maskormenacelogs | I'm just dreaming of tearing you apart

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I'm just dreaming of tearing you apart

WHO: ABEL GIDEON and FREDERICK CHILTON
WHERE: Chilton's office.
WHEN: April 16th.
WHAT: Therapy and revenge coming together just like clockwork.
WARNINGS: Violence, mutilation, body horror.

For a man who did not often compromise his own dignity, setting up any appointments with Dr. Chilton at all had been difficult for Abel Gideon to allow himself to do. It was necessary to get close to the man, he knew -- Chilton was otherwise proving very evasive to him, and Gideon could sense that if he let even more time pass that would only intensify and Chilton would become more difficult to access as a result -- and the best way to do that was to redefine their doctor/patient relationship.

And it wasn't as if Gideon had nothing to talk about. As Chilton had suspected -- taunted Gideon with before -- the transuniversal experience was not an easy one to adjust to, even for someone as unflappable as Gideon; in their first few sessions he described with a clinical and eloquent sense of distance what it was like to have freedom and to be a surgeon again, falling back into the familiar pattern and framing feelings -- however sincere the foundation of such sentiments might have been -- exactly as he thought Chilton would want to hear it.

But the day of their third session, Gideon's focus was on his objective, and his real objective was revenge. He might have been crazy (so they said) but he could be careful, capable of great planning when afforded the opportunity. That Dr. Chilton had manipulated him into believing he was someone he wasn't had eaten at Gideon for the months where he'd only suspected it; knowing it now for certain meant he had no qualms about acting. He had been betrayed, and inscrutable though he was, one sure way to get at Gideon's anger beneath the surface was to wrong him.

He entered Chilton's office as he always did, shoulders bowed slightly, steps deliberate but not arrogant, but instead of sitting down as usual he took hold of a standing lamp and hit Chilton upside the head with it like a man swinging a baseball bat.

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"Abel, you're here ear--" Chilton killed his sentence midway through, his body only turning around; his back had been to the door that Gideon entered, and his eyes were focused on the file in hand that he had only just refined.

The lamp made contact with the left of his face, upside the back of his head. Its black metal-wrought framework bruised his vulnerable skin; Chilton dropped to his knees, his body shaking with gasping consciousness, his sight going dark. The wooden floor under his palms offered no sympathy. His instinct was to crawl away.

"No."

A broken, raw noise.

The door was behind Gideon's stance.

The other difference from this session to the others was that Gideon had brought along a bag -- just a simple leather satchel, but it was enough. He didn't need a vast assortment of instruments for today.

"Not early enough, I'm afraid," he said in his clinical semi-deadpan, swinging the lamp again so that Chilton would be still enough for Gideon to withdraw a needle and a small tube of sedative from his bag. He only needed a few moments of stillness, a small enough opening so that he could fill the needle, find a vein on the neck, and jab the needle through it. "Shhhh."

It wasn't a heavy dose; he didn't want Chilton unconscious, at least not for very long -- if he went out, Gideon didn't anticipate longer than a few minutes. He wanted Chilton awake and present for what was to follow, but not so much that he could interfere with the procedure.

"Try to relax."

The second blow stilled his crawling, and he drowsed out for a moment -- when his consciousness circled around again, he had a needle being emptied in his throat. Chilton considered, ruefully, how right he had been about Abel Gideon.

It was only a matter of time before the surgeon resorted to old habits.

"Please," said Chilton, the word hollow on his lips.

He didn't believe that would persuade Gideon, but with the sedative now coursing through his veins, Chilton eased into stripped nature; bargaining crowned itself paramount. Chilton's shoulders sagged, his lungs drew deeper breathes, his pulse slowed. His eyes rolled upwards, and his mind accepted a hundred and fifty-two seconds of synthetic sleep.

Chilton was exposed to Gideon's hands, as well as his twisting intent.

