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Execute (Original)
- Thread starter TotalAbsolutism
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Izicata
AE ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME
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You duplicated a phrase.
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Secret Secretion
Hi!
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vladspellbinder
Odd and obscure vampiric panther
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My schedule is so borked right now. I am so far behind things...
So she's just going to leave the shower running? Work up that water bill to spite him!
Thanks for the chapter TotalAbsolutism.
Well, now I know you're not American and this isn't set in America. We call them trunks around here, not boots.
So much for her being gagged. Did she chew through it between being taken out of the trunk and dropped on the couch?
I mean, she's clearly ready to be a killer she just needs to learn discipline to only kill when she's getting paid to do so or needs to remove witnesses.
Kinky. She's my kind of girl. Other than the whole "crazy killer" part. Not really into that.
"couldn't"
So she's just going to leave the shower running? Work up that water bill to spite him!
Thanks for the chapter TotalAbsolutism.
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Oh, bah. I meant to write him taking it off.
Some would argue it's just self-defense here.
The origin is more... unpleasant than that.
Thanks.
Also something I meant to put in. Teaches me to write while tired, I suppose.
vladspellbinder
Odd and obscure vampiric panther
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Well that sucks. With her mentioning lack of privacy right after the statement about experience being tied up I had thought she was doing it for fun when she could get away with it.
I don't understand. Are you saying there are times you aren't tired? This is a thing for people? *Says the man with mild insomnia who is always exhausted unless he sleeps for fourteen hours straight.*
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You're right about everything except for the motivation.
Well, no, I'm always tired; but there's tired and there's tired.
vladspellbinder
Odd and obscure vampiric panther
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Huuuum, curious. I'm sure it'll be brought up again at some point and explained a bit more so I'll wait.
Ah, yes, I am well aware of that distinction. Best of luck with it.
On that note I don't know if you have access to it but I recommend Somnapure. It's an "all natural sleep aid" thing that I was really skeptical about but had nothing but a few bucks to lose so I gave it a try and it actually does work for me. I don't use it that often for fear I'll develop resistance to the combination of ingredients but when it gets bad I take two and get some actual restful sleep for the night.
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Well, I'm not American; so I can buy a hundred and twenty 10mg Melatonin tablets at my local pharmacy for about a tenth of the price of a sixty-tablet bottle of that. Considering that's the only ingredient in it that actually impacts one's sleep cycle I think I'm getting a bargain on that. I could even buy the remaining ingredients wholesale and make some sort of herbal tea out of them and still pay maybe a fifth of the cost.
Possibly even some time today!
Fifth
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When I woke up the glass shards were gone. 'Malcolm' must have cleaned it. He was in the room already; seated at the table with a plate of food from which he was eating with a quietness that disturbed me. His cutlery didn't scrape the plate at all while he quietly consumed what looked to be some sort of fried rice with mixed meat and vegetables.
The smell made my stomach rumble. I cautiously stood and walked over. Since there was no way to sneak up on him I didn't bother to try and be silent. Today he was dressed in plain, simple clothes with no visible brands that I could see. Surprisingly they weren't all black. More disguises, maybe? I wouldn't have looked twice at him on the street if it weren't for his pretty face so I supposed they were effective.
"Fixed you a plate too. Eat up; you didn't have nearly enough last night. Can't kill anyone if you're malnourished. Well, you can't anyway. Don't have the hunger for it." He nodded at another plate opposite him and I sat down to eat. My stomach would have overwhelmed my good sense even if I wasn't sure by now that he didn't intend to kill me. Yet.
"What do you mean by that?" When I finally spoke to him I had already finished half my plate and overtaken him. While I ate I'd spotted that he was wearing an underarm holster on his left side as well as a back holster on his right. Both were empty right now.
He didn't respond to my question for some time. The longer the silence stretched on the more I considered what I was doing. Even if a fork wasn't much of a weapon it was still what I had. Except the table wasn't small enough for my limited reach. I abandoned that thought and kept eating while I waited.
"People… don't just kill. In my experience. There's… preamble. A long dance, a build up of emotion. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides that they're going to stab someone to death." 'Malcolm' took another mouthful of rice and pointed his fork at me while he finished chewing. "You… don't have that. Which is interesting."
The tines of his utensil flashed as he flicked it side to side in illustration of his point. "You know why I took so long to find you, Miss Stirling? Rhetorical question, don't answer." I winced at his rapid rebuff and shut my mouth again. Smart-arse. "It was because I thought you were coming back. No signs, see? Took me a lot of digging to see even the shape of your situation and it was only there because of what wasn't there."
I had to admit that I was curious in spite of myself. He seemed to understand an awful lot about me that I didn't think anyone could have possibly pieced together. "Strong academic history. Very strong, one of the top in all your schools, but every student report praised your work ethic rather than your intellect. You don't pick things up quickly; you worked yourself to the bone for it, right?"
This time he let the words hang there expectantly until I nodded. He snorted, smirked, and then continued. "But what else? Extracurriculars. Quite a few. Ballet, piano, equestrianism and lacrosse? Again, praise for your diligence. But you're not first there, because some things can't be overcome by hard work alone."
My hand span made it difficult for me to perform the pieces that my mother dreamed of me doing, true. Nor did I have the ideal ballet dancer's physique. It was light, at least, but I didn't quite have that supple, graceful frame that the rest of the girls did. I made up the difference in absolute perfection in my routines. As for riding, my instructor often said they'd much prefer to train me as a jockey.
I did my best because my best was all I could do. Intense study had been the only path I had to some modicum of happiness. There had even been a time when I hadn't understood how the other children could possibly fail to do their homework. It made me feel like I was a genius, once. Until I'd learned better.
"So. Lots of effort, which means lots of stress. Yet… no visits to the school counsellor. Not a single appointment with a private psychiatric professional either. Nor was there any evidence of misbehaviour in class. By all accounts…. The perfect child." His immediate scoff made it clear just how much credence he gave that theory.
"Do you have a point, or are you just going to spend all day telling me my own life story instead of training me to kill my mother?" I interjected but was met with only a short, wry chuckle and a slow shake of his head.
"Oh dear. Such a misconception. No, that's not what we're going to do." He put down his fork and knife on the plate then pushed it towards me. "What you're going to do now is wash these dishes while I tell you the plan." One hand pointed me over to the sink which I hadn't noticed due to the fugue I'd fallen into last night.
With no small amount of grumbling I took his plate and mine, now empty, over there. Let's see… I needed to run hot water, then add some of that soap in that bottle, right? Then just, uh, scrub it with that brush? It took a couple of tries for me to get the water temperature right, much to the amusement of my captor, and I focused on the burning sensation as I finally got to scraping the plates clean.
