Resurrection: Part Two - Black Mass
May 8, 2017 16:44:27 GMT -5
Rick Majors and The Anarchist like this
Post by Non Compos Mentis on May 8, 2017 16:44:27 GMT -5
I took the razor that he left for me.
It was meant for my wrist. My throat. My life. I cut none of these things.
I took it to my soul.
My heart longed for the times we had trained in The Order, when the bond that tied us together had been its strongest. It wept for the loss of the days we had spent fulfilling the companionship of Seeker and Guardian, before such labels had become soiled.
It cried for what he... we had become.
The razor cut a swathe through the union of my past and present, hacking them crudely in twain.
Sean... no, the one called Non Compos Mentis, wanted me to give my life if I was not strong enough to disown the only family I had ever known. In my own way... I did.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who had walked into fire to face whatever hell was on the other side, knowing his Seeker would be waiting for him.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who had lived his entire life willing to offer himself entirely to the fateful individual he would be linked to.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who clung to life in a sterile jail cell, hidden in an Order black-site, while he slowly starved to death waiting for his love.
Life was left to what remained.
My body had fallen decrepit, my soul distraught, my mind detached from the suffering. I severed what had been and focused on what was to come.
For weeks I resigned myself to watch as he sat by my side with that disappointed expression, feeding me, clothing me, tending to me as a carer.
And one night I heard the holler of animal sounds, the mad cries of the lost and gone. They had gathered again, them and their deranged guru in their makeshift chapel.
I pulled my still-frail body from the bed and uneasily to my feet. Food in St Jude's Shelter was better than starving, but only a man who knew both experiences could tell the subtle difference. I still stumbled as I made my way toward the door.
Already ajar, the primal shouts entered in one cacophonous slither. Above them, one rapturous horrifying voice. The words were unintelligible, but followed by resounding exaltations from the masses.
Cracking the door open further, I shuffled out into the squalor of the corridor. I realised then that the dull poverty of my home-come-prison had hidden the truth of my plight. That room had been luxury compared to the sprawling chaos that showed itself in the shelter's outer layers. Minding mindlessly discarded odds and ends, I made my way out into the dirge.
Every step was one of torment and disgust, every sound created a terrified pit in my stomach. The hall, once a pale shade of beige, had been mutilated by layer upon layer of graffiti. Now with no light entering the corridor the walls fell into a twilit haze, only for brutish words to lurch out of the shadows and attack the eyes.
There was a shuffle to my side as a shred of newspaper gained sentience and took off down the mottled carpet, driven by an unseen rodent who suddenly darted into a side-room. A second passed before a thud and a blood-curdling squeal escaped the room and injected themselves into my ears.
My sickened stomach could have beat a retreat back to the bedroom, to the hollow sense of safety it offered, but I kept walking forward. As I did I glanced into the rat's grave and found its killer cradling its still-warm corpse, uttering a macabre melody to his new doll.
“The man of God fell,
Straight down to Hell,
And they all went tumbling after...”
Suddenly the man-child, sat in the murk in nothing but a tattered pair of pants, looked up from his furry friend. His eyes were far too close together and threatened to pop from his skull. His receding hairline mocked his babyish features.
“What you gawkin' at, Twink?” His voice and words mocked his appearance ever more. A dribble of drool slid from his lips as his pin-prick pupils locked onto my own.
For a moment I was stunned, I didn't move an inch as I focused on the horror in front of me. This was the madness, the dreg of humanity, that Non Compos Mentis attracted with his beguiling charisma. Still he petted his squeakless companion, still he refused to break eye contact.
The noise began to grow from downstairs once more and the barefoot, bare-chested hobo let a grin grow upon his face as he heard the calls. I had enough and I left him to his plaything. “That's right, keep walkin' Twink. Aaaaaand the man of God fell....”
The song continued, a ditty aimed toward the next man who would defy their guru and saviour. The man who called himself Gabriel, fashioned himself as an angel... that isn't any angel I've ever seen. An albino in a flock of crows doesn't make it a dove.
I spent my entire life worshipping the god The Order told me to bow to, I devoted myself to it and where did it get me? No God was there when I was chained up in a prison cell, no angels descended from the heavens to save me when I felt my body gnawing the flesh off its own bones to survive. I was left alone, truly alone for the first time in my life. No God, no Order... no Sean.
In the end he came, but not before I prayed the hooded man would take me into his flock. Then there was no life worth living, only the slow death that came from this new, fresh hell.