It was just enough time, and Gideon took advantage of every second of it. First he went about removing Chilton's coat, untying his tie, unbuttoning his shirt, so that Chilton was bare from the waist up; then, Gideon hauled Chilton's resting body into a chair and secured him to it by the torso and the ankles. He would need to restrain Chilton's arms as well, but couldn't yet -- he needed them free for part of the task, but he would simply do it first. Gideon pulled another chair close for himself as well as a table, laying out a scalpel, a sewing needle, a coil of suture material, disinfectant, a thin silver chain, a pocket watch, cotton, gauze, scissors, and some few other instruments.

With cotton he dabbed Chilton with disinfectant all the way up his arm then readied the needle, laying the chain out along Chilton's left arm and stitching one end to his wrist and one end to his collarbone to hold it in place. Then, while Chilton was still out, he began stitching the rest to his flesh. It was careful but quick work, his eyes flickering toward Chilton's face every now and then to take note of his breathing and if he was close to waking; Gideon planned to apply some local anesthetic for the rest -- he would have to -- but this would be the least painful stage. It was all right for Chilton to feel something.

They punctured his consciousness like razor raindrops, at first, only penetrating that fog slowly, superficially. Needled by needlework. His brow drew together, the movement matching a soft groan that escaped between a pair of slacked lips -- his tongue poked out, wetting the lower lip.

The piercing stabs grew sharper, as his mind was roused into the waking world. His depth of skin began to scream, when thread and metal wove through his nerve clusters.

"Nnh." Chilton opened his eyes. His pupils contracted. "Nnnnhh."

He tried to kick out, but his ankles were strapped to the chair, the material that bound him bit into his flesh. Chilton turned to Gideon, his features torn between the warmth of dawning comprehension and icy consequential horror. His arm ached, the gold links of the chain sewn into his flesh weighed heavily, doubled in profundity because of its unnatural presence. He flexed his arm, instinct riding, and the links flexed with him.

"No, no -- no!" Adrenaline rushed through his throat, his consciousness now burning in his brain. "Noo!"

"Hold still," Gideon snapped without looking up, his voice low in concentration. He sutured another chain link to the inside of Chilton's elbow before his gaze flicked up to the now-conscious man seated in front of him.

"Like it? Just in time to see the work I've done on the forearm," he went one, gently trailing his finger up the straight line of stain that marked its way up Chilton's arm like footprints in snow. Now was when it would be wise to restrain Chilton by the arms; Gideon took Chilton's own tie and secured one wrist to the other firmly, paying no heed to how sort the left one was sure to be.

"Now..." Gideon's eyes were steady, voice still low. He traced his finger up from Chilton's elbow to his shoulder, then down to where the erratic pulse of his heart hid within his chest. "I'll give you a choice, Frederick. I could finish up here, unless you'd prefer I give your arm a break. Y'know--"

Almost idly, as he spoke, he smeared Chilton's chest and the side of his face with a thin layer of local anesthetic. "Come back to it."

"Neither!"

It wasn't a choice offered, of course, but the oozing panic licking upwards Chilton's vertebrae soaked his brain with both horror and humiliation. Gideon was intentionally invoking psychological games to align with his physical torture; the combination played against Chilton was surreal. He rolled back his head, his eyes seeking the ceiling. Dear god, no, he mouths -- the ceiling proved impassive in response. He couldn't look at Gideon's mechanisms, the literal clockwork sizzling orange and copper into his skin.

He couldn't look at it.

The anesthetic began to seep into his skin, its topical salvation numbing. There was no comfort in the quieted nerve cells, only muted terror.

"Abel, why?" Chilton closed his eyes, shuddering. His thoughts lingered to months and months ago, when he had first caught news of Gideon's former doctors. And what he had done to them.

Chilton had been lured into thinking he was immune.

"Don't do this," he whispered, his jawline brittle and growing beyond his control as the numbness spread. "You don't have to do this."

Edited 2014-04-15 05:12 (UTC)

"That isn't helpful," Gideon said calmly, looking at Chilton more like he were something underneath a microscope lens than a person while he pressed his fingers gently to the numbing swaths of skin to ensure it absorbed.

