![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smash_fic posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
smashconTitle: Let Death Come
Rating: PG
Prompt: “What they do not realise – and what you must realise – is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of social interactions” – Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn: The Final Empire”
Fandom/Series: Baccano!
Word Count: 999 words
Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, profit from the story and all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).
Summary:
I am immortal. Damn immortality. Everyone wants it but I tell you, it’s a curse from the Devil. After all, rather than living each day where I can only die over and over again but never truly die, I would much rather simply let death come. Just once. Forever.
Let Death Come
Ah, alchemy.
Is it not such a wonderful thing?
Some might call it a science, but alas, it can only be called an art.
And we, the people who practise such an art, as alchemists, whom hold such power in our hands – the power to change this world, can only be referred to as gods.
Imagine the possibilities. Transforming coal to gold, for example. That’s the kind of thing alchemists do. With our talents, we bless the common people with precious gifts. But that’s not all.
The true gift of god is immortality. The Grand Panacea. The Elixir of Life. Whatever you call it, not only do all alchemists yearn for its creation, the whole world desires it. Well, who doesn’t fear death, after all?
But pardon me. I was too carried away, talking on and on, that I forgot to introduce myself.
My name is Csezlaw Meyer. I come from a long lineage of alchemists. Three hundred years ago, aboard the ship Advenna Avis, I witnessed the summoning of a demon and drank the so-called grand panacea. I have not aged since.
On that fateful night, I became immortal.
I was only ten years of age then and even now, I still retain the body of a child. But that’s not the point. At that time, I was an orphan. When my fellow alchemists parted after we all became immortal, I went with my guardian and friend, Lebreau Fermet Viralesque, the very person who had taken me in after my father died in an accident when I was six. He had been kind to me. He had cared for me. Until immortality poisoned him.
For days on end I would be tied to my bed. In the evening, perhaps, or maybe even early morning, Fermet would approach me with a sickeningly psychotic look on his face and offer me a suggestion, each of them worse than the previous day’s.
“Let’s try cutting off all your fingers this time, Czes-kun. Ok? That’s a good boy...”
Then, he would do exactly that. One by one, with a kitchen knife or some other sharp object, Fermet would cut off each of my ten fingers and watch with a maniacal expression on his face as I gasped in pain every time. Even if I were to protest, I could not escape and he had the nerve to justify his actions by saying he was testing the boundaries of immortality.
“We’re alchemists, Czes-kun,” he would say. “Discovering and exploring all the possibilities of the possible is what we do.”
If he were in the mood, Fermet might move on to my toes after he was done with my fingers. The next day, he might suggest throwing me into a bath of acid. The day after that might be gouging out my eyes and throwing them into the fireplace, or perhaps even carving off my skin, like one would peel an apple...
I would go through this torture every day and at the end of each day, I, without fail, would return to normal with my fingers attached as though they had never been cut off, all bones mended and my entire body completely healed.
I was immortal. I could not die, after all.
But oh, how I wished I were dead.
Any person would rather die than go through that kind of hell each day. Isn’t it ironic? People wish for immortality so much that they would kill for it and yet at that time, where I truly wished for death to come, I could not have it. Instead, I could only live each day over and over, knowing I could never escape. I could never die.
Death cannot compare.
Actually, that’s not quite right either. I would think to myself sometimes:
I don’t want to live anymore.
But in reality, it was more like:
I don’t want to die anymore.
Because that’s what it was – me dying again and again and again and again. I would live each day to die. Over and over.
It became a meaningless life that was better off nonexistent.
Whoever said immortality was a gift from god?
Curse from the devil, more like it.
How fitting that I received the potion that sealed my fate from a demon.
Each time I was tortured, I could only scream my lungs out, too young to know how to endure the pain, as Fermet would cut holes into my stomach or carve words into my bones while I was still alive.
“AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
Oh, how I wished I were dead.
I don’t know how many days passed. How many weeks passed. It might have even been years. It felt like an eternity. Yet there came a time where enough was enough. I don’t know too well how it happened – at that point, I hadn’t even the strength to think straight.
I recall lying on my bed, my body laced with bandages tainted in blood. From where I lay, I would hear Fermet humming from the next room. The next moment, I was out of bed, my feet dragging silently along the wooden floorboards. Pain was the last thing from my mind.
Fermet was sitting in the kitchen, his back towards me, as he cleaned his knife. Three seconds later, I was right behind him. He still hadn’t noticed me. I remember raising my hand, my right hand, and even though I didn’t order it to, it began to advance towards Fermet’s head. He turned...
“Czes, what are you - ?”
On that day, I learned what it meant to devour a person with one’s right hand.
It was both frightful and exhilarating. Most of all, it filled me with disgust.
What I also learned, not just on that day, but from those days of hell, was that people were all manipulative bastards. Even the ones I’d learned to trust would betray me. Just like Fermet. Others would do the same.
That was why, before they betrayed me...
I would betray them.
Voting is now open. Please take the time to fill out the judging form HERE
Thanks.
