This is a series of vignettes which take place between issues and between panels of the issues of Frontier War. It should give a good impression of the world of the story.
I walk through the front doors of the church. For about a half a second I think I'm going to burst into flames...happens every time. I don't know if it's just knowing my background that well or that general fear of fire that getting burned over 90% of your body before you were even able to read gives you. I pass the threshold ... no flames.
I look normal now, sometimes I want to scare the people I pass by as I walk to the confessional, but I'll be honest sometimes I just like not getting the stares. I enter the confessional... I start my confession the way I always do... "Get ready to earn that collection plate money Tommy boy!" "What is it this time Paul... or do you wish me to call you by your 'true name' Skarr?" My brother replies.
"You know me better than that, I take any chance I can get to be called by a human name."
I light a cigarette... Tommy says nothing.
"What happened this week Paul?"
I chuckle at the irony that we're both named after saints for a moment. Then I go empty and black inside as I start my confession.
"I laughed at this new kid tonight... I laugh at all of them. I do my damnedest to scare these kids off before things like tonight happen, but they never listen. And then when they're experiencing something so horrible they could never even imagine it before it actually happened... I laugh at them"
I take a big drag off my cigarette. Tommy's heard this all before, but he knows how badly I get it out. He sits there, stone-faced, like the saint he's named after and takes everything I have to tell. It's going to be a hard night for both of us.
"This kid showed up a year ago, bright eyed, idealistic, ready to change the world. Three months later he brings his girlfriend in."
"I tell him, 'Get out of here, this group isn't what you think it is.' He ignores me. I tell him, 'Ok you've screwed up your life, but the last thing you need to do is drag someone else into it, especially some girl you supposedly love' he ignores me again."
"Tonight was their Ascension Ceremony. Lord Morningstar gives them each a power boost. That's the part they knew about. Then came the part I knew about, that they didn't, testing the breeding stock. First Morningstar took his turn with her, then he allowed all the other male members of the group their turn. He says it's for selective breeding practices, that's kind of true. But the bigger truth is he's an old pervert who likes younger girls. The other thing is he realizes sex on demand is a great thing to offer male members, who will eventually become the leaders of this group. You can guess the career status of the 'breeding stock' of the group."
"He's standing there, watching this girl he was going to marry get used and abused like a piece of meat. And then that sixth sense of ours kicks in. From across the room I can feel it. They've banged this girl so roughly she's barren now. This 20 year old girl is never going to have kids. I don't tell her, I don't tell Morningstar, he'd have the poor girl killed. But the kid's sitting next to me crying. I walk up and whisper to him, 'I warned you kid, and these people are so damn stupid they just ruined their newest breeding stock' I try to hold it together but I can't stop from laughing 'So much for adding to the gene pool, they just banged your girlfriend barren' and I laughed... and laughed."
"It was brutal it was malicious but God Damn it I have to do it to keep my sanity! These kids just keep getting sucked into this cult and it's either going to kill them or make them killers and it's like I can never stop it. I can barely tell what they're going through... SCRATCH THAT I know EXACTLY what they're going through, and I can't stop it."
He then inexplicably asks me something.
"Couldn't you have just healed her?"
I blew smoke in his face and replied "That's your stock and trade... I never learned how to use this thing to heal, at least not as well as you. But I think you're probably damn happy that you don't know how to turn a person's chest cavity inside out and back, meanwhile keeping the person alive through the process and all their pain receptors working"
I take my last drag on the cigarette and add one final thing "Little consolation though. The barren girl, tried bringing her sister in... apparently even more powerful than she is. I managed to scare her off, well not so much that they still got a hold of her. But there's something special about her, might even bring this damn group down someday."
Tommy boy asks me one last question.
"Why do you keep staying with this group Paul, it's killing you and everything good in you that's left."
"Tom I did a good job of that myself... I'm just trying to keep other kids from doing the same thing, might've even worked for once"
"God bless you Paul."
"Thanks, but I don't think god cares too much about me anymore."
I put my cigarette out on my forearm. It hurts but it's not like it matters to someone who can manipulate flesh. I feel dirty and evil and ugly. I wipe my hand across my face and the scars I've had since childhood are back where they belong. Maybe someday I won't deserve them anymore... But today isn't that day.
end
My mother was a whore. That's not just teen angst or anger talking, it's just a fact. For the bulk of her life my mother supported herself by selling sex to strangers. My father is a man who paid my mother $50.
She kept me more protected than you'd think possible, but if you're exposed to something like that on any level it affects you, you become a bit more cynical and it takes a lot more to surprise you. She managed to downgrade to stripper by the time I hit highschool but as they say "the damage was done."
My name is Stephanie Lucille Mason, I always thought it sounded a little too innocent for the daughter of a hooker but oh well. My mother is one of the people I admire most in the world, but I'm deathly afraid of becoming like her. It's kind of ironic that I'm musing over this, writing it down in a little pocket notebook from the dressing room of a strip club 10 minutes to stage time. I guess that's the sad part, at this point she's more afraid of that than me, scary.
I go by the name Raven now, the black hair, the black lipstick, the corsets you can probably guess why. That's part of it anyway. Around the time I turned sixteen I got pretty antisocial and started listening to darker music... but that wasn't it. I try to convince myself it was sometimes, but you can't bullshit yourself in the privacy of your own mind.
I was still fairly normal by age 15. I wasn't popular but I wasn't unpopular by any stretch of the imagination. I guess I was your typical teenage girl, I kind of felt invisible, until the day Brad Parker noticed me. He was this charismatic young guy, he wasn't much more popular than I was but he was cute, and funny, and deep... he wrote poetry (I can't believe I once thought that was the only requirement back then to be deep). We were in band together, I played clarinet, he played the "cool" instrument, he was a drummer. It all started when we'd just talk in our downtime but it kind of slowly blossomed into something really nice. We started dating towards the end of freshman year.
