Hysteric

Nic sighed and sat down on the bed next to Teric, “what they did to you was cruel. Every bit of it was cruel. Your heart was toyed with, your life was extinguished, your freedom removed, and your memories stolen.”

Teric’s eyes flickered open as Nic gently rested her hand on her head, “Nic?”

Nic stiffened, “I’m afraid so. It’s going to be me for awhile in this body.”

Teric rolled over to peer at her counterpart with those unnatural bright blue eyes, “what happened to me?” She asked.

“You were manipulated, abused, and robbed. That is what happened to you.”

Teric turned her head and redirected her attention off into the distance. “I feel used. I feel like the things I’ve done as a Necrolord conflict with the person I was as a human… life becomes unbearable in my own guilt. Memories have created more pain than what I was ready for.”

Nic sighed, “Some learn to accept it, some of us looked for an escape. Cutter made the Doctor his world to escape from what he was, I made two new people more adept at handling this situation to protect myself. Kira… he would kill, until he found a fantasy to escape into.”

Teric winced, “let me guess, me. I was the fantasy.”

Nic stared at Teric with a pained expression, “yes, yes you were. Overall he tried to be honest with you…”

“He should have warned us… if he really cared about me he should have saved my people.”

“That would not have ended well for him. Kira cannot stand up to Noia, the Doctor, the Father, Phran or Skitz, and certainly not the King himself. He tried to save you, but in your case curiosity got the better of you. You died because you could not stay put. That was no fault of Kira.”

“He should have warned us!” Teric cried out, “he had a right to at least inform me! Didn’t I mean anything to him? He should have known that this is not what I wanted.”

“Ah young love, when the break up comes it always hurts. How I miss the feelings and emotions that come with love, such a human sensation, to be hurt.” Nic mused.

Teric looked over at Nic surprised by her response. A statement made to remember humanity with a voice that had long forgotten what that was. That is when Teric discovered another piece of her memory, another connection could be made within her mind.

“You…” Teric trailed off recognizing Nic from her human memories. Her hair was green then, and she went by the name Julia, or other times Megurine. She was another person who had betrayed her with their silence. Nic wasn’t quiet the personas she had evolved into now, but she stood next to that priest once, next to Fiona preparing the baptismal speech that took the colony apart. She acted like humanity was the only thing that matters, and yet she had more control than she let on and was more than willing to hide the monster within in her. Nic was another liar.

Nic continued her train of thought without notice to the change in Teric’s demeanor, “When we can’t feel physical pain, sometimes even emotional pain is welcome. Go face your fears and see him. He’s what keeps you human you know. Whether it’s hatred or love, it’s something and it’s a human experience.”

Teric grimaced trying to hide her revelation about Nic, “thank you Nic for being the only one who has tried to understand me.”

Teric jumped from the plastic bed and forced herself to embrace the stranger. “Thank you for being a good friend,” Teric whispered into Nic’s ear.

From this point on Teric would need to use caution around this one for she was more than she let on. Nic had held control over this body for more than 24 hours without Phran or Skitz emerging. How far or how long the character ‘Nic’ was allowed to play was a mystery.

Nic pushed Teric back, “I’m not your friend, I’m a mentor. I will educate you as you go along… someone needs to watch over the little monsters here, prevent them from becoming like my counter parts. I want you to be a good person, and if I don’t stand by you then that will never happen. So please, don’t thank me, I’m using you to create a better world.”

“I don’t want to see Kira right now…” Teric muttered with a dazed expression on her face, “I have decided that I want to meet my creator. Trade one emotional pain for the other.”

Nic wearily analyzed her counterpart, “If you think you are ready to see him… I suppose I shall allow you to search for him. He too is around, not entirely sure where, but around. Careful darling, Father Joseph enjoys your company; he sees potential in you as does Noia. It is up to you to hold onto the last of your humanity.”

Teric nodded, “Yeah… I’ve noticed a few of you taking interest in me. Be it human or dead.”

“He also told me that if you should become cold, I am to give this to you…” Nic pulled out a badly beaten up blue coat. There was dried blood crusted at the sides of it and the sleeve was torn away. “He wanted me to tell you he remembers who you are now.”

Teric grabbed the coat; she felt like she was going to cry but held it back. She would not let this priest play any psychological games with her mind. She would stay strong until she could find his weakness. She wrapped it around her body. She would have almost looked darling in it, if the coat had not been so beat out of shape.

