𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℂ𝕒𝕜𝕖 𝔹𝕒𝕤𝕜𝕖𝕥 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 𝔻𝕠𝕝𝕝𝕒𝕣 𝔹𝕚𝕝𝕝

Prologue

     It hurts... make it stop Al... please? Where are you? You were supposed to keep me safe from men like him, my Chocolate Ribbon. Make him stop!

* * * * *

~CF

     Gwen had been at the second floor Creole Cottage that she and her beloved husband called home since mid afternoon and had been reading one of the many books that remained in the home from her mother in law's family. She sat on the very same chaise lounge her husband had in fact been born on, dressed in nothing but a lavender dressing gown held closed with a dark purple drawstring, reading for most of the day and listening to her beloved husband on the large wooden radio that sat atop the blazing fireplace. The gas lamps had been lit for some time in the street below by the time she had finished her book and she arose to turn the dial on the radio that now spoke dead static and placed her book back on the shelf. She paused before reaching for another book and thought to herself that it would still be a few hours before Al would return home from work and his...extra curricular activities. She thought that she fancied a cup of coffee so she made her way into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
     Some time passed and she had finished milling down the coffee beans into a powder fine enough for her liking. The sound of the hand-crank grinder ceased and beyond the sound of the steel kettle bobbing its lid about upon the cast-iron stove, she thought she heard something out of place. She had just a moment to turn and barely question the sound before someone grabbed her from behind and wrapped a measure of cloth soaked in the strong smell of chloroform around her mouth and nose.

     And everything went black...

     She awoke an unknown length of time later in her own marriage bed, strapped to the posts with her husband's own belts, suspenders and ties. She was still dressed and did not detect any sort of pain so she figured this was something completely safe.

     "Oh my precious Chocolate Ribbon..is this a new game? If you wanted to explore, you could've just...gasp!"

     A man who was most certainly not her husband stepped out of the shadows. He was a hunched over, gaunt and pale older man with a long unkempt black beard and long black hair beginning to gray, half tied back into a ponytail. He had one dead eye that shone a milky white in the light of the gas lamp on the chesterfield across the room from him. He wore an old, stained and patched gray Confederate uniform that did not fit him as if it was his and it was ripe with the stench of victims' past. The man didn't speak, she only heard him breathing heavily as he stepped ever closer to her. She struggled and wriggled, trying to free herself from her binds but it was no use. All at once she felt a stinging pain enter her abdomen as a glistening, sharp piece of metal that could only be described as a musket bayonet fashioned into some manner of surgical instrument entered her body. She cried out but he quickly fed a thick piece of leather into her mouth, muffling her screams. He tore the instrument up from her belly button to the bottom of her breastbone with a bizarre level of skill that did not puncture or damage any of her organs on the way up and simply opened her skin and muscle tissue to the air as curtains of blood ran down her sides and pain struck her like nothing she had ever felt. Little did she know, it was about to get so much worse.
     Hours passed and the man had taken her fingers, then her toes, then her hands and her feet and the sound of her bones being clipped by hoof pincers made her gag on the leather strap. One by excruciating one he amputated pieces of her as well as explanted her uterus and ovaries. The sound of that was the worst, hearing the peeling wet, sinuous division of her organs from her lower abdomen caused bile to rise in her throat and she began to choke on it, which caused even more pain as her muscles desperately tried to constrict to cough. All she heard beyond the sound of her whimpers and her pulse was this man, calmly breathing as he worked on her insides as if this was some sick art project. Unbearable as the pain was, she still and for whatever reason attempted to speak, begging to know why, and through the leather muffling her tears she asked "What do you want!?" The man stopped his work and leaned his head over to her and opened his mouth and wagged the nub of his tongue which had been cut out long ago and he laughed a wheezing, dry chuckle.

     Gwendolyn knew she was going to die here. Even if Al did come home and stop this maniac, there wasn't a doctor alive who could put her back together after something like this. Nonetheless, she begged and pleaded in her mind that her beloved husband would return and save her,

     Please Al it hurts... make it stop Al... please? Where are you? You were supposed to keep me safe from men like him, my Chocolate Ribbon. Make him stop! You're the killer, not him! Please...come save me...

     She started hearing her pulse slow, her heart was giving out and the constant stress on it was causing a pain, unrelated to the pain this monster of a man was creating. He seemed to sense this and he slapped her face slightly a few times trying to make sure she was still conscious. He looked frustrated for a moment and then produced something from his jacket pocket. It was foul smelling, thick and brown like molasses, which it most certainly was not. It was a small brown jar with a cotton bud attached to the lid, which was saturated with the brown viscous liquid. He removed the leather strap from her mouth and brushed the cotton bid all over her soft palate. It was warm and made her feel a rush of electricity through her body as it took whatever its intended effect was. The man returned the leather strap to her mouth and began the final leg of his sick project. One by one, Gwen felt each of her ribs split free from the cartilage that held them in place, all on the left side of her chest. Then he began wrenching each one free from their root against her spine. With every rib he removed, he stabbed it into the goose down pillow like a grotesque cage around her head. And with each one he stabbed into the pillow, a look crossed his face as if he was nearly shocked that each rib he removed didn't kill her with shock. But finally all 9 ribs were transplanted into her new crown of thorns and more importantly to this psychotic man, her heart was exposed. He looked her in the eye one last time, leaned down until she could see the reflection of her own eye in the milky white of his...and he grabbed her heart and squeezed. She attempted to gasp and scream all at once and then everything shut off like the spark switch on a lamp as her heart gave way to his grip and it popped and squished like a rotten apple run over by cart wheel in late autumn.

     Then...darkness. Darkness and one last thought of her beloved husband, her Chocolate Ribbon, her Alastor.