Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ Strong Heart ❯ Chapter 17 ( Chapter 17 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

A/N EXTREME gore and very disturbing content in this chapter. Please be warned. Also, in later portions, it is HIGHLY HIGHLY recommended that you download and listen to Muse's "Sing for Absolution" as I think it applies very well in this chapter. Other than that, enjoy!



The preacher went on and on, one word more tediously enunciated then the last, sweat beads forming on the ugly bald brow. Trunks wanted to sleep, his mother's crude elbow against his ribs the only hindrance in that regard. They sat in a dusty old church, courtesy of his mother's feverish pleas and Trunks' lack of energy to deny them. The scent of mildew and mold made his nose itch and he longed to clog it up with whatever powdered drug his alter boy dealer had slipped him on the way in. On and on and on and on the elderly preacher went, condemning just about every aspect of Trunks' life that he adored, from sex and fornication to adultery and drugs and (gasp) what a surprise, homosexuality.
"These must be exempt from your life," he would prattle on.
'Yeah,' Trunks thought to himself dryly.' and just how is that life without them?'
"If the evil continue their wicked deeds," the bald preacher cried out, pounding his bible with mockable enthusiasm. "They will be damned to HELL!"
"Funny," Trunks rubbed his temple in annoyance. "and here I thought we were already there."
"Trunks!" Bulma hissed through her teeth. "be quiet!"

He rolled his eyes, sinking lower into the uncomfortable bench. This sucked, he decided, staring down at his fingernails and giving himself a half assed manicure. Pathetic humans scaring themselves into living their lives honorably, too fucking stupid to realize they weren't living them at all. Well, better to live it pointlessly then to pass up the chance completely. Live life until death and regret the things you did do rather than those you were too afraid to, he figured.

Religion was simply an irritancy in Trunks existence. Pointless and pathetic to say the least. What was religion but power and a means to control those afraid of it? And how ironic that X number of dollars could save you from the grips of hell if only put into the donation box, despite what throats you cut to acquire it. As he saw it, you deal with what comes your way; in this life. If in the next you burn in hell, well then, figure out a way to end each day on the side of the devil, rather than in his path. Simple really.

Mirai's face suddenly popped right beside him and Trunks nearly flew through the back of the bench, jumping in his startlement.

"GOD DAMN!" He shouted.

The church was silent, everyone staring in horror at the handsome young bastard that dared to take the lord's name in vain, in a place of God no less. Trunks looked around in slight embarrassment.

"Ahem.." He cleared his throat, ignoring his mother's glare. "I meant.... God damn the evil to... hell. Yeah."
He looked up at the preacher, proud of his cover.
"Preach on." He added with a grin.
Sitting down, he had to chuckle slightly, rolling his eyes and leaning back.
"Good job wonder boy," He whispered to the side. "Next time try a funeral, I don't think my mother's had a hernia yet."
Mirai looked as disapproving as ever and Trunks decided that was the precise face the other would probably wear around him until the day he died. A pretty face but nonetheless, constantly disapproving.
"What are YOU doing HERE?" Mirai had to ask, eyeing Bulma wearily.
"Dying of absolute boredom, you?" Trunks smiled smartly. Mirai replied nothing, staring up at the preacher who seemed unimpressed with his audience, going on half heartedly in his sermon.
"Say," He heard Trunks whisper. "You wanna go jerk off in the bathroom? That's how I used to spend my mornings here."
Mirai refused to chuckle at that, Trunks grin falling slightly as a result.
"Well," he continued. "At least when I wasn't fucking the preacher's pretty son in the second stall. What do you say?"
"Meet me here," Mirai interrupted, handing a tiny slip of paper to the other. "Tonight at 11:00 ok?"
"Trunks," Bulma spat angrily. "Be quiet!"
"Oh isn't that cute," Trunks rolled his eyes begrudgingly. "We both sit here chatting and I'm the one she yells at. Fucking figures."


................................................... ..........................................................