"You really are sheltered, aren't you? My word. In any event; I won't be teaching you how to kill your mother. That's up to you. If I taught you then it would look too professional to be a crime of passion." His logic was something I could follow, at least. Though it did raise the question as to just why he thought this would take a week. "No, what I'm going to train you to do is investigate, and clean up."
I put the plates in the rack to the side of the sink and then emptied out the water so I could find where the cutlery had gone. It too went in the rack and I was left to lean against the bench and focus on 'Malcolm'. Since my hunger pains had ceased I gripped my thumb and slowly began to twist and squeeze while I listened to him. If he noticed what I was doing he didn't say anything.
"When I went to your family's penthouse I noticed cameras in every room. There was no sign of the monitors in the main security hub, so it was lucky that I decided to stage a power cut and steal a cleaner's uniform anyway. Did you know that they're on a separate backup power system that's self-contained inside the penthouse?" I shook my head. The cameras had always been part of my life. Two in each hallway, one in the kitchen, four in the living room, three in the library, three on each balcony and I'd never gotten an exact count on the ones spread throughout the roof garden.
"Hm. Well, they are. You'll need to find where they record to, gain access and put some video evidence of your mother's abuse where it can be easily found after you kill her and 'die' yourself." The sarcasm was as obvious as the actual air-quotes he performed along with the word. I hadn't realised people older than thirteen still did that.
"It's stored on father's computer, in his home office. I don't know his password, though. Mother probably does." I knew because he'd shown me once. Unintentionally. I'd been having trouble sleeping and he'd been up late. When I wandered to the kitchen for some water he'd taken me to his room and shown me a video of the sunset from the rear balcony, then sang me a lullaby until I fell asleep.
… I'd almost forgotten about that. Pleasant memories seemed so few and far between.
"Then we've got a head start. Get the video evidence, make a few audio recordings, practice your suicide note... simple. You off your old lady, signal me, we clean up the video, fake your death, and that's that. Home free to twenty million. No added… complexity." His tone had a number of layers to it that I didn't feel up to unpacking. I was already adding extra steps to his 'simple' little plan.
"... you never answered me, earlier. When I asked if you had a point. You just went to the second question." Even as I finished asking I wasn't quite sure why I had. It wasn't as if his assessment meant anything to me. Still… I'd asked, and now I squeezed my thumb tighter as I awaited his response.
"Over the counter melatonin pills to encourage sleep. The only medication you had in your room." I went still. He'd been in our apartment, so of course he'd been to my room. "Massive stressors in your life, but no sign of any stress disorders. Very little sign of recreation, too. The few things you had genuine talent for? Art, creating writing, athletics? Your time spent on those activities decreased with age."
Of course they had. I'd needed all the time I could get to succeed at the things mother had approved of. "Incredible stress, with no outlets. Annual school physicals show no indication of self-harming behaviours, either. I understand why now that I see you in action, of course." Almost immediately I relaxed my hands and put them behind my back, but I could tell that had been the wrong response.
"So what? You knew I was a murderer in the making because I was… too good? That's ridiculous." He sighed and raised one hand to his cheek. I looked away so that I wasn't caught up in his hypnotic tapping again just as he started it.
"No. It was because you were a teenager under immense pressure without any vices, any bad habits, or any misbehaviour. To my mind, a human can only operate like that if they are, or have, in some way… broken. At a fundamental level. As soon as I had that thought it all made sense. Why you'd vanished when your father died. Why your mother wasn't looking for you. Why there wasn't anything for me to find."
It was odd… his tone seemed to be full of sadness, but he wasn't looking at me with pity. I knew pity. This… this made no sense to me at all. "When I say you don't have the hunger, I mean that you lack the passion and desperation needed to kill a man over a slice of bread. Instead, what you have is a psyche broken enough to simply insert murder into your list of potential solutions to a problem."
He let out a long, slow breath and ran his fingers through his dark hair. "No forewarning. No preamble. Because you keep it all inside your head and hurt yourself to make it stay there. I have no idea what the inside of your mind looks like, Miss Stirling… save that I suspect it is very similar to mine."
'Malcolm' picked something off the counter and dropped it on to the table. A pad of grid paper with a mechanical pencil and a ruler taped to the front cover. "Make a rough floor plan of your apartment and mark where you remember cameras. We'll compare notes in an hour."
Then he punched his code into the keypad again and went through the middle door; leaving me alone.
The smell made my stomach rumble. I cautiously stood and walked over. Since there was no way to sneak up on him I didn't bother to try and be silent. Today he was dressed in plain, simple clothes with no visible brands that I could see. Surprisingly they weren't all black. More disguises, maybe? I wouldn't have looked twice at him on the street if it weren't for his pretty face so I supposed they were effective.
"Fixed you a plate too. Eat up; you didn't have nearly enough last night. Can't kill anyone if you're malnourished. Well, you can't anyway. Don't have the hunger for it." He nodded at another plate opposite him and I sat down to eat. My stomach would have overwhelmed my good sense even if I wasn't sure by now that he didn't intend to kill me. Yet.
"What do you mean by that?" When I finally spoke to him I had already finished half my plate and overtaken him. While I ate I'd spotted that he was wearing an underarm holster on his left side as well as a back holster on his right. Both were empty right now.
He didn't respond to my question for some time. The longer the silence stretched on the more I considered what I was doing. Even if a fork wasn't much of a weapon it was still what I had. Except the table wasn't small enough for my limited reach. I abandoned that thought and kept eating while I waited.
"People… don't just kill. In my experience. There's… preamble. A long dance, a build up of emotion. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides that they're going to stab someone to death." 'Malcolm' took another mouthful of rice and pointed his fork at me while he finished chewing. "You… don't have that. Which is interesting."
The tines of his utensil flashed as he flicked it side to side in illustration of his point. "You know why I took so long to find you, Miss Stirling? Rhetorical question, don't answer." I winced at his rapid rebuff and shut my mouth again. Smart-arse. "It was because I thought you were coming back. No signs, see? Took me a lot of digging to see even the shape of your situation and it was only there because of what wasn't there."
I had to admit that I was curious in spite of myself. He seemed to understand an awful lot about me that I didn't think anyone could have possibly pieced together. "Strong academic history. Very strong, one of the top in all your schools, but every student report praised your work ethic rather than your intellect. You don't pick things up quickly; you worked yourself to the bone for it, right?"
This time he let the words hang there expectantly until I nodded. He snorted, smirked, and then continued. "But what else? Extracurriculars. Quite a few. Ballet, piano, equestrianism and lacrosse? Again, praise for your diligence. But you're not first there, because some things can't be overcome by hard work alone."
