♫♫
They don’t eat, don’t sleep
They don’t feed, they don’t seethe
Bare their gums when they moan and squeak
Lick the dirt off a larger one’s feet

They don’t push, don’t crowd
Congregate until they’re much too loud
Fuck to procreate till they are dead
Drink the blood of their so-called best friend

♫♫

A charcoal colored sedan pulled up outside a familiar building in Manhattan. The door opens and a man steps out of the vehicle, his dirty blonde hair blowing with the breeze as he steps forward towards the grand entrance, it’s old architecture highlighted by the sunlight of this day.

“Good afternoon, sir. What can I do ya for?”

He doesn’t immediately notice or pay attention to the security guard at the door, his focus being on the building itself. The history of it, the beauty of it… The mystery of it draws him in, his heart pitter-pattering with anticipation as his eyes rake over every last detail on every last window. He’s been waiting for this moment. He’s been patient, and now his patience is about to pay off.

The guard clears his throat, finally garnering a look from the man, who takes off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of striking blue eyes with flecks of gold in them. The man offers a soft smile and a handshake as he steps forward towards the doors.

“I’m so sorry, it’s just – I’ve never been here before and…”

The guard nods and the two men shake hands before they both turn their backs to the street and take another appreciative look at the building before them.

“She’s a real beaut, isn’t she? One of the oldest buildings around here.”

“It’s everything I hoped it would be.”

The man says softly, his smile dimming into a slight grin as the guard backs away, placing his hands into his pockets.

“So what brings ya out here?”

The man runs a hand through his hair and chuckles.

“My…friend lives here and she’s been asking me to visit for sometime. As it turns out, she’s getting ready to sell the place and I’m in the business of real estate so here I am.”

He shrugs his shoulders, showing off an oscar-winning smile.

“Ah, you’re a friend of Miss Lucy.”

The guard shakes his head and looks downwards, the man watching him intently.

“It’s a real shame she’s leaving. I liked her and Joe.”

The man nods his head.

“It shocked me too, I’ll tell you. I thought they really liked it here.”

The man pulls up the sleeve of his deep green pinstripe suit, checking his watch, letting out an exasperated sigh.

“Oh, boy.. Would you mind if I go on in and start taking some pictures? I have to get back to the office in about an hour and you know, New York traffic…”

The guard doesn’t even hesitate, grabbing the door handle and pulling the door open.

“Sure, sure. Go on in. It was nice to meet ya, Mister…”

He says, reaching out as the other man takes his hand once more – A menacing grin on his lips.

“How silly of me, the names Michael Krauss. It’s been nice to meet you too.”

He eyes the guard up once more, his eyes lingering for longer than necessary before he slips into the building that Lucy and Joe once called ‘home’.

 

Further downtown, in the Equinox Hotel, Lucy herself sat upon the bed, staring out at the Hudson and watching the people of New York as they went on about their normal lives. She felt so detached from all of it, yet that feeling was a welcome one for her.

For the first time in a long time, she felt content.

Even if she was paying far out the ass for this hotel room, and even if she knew she couldn’t stay here forever. But for now, this arrangement suited her just fine.

“You look so relaxed.”

A warm, husky voice fills the silence as Lucy sees a man step into the room from her peripheral vision. Nodding her head, she turns her attention back to the window in front of her.

“I am.”

She replied quietly as her counterpart sat on the bed beside her, his eyes flickering upwards and out upon the scene in front of them.

“So why do I sense that there’s something bothering you?”

Inhaling sharply, Lucy’s gaze falls from the window and down to her hands as they sit completely still in her lap.

“Probably because you’re in here.”

Lucy points at her head.

“I think there’s more to it than that, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

She retorts almost immediately, her voice uneasy. A lot has changed in her life in a very short time. Lucy’s made quite a few decisions that might make some feel like she’s about to lose her marbles again. Breaking off her engagement, selling her condo, not telling anyone about him.

Just a few examples.

After a few moments of silence, a sigh escapes Lucy’s lips.

“I’m fine.”

She finally says, rising from the bed and moving towards the window – The sunshine illuminating her face, showing the bags beneath her eyes that’ve gone unnoticed thanks to a few well placed layers of concealer.

“I know that’s what you keep telling everyone but do you really believe it?”

The man says, leaning forward just a bit, his eyes narrowing on Lucy’s back. A chill goes up her spine, making her turn around and finally face him.