Chilton was afraid, but he wasn't sorry -- Gideon didn't think he knew yet what he was meant to be sorry for. He snipped the suture with the scissors to leave that one for now, taunt from wrist to elbow and slack from the elbow to where the other end of the chain was secured by the clavicle. Gideon touched Chilton's left cheek, flicking the skin to see how he responded; on the table beside him was what looked like a large brass gear, circular with jagged sides and a hole in the center, and mounted on a wider frame with holes at each corner.

He pressed this to Chilton's cheek and fitted the needle against one of the corner holes. "Why? Why's a person do anything? Take the Chesapeake Ripper... no pattern to his victims, no trace of what he does with the trophies he collects. The human mind is indeed inscrutable... but isn't that you can't understand it," he murmured, leaning close as he focused on carefully stitching each corner to Chilton's face. "You'd rather transform it. Painless process, if you can tolerate the sting."

The needle was re-laced to stitch the opposite side.

The metal of the needle tore through his skin, marrying cogs to flesh. Metal to cheek to metal. Chilton stared forward, his body glacier, the anesthetic numbing the echo chamber that borne his scream.

But scream he did, however low and hollow a sound it was, however closer to a pitched moan. It was his most immediate form of protest.

Chilton's head was weighted to the side, and blood (at first) speckled from his face -- tender cells punctured and left opened, thread forced through tissue, the damage creating a woven set of holes. The gears attached to his face -- he didn't have to look at them to understand the symbolism, to grasp at Gideon's design.

Abel Gideon knew he wasn't the Chesapeake Ripper. And now he had come to remind Chilton of that fact --

-- but not merely remind, no, Chilton thought as he squeezed shut his gaze. To punish. To chastise with blood, but not for the Ripper's sake, not as an apology, this was purely coded revenge. Pure, possessive revenge. This was a letter, a warning, a dangerous promise.

To Danger.

You'd rather transform it, Gideon has said. And now he was transforming Chilton. His eyes snapped open wide.

"I did it for the both of us," uttered Chilton, agonizing his speech along with the metal on his face.

Edited 2014-04-16 10:51 (UTC)

Gideon said nothing in response to that except to scoff, snipping the stitch he'd just threaded tight and beginning to sew another. The anesthetic was a topical, so though it numbed the skin it numbed only the skin; the sub-layers would still be susceptible to the pain that was the consistent puncturing and weaving one incompatible part to another.

"And," he murmured, almost as if to himself as he stitched the last corner into place, the rigid plate now a stiff addition to a face of otherwise very soft skin and beard. "I'm doing this for all of us."

His eyes drifted to the table again, searching for the next implement to use -- he looked from a simple golden winding key with an elongated, sharpened blade, to the ticking watch beside it, before he uttered a hum of consideration and went about continuing to sew the rest of the chain to Chilton's upper arm.

"Just think, Frederick--" Gideon grazed his upper lip with his tongue, pausing to dab sweat and blood off of Chilton's skin. "How well you'll understand us now. What you've done."

Whimpers leaked out, when the nerves a few layers too low were needled. Chilton clenched close his fingers to his palm -- the slender movement that he had, as Gideon had managed the rest of him -- and tried to swallowed the broken noises that threatened behind his teeth. He couldn't repress a shudder while thinking upon this performance horror, analyzing the circumstances and emotional motivations that were all necessary to lead upwards to this brutal moment.

Perspiration haunted the roots of his hairline, his stress manifesting sweat to blood. Gideon's gentle dabbing soothed the mess, and created a perverse sense of care -- or of ownership, perhaps.

"Are you going to kill me?"

The question broke, abrupt in his mouth. He wasn't sure what was worse in the burn of his torture: death, or life as a clockwork monstrosity.

"Don't kill me," he said. Question answered. Raw and exposed, Chilton still favored life. Blood from his cheek dribbled downwards, staining his neck. His eyes focused on that knife of a key that Gideon had set aside.

Now was the time to talk.