My hand span made it difficult for me to perform the pieces that my mother dreamed of me doing, true. Nor did I have the ideal ballet dancer's physique. It was light, at least, but I didn't quite have that supple, graceful frame that the rest of the girls did. I made up the difference in absolute perfection in my routines. As for riding, my instructor often said they'd much prefer to train me as a jockey.
I did my best because my best was all I could do. Intense study had been the only path I had to some modicum of happiness. There had even been a time when I hadn't understood how the other children could possibly fail to do their homework. It made me feel like I was a genius, once. Until I'd learned better.
"So. Lots of effort, which means lots of stress. Yet… no visits to the school counsellor. Not a single appointment with a private psychiatric professional either. Nor was there any evidence of misbehaviour in class. By all accounts…. The perfect child." His immediate scoff made it clear just how much credence he gave that theory.
"Do you have a point, or are you just going to spend all day telling me my own life story instead of training me to kill my mother?" I interjected but was met with only a short, wry chuckle and a slow shake of his head.
"Oh dear. Such a misconception. No, that's not what we're going to do." He put down his fork and knife on the plate then pushed it towards me. "What you're going to do now is wash these dishes while I tell you the plan." One hand pointed me over to the sink which I hadn't noticed due to the fugue I'd fallen into last night.
With no small amount of grumbling I took his plate and mine, now empty, over there. Let's see… I needed to run hot water, then add some of that soap in that bottle, right? Then just, uh, scrub it with that brush? It took a couple of tries for me to get the water temperature right, much to the amusement of my captor, and I focused on the burning sensation as I finally got to scraping the plates clean.
"You really are sheltered, aren't you? My word. In any event; I won't be teaching you how to kill your mother. That's up to you. If I taught you then it would look too professional to be a crime of passion." His logic was something I could follow, at least. Though it did raise the question as to just why he thought this would take a week. "No, what I'm going to train you to do is investigate, and clean up."
I put the plates in the rack to the side of the sink and then emptied out the water so I could find where the cutlery had gone. It too went in the rack and I was left to lean against the bench and focus on 'Malcolm'. Since my hunger pains had ceased I gripped my thumb and slowly began to twist and squeeze while I listened to him. If he noticed what I was doing he didn't say anything.
"When I went to your family's penthouse I noticed cameras in every room. There was no sign of the monitors in the main security hub, so it was lucky that I decided to stage a power cut and steal a cleaner's uniform anyway. Did you know that they're on a separate backup power system that's self-contained inside the penthouse?" I shook my head. The cameras had always been part of my life. Two in each hallway, one in the kitchen, four in the living room, three in the library, three on each balcony and I'd never gotten an exact count on the ones spread throughout the roof garden.
"Hm. Well, they are. You'll need to find where they record to, gain access and put some video evidence of your mother's abuse where it can be easily found after you kill her and 'die' yourself." The sarcasm was as obvious as the actual air-quotes he performed along with the word. I hadn't realised people older than thirteen still did that.
"It's stored on father's computer, in his home office. I don't know his password, though. Mother probably does." I knew because he'd shown me once. Unintentionally. I'd been having trouble sleeping and he'd been up late. When I wandered to the kitchen for some water he'd taken me to his room and shown me a video of the sunset from the rear balcony, then sang me a lullaby until I fell asleep.
… I'd almost forgotten about that. Pleasant memories seemed so few and far between.
"Then we've got a head start. Get the video evidence, make a few audio recordings, practice your suicide note... simple. You off your old lady, signal me, we clean up the video, fake your death, and that's that. Home free to twenty million. No added… complexity." His tone had a number of layers to it that I didn't feel up to unpacking. I was already adding extra steps to his 'simple' little plan.
"... you never answered me, earlier. When I asked if you had a point. You just went to the second question." Even as I finished asking I wasn't quite sure why I had. It wasn't as if his assessment meant anything to me. Still… I'd asked, and now I squeezed my thumb tighter as I awaited his response.
"Over the counter melatonin pills to encourage sleep. The only medication you had in your room." I went still. He'd been in our apartment, so of course he'd been to my room. "Massive stressors in your life, but no sign of any stress disorders. Very little sign of recreation, too. The few things you had genuine talent for? Art, creating writing, athletics? Your time spent on those activities decreased with age."
Of course they had. I'd needed all the time I could get to succeed at the things mother had approved of. "Incredible stress, with no outlets. Annual school physicals show no indication of self-harming behaviours, either. I understand why now that I see you in action, of course." Almost immediately I relaxed my hands and put them behind my back, but I could tell that had been the wrong response.
"So what? You knew I was a murderer in the making because I was… too good? That's ridiculous." He sighed and raised one hand to his cheek. I looked away so that I wasn't caught up in his hypnotic tapping again just as he started it.
"No. It was because you were a teenager under immense pressure without any vices, any bad habits, or any misbehaviour. To my mind, a human can only operate like that if they are, or have, in some way… broken. At a fundamental level. As soon as I had that thought it all made sense. Why you'd vanished when your father died. Why your mother wasn't looking for you. Why there wasn't anything for me to find."
It was odd… his tone seemed to be full of sadness, but he wasn't looking at me with pity. I knew pity. This… this made no sense to me at all. "When I say you don't have the hunger, I mean that you lack the passion and desperation needed to kill a man over a slice of bread. Instead, what you have is a psyche broken enough to simply insert murder into your list of potential solutions to a problem."
He let out a long, slow breath and ran his fingers through his dark hair. "No forewarning. No preamble. Because you keep it all inside your head and hurt yourself to make it stay there. I have no idea what the inside of your mind looks like, Miss Stirling… save that I suspect it is very similar to mine."
'Malcolm' picked something off the counter and dropped it on to the table. A pad of grid paper with a mechanical pencil and a ruler taped to the front cover. "Make a rough floor plan of your apartment and mark where you remember cameras. We'll compare notes in an hour."
Then he punched his code into the keypad again and went through the middle door; leaving me alone.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
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Isn't the end result still going to be her shanking someone in an alley for a BLT if she has to?
TanaNari
Verified Dick
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It's an older, more experienced psychopath manipulating a much younger and less experienced one. Bad analogies are par for the course.
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Due to a combination of university interviews and my wanting to build up a backlog in preparation of starting advanced updates for my Patron(s) there will be no further updates to Unbound or Execute until November 2nd.
EDIT: lmao I was optimistic here
EDIT: lmao I was optimistic here
Last edited:
Sixth
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When I finished the sketch I paused to look properly around the room. Last night I'd just grabbed a soda and not really looked around too much. But now… there didn't seem to be any cameras in this room but that was no guarantee of anything. Surely he wouldn't leave me unobserved? The thought of that bastard watching me made me feel slightly ill, however.
