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jacoboh · 1 year

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𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞: 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐨𝐧. **

mentioned: charlotte oh (@charlotteoh), sarah oh (@sarahoh), lunara kaplan, selin temel, vivian kayes, katherine russell (@katherinefms), enzo huang, kennedy o'neill, adee hayag (@adeehayag), toby rivers, jieun park (@jieunfms)

trigger warnings: blood, death, murder, child abuse, trauma, dismemberment

There was blood everywhere. It spread across the floor like spilled liquor, as if it’s red wine staining his hands and his shirt, and everything surrounding the three. Except there was only one person whose shallow breaths could be heard. Only one person was left standing, knife in hand, and the blood of the women he loved and hated was unavoidable to his eyes. His hand shook, tainted knife dropping to the ground and for a moment, time stood still. Jacob was back in the forests surrounding Nightrest, battered in his own car and suffocating from the smoke. He should have died that night. Kennedy should have been smarter. He’s suffocating all over again, but instead of the smoke and the way his body aches, it’s the blood and the pain in his heart, if he even has one.

Nothing had gone right. He’d pushed her too far, he’d tested the limits until he’d broken her into nothing. And here she was lying in a pool of her own blood, by his own blade.

All that stupid bitch had to do was follow my plan.

He blames her. For everything. And when the police show up, however long they’ll take, that’s the story he’ll tell the world.

This is her fault. All of it.

FEBRUARY 18TH, 2023

If you’re a good person, good things will happen to you. It’s a common saying, isn’t it? After having it reinforced in his mind, it’s what Jake tells himself. Yet in the little stream of consciousness, he holds onto at the foot of the Salem Neck Trails, surrounded by trees to mask the sound of what he feels, the only emotion Jacob can feel coursing through his veins is anger.

After all I’ve done? How much I’ve put up with?

Sitting in his car alone, abandoned to bleed out and die, he’s angry. Angry at everyone, everything, at the world for letting this happen to him. The cracks of his perfection fade in the silence, and the mask he’s spent years crafting begins to falter as the simplicity and stability he’s made for himself is split at the seams, each protective layer he’s made unraveling and leaving chaos in his wake. He can’t open the damn door, he can’t get out. He can’t do anything, and with each second the very thought consumes him, adding fuel to the fire that surrounds his entire soul. The pain from fighting his mind, fighting to live becomes too strong. It overtakes his mind and he shuts down, falling slump against the seat of his car. Every thought is intrusive and no amount of pain or guilt he’s associated with his true thoughts can prevent him from indulging in how many different people he would rather have been in this car than him. The very people he loved, supposedly cherished, and Jake can’t help but wish this were happening to them instead. His memory is plagued by every smiling face, every person he’s comforted, every head he’s offered a shoulder to. And at this moment, on the verge of bleeding out and ceasing to exist, he wishes it were them burning instead of him.

…

It's funny, all things considered. As he drifts into a state of peace, allowing the darkness of the world and his mind to overtake him, it's the very faces that haunted him days prior that greet him with concerned eyes. The weight on his shoulders grows heavier, years of reinforcement punishing himself with the concept of morality. These people love you, Jake, and on the brink of death, you hated them enough to want to subject them to the very torture you endured to ease your mind.

Except nobody really loves him, not the real him at least.

Over the course of his observant lifestyle, Jake had come to learn something about people, about the concept of love and care. It was all conditional. He knew why he was loved, why people cared when it was him who’d almost been victim to the killers. There was perfection to himself, a gentleness and softness to his demeanor that made one feel like he could empathize with people well. That he was a good guy, the kind that was there for his friends unconditionally, sweet and quiet and protective over those he loved. He was the ideal image of what a good person should be. That’s why he was loved. That’s why anyone had shown up for him. Jake knew well enough that if anyone saw what his mind really looked like, they too would wish he would have died that night.

His face hardens as every person walks in, every familiar face he’s expected to smile at and say that he’s truly okay, even when he’s far from it. Every person that walks into his hospital room feels like a burden he can’t escape. And he finds himself struggling to hold onto the version the world wants him to be, the version he was forced to be. His mother’s piercing gaze doesn’t escape his mind, engrained beyond her short visit, beyond what had happened within the past month. It’s a permanent image in his mind, a reminder of where he came from, who made him what he is.