Every other room was dormant, or the clandestine inhabitants had the courtesy of leaving their doors closed. The detritus all around left the pitch-black floor as a lucky dip of balance or chaos. One unfortunate step and my frail body would tumble head over heels into an unnamed casket, or whatever these heathens planned as a grave. Somehow I struggled slowly to the stairs at the end of the hall and clutched the balustrade for dear life.
There I saw light again for the first time; the dim moonlight that crept through the windowed entrance. Would it be locked? With everyone amassed in the mess hall they could have left it unwatched. Tentatively I made my way down the steps, one by one with my hand latched onto the wooden bannister in case my legs gave way.
Bed-bound and malnourished, my legs used all their energy in getting down to the entrance hall in one piece. The door was indeed free from guards, though it was not open. Locked? Perhaps, but this pack of animals feared nothing from another vagrant walking in to join their masses, and those inside were already deluded enough to stay for good.
I stared longingly at the door, so promising and hopefully were the thoughts it conjured. And then the reality set in. Where would I go? Disowned by The Order, too frail to make it far on foot and with no other option. I heard the voice of a maniac booming from the canteen, and I knew my only escape was in convincing that man to see the error in his manipulative ways.
“Boy, that ain't a place you wanna be goin'.” The wizened voice caught me off guard and I almost lost my balance, steeling myself against the wall to prevent my bones cracking on the thinly carpeted floor. I peered into the darkness on the other side of the entrance hall and there, as he had been when we arrived some months ago, was the one-time owner of that hell hole.
Godfrey's bloodshot eyes peered out from the blackness and was soon joined by the sickly skin of his ageing face. The elder man of colour slumped back into his chair, hidden behind a supposedly bullet-proof glass shelter to protect against the hateful humans this place attracted. In his eyes was the resignation of helplessness, a once spirited man who loved his home, Godfrey knew he was now a prisoner. “You can't change him, ya hear me, Son? He's got them all twisted up thinking he's Jim Jones or some shit.”
“Everyone can change, old man. Even him.” My vocal chords felt tight. I had barely used them in months, only to tell Sean... Mentis that I wanted to go back to The Order or die. All that time it was Sean that had stayed by my side, caring for me, but at night be became this beast and took his army with him to fulfil their sordid aims. There was good in him, somewhere in the insanity.
I turned from the jaded prisoner, who had lost all sense of hope and remained chained to his one last possession even though it had so clearly been taken from him, and I moved toward the mess hall doors. With a last gasping cry, Godfrey called out from behind his bullet-proof prison. “I saw him rebuild after he lost you, Boy. I watched him fall apart when he remembered your face again! Everyone can change? Even him, you say? Shit! That IS him changed!”
I tried not to listen and reached out for the door, pull on the large metallic handle to reveal a blast of pure noise and smell. The roar of a crowd fuelled on ecstasy and blood-lust. The scene of a hundred men and women born and raised by the filthy streets.
Of all the myriad people in the room, but a few stood apart from the rest. A crazed, wiry type with a pair of impressive muttonchops and an equally unimpressive bald spot on top; his name was Pike and he held the position of right hand man, and he did so with ruthless zeal. Next was a woman by the name of Tor, whose body was laced with a web of scars accumulated over her years on the hard roads; I had never heard her speak, but she commanded loyalty in spite of her relative youth. A finally a blonde haired youngster who toyed constantly with a can of spray paint; he was Pen, and he was the man responsible for the graffiti-soiled walls all around.
In the middle of these was the one man every single vagabond and hobo in the room was there to listen to. With streaks of black war-paint dragged down his face, Non Compos Mentis took to a makeshift pulpit and lifted his arms high to quieten the masses.
“The story is always the same. I see it now, I've seen it for years. There are those who would proclaim salvation to all who would follow them... and all of them lie!” The words of Non Compos Mentis spat forth from his mouth and were swallowed whole by his followers.
“LIES!” He choked with vehement anger, believing every syllable spoken.”When they tell you to kneel and all will be forgiven. LIES! When they pat your head, give you a smart-looking jacket and tell you to work and you'll be saved. LIES! When they tell you their God is a forgiving God and he'll accept you into his ever-loving arms.”
