Bad bloodlines: The culling house (wip title, name suggestions appreciated)

Seventeen years postmortem.

The land of Custernum, formerly the Midwestern United States.

“Each day closer to hell.

Each month closer to the end.

Each year, an eternity.”

-Unknown, written 12 years postmortem.

The games begin soon. The unwanted children of the elite shall cull each other and the winners inherit the combined wealth of the hush money.

Chapter 1:

The walls were spattered with blood; brownish red highlighted by the white marble. The kid's body lay just below the large stain, gutted and still. He had turned sixteen just two weeks ago. Nobody knew how it happened nor did they really care. The tournament had started and a little foul play was expected. It was just above the thinly carpeted stairs that led up to the bedrooms, just below a painting of the first contender, and just started to smell. Among the twenty four kids who remained, there were no leads and no evidence; in fact, they were all equally happy to see him dead; all except one: Dante. He wasn’t against the idea of killing, however the way the kid was killed was the issue. Barbarically torn apart with multiple gashes in the back, he was stabbed dumbfounded in the dead of night then taken apart like a prey animal.

There was no funeral. Nobody knew who the kid was anyway, like most who lived in the mansion. They were all the unwanted bastard children of celebrities and politicians left to compete for their parents' place in society. Nobody actually knew who their father or mother was, and weren’t too keen on meeting them either.

The body was buried in the backyard next to the garden. Dante had buried him. Not even the guards or custodians wanted to touch the body, too gross they said. He had little problem with it (as long as he was wearing gloves). He buried the body next to the garden, leaving a large patch of uprooted flowers and an ugly mound of plantless dirt.

The yard was particularly nice that day. Vines crept on the white lattices, roses grew in neat bushes, and bees buzzed lackadaisically from blooming flower to blooming flower. The grass was a neat half inch in uniform sheets across the large lawn. Dante had left a particularly large quartz rock he found as a headstone for the stranger, then headed off to the pool. The pool was located just fifty feet from the garden. Its water was a clear crystal blue, surrounded by lawn chairs and tables with umbrellas and twelve statues of previous winners of the tournament. He recognized one statue that looked almost exactly like himself, but paid no mind to it. It was a coincidence, he didn’t have a father, in fact the staff had said that he crawled out of hell like the other kids (lie or not it was close enough to the truth some part of him believed it). He enjoyed looking at the pool, though never actually went in. The water stung him, peeled away his flesh like acid. The other kids could go in perfectly fine. A custodian of the mansion had asked him if he was allergic to chlorine, which could have been the truth if it wasn’t for the fact that it left steam and horrendous bubbling sounds when it touched his skin.

His mind crept back to finding the body laying on the floor, seeing its intestines coiled around themselves like a sick garden hose, how the kid's jaw was broken from its hinges and dangled like children’s swing back and forth when he picked the corpse up. Visions of dropping the limp body into the hole in the garden, seeing the eyes move, stare at him, dead into his soul. A dangerous thought came to him, the corpse was alive. There was no way, no way in hell it could still be alive, right? This thought took him from his place at the pool and left him sprinting over to the garden just a few dozen feet away, digging up the loose grave-dirt with his hands. A job that would have taken twenty minutes or more with a shovel only took him five with his hands. A morbid shock ran through him, that somehow the boy he buried was suffocating there, still alive and unable to scream.

There it was, the corpse. Its milky white eyes stared through him once more, then regained a little color. He thought it was his own imagination until he saw the boy's guts slither back into his body like fleshy snakes. Fighting through the impulse to puke, he grabbed the body by its cold, limp wrist and yanked it up, setting it on the neatly cut grass. Soon the skin regained color, its eyes moved, its tongue found its way to moisten its lips. Soon it was breathing, coughing, twitching.

It took nearly three hours for the boy to speak his first words.

“What day is it?” He asked, combing dirt from his charcoal colored hair.

“May twenty third, seventeen post M. You died… three days ago?”

“I died?” He exclaimed, bolting onto his feet.

“Yeah, you don’t remember?”

“I thought it was still the twentieth, maybe they hit my head a little hard trying to kill me?” He replied.

“Do you want to find out who your killer is?” Dante asked, holding an open palm out.