“So now my own brain doesn’t believe me. Great. What’re you doing here again?”

She asks, stepping past him and towards the mini-fridge, opening it and seeing the complimentary bottles of whiskey and champagne sitting right in front. She contemplates for a few moments about the consequences of grabbing one of those bottles and quelling the thoughts in her head, if only temporarily – But in the end she opts for a bottle of water, closing the door of the fridge before she changes her mind.

“I’m only here to help.”

Lucy nearly chokes on her water as she scoffs.

“Really? Just trying to help, huh?”

He nods his head.

“That is what I said.”

“Yeah, yeah.. I heard you.”

She says, twisting the cap back onto the water and bringing herself over to a chair across the room.

“I just don’t know what sitting here, talking to myself like a crazy person is supposed to be helping with.”

“Lucy,”

He begins, turning around on the bed to face her – His eyes coming up to meet hers.

“If you can’t be honest with yourself, then who can you be honest with?”

Lucy shivers as the two stare at one another before she averts her gaze, lowering it back down to her hands as she toys with the lid of the bottle she holds.

“I’m fine. I really am. There’s a lot of shit running through my mind, but I’ve gotten through worse. It’s just–”

She stops herself, shaking her head as his eyebrows raise in surprise – His interest piqued.

“It’s just..What?”

Lucy bites her lip, turning her head to stare at the painting on the wall. Maybe if she stares at it long enough, analyzing the brush strokes and the color palate – He’ll just go away. Maybe she won’t have to–

“Lucy… I’m not going away that easily.”

His voice breaks the silence, pulling her thoughts away from the intricacies of the painting and back into the present where she sits across from a man who by all intents and purposes should not be here, whether in her own mind or in reality.

“I made the right decision, with Joe. I know I did. He’s never gonna agree with that, because he’s angry and he feels betrayed. But how else was I gonna get him to do what I wanted him to? I don’t know, I just feel like the entire thing was a mistake to begin with.”

She shakes her head.

“Because you haven’t been right up here…”

Lucy looks up to see him directly in front of her, his index finger pointing at her head.

She nods her head.

“That’s why I’m alone. That’s why all of this has to be this way. Especially after Michael brought his daughter into it. But even without that? How did we end up where we were? We’re both too… Too God damned broken to have thought it was going to ever work out for the best. But this? This is for the best.”

He takes a step back, his eyes softening.

“Ahh, the mistake most of us make when we enter relationships I’m afraid. Everyone tends to believe that chaos heals chaos; that damage heals damage. You and I both know that it doesn’t work that way. The truth is that both parties involved always choose what they bring into a relationship and you get the sum of those halves. No more, no less. It feels like it should be more than that,” he sighs, “But it isn’t. It never is. For what it’s worth though, I do believe you.”

“But–”

She says, leaning forward in the chair – A look of uncertainty on her face.

“Michael. He’s still out there, God knows where–”

 

“Hey boss?”

Michael stops within the living room and turns around to see his ‘employee’ standing in the doorway of the Wylde/Lee household and nods his head, motioning for the balding man to join him.

“Yes, yes.. What is it, Bruce?”

He was slightly irritated at the interruption, having finally made it inside the place that he and his men had been watching for months now. He couldn’t quite quantify the pleasure he took from seeing with his own eyes the life that Lucy Johnson had left behind, and that he had caused it himself.

A few notes, a few idle threats and poof… Lucy’s seemingly wonderful life was gone.

“Well, I, uh.. I just got off the phone with Joseph and–”

Michael stopped Bruce with a simple hand gesture, signifying that he didn’t want to hear what his subordinate had to say. He wanted to bask in this victory for the moment, and more importantly.. He wanted to learn whatever he could about Lucy before he put the next part of his plan into motion.

“We’ll get to Joseph and his findings soon enough, but for now…”

He moves further into the living room, peering out of the patio doors and out at the very same view he’d watched Lucy look out into so many times and he had to admit, it was a fantastic view of the city. Quickly enough though, he turned around and looked over the condo in its entirety, the entire place looking like it had been abandoned in a hurry.

There were many things still laying about, as if none of it was important enough for her to have taken with her when she’d made her exit a few weeks before. He couldn’t stop the smile that parted his lips when he noticed a stack of papers strewn about on the coffee table and when he moved closer to inspect, the smile only grew when he saw what it contained.

