Post by konstantine weylin on Apr 24, 2013 22:30:00 GMT -5
Now.
Now was the only opportunity that she would get. Konstantine Weylin stood at the bend of the curve, her short blonde hair slapping against her cheeks. She’d never attempted something of this magnitude and the curiosity of whether or not she could pull it off was killing her. The twisted thrill of it all sang in her bones. She stared glassily at the yellow school bus as it wound its way through the curvy roads, up the mountain. She had the advantage, she could see them coming and they would not see her. Not until it was too late, anyway.
As the school bus turned the corner, long and yellow and sleek, she stepped out from behind the scrub brushes that had concealed her. Planting her feet dead center on the yellow lines, she waited. She’d dressed up for the occasion so as to look as non-threatening as possible. In her cut-off jean shorts and white tank top, she looked innocent. Deceptively so. Coaxing her face out of its normal hard lines, she looked every bit the stranded motorist who needed help, high up here in the mountains. The bus driver would stop, Konstantine was sure. It was human decency. She may not have understood it, may not have felt it, but she knew that it would win out every single time.
That curiously human need to help those around them. People like her preyed on that desire. Moses Sithole in South Africa raped, tortured and murdered women who he lured to isolated places by pretending to be a businessman luring unemployed women to him with the promise of work. John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown and entertained children at birthday parties. Miyuki Ishikawa in Japan euthanized more than one hundred and three newborn babies as a maternity nurse. Ted Bundy would draw his victims in by feigning an injury and convincing those poor young girls that he needed help. They would rush to his side and then the venus fly trap would close around them and they were gone.
The bus stopped, as she had known that it would. Human beings and their desire to come to the aid of other human beings would damn them. Every single time. When the doors wheezed open, she limped hesitantly over to them.
“You okay, honey?” the bus driver asked her, squinting down at her in concern.
“No ma’am, I’m sure not,” Konstantine said, silkily. She had long ago trained the thick, southern accent out of her voice but now she let it slide back in, as sticky sweet as honey. “My car broke down back yonder and I was tryin’ to find me a fillin’ station so I could get some help but I think I sprained my ankle when I took a tumble on these rocks.”
The bus driver’s face softened and why wouldn’t it? Konstantine was small and blonde and she had the soft, full cheeks and pretty blush of youth and innocence. The bus driver was thinking of her own daughter, who couldn’t be much older than Konstantine herself and how she would feel if someone left her on the road somewhere.
“Get in, honey,” she said, nervously glancing up at the camera positioned dead center, in its little glass box. “I’m not supposed to do this… but it’s getting dark soon and there isn’t anyone else around for miles.”
She missed the wicked smirk that crossed Konstantine’s face as she ducked her head down and slowly limped up the bus steps.
The children chattering around her instantly began to grate on her nerves as she sat behind the bus driver, whose name she had learned was Rose. She had her “sprained” ankle propped up on the seat, waiting. Biding her time. It wasn’t right just yet, but soon it would be.
As the sun began to sink below the horizon, Konstantine made her move. In one fluid motion, she had wrapped her thin but strong arms around Rose’s neck. Torqueing her neck back, Konstantine swung around and used her foot to push Rose’s down on the brake. As soon as the bus slowed to a crawl, Konstantine reached down and killed the engine.
Before Rose could scream or react, Konstantine snapped her neck and let the dead woman slump onto the steering wheel.
She stood, calm and still, for a moment before she slowly turned to the bus full of children. The oldest was maybe nine, the rest fell between that and six.
“Your bus driver decided to take a little nap,” she said, softly. Calmly. The children were staring at her, terror written on their chubby little faces. It almost brought a true smile to her face. The terror was like a living thing, something that she could breathe in and make a part of herself.
“My name is Konstantine,” she said, that deadly calm snake in the grass tone still in her voice. “What are your names?”
She waited patiently while the children slowly went around, stuttering names like Ashley and Jessica and Mikey. Tilting her head, Konstantine said, “It’s so nice to meet you all. I think we’re going to be best friends… don’t you?”
When none of the children answered, Konstantine screamed, “I said I think we’re going to be best fucking friends. DON’T YOU?!?!?!”
Some of the children began to cry but they managed a weak “yes” and she was satisfied for the moment.
“W-we’re not supposed to talk to s-s-strangers,” one of them, whose name she had already forgotten, stuttered from his second row seat.
Konstantine tilted her head and smirked, “Oh, is that the problem? Perhaps I should make myself less strange, then. Don’t you think?”
She carefully slid the bus driver’s body out of the seat, laying her flat on the ground with her feet wedged beneath the driver’s seat. Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out a leather bundle, folded over and over onto itself and tied with a leather string.
Slowly untying it, she let the bundle fall open. The scalpels gleamed silver in the dying light and Konstantine carefully ran her fingertip over their shiny surfaces.
“Yes, I’ll make myself familiar and then we can be best friends… how does that sound?”
The children watched on in terror as she pulled a single scalpel from the leather and ran it over her palm to test its sharpness. The blade instantly sliced through her skin and she was satisfied. Wiping the thin line of blood onto her denim cut offs, she stared down almost innocently at the bus driver’s face.
“No smile,” she muttered to herself, slowly using her fingertips to try to push the dead woman’s mouth into a smile. The skin, already limp and turning a light shade of grey, slides back into its place. Frowning, Konstantine shrugs. “Never a smile…”
She twirls the scalpel between her fingers for a moment before she leans down and begins making a long, steady cut. She traces the scalpel with a surgeon’s precision around the woman’s forehead, down the sides of her face and around her chin. The skin split like the skin of a grape, pulling apart easily.
It was a method called de-gloving… although that usually referred to hands. There were five layers of skin that made up the dermis of the face and forty-three muscles. Although it wasn’t uncommon to have fewer. Some people just weren’t made for smiling. Peeling the edges of the skin back with bloody fingers, Konstantine slid the scalpel underneath of it, carefully cutting the depressor anguli oris that connected between the mandible and the lower lip. Moving on, she sliced easily through the mentalis muscles that pulled the sides of the lip downward or the skin on the chin upward.
She had practiced this dozens of times before she’d gotten it right. Her steady hand had been an asset but she’d failed so many times. The skin had either ripped or she had accidentally slipped the scalpel through one too many layers of dermis.
Now, it came easily. Almost like breathing. She’d memorized the muscles she’d have to cut through, the connective tissue that she would need to slice loose. The masseter muscle was next, the one that opened and closed the jaw and clenched the teeth. The platysma, which was larger and required some cutting. It connected from the chest, through the neck and onto the mandible. Moving up the sides of the face, she carefully slit the auricularis muscle that connected the rest of the face to the ears and wiggled the skin free.
Peeling the edges of Rose’s face back, she moved on towards the center of the face. There were the orbicularis oculi and the levator labil superior alaeque nasi muscles. The muscles that allowed the eyelids to open and close, the muscles that had let Rose laugh, smile and blink. Slicing carefully through the eyelids, Konstantine sighed.