Then again… was he planning to bring me back here? No, he wouldn't have done it if he wasn't. That man was anything but incautious. Every time I thought I had one up on him he'd turned out to be four steps ahead. I discarded any thoughts of ambushing him, for now, and went back to filling in details on my map.
I could only imagine that it was exactly an hour later when the other door open and 'Malcolm' returned with a heavy toolbox, painted a dull olive green, in one hand. He laid this on the table and then slid across it to me. I stared at the item, a half-empty ten-pack of replacement utility knife blades, for longer than I meant to before managing to tear my gaze away from it and back to him.
"Why are you giving me this?" It felt like a pointless question. They made for terrible weapons but that hadn't been why I had them. This was the same package, of course; I could tell by the way the label was faded and ripped. I'd shoplifted it on my way home a good six, seven years ago now? Snapping off the individual blades had… helped make it last longer.
"I need you in your most stable emotional state for your training, and this is one of your crutches. So, you get it back." I glared at him, not believing this straightforward explanation for a moment, and he smirked. Instead of answering he opened up the toolbox and started to pull things out of it with one hand as he pawed through my sketches with the other.
"What's this?" He placed a set of locks on the table, one at a time, while tapping at something on the map. I glanced away from his box to see that he'd pointed out a small shaded square in my father's office.
"Gun safe, built into father's desk. I don't know what he kept in there." 'Malcolm' made a disinterested sound as he turned the grid paper around a few times and then reached into his box to pull out a small poster tube from which he extracted and unrolled some page-sized pieces of semitransparent paper. They had meticulous drawings on them that put mine to shame as he began to compare what was clearly a set of plans of my home with my drawings.
"If you had those, why did you make me draw some up?" .More locks came out and were laid out. Not padlocks, but lock cylinders that seemed to have been removed from a doorway. I frowned at them as he continued to unpack them rather than answering my question.
"There's some differences. Also, some things that weren't noted on the actual plans. Like the gun safe. Do you know where he kept the key?" I shook my head. Although I knew that father kept a firearm in there I'd never seen it. "Hmm. If you did, would you use it?" I felt my expression stiffen as I tried to think of how to answer.
He looked up from the plans and met my eyes with a faint smirk. "No. You wouldn't, would you? It isn't as easy as people think it is. Shooting someone. But that's not the problem you'd have with the gun, is it?" The infuriating man held his stare until my discomfort had almost reached its zenith, and then one of the lock cylinders was suddenly slid across the table to me.
"What are these?" I picked it up and glowered at it as I turned it this way and that; secretly relieved for the change in subject. It just looked like a lock to me, though obviously I had no idea what it was from. 'Malcolm' snorted.
"Locks. Tell me, do you know what a skeleton key is?" Now it was my turn to scoff. Did he think I was an idiot?
"No such thing. Not really. You can file down some keys and they'll open multiple locks, but the popular idea is a key that can open any lock, and that's just not possible." He didn't seem bothered by my frustrated and condescending tone. Rather, he smiled and nodded as if I'd just given the right answer for the class.
"Right you are, girl. But there are some modern equivalents. Bump keys, for example, can be used to bypass a wide variety of tumbler locks. Or a pick gun, if you're fancy." 'Malcolm' rolled his eyes with an airy laugh. "Child's play, compared to what I work with. Now, your home has a mixture of digital and analog locks."
I nodded. That much I knew; all of the security guards had cards on their belts that could open some, but not all, of the doors. But my parents' bedroom as well as my own, my father's office, and any of the storage closets had key locks. I'd only ever had the key to my own door, but I knew mother and father had keys for everything.
'Malcolm' continued, "The digital locks are your problem to solve. However, the rest? That's what these are for." He picked out a few more cylinders and slid them over to me. "Those are the same models as the ones I saw… and these are the rest of that product line." Another half-dozen cylinders were added to the growing collection. "I suspect that any locks I didn't find during my brief time there will be of the same kind."
"So, what? You're going to teach me to pick locks?" He laughed again, and I could feel my frustration growing. It was hard to stay calm in the face of his smugness, even if I knew my life was in his hands.
"No, no, no. I'll be teaching you how to use my skeleton key." I rolled my eyes. He did think I was an idiot. There was probably a viable bump key for the locks that my father had installed, or something. But then he pulled out a very strange looking key from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.
It looked rather like a modern car key, but with six perfectly triangular teeth on either side. There was one button on either face of the head, close to the shoulder, and then two more on each side of the head plus one on the top. Still smirking, 'Malcolm' grabbed one of the locks, seemingly at random, and slid the key into it. Within a few seconds of pressing buttons he was able to turn the cylinder in its housing.
"Ta-dah. This is one of the three things you need to get down before I send you in." He pressed the button on the back and then slid the key out. It looked just as it had; totally unremarkable.
"What are the other two?" There was no answer. He packed away the excess locks into the box, then scooped half of them up in one hand and pocketed them.
"Practise with those.for now. I'm going to put these into some proper housings for you so you can't see the pins." After that he went to leave the room again. I turned and stared blankly at him, then called out right as he reached the keypad.
"That's it? No instructions?" 'Malcolm' paused and glanced over his shoulder at me, then shook his head.
"Play with it for a bit. Get a feel for it. Find what feels natural. Then I'll tell you how it works." Then, just like that, he was gone and I was alone with a pile of locks and his… ugh… 'skeleton key'. Seriously?
I picked up the stupid thing and tried pressing some of the buttons. Which, to its credit, did do things. Stupid things. I could extend the shaft and retract it, as well as cause it to widen. That happened by it splitting down the middle and one side or the other raising up according to how I pressed the buttons. But it didn't make any sense. This daft device had no chance of actually picking anything but the most basic of locks.
Yet, I had seen him do it. Unless there was a trick and he was just messing with me. I wasn't willing to rule that out yet. It's entirely possible that at the end of the week he'd just hand me a set of keys with a smug grin and berate me for ever believing him. However, I was still going to at least try and make this work on the one he'd opened; if only to slightly reduce my chances of being ridiculed later.
Even as I slid the 'key' in and began to futz around with the buttons I found myself already questioning this choice. Why was I even bothering? I was up against a master assassin who very clearly planned to kill me.
The answer still came easily, though. I was unwilling to just give up and die. Especially when I was still being underestimated. Being upset about that was incredibly petty, I understood that, but it wasn't something I was used to. Quite the opposite, in fact. Part of me thought that I ought to be relieved but I wasn't at all; instead, I was spurred to action by the stoked fires of my own indignation.
Besides which, I'd finally received some confirmation that 'Malcolm' wasn't quite as clever as he thought he was. Or, perhaps, that he was exactly as clever as he believed; which meant he didn't realise, at times, that other people were not. Because in our little chat I had managed to slip a few things past him.