“Yeah, let's do it!” He exclaimed, slapping his hand against Dante’s into a firm handshake.

“Some sinister sense

Creeping, crawling, careening

Maliciously making my mind

Panic pragmatically

Real raw realization

Death dawning diligently down

On original organs

Heart hurting, heating, heaving”

Bolts of pain ruptured through his body, like nails through bone, like acid in veins. Kane had felt this before, premonition. The night was dark and a poem rang through his mind like church bells announcing the return of Christ. His head spun, eyes unfocused until the world looked like an oil painting. Then it happened, the imaginary, unreal, supernatural pain disappeared into real and excruciating wounds. He felt his back fill with what seemed to be a blade, no, fingers. A hand dug into his back and grasped his spine. In one simple motion his vision turned flashing greens, blues and blacks then nothing, then dirt.

The face that stared back at him was nothing but terrifying. Almost paper white and piercing red eyes held in dark sleepless sockets. Its hair was strawberry blonde and hung down silky curtains around its face. Other than the odd coloration, the actual structure was fairly normal, no blemishes could be found other than the dark circles around the eyes. It pulled him from the cold and damp dirt hole he had been in and onto a sharp dry grass. His eyes adjusted to the bright summer sun but his body had a harder time adjusting. His skin felt as though it was on fire, his bones ached and most of all it felt like his guts were crawling with venomous snakes. Eventually the thing told him its name, and how he ended up in a hole. It felt as though there were holes in his memory stolen from him. It took ages for the pain to stop, though there was a tingle in his spine that never went away.

Among the many suspects that Dante could think of, there were no particular leads to who wanted Kane dead. There were too many people living there, among both the contestants and the guards.

Lit up with only dim sunlight through closed shades, the head guard’s office was almost too dim to see. A heavy oak desk sat in front of them and behind it a grizzled old man smoking a cigarette rubbing his forehead. A bottle of Advil was set to the right of his ashtray and there were noticeably many empty bottles of scotch in an old cabinet behind him.

“So you’re looking for someone who murdered you, but you’re here. Now how the hell does that make sense?” He asked, popping open the cap of the Advil and rattling a few pills into his palm.

“You have just as many clues as we do,” Kane replied, wanting so badly to cover his nose with the collar of his shirt. He hated the smell of cigarettes and the head guard had probably the worst smelling ones he had ever experienced. Dante sat behind him in a cushy old chair with his arms crossed.

“Since you’re alive I have no reason to look into your ‘murder’,” the head guard said, making air quotes with his fingers, “so you’re gonna have to look into this yourself.”

Dante kicked the desk, knocking the bottle of Advil over and spilling three dozen pills over the desk and the rest on the floor.

“What the hell do they pay you for then? It’s against the rules of the tournament, it’s your friggin’ job to keep' em in line!” Dante exclaimed, kicking the desk again before standing up and leaning over to stare into the old man's eyes.

“Quit your yelling punk, you’re making my headache worse,” the head guard growled, pulling a snub nose revolver from below his desk and pointing it at Dante.

“Chill, alright.” Dante slinked back to his seat and crossed his arms once again, muttering under his breath. He let his rose gold hair fall over his face as he scowled childishly. Kane cleared his throat.

“Sorry about that, he’s a little…”

“I know,” the headguard interjected, taking a drag of his cigarette right after.

“So, do you have any leads? Anyone we should ask first?” Kane asked, trying not to cough.

“Well there is a vampire girl in room eighty four, she might be of use, seeing as she doesn’t sleep,” the head guard replied.

“Vampires aren’t real.” Dante stated, looking exasperated.

“Tell that to me once you talk to her!” The head guard lost his temper, anyone who implied he was lying usually got beat within an inch of their lives, Dante was lucky. This time.

Kane got all of his coughing out the second they closed the door, the smoke was worth it, they had a lead.

Room eighty four was on the second floor, just next to the almost cleaned up blood splatters. The outside of the door was decorated with old posters of vampire movies. Clippings from Dracula, Nosferatu, and Twilight were pasted like wallpaper over the entirety of the door. Though the Twilight posters were vandalized with red marker.