Sh rugging off vines that clung to his designer leather jacket, Trunks growled in frustration as he spotted Mirai, hovering a few stories up beside a window. The rain poured into his eyes, the sky above entirely black; only interrupted occasionally by sharp spits of electricity that cracked with thunder only a few moments after. He held his arms around his chest, cold as the wind spit mist against the side of his neck, chilling him to the bone.
It was an eerie night, and as he had parked his gorgeous car down the street from this normal, suburbia home, he had felt a very real sense of something unnatural, or something cruel in the air. The feeling someone might get if they were to walk in a deserted cemetery or through decrepit old concentration camps overseas. Evil; old evil. The scent in the air was indiscernible through the rain and wind, yet he had the chilling feeling as though he were walking down the stairs to an old dungeon, ripe with still rotting corpses and abandoned bodies tied to walls. A foreboding of something you really don't want to see.
Trunks moved a large, leafy branch out of his view, realizing that he was suddenly in an old garden, stone gargoyles fallen and broken on the ground. Moss and weeds had grown over what must have been beautiful statues at one point and he had the distinct sensation that something very beautiful was ruined here. Like something young had once thrived in this garden and now lay in shards and tatters, overgrown with filth and waste.
Lightening cracked over rocks that had once lined a waterfall and a small, man-made pond. Trunks shivered as the following thunder shook the ground and his eyes caught sight of what might have been old, dried blood stretched over the side of one of the rocks. Blood that could have been there for months and would not have been spotted by the human eye. In fact, as he looked around, it seemed to be nearly everywhere. Tiny tracks of blood tossed here and there. It had been scattered over the sides of the house, over lawn ornaments and tipped over deck chairs. And for the small amount, it seemed like a violent shedding of blood, purposeful and meaningful to whoever had done it.
Confused he glanced up at Mirai who moved down to stand beside him, following the younger's eyes and nodding.
"Blood," he confirmed.
Trunks just stared at him, completely baffled that Mirai would ask him here, to this garden drenched in blood and misery. Whatever he felt here, it wasn't normal. Almost like there was a lingering sickness, a dreary, scary feeling of something very cruel and twisted winding itself through the air about them.
"It belongs to a boy who lives here," Mirai distracted him, Trunks swallowing and clenching his coat closer to his throat.
"You mean whoever did this is still alive," He called over the wind and rain.
"Yes," Mirai nodded, glancing up towards the high window. "If you were to go inside that house, you'd see the walls and floors and ceilings the same as out here. Covered in his blood. His name is David and he does it to himself."
Trunks' face fell and he squinted his eyes in confusion, blinking out the water that had fallen into them.
"But.... why?" He asked.
"Because," Mirai looked up once more. "She can't do it for him anymore."
Saying that, Mirai walked towards a small window on the first floor, gesturing for Trunks to follow as he peeked inside. Sure as he had spoken it, tiny tracks of blood had been leaked along the counters and floors of a small, cluttered kitchen, lightening illuminating horrifying pieces of dried skin that had been slapped into place on a table. Knives and jagged pieces of metal tangled with hair and flesh laid out on the tabletop of what once had been a place for eating and now had been converted into a means for self torture.
Trunks' feet fell backwards as he caught sight of a coat hanger, bent and distorted beside the window. A large junk of human flesh, fresh and bleeding, dangled and dripped very close to their faces.
"Jesus Christ!" He screamed out, staring in horror at Mirai. "What the fuck is this?"
"This was once a beautiful home," Mirai spoke quietly, ignoring Trunks and staring inside. "There had been a father and mother and a young boy named David. One day, as David took a bath (only 4 years of age) his mother, had slipped on the wet, toy covered floor, cracking her head against the porcelain tub and bleeding out right into his bathwater. No one had found them until 6 hours later when his father came home from work, finding them as they had been hours before, David staring in horror at his mother's bleeding eyes that stared directly back into his.
"Physically, they found nothing wrong with the boy, only noting that mentally, he might later on need some counseling on the matter. And then, as sure as his mother's life had ended, it was seemingly forgotten and she was replaced by his step mother, the woman that now sleeps above in that room."
Trunks looked upwards, wanting nothing more than to leave and be back in his safe home, away from this.... this horror story.
"His step mother, Dorthy. Dorthy had grown up in a strict, Catholic home, an overly protected monster with no reason for her cruel, begrudging view of the world. Yet it seemed, she took her every frustration out on her step son, beating his small body in hidden places at first and only when her husband would be out for a few days. She would take small rocks from the garden here, at first just throwing them at David and later, becoming quite infatuated with the idea that she could make her amends with the world through tormenting him, pounding the stones against his young flesh.