He had been right, of course. About my father's gun. I had no intention of shooting my mother. That… that would be far too cold. Too quick. Too… impersonal. But that didn't mean I had no intention of acquiring that weapon. Especially because one of his little assumptions had allowed me to slip a small untruth past him.
I didn't know where my father kept his keys. But I did know what numbers he used in his combination lock.
Then again… was he planning to bring me back here? No, he wouldn't have done it if he wasn't. That man was anything but incautious. Every time I thought I had one up on him he'd turned out to be four steps ahead. I discarded any thoughts of ambushing him, for now, and went back to filling in details on my map.
I could only imagine that it was exactly an hour later when the other door open and 'Malcolm' returned with a heavy toolbox, painted a dull olive green, in one hand. He laid this on the table and then slid across it to me. I stared at the item, a half-empty ten-pack of replacement utility knife blades, for longer than I meant to before managing to tear my gaze away from it and back to him.
"Why are you giving me this?" It felt like a pointless question. They made for terrible weapons but that hadn't been why I had them. This was the same package, of course; I could tell by the way the label was faded and ripped. I'd shoplifted it on my way home a good six, seven years ago now? Snapping off the individual blades had… helped make it last longer.
"I need you in your most stable emotional state for your training, and this is one of your crutches. So, you get it back." I glared at him, not believing this straightforward explanation for a moment, and he smirked. Instead of answering he opened up the toolbox and started to pull things out of it with one hand as he pawed through my sketches with the other.
"What's this?" He placed a set of locks on the table, one at a time, while tapping at something on the map. I glanced away from his box to see that he'd pointed out a small shaded square in my father's office.
"Gun safe, built into father's desk. I don't know what he kept in there." 'Malcolm' made a disinterested sound as he turned the grid paper around a few times and then reached into his box to pull out a small poster tube from which he extracted and unrolled some page-sized pieces of semitransparent paper. They had meticulous drawings on them that put mine to shame as he began to compare what was clearly a set of plans of my home with my drawings.
"If you had those, why did you make me draw some up?" .More locks came out and were laid out. Not padlocks, but lock cylinders that seemed to have been removed from a doorway. I frowned at them as he continued to unpack them rather than answering my question.
"There's some differences. Also, some things that weren't noted on the actual plans. Like the gun safe. Do you know where he kept the key?" I shook my head. Although I knew that father kept a firearm in there I'd never seen it. "Hmm. If you did, would you use it?" I felt my expression stiffen as I tried to think of how to answer.
He looked up from the plans and met my eyes with a faint smirk. "No. You wouldn't, would you? It isn't as easy as people think it is. Shooting someone. But that's not the problem you'd have with the gun, is it?" The infuriating man held his stare until my discomfort had almost reached its zenith, and then one of the lock cylinders was suddenly slid across the table to me.
"What are these?" I picked it up and glowered at it as I turned it this way and that; secretly relieved for the change in subject. It just looked like a lock to me, though obviously I had no idea what it was from. 'Malcolm' snorted.
"Locks. Tell me, do you know what a skeleton key is?" Now it was my turn to scoff. Did he think I was an idiot?
"No such thing. Not really. You can file down some keys and they'll open multiple locks, but the popular idea is a key that can open any lock, and that's just not possible." He didn't seem bothered by my frustrated and condescending tone. Rather, he smiled and nodded as if I'd just given the right answer for the class.
"Right you are, girl. But there are some modern equivalents. Bump keys, for example, can be used to bypass a wide variety of tumbler locks. Or a pick gun, if you're fancy." 'Malcolm' rolled his eyes with an airy laugh. "Child's play, compared to what I work with. Now, your home has a mixture of digital and analog locks."
I nodded. That much I knew; all of the security guards had cards on their belts that could open some, but not all, of the doors. But my parents' bedroom as well as my own, my father's office, and any of the storage closets had key locks. I'd only ever had the key to my own door, but I knew mother and father had keys for everything.
'Malcolm' continued, "The digital locks are your problem to solve. However, the rest? That's what these are for." He picked out a few more cylinders and slid them over to me. "Those are the same models as the ones I saw… and these are the rest of that product line." Another half-dozen cylinders were added to the growing collection. "I suspect that any locks I didn't find during my brief time there will be of the same kind."
"So, what? You're going to teach me to pick locks?" He laughed again, and I could feel my frustration growing. It was hard to stay calm in the face of his smugness, even if I knew my life was in his hands.
"No, no, no. I'll be teaching you how to use my skeleton key." I rolled my eyes. He did think I was an idiot. There was probably a viable bump key for the locks that my father had installed, or something. But then he pulled out a very strange looking key from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table.
It looked rather like a modern car key, but with six perfectly triangular teeth on either side. There was one button on either face of the head, close to the shoulder, and then two more on each side of the head plus one on the top. Still smirking, 'Malcolm' grabbed one of the locks, seemingly at random, and slid the key into it. Within a few seconds of pressing buttons he was able to turn the cylinder in its housing.
"Ta-dah. This is one of the three things you need to get down before I send you in." He pressed the button on the back and then slid the key out. It looked just as it had; totally unremarkable.
"What are the other two?" There was no answer. He packed away the excess locks into the box, then scooped half of them up in one hand and pocketed them.
"Practise with those.for now. I'm going to put these into some proper housings for you so you can't see the pins." After that he went to leave the room again. I turned and stared blankly at him, then called out right as he reached the keypad.
"That's it? No instructions?" 'Malcolm' paused and glanced over his shoulder at me, then shook his head.
"Play with it for a bit. Get a feel for it. Find what feels natural. Then I'll tell you how it works." Then, just like that, he was gone and I was alone with a pile of locks and his… ugh… 'skeleton key'. Seriously?
I picked up the stupid thing and tried pressing some of the buttons. Which, to its credit, did do things. Stupid things. I could extend the shaft and retract it, as well as cause it to widen. That happened by it splitting down the middle and one side or the other raising up according to how I pressed the buttons. But it didn't make any sense. This daft device had no chance of actually picking anything but the most basic of locks.
Yet, I had seen him do it. Unless there was a trick and he was just messing with me. I wasn't willing to rule that out yet. It's entirely possible that at the end of the week he'd just hand me a set of keys with a smug grin and berate me for ever believing him. However, I was still going to at least try and make this work on the one he'd opened; if only to slightly reduce my chances of being ridiculed later.
Even as I slid the 'key' in and began to futz around with the buttons I found myself already questioning this choice. Why was I even bothering? I was up against a master assassin who very clearly planned to kill me.