I watched as the devious Mentis turned from his crowd and focused on Tor, his female lieutenant, and pulled a hand up to her face. I slipped further through the door, leaving it to shut behind me, as he traced the path of a particular scar that ran almost the length of her face, forehead to chin in one clear line. With solemn rage he turned back to his adoring crowd and exclaimed. “The only God I ever met is a cruel bastard with a flair for torture!”
He came forward then, into the faces of his own personal baying mob, and shouted in their faces with every inch of the anger they showed in their expressions. They were fed up of being treated as dogs, being labelled as a blight on the earth by some, or worse completely forgotten by others. They had been promised salvation before, hundreds of times, and where had it gotten them? “When you landed with your face in the gutter, where was their God?! When you starved while their chosen few gorged themselves at your expense, where was their God?! When your brothers and sisters died because his chosen few cared so little, where was their God?!”
“No, if that God exists I wish him nothing but the cold edge of a knife! I refuse to pledge allegiance to him and so should each of you!” I almost agreed with him, that psychopath in war-paint who had all but kept me hostage. Every God I'd been taught to believe in had abandoned me, but at least they weren't the devil himself, that stood before me then.
“But some lost souls flock to these false prophets and preachers, they find hollow comfort in their promises of forgiveness. Some even forsake their names and lives for these lies, taking new ones to mimic their fake saviours.” And there was the hook into the flesh. The mob, impetuous for blood, needed only a target worth their anger and Mentis would give it to them on a silver platter. “A man who would think himself an archangel, a messenger from a true God in human form, stands before you and I and he threatens to take away what is rightfully ours!”
“The tournament and the PCW World Title mean more than worthless trinkets to offer to a counterfeit God, they mean more than the blind ambition of one man guiding another. These accolades are those bestowed by the chosen, they are signs of acceptance, forgiveness and triumph...” All that Mentis himself had held at one point, but of course that was all lost in the past. He had tasted the success, and then the bitterness of being forgotten once his neck had been snapped. Now he watched as men like Seromine took the gold he once held and guided their own followers to further riches. Gabriel was the first of many, but not the least. Mentis knew the time would come when every furious hobo under his command would be needed to win that war.
“And we will use them to tear down everything they have built! Every false idol they worship and name themselves after, every Gabriel and Loki, will fall into obscurity like the gods and angels they use as namesakes! Every Phinehas Grimm they lay a crown upon and call king, they shall be dethroned and replaced by what they sought to ignore and punish!” First Gabriel, then the President of PCW himself. The two had history, but this was more. This was about tearing down what the God of Chaos now represented; the establishment, the 'chosen', and none demonstrated that as much as the PCW World Champion himself. Eventually Mentis planned for them to meet, but for now he needed to dispatch an archangel before he could start to consider it a reality.
“The man I knew as Rick Majors, reborn as a preacher of a bastardised faith, was a jaded man with nothing to live for. He was a step from being one of you in this very room. With no love left in his soul and no life left to live, he found himself courted by faith. And in his weakness he accepted the forgiveness, he accepted the promise of riches and he acceptable the hope he could one day be one of the chosen again.” I shuffled through the crowd, my bony form making it easier that I expected. As the depraved Mentis continued I moved closed and closer to the front of the mob.
“Gabriel will not get his forgiveness, he will not find the riches and he will not become one of the chosen few again. Not after Tuesday. We leave for Greenville, each and every one us, and we make sure these false gods never come to succeed!” A massive roar of approval pounded the walls of the mess hall. They would have stormed the White House if he'd given the order at that moment. I finally poked my head out into the open air or the front of the crowd, escaping the claustrophobia of being stuck in a writhing it of putrid beasts. I must have been easy to spot, but Mentis was too wrapped up in the moment.
“I may not offer you salvation. I may not promise you riches. I may not give you the acceptance and triumph you have been devoid of your entire lives. But I can offer you one thing; vengeance.” And finally he saw me. For a moment the mask slipped and the eyes staring into mine were not the maniac's, but those of the carer, Sean Rhodes. Soon enough the mast slid back into place though, and one word was left as he glowered into my soul with that raging insanity; vengeance. The only thing I had left was vengeance, the need to take that monster and tear away the sin it had inflicted.
Looking deep into my eyes, Mentis believed he spoke to the weak-willed boy he'd left in that bed. He believed I was nothing but a broken soul ready to be moulded. “Every preacher who promised you salvation they couldn't deliver, every jumped up asshole who ever spat at you in the street, every last person who looked down on you and offered nothing but hate... I offer you the chance to burn their world to the ground!”