“I don’t believe it, she just seems like a nerd,” Dante said, with Kane to his left.

“Maybe it’s like… hiding in plain sight? I mean if someone looked like a nerd who was obsessed over vampires, would you assume they looked like one because they were one?” Kane replied.

“Guess not.” Dante looked confused, his eyes shifting back and forth before knocking on the door. No answer. He knocked again harder, ripping one of the poster papers just a bit with his knuckle. There was a soft shuffling behind the door. A small click emanated from the doorway.

“What do you want?” The voice behind the door said, slightly muffled from behind the solid oak barrier between them.

“We want to know who killed my friend here,” Dante replied.

The door opened a crack, then all the way. She stood at five feet, both of the boys having to look considerably downward to see face to face. Her room was dimly lit and littered with vampire movie memorabilia. She wore a black sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the mesh of the shirt she wore underneath. Her hair went no longer than her shoulders and was like oil: black and slightly iridescent. Her skin was about as unnaturally pallid as Dante’s.

“You think I did it then hm?” She asked, unimpressed. Dante scowled at her.

“No. Not exactly.” Kane interjected Dante’s attempt to start an argument.

“Someone spilled the beans on who I am to you and you assumed I was thirsty hm?” She accused.

“No, why would a vampire need to gut him to drink his blood? You think we’re stupid don’t you?” Dante practically yelled.

“Yes. You waltz in here and think I know anything about your boyfriend here being killed just because of what? My teeth? I don’t even drink that often, maybe once a week and that's only a few quarts. I sleep away almost the entire day,” she remarked.

“But vampires don’t sleep.” Dante stated.

“Who told you that?” The vampire looked baffled.

“The head guard,” Kane added.

“Well Mr.Sakazuki is wrong, you two need to stop being so gullible.”

“Now are we going to stop playing games or are we going to work together?” Kane asked, slapping Dante on the back of his head.

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever.” Dante sneered at his friend, but decided it wasn’t worth getting into a fight with the only companion he had at the moment.

“I would like that yes, although I have no reason to help you two. Come into my room, there are a few things I can tell you and a few things I haveto tell you,” she said, standing off to the side now. The boys entered her dark room. As Kane entered he studied what little of the room he could see from the light of the hallway. The lightswitch was covered in a thin layer of dust as well as the lamp, the ceiling fan’s light bulbs, and old-school box television. His suspicion for her rose, why would the room of a vampire who spent all of their time in there without need to go out be so dusty? Especially the things that would be needed for her to see. Though, vampires did hunt by night in traditional media, therefore, he assumed, she could see in the dark. Something was off about her, the way she stared at him, at the things in her room. It was unsettling.

She settled in on her bed, sitting amongst the pillows that formed a mountain near her headboard. It was a gothic canopy bed lined with soft deep red curtains and black lace with a spiderweb design. Dante sat on the edge of it while Kane decided to stand. Dante started to notice for the first time in his life, his palms started to sweat, for the first time in his life his heart raced. There was some sort of danger, he assumed, though he didn’t know what. It could be that he had gotten a bad vibe from the vampire girl, like he couldn’t trust her or that he trusted her too much. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. His hand fidgeted without him knowing they were doing so, Kane noticed this before he had.

“To get it out of the way, I have decided to help you two. Not out of the kindness of my heart but because I’m bored, and that's all. Now since I will be working with you I need to tell you both something. I’m blind. Not figuratively, I’m actually one hundred percent blind. No mistakes about it. I see absolutely nothing,” the girl said, leaving Dante in shock and Kane in disbelief.

“So, you’re blind as a bat?” Dante joked, earning him a stern look by his friend. Kane only sneered at him to stop himself from laughing.

“Correct, blind as blind can be,” she said

“Well… what is the rest of what you can tell us?” Dante asked.

“I can sense smells and sounds much better than the average person, even perceive emotion and the intentions of others. I believe that there is a contestant that is hidden somewhere who killed your friend. None of the others smell as evil as him.”

“You can smell evil?” Kane asked.

“The same way you can walk into a room and sense the general emotion. The human body releases small pheromones and the brain releases chemicals, I have a particular sensitivity to both,” she explained.