The answer still came easily, though. I was unwilling to just give up and die. Especially when I was still being underestimated. Being upset about that was incredibly petty, I understood that, but it wasn't something I was used to. Quite the opposite, in fact. Part of me thought that I ought to be relieved but I wasn't at all; instead, I was spurred to action by the stoked fires of my own indignation.
Besides which, I'd finally received some confirmation that 'Malcolm' wasn't quite as clever as he thought he was. Or, perhaps, that he was exactly as clever as he believed; which meant he didn't realise, at times, that other people were not. Because in our little chat I had managed to slip a few things past him.
He had been right, of course. About my father's gun. I had no intention of shooting my mother. That… that would be far too cold. Too quick. Too… impersonal. But that didn't mean I had no intention of acquiring that weapon. Especially because one of his little assumptions had allowed me to slip a small untruth past him.
I didn't know where my father kept his keys. But I did know what numbers he used in his combination lock.
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I feel like, if you take his reason for giving her utility knives back at face value (that it would give her a more stable emotional state/mindset, which would help her training), then him acting all smug might also be manipulating her mindset (if she thinks I'm underestimating her, she'll be more likely to be emotionally stable and not give up on her survival as a fools dream, so she'll put in more effort).
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It's very much not a question of if he is manipulating her, really, but to what specific end. This is not someone who does things casually.
abercrombie fizzwidget
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I'm going to leave my theory that he wants her to end him and/or is her actual father here to point to if that actually ends up being the case later.
Seventh
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The stupid fucking 'skeleton key' was a trick. It had to be. He, 'Malcolm', was screwing with me somehow. There was absolutely no way a thing like that should work, anyone could see it, and none of my testing was able to get it to do anything but open the most basic of his stupid practice locks. The ones so simple I was pretty sure I could have actually picked them with any of the utensils in the drawer.
He'd come back with the re-housed cylinders, dumped them on the table, and then just left again. My frustration must have been obvious but he hadn't said anything. The only thing of note was that he took one of the cans of soda from the fridge on his way out; but, again, I had no way of knowing what was him leaving trails to gauge my reaction.
So, infuriated, I kept working. Every minute I spent sawing away at the locks was another minute I became convinced I was being messed with. Eventually I lost track of time completely. I only broke out of my reverie when I heard the door to his area open again and whipped my head around to see him stepping through. This time I could see into the other side and it looked…
Identical to this one. I don't know what I had expected. He saw me staring and just smirked as he approached and casually leaned over the table to look at my progress.
"Not even one open? How… Surprising." Something was off about his tone. Given how he'd acted so far I'd anticipated more mockery, but instead it seemed to have genuinely caught him off guard and he gave me a strange look like he was reassessing something. "Well, good to know. Get changed." Then he dumped a wrapped bundle on the table. "We're going out."
And as I tried to sputter out questions he turned around to leave without answering even one.
Inside the bundle was a new set of clothing that, unsurprisingly, fit me well. Not perfectly, that would have been too creepy; he'd clearly gotten this all off-the-rack and had gone for a generic stretchy sports bra that was 'close enough' rather than even try to guess my cup size. That was… Honestly, it was actually pretty reassuring. If nothing else I didn't have to worry so much about that kind of treatment. The rest, though…
I didn't immediately recognise any of the brands but I did recognise the language the tags were written in and that immediately raised some questions alongside a bunch of red flags. This wasn't our, my, mother tongue. It was the language of the nation across the lake. We weren't on bad terms with them, as such, but there were always old tensions and grudges and you heard a lot about that when you lived on the border.
No wonder he wasn't worried about me escaping… I was technically in a totally different country.
It wasn't until I was finished, zipping up the overly-large hoodie with an unrecognisable mascot character on the front, that I realised the skeleton key was gone. I tried looking for it but was interrupted by the door opening and 'Malcolm' stepping out. He was dressed much more nicely than I was, almost conspicuously so, and was even adjusting a fancy silver watch as he walked in.
"Our story is that you're my daughter. Step-daughter, mind, so you can just call me Malcolm in front of them. No need to push your acting skills." The mockery was back. I hadn't missed it, but all I could do was glower at him. "Good, that's about right. Now, the people we're meeting won't believe that's true but they won't question it openly, which is all that matters." He reached up and fixed his tie, then pulled a set of glasses from inside his jacket and put them on. Not shades; black-rimmed spectacles that I could tell had at least a little bit of a prescription from how they subtly distorted his eyes.
"Should I bother asking why?" He looked at me and then raised a hand to start counting off on his fingers as he replied.
"Which why? Why won't they buy it? Why are we meeting them? Why am I taking you outside at all? You must be clearer with your requests, Miss Stirling, or we'll be here all day." Trying to antagonise him was a terrible idea, but I really, truly couldn't help myself.
"All three. Plus, 'why should I go along with it'. Because if you're taking me out I see no reason not to just run, or rat you out, or grab the first cop I see and scream for help." He didn't even seem annoyed. Just amused. His wrist flicked and a set of car keys dropped into his hands from… Somewhere. Then he went over and opened the door out.
"To the car, Miss Stirling. I'll answer your questions on the way." He gestured for me to go first and I reluctantly did so; shoving my hands as deep into my hoodie pocket as I could and squeezing the fork I'd 'hidden' in there. There was no way he didn't know I'd taken it, had anticipated it somehow, but I still did it. The cool metal against my palm was comforting. It felt like the tiniest touch of security.
The car he took us to wasn't the minivan I'd arrived in. That wasn't a shock, but what was surprising was how nice it was. He opened the passenger side door for me and then once I was seated went around and started it up. The whole time I was debating with myself whether to run, or maybe try to stab him in the neck as he shifted gears. But I didn't. He didn't even look at me; focusing instead on pulling out of the warehouse and heading towards the exit to the parking lot.
"The people we are meeting with are, in a word, monsters. They are abominable scum who feed upon the lost and unfortunate in society. That is why we must do business with them; because, for our plan to work, we need a body that looks very similar to you." Two feelings rushed through my body at once. The first, more traitorous of the two, was hope. A flash of heat at the mere thought I might live through this ordeal.
But the second was horror as I realised just what he was implying. I don't know whether he sensed it or not, but he continued. "The good news is that they won't be killing anyone for us specifically. Let me be clear, Miss Stirling. The young lady who will replace you is already dead. I do not mean that in the sense of inevitability. I quite literally mean she is already in a freezer somewhere, waiting to be used for purposes far crueller than the one we will put her corpse to." The rumble of the car quieted as he slowed to a stop at the first set of lights.
Then he did look over at me. His expression was… Strangely sympathetic. "I tell you this because I do not want you to feel responsible for her death. Whoever she is, you could not have saved her. Do you understand?" I nodded, slowly, and only then did he look away and start driving again.
