Monster in Disguise

22. Marcello

Marcello

AGE FIFTEEN

W ith one last slash, I throw the knife to the ground and grab a cloth to wipe the blood off. I head to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.

Damn, the blood really got everywhere this time. Even my blonde hair is now splattered with red. I turn on the faucet and splash some water on my face.

When I return to the room, Father is already there inspecting my work.

There are four lifeless bodies on the floor. This had been one of my more intensive torture sessions, since they didn't seem to fear a teenager as they would an adult.

I'd set to prove them wrong.

It had taken me two hours to break the first man. The others had quickly followed, which proved my theory that they would be more malleable if they were to see what happened to their friends.

Father stoops low and inspects the mortal blows, his brows furrowed.

"Are you sure you got everything?" He moves over to the next corpse and does the same.

"Yes, sir," I answer, addressing him with his due.

"That was fast." He stands up, looking pensive. "I have to say, boy," he pauses and I mentally cringe at his use of boy, "I am impressed." He doesn't look like it. In fact, his expression shows how much it cost him to admit this. After all, I am always the disappointment.

I don't reply. Even his praise can't affect me anymore. If anything, I find myself growing colder.

"I think it's finally time for the next step." Father narrows his eyes at me, almost reluctant for what's to come.

I simply nod.

In the last years, I've learned that the less I talk, the less I reveal of myself to the world. This way, no one will find any faults or weaknesses in me.

I simply am.

My existence is to serve the famiglia and to do Father's dirty work. I've come to terms with the fact that I can be nothing more.

I am, but I am not .

Even the notion of pain can't faze me anymore. Physical pain is just that – physical and as such ephemeral. I can close my eyes and dissociate.

Emotional pain... That doesn't go away. So I do the only thing I can. I stop feeling.

"I'll have someone clean this up." He points to the dead bodies before adding, "Let's see how you'll fare in the position I have in mind." He turns to the exit.

I give him a brisk nod, following.

"There is a reason people don't mess with us." Father continues as he leads me towards an area of the basement I haven't been to until now.

"Not that they don't want to, but that they don't dare." He smirks, pride reflected in his gaze.

He opens the door, and inside I see a man strapped to a chair.

The room is much smaller than any of the others, but I've never seen so many instruments of torture in one place before.

"There's a tradition in our family. The younger sons are trained to serve their capo, which is what I've been doing with you until now. Every test I've given you has been for this." He motions me towards the center of the room.

"You've proven yourself to be beyond my expectations." Father muses, and it's the first time he doesn't scowl at me. "But now you must pass your biggest test yet."

"Yes, sir," I confirm. What can be worse than what I've been through so far? I almost want to laugh at that thought.

Yes, Father's done something alright, and that's erasing what little humanity I had left.

"You see," he starts as he surveys the instruments of torture, "there's always one eminent student who gets to do this ." Unexpectedly, Father is excited about something.

"When someone wrongs the famiglia, we have to give back retribution. But our kind of retribution is a little different."

He takes a long knife, testing its sharpness by running it along his forefinger.

"We hit where it hurts the most, and we let them know why and who did it."

Father saunters to the prisoner and using the tip of the knife he removes his gag.

"Romero Santos. Want to tell my son about your crime? You have your chance to confess your sins." Father's lips are drawn in a sardonic smile.

I move my gaze to the prisoner and regard him as he's breathing deeply, sweat falling down his face.

"I didn't know, I swear. I thought she was eighteen." His voice is pleading, and his eyes jump between me and Father before settling on me. In a pleading tone, he addresses me.

"Please, please! I have a family."

"Exactly!" Father interjects, slapping the man behind his head. "And your family will know what you've done. This should show people what happens when you mess with someone in our famiglia."

"What happened?" I finally utter, aiming the question at my father.

"Nothing, I swear. She wanted it!" Eyes bulging, shoulders slumped, the man is trying his best to profess his innocence.

Annoyed at the outburst, Father places the knife, sharp edge inward, in Romero's mouth.

"Now he's quiet." He shakes his head, exasperated. "This man, who by the way is twenty-eight, seduced and impregnated the daughter of one of our soldiers."

I tilt my head, taking in the information.

So?

I don't voice that question, as Father continues.

"She's twelve."

My expression changes immediately, my eyes blanking.

"Rape?" I turn to Father.

"Does it matter?" he asks, shrugging his shoulders. Of course it wouldn't matter to Father. For him, rape isn't that bad of an offense in the first place. It's not as if I don't hear his new wife screaming all the time in the house.

No, this is about pride. Romero dared to touch a daughter of the famiglia and he must pay for it. Funny, but if Father had done the same thing, and I know he's done it before, it would have gone unnoticed.

I school my features once more, focusing instead on the rapist in front of me.