We were inseparable and insufferably cute. We went everywhere together, it just seemed like we never got tired of each other and always wanted more. By summer break I gave him "more." We'd been talking about it for a while, but one day he just surprised me. I came to see him early in the morning, we were going to listen to some new CD he'd just bought. We wound up listening to it, but that wasn't all. His parents weren't home, his CD was playing, he even had the cheesy scented candles. He held me close as we walked into his bedroom, then he just peeled all of my light clothing off and just had me on his bed... it was wonderful, more than I thought it could be. After this we were kind of like rabbits for a while but it tapered off. I thought it always happens that way. I guess it does but there was another factor.
Apparently around fall break when I was out of town with mom, something happened. There was this Halloween party going, and he ran into this girl he knew there Rachel. Typical hypo-christian, always complaining about lack of prayer in school, preaching to anyone in earshot... seducing a boy with a girlfriend... a girlfriend who could get hurt and who found it really hard to trust people in the first place. A lot of people saw it, she complained about celebrating such a godless holiday as Halloween to him, he listened. I guess she liked being listened to. Talking lead to flirting, flirting lead to kissing... by the end of the night even though I was still his first, she became Brad's second.
You'd figure it'd end there, but that's the thing. She just kept seeing him, she knew she was his dirty little secret but she kept it up. I got back and no one told me about it. They laughed but never explained it. I became a school joke.
Finally some cheerleader (I don't remember if she actually was, but she fit the type) told me about it. I didn't cry. I didn't break up. I didn't act like I knew anything for quite a while. Spring break was coming up and this time Brad was going out of town... It's kind of weird when you just let something stew inside of you for a while without doing anything. I should have just broke up with him that night and cried my eyes out for a week... but I wouldn't have survived childhood if I was that weak. So it just occupied part of my mind all day, everyday. Sometimes taking up so much of my attention that I was useless. But I had a plan.
Spring break came. I still kept up the sunny exterior, but inside I was different. I was hurt, but more importantly, I was angry. I was enraged. I would do anything to hurt this boy... and I was about to.
I crashed a party I knew Rachel was going to be at. I eventually approached her. I played dumb, tried to be her best friend. Phase one went as planed. Phase two involved making sure she was drinking. She got really friendly after a while. I kept upping the friendliness. I kept her drinking. It pissed me off that it took so god damn much alcohol to get her tipsy. Clean liver my ass!
Towards the end of the night, I made sure we were alone, and I planted a huge kiss on her. As bad as what she did was, I could tell she probably hadn't done it before... meaning she hadn't "done it" before. Brad was her only point of reference, and after a couple weeks of stewing I became aware of exactly how well I understood his flaws as a lover. I knew exactly how to exploit those weaknesses... girl never had a chance. I kissed her and left her with plenty of thoughts she hoped she'd never have to deal with... and enough embarrassment to keep her quiet.
She came to me the next day. I was shocked at how easily she found my address, but I guess I was flattered more than anything. She showed up and made small talk, she was too afraid to actually ask what she desperately wanted to. I made damn sure she didn't have to. It was a Wednesday so about the time she brought up me going to Wednesday service I threw her on the bed and ripped her clothes off. She put up enough of a struggle to rationalize to herself that she had struggled and then just went with it, and kept going with it. She was pretty and all and might have even made a decent lover after she had a chance to learn what she was doing. I wasn't doing this because I loved her, or even because I was lusting after her. I was doing it out of spite, pure, dark, malevolent spite and I kind of enjoyed it. She was one of the two people who hurt me worse than I'd ever been hurt before and I had a plan.
We get back to school the next week. I keep things perfectly normal with Brad. I even screwed him a last few times to keep up appearance. But that's nothing compared to what I was doing to Rachel. Rachel was an integral part of my plan. Any time I could get her almost but not quite alone I nailed her. In the library, in the gym during an off period, in the girls room, in the boys room... and she never caught on. I wasn't just a thrillseeker, I wanted to get caught. I wanted to get caught in a big way, so absolutely everyone would find out about it... especially Brad.
I got my wish Thursday of that week. I pulled her aside to cut sixth period with me. I got much rougher than usual with her. Not getting caught was killing me. I pushed her up against some lockers next to Brad's sixth period classroom. I stripped her down so far she should've suspected something, but let's face it at this point she didn't care anymore. I did. I made her scream so loud that someone had to acknowledge it. And they did, Brad's teacher ran into the hall to check. He went ballistic. I cracked a smile.
A few minutes of his reaction and everyone in class was watching... everyone.
Rachel tried covering herself. I didn't bother. I didn't NEED to. As I got sent down to the office I did two last things. I turned to Brad and said "Fuck you." And then I turned to Rachel and said "Fuck you."
I walked down the hall towards the office I thought of what I'd just done. I just threw this girl's complete worldview in the into disarray, and I just humiliated the first guy I ever loved. and I felt damn good about it. I got suspended for a week over it. It was so worth it.
I went in that day as a school joke, I left as a legend. After that day I got progressively more antisocial and did my dead level best for people to notice that first thing when they meet me. I think I succeeded.
I haven't had a serious boyfriend or girlfriend since that happened. I had a couple in name only. Dating for a while, getting what we wanted out of each other, and never missing an opportunity to get that out of other people. No one cared when it ended. In my position I don't have a lot to be afraid of. I guess I have to admit there's one thing that scares me though.
Being in my position kind of makes me feel like Nietzche's ubermensch... beyond good and evil. No one can tell me what to do or why. So I tend to put very little thought into it myself.
I sometimes wonder if it happened to mom like this. You just stop caring about standards in a part of your life that was supposed to be important. The sad part is I'm afraid of the answer.