They sit in silence in his hospital room, and she still remains one of the few people whose eyes Jacob can’t meet. She says nothing, perhaps because it’s nothing that could ever be said out loud, or perhaps because her presence of her is enough for him to remember his responsibilities. Every mother knows her son, right? It’s why she doesn’t need to speak with him, doesn’t need to hear any words to recognize the look in his eyes, the chaos brewing behind them. She can only watch as the perfection she molded shatters before her eyes, the man she made into her son gone and replaced by something that’s far too forced.

DECEMBER 25TH, 2002

The extravagant decorations and being removed by the estate’s maids, thrown in the trash instead of being put away in a storage room. It’s all for show anyway, another way to show their wealth and dominance over the small city of Nightrest. For one day, they’re the picture of a perfect family, a doting mother and a happy father alongside his grateful children. Except just like most of Jacob's life, none of it is real. Behind the glamor and the status lies a father who's never home, a mother who extends her care to one child, two sisters who alienate themselves from each other, and a brother who is more broken than the rest combined.

Jacob Oh. The perfect son.

A glance at the young eight-year-old boy, and it's exactly what you would think. He's poised, and gentle, and spreads his warmth whenever he goes. He's kind and sweet, and nothing like how any young boy should be who's grown into a life of exorbitant wealth. On Christmas day, it's Jacob who sits in the middle of his younger and older sister, the glue that's meant to bond the siblings together. He plays his role perfectly, the image of what a good son, and what a good brother should be. He remains shy to his mother's typical favoritism, avoiding her eyes and opting to greet those of his nanny. He isn't embarrassed that his mother dotes on him, he's nervous. The smile on his face won't shake, won't falter, because he already knows what will come next.

“My special, perfect son,” she speaks softly, tying her beloved son’s tie as he faces the mirror. Jake doesn’t know why his mother calls him special, if it’s meant to be a compliment or an insult. He struggles to read her emotions, glancing at her while she’s focused on his attire, the two tucked away in his room away from the rest of their family. “You’ll be good tonight, won’t you?” Everything about her tone is sweet and delicate, pampering her son for yet another event. He can’t tell her he hates them, that they make him feel on edge and left out. If he disobeys her, the gentleness of her tone will fade and she’ll remind him what happens when he doesn’t follow his script. He’s only eight, but his mother’s wrath has become routine. It’s not fear that consumes him, it’s anger towards her. Anger that’s been repressed by every lashing and beating she’s given him. Jake is left with an emotion he can’t show, swallowing the only thing he knows down.

He’s only eight, but he knows that he hates his mother. His face remains blank in the room with her, cold eyes settling on her face as she grabs his cheeks. She smiles at him, but the words that leave her mouth don’t provide him comfort. “Remember who you are, Jacob. When they smile, you smile too. Your friends will be there, Lunara, Montez, that young Temel girl… wouldn’t you two make the perfect fit? Her father already thinks so,” she boasts proudly, proud the prodigal son continues to be well perceived. It feels like his life is already planned for him from so young, the apple of his mother’s eye fit to take the heir to the family business. Attending these events exclusive to the rich is simply for show, children left to entertain themselves in the least disruptive way possible as the adults make business deals.

…

He grows more into who he should be with every passing year. Jake learns to mimic people and pick up on the physical cues of what emotion looks like so he can properly display it. He pretends he’s happy until he can fool his mind into believing it too. There is no discussion of anger, hatred, or anything he remotely relates to. From a young age, Jake feels as though he is destined to live outside of his own body, attaching any remotely human feeling he has to the beliefs his mother enforced. Jake can’t tell anyone he feels anger, that deep in his core, he hates everyone. He hates his mother for seeking to change him instead of helping him, he hates his siblings for never holding any of their weight. He hates Sarah for becoming rebellious, and he hates Charlotte for her insecure nature. He hates his friends who see him as second, who never notice the way his smile doesn’t meet his eyes until he’s much older. He hates everyone. And no matter how much his mother tried to beat it out of him, how perfect he tried to be, or how much he overcompensated, it was the one feeling he could never escape.