She’d always wanted to keep those but the tissue was so thin there that it had proven impossible. Thin like paper, she’d never managed to cut them lose and keep them intact. Then there was the issue of keeping the eyelids open so that she could see…
Slicing through the zygomaticus maor, Konstantine finally carefully peeled the dermis from the face muscles, holding it up like a hard won trophy.
It was perfect, just as she’d hoped that it would be. This was her first time in the field, so to speak. The rest had been carefully practiced on in the safety and comfort of a familiar place. She’d been nervous about what her results would be like in an uncontrolled setting.
Tilting her head down, she slid the skin on top of her own and pressed it down carefully so that it would stay in place. The congealing blood held it onto her own skin almost perfectly. Using her fingertips, Konstantine slowly smoothed out the air bubbles. The mouth she had never been able to get quite right. The lips were primarily collagen and she hadn’t been able to figure out how to get them to mold to her own. They hung in a grotesque frown around her own lips.
“See,” she sing-songed. “I look just like Rose now. So it’s okay to talk to me… your mommy and your daddy won’t get mad at you…”
The children stared up at her, their eyes wide as saucers. Most of the younger ones were sobbing now, hard. A few of the older children were crying too, trying to keep up brave faces for the younger children.
“I want to sing a song,” Konstantine said, in that same high pitched girly voice she had been using. “What song do you want to sing?”
The children said nothing, trying hard to avoid looking at her face.
“Let’s sing…” Konstantine thinks for a moment, though Rose’s face worn as a mask over her own remains blank. “I want to sing Rocka-Bye Baby. Do you guys know that one?”
The children remained silent, staring down at their feet with tear stained faces.
“I SAID SING, GODDAMNIT.”
With wobbly, tearful voices, the children slowly began to sing the words to the song as Konstantine slid behind the wheel of the bus, starting it up again.
She had never driven something this large but what was the worst that could happen?
Konstantine drifted awake with a small smile on her face. It was not a nightmare, but a pleasant dream. One she wished that she could slip back into.
A memory of another time, when she’d been younger and more reckless. She hadn’t tried as hard to keep her baser instincts and urges in check.
Although, it had been the incident that had sent her back to the hospital for the final time. It was still a bright spot, it was still a memory she enjoyed revisiting from time to time.
Stretching like a cat, she languished on the bed naked. The dream had had one unintended side effect though, she though as one hand snaked down between her thighs.
Killing always made her needy for something else.
xxxxx
“Lekkter,” Konstantine said, her voice its usual cold and detached almost monotone. “You have expended an awful lot of energy thinking about me. You have expended an awful lot of energy considering me and believing that you have gotten inside of my head and figured out just what makes me tick, have you not? You claim that what I did at Rapture was done out of some sort of malice… some sort of nervousness about our impending face to face meeting in the ring. Sadly… for you… you could not be further off the mark, Lekkter. What I did was not done out of any attempt to cripple you or humble you before our match. No, it was done out of curiosity. I wondered what you looked like on the inside and I thought that perhaps I would find out. I was disappointed with what I found, but that’s another matter entirely. I mean that literally and figuratively.
Put a man’s back up against a wall and you will discover his true nature. Force a man’s hand and you will learn who he is. I did both when I attacked you at Rapture.
And I found you to be lacking.
You insinuate that I am in some way afraid of you. While I applaud your healthy ego, that too could not be farther off of the mark. I do not fear any man, Lekkter. Most specifically because I am incapable of this emotion. You may wonder at the validity of that claim and I do not blame you. Fear is a common human emotion, is it not? Fear is what keeps us mere mortals from plunging to our deaths at any given second.
But I am more than that. What keeps me alive is not a healthy fear, it is a healthy intelligence. The intelligence to comprehend what most rely on these pesky feelings of trepidation and concern for. I do not fear fire, but I understand that should I place my hand on a burning flame I too will burn. I understand the science behind it.
I do not fear heights but I understand that if I were to fling myself off of a cliff that I would most probably die. Or not. I seem to have an inhuman ability to stay alive even in those situations where death should have claimed me a dozen times over.
Unfortunate for you, isn’t it? Your opponent is a cat who always lands on her feet, so to speak.
No, you do not make me nervous and I do not fear you. I recognize your abilities inside of the ring but I also recognize that those same abilities are hindered by your humanness. You are unwilling to do the things that I am willing to do simply because you, with your normal human emotions, are afraid. It goes against your very nature to put your body on the line to the extent that I am willing to put my body on the line.
You see, a convenient side effect of these lacking emotions that I have found is that I am not as attached to my body as you are. As most human beings are. For example, I do not love my arm. I recognize it for the things that it allows me to do but I do not feel any emotional attachment to it.
If I were to lose my arm, I would not mourn it. I would simply adjust and live my life without it.
You assume far too much, Mr. Lekkter. You assume that I care that you have added me onto your… what did you call it? Your ‘shit list’. You assume that I care that you hate me. You assume that your hate and anger will not hinder you in the ring.
Because it will.
Let me tell you something about anger, Lekkter.
It is a base emotion. It a response to pain of one form or another be it psychical or emotional. Anger occurs when people feel rejected, threatened or experience some loss. The type of pain does not matter, the important thing is that the pain is unpleasant.
I do not feel anger, but I can describe it to you perfectly.
Pain alone is not enough to cause anger. It occurs when pain is combined with some stray triggering thought. These thoughts can be personal assessments, assumptions, evaluations or interpretations of situations that make someone think that another person is attempting to hurt them. In this sense, anger is a social emotion. And I am not a social creature, Lekkter. Human beings must always target their anger at something… someone… sometimes even themselves.
Anger is messy and ineffective. It is nothing more than a smokescreen for vulnerability. Anger triggers a feeling of righteousness, power and moral superiority that is often ill placed. Ill deserved.
But more than that, ignoring all of that, let us focus on the physical effects of anger. The anger begins in the amygdala. The amygdala is so efficient at identifying and warning you of threats that it has you reacting before the cortex, the part of your brain responsible for thought and judgment, can react. You are reacting out of base instinct, with no thought or intelligence behind it.
As you become angry, your body’s muscles will tense up. Inside your brain neurotransmitter chemicals known as catecholamines are released causing to experience a burst of energy that only lasts for a few moments before it burns itself out again. Your heart rate accelerates, your blood pressure rises and your rate of breathing increases. You are burning through your energy stores by the second. Your attention narrows and becomes locked onto the target of your anger and you can focus on nothing else. Additional neurotransmitters release hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline. These too will only last for a short time and resulting come down from both will make you shaky, erratic and sometimes lethargic.
Although it is possible for your emotions to rage out of control, the prefrontal cortex of your brain will work overtime to keep your emotions in proportion.
So, you see, while you think that your anger makes you an unstoppable force in reality it only makes you weak. You are using your body and your mind ineffectually. It wears down your body, saps your energy and makes you erratic and quick to jump to action.
