The scent of herbs and delicious meat joyfully danced through the air and over the dreamy musical notes as their stage. Played by the gramophone, invading his mind one beat at a time. Jumbling it like a cat playing with wool.
Unknowingly he lurched down and—
—Gawwwk!
Putrid acidic smell of undigested meat crashed the pleasant atmosphere like vomit, spilling onto the lavish flooring he once treasured.
—NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Indifferent with a smile, Victor calmly took his seat back. Cutting into his leafy dine.
"Mr. Bern, you are a food critic, right? May our humble bureaucratic chefs get any tips? For future improvements of course. :)"
He pointed at a few parts on his dish.
"Is it too tender? Does it taste too subtle? Fat too low?"
"LAIR! F**KING LIAR! LIAR!"
Berns jumped back, and hastily pulled out a brass barreled handheld revolver from his hidden pocket. A causation carried out of habit.
With a trembling barrel pointed at Victor, he madly shouted, consumed in raging denial.
The unpleasant smile on Victor's face disappeared, giving him a sense of heroic satisfaction.
"Lie? Sorry, I don't speak such language on duty. :("
Victor spoke in a deliberate calm voice. With a gaze trailing down at the plate he continued,
"On that topic, did you know the fate of those 73 people. You must've, afterall you were there."
Horrifying ritualistic scenes of flesh being Dismembered, blood being drained, organs harvested and used strangely flashed through his eyes. Memories he had buried in the depth of his mind gate, never to be opened.
He remembered the fresh flesh squirming on mud ground like bloody worms. The screams and pleas.
The more he thought, the more nausea rose up his throat.
"No business is ever truly white, but you were particularly black in parts. Mr. Bern, Had you seen your daughter today?"
He infact hadn't seen his daughter today…
"To fill in the gaps, we got intel today about a certain child wandering into the lower docks…"
He gestured as if saying — 'My condolences.'
"…and now your daughter will rest peacefully for a long time. :("
"SHUT UP!"
His fingers over the trigger stiffened up,
"GUARDS! MAIDS! SOMEONE?!"
No one replied. Only his shouts of desperate pleas remained, reverberating through the dinner hall drowned by the dreamy music.
"If you pull that trigger, You'll inflict great harm towards your loved one."
"Do you take the risk and its liability into account, Mr. Bern?"
F-F**k you!
—Bang!
...
'I-I shot so-someone…!'
With tears rolling down his panicked brown eyes, he blankly gazed at the figure of Victor looking at him with wide eyes.
'I-I pulled it…!'
With a pained expression, Victor gazed down at the wound in his stomach, desperately pressing it down with a palm. Yet the sanguine liquid continued to spill down on the floor with no end.
With seemgly last of his will, he looked up at him wearing an expression of shock and…betrayal? And spoke,
In an voice out of place, a familiar voice not belonging to 'Victor',
"Why…dear?"
His mind blanked hearing the familiar vocal. His teary eyes blinked in confusion.
Victor was gone, instead there now sat a familiar figure of a woman in a red stained white flowing flowery gown, having long silky brownish hair tied up in a simple, full bodied style.
It was his wife.
River of blood spilled from her abdomen, staining her gown crimson. A silky red ribbon was tied around her eyes like a blind nomad, blocking her vision. But the tears trailing down were all too real.
"If you pull that trigger, you'll inflict great harm towards your loved one. Do you take that into account?"
—Snap
A finger snap crisply resounded within the dinner hall as he found himself sitting back in the comfy chair, opposite to the chair his wife sat upon, just like the arrangement before the dinner.
Only now there was someone on the mysterious third chair he hadn't noticed before. A chair he was subconsciously been ignoring.
"Do that again, and it would grounds for immediate execution, mind you."
"Anyway, let me remind again— Do you confess to your crimes, Mr. Bern?"
—Ah…
It now became quite evident to him that this 'person' in front of him wasn't the officer he knew.
Gashing his teeths he scoffed in a vexing manner, "You are no bureaucrat."
'Victor' corrected,
"We represent the state as a whole, while I personally lean more towards a bureaucratic approach."
"Personally, I'm just a selfish arbitrator who seeks a peace of mind. :| "
This person…he had well heard of this kind from those cultists before.
An Official Blasphemer. Sanctioned by the Empire.
State Codenamed : Somviore Architect.
A Living Time Bomb walking amongst the common crowd. A Monster that had long abandoned their humanity.
"Confess? Fine."
'Victor' beamed,
"Great! Glad to know that we are now on the same page. :)"
He decided to confess, as there was nothing else he could do in this situation now. Running was not an option in front of such being.
Perhaps this is a very long winded dream by it...
"Yes, the warehouse is mine. Yes, I knew what those cultists were involved in. Yes, I am an accomplice."
