maskormenacelogs | sing it from the heart, sing it 'til you're nuts --

WHO: the living Frederick Chilton and Raina, and the dead corpse of JP March
WHERE: The Hotel Castile. The Honeymoon Suite.
WHEN: October 31st, 11:55PM - November 1st, 12:29AM
WHAT: James Patrick March, serial killer socialite, attempted to murder Raina while Chilton was forced to watch. Things didn't end up quite as planned.
WARNINGS: Gore, death.

Slllhhhp.

He yanked it out, horrified at the unnatural protrusion of iron born from flesh. It had been only a stab in the dark, quite literally -- March had been incorporeal, and Chilton worn down to only his instincts. Liberated from his ropes, he had found the only weapon he was willing to use. Chilton thought March would go ghost, he thought the man would rip out some organ of Raina's, her left eye, her frontal lobe, part of her liver. Her heart.

Iron in hand, he had lunged. Impulsively.

And he had struck.

He now yanked out the iron-wrought fireplace poker from March's chest, panic throbbing in his throat, unwittingly bringing a flow of blood and mutilated cartilage along with its liberated tip. That blood-soaked tip, so dark a red it looked black to him. Chilton swayed, whimpering, horror seizing his lungs. Iron still clenched in his fist. His blinkless eyes stared at the still-standing serial killer, he wanted to look away, he couldn't, he only stared at March.

It wasn't finished. That was the coal-dark whisper in the back of his mind, the icy realization that March could still stand, he could probably still fight. This was an accidental mortal wound, not a lethal blow. March still had his wrath, his violence, and now -- perhaps a newly spawned hatred.

Half a breath of silence.

He was scared. Frederick Chilton was so, so scared.

Thwack!

His arm bent back, and swung down upon the head of James Patrick March. Thwack, thwack, slrrp! Fragments of skull, flecks of skin and blood soured the adjacent wall. Thwack! He couldn't stop, he could barely see with the stinging tears blurring his vision, but he could hear. He could hear the groan of iron against the cracking fracture of bones.

Frederick Chilton would hear that sound for days to come.

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It all happened so fast. The blink of an eye. As the heated blood hit her flesh, for a moment, Raina confused it with her own and she screamed -- she screamed and broke free, bringing a well-manicured hand to her throat to feel for a wound. Nothing.

Nothing.

Which meant -- Raina backed up to the nearest wall, riding the high of adrenaline as she watched Chilton take matters into his own hands. Thwack, thwack, thwack! The wet crunch of brain matter and fragmented bones pierced the air. The only sound apart from frantic breathing. And it was a beautiful sound because it meant he did it. This was her victory. Their victory. If only she could see Chilton's aura -- the darkened edges consuming the blue as he beat the already dead body well beyond what was needed. Raina was sure it was just as beautiful as the sight before her.

But now came the important part -- the reward, the relief, the reminder that he had protected her from her terrible fate. She raced forward, wrapping her arms tightly around him from behind to stop him from beating the body anymore. "Frederick...it's over. It's done." She grasped his wrist holding the cane gently. "We did it."

Shaking, his face a sickly moonlight pale, Chilton couldn't tear his eyes away from the bloodied and mangled body of what had been his good friend. Still inconceivable, the depths of deceit he had suffered -- March had plotted this, maybe for months, maybe longer, he had carved out the details of brutality against Raina. Against Chilton.

They had been friends.

"Oh my god," he uttered. The sound barely broke any audible decibels, a coarse whisper dragging up his throat.

"I didn't."

The protest withered in his mouth. He did. He had. He stood there, with March's blood splattered against his face and hands and chest. Chilton couldn't see the beauty in survival as Raina had; all he witnessed was ache and darkness and a hollow thud of his racing heartbeat.

He turned to her, but he didn't drop the iron from his hand. He turned to her, and buried his face in her shoulder. His dry sobs were not muted against her elegant angle.

"You did..."

Raina answered, but in a soothing voice. Her arms wrapped around him, her hand in his hair -- stroking gentle circles of adoration. She would not allow for him to deny his art -- to deny what he had done, what she had worked so hard for him to do.