The void I feel, the complete lack of emotion, makes me a methodical opponent. It makes me someone who is always in control of her faculties. It makes me more dangerous than you seem capable of comprehending.
I do not fault you for that. I am something that most “normal” human beings find difficult to comprehend. I have learned that over the years.
So while you suspect that I spent my years in confinement a drugged and angry mess of a human being, I did not.
I spent my years in confinement much as I spend them now. Quietly observing the world around me. Teaching myself things that most would not dare to know. Teaching myself about the very human nature that I seem to have been born lacking.
I was actually prescribed very few medications while I was… incarcerated. I refused them and contrary to popular belief and what the media would have you believe, you cannot force medication on someone. You cannot drug someone just because the world as a whole deems them to be… what was the term that they used? Mentally unstable? I believe that is it.
I spent my time very much lucid and very much awake.
Our states of mind are very different, dear Lekkter. You seem to be of the opinion that we are much alike but I can assure you that you are wrong. Your ability to comprehend and feel human emotion will set us apart indelibly. It will make you weak as it has made so many others weak at my feet.
You will feel your trite anger and you will suffer for it.
I will approach this as I approach everything. Methodically, coldly and calculatingly. I will dismantle you, piece by piece and not because of some misguided anger or hatred. I will do it because I am curious about what will remain. I am curious to see what you are like on the inside both literally and metaphorically speaking.”
xxxx
The camera pans over the room, small and enclosed. It was empty save for the table in the center. Surgical steel like the kind normally found in hospital operating rooms. But this is definitely not a hospital.
The walls and the floor are covered in thick, heavy clear plastic tarping. The table is also draped in the tarp. Next to it, is a small metal table that holds an assortment of bone saws, scalpels and clamps. All gleaming shiny silver under the heavy duty flood lights that shine down from every corner of the room, focusing on the table. The lights make the stainless steel shine almost blindingly.
The camera shifts slightly as the man wielding it shifts uncomfortably. He was called here but he doesn’t understand for what purpose. The room makes him uncomfortable. The set up so much like an operating room but out of place in this storage unit in the middle of nowhere.
Something in the pit of his stomach, some human emotion that warns us when we are inadvertently stumbling into danger, is telling him that he should run. He should leave this place and never look back. But at the same time, it is a job. A job that he signed up for. A job that he intends to complete.
Walking away now would look unprofessional and he can’t risk losing this job. His wife is pregnant with their first child and they had found out a week prior that she was expecting twins.
They needed the money more now than ever before.
He hears the door to the storage unit scraping open and he jumps back as the camera films a thin blonde haired woman struggling in through the door with something draped across her shoulders.
Konstantine Weylin glances up at the camera as she half carries and half drags the body over to the table and lets it tumble unceremoniously down onto the steel.
With the quick and surefooted movements of a danger, she leaps back over to the storage unit’s door and shuts and bolts it from the inside. Insuring that both of her captives: the camera man and the unconscious woman on the table, will not be going anywhere.
“Is she…” he stuttered.
Konstantine turned to face him for the first time, her lips curling back into a snarl. “If I had wished for something other than a silent audience I would have brought her family along with me. Your purpose here is to observe… nothing more and nothing less.
But no, she is not dead.
You see, I am searching for something. I want a smile. A real, genuine smile. It would satisfy a curiosity that I’ve had for years. I have, sadly and much to my own chagrin, been incapable of producing it in my works thus far.
They see the death that awaits them and they lose their smile. They cease to grin and laugh and make merry. So no, if you are asking if this woman is dead… she is not. Not yet, anyway.
You are to be a silent… emphasis on the silent… observer to a new technique I have been contemplating for some time.
I’ve been considering,” she said, while she shifted her intended victim on the table so that she was lying flat. Reaching beneath the operating table, Konstantine pulled out three thick straps with buckles at each end. “Would I be able to keep that elusive smile on their faces if I do not kill them first. If I were to allow them to remain alive for the entire process. Or… as much of the process as they are able to handle.”
As she finishes strapping her victim down to the table, she stands back to admire her handy work. The woman looks every bit of the soccer mom stereotype. Her short brown hair is streaked with subtle brown high lights and her face has the laugh lines of a woman in her late thirties to early forties.
She is dressed sensibly in a light cardigan over a silk shell and brown slacks. She was missing one of her name brand running shoes. There was a large diamond engagement and wedding band set on her left hand.
Turning back to the camera, Konstantine quirked her lips in an approximation of the smile that she was in constant pursuit of. “I have contemplated this before,” she said, slowly. “But I have always run into a few problems that I have not known how to fix. First, how would I keep them still enough for the procedure? I considered using a paralytic agent but testing showed me that they would be unable to smile. I was very disappointed and nearly shelved the entire idea. But recently… I have come back to it again and again and considered it with more seriousness. The problem with leaving my intended mobile is, of course, the screaming.
Humans are messy, loud creatures and they often like to voice their displeasure that way. I could not take the risk of some well-intentioned passer by overhearing and deciding to play the white knight.
I have exercised what little self-restrain that I possess waiting for the right time. As you can probably tell, I have chosen this place for its remote location. Even if it does scream… it will not likely be heard by anyone in the area.
Although…” she reaches below the table and retrieves a standard issue metal baseball bat. “I have come up with a few other workable solutions to the screaming. You see…” she twirled the bat once or twice in her hands, “There is a process that is often used to de-vocalize dogs. It is frequently used by those who run and operate illegal dog fighting rings so that the snarls and cries of pain are not easily overhead since these types of things are common in urban environments.”
Carefully prying the woman’s mouth open, Konstantine fitted the bat against her teeth. “This will damage her vocal chords so severely that she will not be capable of sound louder than just a few decibels. This is my first time attempting this, however, so I chose the remote location just in case my first few attempts do not pan out as I expect them to.”
Using all of her strength, Konstantine jams the bat down the woman’s throat. As her teeth break and blood spatters, the camera man can be heard dry heaving. The camera shakes but still catches the image of Konstantine shoving the bat further and further into the woman’s throat.
The woman wakes up halfway through the process, her eyes wide and unseeing. The pain is a shock to her system and she struggles to scream around the bat.
Finally, after ten long agonizing minutes, Konstantine pulls the bat out of the woman’s bloody and broken mouth. She tosses it aside absently and stands back to observe her handy work.
Reaching for a wet nap, she almost tenderly wipes the blood and broken teeth away from the woman’s lips. Then she reaches down into the woman’s purse and pulls out a tube of lipstick, gently reapplying it where it has smudged off.
The woman is struggling to scream but only a low groan comes out. Konstantine looks satisfied with that and slowly reaches down to the table and lifts one of the scalpels, staring down at it fondly.
“Not just yet,” she said, replacing it on the table. Instead, she reached down for a mask and turned the nozzle on a tank similar to an oxygen tank sitting on the ground next to her.
