childliike

[childliike]

dante.

“some of them, sure. but they have to do a lot more than cut people up.” dante wrinkled his nose, trying to picture ever enjoying going into that field. legal mutilation aside, it didn’t exactly seem like a dream profession. sickness was disgusting, and most of the time the solution didn’t involve picking up a scalpel and pulling things apart. “i guess you could be, if you’re into that.” of course, he personally thought it was more rewarding to be a murderer than to bother with the complications of the medical field. saving people just didn’t have the same appeal as ruining them, even if there were some nice cutting tools involved.

dante stole another glance at JD, shrugging a shoulder. “suit yourself. maybe when you cut one open you’ll find something broken enough for you.” it did make sense, in a weird sort of way—fitting, given his opinion on the man—but only in logistics. he seemed to want something less artificial than some last-minute injury, but why that would make someone less appealing was lost on him. that didn’t bother him, not really—dante knew they all killed for different reasons.

doubt glittered in his eyes, and he didn’t bother to hide it from his expression even when he physically turned to face john. “who are you trying to convince, casper? me, or yourself?” it wasn’t a malicious question on his part (hell, he didn’t expect an answer), but part of him did hope it would send him in another direction. bristling slightly, he continued, “look, we all kill for different reasons, right? you like imperfections, and i like…” fuck, he couldn’t even finish his sentence, not even to someone he knew was probably too socially weird to care. “i kill people i wanna fuck, okay?” defensive, much? god, he wanted a cigarette. 

JD frowned. “That seems... inconvenient,” He said after some thought. Hank had been like that. ( Was still like that, maybe. ) He took blonde women because he found them the most attractive. But Hank didn’t just kill women, he kidnapped them. He held them in the cellar for months, abused them in every way imaginable, and of course, that included sexually. Dante didn’t do that. Or at least, JD didn’t think he did. If he had a cellar full of people, wouldn’t he have shared that with the group? Besides, captives required so much space and upkeep. It seemed unlikely.

So, if he wasn’t doing what Hank did, what did he do? He didn’t seem like a virgin, but JD wasn’t actually sure what virgins seemed like. Could people tell he was a virgin? Most people didn’t think about it, he supposed. He didn’t usually think this much about it either, but now his mind was whirring with questions. “If you kill people you’re attracted to, does that mean you don’t have sex? Or do you have sex first, and then kill them? But then what if you want to have sex with them again? Don’t you...”

Oh. Oh. A new idea popped into JD’s head, making his eyes go wide and his lips break into a nervous grin. It’s not like he’d never wondered what it felt it like, how could he not? He just figured it was one of those boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, something frowned upon even in this crowd. But if could just get a little insight... “Unless— You don’t—”   He looked around them quickly, dropping his voice to an excited whisper. “Do you have sex with them after you kill them?”

[childliike]

riley.

Riley took a step back when he got in her personal space, bright blue eyes flashing with a warning. If he tries and touches me, she thought, I may just throw a blindfold on him, see how he likes it.

“I don’t care what you do after she’s dead,” Riley whispered. “Once she’s dead, she’s all yours.”

She didn’t intend to stick around to see what JD had in mind. She was sure it’d be far more disgusting than anything she’d be interested in.

Riley always had at least two knives on her at all times – one of which she kept hidden in her boot. Kneeling down to get it out, she flipped the long blade open and cast her glance at the girl.

“Stay here, and don’t make any noise,” she told JD, before she made her way down, as quietly as possible, into the clearing with the soon-to-be-corpse.

Riley stayed a few yards away, as per the rules, before raising her voice for the first time all night.

“HELP!” she screamed, allowing a hint of a sob to seep into her tone. “HELP ME!”

Thinking she’d found a fellow victim, the girl turned, hopefully stumbling towards the sound of Riley’s voice. Riley worked up some tears, calling for help again, encouraging the girl closer… closer…

…Into Riley’s welcoming arms.

“You’re forgiven,” Riley whispered, before slitting the girl’s throat in one fluid motion. She dug her blade as deeply into the flesh as possible, wanting to keep the time the girl spent bleeding out, aware she was about to die, to a minimum.

Of course, he did not stay there. He could be quiet up close just as easily as he could from far away, so he figured there was no real harm in following her. He wanted to see her, see what she did, see what her face did in the actual moment of death. Riley’s, that is. Not the girl. The girl was just a human, and she would do the same thing all animals did when they died ( sob, whimper, wriggle, go limp, blah, blah, blah ). 

Riley was different. She was like him. ( Or, she was about as close to like him as people ever got. ) But more than that, the things she did had purpose, and power behind them, and they meant something.He wanted to witness, to understand. 