Twelve. She's twelve. That's even younger than I was when... I stop that train of thought. It always makes me ill thinking about that encounter, or any of the subsequent ones.

"What do you want me to do?" I ask.

"Get the message across. Personalize it. Make it a punishment and a warning at the same time."

I nod.

Father regards me for a second before turning to leave.

"You have two hours."

I see. This is a test too.

Once I'm left with Romero, he blabbers, begging me to save him. I don't even listen to his cries for help as I survey the tools at my disposal.

Rape.

He's a rapist.

A small smile tugs at the corner of my eyes, looking forward to this for the first time.

I put aside a few instruments. Turning, I take the knife out of his mouth. I look over his form, my mind coming up with novel ideas.

Personalize it.

I might have just the thing.

I place the gag back in his mouth, not wanting to hear his screams.

I grasp the handle of the knife with trained ease, bringing it at an angle. Holding the tip of his nose, I cut through skin and cartilage. I ignore the trembling of his body as I saw through the material, cutting as efficiently as possible.

The only remaining skin is attached to nasal bones. I will need that a while later.

For a second, I stare at him, blood pouring down his face, his nose a wide-open orifice surrounded by red. If Vlad were here, he would have been overjoyed to inspect the inside of his olfactory system. Momentarily, I'm struck by a thought – how well can he smell now? All my time spent with Vlad has spoiled me. Now I think like him.

I throw away the piece of flesh and remove his gag. Romero sobs immediately, his eyes glued to his nose on the floor.

"Did you really not know?" I deadpan ask him.

"No... no, I swear." He shakes his head, tears falling down his face. Fool, it's probably going to sting when they touch the wound. Not my business.

"Really?" I ask, continuing my inspection of his body.

Father wants something inventive. My mind goes back to the needles and thread I'd seen among the other tools.

My eyes crinkle with hidden merriment. I have just the thing. The knife descends towards his crotch. Romero becomes visibly more terrified.

"I knew, OK? I knew. She told me," he blurts out.

"Hmm. Is that so?" I raise my eyes so he can see that nothing can sway me.

I am what I am. And because of that, he has no chance.

"Yes... I convinced her... Please let me go. I'll marry her, OK?"

"But Romero," I start, my voice the epitome of fakeness, "She's twelve." I say in a high-pitched voice, as if to emphasize my stance.

He pales, realizing there's no way out.

I bring the knife to his crotch and I cut out the material until I reach his wet, flaccid cock. He's pissed himself.

I look up at Romero, raising my eyebrows in question. He's still trembling. Waiting two more minutes to make sure he won't piss on me, I position the knife at the root of his cock and dig in. It's a clean cut, his screams music to my ears. One easy swipe and his cock falls down, separated from his pubis. Using two fingers, I take it and fling it to the floor.

Now for his balls...

His entire pubis is a mess, blood pooling down rapidly and mixing with piss from his severed urethra. I get over my disgust soon enough, as I cut his balls, making sure I also separate them through an incision in the middle. And just so he can experience more pain, I do it before cutting them from his body.

He screams and wails until his throat is sore.

I won't lie, that was my intention all along. I know that father is monitoring me closely.

With the entire genitalia separated from his body, I'm suddenly afraid he's going to bleed out.

No, that wouldn't do.

I take a step back and think on my options. Weighing in everything, I nod to myself and head back to the instruments. I pick up the sewing kit and I return to Romero's side.

I take off his gag and stuff it between his legs, lest he die on me before it's time. Then I start to painstakingly sew his dick to his nose. The flanges on what's left of his nose are slippery, so I use a smaller knife to detach some skin from the bone. I then hold the organ and thread the needle through the skin. It's not exactly easy to pace my stitches with all the blood still leaking from his dick, but I make do.

Romero stops moving.

Frowning, I check the pulse, and he's still alive. He must have passed out from the pain.

I shrug and continue to focus on my task. When the last stitch is done, I draw back to examine my work.

Still, while having a dick for a nose will definitely signal his crimes, it still doesn't feel enough. My gaze moves past the abandoned balls, and I get an idea.

Since they are already separated, it's easier to work with them, and I attach each ball to an ear. They hang low, like earrings, their weight pulling on the ear.

Romero looks exactly like he acted – with his dick instead of his brain. His penis is slumped down his face and over his lips, almost like an elephant trunk. Another brilliant thought crosses my mind and using my fingers I spread his mouth open and stuff the head of his cock inside.

Nice. I feel satisfied with this work.

But still. There is one more issue.

He's not dead.

Careful to keep my masterpiece, I use a thick axe for a swift decapitation. Leaving the headless body behind, I take the newly adorned head and place it on a tray.

And that's how father finds me.

Going by his hum of approval, I'd say I pass this test.

Romero... not so much, as his family will soon find out.