The room fell silent for an excruciatingly long time. Awkwardness filled the air so thick Dante could have choked on it. Then finally he spoke.

“You never told us your name,” he stated.

“Carmilla, and you are?”

“I’m Dante and this is Kane.” He pointed to Kane, who was still standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

Dante stared into his full length mirror. His clothes were covered in dirt, his pants more mud than fabric. His closet consisted of almost the exact same outfit which was to his liking, though others assumed he just never took off his clothes. He slipped on a pair of black jeans, a sleeveless camo shirt, and slipped on a black capelet he wore most every day. His closet contained neither shoes nor socks as he refused to wear either. He liked the feeling of the floor beneath him, his senses were fine tuned to feel any vibrations that could mean someone was walking near him; and something was.

Kane, in his own room, changed clothes as well (as was needed after being buried half dead half alive). He settled for a Metallica t-shirt and dress pants paired with black dress shoes. They were soon going to find his killer, though Carmilla wouldn’t allow them in her presence without getting off whatever filthy clothes they were wearing. A chill slithered its way up his spine making his flesh erupt into goosebumps. All of the lights in his room made the same sudden dull popping noise and burned out in organized sequence. His heart thudded against his ribcage. The room was a thick sludge of blackness and Kane could feel something was swimming in it. It felt as though his head was going to explode as raging migraines crawled through his skull like centipedes. Visions of hanging bodies on meathooks flashed through his mind, visions of a man with stitches stretching across his face, visions of a hooded man standing in the corner of his room. Soon his eyes began to throb spouts of pain. His eyes watered, his nose started to leak blood, and his teeth ached. The pressure building inside his body was unnatural. His ribcage began to cave in, the bones in his arms gave way and snapped, his legs which could no longer stand the pressure crumpled and he fell.

Whoever it was in his room he didn’t like it. If it were Kane he would be more forgiving but would definitely give him some choice words. Though his intuition told him it wasn’t Kane. Kane didn’t walk like that, nor did he wear heavy steel toe boots, from what he could tell from the vibrations against the floor. His head swiveled around, his eyes transfixed on everything in his room, looking for any possible intruder. He could feel that someone was in there but couldn’t see. His throat felt dry and his breath hitched with every inhale, but there was a smile on his lips. This was the second time he felt what he thought was ‘nervousness’ but both times he enjoyed the sensation. Pop. One light blew a fuse. Pop. Another. Pop. Pop. Pop. Three more. His room dropped deeper into darkness with each lamp, each light of his ceiling fan, and finally the fuse of the glowing tv on his shelf had popped as well. Drowned in darkness, Dante began to feel around for whoever was messing with him. Obviously they were pranking him, right? I mean if they wanted him dead they would have killed him already, right?

Kanes body contorted back into shape, something that had happened once before when he died. His head was spinning, the room around him although unable to be seen, looked as if it were whirling in a circle. The blackness in his eyes moved somehow, he just knew it. His stomach crawled with felt like thousands of cockroaches which spilled out in a rancid vomit. Gasoline. He smelled gasoline. Not from this room but from the other where Dante slept. It might be the same attacker, he thought, that's why they were after his arms and legs, so he couldn’t stop him from killing Dante. He sprinted towards where he thought the door was and slammed straight into the bathroom door, knocking off his hinges and sending him tumbling down on top of it to the floor. When he got to his feet again, rubbing his newly hurt ribs, he swayed back and forth brushing his shoulder against the wall so as to not lose his way. Where there should have been the door out, his bed was in the way. When he turned the bathroom doorway disappeared and when he went back to where his bed should have been but there was a closet. The room was either shifting or he was, though this didn’t really matter as much to him because he felt as though he was going to vomit again.

Dante’s visions started. The darkness faded away into a field of roses miles long. The sky was a blue Dante had never seen before and the clouds were light and fluffy. A warm breeze waltzed past his skin, swirling through his fingers and around his legs in relaxing vines. Then, wading through the waist high bushes of roses was a flaming human figure. It was wearing his clothes and approaching slowly. His mind fought with itself. It wanted both to run to his flaming self and the other wanted to run away and be rid of the horror. This reluctance made it so he couldn’t move. It felt as though his feet were stuck in wet concrete, unable to be pulled out. His flaming doppelganger increased pace then vanished in a cloud of black smoke. Now he was among a multitude of mirrors, seeing his reflection in all directions. His own face staring back at him, contorted in fear. These reflections burst into flames one by one, the infinite rows of himself slowly igniting in a neat circle making its way closer to him.