Sometime in his life, he became self-aware, acknowledging who he was at his core. But it wasn’t something that he could tell anyone, because if it wasn’t the rude awakening he’d experienced as a child, it was that if there was someone who he hated most of all, it was himself. He hated not being normal, having to try hard, and making the extra effort to fit in. He was attractive, intelligent, and popular, and checked off every single box any ordinary person would have for their life aspirations. Yet in the box where it mattered most, the box most people looked right past, he continued to struggle.

There was no choice for him but to be normal, or at least pretend he was. A simple job. Math was direct and straightforward, and most of the time, there was only one logical answer. It was Jacob’s favorite subject, devoid of any feeling and concrete in the way he needed. The students of Wardwell were good, and for the most part, he hardly worried about confrontation. Parents could hardly do algebra, let alone question his methods of teaching. While it was inevitable he would inherit the company of his family, he held onto his ordinary career.

When it came to girls, he always made an excuse. In the few moments he'd had, the few girls he'd ever made a connection with, there was a fire in the pit of his stomach that reminded him a little too much of what he wasn't supposed to be. It felt wrong to desire anything, to want more than he had. So he pushed anyone away because it felt like an opportunity to lose himself in something real. In the same way that deep down it felt good and right to be angry and erratic, he worried it would feel the same to act on his own desires.

He was prepared to stay true to his morals, as skewed and fake as they could be. To push down any part of him that felt real and human in replacement for what everyone wanted him to be. He was prepared to do that for the rest of his life.

Until the accident happened, and she walked into his hospital room.

MARCH 4TH, 2023

It's been a few days. A few days since he got out of the hospital. A few days since his birthday. A few days since Vivian died. Jake had felt like a ticking time bomb, regardless of whether he was at home or if he was stuck in a hospital bed. The darkness hadn't escaped him, and most days it felt overwhelming. Vivian's death shook him to his core. He didn't miss her, he didn't cry, but her murder served as a reminder that he felt out of control. He hated feeling out of control.

It led to his impulses running wild, growing erratic and angry as he became charged by his only real emotion. It was hard enough to remain in the hospital, to bear the way he felt on his own only to come home and feel as though things were becoming worse.

He'd shut his friends down about the idea of a welcome-back party. It felt as if everyone wanted to make themselves feel better, instead of him. What he wanted was cast aside for the idea of something more grand, and it pissed him off. Jake couldn’t imagine sitting in a crowded place, forcing another smile on his face so everyone else could feel at ease. Yet mere days later, he'd found himself in the same location he was supposed to be welcomed back in, for an entirely different reason.

Katherine was in many ways his complete and utter opposite. While he remained calm and devoid of emotion, she seemed to be full of feeling. There was something about her that left him wondering, something about the way she'd shown up to the hospital that lured him in. He didn't know why, but for the first time, he wanted more. For the first time, he didn't punish himself for that fact, embracing it the moment he stepped inside the strip club. It was a gamble if he'd see her or not, but once their eyes met, Jake didn't think he could stop there. Her touch became addictive from the moment she took him into that private room, a side of him nobody had seen before peeking through alongside his desires. It was real, and entirely out of character for a man as poised as him to lose his virginity in the private rooms of a strip club. Every touch, every moment felt like a crack in his exterior, and it felt far too good for him not to embrace the change. Kat made him feel human, even if it was just in small moments.

The problem with going after what he wanted was that once he started, it felt too hard to stop. For a moment, Jake would truly believe he’s in love with Kat. That he was fixed, and he could be like everyone else. But it was nothing more than an addiction or an obsession, because while things with her made him undeniably happy, everything else in his life began falling apart. It all became meaningless, besides her. His friends that didn’t agree were pushed away, the people he’d lost started to matter less, and every heartbreaking tragedy was a reason to grow closer to her.

