AGALE/A

Hold It Together

We come back to Kaine, six nights after the events that transpired between Trish and the King, on the last night of his solitary confinement. Kaine was uncontrollably drooling and babbling nonsensically as the insanity of being alone for almost a week plagued him with visions and hallucinations of his mother covered in his father's blood. Earlier in the week, at the beginning of his sentence, he had decided to keep his mind on track by calculating advanced arithmetic equations. Two days of calculations later, led him to begin simulation training. After four days he had begun to have hallucinations of his mother, whispering in his ear, carving pieces of flesh out of him and eating it in front of him. His hallucinations had begun to turn into visions of his mother mercilessly killing and eating Brooklyn, and finally they turned into visions of her eating Remington and Rosaria. The whispers in his ear got louder and there were more voices, whispering. It was no longer just his mother, but it was also adolescent versions of the two children, bloodied, with chunks of their flesh carved out and numerous bite marks. The hallucinations gradually grew worse as they became more violent.

As the hallucinations continued, Kaine delved into the depths of insanity: at first he was able to ignore it, then as the visions became more grotesque, he couldn't bear the sight of Brooklyn being killed in the way she was and vomited at the sight, followed by screams pleading for his mother to stop. When the children became involved, he began to shed tears and just wished for his mother to stop. After she had devoured the children, he was filled with rage and tried to break out of his restraints to end the hallucinations. He failed with every attempt. As the hallucinations of his children began to whisper in his ear, he began to feel hungry and he was sickened by this. He was shrouded in darkness and the faces of the people he had eaten began to fill the space around him, emerging from the floor beneath him. Eventually, he was surrounded by piles of bodies, all people he had once eaten, all bloodied and missing body parts from the times he had feasted on them.

"Eat. We know you're hungry."

The hallucinations of his children beckoned him to eat, not only the bodies around him, but them as well. That crazed look on his face he gets whenever his other, insatiable self begins to take control. He began to water at the mouth and tried to break out of his restraints. Mentally, he broke out of the restraints and began to feast upon the bodies on the ground. He ate and ate until only a tenth of the tens of thousands of bodies he had filling the space around him were left. Before he could pick up another one of the bodies, the children appeared before him, this time, pristine and in good health. Different from their usual bloodied and grotesquely mutilated appearances. They lunged towards him, but he grabbed both of them by the throats and slammed them both into the ground.

"Eat us."

He began to salivate once more and inched his teeth towards the pinned children. A hand reached out and touched his children. The room turned from a void, to a placid lake, surrounded by beautiful, lush fauna. A voice that he hadn't heard for years, filled him with nostalgia, happiness and sadness all at the same time. It spoke and filled the room.

"That's not the example I wanted to leave behind when you were younger. Well, you were still just a baby so I didn't get the time to leave much of one, huh?"

Kaine turned around, to the sight of his father. The usual vision of his father would be covered in blood and mutilated from his mother eating him. The vision of his father would usually appear in his nightmares whenever he'd fall asleep early on as a child. Kaine began to break down and hugged his father.

"Alright, alright. It's okay son, I'm here."

After a long, much needed embrace from his father, they sat down and had a father-son talk.

"I see you've got some kids of your own now. How's it feel to be an honorary dad now, Kay?"

"I don't know. I haven't gotten much time with 'em yet. I got taken to solitary confinement before I could even spend an hour with them."