It was the only thing I had left, I had to burn Non Compos Mentis away until only Sean Rhodes was left.
It was meant for my wrist. My throat. My life. I cut none of these things.
I took it to my soul.
My heart longed for the times we had trained in The Order, when the bond that tied us together had been its strongest. It wept for the loss of the days we had spent fulfilling the companionship of Seeker and Guardian, before such labels had become soiled.
It cried for what he... we had become.
The razor cut a swathe through the union of my past and present, hacking them crudely in twain.
Sean... no, the one called Non Compos Mentis, wanted me to give my life if I was not strong enough to disown the only family I had ever known. In my own way... I did.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who had walked into fire to face whatever hell was on the other side, knowing his Seeker would be waiting for him.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who had lived his entire life willing to offer himself entirely to the fateful individual he would be linked to.
It was death for the Ezra Colne who clung to life in a sterile jail cell, hidden in an Order black-site, while he slowly starved to death waiting for his love.
Life was left to what remained.
My body had fallen decrepit, my soul distraught, my mind detached from the suffering. I severed what had been and focused on what was to come.
For weeks I resigned myself to watch as he sat by my side with that disappointed expression, feeding me, clothing me, tending to me as a carer.
And one night I heard the holler of animal sounds, the mad cries of the lost and gone. They had gathered again, them and their deranged guru in their makeshift chapel.
I pulled my still-frail body from the bed and uneasily to my feet. Food in St Jude's Shelter was better than starving, but only a man who knew both experiences could tell the subtle difference. I still stumbled as I made my way toward the door.
Already ajar, the primal shouts entered in one cacophonous slither. Above them, one rapturous horrifying voice. The words were unintelligible, but followed by resounding exaltations from the masses.
Cracking the door open further, I shuffled out into the squalor of the corridor. I realised then that the dull poverty of my home-come-prison had hidden the truth of my plight. That room had been luxury compared to the sprawling chaos that showed itself in the shelter's outer layers. Minding mindlessly discarded odds and ends, I made my way out into the dirge.
Every step was one of torment and disgust, every sound created a terrified pit in my stomach. The hall, once a pale shade of beige, had been mutilated by layer upon layer of graffiti. Now with no light entering the corridor the walls fell into a twilit haze, only for brutish words to lurch out of the shadows and attack the eyes.
There was a shuffle to my side as a shred of newspaper gained sentience and took off down the mottled carpet, driven by an unseen rodent who suddenly darted into a side-room. A second passed before a thud and a blood-curdling squeal escaped the room and injected themselves into my ears.
My sickened stomach could have beat a retreat back to the bedroom, to the hollow sense of safety it offered, but I kept walking forward. As I did I glanced into the rat's grave and found its killer cradling its still-warm corpse, uttering a macabre melody to his new doll.
“The man of God fell,
Straight down to Hell,
And they all went tumbling after...”
Suddenly the man-child, sat in the murk in nothing but a tattered pair of pants, looked up from his furry friend. His eyes were far too close together and threatened to pop from his skull. His receding hairline mocked his babyish features.
“What you gawkin' at, Twink?” His voice and words mocked his appearance ever more. A dribble of drool slid from his lips as his pin-prick pupils locked onto my own.
For a moment I was stunned, I didn't move an inch as I focused on the horror in front of me. This was the madness, the dreg of humanity, that Non Compos Mentis attracted with his beguiling charisma. Still he petted his squeakless companion, still he refused to break eye contact.
The noise began to grow from downstairs once more and the barefoot, bare-chested hobo let a grin grow upon his face as he heard the calls. I had enough and I left him to his plaything. “That's right, keep walkin' Twink. Aaaaaand the man of God fell....”
The song continued, a ditty aimed toward the next man who would defy their guru and saviour. The man who called himself Gabriel, fashioned himself as an angel... that isn't any angel I've ever seen. An albino in a flock of crows doesn't make it a dove.
I spent my entire life worshipping the god The Order told me to bow to, I devoted myself to it and where did it get me? No God was there when I was chained up in a prison cell, no angels descended from the heavens to save me when I felt my body gnawing the flesh off its own bones to survive. I was left alone, truly alone for the first time in my life. No God, no Order... no Sean.
In the end he came, but not before I prayed the hooded man would take me into his flock. Then there was no life worth living, only the slow death that came from this new, fresh hell.