Kane did vomit. The vile contents of his stomach spewed from his mouth upward towards where the ceiling should have been. Though he couldn’t tell where exactly was up, down, left, or right anymore. Muffled screaming came from all directions, as if every way he turned was his west wall. It was distinctly Dante’s voice that was from every direction. He knew it for certain.

“Come on coward! Light me up already damn it! Screw off with your little games!” Dante was in another location. This time it was the stage of a play. A gallows was built out of 2x4 and cheap paint, the kind of center prop in a cheap highschool production.

“I’m waiting jackass! Show me where you are so I can beat the ever living-” Then his voice went silent. His heart stopped. Actually stopped. His veins relaxed, his vision greying. Within seconds he was starting to see color again. The stage was on fire, his heart was on fire, and eyes were leaking water. He felt the corners of his mouth stretch into a smile impulsively.

“Come on you dirty bastard!” His voice shook, the tears which only licked his eyes before were streaming down his cheeks like waterfalls. There was no way this was fear, was it? Why did it feel so bad, so good? Why did he want to chase it?

Something struck him in the back over and over and over. The thuds of a boot echoed in the confines of this hell his room had become. Dull pain built up in puddles, occasionally mixed with the sharp piercing pain of skin against broken bone. In bouts of consciousness Kane could make out his surroundings. The lights were on now. Every wall had a door and the floor and the ceiling were walls too. Every time he blinked the doors shifted. His legs screamed at him in pain when he finally had the energy to move to his feet. Being (conceivably) immortal sucked. He thought quickly about his circumstances. Clearly this wasn’t real, that or wasn’t the reality he belonged in. His mind immediately began testing the world around him. Seeing if it followed some general rules of reality, of sense. He tested the walls, which were solid and didn’t allow his hand to pass through nor did they warp around it. He tried the door handles. Most of them were locked. He realized that the doors had stopped shifting. Testing them one by one revealed that only one could open. Whether he wanted it to open or not was another issue. What was behind the door, he could not guess, and that was the terrifying thing. Right now the only thing he craved, the only thing that he could latch onto for safety was logic. His mind and scientific view of the world had brought him only success in living in the God forsaken mansion but in this world of non-rules it seemed useless. His hands and feet were ice cold and were producing enough sweat to drench his socks and make his fingers pruny. The screaming started again, only it seemed less so angry and more the screams of a predator pronouncing its victory over prey.

The joke was on him, he thought. The joke was on both of them. On him and only him and them and only them. Flames can’t burn the soul, but the soul can only handle so much torture. Now was the contest between his flaming self and his flesh self. They were standing across from each other on an empty New York street. No cars, no people, just him and himself.

“You are going to tell me who you are,” Dante stated, not sure the figure could even talk in the first place.“And if I don’t?” It replied in his own voice but missing any tone whatsoever.

“I suppose you don’t have a choice, you body stealing jackass ,” Dante snapped.

“You really should cut back the cuss words, it’s showing you’re scared,” the flaming man jested.

“You know me that well? I don’t even know myself like that.”

“I am you.”

Kane opened the door finally. A painful lump had wormed its way into his throat. His veins sloshed with ice cold blood. Beyond the door was pure darkness. Darkness that defied human perception so as it felt that there was nothing at all, a rip in existence, yet he knew without a doubt that there was something in there, that the darkness was a veil that hid horrors beyond belief. Though it could only be his mind, he had a way of extrapolating things when there wasn’t concrete evidence to stop his mind from racing. He stepped through the door and was hit with wind strong enough to blow a car over. His flesh rippled against the winds as if it were trying to slither off of his bones. His body was tossed against a thin wall which broke underneath his impact. The room he found himself in was a high school auditorium with burn marks among the floorboards and curtains. An electric chair stood in the middle of the stage. It was obviously not a prop, as there were too many real wires and the leather and wood that made up the thing were too high quality for a simple highschool play. A voice in the back of his head told him to sit in it. It told him it was alright to be nervous, that fear should propel him forward instead of holding him back. He recognized the voice, it was the voice of adrenaline, of his hidden desire for quick thinking, of the end of needless worry.

