Birth of a Nightmare Man

Chapter Nineteen

People didn't look at Elise. She didn't appear as anything special but a woman buying vegetables and herbs. She stopped to look at some potion ingredients but eventually moved on. She purchased a whole chicken, but no bread. Her master, the Nightmare Lord didn't eat bread that others had baked. Some would call him fussy. Not to his face of course. They usually wouldn't keep their heads if they did. But it wasn't that he was fussy; he just kept thinking everyone tried to poison already made food. Elise had learnt this also meant he wouldn't eat a meal prepared by someone else than himself, Elise or Lucian which meant if she or Lucian didn't feed him, her master would rarely eat at all. He could cook but preferred to do other things with his time. Like trying not to be bored. Making food was in his opinion boring, because it reminded him of things he'd rather not remember.

So everything she bought was in its raw condition. She thought of tender chicken meat that could easily be shredded. She thought of steaming vegetables, quite firm and quite hot. The last time her master had been served cold vegetables, he had first vomited and then he had… well, let's just say the black eye lasted quite a while on her face. She wasn't sure who had been most surprised over the sudden violence, her or her master.

Elise did not really know when her master had changed from threats to simply charging in. He didn't seem to know either. Anger was part of his personality as much as his glee when it came to hurting others.

"Master doesn't mean it," she had said once, when the violence got the better of him for the second time.

"No, master does mean it," he replied. "I'm hurting you because I want to; don't try to make me into a nice person. I'm a horrible person and don't you ever forget that."

So Elise accepted it and moved on. Her master had anger issues, and took it out on others. Mainly other people than her and Lucian but if he didn't have anyone to torture, they could become his victims just as easily as any other person… unless he decided it was time to torture himself.

How many times hadn't he swallowed poison before she could stop him? How many times hadn't he taken knives from her hand just to plunge them into his body?

"I just wanted to see what would happen," was his only comment to each injury he caused on himself. "Stop acting like… oh, I don't know, as if you genuinely care. You don't."

"I do," she usually said despite the fact her master rarely liked to hear them talk too often. She didn't really know why, but he looked torn between wanting them to shut up and have them talk more.

"I made you care. In reality, you don't. You want me dead. I want me dead. I also want to live. It's all terribly complicated, so now let me go and torture myself in peace."

A few times she had tried to continue that kind of conversation. Pain had followed, and her tongue in her master's hand.

"Behave, and I'll put it back," was all he said.

Elise never counted how many times he had taken her tongue, or Lucian's tongue. It was within his right to do so. He owned her, and he owned Lucian. Whatever orders he gave her, she obeyed.

Like now, buying food because he couldn't be bothered. Said something about demons making him do it, and not letting him have any of the food. Elise only knew of the demons as Aunt and Uncle, and that the lord seldom spoke about them. Sometimes she heard him late at night, waking up screaming, then destroying part of his room in anger. She knew her master was a mess, and that he couldn't be called sane. He didn't act like most people she observed when she went out, but she didn't know what set him apart from them. When he made her his, he was already beyond what people called normal.