“My next dilemma, was of course, how to procure the smile. The… circumstances would not lend themselves to euphoria. So, I thought that perhaps I could find a chemical substance that would be of assistance in this matter.”
She held up the mask again. “This is nitrous oxide… well, it is a very, very concentrated nitrous oxide. It produces euphoric affects… I thought perhaps it might make my new friend more willing to give me the smile that I am longing for.”
Konstantine gently puts the mask down over the woman’s nose and busted mouth. She leans down and whispers, “Breathe in.”
After a few agonizing minutes of holding her breath futilely, the woman finally reluctantly takes several deep breaths. The gas works in minutes and suddenly she is laughing.
The camera man stumbles back a few steps as the woman’s almost hysterical laughter bounces off the metal walls.
“Smile,” Konstantine commands and the woman, as malleable now as a doll, does.
When she’s satisfied, Konstantine picks up the scalpel and her sure, steady hand begins making the familiar cuts again for the first time in far too many years.
The camera shakes as the camera man backs himself into a corner. That feeling that had told him to run as soon as he’d walked into the door was back in full force. He wanted to scream, to cry out, to throw up everything that he had eaten for lunch. But it would draw her attention and right now that was the very last thing that he wanted.
As she peeled half of the face back, revealing the bloody mess of severed muscles underneath, he felt a wetness soaking through the front of his khakis and running down into his shoes.
Humiliated, he realized that he had pissed all over himself unconsciously. Something he hadn’t done since he was a very small boy.
But there was something about the almost childlike expression on Konstantine’s face as she peeled back the top layers of skin from the woman’s face. He could see the muscles twitching and stretching over the bone as the poor woman struggled to scream, but all she could make was the dull, low moan of a mute person.
As Konstantine severed the last few major muscles, she peeled the face off entirely. Holding it up to examine it, she frowned. Below her, the woman was still alive, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly and soundlessly as her eyes fluttered open and closed. Her eyelids were the only pieces of skin left on her face.
Finally, the shock was too much and the woman slowly went limp.
“No smile,” Konstantine said quietly. “I suppose I should have expected that. The muscles are what keep the smile in place. It was certainly a worthy inaugural run, though. I believe next time if I allow rigor to set in and the skin to harden and mold to that shape, I may have more luck.”
Slowly ducking her head down, Konstantine slides the sticky, bloody skin against her own face. Lining it up carefully, she smoothed it out with her fingers and stands facing the camera once again.
The mouth hangs down in a grotesque frown around her own lips and Konstantine’s dull grey eyes, like a sharks, stare out from behind the place where the woman’s chocolate colored eyes had once been.
“Now,” she said, “The real reason I invited you. Besides to witness this… venture… for posterities sake. No, I invited you here because I realized that I have perhaps been remiss. I was intrigued by the loudest of this little group of contestants that I have neglected to consider my other opponents in this match.
Mr. Steele, Mr. Reilly… rest assured that you have not escaped the dubious honor of my attention. Although, I am told that that is not something that most wish to receive.
You have not been as outspoken or as obnoxious as your know it all counter-part Mr. Lekkter. However, I do not take that to mean much as Mr. Lekkter is a bit of a blow hard, is he not?
He enjoys speaking only to hear his own voice. He does not pay much attention to the drivel that he spews. I certainly hope that the two of you will choose your words much more carefully and will not presume to think that you know me.
In reality, there is not much to be gained from specifically speaking about each of you in turn. I spoke directly to Mr. Lekkter because I found his spiel amusing. But in all honestly, and I am hardly capable of much else, I am unconcerned with any of you.
You see, you will always be at a disadvantage. Your human emotions will always put you at a disadvantage in life. I have coped quite well without them and will continue to do so. Because here is what you need to know.
They will only drag you down.
They will only make you incapable of being able to do what needs to be done. You will hesitate and I will not. You will second guess and I will not. You will re-consider and again, I will not. You will feel pain and so will I but the difference is that I am unattached from my body and I will not allow this pain to worry or jeopardize me.
The human mind is wired to do no harm. You may have willingly involved yourselves in a lifestyle where pain is required of you. However, you are only human and causing that kind of pain to another human being goes against your very nature. As a result, you will always be holding yourselves back if only to a small degree.
As you may be able to tell, it does not go against my very nature. It never has. I will not hold back and I will not second guess myself. I will strike sure and true and I will strike you down.
Because the alternative…”
She gestures around herself.
“The alternative is this… and despite how much I dislike it, I am trying very hard to moderate myself.”
Smirking into the camera from behind the flesh mask, Konstantine moves slightly closer in a graceful sort of slink. “You see, you believe true evil is someone like Lekkter. But someone like him can never truly be evil. He understands what he is doing and he knows that the things that he does are wrong. He understands why they are wrong.
Someone like me, well… someone like me does not feel these same emotions. I do not understand why the things that I do are wrong but I am intelligent enough to know that society views them as wrong.
I am the true face of evil. Someone incapable of sympathy, empathy or concern.”
Using her fingertips, she manipulates the flesh mask on her face into an approximation of a garish smile.
In a sing-song voice she whispers softly “One… two… I’m coming for you…”
Turning around slowly, Konstantine goes back to her unconscious victim. She reaches her fingers into the woman’s face and slowly pulls off a chunk of muscle which she raises to her mouth. She closes her eyes as she chews.
The camera man finally has had enough and heaves violently onto the floor around him, the camera bouncing around erratically.
This draws her attention again.
“Where are my manners,” she says, her voice still high pitched and girly. “Would you like some?”
She calmly picks up the scalpel as she unbuttons the woman’s pants, dragging them and her panties roughly down to her ankles before she begins slicing strips of flesh off of her thighs.
Each of the strips she wraps up in brown butcher’s paper and carefull places in a gallon sized Ziplock bag which she’s labeled with the days date.
When she’s satisfied, she turns back to the camera man. “I suppose you would like to leave now, wouldn’t you?” she asks, peeling the mask slowly off of her face. The blood and pieces of tissue left behind give her a sick, garish look.
“P-p-please,” the camera man whimpers from behind his equipment.
Konstantine shakes her head slowly, “I am afraid you may have seen… heard… too much. But I do thank you for the footage. I would not have been able to do both.”
As she steps closer to him, the man is heard whimpering and begging for his life. The scalpel flashes as the camera crashes to the ground. The image rolls for a few moments before it returns to normal. The angle the camera has fallen at allows just the right angle to see Konstantine with her hand plunged into the bloody gash that her scalpel made in the man’s throat. He is already dead, being held up only by the fist Konstantine has wrapped around the man’s trachea.
When she abruptly yanks her hand back, the inner workings of his throat are suddenly pulled past the skin and it makes a disgusting picture as he slumps to the ground.
Konstantine stares down at him with an unreadable expression on her face but suddenly she begins slowly running her bloody hand down her body and into her own pants, moaning and throwing her head back in ecstasy as the footage abruptly cuts off.
