The Altercations with 24

My Conversation With The Beast

"Anything I want to know?" Casey asked, already forming questions in her head.

"Sure. But I can choose not to answer a question." The Beast stated. Casey had no objections.

"Deal. I would shake your hand, but..." Casey looked at the blood on his hands and chest. She didn't want to know why he was bloody or what he did with the body. The Beast grabbed her right hand in his left and shook it anyway.

"You should get used to the blood." He told her.
 
Casey resisted the urge to wipe her now bloody hand on her pants. "Okay. Why Baltimore?" She jumped right into the most pressing question, ready to spit out more based on what he said.

"There's a friend of Dr. Fletcher's that we want to meet." He answered, making sure not to give so much away until he studied her a bit more. 

"Why?" She asked.

"We want him to take over our case. People need to know that we are real. That we exist just like any other human. We just all live in one body." The Beast answered.

"Why do only a few personalities come out? There's twenty other people I have yet to properly meet." Case asked, remembering the time when some of them popped out right after the other.

"Well, some of them are asleep, like Kevin. Others have to fight for the light and always lose." He explained. It must be hard always fighting to come out, Casey figured. That's why only a few could show up whenever they pleased.

"Dr. Fletcher's friend, he's a psychologist? You think he can help you?" The Beast drummed his fingers on the counter for a minute, as if wondering the same thing.

"I guess we'll just have to see." He shrugged, discontinuing the drumming. That wasn't helpful, but Casey used this chance to ask all the questions she wanted.

"Which personality was first?" The Beast was amused at how she changed the line of questioning.

"I wasn't the first. I only came after a certain incident brought me out. But I believe it was Dennis who came first." He made sure to drop the tidbit about the incident to see if she would fall into his trap. She didn't.

"Why him? Because he has OCD?" Casey knew he mentioned the part about the incident to spike her interest and make her drift off into the part of questioning that he could answer. She smirked at him, a silent signal to indicate she wasn't stupid and she knew what he was doing.

"Yes. Kevin's mother was...strict about the importance of being clean. It's a shame she didn't know that a three year old didn't possess the same thoughts at the time." He answered, his eyes seemed to drift off, but he quickly snapped out of it.

"How do you know that? I thought you were formed only recently?" Casey asked, leaning against the counter.

"Because Dennis told me. He remembers all the trauma that happened to poor Kevin Wendell Crumb." The Beast spaced out Kevin's name, as if to show her that it had no power anymore.

Casey noticed that he never said the words "abuse" or "beatings" when describing what happened to Kevin. He just said "trauma." But she moved on, knowing she would come back to that later.

"Are we going to stay here?" She asked, using one hand to gesture at their surroundings.

"For now. No one knows we're here and it's not like we have to pay. Besides, the scary office man is gone " He taunted her.