Rating: PG
Prompt: “What they do not realise – and what you must realise – is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of social interactions” – Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn: The Final Empire”
Fandom/Series: Baccano!
Word Count: 999 words
Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, profit from the story and all creative rights to the characters belong to their original creator(s).
Summary:
I am immortal. Damn immortality. Everyone wants it but I tell you, it’s a curse from the Devil. After all, rather than living each day where I can only die over and over again but never truly die, I would much rather simply let death come. Just once. Forever.
Let Death Come
Ah, alchemy.
Is it not such a wonderful thing?
Some might call it a science, but alas, it can only be called an art.
And we, the people who practise such an art, as alchemists, whom hold such power in our hands – the power to change this world, can only be referred to as gods.
Imagine the possibilities. Transforming coal to gold, for example. That’s the kind of thing alchemists do. With our talents, we bless the common people with precious gifts. But that’s not all.
The true gift of god is immortality. The Grand Panacea. The Elixir of Life. Whatever you call it, not only do all alchemists yearn for its creation, the whole world desires it. Well, who doesn’t fear death, after all?
But pardon me. I was too carried away, talking on and on, that I forgot to introduce myself.
My name is Csezlaw Meyer. I come from a long lineage of alchemists. Three hundred years ago, aboard the ship Advenna Avis, I witnessed the summoning of a demon and drank the so-called grand panacea. I have not aged since.
On that fateful night, I became immortal.
I was only ten years of age then and even now, I still retain the body of a child. But that’s not the point. At that time, I was an orphan. When my fellow alchemists parted after we all became immortal, I went with my guardian and friend, Lebreau Fermet Viralesque, the very person who had taken me in after my father died in an accident when I was six. He had been kind to me. He had cared for me. Until immortality poisoned him.
For days on end I would be tied to my bed. In the evening, perhaps, or maybe even early morning, Fermet would approach me with a sickeningly psychotic look on his face and offer me a suggestion, each of them worse than the previous day’s.
“Let’s try cutting off all your fingers this time, Czes-kun. Ok? That’s a good boy...”
Then, he would do exactly that. One by one, with a kitchen knife or some other sharp object, Fermet would cut off each of my ten fingers and watch with a maniacal expression on his face as I gasped in pain every time. Even if I were to protest, I could not escape and he had the nerve to justify his actions by saying he was testing the boundaries of immortality.
“We’re alchemists, Czes-kun,” he would say. “Discovering and exploring all the possibilities of the possible is what we do.”
If he were in the mood, Fermet might move on to my toes after he was done with my fingers. The next day, he might suggest throwing me into a bath of acid. The day after that might be gouging out my eyes and throwing them into the fireplace, or perhaps even carving off my skin, like one would peel an apple...
I would go through this torture every day and at the end of each day, I, without fail, would return to normal with my fingers attached as though they had never been cut off, all bones mended and my entire body completely healed.
I was immortal. I could not die, after all.
But oh, how I wished I were dead.
Any person would rather die than go through that kind of hell each day. Isn’t it ironic? People wish for immortality so much that they would kill for it and yet at that time, where I truly wished for death to come, I could not have it. Instead, I could only live each day over and over, knowing I could never escape. I could never die.
Death cannot compare.
Actually, that’s not quite right either. I would think to myself sometimes:
I don’t want to live anymore.
But in reality, it was more like:
I don’t want to die anymore.
Because that’s what it was – me dying again and again and again and again. I would live each day to die. Over and over.
It became a meaningless life that was better off nonexistent.
Whoever said immortality was a gift from god?
Curse from the devil, more like it.
How fitting that I received the potion that sealed my fate from a demon.
Each time I was tortured, I could only scream my lungs out, too young to know how to endure the pain, as Fermet would cut holes into my stomach or carve words into my bones while I was still alive.
“AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”
Oh, how I wished I were dead.
I don’t know how many days passed. How many weeks passed. It might have even been years. It felt like an eternity. Yet there came a time where enough was enough. I don’t know too well how it happened – at that point, I hadn’t even the strength to think straight.
I recall lying on my bed, my body laced with bandages tainted in blood. From where I lay, I would hear Fermet humming from the next room. The next moment, I was out of bed, my feet dragging silently along the wooden floorboards. Pain was the last thing from my mind.
Fermet was sitting in the kitchen, his back towards me, as he cleaned his knife. Three seconds later, I was right behind him. He still hadn’t noticed me. I remember raising my hand, my right hand, and even though I didn’t order it to, it began to advance towards Fermet’s head. He turned...
“Czes, what are you - ?”
On that day, I learned what it meant to devour a person with one’s right hand.
It was both frightful and exhilarating. Most of all, it filled me with disgust.
What I also learned, not just on that day, but from those days of hell, was that people were all manipulative bastards. Even the ones I’d learned to trust would betray me. Just like Fermet. Others would do the same.
That was why, before they betrayed me...
I would betray them.
Voting is now open. Please take the time to fill out the judging form HERE
Thanks.
