VIRTUE, frank castle

CHAPTER ONE

"Motherfucker."

Had her hands always been so fucking vile? It was a question Mallory found herself asking often now, usually in the dead of night where only to flickering lights of cars passing her window were able to see her mess of being that cradled a bottle of scotch in broken palms. Had they always been so vile? Had they always been so destructive to everyone around her? Had they always been simply wrong and just waiting for a chance to ripple through her body like a deadly disease that spread from the tips of her finger to the pounding flesh of her heart that was entrapped in its bones prison.

She used to wonder if it was a curse, some kind of punishment by the supposed omnibenevolent God who'd looked upon her mortal corpse and decided quite simply that she, she and only she wasn't worth his adoration, his wasted breath because of the ruin she was making of herself, the ruin she had been made of. But that was before, before she lost her faith in any being higher than herself because what kind of God would allow this? This suffering that she and many others had faced, the horrors inside her eyes that would never leave, that would continue to stain her mind for years upon years to come like a bloody shrine of false praise and empty promises.

Fucking hell, another question was had she always been so bloody dramatic, Malloy thought to herself with a tired groan, running her gloved hand up and down her face until it felt as though she was going to get some kind of friction burn, finally putting the almost empty bottle of scotch down upon her second hand table that reeked of old lady with a sigh, breathing the stale air through her lips thinly and trying not to burst into some kind of hysterical laughter because her life really was a shit show and if she didn't laugh she'd probably cry.

This, this was how she'd spend her weekend off from her crappy work where her boss was a sleaze just as much as the patrons, sitting at this exact table in her shitty apartment that was way too small and stained for the rent to be as high as it was, holding her drink like it was a child that had crawled it's way out of her womb, drinking so much that she was pretty sure she could be labelled an alcoholic and pathetically lonely, just like she always was, just like she'd always be because she was poison and the cure and it was so exhausting fighting against both sides of a never ending battle of her humanity or her damnation.

Maybe she should look into seeing a therapist, or maybe she should just throw herself out of the window and be done with it all...decisions, decisions.

"Fuck my life." She eventually muttered, standing up on unsteady legs to make sure her window was actually shut, just to swaddle off the temptation because in the end, Mallory knew she was too much of a coward to go through with any of her suicidal thoughts in the effort of searching for peace, but she still really didn't want to find out just how close she actually was to the edge of it all. However, seemingly because she'd finally got off of her rather numb ass, the fog that had once swarmed over her dark gaze lifted, like a switch flipped, and instead of seeing her apartment through rose tinted glasses...she now realized how much of a shit tip she'd left it in her neglect.

The young woman cursed quietly, looking around in absolutely mortified disgust because the last time she'd had pizza was like, three months ago and there was definitely at least three boxes scattered around her living room, which really was a testimony to just how pathetic her life was getting because what the fuck? Did she want a roommate or something? Was that is? Because if she kept going the way she was going she was going to invite all of the bastard rats in New York into her apartment and they couldn't pay rent, hell, she could barely pay rent but at least she was trying...the window was really starting to look like the better option.