"You had to." It wasn't his fault. Raina attempted to be his conscience come to life -- the angel on his shoulder with devil's horns. She had to replace his own internal battle, his own tormented thoughts. Positive reinforcement.

"He would have taken me from you forever, Frederick. He would have. Just the same way he had the other women. Just the same way he would have continued to do to other women. You saved me from that fate. You saved countless others from that fate." Palms rested against his cheeks to lift his face from her shoulder, staring him in the eyes. "This is what it means to be a hero."

A twisted reminder of Chilton's own words in Kavinsky's dreamscape where he wished to be a hero then. Well, he got his wish now.

[A shuddering inhale against her, his face still buried, and it was still moments more before Chilton would speak. He remained leaning against her, practically hanging onto her, staggering through the tectonic mindscape of her rationale clashing against his own.

At last, he lifted his head from her shoulder. Chilton nodded.]

It's over.

[That much they could agree upon. He would need the time to soak into her words, to accept her arguments.

He made the mistake of glancing down towards March's torn and bloodied body, and nearly retched back up the hotel champagne consumed hours before.]

What about that?

[Only after swallowing back the bile.]

What about him?

[The body, the evidence, the blood.]

Raina drew his head back toward her. She was the reward. Her expression was tender as she leaned in and caught his lips with her own. Reassurance. Mothering tenderness. And even though Raina felt an erotic thrill at the whole thing, Chilton was not ready until things were cleaned up.

"We'll take care of it. March has all of the things we need here to take care of it, and I have the scientific knowledge. We can get rid of the evidence. No one will even know."

The body itself would disintegrate. March was too beaten, too mangled to be repaired by the nanites. So it would disintegrate in preparation for when he returned. If he returned. "I think this was what he wanted. Even if he does come back, he won't come after us anymore."

Raina walked away from Chilton, approaching the bloodied mess and kneeling before it. "The last time he spoke to me, he told me he wished to return home. To his beloved. I think living in this world without her finally drove him over the edge. The very way I would feel. Without you."

She extracted March's clothing as best as she could, clearing off bits of organ and tissue as she did.

"And if he returns?"

It wasn't impossible, given the imPort condition. The question itself, not having been fully realized in Chilton's mouth as he spoke it, quickly sent a void down his throat that pummeled his stomach. No one would ever know -- unless March returned with vengeance in his amicable grin.

He watched her, as she moved away. Watched her as she knelt before the felled corpse.

"If he returns back here, we will need to do... Something."

What, he couldn't yet conceive. But her knew his Raina would.

Raina paused, clumps of blood and sinew dripping from the drenched attire in her hands. A wary glance flickered toward him over her shoulder -- all part of the act, all setting up what she was about to say next.

"I don't think we'll have to do much of anything at all. I should have seen this coming. Of course, it all makes sense..." Brows knitting together, Raina rose to her feet.

"The last time I spoke to March, he talked about your aura. You knew he could see them, right? He said you had a potential yet to be realized. I think..." A glance down at the corpse. "I think you gave him what he wanted. I think he wanted to drive you to this point. You were to be the final piece in the game he played all month -- the murders." Her breathing accelerated and she became convincingly distressed. "Oh god. Bela. He must have-- he would have put me on display on the network. Just like her."

Envision it, darling. Envision it and take pride in what you did to stop that from happening.

"Does it? Make sense?"

Chilton's breath hitched on the hysterical. He needed to leave, right now, he needed to get the scent of March's blood out of his nose. He could barely hear what Raina was saying, the pounding of blood in his ears, the sight of blood on the wall.

"I need -- I need to leave. Right! Now!"

But the image of Raina on display like that, the stone cold parallel to what Hannibal Lecter would have done to her. He gasped, choking on the air in his throat, and turned to flee the murder scene.

sing it from the heart, sing it 'til you're nuts --

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whoops i had jumped formats weirdly

you were just changing things up to make it exciting!

that must be it!