint in the other. The time spent away from Wanda wasn't easy. Eager to get the answers he so desperately wanted, Adam tentatively pulled at the strings in his mind that all led back to his past, to his shame, to his love...to her.

A strangling sadness had nestled itself in his chest with the feeling of Wanda's lips permanently pressed against his temple. The feeling was familiar yet distant beyond the scope of what he assumed possible. The Adam familiar to himself today wasn't capable of love, of having a family, or even opening up to somebody that couldn't probe his mind. But now that the cage had been rattled, Adam wanted so horribly to find his life again.

He laid his head back against the felt covered couch as he tilted the bottle back against his shaking lips. The alcohol never did anything except numb his ability to feel physical pain. It was so easy to get lost in the rejection of a stab wound, a bullet wound, even dismemberment. But something crept behind the facade of his unwavering apathy; a need to be loved, accepted, and simply just wanted. And that was what Wanda had shown him through the action of a simple kiss, if only for less than a moment.

Tilting his head forward, Adam took a hit of the burning joint and held it in until his vision went white. With his exhale, a simple sight beheld his conscience. A young girl with auburn hair running through the wood chips at a park Adam couldn't help but recognize.

Her voice sounded so distant to the Adam sitting on the couch, but right next to the man at the park inside his mind.

The thread he was pulling now caused his brows to furrow as a thick lump was swallowed down his dry throat. His bottom lip shook as he pulled more smoke from the burning roll.

As the smoke blew out, Adam slipped away into the memory while still very much awake.

"Look at that little girl, Adam." A voice struck his ears that he quickly recognized as Wanda.

When his eyes looked down to her, the pain in his chest resurfaced. He now understood the feeling to be a fondness for a lost love festering into a hopelessly forlorn obsession over a faceless woman who only now revealed herself to be the very person he had spoken to in the diner.

"She's got the best of both of us. I pray she'll have a mind like her mother." Adam spoke as he raised his arm to rest his hand on the woman cradling his other arm. A small lean and a kiss to her forehead followed the reply.

When he replied back to her, Adam on the couch let out a stifled cry at the stark happiness present in his tone, a far cry from the broken man with alcohol and weed coursing through his body currently reliving life's best hits from episodes he didn't even remember seeing.

"It doesn't matter whose smarts she gets, love....she's ours.." Wanda's candid reply struck Adam like an explosion to his face.

The whiskey in his hand was so close to dropping to the floor as the young girl, Isabella looked back to him behind his closed eyes. The look directed to her parents made the next seconds out to be a merciless antagonist to the joy he had only just now allowed himself to feel.

Gunfire rang out surrounding Adam, but he opened his eyes before the aftermath could present itself.

A scream erupted from his throat as he stood from the couch and lobbed the bottle against the wall in front of him, sending it through the wood with a deafening crash. The scream didn't stop as his heartbeat quickened behind his ears, pounding with a relentless beat that sent him crashing to the floor with his eyes closed, tears pouring onto the dust-caked hardwood floor.

The memory now presented itself in grisly detail and Adam succumbed to the loss of consciousness that came with the tide of emotions present in the trauma.
Noise erupted around them as his eyes settled on the frightened expression of his daughter across the park.

"Wanda you need to g-" Before he could even finish his sentence, his body was already taking action.

He had grabbed his wife and simply tossed her behind a metal bench adjacent to the tree they stood by. He knew she wouldn't be hurt by the fall, but at least she had some protection.

Movies were never Adam's favorite medium of media, but the scene before him played as a horror beyond Stephen King's darkest nightmares.

His attention turned to his daughter as his left foot gripped the dirt, transitioning to a full sprint as he turned. Hyper aware of the men surrounding the park, Adam knew he would catch fire from several people.

What he didn't know....what he never could have predicted, was that each bounding step he took towards the girl was a cue for another bullet to rip through her indiscriminately.

With wide eyes, Adam shouted to the girl to get down, not knowing that she didn't have a choice on whether or not to fall. In the last few steps on the wood chips, Adam crashed to the ground with his knees sliding and scraping his flesh away on the rough and rugged terrain beneath them.

When he ducked down behind the slide with his body over Isabella, he wasn't sure which person the blood surrounding them belonged to. Bullets struck his large frame one after the other but nothing would remove him from this very spot until the firing stopped mere seconds later.

After what felt like hours of silence, Adam whipped his head up and looked around Central Park to see several matte balck unmarked vans screeching away at high speeds. His head whirled back to see Wanda staring ahead with disheveled hair peeking up over the bench.

The look of horror on her face confused Adam until he realized her line of sight wasn't on him, rather the dead civilians surrounding them on all sides.

Adam, himself was riddled with holes and his clothes were caked in blood. And the hope in his body drained to the floor as his vision rested on his daughter beneath him, unmoving, silent, and a ghostly visage of terror plastered on her face.

The gasp that erupted from Adam's lips was the last thing he could truly remember before his life now. Because after that breath let itself out of his lungs, the man within left alongside it.

In the few seconds that followed, Wanda was forced to stay behind the bench, staring helplessly as her daughter lay dead beside her husband who was now screaming in agony and writhing around on the ground with his hands gripping the material beneath them to the point where it ripped away the foundation.

Sinewy cracks and tendons snapping signaled the physical transformation going on within Adam as the Beast took its place firmly in the forefront of his conscience.

As it stood, it's gigantic frame blocked the sun from Wanda's eyes. A low, hefty growl erupted from the black eyed monster that stood beside Isabella's body.

Wanda's blood ran cold as her eyes trailed the monster, settling on the black orbs piercing directly into her gaze. She wanted to run, to fight, to protest, to get Adam and Isabella into the car and go home. But the monster in place of her husband proved that want to be false.

The Beast took several steps towards Wanda before her posture snapped straight, nose runny and eyes weary. Red wisps twirled themselves through her fingers as she stared at the approaching Beast.

Although the Beast simply stopped and studied her for several seconds before leaping away in a huff, leaving Wanda by herself in a sea of red magic, blood, and broken dreams.

To add salt to the wound, a Marine by the name of Frank Castle lost his wife Maria, daughter Lisa, and son Frank Jr. All of whom Wanda could see being cradled by their wailing father. In the wake of this senseless tragedy, Wanda could only stare ahead at her motionless daughter, stuck in the notion of returning home from this bad dream. Maybe this could all end and she would wake up at home in the arms of a man she hadn't just watched give up on his own life.

But that end never came, just a fresh stream of tears and a scream of agony unheard by an indifferent universe.

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Hope you're having an Amazing New Year~

- 01/01/2022