"I needed to, Abel, I had to -- can you imagine, what would have happened, if it were a different psychia--" some words hurt to speak, in this state, and Chilton winced. "Doctor? They would have treated you like a common criminal. But you, and Danger, both of you. Are. Extraordinary."

"No."

That one word, as Gideon pulled tight another stitch and stopped, eyes resting on Chilton's. They were wider than usual, alert and accusatory -- his anger, though so occasionally triggered, was present now. Passionate and cold. "I can't imagine it, Frederick. How could I when you took that from me?"

Even in anger all his voice did was raise in volume, a slap of aggression not accompanied by any loss for words nor shaking hands. The needle stabbed into the flesh of Chilton's shoulder, lacing the last of the chain links in place. Absently, Gideon wiped any blood that had gotten on his hands on his shirt, leaving behind dark red smears in his fingers' wake.

"Wonder what she'd make of you now," he said, picking up his scalpel and turning it over, examining the angles, how easily it slid itself back in place between his fingers. This was familiar. "You're right -- she is extraordinary. Probably wouldn't take well to news of your death... but she isn't my wife. Can't tell me what to do."

"How will she know?" The crispness of his syllables were only crystalline because of how acute his agony was -- pulsating, scorching tissue throbbing against pristine alkaline iron. Chilton quivered, his tone careful only because of the fact that speaking words alongside those metal cogs required conscientious choices. He had always chosen his words carefully, but now required an extraordinary intent. Every movement cost him blood.

"Are you going to exhibit -- this?"

This, he chose, as the receiving context. Not 'me', but 'this', as if the display was an experience apart from his persona. If Danger saw him, if she looked upon what Gideon had done to him, if she knew what redesign had fallen upon his flesh -- it was an unbearable concept. His conceit quivered, the concept of losing that power invoked solid fear.

Gideon had already confessed his intent. He was going to kill Frederick Chilton. The psychiatrist had yet to fully absorb that trauma, opting to compartmentalize. Process other internal concerns, first.

It wasn't like Abel. It was like the Chesapeake Ripper, yes, but it wasn't like Gideon--

Chilton choked, saliva and blood swirling down his throat.

He knew, Chilton thought. Gideon had known. And it couldn't have been Alana Bloom, who was the catalyst -- though Chilton blamed her as the instigator -- yet Gideon knew.

"Who was it?" One stricken stare. Chilton doubted he needed to clarify his query.

Edited 2014-04-17 05:50 (UTC)

"That's up to you, Frederick. Told her enough already, haven't you?" The cog placement had been very carefully chosen, affixed to Chilton's face just so that it would make both speech and sight -- pressure beneath the left eye -- distinctly uncomfortable without disabling either. It would give Chilton more reason indeed to think his words through even more, for however long such thought would remain relevant.

The clock on the table beside them ticked the seconds off.

He didn't clarify any intent he might have with Chilton's body; Chilton had wanted Gideon to be the Chesapeake Ripper, let him think that Gideon would display his mutilated corpse the way the real Ripper might -- but with all organs will in their proper places. Let the thought haunt and paralyze him; Gideon was content with that. It seemed perfectly karmic to let Chilton stew in the uncertainty of his own fate.

"A little birdie," he said, pressing his scalpel to the numbed flesh of Chilton's chest, tracing a shape with the point of the blade before he made a thin, clean cut about half an inch deep. "With a very sharp tongue."

Christine.

The name echoed in his head, those two syllables weighing like a guillotine against his synapses. Christine. She had used her power, her persuasive power to force a loaded confession out of Chilton -- those were the bullets, and Gideon was her gun.

Christine and her sharp tongue.

"You're not the Chesapeake Ripper," said Chilton. His confessions were always too late, always too desperate. Atonement didn't count when you already had a death sentence. "You never were."

Chilton whimpered, as Gideon traced with that scalpel, he squirmed and sweated, finding the impulse difficult to fight. The eerie sounds of a careful death -- it thudded, like a slowing heartbeat, soft and human.

It wasn't anything like thunder.