Now was the only opportunity that she would get. Konstantine Weylin stood at the bend of the curve, her short blonde hair slapping against her cheeks. She’d never attempted something of this magnitude and the curiosity of whether or not she could pull it off was killing her. The twisted thrill of it all sang in her bones. She stared glassily at the yellow school bus as it wound its way through the curvy roads, up the mountain. She had the advantage, she could see them coming and they would not see her. Not until it was too late, anyway.
As the school bus turned the corner, long and yellow and sleek, she stepped out from behind the scrub brushes that had concealed her. Planting her feet dead center on the yellow lines, she waited. She’d dressed up for the occasion so as to look as non-threatening as possible. In her cut-off jean shorts and white tank top, she looked innocent. Deceptively so. Coaxing her face out of its normal hard lines, she looked every bit the stranded motorist who needed help, high up here in the mountains. The bus driver would stop, Konstantine was sure. It was human decency. She may not have understood it, may not have felt it, but she knew that it would win out every single time.
That curiously human need to help those around them. People like her preyed on that desire. Moses Sithole in South Africa raped, tortured and murdered women who he lured to isolated places by pretending to be a businessman luring unemployed women to him with the promise of work. John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown and entertained children at birthday parties. Miyuki Ishikawa in Japan euthanized more than one hundred and three newborn babies as a maternity nurse. Ted Bundy would draw his victims in by feigning an injury and convincing those poor young girls that he needed help. They would rush to his side and then the venus fly trap would close around them and they were gone.
The bus stopped, as she had known that it would. Human beings and their desire to come to the aid of other human beings would damn them. Every single time. When the doors wheezed open, she limped hesitantly over to them.
“You okay, honey?” the bus driver asked her, squinting down at her in concern.
“No ma’am, I’m sure not,” Konstantine said, silkily. She had long ago trained the thick, southern accent out of her voice but now she let it slide back in, as sticky sweet as honey. “My car broke down back yonder and I was tryin’ to find me a fillin’ station so I could get some help but I think I sprained my ankle when I took a tumble on these rocks.”
The bus driver’s face softened and why wouldn’t it? Konstantine was small and blonde and she had the soft, full cheeks and pretty blush of youth and innocence. The bus driver was thinking of her own daughter, who couldn’t be much older than Konstantine herself and how she would feel if someone left her on the road somewhere.
“Get in, honey,” she said, nervously glancing up at the camera positioned dead center, in its little glass box. “I’m not supposed to do this… but it’s getting dark soon and there isn’t anyone else around for miles.”
She missed the wicked smirk that crossed Konstantine’s face as she ducked her head down and slowly limped up the bus steps.
The children chattering around her instantly began to grate on her nerves as she sat behind the bus driver, whose name she had learned was Rose. She had her “sprained” ankle propped up on the seat, waiting. Biding her time. It wasn’t right just yet, but soon it would be.
As the sun began to sink below the horizon, Konstantine made her move. In one fluid motion, she had wrapped her thin but strong arms around Rose’s neck. Torqueing her neck back, Konstantine swung around and used her foot to push Rose’s down on the brake. As soon as the bus slowed to a crawl, Konstantine reached down and killed the engine.
Before Rose could scream or react, Konstantine snapped her neck and let the dead woman slump onto the steering wheel.
She stood, calm and still, for a moment before she slowly turned to the bus full of children. The oldest was maybe nine, the rest fell between that and six.
“Your bus driver decided to take a little nap,” she said, softly. Calmly. The children were staring at her, terror written on their chubby little faces. It almost brought a true smile to her face. The terror was like a living thing, something that she could breathe in and make a part of herself.
“My name is Konstantine,” she said, that deadly calm snake in the grass tone still in her voice. “What are your names?”
She waited patiently while the children slowly went around, stuttering names like Ashley and Jessica and Mikey. Tilting her head, Konstantine said, “It’s so nice to meet you all. I think we’re going to be best friends… don’t you?”
When none of the children answered, Konstantine screamed, “I said I think we’re going to be best fucking friends. DON’T YOU?!?!?!”
Some of the children began to cry but they managed a weak “yes” and she was satisfied for the moment.
“W-we’re not supposed to talk to s-s-strangers,” one of them, whose name she had already forgotten, stuttered from his second row seat.
Konstantine tilted her head and smirked, “Oh, is that the problem? Perhaps I should make myself less strange, then. Don’t you think?”
She carefully slid the bus driver’s body out of the seat, laying her flat on the ground with her feet wedged beneath the driver’s seat. Reaching into her back pocket, she pulled out a leather bundle, folded over and over onto itself and tied with a leather string.
Slowly untying it, she let the bundle fall open. The scalpels gleamed silver in the dying light and Konstantine carefully ran her fingertip over their shiny surfaces.
“Yes, I’ll make myself familiar and then we can be best friends… how does that sound?”
The children watched on in terror as she pulled a single scalpel from the leather and ran it over her palm to test its sharpness. The blade instantly sliced through her skin and she was satisfied. Wiping the thin line of blood onto her denim cut offs, she stared down almost innocently at the bus driver’s face.
“No smile,” she muttered to herself, slowly using her fingertips to try to push the dead woman’s mouth into a smile. The skin, already limp and turning a light shade of grey, slides back into its place. Frowning, Konstantine shrugs. “Never a smile…”
She twirls the scalpel between her fingers for a moment before she leans down and begins making a long, steady cut. She traces the scalpel with a surgeon’s precision around the woman’s forehead, down the sides of her face and around her chin. The skin split like the skin of a grape, pulling apart easily.
It was a method called de-gloving… although that usually referred to hands. There were five layers of skin that made up the dermis of the face and forty-three muscles. Although it wasn’t uncommon to have fewer. Some people just weren’t made for smiling. Peeling the edges of the skin back with bloody fingers, Konstantine slid the scalpel underneath of it, carefully cutting the depressor anguli oris that connected between the mandible and the lower lip. Moving on, she sliced easily through the mentalis muscles that pulled the sides of the lip downward or the skin on the chin upward.
She had practiced this dozens of times before she’d gotten it right. Her steady hand had been an asset but she’d failed so many times. The skin had either ripped or she had accidentally slipped the scalpel through one too many layers of dermis.
Now, it came easily. Almost like breathing. She’d memorized the muscles she’d have to cut through, the connective tissue that she would need to slice loose. The masseter muscle was next, the one that opened and closed the jaw and clenched the teeth. The platysma, which was larger and required some cutting. It connected from the chest, through the neck and onto the mandible. Moving up the sides of the face, she carefully slit the auricularis muscle that connected the rest of the face to the ears and wiggled the skin free.
Peeling the edges of Rose’s face back, she moved on towards the center of the face. There were the orbicularis oculi and the levator labil superior alaeque nasi muscles. The muscles that allowed the eyelids to open and close, the muscles that had let Rose laugh, smile and blink. Slicing carefully through the eyelids, Konstantine sighed.