Every other room was dormant, or the clandestine inhabitants had the courtesy of leaving their doors closed. The detritus all around left the pitch-black floor as a lucky dip of balance or chaos. One unfortunate step and my frail body would tumble head over heels into an unnamed casket, or whatever these heathens planned as a grave. Somehow I struggled slowly to the stairs at the end of the hall and clutched the balustrade for dear life.
There I saw light again for the first time; the dim moonlight that crept through the windowed entrance. Would it be locked? With everyone amassed in the mess hall they could have left it unwatched. Tentatively I made my way down the steps, one by one with my hand latched onto the wooden bannister in case my legs gave way.
Bed-bound and malnourished, my legs used all their energy in getting down to the entrance hall in one piece. The door was indeed free from guards, though it was not open. Locked? Perhaps, but this pack of animals feared nothing from another vagrant walking in to join their masses, and those inside were already deluded enough to stay for good.
I stared longingly at the door, so promising and hopefully were the thoughts it conjured. And then the reality set in. Where would I go? Disowned by The Order, too frail to make it far on foot and with no other option. I heard the voice of a maniac booming from the canteen, and I knew my only escape was in convincing that man to see the error in his manipulative ways.
“Boy, that ain't a place you wanna be goin'.” The wizened voice caught me off guard and I almost lost my balance, steeling myself against the wall to prevent my bones cracking on the thinly carpeted floor. I peered into the darkness on the other side of the entrance hall and there, as he had been when we arrived some months ago, was the one-time owner of that hell hole.
Godfrey's bloodshot eyes peered out from the blackness and was soon joined by the sickly skin of his ageing face. The elder man of colour slumped back into his chair, hidden behind a supposedly bullet-proof glass shelter to protect against the hateful humans this place attracted. In his eyes was the resignation of helplessness, a once spirited man who loved his home, Godfrey knew he was now a prisoner. “You can't change him, ya hear me, Son? He's got them all twisted up thinking he's Jim Jones or some shit.”
“Everyone can change, old man. Even him.” My vocal chords felt tight. I had barely used them in months, only to tell Sean... Mentis that I wanted to go back to The Order or die. All that time it was Sean that had stayed by my side, caring for me, but at night be became this beast and took his army with him to fulfil their sordid aims. There was good in him, somewhere in the insanity.
I turned from the jaded prisoner, who had lost all sense of hope and remained chained to his one last possession even though it had so clearly been taken from him, and I moved toward the mess hall doors. With a last gasping cry, Godfrey called out from behind his bullet-proof prison. “I saw him rebuild after he lost you, Boy. I watched him fall apart when he remembered your face again! Everyone can change? Even him, you say? Shit! That IS him changed!”
I tried not to listen and reached out for the door, pull on the large metallic handle to reveal a blast of pure noise and smell. The roar of a crowd fuelled on ecstasy and blood-lust. The scene of a hundred men and women born and raised by the filthy streets.
Of all the myriad people in the room, but a few stood apart from the rest. A crazed, wiry type with a pair of impressive muttonchops and an equally unimpressive bald spot on top; his name was Pike and he held the position of right hand man, and he did so with ruthless zeal. Next was a woman by the name of Tor, whose body was laced with a web of scars accumulated over her years on the hard roads; I had never heard her speak, but she commanded loyalty in spite of her relative youth. A finally a blonde haired youngster who toyed constantly with a can of spray paint; he was Pen, and he was the man responsible for the graffiti-soiled walls all around.
In the middle of these was the one man every single vagabond and hobo in the room was there to listen to. With streaks of black war-paint dragged down his face, Non Compos Mentis took to a makeshift pulpit and lifted his arms high to quieten the masses.
“The story is always the same. I see it now, I've seen it for years. There are those who would proclaim salvation to all who would follow them... and all of them lie!” The words of Non Compos Mentis spat forth from his mouth and were swallowed whole by his followers.
“LIES!” He choked with vehement anger, believing every syllable spoken.”When they tell you to kneel and all will be forgiven. LIES! When they pat your head, give you a smart-looking jacket and tell you to work and you'll be saved. LIES! When they tell you their God is a forgiving God and he'll accept you into his ever-loving arms.”
I watched as the devious Mentis turned from his crowd and focused on Tor, his female lieutenant, and pulled a hand up to her face. I slipped further through the door, leaving it to shut behind me, as he traced the path of a particular scar that ran almost the length of her face, forehead to chin in one clear line. With solemn rage he turned back to his adoring crowd and exclaimed. “The only God I ever met is a cruel bastard with a flair for torture!”