“This broad must got a lotta money.”

Bruce says with his thick New York accent as the silence within the condo was disturbed with his clumsy footfalls. Michael ignored his comment, taking a seat on the couch, grabbing one of the papers and reading it thoroughly.

“Hmmmm. Very interesting…”

Michael mused to himself. What made it so interesting wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with what he was looking at, it was that he was intimately familiar with it. What he was holding was financial statements from the Chesapeake Bank – The front for his little ’operation’.

It didn’t appear to him that Lucy found any information of value in these documents, considering she left them here – But the effort she took in procuring them, it had Michael intrigued.

“Oh, Lucy… Dear, sweet, Lucy…”

He laid the papers back onto the table and got up, not wanting to waste all the time he has simply looking at documents he’s already seen. He leaves the living room, and moves towards the kitchen, not expecting to see much of interest in there, that is until he sees a lone envelope lying on the counter in the middle of the room.

He remembered watching her write that, and he’d be lying if he wasn’t insanely curious as to what she wrote.

“What’s that?”

Bruce says, moving in beside Michael, trying to see what he’s reading but Michael turns away from the prying eyes of his junior.

“Go see what you can find in the rest of the residence and leave me be.”

He states, placing emphasis on the last three words. Bruce nods his head, looking disappointed as he heads to the deeper recesses of the home. Michael takes a seat on the very same chair that Lucy sat upon as she wrote it and he begins reading the letter that she’d written to Joe before she left this place for the final time.

The enjoyment he took from reading such a personal confession, it couldn’t be described. But as he placed the letter back onto the counter, Michael couldn’t help but to feel like everything has gone far better than he could have ever dreamed.

Because of him, Lucy’s fallen into mediocrity in her career – She’s ended her engagement, she’s selling her home. And she doesn’t even know the half of what he can do to her, and what he wants to do to her.

But most importantly… What he’s going to do to her.

He looks up as he hears Bruce’s lumbering footsteps as he comes back into the main living area.

“Well?”

Michael asks, turning his body to face Bruce. Bruce simply shrugs his shoulders.

“Ain’t nothin to see, really. Looks like the boyfriend or whatever ain’t got his shit out but then again, the broad left a lot of shit behind too. Nothin to write home about though.”

Nodding his head as he gets up from the chair, Michael can’t help but to be just a little disappointed that there wasn’t more to see. But what he’s already seen has made him happier than he’s been in a long time.

He’s been wanting to hurt her since he found out that his boss had been killed – And he’s simply bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment to begin deconstructing Lucy’s life piece by piece. The process thus far certainly hasn’t disappointed.

“Okay, well it looks like I’ve seen what I needed to see then.. What did Joseph have to say?”

Bruce nods his head, excited to finally tell the boss what he’d found out earlier in his phone call with Michael’s number two.

“Yeah, well alright so the first thing is about the shipment comin in tonight.”

Michael waves the statement away, shaking his head.

“Not concerned about that. The merchandise will be there, as it always is. What else?”

A smile crosses Bruce’s lips and he claps his hands together.

“And… he found out where the bitch is livin at now.”

Michael’s eyebrows raise in surprise as he smiles once again, baring his teeth.

“Excellent.”

 

“–Wait, what are you holding?”

Lucy gets up from the chair, approaching her counterpart as he sits back down upon the bed, cradling something in his arms. As she gets closer, she sees a tiny white head pop out from between his hands, it’s whiskers twitching as it sniffs the air around it.

“A rat? Really?”

The man looks down at the creature lovingly, stroking its head.

“Did you know that to some people, rats are considered to be representations of the part of society that are undesirable? You know, the lower strata of the world we live in?”

He muses to himself, pulling the little white and brown rat up onto his chest, allowing the animal to climb up onto his shoulder, it’s long tail wrapping itself around the underside of his chin.

“Oh, so you’re showing me a representation of Michael… Wow.”

Lucy shakes her head, wondering how crazy she must be to be imagining this shit. Not only is she talking to someone that’s not there, but now he’s got a pet. A pet that apparently represents the man who’s toying with her – the man who she knows little to nothing about.

“It could be…”

His voice says softly, as the rat runs across the back of his shoulders and emerges on the other side of his head, it’s beady little eyes turning towards Lucy as the twitching of it’s whiskers picks up. Lucy sighs.

“It could be? Well, what else would it be, huh?”