“Well then,” Teric’s voice was barely above a whisper, caught in her throat as her memories reminded her of the fear that followed her to death, “How sentimental of him.”

This isn’t going to get any easier, she thought as she walked once more to the direction of the auditorium. The priest seemed to thrive in open areas where people could gather to listen to him. He was an egoist from first impression. The priest wasn’t in the room as she had hoped to find him. He seemed like the kind of guy who loved to talk about himself all the time. Even when he was the only listener.

She walked down to the end of the hall and stepped up onto the stage looking outward at the empty seats. Imagining them filled with people seemed almost impossible for her until her memories aided her pain.

She was never allowed into the meetings with the humans, what on earth would so many people need to listen to? She stepped up to the podium and stared out at the seats again. The listeners could be church goers… perhaps this is how the Father killed her people to start with?

“A good ability to communicate with the masses is the first step to conquering them.” The priest stepped out from behind a curtain off the side of the stage. Teric took a step back away from the podium surprised to see him walking in from her left.

“How are you my dear,” he lifted Teric’s hand and gently kissed it. His façade was seemingly endearing, but it was all a façade. The priest was unique in that he was always acting friendly when he was anything but. Teric recoiled away in disgust drawing her hand back in.

“Don’t be so nervous,” the man said to Teric, “perhaps you too can make this your destiny.” The priest raised his arm out and pointed to the empty seats. “It’s quiet a thing to see these seats filled up with spectators, hanging onto your every word.”

Teric moved farther away from the podium, and began to back away from the creature before her. She could feel her body start to tremble as the man approached her. She was on the verge of panic and laughter was starting to well up within the back of her throat.

“It’s more magnificent as a Necrolord to look out amongst them. Little morsels obeying my every command. It’s a different sight than when I preached as a human. Once they were common followers of god, then they became followers of me. Followers willing to allow me to feed from them. Magnificent, don’t you think?” The father continued his casual rambling in a mild mannered tone.
Teric flinched as he approached her. She would need to respond to him if she wanted him not to come any closer to her, “I wouldn’t know. Taking advantage of them… it’s wrong…”

The priest laughed, “Wrong? How was I wrong? Noia writes to me of your progression, and Kira tells me such things that you have done in the forest. The little human pack you so happily took advantage of?” His smile was unsettling. Only his incisors were fanged, but they were thick and long giving the man an abnormal appearance up close.

“What was done was done because I was led to believe I was something I am not. I am not a monster!” She screeched.

“No, no we’re not monsters,” replied the priest, “we are like any other animal. We do what we must to survive. Sometimes we over indulge, or we can get greedy, but this is no different from the humans or other animals. We kill because we can, we kill because we must eat, and we are not above trickery to achieve this.” His demeanor was relaxed and poised. Teric took another step away from him disturbed by his cool manner.

Teric replied, “I was wrong, I can admit that now that I’ve been given back my memory! Every action I had done before remembering is a sin on you!” She clenched her hands into a trembling fist and gritted her teeth.

“Ah, the little darling is resentful.” The priest reached his arm up, he was now close enough he could reach over and touch her. He brushed her hair past her cheek and exposed the inside of his mouth as it twisted into what might have possible been a grin. It was a normal expression though the smile looked forced aiding to the pain of his complexion. Teric focused in on that mouth of his, she remembered how he had stretched it out, further down below past the jaw line before he latched it onto her ankle. How he bit at her in an attempt to eat her, and now here he stood forcing himself to smile in her presence like everything was now okay.

She giggled stupidly at his cold touch and found herself shivering uncontrollably. She couldn’t control her hysteria.

“Ah, perhaps you are still scared. Good, you should fear me, you should always fear me.” The father sneered and pointed back over to the podium, “Well, don’t let my being here stop you from what you were doing.”

Teric stuttered through her words, “I wa…was just try…trying t-ta-to see what the point was. Heh…heh heh…” The laughter was still weak but not weak enough that the priest didn’t notice it.

“The point?” the father asked, “ah but the point is as simple as it is complex. The point is to enrapture and illuminate the minds of your food; to inspire them and to give them something to hope for. To create dedicated followers who complete your every command. The point is to power over them. This is the point. Step up.”

He grabbed her thin wrist and swung her around back over to the podium.

“Now look out,” he whispered in her ear. Teric’s shivering turned to a trembling and her legs felt weak beneath her.