AGE SEVENTEEN,

"Really?" I lean against the wooden door, raising an eyebrow at the carnage before me. "You really couldn't control yourself?" I shake my head, not too keen on the work I have to do.

"I snapped," Vlad wheezes, spitting some blood. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, a frown on his face. He feels his face for a few seconds. "Oh, it's not mine." He breathes in, relieved.

"Want to tell me how blood that isn't yours ended up in your mouth?" I ask sardonically.

He grins at me, showing white teeth stained with red. "I might have gotten too into it." He jokes, even though I'm sure he can't remember what happened.

Ever since we started working together, I've noticed that about Vlad. He becomes a killing machine, but he loses his mind at the same time. It's not exactly... reliable. Which is where I come in.

I take a step forward, my lip curling in disgust.

Severed limbs, shredded organs, disemboweled torsos.

"You know I have to clean up after you, no?"

"Isn't that the whole point of this?" Vlad waves his finger between the two of us. "I destroy and you repair? It's your art."

"It would be easier if you didn't... go berserk on the targets." I survey the remains, trying to come up with a plan to put them back together. After all, we were supposed to send a message through the crime scene. The only message you'd get from this is that a feral animal had escaped the zoo and had paid these people a visit.

"Sometimes I wonder if you're some human-animal hybrid." I muse out loud. Vlad snickers at my comment.

"You're jealous." He sticks his tongue out at me. Sometimes I forget that he's a teenager.

"Jealous of what? Of getting intestines stuck between my teeth? I think I'll pass."

"It was one time, OK? I have enough nightmares about that, don't remind me." He puts one hand up, the other massaging his forehead. Drama queen.

"Or," I pause, a smile tugging at my lips, "not realizing I have a rib in my hair and going out like that?"

"That was one time, too," Vlad sighs. "And it was a floating rib. Those things can be tiny."

"Sure. From now on, make your victims take a blood test. You know, just in case you end up swallowing other parts."

"I do, in fact," he says nonchalantly, focused on the mirror in his hand and trying to clean his teeth.

"Sure," I repeat ironically.

"I'm serious. I never take an assignment if they have any blood disease." He peeks his head from behind the mirror. "I'm not that reckless."

"You're serious?"

"Uhm." He nods and starts whistling, ignoring me.

I huff out a breath, and I raise my sleeves. Well, it's time to get started.

There are three men in total. Part of the distribution network, they'd been caught stuffing their pockets with money that wasn't theirs.

Greed

That's their sin, and what they're going to be remembered for.

I look around, already picturing the finished product.

"How long will it take you?" Vlad interrupts my thoughts. I turn my head slightly and he's making himself comfortable in a corner.

"Go ahead, sleep," I say flippantly, knowing that's exactly what he wants to do.

"Gotcha. Wake me up when you're done."

I grunt, returning to my task. I take my backpack and pull out my kit. Vlad did not make my job any easier.

One man is cut in half, his organs spilling out. Another has his limbs severed, while the third is relatively whole, aside from his head that's lying some feet away from the body.

I decide to use the third one as the main canvas. Removing the medical staples from my bag, I lay them on the floor next to my sewing kit. Then I assemble the pieces.

I take the empty torso from the first man and lay it next to the headless body and the one that's missing the limbs. I already have enough experience to know what's going to appeal to the senses – what's going to terrify and horrify.

Before anything else, I take out all the organs, laying them aside for future use. Then, I ensure the limbs are completely severed.

Finally, I take out a handsaw and hammer at the ribs, removing the right side from the first torso, the entire rib cage from the second, and the left side from the third. I make sure the spine is still in place for each body. Then, taking the flapping skin of the first torso, I staple it to the second, and then the third, ensuring a Frankensteinian continuation.

Still loose, the three torsos are now bound together, emulating Siamese triplets.

The middle is empty, since I removed the whole rib cage from that particular body. To make the transition seamless, I use the discarded ribs to build a larger replica of a ribcage. I take a hammer and some nails and I connect the right side to the left with the leftover ribs.

It takes me a good half an hour to fit the pieces together. But at the end, the torsos look like they share a chest cavity.

Using some tape, I secure the spines in the back, before moving to the necks. I cut and discard any unnecessary skin to create a larger diameter from all three necks. I then tape them together, making sure they will hold for the final piece.

Returning my attention to the chest cavity, I retrieve the organs and stuff them inside the vacant space. I put the hearts, lungs, livers, bladders, kidneys, and stomachs to the back, using them for volume more than anything. Then I turn my attention to the intestines, and I staple them all together, converting them into a long organic hose.

Starting from the bottom, I strew the intestines around in a labyrinthine manner, interspacing them with the other organs. When I reach the end, I let them fall for a moment.

"Are you done?" Vlad asks in a bored tone.

"Not yet. You might as well help me if you're awake."

"Ugh, fine." He blabbers something but comes to my side.