He trailed behind her, wraith-like, and stopped when she did, crouching down in the trees a few feet away. The first cry startled him, but then he smiled, watching her wail in the darkness like a wounded doe. Clever girl. 

The blind prey staggered directly into her unlikely predator’s arms, and he thought he knew just what would happen next ( a blade drawn ear-to-ear, a fountain of warm and wet ), but he was taken back by Riley’s words. He had apologized to victims before, manically trying to shove their organs back into place in a flash of lucidity, but he had never forgiven one. What did it mean? 

He emerged from his hiding place as the girl took her last gurgling, blood-drowned breaths and the cascade of plasma spewing from her slowed. Gently, he hooked his arms under hers and lifted her slumping body from Riley’s grasp. He placed her on the ground, face-up, and crouched down to pull the blindfold from her eyes. Dark, shallow nothingness is what he found there; a doll’s eyes, painted glass that only echoed the real thing. She was less than an animal now, she was an object. His object. He rested his elbows on his knees and examined her, plotting out his next move. His tongue darted over his lips in a subconscious gesture of hunger.

His mind was slipping from him, and he reeled it back. He still had a question for Riley, and he needed to ask it before he scared her away. He looked up at her, and then back down at the corpse, tilting his head like a child might. “Forgiven for what?”

[childliike]

dante.

it was unsettling to know that even one person in their club could sneak around him without being detected, even if he was reasonably sure that none of them would stick a knife in his back. not yet, at least. despite that disconcerting fact, he had always found it easy to ignore the risks in any given situation, and as soon as he had chastised john he was content to forget the whole thing. especially when there were better things to focus on than a friend’s ghostly habits—a comparison that seemed to confuse the teenager, if his expression was anything to go by. john seemed to struggle with cultural references in general, but dante didn’t mind. maybe one day he would turn on a television and see what he had been talking about.

still, with all his quirks, JD came across as—how did he put it nicely?—weird. “you never know until you cut them open. sometimes not even then,” he said, wondering what the hell cancer was even supposed to look like; everyone had always made it sound like some horrible, flesh-eating zombie of a disease. “if you want one that’s already broken, i could always carve a few pieces off for you… or break a bone or two. you know, whatever makes it easier.” he paused, sending a quick glance in JD’s direction. grimacing, he said, “you probably wouldn’t get it.”

it was the truth, wasn’t it? he didn’t think most people would really get why he chose the people he did—at least, for some of them. that prisoner in particular wasn’t special to him, he was just… attractive. he was hot. he wanted to get down and dirty with him—it just so happened that his version of that involved the use of deadly force. and it was one of the few things he actually felt a bit shameful about, like satan had crawled up his ass and made him a real freak of nature. 

“Doctors know,” He rebutted childishly, “Maybe I should be a doctor.” He imagined himself, stringy hair pulled back into a ponytail, his sickly frame swimming in a doctor’s white coat, leafing through a clipboard and saying smart things. Like dress up. He imagined everyone trusting him and nurses blushing and a really nice car. He imagined sneaking into patients homes at night, cutting them open with a scalpel, taking out their faulty parts and putting them in jars... Fixing and saving... Doing good... Cutting open...

He was only half-listening to Dante, lost in his fantasy. “It doesn’t work like that,” He said, shaking his head and trying hard to focus, “You can’t break them, they have to be broken—” He could feel himself not making sense, but his thoughts were medical gibberish and he couldn’t straighten them out and then just as he was thinking it Dante said it out loud; You wouldn’t understand. Or, well, close enough.

Jinx, he said in his mind.

It was an odd moment. He felt both a sense of connection and indignation. He hated being told he wouldn’t understand things, despite being certain that no one could ever understand him. It was hypocritical, sure, but that didn’t mean it made him any less angry, made him feel any less small. And out of all the things for him to not understand, this? This was all he’d ever known.

“Try me,” He pushed, crossing his arms and telling himself it was just the cold. “I’m not like, dumb, you know. I’m not a kid.” Ha. “I mean— I get stuff. I get this stuff.”

[childliike]

memphis.

There was something pleased in the way Memphis looked at the boy, it could almost be classified as pride if someone was trying hard enough to give words to his reactions. JD being able to recognize what Memphis saw was exactly why he enjoyed the boy’s presence, more so than anyone else’s in the club. He’d been satisfied with finding other like himself, but JD was the only person who could almost identify with. There was potential there that the world would want to snuff out and Memphis detested the idea of wasting what JD could be. What he could use him for.

