(Trigger warning!: Deep delusional hysteria and mentions of hallucinations)
Though I had gone to Jack's cabin on Toby's accord, this time, it would be of my own. I wanted that girl.
No matter how much I absolutely fucking hated to admit it, she had got me pretty good. I scanned over my reflection in the mirror, examining the deep bruises and cuts. I honestly didn't think my skin was even capable of bruising after all the 'beauty treatments' I had endured years ago, yet the varying dark purple shades scattered across my sickly pale skin nonetheless. I didn't care for how my skin had turned out half as much as I cared for the smile.
A scarification of sorts to always remind me of how beautiful I really was. How intimate a moment it was to bestow myself with such honor and grace. To wear the engraved smile was to be powerful and feared, yet not feared because you're powerful; feared because you're delusional. But was I really delusional, or was that a term forced upon me by the doctors and shrinks that just didn't understand?
Well, Jeffrey, I've never seen a case quite like your's. You've been very nearly fatally assaulted, yet find the damage they caused you to be beautiful?
The PhD fucks didn't even bother covering their dripping sarcasm, drenching every word that left their tongues. Of course I thought it was beautiful, if they read my paperwork and saw my statements, why did they keep fucking asking?
To be able to survive such an encounter was a miracle, a gift from God, nearly impossible odds. The only reason that made sense as to why I had survived such an attack was that I had been chosen by a higher power. I was meant to embrace my unsettling, newfound beauty, and bless others with that same honor. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror all those years ago and carved my face with a simple kitchen knife' such a bland yet blessed object to be able to make contact with the blood and flesh of a chosen one.
And now, (Name) was blessed in that same sense. To make contact with my flesh and my blood, she must also have been chosen, for no other being had been able to leave bruises on me since that fateful day I stood in the mirror, smiling for all eternity. It all made sense. It was fate. Me seeing Toby eavesdropping led to me meeting her, the chosen woman.
I would hand-craft her smile to fit her perfectly, and she would survive it. The fight in her was strong, as it was in me all those years ago when I was quite literally burned alive. She would fight, and she would rise above the pain as the higher power had assigned her to do, and she would be beside me for the rest of time. Her feelings for me would surpass a mortal love when she realized we were cut from the same cloth in the heavens before our souls had ever made it down to earth.
A sudden wave of intense jealousy like I had never known before ripped through my body. She was with Jack. And he had acted protective over her. He had thrown me nearly ten feet away when I had my hand wrapped around her soft and dainty throat, choking the life from her. I did want to kill her in that moment, but I didn't understand then. Yet, I didn't feel bad. She would have to be conditioned to me anyway. She would have to behave the way I told her to, or get severely punished. It would only be fair that if I was the one to awaken her to her true self, she would eternally serve me and be grateful for her chance to be beside me.
I could almost see her now, kneeling before me, looking up at me with her soft (eye color) irises and a freshly engraved smile, enhancing her beauty by tenfold.
"Come get me, Jeff... Come rescue me from Jack...I'm waiting for you, Jeff...I will always wait for you..."
She spoke to me, her eyes never leaving my own. Words flowed from her in a breathy, almost ghastly tone as her form rippled like water, yet her mouth never moved as she spoke her truth. I wanted to reach out for her, but when I tried, she dissolved and melded into the walls and flooring of my bedroom. And instantly, I knew she was trying to communicate with me through her own mind into my own. She had sent me a deliberate message, telling me to go back and save her from her fruitless mortality and envelope her in eternal grace. And save her I would. I needed to come up with a plan, but first, I needed to get Toby off of Jack's ass. If he kept trying to interfere, he would ruin my own plans, and that I wouldn't tolerate. I knew what I had to do.
'hey, meet me at the training circle. gotta tell you somethin' sent at 3:55 P.M.
--(Name) POV--
The little surge of power that came from smacking around Jeff was short-lived as Jack turned his attention back to me. While I knew I was due for some questioning, I had been too busy reveling in the feeling of having some control over something to plan out my responses.
If it really came down to it, which I was almost sure it would, I would just tell him the truth.
He had brought me back into the hostage-room, which he had described as his guest room. Calling it a 'guest-room' alluded to Jack having his own bedroom; it was sort of strange thinking that a creature such as Jack would still need sleep, but it made sense. Though he hadn't taken the extra step to cuff himself to me, or use tape to bind me again, he was still alert and ever-cautious as he eyed me down every time I made even the slightest movements.
