Esoteric Life (mugshots)

Esoteric Life: Happier

PART I  Twenty-one-year-old Charlie Afflic licked blood from his smiling lips.
Outside police sirens and lights lit up walls of the dark office.
I still have a moment left.
Stepping over bodies I had exploded. One with a machete, that I had thrown out the window. Another, with the office's phone cord.
I smiled and pulled up a dead woman by the hair. Her mouth hung agape, and I thrusted my finger down her throat. "Tickle tickle." I crooned. When her hazy eyes didn't move, I laughed and sucked my finger clean.

Quieter sobbing spun my legs around, eyes wide.
I know who it is. The reason I've come today.
Lips parting, I purée red for her. "Ivy, Ivy come to me!"
Scrambling among files, creaking of a closet door.
She was leading me right to her.

"I'm not going to hurt you." I threw my head back and cackled. My curly hair sprayed droplets of blood against thin, yellow envelopes.
"Ivy!"

Wide, frightened eyes shook at me from under the dead's coats. They fueled my rampage. Cussed my joy.
I screamed and grabbed her hair before she could run, throwing my victim to her knees. Bent to me.

She begged for mercy, and I sawed off her lips with a line.
She cried, and I plucked her eyeballs out with my fingers. I rolled them in my hands, juggling them.
But couldn't see the snow as she's, well, eyeless.
I laughed — what a joke.

Something sharp pricked the back of my head. Ow, that hurt.
Not yet! Don't take my fun! Revenge against humanity has just begun!!

PART II  Twenty-year-old Ivy Park flew from the nightmare she'd been trapped in.
But the blackness would not fade.
Raising her hands from the bed sheets, Ivy felt the bandages across her face.
And eyes.

A female voice came shouting for her not to touch her own face. Ivy tried to ask a question, but all she could do was force a shattered moan.

Streaks trickled down Ivy's bandages and onto her neck.
If you don't have yes, can you even cry?
It would seem she could.
And she didn't have eyes.

Without eyes to blink open and focus in the world; Ivy was forced to to lay there as blackness acted as a canvas for the horror story to play again.
No escape.

If she hadn't married Ben, would things have played out different? Is this punishment for saying no to that sycopath?!
She didn't need to wonder if he was her judge. That she deserved to watch all her co-workers be hacked and hung before her eyes with cords.
But she could have stopped it by replying to 'his' calls.
Meeting him in allies to do what 'he' wanted with her,

It would have been a small rice to pay if it meant everyone she cared for would still be alive.
Oh gosh, Ben! God, let him still be alive!!

PART III  Twenty-six-year-old Ben Park desperately needed to believe she was still alive.
Clinging to her shoulders, Ben shook his girl who lay unmoving on the bed they shared.
With a groan, she rolled over, blond hair sticking to her face.
She'd been crying before she fell asleep.

"Oh gosh, I thought you had-had—"
"I'm still here." She smiled weakly, squeezing his hand back. Muffling a sob, Ben climbed in next to her and pulled the covers over them both like a protective fortress. His girl snuggled into his chest, and Ben nuzzled the top of her head while he watched rain at the window.

Every second of his life for the past six years was literally spent in anxiety for everyone he cared about. They never caught his girlfriend's torturer, and that... man... is still out there. Somewhere. Roaming the woods. Ben pulled her closer; eyes wide as he searched every shadow on the wall. Would he come looking for them? Would it be happier for them to just commit suicide now?