She’d always wanted to keep those but the tissue was so thin there that it had proven impossible. Thin like paper, she’d never managed to cut them lose and keep them intact. Then there was the issue of keeping the eyelids open so that she could see…
Slicing through the zygomaticus maor, Konstantine finally carefully peeled the dermis from the face muscles, holding it up like a hard won trophy.
It was perfect, just as she’d hoped that it would be. This was her first time in the field, so to speak. The rest had been carefully practiced on in the safety and comfort of a familiar place. She’d been nervous about what her results would be like in an uncontrolled setting.
Tilting her head down, she slid the skin on top of her own and pressed it down carefully so that it would stay in place. The congealing blood held it onto her own skin almost perfectly. Using her fingertips, Konstantine slowly smoothed out the air bubbles. The mouth she had never been able to get quite right. The lips were primarily collagen and she hadn’t been able to figure out how to get them to mold to her own. They hung in a grotesque frown around her own lips.
“See,” she sing-songed. “I look just like Rose now. So it’s okay to talk to me… your mommy and your daddy won’t get mad at you…”
The children stared up at her, their eyes wide as saucers. Most of the younger ones were sobbing now, hard. A few of the older children were crying too, trying to keep up brave faces for the younger children.
“I want to sing a song,” Konstantine said, in that same high pitched girly voice she had been using. “What song do you want to sing?”
The children said nothing, trying hard to avoid looking at her face.
“Let’s sing…” Konstantine thinks for a moment, though Rose’s face worn as a mask over her own remains blank. “I want to sing Rocka-Bye Baby. Do you guys know that one?”
The children remained silent, staring down at their feet with tear stained faces.
“I SAID SING, GODDAMNIT.”
With wobbly, tearful voices, the children slowly began to sing the words to the song as Konstantine slid behind the wheel of the bus, starting it up again.
She had never driven something this large but what was the worst that could happen?
Konstantine drifted awake with a small smile on her face. It was not a nightmare, but a pleasant dream. One she wished that she could slip back into.
A memory of another time, when she’d been younger and more reckless. She hadn’t tried as hard to keep her baser instincts and urges in check.
Although, it had been the incident that had sent her back to the hospital for the final time. It was still a bright spot, it was still a memory she enjoyed revisiting from time to time.
Stretching like a cat, she languished on the bed naked. The dream had had one unintended side effect though, she though as one hand snaked down between her thighs.
Killing always made her needy for something else.
xxxxx
“Lekkter,” Konstantine said, her voice its usual cold and detached almost monotone. “You have expended an awful lot of energy thinking about me. You have expended an awful lot of energy considering me and believing that you have gotten inside of my head and figured out just what makes me tick, have you not? You claim that what I did at Rapture was done out of some sort of malice… some sort of nervousness about our impending face to face meeting in the ring. Sadly… for you… you could not be further off the mark, Lekkter. What I did was not done out of any attempt to cripple you or humble you before our match. No, it was done out of curiosity. I wondered what you looked like on the inside and I thought that perhaps I would find out. I was disappointed with what I found, but that’s another matter entirely. I mean that literally and figuratively.
Put a man’s back up against a wall and you will discover his true nature. Force a man’s hand and you will learn who he is. I did both when I attacked you at Rapture.
And I found you to be lacking.
You insinuate that I am in some way afraid of you. While I applaud your healthy ego, that too could not be farther off of the mark. I do not fear any man, Lekkter. Most specifically because I am incapable of this emotion. You may wonder at the validity of that claim and I do not blame you. Fear is a common human emotion, is it not? Fear is what keeps us mere mortals from plunging to our deaths at any given second.
But I am more than that. What keeps me alive is not a healthy fear, it is a healthy intelligence. The intelligence to comprehend what most rely on these pesky feelings of trepidation and concern for. I do not fear fire, but I understand that should I place my hand on a burning flame I too will burn. I understand the science behind it.
I do not fear heights but I understand that if I were to fling myself off of a cliff that I would most probably die. Or not. I seem to have an inhuman ability to stay alive even in those situations where death should have claimed me a dozen times over.
Unfortunate for you, isn’t it? Your opponent is a cat who always lands on her feet, so to speak.
No, you do not make me nervous and I do not fear you. I recognize your abilities inside of the ring but I also recognize that those same abilities are hindered by your humanness. You are unwilling to do the things that I am willing to do simply because you, with your normal human emotions, are afraid. It goes against your very nature to put your body on the line to the extent that I am willing to put my body on the line.
You see, a convenient side effect of these lacking emotions that I have found is that I am not as attached to my body as you are. As most human beings are. For example, I do not love my arm. I recognize it for the things that it allows me to do but I do not feel any emotional attachment to it.
If I were to lose my arm, I would not mourn it. I would simply adjust and live my life without it.
You assume far too much, Mr. Lekkter. You assume that I care that you have added me onto your… what did you call it? Your ‘shit list’. You assume that I care that you hate me. You assume that your hate and anger will not hinder you in the ring.
Because it will.
Let me tell you something about anger, Lekkter.
It is a base emotion. It a response to pain of one form or another be it psychical or emotional. Anger occurs when people feel rejected, threatened or experience some loss. The type of pain does not matter, the important thing is that the pain is unpleasant.
I do not feel anger, but I can describe it to you perfectly.
Pain alone is not enough to cause anger. It occurs when pain is combined with some stray triggering thought. These thoughts can be personal assessments, assumptions, evaluations or interpretations of situations that make someone think that another person is attempting to hurt them. In this sense, anger is a social emotion. And I am not a social creature, Lekkter. Human beings must always target their anger at something… someone… sometimes even themselves.
Anger is messy and ineffective. It is nothing more than a smokescreen for vulnerability. Anger triggers a feeling of righteousness, power and moral superiority that is often ill placed. Ill deserved.
But more than that, ignoring all of that, let us focus on the physical effects of anger. The anger begins in the amygdala. The amygdala is so efficient at identifying and warning you of threats that it has you reacting before the cortex, the part of your brain responsible for thought and judgment, can react. You are reacting out of base instinct, with no thought or intelligence behind it.
As you become angry, your body’s muscles will tense up. Inside your brain neurotransmitter chemicals known as catecholamines are released causing to experience a burst of energy that only lasts for a few moments before it burns itself out again. Your heart rate accelerates, your blood pressure rises and your rate of breathing increases. You are burning through your energy stores by the second. Your attention narrows and becomes locked onto the target of your anger and you can focus on nothing else. Additional neurotransmitters release hormones like adrenaline and noradrenaline. These too will only last for a short time and resulting come down from both will make you shaky, erratic and sometimes lethargic.
Although it is possible for your emotions to rage out of control, the prefrontal cortex of your brain will work overtime to keep your emotions in proportion.
So, you see, while you think that your anger makes you an unstoppable force in reality it only makes you weak. You are using your body and your mind ineffectually. It wears down your body, saps your energy and makes you erratic and quick to jump to action.
