Heartache to Heartache,
I'm your wolf- I'm your man
I say run little monster,
Before you know who I am
I'm your wolf- I'm your man
I say run little monster,
Before you know who I am
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Xanthippe Devereux |
Hell’s Kitchen is a special kind of jungle. The kind that can take a person and chew them up, spitting out just a husk of their soul. The kind of jungle where the weak don’t just get perish- they get devoured. It was a free for all, and if you didn’t learn how to adapt- you simply didn’t make it. Xanthippe Devereux was no exception; she supposed in hindsight her story didn’t really matter until- well it all changed. She was a small town girl trying to survive in the concrete jungle of New York, nothing that set her apart from most other New Yorker’s. She kept her head down, her nose clean, and applied herself to her job. Even had a few friends in her pathetically decrepit apartment building she’d spend Friday nights out at bars with. Xanthippe supposed everything changed when she was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It started with her coordination. Bits of dizzy spells, spasms in her legs, the feeling of loss of balance. Then it became things like forgetting, getting confused; personality changes and it was around that time she was diagnosed, the time her story changed. It was incurable, and at twenty-four Xanthipe Devereux was facing death within the year. All her life wasted just doing nothing, and now she’d never get the chance to make that right. Her last months would be spent wasting away as a drooling mess in a hospital bed.
Her mom cried, her father drank more and her brother withdrew so completely into himself that he may as well have been the deceased one. And Xanthippe Devereux was terrified. It was that time that she was contacted by a group that operated under the simple name of, The Keller Agency. Later she’d learn that company never really existed. But they offered her hope, sold it on a golden platter. That she could take her life back. Xanthippe didn’t even hesitate as she agreed to partake in their experimental treatment of her condition. The woman didn’t even say goodbye to her family; wouldn’t it be easier if she didn’t give them false hope in case their treatments didn’t work? She could make up when she got back. The place itself was the first red flag to Xan. Hidden underground in New York, run from a basement with miserable, lost looking souls strapped into hospital beds. But she still had hope, until the treatments began. To this day she still has no idea what the hell was given to her, but it changed everything. Her disease was gone, and at first it appeared that’s all the injections did. The Keller Agency wasn’t happy, hell they were furious. She was supposed to be special after those injections she’d overheard one of the staff discussing. She supposed that’s why she was cast out of the program; but not to go home- no. If she wasn’t an enhanced, the Keller Agency was still determined on making money off her.
Sure she may not go for as much as one of their successful patients, but she was a pretty face and Xan supposed that she was bought for a pretty penny when the Keller finalized the deal with the Irish mob. Life again changed during her life with the mob, if one could call it that. Xanthippe still can’t close her eyes without being back in that dirty bedroom with other women who had the misfortune of suffering a similar fate as her’s. Of dirty men and hands that no matter how hard she scrubbed during a shower still felt. Or the jeering laughter of mobsters that still rung in her ears. Maybe it was the terror or the fear, or rather the terrified need to get away from her captors, but that mutant gene activated. Not that it did much good, intangibility- as if her body were mocking her. The Irish the decided her use would be better served in a human fighting ring. She still tries to forget those days. Maybe they were weeks or month- there’s no clock in hell. She would've run away, it would've been easy. Had it not been for the fact that the Irish had calculated this. If Xanthippe ran, her family would die. They made it clear to the young woman that one misstep and her family would pay the price. So she did as they asked. She tried not to imagine the blood on her hands, and that fear turned to a scorching fire in her belly.
And then he came, sweeping into the dingy little favored Irish headquarters like death personified. It had been the screams of the bastards who’d turned her life upside down that woke her up from the small cell in the basement of the building, along with the splintering of wood and shattering of glass. Was a rival gang making a hit? Exhaling the small woman drew her knees up to her chest, just waiting for whatever hell was now coming for her. How long the fighting broke out she wasn't quite sure, but at some point a few Irish Kitchen members had come, their clothes bloody and eyes wild. They had grabbed her, hands tangling in her long hair and a knife to her throat, warning her to think of her family and to not try anything while they moved her. The small group had made it to the back entrance when the first bullet exited the man on her left's skull. Panic coursed throughout the small group, and the last thing Xanthippe recalled was being grabbed, being yanked forward as a human shield; and the white hot burning pain of a bullet ripping through her side before a mixture of shock and exhaustion set in as she slid to the blood slicked ground; blackness welling behind her gaze and overtaking her frail looking body. And that's where she currently was, slowly coming to aware of two immediate things. A dull ache in her side wrapped in starkly clean white gauze, and the fact that she was comfortable and warm.
Making a soft groaning noise the young woman stirred, forcing herself up on her elbows as the previous night's events came flooding back to her. Xanthippe's breath hitched as she snapped her eyes open, gaze falling on unfamiliar surroundings. Peeling paint, revealing yellowing walls. A simple mattress in the center of a room that might be called a bedroom by New York standards. The sound of traffic and people drifted in through one small grimy window; sounds she hadn't been able to just appreciate in years. She was so lost in staring wondrously around, that she failed to hear the agile footsteps of a person approaching. No, she was too... Euphoric really that she was no longer trapped in her own hell. It wasn't until she turned her gaze towards the bedroom's doorframe did she notice the hulking and impressive figure leaning casually against it. She didn't react much, even from here she could smell the acridness of gun smoke drifting off of him. For a moment the two merely observed each other before she broke the silence with a quiet, "Who are you? What do you want? Are you with the Dogs? Some other gang? Was that you last night? Are you with the Agency?" That last question her voice turned to something further from tepid curiosity, to a vehement fear and anger as her fists clenched around the scratchy, thin blankets she was wrapped in.
March 20th, 2016 at 10:39pm