The perfection had begun to crack long before he gave in completely, bad habits of drinking and smoking picked up without a question from anyone else. He smiled less, stopped being there for every person who expected it, and abandoned the rigid routine he followed of simply going to work and coming home. There wasn’t something particular that Jake was looking for in the midst of his erratic behavior, whether it was peace, comfort, control. Kennedy and Enzo being arrested hadn’t absolved him of his anger, in fact seeing their failure only served to anger him more. These were the idiots that ripped so much away from him? Three simpletons with no worth had managed to change his life, take away his peace and his comfort and his control, and for what? Watching Enzo be taken away by the cops, he wondered what it would be like to take back what he’d lost. To act on the very anger that those who tried to destroy the town rebirthed in him. Of course, it was a thought meant to remain dormant, tucked away as he fell further and further away from reality. He had no reason to do anything, no reason to find a new outlet for his anger that he suddenly could no longer escape.

He had no reason to do any of that, until that night.

MAY 6TH, 2023

It should be a good day. The reopening of Mama’s, a beloved diner in town that he rarely visited due to the unhealthy food and lack of sanitation regulations. Of course, he showed up, early and ready to help out where he could. This was still the version of him that believed that he had to constantly put in effort, go out of his way to prove his worth as a good person. Jake avoided Adee, their paths crossing a few times. He wasn’t supposed to talk to her, taking Kat’s side in their fight. It wasn’t the first time he’d dropped a close friend in his life for the blonde, the first of which being Selin a few weeks before her death. Sometimes he thought about her, but it was rare, his focus was on his girlfriend now.

His girlfriend. They were words he never thought he’d say. But it felt natural, and it felt real, what they had. And he didn’t want to let her go. His desire couldn’t help but burn brighter and stronger the more he was with her. Gone was the demure, modest and reserved Jake who rarely got drunk in public. Later that night at Medusa, he’d let himself give in, their public displays of affection seen by more than a few, and the events after they’d gotten home both messy and passionate. He knew he should care, be more cautious in public and find it in himself to acknowledge when other people were around the two, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to care about anyone but her.

The problem with their touch-driven relationship, how intense things seemed to get between the two in the midst of a second was that it always left him wanting more. Jake wasn’t satisfied, not after countless rounds and seeing his girlfriend fast asleep next to him in bed. He wanted more, more of everything, more of indulging on every desire and unfiltered thought in his mind.

In theory, he knew he should be happy, the perfect life in front of him. A girlfriend, a good job, plenty of friends, a family that cared for him, and wealth that would never leave him with financial burdens. Except none of it really mattered to him. Maybe Kat, maybe the attachment he’d had with her, along with a few others that he saw as pieces of himself after so long. Charlotte, Sarah, Toby, Jieun. Beyond them, beyond people he couldn’t form any kind of bond with, there wasn’t much feeling in Jake’s head. He lied to himself most of the time, pretended he knew sadness and pain, pretended he could smile genuinely and be happy. After so long, it was second-nature, even if it was fake. But with each day, he finds it harder to hold the mask to his face, to pretend he feels as much as his face portrays.

Jake glances at Kat, pulling himself out of bed and throwing on a pair of pants and a hoodie. He needed to clear his head, and get away from the thoughts and ideas in it, sliding a pack of cigarettes into the pocket of his jacket before quietly exiting Katherine’s home, locking the door behind him. There’s nothing wrong with taking a walk late at night now that the killers were arrested or pronounced dead. Nightrest is safe again, the thought alone making Jake sigh as he fishes out his lighter, bringing a stick up to his lips and lighting it. A new bad habit. He’d made a point to hide it from Kat, even if the smell of smoke was impossible to conceal from his clothes. Besides weed, he’d never smoked before. But he liked how it made him feel lighter, less stressed and on edge.