“I’m going to see what it takes to make her scream.” He started, a glint of excitement in his eyes as his gaze met the boy’s. “Then I’m going to cut her vocal chords out.” JD’s struggle with holding a conversation made him the ideal person for Memphis to talk to, seeing as he conserved most of his words and saw no point in making small talk. “Is there one you want?”

JD frowned slightly. Screaming did nothing for him. It was like white noise. Hank loved screaming. He lived for it. Which meant that for the first fifteen years of his life, screaming had been a constant fixture in boy’s —JD, he corrected himself, even within his own thoughts, he had a name now— in JD’s home. It had been as commonplace as dogs barking or children laughing may have been in any other household. He barely even heard it anymore. 

For the first time, it occurred to him that Memphis was quite like Hank, quite like Hank might have been when he started; quietly charming, naturally commanding. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he didn’t have much time to mull the idea over before his thoughts were interrupted.

His eyes went wide with curiosity. “Can you do that?” He asked, excitement clear in his voice. “I’ve never seen vocal chords before.” He’d never even considered it, but now the idea seemed achingly tantalizing. 

“I like to hold things,” He said quietly, like he was admitting to a shameful sexual fantasy. ( In a way, he was. ) He wasn’t sure why he was sharing it, but his mouth kept moving. “I like... knowing that something worked once, and now it’s just... Once you made sound, and now you’re just a piece of useless meat in my hand...” 

He looked up at Memphis, searching for... agreement, perhaps? An explanation? Approval? He craved something from him certainly, but he lacked the vocabulary to name it.

[childliike]

negan.

Normally, if he’d just been out on the street or in his own bar, Negan could tell when he was being followed or looked at. He could usually feel it on his skin. Of course now he was far to invested in the game. His focus was a bit all over the place. From keeping his footsteps steady and quite to listening as close as possible to every sound that wasn’t himself. So Negan hadn’t so much as looked up when JD started to follow him. He simply kept his head down and went on with looking through the trees for movement and straining his ears for any sort of sound. Being part def was really coming into play here and not in a good way.  A sudden voice behind him was something Negan heard, though, and it caused him to flinch as he turned around. JD. Dear god, again. He narrowed his eyes at the other. “Y-you decided y-you’re just ab-above saying h-hello?” Negan asked with sarcasm touching his tone. “N-no. Funny b-because th-theirs only six of-of th-them but it seems l-like so many. T-too many ch-choices.” He admitted before pushing a hand through his hair. “Wh-what about y-you?”

JD’s lips set in a firm line and his eyes darted back and forth, as if searching for a reason for a formal greeting. It was stupid. To be fair, JD found small talk in any form to be stupid and tiresome, but in a situation like this, with the chaos around them, it bordered on absurd. “Hello, Negan,” he said with robotic formality, “How are you this evening? How’s the wife?” He was imitating the cadence from some black-and-white sitcom where neighbors leaned over their shared fence to chat, but it was a little off, his voice and his eyes empty.

He stared off dreamily into the woods, watching a couple of stragglers slowly make their way towards their doom. “I’m not sure I like this game,” He said vaguely. In his mind, it was a direct answer to Negan’s question. "It’s like... a pack of wolves stalking around a Golden Corral.” He turned back to the other boy, a self-satisfied grin on his face. “Even if we get full, it won’t taste as good as a plain old deer. And it’s weird.”

[childliike]

riley.

Riley jumped slightly at the sound of another’s voice. She’d heard other members of the club calling out occasionally – taunting their victims, luring them to their doom – but Riley personally thought they were crazy. (Even as she thought it, she fully recognized the hypocrisy.) She knew Memphis and the others didn’t intend to let any of them make it out of the woods alive, but people were unpredictable. One of them might have turned out to be smarter, more resourceful than they anticipated. One of them may be able to overpower them, even with a blindfold – adrenaline and fear were powerful motivators. One of them may simply turn out to be extraordinarily lucky. Or perhaps someone outside the game would stumble across it, and they would be forced to scatter to the winds, leaving the would-be victims alive in order to save themselves.

If any of that happened, the last thing they’d need would be for one of them to be able to identify them in any way. Even by something like their voice.

Maybe she was paranoid, but Riley was fine with being paranoid if it meant she could adequately cover her ass. There was no way she’d survive jail.

“Sh!” she hissed, raising a finger to her lips. 

She cast a glance at the blindfolded girl below – she didn’t react to their voices. Her breathing steadied slightly as she realized the girl couldn’t hear them. Still, she didn’t dare raise her voice above a barely-audible whisper.

