The Rose Garden: In accordance with PTRR
To many, death is an awful thing. It takes the ones we loved, adored, looked up to and even felt sympathy for. Death is played with by many and can be looked at as the rightful punishment for horrendous crimes. I learned that even in death, you cannot escape what you’ve done. I would’ve given anything to just drop dead, to no longer be his slave or toy. He’s so far gone that he’s lost sight of his main goal. All Nicholas ever wanted was to preserve innocence and destroy the bad people, ones that steal the very thing. He thinks by killing these people before their innocence is ripped from them he’s doing them a favor. But in the end, Nicholas had become the very thing he feared his whole life, a beast. A sadistic, cold-hearted, demented, monster. He’s too lost in his own mind to realise it now. I watch as his ways of torture get crueller and darker, day by day. When we first started he only talked to them, explaining why he was about to kill them. Then money got in the way, that’s where the screen room came to be. People paid him to torture these people in any way they’d like, no matter the age, Nic didn’t care, he never did. I watched monstrous things done to people, even done to myself. The only proof I have are the scars, mentally and physically. You would hear the haunting echoes bounce off the walks throughout the manor at night, the begs and pleas. You hear people rattling their chains trying so hard to get out, praying that they’ll escape and get back to their lives, families and forget this nightmare. Unfortunately, Nicholas never lets anyone get away. You’re wondering, who am I to be telling you this? Why should you take my word? I watched everything he did to those poor people, I handled their lifeless corpses, I saw their blood run down with water in the drains in the black room, I’m the one Nicholas needed.
I had a bad life, running the streets with the wrong crowd from a young age, smoking since 12, etc. My dad left our little family when I was 10, leaving scars that seem like paper cuts to me now. My mom? She had men coming in and out of our apartment at all hours of the day and night. They would sometimes beat her, not give her the money etc. Regardless, our bills were always paid. Alas, life was just never good. I’m sure there were signs early on to show how demented I was. You know, killing small animals for fun, making myself bleed because I loved pain. But most of all, I loved the pain of other people. It had always intrigued me to see what emotions do to someone. How much could one person cry? How mad would someone get before they snap? I loved testing these things on people. I’d get into fights a lot, beating the other person bloody until I was pulled off. I wanted to know how much I’d have to hit them before they would nearly die. I would call my sister awful names, pull her hair, etc just to see how much I could make her cry. I don’t hate my sister, I don’t hate the people I would hurt, I just want to see how they react.
At the age of 19 I got arrested for gang violence. The only issue was, I murdered the police men trying to arrest me. This put me on the run for a while until I was caught. During my time of running away from those pigs, I began to crave the feeling of killing another person. When I killed those three police men, there was just something about seeing the life literally leave their eyes that put my urges at ease. I use to have control over said urges, when I would want to hurt my sister more to see her cry the most she ever had, I stopped myself. Or in the mist of a fight, I restrained myself from just killing the other guy. Once I hit prison? The urges just got intensified. They put me in solitary confinement after I murdered my cell mate. I let go and let the urges wash over me.
I like to call him Artie, he’s the one that loves to indulge in the urges we have. I dislike what we do during our episodes but he couldn’t get enough of the gruesome acts. We’ve killed 4 guards since being in here, they’re threatening Artie with death row, that means I have to deal with that too thanks to him. Artie asked me a very dark question as we sat in our single cell.
“Can we kill ourself before they do first?”
I shook my head. We’ve gotten into this big mess because of him, there’s no way we’re doing that! Artie started yelling at me, shouting that we kill ourself. I started rocking back and forth trying to keep him from taking over. I started shouting for help, no reply. I started hitting my head against the cell wall hoping he’ll shut up. That’s when the guards came in and restrained me. They put me in a wheelchair and strapped me down. I started tossing and turning trying to get away. Artie started screaming,
“They’re gonna go kill us! I told you to do it first! I told you!”
I began sobbing violently until a pill was shoved in my mouth. After a minute or two everything went fuzzy and I blacked out.
So here I sit, in a room again with just me and Artie only this time, we’re restrained.
“They didn’t kill us,” I said aloud.
“They’re going to. Come on, let’s hang ourself, we haven’t killed anyone for a long time and it’s hurting me,” he replied.
I shook my head.
“If we do that we will never get to see that look I know you love,” I retorted, sighing and laying down.
It was silent for a while until I heard him speak.
“Why don’t you let me take over for a while, Alex?”
I gulped back some fear. I’d never let him completely take over before.
“You’ll just kill us!” I shouted.
“I won’t, you can rest and I’ll handle it,” Artie assured.
I agreed and went back into the depths of my mind as he took control of our body. I heard him cackle. He began to bite at our own lips, drawing blood.
“Stop that!” I begged, it hurt terribly.
He wouldn’t let me take over. What’s he doing?!
Some of the mental health ward guards came in and tried to stop him but he only tried attacking them. They shone bright lights at us then tazed and beat us. This really hurt badly and I know Artie must feel like a hurt animal.