Father Joseph continued, “what you see right now are empty seats, a pointless vision. Imagine them instead filled with devoted followers cheering for you, calling your name and praising whatever it is that you give to them. Can you imagine this?”

Teric whirled around and shoved the priest back, “Get away from me!” Her voice was growing frantic and mixed with her iconic laughter. A sign that the child might slip into madness if she was pressed too quickly.

Father Joseph took a step back allowing her room to breathe, she would need to calm herself. He discovered that as he looked over the nervous girl he was simply smitten with his newfound protégé. She had come to look so much like him now. Her appearance had changed drastically. Dr. Sado had written down in her files that the metamorphosis was a self defensive mechanism of her death state. A way to ward off the destruction that took her in life by emulating it.

“Come child, perhaps resolution is in order. I know that is what you seek.” The priest gently touched her shoulder and guided her down the stair case.

Teric cringed but followed his lead.

“We all hate our creators at first, but we come to love them when given time. The king found me hiding in my temple making my last prayer to my God before he killed me. He simply struck me, as I did to you, to show my followers how foolish I was. He wanted to make a joke out of me, but then I re-awoke just like him the next day. I tried to fight him thinking that I was now just as powerful as he was, but that was not the case. I was nothing compared to him.

“Instead of leaving me to die he took pity on me, and showed me what it was like in his world. I felt as though he still mocked my religion and my choices as I was forced to live by committing acts my book teaches against, but instead he was priming me, preparing me.

“I ran away, once, like Kira did. I found humans again and tried to live with them. It works until you get hungry. It was my sister, Noia, who brought me back to the salvation of our King. It’s not wise to fight your family when there is so much to learn from them. I learned that the hard way, and I am willing to guide you if you should accept guidance. You rebel, like I did. I see myself in that attitude of yours so I’m apathetic.”

“Interesting,” replied Teric, “that’s a very interesting story. How about I tell you a story regarding my creator. He killed me in front of my colony, forced them to watch me die, then killed everything I loved while I was still conscious enough to see, and finally abandoned me. He didn’t stick around to even bother mocking me like yours did. After that I wind up in the care of his brother, a sadist bent on torture and pain, then his little sister who lied to me on a daily basis so that I may develop like a good little child. Until I wake up from the dream and find you in my presence again.”

She focused on her creator, “so far, I haven’t found a reason to accept Necrolords, and I sure as hell haven’t found a way to accept the monster that made me like you did with your beloved daddy.” Teric’s shaking stopped. She was starting to find confidence in herself. She would need to face him, not fear him. Her human fears were shrinking back from her newfound undead confidence.

The priest responded, “Noted. But you should pretend to like me at the very least. You see I am a master at what I do, and from what I have been told I do it well. You have yet to learn a thing from me, and I have much to teach.”

“You’re a sneak and a liar, what else is there to know?” Teric glared at the priest.

He found this amusing. It was almost as though he was a human for a moment; a human experiencing human problems. Regardless of the humor to the scenario he did feel a connection with this girl. She was the first victim of his not only to stay clear of his traps, but successfully flee from him. She was the snack that got away, and now she was back.

She had smelled so sweet when he first encountered her. A little rebel marked with Kira’s scent standing next to the rebel of the Necrolords. She was naive and innocent. Now she had all her memories back and part of her innocence was degraded. There was a bitterness growing in her and her scent was no longer as appetizing as it had been when she was human. The insides of her body smelled of rot, just like his. She was as dead.

The priest stroked the base of his chin, “you were there the day I arrived then you left, and when you came back it was a few weeks later. Tell me, what were the differences between the two times we encountered one another? And don’t just regale me with tales of my appetite.”

At first Teric did not understand the direction of the question, but then a pull came from him. As Teric relaxed she could feel that pull, she could feel a certain strength emitted from him. Almost as if he really did have something to donate to her. That aided to her comfort and assisted the dismissal of her fears. This revelation brought certain anxieties though. As he approached her again she didn’t recoil or cringe away. She could feel the connection death gave to them. A shared fate and that was a new fear.

Father Joseph watched her move away again turning her attention to the auditorium. He had created her, gave her a new life and a second chance. Kept her from death, how could he not feel obligated?
“When you came, you were just a regular man,” Teric responded, “before you left you were a monster.” She spoke with an unresolved anger. It was the simple answer.