“If you want to help me, we do this my way,” she whispered. “No unnecessary suffering. We do this as quickly and cleanly as possible. That’s the rules.”

Riley liked rules. They kept things neat, tidy, and manageable. She had that she stuck to whenever she was making a sacrifice. While she believed the Righteous One wouldn’t set her on the path of anyone that didn’t deserve it, she got no pleasure in inflicting needless evil. She’d spent far too much of her life as a victim of it for that. So, unless Riley knew exactly what her target had done to deserve it, she tried to keep her kills quick and relatively painless.

Her stepfather hadn’t been that lucky. Because Riley knew what he’d done. She knew all too well.

He was able to suppress the giggle that was threatening to escape his throat, and it surfaced instead as a wide, bemused grin. Given the circumstances, it was entirely inappropriate. He knew that, but he couldn’t help it. It was just so ridiculous. He hadn’t been speaking loudly. He’d never been loud in his life. It was kind of his thing. In fact, he was often told off for being too quiet. And yet here was this tiny girl, shushing him and giving him orders like some kind of incensed librarian.

He looked around himself in a big, obvious way that made it clear he was gently mocking her paranoia, and then leaned in close, hunching down conspiratorially. ( Personal space? What’s that? ) “No unnecessary suffering,” He repeated, dropping his usually low volume to something hardly above a breath, “But I can’t agree to clean.”

He’d never pulled out teeth before, but he knew it wouldn’t be any kind of simple. He hadn’t brought pliers, of course, and even if he had, he worried they’d damage the delicate contraption that lined the girl’s jaw. He’d have to use a rock to break up bones of her face and then chip them out with the knife he’d brought. It would be neither quick, nor clean.

“You can slit her throat or whatever, say your prayers, whatever you need to do. I’ll help however you want and I won’t interfere.” He searched her eyes, trying to show that he was being earnest, “But then you let me do what I need to do, okay?” Maybe he didn’t have a wrathful god to answer to, but he hoped she’d understand that he was still beholden to his particular need. They all were. He supposed that alone was what bonded them.

“I want something from her. It’ll be messy, but your hands won’t get dirty, and she won’t feel a thing by then. How does that sound?”

[childliike]

dante.

waiting had always been dante’s least favorite thing to do, and the unfortunate fact of the matter was that homicide came with a lot of it. finding someone that caught his interest took time, stalking them and learning their schedules took time, finally capturing them took time—only when he was able to get to work did drawing things out become more gratifying. before they were in his grasp, it served only to rile his impatience. as with any other night out working, even with the victims so tantalizingly close, he had to wait until they had a good head start. damn it all.

dante kept his eyes on them, watching as they stumbled their way around the beginning section of their game, slowly beginning to drift farther and farther from their group. he had been just about to slink off to follow one in particular when a soft voice caught him off guard, and much like a cat he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention. after a quick breath, he turned to face the guilty party. “dude,” he began, shaking his head; “how many times have i told you not to do that?” turning back, he nodded in the direction of one of the prisoners. “him. he’s p—” don’t say that. “he’s worthy. what about you, casper? anyone catching your eye?”

JD ignored the admonishment. He’d heard it before. But Hank had been a big believer in the whole ‘children should be seen and not heard’ thing, and so much as poorly timed floorboard creak could set him off on a bad day, so JD had learned early and well to keep himself quiet. The habit had stuck in the outside world, and even though the repercussions were gone, he felt safer in silence. Besides, there was a certain comfort in knowing he could sneak up on the other club members. He didn’t want to kill any of them, but with friends like these...

His brow furrowed at ‘casper’. It sounded kind of insulting, but Dante’s tone didn’t suggest an insult. A casper must be someone who casps, but he didn’t know what casping was, either. Was it like gasping? He didn’t think he gasped enough to warrant a nickname. He gasped then, testing it out, but it didn’t feel like something he did often. At that point he gave up, another reference lost on the eighteen year old baby.

“None yet,” He said with a shrug. “They’re all too... Whole. I like it when there’s, like, something wrong, you know? Something interesting. I wish I could tell if one of them had a stomach ulcer or cancer or something,” He mused, losing himself in fantasy for just a moment, “I’d like to see that up close...”

He shook himself back to reality and stared at the boy Dante had referred to. He didn’t seem like anything special. “What’s so perfect about him?” JD asked, picking up on the word he’d almost said, but failing to notice his distaste for it.

[childliike]

memphis.

