The Prisoner Project

TWENTY TWO

"I don't know why I'm here."

- The last words of Albert Fish

TWENTY TWO

NICHOLAS DEMENTIA WAS A BULLET, and I didn't mean that in a manner that leaned towards aesthetics. I meant it in all seriousness. He was a bullet. The kind that spiralled out of control, out of focus and into the body of an innocent bystander. It was gruesome. So in that moment when he had impaled me, I knew the only thing I could do was to dig elbow deep inside of me and pull out the metal he had put in. I had no time to ask, beg, cry for justice. No. He was already inches close to the most vulnerable part of me.

I hoped it wasn't too little, too late.

The blood from his nose glided towards his lips, and he wiped it off with an orange sleeve. I winced at the stain. "I don't know what you're talking about."

I watched his eyes flash. More excitement. More trepidation. Hell, more pleasure. His jaw ticked for a moment and then he paused, as though the movement had hurt him. He closed his eyes for a split second and cradled his jaw at the same time.

I stayed silent. I had never actually seen Banshee feel any type of pain so I grew fascinated with this discovery. For a while I had dismissed the thought of him having feelings so the grimace on his face that would seem ordinary to others, was surreal to me.

"Look away, Aria." He whispered.

And when I shook my head, rather than berate me for denying him, he gazed at me with hooded eyes for a moment. Then, he smiled. "Suit yourself."

Within a second, he lifted his hand towards his mouth and dug his fingers inside. His eyes were shut while he tugged, and as he tugged, blood from his parted lips strolled down his arms. I couldn't look away. When he pulled back, his fingers were wrapped around a tooth. A single blood stained tooth.

He dropped it on the table before us, tilted his head to the side and spat the bloody residue onto the ground.

And when he lifted his head to look back at me, a chuckle escaped his bruised lips. I hated it when he found humour around me. "You might be beautiful, but fear makes you jarring." He looked right into my eyes. "Sometimes, when I see your fear, I try to imagine what I look like through your eyes."

The whole incident had knocked me off my feet, yet I could respond. "What do you reckon?"

"I must be God," He leaned closer to me. "because I'm certain no man has looked at another like the way you look at me."

Involuntarily, my hands moved to my chest to still my beating heart. He had called me beautiful, jarring and accused me of being a murderer in a single moment. He was like a jack of all trades for all things disturbing. He must have noticed my expression over his tooth because he flicked it in my direction, making me flinch.

"That's how quickly people die. It's so simple to just pull them out their lifeline, and toss them away. It's easier when they're worthless too. It's almost as though they let you kill them. Even easier when they're bad to you." He gestures to his tooth. "When a tooth hurts, you get rid of it. When someone hurts you, you do the same. End their life as easy as that."

Rather than remain silenced and let him steer the conversation at his pace, I spoke over my emotions. "You'd be foolish to compare a persons life to a decaying tooth."

"It's all the same to me."

"Besides, haven't you heard the saying that a person's life doesn't end just because their heart stopped beating."

"Ah." Like lightening, he sat up straight. "Exactly. Exactly, love."

I shivered because somehow I had excited him.

In that moment, I saw that his eyes were contradictions. They were murderous, but they were filled with adoration. They were darkened with repressed tragedies, yet spilling over with remorse.

His voice was breathless when he spoke again. "That's exactly why I know you've killed a man. Because he's not dead. Because he lives inside of you. In your eyes, your heart, your fucking words. Everything about you revolves around him, and I knew the moment you stepped inside this room that you weren't alone. Aria, you might have stopped his heart, but you didn't truly kill him."

I stood up, chair scraping across he ground. It screeched and the sound bounced off the walls in a harsh crescendo.

Banshee stood just as I did, forcing me to look up at him. "You and I can never be the same. I killed for reasons you will never fathom but you, you're different. Whilst my victims are dead to me, yours made you. He's why you're here. He's why your eyes flash when you see me. He's why you keep coming back. When he died, you awoke. The end of him, was the beginning of you."

I felt the wall against my back and it faintly occurred to me that I had been retreating from him. I didn't care if the bell signalling the session end hadn't come. I didn't care about anything then. I wanted to take my fingernails across my flesh and pull them as though my skin were flint and I would burst into flames. I wanted to crawl out of the room. I wanted to die. My worst fear was dancing, waltzing in between my tragedies, with Banshee.

I reached for the handle of the door leading to the emergency exit and wrapped my cold fingers around it.

Nicholas didn't flinch.

"Let me help you kill him." Nicholas said, words softer than flesh. "Tell me what you did."

Boom.

I slammed the door behind me, eyes screwed shut and heart beating a taboo against my rib cage. I rested against the door for support, taking a few moment to breathe, indifferent to whether Hank would be grinning at my reaction when I opened my eyes or if Frank would be feigning worry.

I was going to stay there for as long as I could.

I was, until I heard my name from a mouth so familiar.

"Aria?"

My breath caught in my throat, and I looked up. "Diana.."

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AN: A long update tomorrow, don't crucify me! I cut the chapter into two for a reason!