Angered by the words of his flaming other, Dante lunged, hand clenched into a tight fist which he intended to land in the middle of the doppelganger's face. Before the punch could land however, he was yet again in a new place. His room, the dark and now light bulb-less room. Illuminating the area was again the flaming man. Dante’s face straightened into a scowl. His desire to fight was lost, he could never win against an enemy that could just teleport him away. Most of all he stopped wanting to fight out of frustration. He never lost hope, but this was the closest he could get, annoyed.

“Fine, I surrender, now tell me what you want with me,” he said.

“First off, I will not listen to commands. Secondly, ask yourself the questions you seek answers to. After all, I am you.”

“How is that supposed to help? I’m completely lost! What are you?”

“As I said, I am you.”

“Seriously, I’m starting to think that you are just stupid and asking me to tell you what you want to hear.”

“Maybe I am, maybe I’m-” Smack. There was in fact flesh beneath the flames and to no surprise, a nose to break.

“Tell me straight right now! What is your deal!” Dante screamed, spit flying from his mouth.

“I am part of you that you haven’t found yet. Do you wish to experience the freedom of holy suffering? The very antithesis of your biology? Do you too wish to burn?”

“Yeah. Let’s do it.” Dante held his hand out, the flaming man clasped his hand in return, a handshake over a prestigious new deal.

‘Ride the lightning’ was written on a bronze plaque above the head of the chair. Clearly, whoever was doing this to him had a sense of humor. They must have found it so funny to kill him with the name of the album on his shirt. Whatever the case was, Kane was pretty sure that he could not die by now, seeing as he should have died about thirty times in the past couple hours and had been dead at least once, so jokes on them. He sat in the chair, waiting for whatever was going to happen next when he was suddenly on the floor of his bedroom. Standing above him in the dim light of the moon stretching through the window, was the silhouette of a man in a raincoat. In the slight draft of his room, small bits of string floated off the stranger.

“Shhhhh, go back to sleep.” The voice sounded smooth, deep, and contemplative. The teeth behind the strangers lips glowed a dull green like a glow-in-the-dark childrens toy.

“Go back to nightmares, learn about your deepest fears so you may fight the lord Custer without hesitation. He craves the strength you hold. Come now, back to sleep, back to-” His speech was interrupted by the point of a dress shoe going into his crotch. His abdomen’s muscles tensed as he felt a slimy rope of pain go from his testicles to his stomach. He couldn’t tell whether he was going to puke or die. He wished it was the latter.

“I think I learned enough in there,” Kane said, sending another kick into the attackers groin.

A wicked smile graced his lips, he understood now. This was what he didn’t want to know about himself. This power bestowed upon himself from somewhere in his lineage. Normally he wouldn’t trust himself with such power but for the first time in his life he felt calm, like the boredom that he felt constantly through almost every second of his life was gone. In the other room he could hear the gurgled screams of the raincoat man and the remarks Kane just had to get out. He sprinted over to his door, forgetting that his entire body looked like it was on fire, though it wasn’t actually in reality he found out. He swung open the door, breaking it from its hinges and sending it across the room. Kanes door was broken down and the raincoat man was hit with a multitude of splinters, then the glowing orange fist of Dante, sending him through the wall only a few inches short of the window.

“Are you alright?” Dante asked as Kane lay stunned on the ground.“Dante, are you ok?” He replied, naturally concerned that his friend was on fire.

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“You’re on… fire.”

“Oh yeah, the fire is ok,” Dante said.

“I didn’t ask if the fire was ok, I asked if you were.”

“Same thing really. Also I’m pretty sure I killed that guy.”

Dante moved to the window and looked out towards the back lawn where the raincoat man had been thrown. There were bricks, bits of wood, blood, but no body.

“Well, he’s not dead… probably.” Dante shrugged.