If it’d been anyone else sneaking up behind him, Memphis would wrapped his hands around their throat in a second. It wasn’t often that anyone could manage to do that with him, he didn’t like surprises. But he recognized the voice instantly and an amused smirk pulled up his lips. He liked JD, or he liked him as much as he liked anyone. He was fascinated by the kid, almost sickly so. Memphis found himself drawn to him, even almost wanting his company, or at least not feeling put out when the kid ended up appearing at his elbow without warning. “Yes.” He answered, without looking back at the boy, never taking his eyes off the target. For someone who would rip apart everyone he passed without hesitation, Memphis was rather picky with who he eventually chose to do it, too. It needed to be someone interesting, someone who piqued his curiosity. He had to feel that need to see what their insides looked like. And he found that in the girl his eyes were fixed on. He liked how she didn’t cry or scream. She was scared, he could tell that, practically taste it, but she didn’t react like the others. “She’s smart.” He explained to JD.

The way he responded, no sign of surprise or dismay, as if they’d already been having a conversation, made JD wonder if he had in fact heard him approaching. But Memphis was like that. Unflappably cool, right up until he wasn’t. JD couldn’t rattle him, and even if he could, he wouldn’t want to. Something about him, his stoically domineering presence perhaps, rung a bell in the boy’s mind. A bell that chimed ‘listen’... ‘obey’... And so he did, unquestioningly. He waited patiently for Memphis to say more, and when he didn’t, he turned his focus to the girl in question instead. She stumbled blindly, like the rest of them, but her steps were slower and more cautious. She wasn’t tripping all over herself like a toddler with its head cut off. She was making careful progress. “I see it.” He replied simply, matching the older boy’s measured tone in a subconscious attempt to please him. 

He took a step forward, leaning against a tree so he could face him, and considered what to say next. Conversation was not his strong suit. Finally, he tilted his head, all curiosity and no taunting, and asked, “What are you gonna do to her?”

[childliike]

JD wandered the forest dreamily, naturally quiet steps carrying him along like a phantom. Occasionally he’d cross paths with a victim, but none of them had sparked his interest yet. Honestly, he’d be perfectly happy to simply observe the game; the shaking, panting prey groping through darkness as though they might still escape were far more interesting than he’d expected. Humans were always so determined to live, so unaware of how weak they were. He liked the way their tears made clean tracks on their dirty faces. It stirred something in him. Not empathy, but something.

He spotted another member shrouded in shadows a little ways away and trekked towards them. The soft ground masked his approach, and he was able to take up a position behind them without alerting them to his presence. He lingered silently like that for a while, watching them watch the victims, before finally speaking up. “Have you chosen yet?”

[childliike]

Dead leaves carpeted the ground and moonlight shone through the trees in eerie beams; a perfect, clichéd, October landscape. From his perch on the incline, JD could see into the little clearing below perfectly. A girl stumbled into it, but he’d been expecting her. He’d already chosen her, and had overtaken her path a little while back, stalking her silently from above. He could see the whole scene like a painting in his mind: the terrified damsel and the monster crouched in the shadows above her.

But that wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t a perfect monster. He didn’t get the thrill of the hunt that he knew some of the other club members did. She wasn’t a perfect damsel, either, with her piss-soaked jeans and the acne on her jaw. It wasn’t a painting. It was a sickly curious boy and a very unlucky girl.

She was unlucky because she’d made him curious, and he was curious because of her teeth. He wanted them. There were little wires across them like some kind of mechanical contraption, and they fascinated him. Braces, one of the others had told him. He wanted to break her jaw and pry all of her teeth out, see if they stayed on the wires, like a charm bracelet. That would be a neat thing to have.

A rustle behind him. He peered over his shoulder, somewhat annoyed to be distracted from his fantasy, but softened when he saw Riley. He liked her, he supposed. Something about her put him at ease. He liked that she killed with purpose. It made her seem... purer, in his eyes at least. Her deaths were sacrifices to a higher power, not simple animalistic greed like his. She cleansed herself afterwards through her rituals, while he would be forever dirty.