He came forward then, into the faces of his own personal baying mob, and shouted in their faces with every inch of the anger they showed in their expressions. They were fed up of being treated as dogs, being labelled as a blight on the earth by some, or worse completely forgotten by others. They had been promised salvation before, hundreds of times, and where had it gotten them? “When you landed with your face in the gutter, where was their God?! When you starved while their chosen few gorged themselves at your expense, where was their God?! When your brothers and sisters died because his chosen few cared so little, where was their God?!”
“No, if that God exists I wish him nothing but the cold edge of a knife! I refuse to pledge allegiance to him and so should each of you!” I almost agreed with him, that psychopath in war-paint who had all but kept me hostage. Every God I'd been taught to believe in had abandoned me, but at least they weren't the devil himself, that stood before me then.
“But some lost souls flock to these false prophets and preachers, they find hollow comfort in their promises of forgiveness. Some even forsake their names and lives for these lies, taking new ones to mimic their fake saviours.” And there was the hook into the flesh. The mob, impetuous for blood, needed only a target worth their anger and Mentis would give it to them on a silver platter. “A man who would think himself an archangel, a messenger from a true God in human form, stands before you and I and he threatens to take away what is rightfully ours!”
“The tournament and the PCW World Title mean more than worthless trinkets to offer to a counterfeit God, they mean more than the blind ambition of one man guiding another. These accolades are those bestowed by the chosen, they are signs of acceptance, forgiveness and triumph...” All that Mentis himself had held at one point, but of course that was all lost in the past. He had tasted the success, and then the bitterness of being forgotten once his neck had been snapped. Now he watched as men like Seromine took the gold he once held and guided their own followers to further riches. Gabriel was the first of many, but not the least. Mentis knew the time would come when every furious hobo under his command would be needed to win that war.
“And we will use them to tear down everything they have built! Every false idol they worship and name themselves after, every Gabriel and Loki, will fall into obscurity like the gods and angels they use as namesakes! Every Phinehas Grimm they lay a crown upon and call king, they shall be dethroned and replaced by what they sought to ignore and punish!” First Gabriel, then the President of PCW himself. The two had history, but this was more. This was about tearing down what the God of Chaos now represented; the establishment, the 'chosen', and none demonstrated that as much as the PCW World Champion himself. Eventually Mentis planned for them to meet, but for now he needed to dispatch an archangel before he could start to consider it a reality.
“The man I knew as Rick Majors, reborn as a preacher of a bastardised faith, was a jaded man with nothing to live for. He was a step from being one of you in this very room. With no love left in his soul and no life left to live, he found himself courted by faith. And in his weakness he accepted the forgiveness, he accepted the promise of riches and he acceptable the hope he could one day be one of the chosen again.” I shuffled through the crowd, my bony form making it easier that I expected. As the depraved Mentis continued I moved closed and closer to the front of the mob.
“Gabriel will not get his forgiveness, he will not find the riches and he will not become one of the chosen few again. Not after Tuesday. We leave for Greenville, each and every one us, and we make sure these false gods never come to succeed!” A massive roar of approval pounded the walls of the mess hall. They would have stormed the White House if he'd given the order at that moment. I finally poked my head out into the open air or the front of the crowd, escaping the claustrophobia of being stuck in a writhing it of putrid beasts. I must have been easy to spot, but Mentis was too wrapped up in the moment.
“I may not offer you salvation. I may not promise you riches. I may not give you the acceptance and triumph you have been devoid of your entire lives. But I can offer you one thing; vengeance.” And finally he saw me. For a moment the mask slipped and the eyes staring into mine were not the maniac's, but those of the carer, Sean Rhodes. Soon enough the mast slid back into place though, and one word was left as he glowered into my soul with that raging insanity; vengeance. The only thing I had left was vengeance, the need to take that monster and tear away the sin it had inflicted.
Looking deep into my eyes, Mentis believed he spoke to the weak-willed boy he'd left in that bed. He believed I was nothing but a broken soul ready to be moulded. “Every preacher who promised you salvation they couldn't deliver, every jumped up asshole who ever spat at you in the street, every last person who looked down on you and offered nothing but hate... I offer you the chance to burn their world to the ground!”
It was the only thing I had left, I had to burn Non Compos Mentis away until only Sean Rhodes was left.
