Work Text:
My name is Cesar Torres.
He is awake, and desperately wishes he was not.
His mom is dead. His mom is dead, and he killed her. It killed her, he tells himself, because he wouldn’t kill his own mother. Who in their right mind–but is he in his right mind, anymore? Was he ever? Is he–
–Cesar Torres. I’m Cesar Torres.
He (it) just got off of the phone with Mark. Oh god, oh fuck, Mark, he thinks. Mark. Please, please, please, don’t come to my house. Yeah, sure, it was my voice that told you everything, but it wasn’t–was it? He can remember the sensation so clearly. Picking up the phone, unlocking it, ringing up Mark. Everything he said was said genuinely. Please come over, Mark. Please come and help my mom. Please come here so I can reach inside of you and turn your soul inside out, just like it did to me.
Cesar Torres.
He shakes his head firmly and sets the phone back on the sofa. There is something terrible and oily in his gut. He feels sick as he stumbles into the kitchen again, trying to ignore the shape slumped against the pantry. If he pretends hard enough, ignores the blood darkening the wall, forgets the deep nail gashes on her torso, her throat, maybe he can convince himself that his mother is just taking a nap in a very unfortunate place.
Again, he stumbles to the knife block. Maybe it will work this time, he thinks. He hopes. It didn’t let him, last time. But maybe that’s because he was still rife with shock and panic and so couldn’t do it quite right. Now, though, his head is on his shoulders and his intentions are clear.
I am Cesar Torres. I will die Cesar Torres.
Jesus, it sounds like something straight out of fucking lit class. Something that he and Mark would immediately mock after school, dramatically recreating the scene, laughing. If he wasn’t so terrified and if he wasn’t about to actually die, he would have laughed now.
He’s never done research on this kind of thing. Never even been curious about it. But there’s no time to look up other methods, and Mark is on his way, and it’s right there in front of him, and he needs to stop thinking. Stop moving. Stop and wait for Mark to get here so he can say hello, and watch him tear off his own face.
Nope. Nope, no way. Just go. Just do it.
He pulls the biggest knife from the block. Just do it.
He tests the weight of it in his hand. He turns it left and right, watching the way light glints off of the metal. He tests the edge with a finger and feels a small, sharp sting. He stares at the knife and commands himself to just do it. The minutes tick by. He does not put the knife into his throat.
And through it all, the same cadence:
Cesar Torres, Cesar Torres. I am Cesar Torres.
There’s a knock at the door.
He (it) puts the knife back in the block, and it’s only until he’s halfway to the door that his disappointment, his disgust, hits him. He has to pause, hands on his knees, trying not to be sick. He has to look good for Mark. How else will he get Mark inside, lock the door behind him?
No. No. Open the door and tell him to run. He will open the door, look straight at Mark’s stupid face, and tell him to fuck off. Or maybe he won’t even open the door, just shout at Mark through the wood. It’s not me, Mark. It’s in my skin. It’s in my bones. It’s in my fucking brain, Mark.
He straightens. The knocking starts up again, and a call: “Anybody home?” God, Mark, you stupid idiot, he thinks. He just told him that he was on the way to the E.R. If there’s someone home, there’s a fucking problem.
He (it) turns towards the coat closet, open and shut. Hiding. Waiting. The sound of a key in the lock. His key, the key he gave to Mark, because he trusts Mark and Mark trusts him. Mi casa es tu casa, especially if something bad happens.
The front door opens. Mark takes two steps inside and stops. Good, Mark. Turn around and run away. Come in, Mark. It’s me. It’s–It’s–
Fuck.
Cesar. Cesar… what?
Oh, fuck. It’s gone. His last name is gone. Just like that.
“Dude, what the fuck is that smell?” Mark scoffs. “I mean, it, it smells like something fucking died in here or something.”
Because something did, Mark, you fucking idiot. He realises, suddenly, that he doesn’t have to hold his breath because he is not breathing at all.
Cesar…
More footsteps, careful but heavy, turning into the dining room. Of course. The dining room connects to the butler’s pantry, and the butler’s pantry is where the camera control panel is. He won’t see the body. He won’t see him lock the front door. No escape.
Mark keeps mumbling to himself. Mostly nonsense, talking himself through actions. With a silent snap the cameras power on, four panels on a tablet screen light up. Everything seems pretty normal. Good.
He follows Mark around the house, silent. Waiting. For what? He wants to scream at Mark. He needs to say something. He needs to do something. He needs to smash his fingers in a door, he needs to grab Mark by the shoulders and shake sense into him, he needs to hold Mark’s eyelids open until the veins in his eyes pop and he’s hoarse from screaming–
He needs to – to wait. A compromise.
Mark checks upstairs, returns. He’s still hiding, just out of sight. Mark’s looked over his shoulder a few times, and hasn't dropped the tenseness in his posture. At least he knows something’s up.