“I want this one,” He said quietly, forgoing the usual greeting dance and glancing back at the girl below. “But I don’t need to— ” He wanted to give Riley something. He wanted her to like him back. “I don’t need to do it myself. I want something from her, but... If you wanted to give her to your goddess, I could help you do that first.” @shatteredriley

[childliike]

Meet The Child

Name: goes by John “JD” Doe Age: 18 FC: Max Records His Story: From 1956 to 1974, nearly three dozen blonde women went missing along the highways of northern California. Many of them were classified as runaways or addicts and thought of no further, but the number was high enough that an investigation was launched in 1971. After about a year of dead ends, the case faded into obscurity, and was forgotten. The cops didn’t know where they were, the feds didn’t know where they were, but one little boy in a farmhouse just outside of Madrone knew where they were. They were in his basement. Not all at once, of course, but two or three times a year some poor girl would wake up down there, shackled and screaming. The boy was used to the screaming, like he was used to the dogs snarling outside and the blood stains on the linoleum floor; like he was used to the dull ache of hunger in his stomach and the chain around his own ankle. To be clear, the boy did not take the women. In some ways, he was one of the women. One of them had given birth to him, he supposed, but Hank never spoke about her, aside from that the boy had killed her during childbirth. He was very clear about that. It was Hank that took the women. His toys, he called them. The boy was pretty sure Hank was not his father: he didn’t look like him (Hank was blond and broad, with a bit of a gut), he never called him son (it was always boy or kid or skinny or dogmeat), and he certainly didn’t treat him like a son. If the women were toys, the boy was more like a pet. He was never given a name, or a birthday. He ate sporadically, seemingly whenever Hank thought he may be starving to death, and usually out of a dog bowl. He slept on a pile of ratty blankets on the floor. As soon as he could walk, he had a shackle put around his left ankle, though he wasn’t kept in the basement. His chain was anchored to a kitchen wall, and was long enough that he could move about the main floor of the house if he didn’t get it too twisted up. At it’s full length, the boy could walk a little ways into the yard, just far enough to feed the dogs when Hank was away. Hank was away a lot. The boy didn’t know what he did when he left, whether he was working or simply roaming the highways, looking for fresh prey. A little of both, he assumed. In truth, he didn’t much care. Time that Hank was away was time that he wasn’t being beaten, and the women weren’t shrieking all night. It was time in which the women spoke to him. He almost always liked the women. They were kind to him, and so much softer than Hank. Soft hands, soft words, soft hearts. Hank told him that all women were liars and cunts and only faked at being nice to trick men into giving them things, but that didn’t seem right to the boy. In his experience, women listened. They sang lullabies. They told him stories about their homes and families that seemed so bizarre to the boy that they couldn’t possibly be true. They were strong, too. Most of them lasted for months down there in the basement, taking whatever horrors Hank inflicted on them, and so many of them never gave up hope. They always thought they’d escape somehow. They always wanted to take the boy with them. They didn’t understand that the boy had no desire to leave. You see, when you’re born in hell, you don’t call it hell. You call it home. The farmhouse, despite the screaming and the blood and the beatings, was his home. Hank, even if he was a monster and even if he wasn’t his father, was his only family. And he wasn’t all bad. No one is. He was charming, in a strange way. Charming enough to lure countless women into his station wagon. The boy could see how someone might find him handsome, or how he might have been handsome once. He was an excellent storyteller, always hitting the turns and the punchline perfectly. Sometimes he’d come home with burgers for the two of them, and they’d watch Bonanza. Sometimes he’d turn on Sesame Street in the morning, just because he knew it was the boy’s favourite. These things were rare, but they happened. When the boy was nine, Hank started including him in the disposal of the bodies. It became a ritual for them. They would butcher the corpses, separating the meaty bits from the hands and heads and organs. The meat was ground and added to the dog’s slop, and the rest was burned. That was the boy’s favourite part. He loved fire, and it seemed Hank did, too. Macabre as it was, it was something they could share. It was around this age that the boy started identifying more with Hank than the women. Obviously, he had to separate himself from them. It was too hard to dispose of them if he bonded with them first, and truth be told, he started to see them more like hank did, anyway. Like… meat. Like something less real than him. One night, Hank brought him a gerbil. It felt small and warm in his hands, and he liked how it could only do what he let it do. The little thing bit him, and without a thought, he