— :l
"They helped me revive my generational family business. Providing protection when required, investments when no one else cared to give a chance, assassinating competition when someone stepped out of line. I simply returned the favour by overlooking."
He felt strange, yet liberating. Opening it out aloud, after burying it for so long. It was like an confession in booth.
"In this society, where those up top lived lavishly simply because they're possessors of some "Miracle blood", where knights are composed mostly of those hypocrites and few lucky capable commoners. I detest them."
Perhaps because, those who have transcended the mundane have different opinions and views than those not. Unlike victor, this person knew the true front of society.
'Victor' patiently listened without interpreting, like a business man listening to an rather interesting proposal.
"They don't understand the struggle of the working class, of one-day jobs, working in that…filth! That kills!"
"They don't know the meaning of not knowing if you'd been loved, or the gambling of the food you eat- which it might kill or let you live! Living with uncertainty of the next dawn everyday!"
Berns gaze trailed down to his boots, stained with fresh blood and vomit.
"Compared to those monsters above? I took the sacrifices of hardly a hundred. Thousands were saved by my charity! I paid attention to their negligence!"
Looking into the eyes of 'Victor' with fiery passion and fury, he asked,
"To those above, are we just discardable pawns? With no freedom of our own? Is the God truly the Truth?"
"Mr. Bern—"
"Our options were rigged from the very beginning. So I chose to play unfairly in this rigged system."
"Mr. Bern, kindly—"
"A thousand lives to less than a hundred, what would you choose in my place?!"
"MR. BERN, Kindly put the revolver down. We wouldn't ask the fourth time. :("
Somewhere during the conversation, he had pulled the revolver out again.
The barrel glimmered golden from chandler above, steadily pointed at that 'someone'.
"Hey, Tell me, are you real or a dream?"
'Victor' carrying a sombre expression, put down the glass 'he' was cradling, and in a dreamy yet solemn tone answered,
"Reality and dreams are quite subjective, but—"
"Answer the damn question!" he barked.
"But you, your wife, and that gun are very much real."
Pointing 'his' index finger at 'himself', 'he' continued,
"I too am very real. ;)"
His eyes locked into 'Victor's' then trailed down to the slumped downed, bleeding figure of his wife.
'If she survives…'
"I'm sorry."
—Bang!
—Thud!
The dreamy classical music stopped abruptly, As the dance of death had concluded.
When the long hand met the half way of the clock, a second shot rang like thunder within the manor of Berns. Echoing throughout the neighbourhood of riches like after strike.
Yellow light peared through thin curtains, as sleeping homes woke up in panic.
An eyeball splat on the circular dining table, looking at the perpetrator even in death.
A metallic bullet had indeed been fired, as the gun was far too real to not.
Just that it wasn't pointed towards the front. Neither the back, the down, the left or the right.
It was the direction where the heavens resided.
Where 'Victor' had pointed while addressing 'himself'.
'Victor' signed while wiping away the crimson splat on 'his' face, and mechanically murmured in a detached heavy tone,
"We thank you for your cooperation."
Bowing humbly with the navy cap at the chest, 'he' continued,
"Your sins have been paid in flesh and blood, as such the sun shall again grant you passage in its new heavens where pillars stands tall and mighty."
An indescribable emotion rippled in those clear 'brown' eyes.
—Sigh...idiot.
"You won Mr. Berns, I'm was indeed a Lair."
The clock hand of machinery and gold hovered over the half of IXth & Stars sprinkled over the moonless velvet black curtains.
Molten gold river faded away in oblivion as the streets and houses of the city of stories and opportunities fell in reverie. Glass chambers, mildly warm. Dreams, unfulfilled.
In a manor of Berns, three had become two with one alive. As scripted.
"Tch, and here I was thinking of going out with my new girlfriend… looks like that's not anytime soon. Damn conservative society."
The door of the dinner hall slammed open, as the residence of the manor breached inside in panic.
"Sir Berns, Lady Lucia! Take cover!"
A horrifying scene unfolded before them.
Mr. Berns laid motionless in his chair, a smoking brass revolver in limp hands.
A clean hole through the jaws and out of the skull. Eyeballs bulged out from the pressure.
A textbook sucide.
"LADY LUCIA!"
Opposite, laid the figure of lady lucia. Bleeding with a stomach wound. Eyes unobstructed, and closed tight. Unconscious.
As for the third...there was none.
Why would there be a third or fourth chair to begin with?
This was a private dinner between Lady Lucia and Sir. Berns only. Which unfortunately ended with an sucide, with an attempt of double sucide.
Anything otherwise was mearly a reality confused with dreams. As poor critters after a long winded day tends to imagine things at late night.