“Cute response, but not the one I wanted. When I came no one paid attention to me at all, but then I talked my way out of that cell, captured the imagination of the people, removed all obstacles, and took complete control. Granted usually I do much worse with my colonies, but seeing as how the king’s blood son had appeared I was forced to move hastily with this particular job. It took me three days my dear, to gain complete trust of all the humans. Three days to turn their armies against them, four days to remove their scavenging crew and turn them, and six days to bring in the King himself and his troops through the front door. I am good at what I do.”

“I am nothing like you,” Teric whispered, “and I will never be like you.”

The Father scoffed, her response was almost darling. “That is not what my Nic has reported. You led your own invasion, did you not? Got cozied up to a pack of wild humans, got them to trust and even adore you. Then Kira gave away your position and you attacked, and from what I understand you did it so well. You resisted your bloodlust to consume, and made a martyr and a victim out of their pack leader. Killing unnecessarily at that point! No longer was the hunt about food, but you made it into a game!”

Teric’s eyes widened. She had killed three times since turning, and all three of those times were because she thought it was okay. Her true morals had been dismissed, and her life lessons removed because the people she was with betrayed her. They tried to mold her into the same monster that they were.

“I did that because I didn’t know better.” Her teeth were grinding in her mouth. She didn’t know if it was the lies she had been fed by the other Necrolords or the lies she told herself. Either way she refused to admit what the priest wanted to hear.

The priest laughed, “Because you didn’t know better? Your decision to get to know the humans was your own! No one else taught you how to do that. Phran is notoriously known for jumping in and wiping them out, a battle beast. You changed the game plan and weakened them from the inside by destroying their defenses and then slammed them right in the heart of their group. This doesn’t sound a thing like me to you? Not at all?”

Teric swallowed, he was right. She had pulled the same stunts he did, a little more untrained and not nearly so graceful, but she repeated the actions he had done to her. Perhaps it was part of her subconscious, that as a monster she was to repeat the actions of the monster that scared her the most. Maybe it was just by chance she had done something so stupid, but whatever the reason she had killed those humans once they had her trust.

“It’s wrong… what I did was wrong!” She admitted.

“Perhaps, maybe. I thought like that too little girl. Remember I am a holy man. Everything I was taught contradicted what I did. I found myself in terrible pain. It was our king who pointed it out to me, I died when I was a human, and I awoke a better zombie. Zombies have no morals or conflicts, they just do what they must to survive… and when you think about it, so do humans. Humans betray one another so easily to get what they want, leaving behind their brothers and sisters. We Necrolords must stick together, and defend one another to show that we are better than them. That what we are doing is only killing off a small pest. We survive on them, but never should we have to feel bad for killing them. We are better than them.”

Teric replied, “so that’s how you fought your insanity… you gave right into it. You’ve got a God-complex; you’re narcissistic, and greedy. You gave into the sin you feared so much Father…”
He said, “What humans define as a sin is trivial to me. You yourself, how can you bear to live when after you reflect upon what you’ve done. You can’t be both a monster and a human. You’re not human Teric, you are like me.”

The priest stood up not surprised to find that her rebellion remained unchanged. She was a rebellious human, it was no surprise she was a rebellious Necrolord.

Teric grimaced. How could she still act like a human when she’s eaten them. How could she call herself a sympathizer when she had no sympathy while she slaughtered them. She wanted to cry, but at the moment her emotions were at a standstill. Luckily nothing came of it. She just stared off into the distance blankly, deep in her own thought process. The priest had made his point.

“My human name was Joseph Anderton, I later became Father Anderton. Nic still calls me by that name, Father Anderton. You shall be allowed to use it as well, Arisa. I never liked how Noia felt the need to re-name our people. It helps remove the connection to your… past life I suppose, but not much else. You were Arisa, the little girl who thought she could take me on. You are still Arisa, the little girl who is currently plotting to find away to get rid of me. Not until you come to copes with the situation you are in will you truly be Teric.”

The father examined his new daughter; he’d have to get creative to work with such a stubborn person, but at least he looked at her through new eyes. He was flattered to have such a stubborn disciple; she would be the perfect challenge for him.

“I’ll leave you be Arisa, I’m sure you’ll want to explore again. You’ll find this place hasn’t changed all that much, and the people you knew are still around… well, a few of them.”

Teric looked out over the empty room in time to see Nic wander in with a brand new disaster. With ill timing as her companion, Nic led Kira close behind her.