He walks mindlessly down the sidewalk, only pausing as he approaches the entrance of the Salem Neck Trails, halted by his footsteps joined by the sound of a girl’s voice. Jake keeps the cigarette in his mouth, stepping closer into the woods to see who was there. Nightrest was safe, right? But the back of his mind begins to wonder if it really is, pulling his phone out. It’s dark, beyond dark and he can barely make out a thing. It’s the voice that makes him stop and turn, a voice he’d heard early this morning and the voice he’d secretly missed. He stands by a tree, head tilted as he listens, the rustling of the leaves and the faint two figures slowly becoming more clear to his eyes. She was kissing someone, getting it on in the woods of all places. Jake had always thought she was desperate, but surely she could’ve waited until they reached the front door at least. He turns, figuring it’s not his business who she wants to hook up with in the middle of the night, until he’s halted in his tracks, the female voice he knew well growing frantic and a male voice yelping out in pain. Jake turns back, but he doesn’t move, instead watching for his very own eyes. He watches it happen, watches the way she pushes a knife into the man’s gut and how he falls to the ground, blood splattering over the summer leaves. Jake watches someone die right in front of him, yet he feels nothing, except maybe curiosity. The cigarette he’s been smoking reaches it’s end, Jake letting the bud fall to the ground and stomps the remains of the ash away before walking towards her.

When their eyes meet, when her gaze turns towards the sound of his footsteps, he props a look of concern on his face despite seeing what happened, asking if she's okay. There's a dead body in front of the two, but he doesn't pay it any mind. Not when she's next to him.

Years ago, he harbored a crush on Adee Hayag, or at least what little obsession his mind clung to that he convinced himself were true feelings. His favorite thing about her had never changed over the years, despite their history and all that had changed. Jake's favorite thing about Adee was that she was utterly helpless and desperate enough to cling to whoever gave her attention. The doe eyed expression on her face, the way she pleads with him with her eyes to help him is a look he's used to. In many ways, it made him feel wanted, feel useful. It made him feel strong, and it made him feel like a man. Over the years, he'd been there for Adee, whether it was a shoulder to cry on or a set of lips to help her get over her heartbreak of the month. And it was always the same look in her eyes, the same glint that made him give in, letting himself feel good for once. So when Adee is standing in front of him, bloody knife in her hands and the dead body of Rhys Miller on the ground, all he can focus on are the familiar eyes that he'd purposely shut out of his life just weeks ago.

Jake doesn't feel fazed by what he saw, and because she has no knowledge he witnessed a man's death, he doesn't feel like he has to put on a front. Besides, after murdering someone in cold blood, he thought that she'd barely have room to judge his unemotional response. His expression remains blank, staring down at the body. He never really liked Rhys. The guy was a player beyond his stupid charm he showed people in town. Maybe he deserved to die. Maybe that was his fate.

When she asks for his help, and asks him to take care of this, he realizes he's never done this before, and his mind pauses, wondering what their best option was. Jake was strong, but carrying a dead body around in his arms would be noticeable, and he wondered if it would be easier had Rhys been split up into parts, stuffed in trashbags to make it less suspicious. He's never killed anyone, let alone chopped up body parts for fun, but he figures it's the best bet. So he leaves Adee alone and takes what he needs from his home. Bleach to clean the area and the body. Trashbags for the parts. A butcher's knife he'd sharpened a couple times.

He didn't flinch. He didn't react. It felt like a task for him more than anything else, a set of actions he was meant to perform rather than committing a crime and severing a body up in the middle of the woods. Jake felt desensitized to it all, not that there was any real sensitivity in the first place. There's a part of him that enjoys it, maybe because he doesn't like Rhys or maybe because it gave him a sick sense of control. Over a dead person who would never be found, and over Adee. Taking away the essence of a person limb by limb brought him a sense of satisfaction, the feeling he'd had in bed with Kat an hour ago. The way he’d been on edge and felt out of control faded away, a sense of relief and calmness spreading over his body in replacement. It was cathartic and real, and he wanted to do it again. He'd cleaned up, and discarded everything for the most part before returning to Adee, assuring her things would be okay. Jake wondered what she was capable of, wondered who she was behind the helpless girl he'd known. She was broken, he knew that much, just as he was. This was their secret.

Except he didn't want it to stop there.

#jacob / paras #oopsie #murder tw #child abuse tw #trauma tw #death tw #blood tw #im sorry for how long this is plz dont read any of it

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