"I have told them what we want the body for. That is why you must come. Someone will examine you. It may not be a woman. It should be no more invasive than a simple fitting; they should not need to lay a finger on you to take your measurements. If they do then inform me." He didn't say why, or what he'd do, and she wasn't especially reassured. Thanks to her mother there had been… A lot of fittings. None of them had been what she'd call 'uninvasive'.
Rather than focus fully on his speech she tried to look around. It was dark out. There were street lights and signs, but they were in a language she recognised words of but couldn't quite parse. Their classes hadn't been extensive and it was one subject her mother hadn't cared enough about to ride her on. Aside from that, though, it looked much like home. So much so she wondered if maybe they hadn't even crossed the lake.
That lasted until he took a particular turn onto an elevated highway and she could see, across the water, a very different skyline to the one she was used to seeing. With one particular building she could recognise even from here. The logo on the side was unmistakable. Her father's business.
Malcolm really had smuggled her to another country. As if blind to her reeling thoughts he continued with his answers once they were cruising again. "They won't buy my excuse because I've laid hints implying otherwise. What they believe to be the case is that I am a scumbag that has tricked an underage girl into eloping with him and wants to fake her death so her parents can't find her." He snorted derisively. "That's something they'll accept; both because 'figuring it out' makes them feel clever, and because it's the kind of shit they do. It's an answer that makes sense to them. They won't question it."
For all that he was employing these people he seemed to have a low opinion of them. Light flashed in their rear and her heart froze for a moment, but Malcolm calmly shifted to the side and watched the police vehicle, painted in entirely the wrong colours, speed past them and into the distance. "That should cover the first three. As for the last? Your little run-on question?" He chuckled. It wasn't a friendly sound. "Because you're not that stupid, Miss Stirling. You've figured out where we are, and you've already talked yourself out of doing anything dumb."
They turned off the highway and took a sharp curve; sharper as some guy tried to cut them off and Malcolm laser-focused on his license plate for just a moment before he continued. "Oh, don't get me wrong; I don't expect you to trust me, and I am fully anticipating some ill-advised scheme or treachery on your part before all of this is over. But you're smart enough to know now isn't the time. Frankly, I'll be shocked if you do it while your mother is still breathing." They slowed, and took one last turn off the road and into a parking lot.
He came to a stop in front of a large neon sign-adorned facade that, even though she couldn't read it outright, proclaimed the dubiousness of the place they'd come to. She went for the door, but the handle didn't work and when she looked back over at him he was staring at her with that same murderous intensity she'd seen over the kitchen island the other day.
"Two final things, Miss Stirling. Firstly, know that if I have misread you and you do attempt anything foolish in there all you will have succeeded at is killing every person, innocent or otherwise, in this establishment." He said it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, that her blood ran cold. Until now his tone, despite what he'd been saying, had been so genial she'd almost forgotten for a moment. Forgotten who she was dealing with. What she was dealing with.
"And lastly… If at any point in there I call you 'petal' then you should close your eyes at once." His expression cracked. Something like a smile bloomed on his face; he sounded almost… Eager. Anticipatory. "Because that will mean I am about to kill someone."
He'd come back with the re-housed cylinders, dumped them on the table, and then just left again. My frustration must have been obvious but he hadn't said anything. The only thing of note was that he took one of the cans of soda from the fridge on his way out; but, again, I had no way of knowing what was him leaving trails to gauge my reaction.
So, infuriated, I kept working. Every minute I spent sawing away at the locks was another minute I became convinced I was being messed with. Eventually I lost track of time completely. I only broke out of my reverie when I heard the door to his area open again and whipped my head around to see him stepping through. This time I could see into the other side and it looked…
Identical to this one. I don't know what I had expected. He saw me staring and just smirked as he approached and casually leaned over the table to look at my progress.
"Not even one open? How… Surprising." Something was off about his tone. Given how he'd acted so far I'd anticipated more mockery, but instead it seemed to have genuinely caught him off guard and he gave me a strange look like he was reassessing something. "Well, good to know. Get changed." Then he dumped a wrapped bundle on the table. "We're going out."
And as I tried to sputter out questions he turned around to leave without answering even one.
Inside the bundle was a new set of clothing that, unsurprisingly, fit me well. Not perfectly, that would have been too creepy; he'd clearly gotten this all off-the-rack and had gone for a generic stretchy sports bra that was 'close enough' rather than even try to guess my cup size. That was… Honestly, it was actually pretty reassuring. If nothing else I didn't have to worry so much about that kind of treatment. The rest, though…
I didn't immediately recognise any of the brands but I did recognise the language the tags were written in and that immediately raised some questions alongside a bunch of red flags. This wasn't our, my, mother tongue. It was the language of the nation across the lake. We weren't on bad terms with them, as such, but there were always old tensions and grudges and you heard a lot about that when you lived on the border.
No wonder he wasn't worried about me escaping… I was technically in a totally different country.
It wasn't until I was finished, zipping up the overly-large hoodie with an unrecognisable mascot character on the front, that I realised the skeleton key was gone. I tried looking for it but was interrupted by the door opening and 'Malcolm' stepping out. He was dressed much more nicely than I was, almost conspicuously so, and was even adjusting a fancy silver watch as he walked in.
"Our story is that you're my daughter. Step-daughter, mind, so you can just call me Malcolm in front of them. No need to push your acting skills." The mockery was back. I hadn't missed it, but all I could do was glower at him. "Good, that's about right. Now, the people we're meeting won't believe that's true but they won't question it openly, which is all that matters." He reached up and fixed his tie, then pulled a set of glasses from inside his jacket and put them on. Not shades; black-rimmed spectacles that I could tell had at least a little bit of a prescription from how they subtly distorted his eyes.
"Should I bother asking why?" He looked at me and then raised a hand to start counting off on his fingers as he replied.
"Which why? Why won't they buy it? Why are we meeting them? Why am I taking you outside at all? You must be clearer with your requests, Miss Stirling, or we'll be here all day." Trying to antagonise him was a terrible idea, but I really, truly couldn't help myself.
"All three. Plus, 'why should I go along with it'. Because if you're taking me out I see no reason not to just run, or rat you out, or grab the first cop I see and scream for help." He didn't even seem annoyed. Just amused. His wrist flicked and a set of car keys dropped into his hands from… Somewhere. Then he went over and opened the door out.
"To the car, Miss Stirling. I'll answer your questions on the way." He gestured for me to go first and I reluctantly did so; shoving my hands as deep into my hoodie pocket as I could and squeezing the fork I'd 'hidden' in there. There was no way he didn't know I'd taken it, had anticipated it somehow, but I still did it. The cool metal against my palm was comforting. It felt like the tiniest touch of security.