The man smiles softly as he raises his hand and lets his fingertips run along the rats back.

“Well, Lucy – Freud believed that rats were symbolic of children. Dirty, crying, screaming… Vermin. And as the vermin that they are… they’re unwanted. Unloved. Undesirable.”

Lucy looks between the man and the rat, her eyes widening.

“Oh, so that’s supposed to be me..”

He nods in response.

“How you see yourself. How your father saw you. How your sister saw you at one point. How you believe just about everyone sees you, Lucy. But this…”

He picks the rat up once more, cradling it in his arms as he gets up and moves closer to Lucy.

“This is no ordinary rat. This rat is the epitome of unwanted. This… lab rat is the subject of experimentation. No one cares that the things they do to this rat could very well kill it. This rat is simply a plaything for the people who value anything else above it’s meaningless existence.”

Without warning, he pushes the rat towards Lucy so that she’s looking the creature right in the eyes.

“It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it?”

Lucy closes her eyes and turns away, shaking her head.

“No, it doesn’t. Why are you doing this?”

“It isn’t me that’s doing this, Lucy. You know that. You know I wouldn’t let this damn thing crawl all over me. You on the other hand…”

Lucy rolls her eyes.

“Great. Even in my imagination you’re still just a horny bastard.”

He shrugs nonchalantly.

“What can I say? You’ve always been detail-oriented. Anything to make this moment seem more real to you…”

He smirks.

“..Which therein lies the caveat, of course.”

The two simply stand there, face to face, staring at one another for a few moments – That is until Lucy abruptly moves past him and grabs her jacket from the spot she’d thrown it down on the desk, shoving her arms through the holes.

“Listen, this is all well and great. So thank you for trying to make me doubt myself or whatever it is that my own brain is trying to make me do – but no one really cares about how I see myself, or how much I may wish you weren’t just a figment of my imagination… I’ve got more important shit to worry about than that.”

As she turns away and finishes zipping up her jacket, she feels that he’s moved in beside her and she can almost feel the presence there. But she dismisses it. She knows it’s not real. She knows he’s not real.

“Now we’re getting somewhere…”

Lucy rolls her eyes again.

“You’re trying to move on.. Yet I’m the one you see when you have no one else to talk to about how you’re feeling.”

“Like I had a choice.”

He chuckles in her ear.

“The choice has always been yours, Lucy.”

“Whatever…”

She replies, heading towards the door. But when she reaches for the handle, he’s right there again, in front of her – The rat still resting upon his shoulder.

“Gabriel hasn’t found out anything of substance yet about Michael, yet you know you can’t just sit around and wait for Michael to make his next move. But you know that that’s all you can do because you don’t know anything about him. You know he believes you stole something from him, and you know he wants you to pay for that. And then there’s Tempest…”

She looks up at him and he smirks.

“Another rat… Another person trying to get into your head. But what they don’t already know is–”

“That they can’t do any worse to me than I can do to myself.”

 

To some the darkness is a comfort. Like a blanket, wrapped around you – Almost a sanctuary, protecting you from whatever lies in the light. But there was something cold, and menacing about the darkness that surrounded a single light, shining down upon a head full of blonde hair as she sat on top of a gravestone, the outline of grass around her.

“Tempessssst….”

The name is said in a whisper as Lucy finally brings her gaze up – Revealing a face painted in a similar style to Tempest himself – Half of her face a blank canvas, untouched by the dark, gritty, mud-like paint that adorned the other half of her face.

“You wanted to know deep the cave inside my mind goes… You wanted to know how many monsters you’d find within the recesses of my head…”

She grins.

“Familiar monsters… family monsters….”

She says, echoing the words spoken from Tempest’s mouth – Her eyes never leaving the camera.

“Oh you have no idea, Tempest… But finally, finally you’ll have the chance to take a look for yourself… And you may be surprised at what you find…”

Her voice trails off as she raises her hands up, a small brown rat perched in her open palms. The rodent moves around, it’s long, scaly tail inadvertently wrapping around Lucy’s wrist as it looks out over her fingertips and into the void that lies in the darkness.

“But why would you care now, Tempest? In your own words… I wasn’t the one you really wanted. No, no… Who you really wanted was the man who pulled the wool over your eyes, the one who welcomed himself into your confidence and then burned your home down… Who you really wanted was someone who tucked tail and ran away… Someone who couldn’t possibly ever give you the stimulation that I could have… Dear Tempest.”