Mark walks towards the kitchen and something inside of him tears. Don’t look. Fuck, Mark, don’t fucking look. There’s a body in there. There’s a dead woman in there. Take a look, Mark. Take a good look.
Mark enters the kitchen and hisses, “Oh—holy shit. Fucking—fuck.”
CesarCesarCesarMARK
His foot skids on the floorboard. Mark whips around so fast his neck pops.
He stands there, staring at Mark. Then, he smiles. His lips keep moving outward even when there should be no space. Suddenly he can see Mark like never before—every hair on his head, the crusted edges of the cut he gave himself while shaving, the sheen of sweat highlighting bumps and divots in his forehead, the way veins run through the whites of his eyes. There is something in his gut that is writhing and pulsating.
It’s in his bones. It’s in his brain. He can’t stop smiling, because he can’t want not to.
“Hey, Mark,” he says, and Mark books it.
There’s a certain thrill in realising one’s prey knows it’s being hunted. He will catch Mark. There's nowhere for him to go. He wants to laugh. Thoughts scrape against each other like steel files. He wants to scream. It will catch Mark. Fuck. Fuck.
A bang. A gun? But Mark is unarmed. Not a gun. A door.
The back door. Shit. The back door. He forgot about the back door. In his mind, somewhere behind whatever the fuck he (it) is, there’s a flash of smug victory. Oh. Right. He’d conveniently forgotten to re-lock all the doors in his house earlier, after the – after his –
Fuck this, I’m Cesar. And this thing isn’t going to fucking get him.
He doesn’t run after Mark. He walks, taking his sweet, sweet time. His resistance, or its desire to draw this out? His mouth is still smiling. There are teeth behind his teeth. At least Mark isn’t screaming. He doesn’t know what it’d do to him (to it) if Mark started screaming. He hears Mark fumble with his car door, swearing like a bitch, barely getting inside before the engine roars to life. The headlamps are blinding in the darkness. He is still smiling. His eyes hurt from staring.
Faster than he’d ever seen before, he watches Mark pull out of the driveway and pound the gas so hard the tires screech in protest. And he’s gone. Mark is gone. Relief.
Relief?
No, hold on. That’s not relief. He’s not feeling relieved. He feels – he feels anticipation. A sick, hot feeling burning in what remains of his lungs, scalding his senses. He cannot stop staring after the tailights of Mark’s car, and he cannot stop the churning in his stomach that snarls lost sheep must be brought to the shepard.
He runs.
It’s not running, per say, not so much as – well. He can’t really describe what the hell this is. Because he’s not losing sight of Mark’s tailights, despite him going at least fifty miles per hour in a residential zone. He can feel muscles ripping and tearing, hear wet cracks and snaps. It hurts. It hurts. It feels good, and it hurts.
Cesar, you idiot asshat, what the fuck are you doing?
But it’s not him. It can’t be, because if it was him, Mark wouldn’t be pulling up to his front door as close as the car can get so he can jump inside without having to cross the front yard. If it was him, Mark wouldn’t be running up the stairs so fast he almost twists his ankle in an attempt to get away from him. If it was him, he wouldn’t be grinning at this bullshit like it was the funniest comedy he’d ever seen.
“Mark,” he calls, singsong, bright and almost hysterical as he crawls through the front door. “Mark, where are you going? Mark?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He doesn’t want to. He has to. He wants to. He can’t. He needs to. Fuck.
Mark has gone into his room. Idiot. He stands outside of the door in a body that is not a body anymore that is not his, but it’s his. He wants to sob. He wants to laugh until his throat bleeds. He wants to knock and knock and knock and shout at Mark that he’s sorry, he’s so sorry, will he please open the door, he has a gift, he has a special gift and he—
I’m—I’m—
No. No. No. He stands outside of Mark’s door, laughing, crying, scraping his fingers to the bone. His body is not a body anymore. He cannot remember his mom’s face. Come out, Mark. Please. Open the door. Shoot. Put a bullet through my head. Put a bullet in your head, Mark. Can’t you hear the angels singing? Can you hear your god screaming?
I’m—
Days blur into light and dark and light and dark. Mark is scrambling for anchors in his room, he can hear it. The television goes on and off sporadically. He hears Mark praying, and he wants to mock him and beg forgiveness and open the door, Mark. He has to watch something in his friend’s eyes break beyond repair. He has to fold his flesh inside out and back again, turn his nerves backwards, spread the folds of his brain flat so words will fit. He has to do this. He wants to do this.
I’m—
It’s gone. It’s all gone. Everything hurts. He can’t feel anything anymore, so he laughs, and keeps laughing. His face is wet. The breath of humanity bestowed by God is smothered beneath suffocating, blighted tar. There is nothing left but hunger and desire and the deep, gutted corpse of despair. The door gives.
“YOU FUCKING BASTARD!”
I am Cesar Torres.