"You escaped your restraints to save me? I highly doubt that was the true motive,"
Out of all the things he could question me on, he had settled on that. Honestly, it was something that was purely spur-of-the-moment. Had I been thinking more clearly and hadn't let the guilt of Henry flood my brain in that exact moment, I probably would have made my escape as I had intended to.
"It wasn't my true motive at all, to be honest. I wanted to escape, at first anyway. I was going to let Jeff have you if it meant I could escape,"
I left out the part regarding Henry. I learned my lesson the last time when Jack had kicked me in the stomach, sending me hurtling to the floor in the very same room; don't bring up Henry. Jack had some strange feelings regarding human relationships, and he wasn't afraid to voice them. He didn't really think that there was anybody that was truly in love. And after the relationship I had went through with Henry, I could see a little reasoning in that outlook.
"..Thank you."
My eyes widened in shock, and I tried looking away from him before he could gauge my reaction. He was thanking me. There were a trillion words in the English language at his disposal that he could have chosen to use as a response or a rebuttal, but he chose to thank me instead. And he didn't sound sarcastic as he usually did; he was genuinely thanking me.
"You threw Jeff ten feet for choking me, was that your true motive?"
It hadn't slipped my mind that as soon as Jeff had started choking me, Jack had reacted. Why would he choose to save my life if he was just going to end it when everything was said and done? He hadn't said what he wanted from me, or more specifically, what they wanted from me, but he had told me multiple times that he was refraining from consuming my innards. Why not just let Jeff off me? If he had the laptop in his custody, why not just rid of me here and now? It wouldn't be hard to find out Henry's password by any means; his password was his lock-screen background.
"I have no motives, I have assignments I complete and orders I listen to,"
He stood, making his way toward the heavy metal door.
As he had said, sometimes the lack of an answer is all the answer you needed, and deflection definitely counted as lack of an answer.
I looked after him, and decided that maybe I could play nice for once, too.
"Thank you,"
He faltered in his stride toward the door, his hand hovering just above the handle. He seemed frozen in place for a moment, like he was deep in thought. His back was facing me, but even if he was fully turned toward me, his tar-filled voids wouldn't provide me even a glimpse into his world. An organ-eating monster who makes friends with serial killers and works for some sort of criminal ring, yet saved his hostage from certain death when push came to shove. Who really was Jack?
"You haven't had anything to eat in nearly a full week, you know,"
My stomach lurched at the thought of him bringing me a sampler plate of his taste in cuisine.
A grumble emanated from my stomach, serving as my reply to him.
"You'll need to eat to stay alive I suppose, so I will make a trip to your house,"
My severely deprived brain couldn't fathom why he would return to my house on the premise of me eating until I pictured him trying to enter a grocery store looking the way he did. He would have no choice other than to return to my house and grab food from the fridge and pantry.
Whether he walked into the grocery store or broke into my house for the second time didn't concern me as long as I would finally have something to satiate my stomach, it was probably eating itself by now.
I looked up at him from my spot on the queen-size bed just in time to see his disheveled appearance from his altercation with Jeff. Deep bruising turned his ash-gray skin nearly black at his throat while his face held a few light scratches across his cheeks and forehead. His brunette hair hung messily, the tips just long enough to dip into the concave socket where his eyes should have been, his sweatshirt had unzipped itself from all the chaos just enough for an off-white V-neck to peek from beneath the zipper, alluding to his chest.
He was beautiful. Everything about him was effortless. His every thought was calculated and his entire environment was always accounted for, even the people in it. How he could see so well with nothing ocular to aid him was strange, but Jack even existing at all was strange. A man, sacrificed to a God, rose from the dead to transform into something of nightmares. And I, the human he held captive, found him to be utterly breathtaking.
As Jack took his leave and shut the door, a soft click following, I found myself hoping that my fleeting thoughts on Jack's appearance were just due to some sort of psychological damage. Perhaps Jeff had strangled me for just a second too long and I was suffering the effects of oxygen deprivation. But I knew better.
-- Uh-oh. Jeff's taken a liking to (Name). I decided to add this part in to really showcase the true insanity of Jeff. How he views himself as above everybody else because he survived something seriously traumatic. It ISNT canon, as a lot of stuff in this book isnt, but I think it would make sense for Jeff to have a superiority complex and think he is some sort of chosen one, especially after having so much time to sit in his thoughts and really spiral into true insanity and psychosis.
AND WHEWWWWWW Jack was putting out them STRIPTEASE moves now dayummmm
We love a gray-skinned alien cryptid <3
And as always, if you're going to Meatball, do it Extravagantly. And don't forget, if your man/woman doesn't think you're chosen by a higher power to be with them, they ain't THE ONE PERIODDDDD.--