Lucy tilts her head as she watches the rat try to jump off of her hand. She doesn’t try to stop it, but the uncertainty of what lies beneath was enough to keep it within the confines of her hand as she continued.

“You thought that Jayyy-Ceeee was the one… You thought that I was behind his failures… That I was the thing that was killing him….”

Again her eyes narrow on the camera, the limited lighting bringing out the brightness of her blue eyes.

“But who’s still here… And who’s gone?”

Lucy shrugs her shoulders as she brings the rat up to her shoulder, allowing the creature to crawl onto it – immediately burrowing into her hair.

“You promised him to kill what was killing him… Yet here I sit, Tempesssst… Waiting for you to fulfill that promise. Or maybe, just maybe you realized the truth… I wasn’t killing him… He was killing himself.”

She shakes her head.

“Maybe Lucille wasn’t holding Jay–Ceeee Down…. Maybe Jay-Ceee was holding Lucille down, hmmmm?”

A sinister smirk crosses her lips.

“And now, it’s just you and I, Tempessssst. Just you and I. Come, play with me Tempest… Experience what you’ve always wanted to experience… Experience what it’s really like to face Lucilllleeeee…..”

The light goes out, bathing everything in a blanket of darkness…

And when they come back on, there Lucy sits, but now her face is clean – Her hair pulled to the side, cascading down her shoulder in soft curls. The rat that was once nestling into her hair is now gone, seemingly running around on the ground somewhere around where she sits. The same smile rests upon her lips as before as she pulls her knees up to her chest, letting her arms rest on them carelessly.

“That’s what you really want, isn’t it Tempest? You wanna find out how fucked up I really am in the head? You wanna see the demons that lie within? But that’s just it, Tempest… What you see is what you get. It’s no real secret that I’m fucked up in the head. It’s no surprise that I’m not really the most stable person in the world.”

Again she shrugs her shoulders.

“I am who I am. There’s nothing that you could say, nothing that you could do that’ll turn me into the next ‘final girl’. And I know that’s oh so disappointing for you but what’s gonna disappoint you even more is when I prove it to you and take that Chaos title off your hands. Those are just the facts of life, Tempest. Not everyone is a pit of despair, not everyone is a cavern of darkness for you to explore and analyze.”

She looks down momentarily at her hands, shaking her head.

“For everything that you are, Tempest… I didn’t take you for a naive little kid. You’ve been trying to get into my head since day one, been trying to tell me that I’m the reason for Joe’s failures, that I’m the one holding him back.. That I’m the thing that’s ‘killing’ him and his career… And you were right. Well, partially.”

“You see, it wasn’t Joe that I was hurting. It was myself. Everything I’ve done since I came back has only been a detriment to my own life, my own career… and on Monday night I’m starting fresh. And the first thing I’m going to do is whoop your ass once and for all.”

She looks back up, putting her hands in the air as if she were saying ‘I don’t know’.

“You have nothing, Tempest. You have nothing to lord over me. You can’t use Joe against me anymore. You can’t use my past against me. You can’t tell me that you’re going to get into my head… You never could. So please, try.. Try to make me feel anything, Tempest. Try to make me doubt myself more than I already do. Try to make me believe that I’m going to fail because I got rid of the one thing that was propelling me to some semblance of success. Try to bring up my father, or the other fucked up shit that’s going on in my life… Try to break me Tempest…”

She chuckles.

“You can’t break something that’s already broken. You can’t hurt something that’s already hurting. You can’t make something feel anymore than everything. But I will tell you this… Whether I walk out of Synergy with that belt or not – I still win because against me? Your whole gimmick is useless. You’re useless, Tempest. Welcome to the club.”

She tilts her head to the side.

“Hello, Tempest… My name is Lucille…”

Lucy straightens her head up and lowers her shoulders as the smirk drops from her lips.

“And I’m going to end you.”

 

♫♫

They don’t scurry when something bigger comes their way
Don’t pack themselves together and run as one
Don’t shit where they’re not supposed to
Don’t take what’s not theirs, they don’t compare

They don’t scam, don’t fight
Don’t oppress an equal’s given rights
Starve the poor so they can be well fed
Line their holes with the dead ones’ bread, no no

♫♫

OOC: Lyrics from “Rats” by Pearl Jam