madness

Once upon a time, a young man hanging out at a bar was forced to watch his best friend die, and an innocent trying to do her work got her arm torn off for a cruel ruse. A man was forcibly embraced and his student nearly drove herself insane with anger, only to eventually submit to the same fate faced with vengeance or her continued existence. That same man and that same innocent were targeted for murder simply for existing. There are so many tales of anger, and pain, and suffering that I could recount, but no. I will settle with one.

Once upon a time, two girls who never meant anyone any harm, and their gentleman accompaniment were at a party for the holidays. Harmless. It was a lovely date spot for the solstice, because the three cared for each other deeply, and wanted to spend the night together. They talked, they mingled, they saw their friends.

One girl’s twin, who loved her to death and wished nothing more than that she was protected, thought it would be safe. She thought there would be no harm waiting for her dearest sister, and so she chose to hang out with her kind that night, instead.

But oh, no. It wasn’t safe at all. The murderers, the tormenters, they had sent spies to this party so that they might incite hurt. And when the two girls went for a walk on their own, they struck. One disguised themselves as the gentleman and followed them to distract them, and their torturer leaped from the trees and stole them away before anyone had time to notice.

They blew out one’s eyes and left her to die like vermin. They took the twin captive. They staked her, and burned her, and broke her mind in twine, and the only reason they were found in time was because the one left to die summoned her fellows to the scene of the crime. The innocent found her, the innocent called the cavalry.

The gentleman was the first to hear from them. He took none other than the Prince’s rich person car and sped the whole way. Next to arrive was the other twin. The defender. The two of them were close to the pair and devastated by the sight of the one left to die. The screams of the twin drew their attention and sent broken fragments of herself scattering.

And those fragments embedded themselves within the two.

Shards sunk deep into the gentleman’s heart, made him cry out in rage, drove him to frenzy. Rounds of an incendiary pistol sank themselves into the flammable flesh of panders and cannon fodder, and he tried to defend the shattered girl against the onslaught, tried to save her, tried to fix her.

But the pieces didn’t dig deeper than into the mind and soul of the twin. They stabbed into her brain, splitting her mind in twine and invoking a deep, primal, terrible rage from far deeper within than the Rage of the Garou and realizing all of her greatest fears before her. They lacerated her heart and made it hard to breathe, hard to reason, hard to keep herself together.

They embedded themselves into her skin and became her claws and became barbs along her spirit, jagged and cutting like broken glass and rusty razorblades. They replaced her teeth and filled her mouth with blood and tears and hate, so much hate. They caught in her fur and cut at her as much as they cut in her enemy and she cried over the broken remains but she could do nothing to fix this but make them pay.

Make them pay.

Make them pay.

They glued the pieces of the girl back together eventually, but she wasn’t whole. She could never be whole again. There were cracks and missing pieces, and the cracks threatened to break again and send those fragments flying whenever any strife showed itself before her. And the missing pieces were permanently embedded into her twin. Her fangs, her claws, her very soul, covered in jags and barbs and hatred and anger and bitterness and poison.

And she used the hatred, the poison, it became her blood. It nearly became her driving force if not for those she loved and it gave her direction to destroy those responsible. And she used the shards that became part of her to tear into their flesh, make them suffer tenfold.

Now you seem to have been so enchanted by my story that you haven’t noticed the stake through your chest. You were so enchanted that you didn’t notice the kerosene underneath you. You were so enchanted that you didn’t notice me light this match.

There’s a lesson to be learned here, my friend. Don’t steal away someone’s twin, don’t wound her to breaking, and don’t let those shards embed themselves in her loved ones.

So tell me, what have we learned today?

We’ve learned that you are already dead.