crushed it in his grasp. Hank asked him how it felt, and the boy just shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain it. He’d never felt power before. You may feel your heart breaking for the boy, and you’re right, his story is tragic. But make no mistake, he never becomes a hero. A survivor, yes. A victim, sure. But not a good person. A little boy raised by one monster and a thousand ghosts does not grow up to be an angel. He grows up to be half monster, half ghost. He grows up to be the spectre of a little boy, with claws inside him, tearing their way out. When he was twelve, the chain around his ankle came off permanently, leaving only a ring of scar tissue. He didn’t run away. Hank started taking him out hunting with him. He called it training. At first, the culture shock was severe. The boy had never left the farmhouse, and the sheer size of the outside world overwhelmed him. It was too much, too loud, too endless. But like all newborns, he acclimated. He learned to fake it. He loved watching people. Just people, doing people things; walking, eating, holding hands and laughing. Their lives seemed so foreign and small to him that it was like a child observing ants through a magnifying glass; they shared a physical space, but were on a totally different plane of existence, and had no idea that he could destroy them at any moment. It was both lonely and exhilarating. Hank was very good at people. It was as if he became an entirely different person depending on who he talked to, his bullshit tailor-made for every new ear. Once he watched as Hank explained to a police officer that the unconscious woman in the back seat was his daughter, and that he and his grandson had just picked her up from the bar. The cop damn near wept as he sent them on their way. They continued like this, long periods of strained isolation, punctuated by the occasional outing or dismemberment, for three more years before Hank was caught. Of course, the boy didn’t know he’d been caught until the police were breaking down the door, shining their flashlights in his dirty face. They found the woman in the basement immediately, but no one suspected him. They looked at him, with his long, tangled hair and his filthy clothes, crouched on his rag bed on the floor, and felt nothing but pity. From the back of a squad car, he heard a policeman say “We’ve got a juvenile here, John Doe, in need of medical assistance-” and thought to himself ‘My name is John?’ It said ‘John Doe’ on his hospital charts, too, and he wouldn’t learn for another year or so, until he was used to the damn thing, what that term actually meant. It was disheartening, but fitting. By then he was known by most as JD, so he just stuck with it, though he doesn’t care much what people call him. Would a rose by any other name not smell like death? At the hospital, they washed him and cut his hair as short as he’d allow. They gave him his shots and put him on an IV. They used terms like “chronic malnutrition” and “Stockholm Syndrome” that he didn’t understand. A few psychiatrists and psychologists frequented his room, though he didn’t say much to them. They seemed fascinated by the little he did say, anyway. It made him feel like a lab rat. In all, he was only there for a couple of weeks. After that it all got to be too much. The nurses were too cloying, the policemen were too pushy. He didn’t know where Hank was, but he knew he wouldn’t want him talking to cops. Besides, they didn’t have his fingerprints yet, or any real identifying information, and giving that up seemed like handing over a super power. So he made a run for it. After that he tried to stay mobile, mostly around San Jose and the surrounding areas. Sometimes he had a car or a hotel room, sometimes he didn’t. He found that if you have some beer or weed to offer up, there’s always a couch to sleep on. He also learned to keep himself clean and relatively presentable to avoid being hassled by the cops. If you saw him on the street, he would look like any other middle-class teenager dabbling in hippie shit, and as long as he didn’t talk too much, most slightly counter-culture youths accepted him as one of their own. But he wasn’t one of them. He was something bigger and more real, and he was suffocating. As horrifying as Hank was, he had been someone who understood his darkest impulses and couldn’t judge them. There was something inside of JD, willing him to cut things open, willing him to get inside and explore. And even when he let go and indulged those impulses, felt the unparalleled rush of unspooling a trucker’s intestines or cracking open every one of a waitress’s ribs to rip out her still-warm heart, it didn’t work the same as it had with Hank. Feeling these things and then having to keep them locked deep down inside himself only made him feel more isolated and insane than ever before. And then he found The Club, and he could breathe again. It was the first time in years he could be his true, creepy self. The first time he’d met people who even came close to seeming real, people he felt anything at all for. He’s quite certain that The Club is the only place he’ll ever truly fit in, and he’s both excited and terrified by the implications of that. He’s quietly desperate for acceptance, and would do anything to protect the group as a whole.

