What scares you?

"Fear is proof of a degenerate mind"

- Virgil

This is a short Virgil-centric fic by Hiddenfolk. A strange young man has an unfortunate encounter with a bored middle-aged businessman.

Content warnings for murder/torture.

Characters

 * Virgil Dextrum
 * Unnamed suburban sadist

Story
It was a quiet sort of area, the type that was straight out of a modern storybook. Every house had a white picket fence, every couple was happily married and their two-point-four kids would skip happily around the neighbourhood, freshly pressed and straight out of their plastic wrappings, ready to attend whatever community event was planned for the day. Their life was delightfully stable, day in and day out. A perfectly unchanging happily ever after, the perfect ending for a mediocre middle class family. It was Friday night, and just like clockwork they would congregate at the bar, ready to drink away the cracks in the veil. They'd laugh and joke among each other, the best of friends, on that night only. It wasn't a big place by any means but that didn't mean strangers were a rarity. Indeed, new faces were just as familiar as the old and slotted into the background just as comfortably.

This night, however, one stranger caught his eye. A young man, dubiously on the cusp of adulthood arguing with the bartender.Clearly underage with no id to present him with. His tactic seemed to be to erode the bartender’s will, and it seemed to be working. For just like everybody else in this town, the bartender was Tired. Instead, however, he merely turned away from the youth, abruptly ending the conversation. The teen’s features softened in confusion, rusty blond hair drooping over his lost expression. He was perfect.

Stepping off the stool, he walked across the bar. Slipping into the seat beside him he smiled, waving to the bartender, who handed him the drink with a sigh, choosing not to acknowledge when he handed it to the teen. His eyes widened at the unexpected offering. It was a good conversation, filled with shy smiles and disposable dialogues. He was animated and cheerful, drinking freely and gazing trustingly. However once the topic of his background came up, the lost look returned. A runaway, perhaps? He threw the invitation home into the conversation casually and the boy accepted, hook, line and sinker. He seemed too interested, staring at every photo, asking strange questions that were none of his business. Still, he followed him willingly to the bedroom. Alcohol and infatuation were a great combination.

Hot blood pulsed out in bursts as he drove the knife in further. The sensation of it coating his hands and arms was heaven, pain corrupting itself into his pleasure. The boy looked at him numbly.What scares you I wonder... He lifted the red coated blade to his face, tracing it down his cheek, awaiting the pained tears they always cried. It was his favourite part. Yet his prisoner remained silent, shuddering from the wound in his side. Tch, no fun. Suddenly he thrust the blade towards his eye, a hand on his neck preventing him from flinching away. He gave a short scream before being abruptly cut off by the makeshift gag that he forced down his throat. Stroking his cheek gently, he allowed the blood to slowly drip across his palm. He leaned over his shivering form and gently licked the blood from his eye. They were not done yet. Not by far.

Finally it was over, albeit far too soon for his liking. He untied the shredded corpse from the bed and dragged it to the garage, dumping it on the tarp he had already prepared. Now it was time to clean up. Slosh it down with soap and water, scrub out all the stains he could find, then erase all the evidence he couldn't with those four illegitimately learned spells that he now knew from memory. It took hours, yet not as long as it used to. Practice makes perfect, he supposed. Next he had to clean through the house, erasing fingerprints, hairs and spatters. All trace gone. Then the main job. He descended into the garage, a roll of garbage bags in one of his gloved hands and his cleaver in the other. But when he approached it, the body was gone.

Monday Morning and back to work. The disappearance weighed heavily on his mind, though he hid it well. He was well practiced at concealing such things. Tending to each client with his usual speed and grace, the day dragged on, surprisingly mundane. Finally the day ended and it was time to drive home. He pulled into the driveway, exited the vehicle and glanced idly across his well trimmed garden. He almost collapsed in shock, pressing fearfully into the side of his car. For that boy was smiling at him, face bloody, his single eye shining gold. From his shattered throat a question bubbled. What scares you?

That moment seemed to last hours as he took a ragged breath, unable to reply. Then he was gone. He returned every night. Standing on the lawn, staring directly at him, as if fortelling the beginning of the end. However life moved entirely normally otherwise. His colleagues would smile and complain of work’s tedium, seemingly ignorant of his deeds. Nothing had changed. He had heard of this before. Weak minded fools becoming haunted by the guilt of what they had done. Maybe it was the same for him.

What scares you? “Not you, that's for sure.” Fearing the ghosts inside his head was not a pitfall he intended to fall into. The bloody sentinel gave him a stunned look before smiling quietly. “I'm not surprised. You're the one who created these wounds after all.” And once again he was gone.

He didn't appear again, not for the next few days. There was a silent relief that came with returning to an empty street, an empty home. He could enjoy a quiet evening, drinking a little more than would be wise at his age, then sleep. But when he walked into the bedroom he was sitting there. Bearing no trace of the wounds that should have killed him stone cold, he stared up at him, his eyes lightless. He braced himself for the inevitable question but instead the boy shifted casually and complainingly started, “I don't understand why you do it. Do you hate your life or something? Some would call that ingratitude.” He stood in stony silence, watching his ghost with wariness. “or sadism? Yeah sadism seems likelier doesn't it? You know what they say about the quietest ones, right?”

“...so why did you think you'd get away with it? Is it because of the neighbourhood? No one would suspect such a nice man would they?” The boy smiled knowingly. “I know what scares you. Their attention. The more they look at you the harder it is for you right? If they don't question it they won't look twice at you will they?” He stood up, revealing a patch of blood, ghostly and indistinguishable from a bad memory.

“i wonder where in your life that fear originated from?”

And as always, the boy vanished. He decided to sleep on the sofa that night.

He returned home early afternoon to find the neighbours on the street, staring towards his garden in worry. Cutting through the serenity of their green grass-paradise was an almighty monument to his crimes. A pile of junk stacked sky high, leaking static and blood. Her tattered shirt waved from it like a flag. A monochromatic compass bleaching the sky and land around it and pointing its accusations directly at him.

The whispers began to cling to him, their gazes began to linger longer. He could hear it on those Friday nights, as the rumours around him would slowly supersede every other conversation topic. He could hear it and he hated it. A pretty young thing had to be let go under feigned indifference and that was an opportunity that he was loathe to pass up.

It would be fine, right? After all, the spells were said to eliminate all trace evidence. They were so thorough that precious few forensic methods would turn up anything. They would find nothing and they would leave. They wandered through the house, looking closely at any and every suspect stain then dejectedly dismissing it as the coffee or ink stain it was. They had gone through every room in turn until only one remained. They were almost done, finally done, and then they'd leave him well enough alone. But as he opened the door leading into the bedroom he gasped and his future shattered before his eyes. For the room was drowned in layers and layers of bloodstains, each one neatly labelled and named.