They took us to a room where we had to be strapped in a wooden chair with a weird helmet on our head. I soon learned that they were gonna electrocute our head to try to cure us. The only issue with this is that Artie and myself loved this pain, or at least we did for a while.
Nearly every hour, day in and day out they shocked us. It began to turn our brain to mush. Artie finally let me take back over again. He hated bright lights and especially laughter after that. As they tortured us, they would mock us, cackling at our misery. That heavily angered us both. If I didn’t have restraints I would murder each and every one of those bastards until it was silent.
We met Nicholas on the day they intensified our shock treatment. We watched him smile at us as it happened, how was this amusing?! I began to get very angry, Artie now taking over. He began yelling and ripped out of the restraints, throwing the helmet off and beating on the guard in there until we were tazed. Suddenly we heard applause. We looked up and saw Nicholas clapping his white gloved hands together with a twisted smile on his lips.
“He’s perfect!” he said, his voice echoing throughout the room.
“Perfect? He’s up for death row today!” a guard shouted at him.
That’s when we heard gunfire and watched blood spray onto Nicholas’s face.
“I like him, Alex,” Artie said to me.
I frowned. Something was off. He walked into the room where we were.
“Well you heard him, happy death day Alex!”
We both were confused and slightly intrigued by this strange, strange man. Artie stood up,
“I am Artie, Alex isn’t here.”
We heard him laugh, bad mistake. Artie began to get angry.
“Ah, not a fan of joy? I understand. I am Nicholas Rukhat, shall we get going? Belladonna must’ve cleared us a path now.”
I took over surprisingly and stood a bit away from him.
“Why do you want us? We’re too dangerous.”
“A completely dangerous mad man, Alex Lawdaem? What an asset you would be to me and my business. And your ‘friend’, Artie?” Nicholas asked.
I frowned and looked at our feet. Artie was so thrilled about this man, it was making me sick.
“Artie Lawdaem is the murderer. I don’t like it.”
Nicholas chuckled.
“Well, let him come out again.”
“You want him to rip your head off? That’s what he wants to do.”
“I want to talk to him, can he hear me?” Nicholas asked.
I nodded reluctantly.
“Artie, if we convince Alex, I’ll let you kill whenever you like.”
I froze, Artie was trying very hard to take over right now, it felt suffocating.
“Stop that! He’ll come out if you do that!” I shouted.
Nicholas chuckled.
“Oh you silly boy Alex, it’s in your nature.”
“No it isn’t! Stop it Artie! He’s lying!” I yelled.
My brain was stringing and I couldn’t stop him anymore. I stared at Nicholas.
“You promise I’ll be ok?”
“Of course Alex, you’ll have control soon enough.”
I wish I had known better then. I wish I had known that Artie could’ve been tamed. Now where are we? Dumbed down so much it hurts. I can’t control my body anymore, it’s almost like I’m not even me anymore, like I’m a voice in his head. The things we see would surely give someone a laundry list of mental issues, good thing we already have that list. Artie likes to sing as he works, actually, we sing lullabies our mom would sing to us. It brings us back to a simpler time. I don’t understand Mr. Nicholas, yes Artie and I have hurt things we love but that’s because we don’t know it’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong, oh he knew all too well and now all he can do is blame himself. Ever since it happened, he snaps at us more. He gives us more pills so Artie stays in control and doesn’t lash out. He slaps Miss Bella when she messes up, he even shocked us like the guards use to do. I watched him get so upset that he began to kill the people in harsher ways like, ripping out their blood vessels one by one as they’re alive, ripping out organs as they watch, throwing toasters into bathtubs full of people, etc. Artie and I barely have a body to dismember, just a pile of blood, guts and bone. Mr Nicholas misses Miss Veronica dearly. He cries and screams for her at night but I guess he did it to himself. He burns the roses now, disregarding what it took to make them. It’s his own fault! I saw Artie pause as we cut up a body.
“Alex? Why did he do it?”
“Why do we kill, Artie?”
“Because it feels good. Mr. Nicholas doesn’t feel good.”
“Mr. Nicholas is insane.”
Artie stopped cutting and put the organs in a bucket and sat on the floor.
“How do you think Miss Veronica is?”
“She is very well, Artie.”
He got up and left out the black room, it was night, the only time we were allowed out. We walked to Mr. Nicholas’s room and opened the door slowly. There he laid on his bed full of dried roses, hugging that thing.
“Does it bother him that she’s been gone for so long?”
I sighed.
“Not at all, this way, she is his forever.”
We gagged at the smell of rotting flesh and the sight of maggots wiggling around making noise as they feasted. Nicholas hugged the cold body closer. Her face lay so still, so lifeless yet so perfect, it ran chills down our back.
“So she is here forever?” Artie whispered.
We looked back to take one last look.
“Yes, oh Miss Veronica, death doesn’t suit you,” I said, him closing the door.