[childliike]

hi everybody !! ( hi dr nick! ) im ARI, pst, she/they pronouns ( your pick go wild ), and boy do i love murder :)) i bring 2 u my mixed up ghost of a son, JOHN “JD” DOE !! i understand his bio is basically a novella, so the TL;DR is that he was raised in captivity by a serial killer, and when said serial killer was caught he just kinda,,, wandered the streets? he’s only really been participating in the world for like three years, so in a lot of ways he is like a small child. a small child who really likes playing w dead bodies. ( istg this all makes some kind of sense in long form sigh )  anyway,,,, if you did read the bio and youre like ‘that was great but how do i give even MORE of my valuable time to this stranger?’, you can find some headcanons under the cut !! ( i mean, youre also free to read them if you didnt read the bio ofc, but i cant guarantee they’ll make sense ok ) OH HEY you know what else you’ll find under the cut ?? some vague ideas for connections. yeah. sexy stuff like that. in a group this size i generally prefer to establish our charas dynamic before jumping into threads, so if you see something you like, let ya boi know !! otherwise hop in my DMs or ill hop in yours and we’ll work something out, it’ll be great. OKAY i’ll stop rambling now enjoy the stuff kids !!

headcanons —

JD always eats quickly and desperately, like it might be the last food he gets for days

also hell eat like, anything. catch him scraping mold off bread and then eating it.

he has a dog, some kind of rottweiler mutt, that he picked up on his travels. his name is dog. JD sometimes feeds him human meat.

he loves fire!!! so much ok hed probs marry it if he could if theres a fire anywhere in the vicinity he either lit it or is looking for it so he can feed it

aside from some unwanted touching from random sketchy hippie-types, JD is a virgin

he feels sexual attraction occasionally, but he mostly associates sex with violence, and stays away from it for that reason. he’s pretty sure that he’s never felt romantic attraction, but he kinda hopes he will someday

he feels more comfortable with women than men, but is conditioned to do just about anything a man tells him to do

that said, gender seems rather trivial to him, in the sense of both attraction and identity. if he lived in a more enlightened time, he would identify as agender.

he is somehow both the most innocent and the most disturbed boy you will ever meet. its an unsettling combo.

hes so curious about everything. seriously. hes basically only been in the world for like 3 years ok theres SO much he doesnt know and he wants to LEARN

especially curious about families and hometowns and human relationships bc that shits all like, bizarre and surreal to him lol

will hover silently around you until you directly address him or tell him to stop, and maybe even after that

catch him crossing boundaries constantly (figurative and physical, hes just as likely to ask you if your mother loved you cause it seems like probs not as to play with your hair without permission)

hell apologize like crazy if you call him on it tho, he just literally has no sense of like, how human interaction is supposed to work

like hes faked it ok-ish for the last few years but only because he mostly keeps his mouth shut and moves around a lot yknow? hes self aware enough to know he’s not human-ing right, but not self aware enough to actually learn how to human right

hes basically illiterate :( he never had any formal schooling and pretty much everything he knows about letters and numbers he learned from sesame street. if he tries really hard he can decipher basic things like street signs and menus to some degree, but most of the time he just fakes it

hes an open book in that hell answer just about any question truthfully (at least within the club) and will sometimes casually spout some very personal, truly disturbing shit like its nothing, but hes not the type to ever just bare his soul, and its doubtful anyone in the club knows his whole story

for him, killing is less about the actual act, and more about the access to a body. he loves exploring. he plays with his food, so to speak.

he has a complicated relationship with killing in general, due mostly to his mixed feelings about hank. he doesnt want to be like hank, but he also feels a bloodlust that he cant deny. he thinks about killing most people that he interacts with, but he suppresses the urges as best he can. when he does kill, its in an almost disassociative state- his usually careful demeanor becomes delirious and vicious.

connection ideas —

( note: many of these could overlap, or be filled by multiple people )

the person who introduced him to the kill club !! probably someone drifter-y or sketchy who would swim in the same semi-homeless circles he does. ie. knows him from that spot under the bridge where kids get stoned or that abandoned strip mall with all the mattresses and burned-out oil drums in it or some place like that. my son doesnt really fuck with institutions.

someone whose couch he crashes on currently/occasionally. could be anyone who doesnt mind a hover-y waif of a boy and a big growl-y dog in their space (or,,,, come to think of it, someone who DOES mind,,,)

which is a prefect segue to: someone who hates this kid. in my totally biased opinion, hes crazy lovable, but maybe your character doesnt like being asked a ton of personal questions? maybe they just find it creepy how he hovers around everyone? maybe theyre unsettled by how his eyes go all black like an excited cat when he gets to play with someones innards? maybe they knew one of them women he helped hank kidnap/murder???? idk man the skys the limit

on the other hand, how about someone who takes on a parental/big sibling type role? someone who disregards all the fucked up shit about him and just sees a lost and confused little boy who so desperately needs someone to take care of him and teach him stuff

a best friend???? hes never really had any friends at all so idk how this would go down but its worth a shot????

someone who,, kind of takes up the mantle that hank left empty? a manipulator who sees JD as the well-conditioned beta bitch that he is and uses him for their own gain

uhhhhh maybe someone he somehow knew before the kill club and is shocked to find there?? they probably wouldnt be as shocked tho he has a certain ~vibe about him lol

idk i think thats all ive got for now but im super open to other ideas hmu yo god bless

[childliike]

A burnt child loves the fire.

Oscar Wilde (via sharingneedles)

[childliike]

and we’ll kill the neighbor kid who only wants to be our friend...

[childliike]

[childliike]

[childliike]

I spent my life learning to feel less.

Jonathan Safran Foer (via quotemadness)