"At first the bruises could sate her, until her inherit cruelty demanded more and she would tie him to chairs and make small cuts across his tender little arms. It wasn't long before cuts turned to gashes and she would dangle junks of his skin in front of his crying eyes, throwing them against his face when she had finished and leaving him there. His father, always away on business, never noticed, never believed, even when he died leaving the child entirely in her care.
"This house," Mirai looked around. "Became the grave of an innocent, beautiful little boy and the birthing place of a horrific monster that Dorthy created. For you see, this story isn't about her and what she did so much as him and what he became.
"Locked away in the basement for weeks at a time and given no human contact, the mind will very surely go insane and starve for any means of attention. In the life of a tortured, isolated creature, even the cruelest touches are touches nonetheless. A dog will plead for attention and even if a mean kick is its only answer, surely enough, it will come back for it again."
"What are you saying?" Trunks asked. "That he learned to like it?"
"No," Mirai shook his head. "That he came to love it. Unable to remember any alternate kindnesses, in the already deranged mind of David, Dorthy's attention was the equivalent of any attention a mother would show a son. She gave him love through her kicks and kisses through her stabs. He learned to beg for her torment, though never showing it as such. He would pretend to break things "on accident" or to bleed "on accident" on her new dresses. He would pretend to be clumsy and tip milk on the floor. Anything that would cause the attention that he thought was her love.
"And when he reached the age of fantasies and wet dreams, they involved only her and her beautiful instruments of cruelty. He yearned for it."
"That's sick," Trunks spat. "I want to leave this place. It gives me the creeps."
"But I thought you loved creating monstrosities Trunks," Mirai replied sharply. "I thought you loved violence. You enacted cruelties that even Dorthy would have been proud of yet you say THIS sickens you? Follow me."
Against his will, Trunks followed Mirai upwards, swallowing down bile that had risen in his throat as they came to Dorthy's window, high above the ground. They watched through the raindrops that fell like tears over the foggy window, the image of the woman fast asleep in her bed, diluted by the water. Her hair was grey and lifeless around her aged face, her hard mouth set in a cold, thin line. The blankets were wrapped around her small form, tucked in at her feet. And it wasn't until his eyes had rested on her feet that he literally flew backwards, catching the outline of a body slouched and hidden in the shadows by her door frame.
"What the fuck..." He whispered, moving closer and trying to discern what it was. "It's him, isn't it?" He breathed.
Mirai didn't answer, staying quiet when the frame of a young man, slightly younger than Trunks came into view, moving silently into the room, oblivious to their stares. It was impossible to make out a face, as the lightening only shown what was an inhumane, corpse like thing with only blood and gore serving for one. All flesh had been either torn away or twisted, a horrifying crack serving as a grinning mouth. The eyes, one void of any lids were icy blue, covered slightly by thin, crimson drenched pieces of hair that spouted from the burnt and deformed head. Some pieces were long, curling around the slanted shoulders that slouched as the creature moved what must have been painfully towards the bed, one trip at a time as a foot had been bent backwards and dragged behind the rest of the body.
Trunks wanted to vomit as pus and yellow filth ran from the gouges that served as a nose that had long been torn from the face, the entire body itself like that of a severe burn victim. He couldn't even figure how something so distorted could endure life in such pain. But hadn't David gotten used to it by now? Didn't in some sick part of himself, he enjoy it?
The feet only dragged closer, the shadow of the creature crept like a thousand maggots on the wall, moving towards her resting body. Sinister eyes, clouded by a gleaming obsession came into full view, the light glittering over tears and what could be called, a grinning mouth.
"You never knew you loved me.." It whispered in a beautiful, clear young voice that startled Trunks. "but you will."
"It was her cruelties that kept him her slave," Mirai whispered, silent enough that the thing never even noticed them. "He would beg for them. Breaking vases, spilling on carpets; his supposed clumsiness was his plead for her attention, his cry for the greatest kindness that only her belt over a bare back could provide. And through his tears of pain, he poured the blood of his love on the carpet, only wishing that the crimson could speak the poetry his lips could not."
Mirai shook his head.
"His obsession smothered him, years of falling in love with that which only he could justify. The beauty behind such pain and pleasure such as no one could have given him. Their dirty secret. Sexual abuse; his only real love affair and a one-sided one at that."
Shaky, hesitant fingers, void of any nail moved to the gray strands of her hair, rubbing tiny specks of dried fluid over them.
"As he strokes her hair," Mirai breathed. "he longs to brush it with the comb that once implanted itself into his skull, courtesy of his most beloved clumsiness once more. Blood pouring from his eyes and ears was poetry, his ode to that which he could love more than any other human could love another. He fell for the monster that became his world, his goddess behind the screams.