The ticks of the clock's secondhand shuddered with each tock.

"Why did she come to you?" Emotion punctured his mouth, flushing pain in his cheek. His arms prickled with goosebumps. He knew why she went to Gideon, he knew why she had set the dominoes to his torment. But he wanted to know if Gideon knew, too.

A smile slid over Gideon's lips, his eyebrows twitching slightly, when Chilton uttered his helpless confessions; it was the final nail, so to speak, hearing it from the lion's mouth. Looking at Chilton with an expression that by all appearances might seem almost forgiving, he pressed two fingers to the irritated, bleeding skin that the chains were stitched to so that one of his Porter-given powers -- the one that unhealed wounds -- would activate, keeping the pain and blood flowing.

"I know," he said crisply, voice soft. "Figured that part out, but it's refreshing to hear some truth from you before death do us part."

The scalpel sliced again, another clean cut of the exact same depth as the other one.

"She wanted to hurt you," he added, a coy taunt. "Imagine that."

"Gnnh -- God!"

He spits the word out, its syllables sharp with bloodied pain. When Gideon begins to splice his cells again, with more than the use of a scalpel, Chilton screams. He calls out, though his words come hollow and mangled, the gears against his cheek forcing unseen layers of agony -- sharp, aching undulations, blood flowing and tissue tearing.

Then that blade. Into his chest.

He couldn't flinch his arm, chained as it was, without a domino effect of spasms linking along the limb.

"Then. She has. Competition." Chilton spoke through gritted teeth, flecks of saliva on his lips. Blood dribbling down his torso.

"Why -- do you think. You can get away with this?"

The blade sliced thinly as if Gideon were drawing a paintbrush over Chilton's skin, dark red pooling around each side of the blade and dripping downward. Gideon's expression remained fixed stoically, but his eyes gleamed with a vague predatory satisfaction.

"I'm not sure if competition's the right word," he commented finally, distractedly as he cut deeper into Chilton's chest, peeling back with his fingers a layer of skin like it were on a hinge. It wasn't terribly deep, but blood still dribbled freely from the open hole and the pulse of Chilton's heart made the muscle tremble in a way Gideon felt in his fingertips.

He lifted the ticking watch by its chain.

"Doesn't matter if I get away with it," he continued, holding the clock first to his own ear to make sure it was ticking in proper time. "If I don't get caught until after we're done. And by then it won't make any difference to you regardless."

The clock fitted over the hole Gideon had just cut, ticking in comparable time to the throb of Chilton's heart beneath it.

"Ohmygod," slurred Chilton, when he was no longer able to keep his eyes from rolling upwards, his mind teetering on blackout. It wasn't so much the pain -- though that razor sharpness was relevant -- as it was the concept. The horror invoked. The visual, gruesome rips and concaving of his flesh.

"This won't. Help you. Get back your identity, Abel. This won't."

That was the thrum of logic sounding in the back of his mind, this unspoken conclusion: Abel was still searching for himself, and his divining medium was blood and gore. Surgical precision married to unclean brutality, a walking contradiction. A Frankenstein's monster of spare personality disorders. What Abel Gideon had become was partly (mostly) Chilton's own creation.

And this was how gratitude bled.

Edited 2014-04-30 14:53 (UTC)

"Maybe not... in fact almost surely not, but you know, Frederick, that does nothing to dampen the satisfaction."

His voice was quiet, eyes fixed on Chilton's face for the moment to scrutinize the expression -- if he couldn't have justice, after all, he could at least have revenge. It was comfort, not closure, but sometimes a man had to settle for what was realistic and available. Sometimes, he had to work around his limits and get creative.

Focusing narrowing so that the tick of the watch settled Gideon's concentration like a metronome, the rest of the stitches made for short work. Blood dotted and dripped and Gideon wiped the area clean as needed until the piece was affixed in place. Cleaning his own hands, Gideon plucked up the sharpened key.

"Now," he said slowly. "Time to wind you up."

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I'm just dreaming of tearing you apart

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