He surveys my handiwork, reluctantly acknowledging it.

"What now?"

"The heads. I need to break the skulls."

"What do you want to do?" He narrows his eyes at me before realizing. "No way! You're serious?"

"Yup. Should be feasible."

"You can't possibly control how they're going to break," he adds.

"I'll just put them together. I need the skulls broken; it doesn't matter how."

"Fine." He shakes his head before proceeding to violently smash the skulls to the ground. Yeah, I didn't expect that many pieces. That's a lot of reconstruction.

"You did that on purpose!" I accuse him, especially after I see his uplifted mouth.

He shrugs.

"I don't know how no one's renamed you so far, Berserker ." I give him a look, knowing he hates the moniker. "So wild, no wonder no one wants to date you." I pretend to shake my head in despair.

Vlad merely raises an eyebrow, unaffected.

"I wouldn't want to date me either," he says, tongue-in-cheek.

"Right, Casanova, either help, or go back to sleep."

He pouts, looking between the smashed pieces and the torsos. His eyes narrow before he gives a deep sigh.

"Fine, I'll help."

A smirk threatens to appear on my face, but I school my features. There is one thing that I can be sure of with Vlad – he's incredibly easily bored. He needs something to challenge him constantly, or he becomes a pain in the ass.

"Help me glue the pieces you smashed into the shape of a chalice, but with no bottom."

"Hmm." He brings a finger to his chin as he processes the information. "You want to make it like a funnel?"

My eyes widen in surprise at his quick thinking.

"Indeed," I respond.

Before we get to work, I gather the brains and separate them from shards of bone, putting them aside.

Then the painstaking work begins. We glue the shards until the funnel-shaped chalice starts to form. It takes us hours before we complete it to a satisfactory degree.

"I'm done." Vlad wipes a hand over his forehead, leaning back on his elbows. "This is boring."

Yeah, can't say I didn't expect that.

"You can go," I dismiss him. The bone sculpture is almost done. I don't need him anymore. Yet, he doesn't move.

"I want to see the finished thing." I shake my head at him, but I continue to focus on my task.

Once the newly built bottomless skull is done, I attach it to the enlarged neck. There's still hair and scalp on the outside, which betrays the seamless transitions I'd worked so hard on, but alas, I did not have any flesh-eating beetles on hand.

When the pieces are connected, I put the brain inside, crowding it towards the narrow part of the funnel to make sure it won't collapse. Then, I reach inside the chest cavity and with some difficulty I connect the intestines to the neck and then staple it to the brain matter.

Done, but....

This masterpiece will require an audience before it's complete.

"We need to move this carefully. Can you manage that? And I'll meet you at the warehouse in an hour?"

Vlad sighs, exasperated, but I know that for all his immature display, he is very meticulous in his work. So much so that I know the exhibit will be untouched at the destination.

"Fine. Where are you going?"

"I need the last piece. It needs to be an interactive exhibit," I explain.

Greed .

They'll see greed.

One hour later, and I'm at the warehouse, a bag full of furred friends, and not of the domestic variety.

Vlad is on the other end, standing next to the exhibit, his expression clearly annoyed.

"You're late," he notes when he sees me, raising his hand to show me his watch.

"Two minutes," I groan.

"Two minutes too late. Let's do this. I have things to do," he says in a clipped manner. Yeah, I doubt he has anything to do. Much like myself, Vlad is a loner. Even more than I, no one would willingly associate with him. With his volatile nature, you never know when he'll snap.

I give him a look before unveiling the top part of the artwork. Reaching inside my bag, I grab the rats I'd brought – New York rats – and I drop them on top of the brains. When they start eating away at the organic matter, I give Vlad a nod, and we take the entire sheet off it.

People from both the Bratva and the Famiglia are inside the warehouse, together with workers and other essential staff. And they are all present to witness.

Greed.

It doesn't even require an introduction, as people stop to stare, some getting ill, others fainting.

The rats make excellent work of the brain matter before reaching the intestines, and then, like Hansel & Gretel, they make their way through the organ maze. Everything is visible from the outside.

"What would you call this?" Vlad suddenly asks.

"This? I don't know. Art?" I joke, but he's not even cracking a smile.

"You know, if I'm Berserker, then you should have your own name too. Let's see..."

"Frankenstein?" I chuckle at the thought.

"No." His expression is serious. "Too man-made. We need something more powerful. Mythical."

"Hmm," I muse, but I don't exactly take him seriously.

"Chimera," he suddenly says.

"Chimera?"

"A creature of amalgamations. Not whole, but not lacking. And most of all – terrifying." Vlad turns to me, awaiting my reply.

"Chimera," I repeat, testing the name. In Greek mythology, it was a fire-breathing animal hybrid that instilled fear in people.

Not bad... not bad at all.

Because so would I become. A name so feared, almost mythical in reputation.