Blackouts

“Exactly, we bleed when we’re hurt.
When you hurt your body, you bleed blood. When you hurt your soul, you bleed tears.”

-Sierra

My blackouts were called into question recently. I thought I would spend some time discussing them and pour in some lies with the truth while I was at it; see if I can bait more snakes to leap out of their pots.

I in fact… am still suffering from blackouts. They certainly aren’t as bad as they were before. When I first crawled out from the rubble and discovered I was still alive I couldn’t so much as draw my blade without putting out someone’s flame. About the time I figured out how to get back in touch the bureaucracy, I had figured out how to hold back well enough that I could stop the blackouts as long as I had not made the decision that the person I was dealing with overly deserved physical and permanent harm. Although at that point I often had to dig into my own flesh to bite back the fog.

And then along came Firecracker, a living embodiment of my failures, and the order to bring her in alive. She was, and quite frankly still is, a monster that deserved to get thrown out of the tallest building I could find. But I owed her more than that and I had my orders. Something changed after I took her down, which consequently took me cutting into nearly every square inch of my exposed skin in order to pull off. I swear I almost bled out that day and considering my condition that is quite a feat.

After that I found I had gained much greater control over myself. I no longer needed to dig into my own flesh to fight back the urges, although I will admit I still find it calming and it does still kind of help. Fracture seems to think that’s a matter of habit or a way of exerting control over my own life. I think that’s stupid personally, I’m already well in control of my own life and if I wanted to inflict violence to prove I had control I would just break Fracture’s legs again simple as that.

I think I started rambling somewhere in there.
Now I only blackout when I go to perform the actual kill and it doesn’t take as long as it did before for me to snap back to reality. Although I have found that I have a new side effect that I experience following every blackout now, the incessant Fucking crying. Every. Single. Time.

It pained me to cry for that weak fuck Nemesis. He deserved every second of his slow death and if I thought I could draw it out any longer without him dying on me I would have. I want to remember slitting his fucking throat but it hurts to try. All of them fucking hurt to try to look back on although the fucking black fucking blood thing is still by far the most painful of any blackout to try to remember anything about. I should probably mention that trying to think back on a blackout also induces fucking tears.

I swear to god I am the biggest cry baby I know.

I’m tired of talking about this shit.
Swan out.

Just Call us Squad Expendable

So much to say… huh. That was weird. Déjà Vu.

… Moving right along though, I should start from the beginning.
So as Fracture had already explained, Picasso broke into our house by way of car. To be perfectly honest I was proud of her. She got really good at this while we were apart. She could still use some work but she’s come a long way from the crying girl who refused to kill.

Moving right along, again, she took a stray shot from Fracture and booked it firing off a few shots and I grabbed the effects I figured I would need and went through the window after her. I chased her for a good few hours in the shadows until she was sure she had lost me. She stopped for a breather right in the middle of the alleyway. Now was my chance to strike while she was tired and distracted. I crept down the fire escape above her as silently as I could and got up on the railing ready above her ready to pounce and drew out Fracture’s shovel.

I figure if she’s going to act like me then I could probably calm her tits the same way Fracture managed to calm mine, with blunt force trauma and screaming. It was difficult though. I hovered over for what felt like hours fighting off the fog. I knew if the fog won and I blacked out I would wake up to find her dead. One hand held the shovel; the other one held a knife and was frantically cutting into me in an effort to make sure I stayed in control for this. She deserved that much. I could suffer that much for her. The problem came when a few drops of blood found their way onto her. I knew I had to strike then.

I dropped down on her and clubbed her hard in the back of the head with the shovel before she had time to act. She screamed and went down limp on the floor. The fog was so thick, but fire shines bright in the darkness. I’ll spare you the gory details but I don’t think there was a single part of my skin that I didn’t piece at one point or another before the fog finally cleared and I knew Picasso was safe.

I worked fast after that to bind and gag her.  And then I sat down. I needed to give my skin time to recover. The wounds may close but it takes a good few hours before they stop ripping open at the slightest tug and as severely as I had laid into myself, the slightest movement had become enough to ripped them open again. After a hour I found I could move again.

I had stolen Fracture’s phone when I left. I used it to check the blog and found out where he had moved to. I pulled Picasso onto my shoulder, which hurt like fuck, and took off before it got any brighter out. I found my way to the hotel to find Fracture sitting on his car out front holding a sign that read ‘Picasso’.

“Took you long enough to get back with her,” he said opening his trunk. “Put her in and I’ll take her to her sentencing.”

“How did you know?” I said dumping her in. After reading what he said I was surprised to find him expecting. He even had all the medical tools he needed for a concussion on hand to treat her.

“I knew if I told everyone you were going to kill her you wouldn’t. You would find a way to prove me wrong because that’s who you are. You’re a fighter. In regards for being ready for a concussion, you left with the shovel. Wasn’t hard to figure out,” he said sewing up her scalp and putting ice on her head.

“Why didn’t you just say I took the shovel if you knew?” I asked.

“Because I’m a sucker for theatrics and this made for a far more interesting reveal,” he grinned… that nasty, knowing grin. “So have you figured out this ‘non-lethal’ thing yet?”

“Yeah, it’s still a process but I think it’ll only get easier from here. Are there more trials ahead after this? Are there more endless torments based on my own short comings to face?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“I’m being completely serious Duckie. There is a storm brewing and the bureaucracy needs its collectors now more than ever.”