The void I feel, the complete lack of emotion, makes me a methodical opponent. It makes me someone who is always in control of her faculties. It makes me more dangerous than you seem capable of comprehending.
I do not fault you for that. I am something that most “normal” human beings find difficult to comprehend. I have learned that over the years.
So while you suspect that I spent my years in confinement a drugged and angry mess of a human being, I did not.
I spent my years in confinement much as I spend them now. Quietly observing the world around me. Teaching myself things that most would not dare to know. Teaching myself about the very human nature that I seem to have been born lacking.
I was actually prescribed very few medications while I was… incarcerated. I refused them and contrary to popular belief and what the media would have you believe, you cannot force medication on someone. You cannot drug someone just because the world as a whole deems them to be… what was the term that they used? Mentally unstable? I believe that is it.
I spent my time very much lucid and very much awake.
Our states of mind are very different, dear Lekkter. You seem to be of the opinion that we are much alike but I can assure you that you are wrong. Your ability to comprehend and feel human emotion will set us apart indelibly. It will make you weak as it has made so many others weak at my feet.
You will feel your trite anger and you will suffer for it.
I will approach this as I approach everything. Methodically, coldly and calculatingly. I will dismantle you, piece by piece and not because of some misguided anger or hatred. I will do it because I am curious about what will remain. I am curious to see what you are like on the inside both literally and metaphorically speaking.”
xxxx
The camera pans over the room, small and enclosed. It was empty save for the table in the center. Surgical steel like the kind normally found in hospital operating rooms. But this is definitely not a hospital.
The walls and the floor are covered in thick, heavy clear plastic tarping. The table is also draped in the tarp. Next to it, is a small metal table that holds an assortment of bone saws, scalpels and clamps. All gleaming shiny silver under the heavy duty flood lights that shine down from every corner of the room, focusing on the table. The lights make the stainless steel shine almost blindingly.
The camera shifts slightly as the man wielding it shifts uncomfortably. He was called here but he doesn’t understand for what purpose. The room makes him uncomfortable. The set up so much like an operating room but out of place in this storage unit in the middle of nowhere.
Something in the pit of his stomach, some human emotion that warns us when we are inadvertently stumbling into danger, is telling him that he should run. He should leave this place and never look back. But at the same time, it is a job. A job that he signed up for. A job that he intends to complete.
Walking away now would look unprofessional and he can’t risk losing this job. His wife is pregnant with their first child and they had found out a week prior that she was expecting twins.
They needed the money more now than ever before.
He hears the door to the storage unit scraping open and he jumps back as the camera films a thin blonde haired woman struggling in through the door with something draped across her shoulders.
Konstantine Weylin glances up at the camera as she half carries and half drags the body over to the table and lets it tumble unceremoniously down onto the steel.
With the quick and surefooted movements of a danger, she leaps back over to the storage unit’s door and shuts and bolts it from the inside. Insuring that both of her captives: the camera man and the unconscious woman on the table, will not be going anywhere.
“Is she…” he stuttered.
Konstantine turned to face him for the first time, her lips curling back into a snarl. “If I had wished for something other than a silent audience I would have brought her family along with me. Your purpose here is to observe… nothing more and nothing less.
But no, she is not dead.
You see, I am searching for something. I want a smile. A real, genuine smile. It would satisfy a curiosity that I’ve had for years. I have, sadly and much to my own chagrin, been incapable of producing it in my works thus far.
They see the death that awaits them and they lose their smile. They cease to grin and laugh and make merry. So no, if you are asking if this woman is dead… she is not. Not yet, anyway.
You are to be a silent… emphasis on the silent… observer to a new technique I have been contemplating for some time.
I’ve been considering,” she said, while she shifted her intended victim on the table so that she was lying flat. Reaching beneath the operating table, Konstantine pulled out three thick straps with buckles at each end. “Would I be able to keep that elusive smile on their faces if I do not kill them first. If I were to allow them to remain alive for the entire process. Or… as much of the process as they are able to handle.”
As she finishes strapping her victim down to the table, she stands back to admire her handy work. The woman looks every bit of the soccer mom stereotype. Her short brown hair is streaked with subtle brown high lights and her face has the laugh lines of a woman in her late thirties to early forties.
She is dressed sensibly in a light cardigan over a silk shell and brown slacks. She was missing one of her name brand running shoes. There was a large diamond engagement and wedding band set on her left hand.
Turning back to the camera, Konstantine quirked her lips in an approximation of the smile that she was in constant pursuit of. “I have contemplated this before,” she said, slowly. “But I have always run into a few problems that I have not known how to fix. First, how would I keep them still enough for the procedure? I considered using a paralytic agent but testing showed me that they would be unable to smile. I was very disappointed and nearly shelved the entire idea. But recently… I have come back to it again and again and considered it with more seriousness. The problem with leaving my intended mobile is, of course, the screaming.
Humans are messy, loud creatures and they often like to voice their displeasure that way. I could not take the risk of some well-intentioned passer by overhearing and deciding to play the white knight.
I have exercised what little self-restrain that I possess waiting for the right time. As you can probably tell, I have chosen this place for its remote location. Even if it does scream… it will not likely be heard by anyone in the area.
Although…” she reaches below the table and retrieves a standard issue metal baseball bat. “I have come up with a few other workable solutions to the screaming. You see…” she twirled the bat once or twice in her hands, “There is a process that is often used to de-vocalize dogs. It is frequently used by those who run and operate illegal dog fighting rings so that the snarls and cries of pain are not easily overhead since these types of things are common in urban environments.”
Carefully prying the woman’s mouth open, Konstantine fitted the bat against her teeth. “This will damage her vocal chords so severely that she will not be capable of sound louder than just a few decibels. This is my first time attempting this, however, so I chose the remote location just in case my first few attempts do not pan out as I expect them to.”
Using all of her strength, Konstantine jams the bat down the woman’s throat. As her teeth break and blood spatters, the camera man can be heard dry heaving. The camera shakes but still catches the image of Konstantine shoving the bat further and further into the woman’s throat.
The woman wakes up halfway through the process, her eyes wide and unseeing. The pain is a shock to her system and she struggles to scream around the bat.
Finally, after ten long agonizing minutes, Konstantine pulls the bat out of the woman’s bloody and broken mouth. She tosses it aside absently and stands back to observe her handy work.
Reaching for a wet nap, she almost tenderly wipes the blood and broken teeth away from the woman’s lips. Then she reaches down into the woman’s purse and pulls out a tube of lipstick, gently reapplying it where it has smudged off.
The woman is struggling to scream but only a low groan comes out. Konstantine looks satisfied with that and slowly reaches down to the table and lifts one of the scalpels, staring down at it fondly.
“Not just yet,” she said, replacing it on the table. Instead, she reached down for a mask and turned the nozzle on a tank similar to an oxygen tank sitting on the ground next to her.
