and lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He comes to them, and they choose their fates.
Well, some of them. He does not abide by all of them, and some of them do not choose at all. One – his own child, a disgrace, as they are all disgraces – says nothing, and when he reaches into Carlina’s mind there is only a buzzing, like flies. He does not need her. He attacks her, mauls her for a moment, and his jaws close over her left eye and remove it deftly, a practiced move.
(He’s been here before, he knows how to make the equine body do things evolution has begged it not to.)
He sends her away, back to wherever she came, and turns to his remaining toys.
He himself is laughing - giddy, really – for they are a cornucopia laid out before him, marked by him, ruined by him. There is a feral pleasure taken in this, in their pain, the way they succumb.
(They all do, eventually, and this is what he finds most beautiful – they all succumb, to him, he is the unstoppable force.)
One more trick, then, to break them, to show them who they really are.
(They never like it, seeing what they become, the possibilities that lurk like cancer in the bones.)
He thinks of taking them apart, of writing a story on their bones that only he knows. But ah, it is more efficient to harvest their own fears – easier, to take the things that leak off of them like radiation and craft it, shape it with a few words.
The minds are so rich in horrors, why should he bother to create something original?
So to each prisoner, each captive, he sends them themself – an older Self, one that has endured years here. The Self is them, aged, a horrid mirror to be held up.
“I am,”
(ledger)
(wayra)
(cress)
(minette)
(raelynx)
(bly)
says the Self. It looks as its younger self, new, fresh-marked. It tries not to remember those days. It tries not to remember many things.
But it must.
Time is strange and there are multiple paths, and the Self knows this, if it knows anything at all. It knows it can escape.
It has a key. I am the key, thinks the Self.
“This is what you become,” says the Self, flat. It no longer feels anything.
“You can escape.”
A promise, a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.
“I am the key, use me” says the Self. The words rhyme like a childhood chant and it looks at itself, curious. It is so young. Time is so strange. It exists and does not exist.
“Go,” it croaks, the words dying – all of the Self is dying – and His games continue once more.
NOTES:
HAHA TIME TO GET WEIRD.
First, for failing to reply, Carlina was eliminated and is now missing her left eye She will also be scarred, though you can determine the extent of the scars.
The rest of you are through to the LAST ROUND, yay.
So, to explain wtf is going on: Carnage sent in an illusion/something into the cell. It’s you, from a timeline where you stayed in the lair for years. This character (the “Self”) is the key, in that you must kill it/have it die to trigger your escape (the key is literally inside it, distract the hellhounds with it, it sacrifices itself, whatever makes sense to you and your character).
Your character may talk to its future self for as long as you like, can describe what happens to it/you, or you can get right into the gore – again, whatever makes sense for you. I just want to see the fucked-up-ness that stems from meeting and having to kill your alternate timeline self.
Alternatively, your character may choose to stay, in which case describe how THAT conversation goes, and some highlights from the subsequent years.
Replies must be in by Thursday, 4:00 PM CST. Results should be posted fairly soon after that.
As always, if you have any questions, please email me at acmrshll@gmail.com.
c a r n a g e