“What happened?”

“Redlight happened. People are panicking, work isn’t getting done, and the quota still stands. In times of crisis, the collectors have to pick up the slack but most of them are dead and no one is stepping up to take up their mantles. Steps are being taken to train new ones but we need results now. You’re going to be leading a troop of temporary collectors and square the numbers we need away.”

“I hope these people are expendable. I have a bad track record with teammates.”

“All of them, excluding myself, will be people you hand trained over the course of your career.”

“… I haven’t trained anyone.”

And then he grinned that fucking grin and left with Picasso. I cracked the back window of his car with a fucking rock.

Now that I think about it, this is another fucking trial. The high death rate of my teammates is a fucking short coming. You can’t trick me you assholes. Crisis or no crisis, I know this is just another step in your stupid little game with me.

Fuck you all,
Swan out.

Nothing

We’ll I was wrong, yesterday sucked.

We watched that door for hours but no one came out. I was beginning to think there may have been another way out and that the mark had slipped away on us. I had the great misfortune of being wrong. As the sun began to rise I decided I was done waiting and told Fracture to start for the motel while I deal with the mark. I got up there to find piles of canned foods. It looked like the mark had been here for a while and had no intention of going anywhere. That’s a pretty cocky move for someone living on someone else’s roof. And then I got a look at my sleeping mark and realized why he thought this was going to work out for him. He was about 9 years old.

The gravity of this took a good minute to sink into my brain properly.
How did a 9 year old get his hands on this much food?
How did he sneak it onto the roof of a hotel?
Why the hell was this mark assigned to me?

As far as I was concerned, this wasn’t happening. They could send someone else to take care of this. I already did the part of finding him. The next hunter would just have to come up and slit the little shit’s throat when I was good and gone. That’s what I kept telling myself as I pulled out my phone.

That’s what I kept mumbling as I looked down at my phone and realized my vision was starting to blur.
And then once more, the world went black…

When I came to my senses I found I was coated in blood. I was holding a… piece of the kid. I had mutilated him, but my knife was clean. I had carried out this gruesome scene with my bare hands. I was in complete disbelief. I had to close my eyes so I couldn’t see it or I was going to vomit.

This never should have happened.
Not like this. Not by me.
All I could think was that this was part of my punishment. The master must have made me do it because he knew it would hurt me. That’s why I’m alive right? So I can endure further punishment for my disobedience in my last life. So the monster I call master can teach me a lesion that I can carry to my grave.

Perhaps this is what I get for making rules for myself that I put above him. If I’m going to get through this, I’m going to need to be ready hurt more children.

It’s all very hypocritical of me anyways. I always justified the killing with the logic that no one life was worth more than another. Since I have already killed someone, I was being disrespectful to the dead if I wasn’t ready to kill absolutely everyone else. I never included kids in that everyone, but I guess I should have.

It’s got me thinking though.
What makes my life worth more than my victim’s since I keep surviving but they don’t?

Something's Off Here

I love traveling. The thought of all the things I’ll never have to see again has always been a comfort for me even if it is a lie, revisits are after all inevitable. I got to spend about a day on the road. For some reason there wasn’t a person on my list in the same state I was in. It’s not unprecedented but it is odd.

After a quick nap the hunt was on. My target had been marked for death for over a year. She was apparently very good at not being seen. Her assigned hunter had various observations from his many reported failures. I started with the locations from those reports and fanned out. I had no luck. I was about to call it a day when a lead came in.
It was a street address and a time. So I went and waited and sure enough there she was but she wasn’t what I was expecting. She was well dressed. She smiled and waved as she passed. After a few seconds I took up a spot behind someone and followed her.

From there she went to a bar, worked for a few hours, then walked back to a bus stop, and took the bus to what is apparently her apartment. She had her last name on a plate beside her door. Through the window hanging out on the roof of another building I could see that she spent the night watching television before going to bed. Something was terribly wrong. This was not the life of a runner who had managed to evade a hunter for an extended amount of time.
Making as little noise as possible I broke into her house. Up close I could see she had a nice fully furnished place. And her TV… it was huge. I snuck into her room to find her sleeping peacefully in a rather large bed. The comfort this person was able to hide away in was absolutely sickening. This would have been a most satisfying kill but once again it was not something I was allowed to enjoy.

From there I must assume that I killed her. My knife was still in her. It seems I had forced it in between two of her ribs and stabbed her in the heart repeatedly. More than that though, I had been violent about it. It looked like I broke a lot of her ribs. I was kind of angry after that and flipped the mattress she was on. I was hoping when I became a proxy again killing would stop being a joyless burden but I guess I’m still being punished.
When I finally calmed down I took another look around and figured I should ransack the place. She can’t use any of this crap now. So I took her radio/clock, jewelry, and was even fortunate enough to find a shoe box with a few hundred dollars in it. Oh and I took her TV. I don’t know that I’ll ever use it but there was no way I was leaving it.

Now, the final step of this process is the evaluation. I’m supposed to put my thoughts in on whether or not the failed hunter deserves punishment for their failure and under sketchy conditions I’m supposed to investigate further into why the mark survived as long as they did. I usually just fill ‘Hunter was clearly incompetent’ in that field but that is a gross understatement in this case.

I’m going to have to investigate this further. Tomorrow I’m going to go talk to the assigned hunter.
If I don’t like his explanation I may very well run him through.