“My next dilemma, was of course, how to procure the smile. The… circumstances would not lend themselves to euphoria. So, I thought that perhaps I could find a chemical substance that would be of assistance in this matter.”
She held up the mask again. “This is nitrous oxide… well, it is a very, very concentrated nitrous oxide. It produces euphoric affects… I thought perhaps it might make my new friend more willing to give me the smile that I am longing for.”
Konstantine gently puts the mask down over the woman’s nose and busted mouth. She leans down and whispers, “Breathe in.”
After a few agonizing minutes of holding her breath futilely, the woman finally reluctantly takes several deep breaths. The gas works in minutes and suddenly she is laughing.
The camera man stumbles back a few steps as the woman’s almost hysterical laughter bounces off the metal walls.
“Smile,” Konstantine commands and the woman, as malleable now as a doll, does.
When she’s satisfied, Konstantine picks up the scalpel and her sure, steady hand begins making the familiar cuts again for the first time in far too many years.
The camera shakes as the camera man backs himself into a corner. That feeling that had told him to run as soon as he’d walked into the door was back in full force. He wanted to scream, to cry out, to throw up everything that he had eaten for lunch. But it would draw her attention and right now that was the very last thing that he wanted.
As she peeled half of the face back, revealing the bloody mess of severed muscles underneath, he felt a wetness soaking through the front of his khakis and running down into his shoes.
Humiliated, he realized that he had pissed all over himself unconsciously. Something he hadn’t done since he was a very small boy.
But there was something about the almost childlike expression on Konstantine’s face as she peeled back the top layers of skin from the woman’s face. He could see the muscles twitching and stretching over the bone as the poor woman struggled to scream, but all she could make was the dull, low moan of a mute person.
As Konstantine severed the last few major muscles, she peeled the face off entirely. Holding it up to examine it, she frowned. Below her, the woman was still alive, her mouth opening and closing wordlessly and soundlessly as her eyes fluttered open and closed. Her eyelids were the only pieces of skin left on her face.
Finally, the shock was too much and the woman slowly went limp.
“No smile,” Konstantine said quietly. “I suppose I should have expected that. The muscles are what keep the smile in place. It was certainly a worthy inaugural run, though. I believe next time if I allow rigor to set in and the skin to harden and mold to that shape, I may have more luck.”
Slowly ducking her head down, Konstantine slides the sticky, bloody skin against her own face. Lining it up carefully, she smoothed it out with her fingers and stands facing the camera once again.
The mouth hangs down in a grotesque frown around her own lips and Konstantine’s dull grey eyes, like a sharks, stare out from behind the place where the woman’s chocolate colored eyes had once been.
“Now,” she said, “The real reason I invited you. Besides to witness this… venture… for posterities sake. No, I invited you here because I realized that I have perhaps been remiss. I was intrigued by the loudest of this little group of contestants that I have neglected to consider my other opponents in this match.
Mr. Steele, Mr. Reilly… rest assured that you have not escaped the dubious honor of my attention. Although, I am told that that is not something that most wish to receive.
You have not been as outspoken or as obnoxious as your know it all counter-part Mr. Lekkter. However, I do not take that to mean much as Mr. Lekkter is a bit of a blow hard, is he not?
He enjoys speaking only to hear his own voice. He does not pay much attention to the drivel that he spews. I certainly hope that the two of you will choose your words much more carefully and will not presume to think that you know me.
In reality, there is not much to be gained from specifically speaking about each of you in turn. I spoke directly to Mr. Lekkter because I found his spiel amusing. But in all honestly, and I am hardly capable of much else, I am unconcerned with any of you.
You see, you will always be at a disadvantage. Your human emotions will always put you at a disadvantage in life. I have coped quite well without them and will continue to do so. Because here is what you need to know.
They will only drag you down.
They will only make you incapable of being able to do what needs to be done. You will hesitate and I will not. You will second guess and I will not. You will re-consider and again, I will not. You will feel pain and so will I but the difference is that I am unattached from my body and I will not allow this pain to worry or jeopardize me.
The human mind is wired to do no harm. You may have willingly involved yourselves in a lifestyle where pain is required of you. However, you are only human and causing that kind of pain to another human being goes against your very nature. As a result, you will always be holding yourselves back if only to a small degree.
As you may be able to tell, it does not go against my very nature. It never has. I will not hold back and I will not second guess myself. I will strike sure and true and I will strike you down.
Because the alternative…”
She gestures around herself.
“The alternative is this… and despite how much I dislike it, I am trying very hard to moderate myself.”
Smirking into the camera from behind the flesh mask, Konstantine moves slightly closer in a graceful sort of slink. “You see, you believe true evil is someone like Lekkter. But someone like him can never truly be evil. He understands what he is doing and he knows that the things that he does are wrong. He understands why they are wrong.
Someone like me, well… someone like me does not feel these same emotions. I do not understand why the things that I do are wrong but I am intelligent enough to know that society views them as wrong.
I am the true face of evil. Someone incapable of sympathy, empathy or concern.”
Using her fingertips, she manipulates the flesh mask on her face into an approximation of a garish smile.
In a sing-song voice she whispers softly “One… two… I’m coming for you…”
Turning around slowly, Konstantine goes back to her unconscious victim. She reaches her fingers into the woman’s face and slowly pulls off a chunk of muscle which she raises to her mouth. She closes her eyes as she chews.
The camera man finally has had enough and heaves violently onto the floor around him, the camera bouncing around erratically.
This draws her attention again.
“Where are my manners,” she says, her voice still high pitched and girly. “Would you like some?”
She calmly picks up the scalpel as she unbuttons the woman’s pants, dragging them and her panties roughly down to her ankles before she begins slicing strips of flesh off of her thighs.
Each of the strips she wraps up in brown butcher’s paper and carefull places in a gallon sized Ziplock bag which she’s labeled with the days date.
When she’s satisfied, she turns back to the camera man. “I suppose you would like to leave now, wouldn’t you?” she asks, peeling the mask slowly off of her face. The blood and pieces of tissue left behind give her a sick, garish look.
“P-p-please,” the camera man whimpers from behind his equipment.
Konstantine shakes her head slowly, “I am afraid you may have seen… heard… too much. But I do thank you for the footage. I would not have been able to do both.”
As she steps closer to him, the man is heard whimpering and begging for his life. The scalpel flashes as the camera crashes to the ground. The image rolls for a few moments before it returns to normal. The angle the camera has fallen at allows just the right angle to see Konstantine with her hand plunged into the bloody gash that her scalpel made in the man’s throat. He is already dead, being held up only by the fist Konstantine has wrapped around the man’s trachea.
When she abruptly yanks her hand back, the inner workings of his throat are suddenly pulled past the skin and it makes a disgusting picture as he slumps to the ground.
Konstantine stares down at him with an unreadable expression on her face but suddenly she begins slowly running her bloody hand down her body and into her own pants, moaning and throwing her head back in ecstasy as the footage abruptly cuts off.