The car he took us to wasn't the minivan I'd arrived in. That wasn't a shock, but what was surprising was how nice it was. He opened the passenger side door for me and then once I was seated went around and started it up. The whole time I was debating with myself whether to run, or maybe try to stab him in the neck as he shifted gears. But I didn't. He didn't even look at me; focusing instead on pulling out of the warehouse and heading towards the exit to the parking lot.
"The people we are meeting with are, in a word, monsters. They are abominable scum who feed upon the lost and unfortunate in society. That is why we must do business with them; because, for our plan to work, we need a body that looks very similar to you." Two feelings rushed through my body at once. The first, more traitorous of the two, was hope. A flash of heat at the mere thought I might live through this ordeal.
But the second was horror as I realised just what he was implying. I don't know whether he sensed it or not, but he continued. "The good news is that they won't be killing anyone for us specifically. Let me be clear, Miss Stirling. The young lady who will replace you is already dead. I do not mean that in the sense of inevitability. I quite literally mean she is already in a freezer somewhere, waiting to be used for purposes far crueller than the one we will put her corpse to." The rumble of the car quieted as he slowed to a stop at the first set of lights.
Then he did look over at me. His expression was… Strangely sympathetic. "I tell you this because I do not want you to feel responsible for her death. Whoever she is, you could not have saved her. Do you understand?" I nodded, slowly, and only then did he look away and start driving again.
"I have told them what we want the body for. That is why you must come. Someone will examine you. It may not be a woman. It should be no more invasive than a simple fitting; they should not need to lay a finger on you to take your measurements. If they do then inform me." He didn't say why, or what he'd do, and she wasn't especially reassured. Thanks to her mother there had been… A lot of fittings. None of them had been what she'd call 'uninvasive'.
Rather than focus fully on his speech she tried to look around. It was dark out. There were street lights and signs, but they were in a language she recognised words of but couldn't quite parse. Their classes hadn't been extensive and it was one subject her mother hadn't cared enough about to ride her on. Aside from that, though, it looked much like home. So much so she wondered if maybe they hadn't even crossed the lake.
That lasted until he took a particular turn onto an elevated highway and she could see, across the water, a very different skyline to the one she was used to seeing. With one particular building she could recognise even from here. The logo on the side was unmistakable. Her father's business.
Malcolm really had smuggled her to another country. As if blind to her reeling thoughts he continued with his answers once they were cruising again. "They won't buy my excuse because I've laid hints implying otherwise. What they believe to be the case is that I am a scumbag that has tricked an underage girl into eloping with him and wants to fake her death so her parents can't find her." He snorted derisively. "That's something they'll accept; both because 'figuring it out' makes them feel clever, and because it's the kind of shit they do. It's an answer that makes sense to them. They won't question it."
For all that he was employing these people he seemed to have a low opinion of them. Light flashed in their rear and her heart froze for a moment, but Malcolm calmly shifted to the side and watched the police vehicle, painted in entirely the wrong colours, speed past them and into the distance. "That should cover the first three. As for the last? Your little run-on question?" He chuckled. It wasn't a friendly sound. "Because you're not that stupid, Miss Stirling. You've figured out where we are, and you've already talked yourself out of doing anything dumb."
They turned off the highway and took a sharp curve; sharper as some guy tried to cut them off and Malcolm laser-focused on his license plate for just a moment before he continued. "Oh, don't get me wrong; I don't expect you to trust me, and I am fully anticipating some ill-advised scheme or treachery on your part before all of this is over. But you're smart enough to know now isn't the time. Frankly, I'll be shocked if you do it while your mother is still breathing." They slowed, and took one last turn off the road and into a parking lot.
He came to a stop in front of a large neon sign-adorned facade that, even though she couldn't read it outright, proclaimed the dubiousness of the place they'd come to. She went for the door, but the handle didn't work and when she looked back over at him he was staring at her with that same murderous intensity she'd seen over the kitchen island the other day.
"Two final things, Miss Stirling. Firstly, know that if I have misread you and you do attempt anything foolish in there all you will have succeeded at is killing every person, innocent or otherwise, in this establishment." He said it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, that her blood ran cold. Until now his tone, despite what he'd been saying, had been so genial she'd almost forgotten for a moment. Forgotten who she was dealing with. What she was dealing with.
"And lastly… If at any point in there I call you 'petal' then you should close your eyes at once." His expression cracked. Something like a smile bloomed on his face; he sounded almost… Eager. Anticipatory. "Because that will mean I am about to kill someone."
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I'm going to have to carefully resist the urge to rewrite every other chapter of this and just accept it as it is.
Secret Secretion
Hi!
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I'm going to have to reread all of it
Blonddude42
Experienced.
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I think you can feel free since we're all gonna have to reread anyways, lol
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
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Foreshadowing? If so, did he just have a slip-up that could give her an idea, or just a bluff?
I don't expect an actual answer.
...huh, wasn't expecting her to have any morals.
I'm going to have to reread all of it
Having just done that myself, I think they're fine.
Spirit_Of_Schadenfreude
Know what you're doing yet?
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Right? I mean, sure, to draw the line somewhere in between 'innocent girl' and 'guy looking for a blowjob' isn't the wildest choice, but with the way Malcolm was talking(naturally inserting murder into options) it was sounding like she was a true-blue stone cold killer.
Winged One
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...maybe that's just a him thing.
Also, why is he telling her not to look if he gets an excuse to kill these guys? Isn't giving orders you know won't be obeyed damaging to authority?
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Probably for the reason that "she's broken enough to insert murder as a viable solution, but lets not break her more then needed"
Winged One
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So, earlier on in the thread people were saying something about this being a pardoy of YA novels. What's up with that? Is the reconstruction tag because you gave the protagonist a background that explains perfectly why she will never ever try to have an adult solve her problems for her?
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Now, to be fair; he wasn't 'just' a guy looking for a blowjob. I've nothing against that, given I live in a country where sex work is completely legal.
He approached after she flashed her school uniform, was nervous when he asked about her age, and well...
Look, she's meant to be around fifteen to sixteen, and he thought she was an underage runaway selling herself out of desperation. He wasn't a particularly nice fellow. At most you could say he really thought she was lying, but still.
There may be more to it than all that, of course.
A bit've all that. If I recall correctly I wrote this initially in a fit of frustration over a certain kind of YA story that treats particular traumas as fun collectibles and personality quirks instead of life-defining events; among other things.
Blonddude42
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Thoughts on reread -- the MC is an unreliable narrator in a way I don't think I've really seen. She doesn't lie to herself or misattribute the actions of others (which is what I expect with unreliable narrators), but rather she outright doesn't think of some actions until 'Malcom' references something she has done or is planning on doing.