"Shadows call to mind memories spent in the confines of a basement for a week, carving her name with his shattered fingernails into the cement, begging and pleading with his very soul that her foot or hand or any object commanded by such might strike his unworthy flesh once more and bring forth the pain that only such longing could give. He would beat his sores and wounds against sharp rocks or tear at them with shards of glass to relive the beautiful agony only she could inflict with such detached perfection. Seeing her beautiful face distorted with fury only made it more flawless to him, longing to lick his own blood from the cracks and crevices of her aging skin, or drink the droplets that fell from her jagged knuckles as she pushed and pulled them from his body. His drug was the sound of her feet cracking the fragile bones, knit only together for the purpose of supplying what he needed more desperately than any heroin addict."
Trunks just shook his head, horrified by this. By all of this. He stared at this .... this monstrosity that leaned over its step mother, unable to see her for the fucking cruel tyrant that she was and instead, eyes teary with idolism.
"I only dream of you," it whispered.. "my beautiful."
Its skinny fingers, yellowed by starvation crawled like insects around her sagging throat, feeling the thin skin warm to its touch. Kissing the frail flesh that soaked into its mouth and whispering promises that they would be together forever. Lovers of their own masochistic game.
"Only," Mirai breathed so quietly, Trunks strained to hear. "Dorthy is too old now, too frail to give him what he wants. There's the lesson. The love she showed ended."
Trunks eyes widened as the leathery fingers collapsed like pieces of steel around the woman's wind pipe, beginning to choke the life from her. Horrible green eyes stretched themselves open, staring in terror at her attacker. Her fragile fingers clenched around his wrist, fighting to no avail as he took the breath from her lungs.
"Aren't you going to stop him?" Trunks asked, confused that Mirai had made no move to.
"No," Mirai replied, suddenly looking as cold as Trunks. "There are some things not even I should change in the past."
Trunks stared quietly at the older version before directing his attention towards the murderer, the cold blue eyes spilling tears over the smiling crack that was its mouth.
"Besides," he heard Mirai whisper. "This is what we're here to see."
Dorthy struggled against the fleshless arms of her step son, fingernails digging into gory, muscled matter. Blood pooled over her knuckles as her fingers gave him their last bit of pleasure, sinking in until they touched the thin bones of his arms. Her terrible green eyes never left his, staring at the creation of so much torment. Times when she had refused to feed him came to her mind, laying awake in this very bed and listening to his screams for food; listening as he had torn chunks of his own flesh off and lay in the darkness gnawing them. Times when she had hung him in the shack behind the house, piercing his flesh through his back with thick wires and hanging his tiny body by nails connected to the ceiling; watching his little feet kick the air relentlessly, pleading that she take him down. Times when she had lit the healing skin of his back and neck on fire, tying his arms down so that he could only endure the pain rather than stop it.
And now, the result was strangling her in this very bed, the bed it had longed to sleep in since the years of puberty when the bones she'd cracked and refused to mend grew into distorted limbs that only dreamt of holding her. Their last intimate act. She blacked out as his tears fell onto her face, her wretched, piercing green eyes seeing nothing as she died.
Trunks wanted to scream, moving away from the window and refusing to look anymore.
"Why?" He demanded, feeling like he couldn't even breathe. Mirai moved towards him, leading them slightly away from the house. "Why would you show me that shit? How is that love? What are you trying to PROVE Mirai?!"
"How is that not love?" Mirai shrugged, trying to pretend he was unaffected by what they'd both witnessed. "I told you I would prove that love exists Trunks. I didn't say that it was always a beautiful or a pure thing. Love is loss. Love is sadness and it's breaking down. But more than those, love can be a sick obsession. It can be unhealthy and cruel and in this case, fucking monstrous. But that doesn't mean it isn't love and it certainly doesn't mean it can't exist. Tell David that he didn't love her. Tell him that it was just chemicals mixed in his twisted mind. Or could you even believe the words yourself after seeing all he would do for her, all he went through for her most sadistic attentions?
"He loves her even now as he throws gasoline around the house that was his torture chamber. He loves her with every breath in his disfigured body as he lights a match and puts to rest the never ending pain that was his existence."
The window suddenly became light and within, Trunks could make out the burning form of the creature named David, standing still by his dead lover as they were both consumed by fire.
"Tell me that isn't love Trunks." Mirai said before he disappeared into the sky, flying away and leaving the other to watch the house gradually catch completely.
Trunks stayed, watching the flames eat away at the roof before eventually collapsing the entire house. Flames that could consume such evil and leave behind no traces of the abominations that were once conducted behind the walls that now lay in ruins. And flames that could never tell the stories of a little boy named David or speak of the love between the creature and his step mother, Dorthy.
As he flew away, he still thought he could hear their screams.