Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!! AHhh well I am finally here to review this peace. I was worried I wouldn't make it around to this before you posted the next one but here we are...let's begin then.
First Impression: Ahhh this was a really powerful piece here. Its so different to your earlier and yet it hits about the same in the sheer amount of terror that it manages to spread here and this time instead of it being a random unsuspecting victim to see a righteous anger and hatred tear this person apart gives the whole thing a different flavor and I truly believe you bring across exactly who was the real monster all along.
Anyway let's get right to it,
I am perfectly aware that Richard’s story may be a little distressing. I don’t apologize for sharing it, for you mortals are very motivated by what you find distressing, but I do express my sympathy for your anxiety. But, I hope that any anxiety or stress you felt will lead you to run away from any strange red frog men that try to tell you the capital of California is Los Angeles because the yara-ma-yha-who is kind enough to give you a warning.
Some monsters, however, aren’t. Not all monsters are born of contradictions and trickery. Some are born in the moments when humanity just snaps, and all that’s left is jagged edges and pain.
Well this seems like a pretty dangerous start there. The narrator being ever so calm and almost professional in a matter sounds like we're definitely about to be spotting something a little more dangerous than the last two, or at the very least a story more saddening and well all the trigger warnings and things definitely support that idea.
Such is the story of Lucille Ebony. She was young, a mere twenty years old when she married for the first time. His name was Jackson Ebony, and he was tall, handsome, and had a sweet smile. He thanked the waitress for the meal and called his mother every weekend. Lucille had every reason to believe that he was a prince charming, a perfect angel.
But she forgot that Lucifer was God’s favorite angel, as the story goes. She forgot that perfect is nearly always hiding something twisted and awful.
Okayy this is a fun little setup that we're starting to see from the looks of it. You can very easily see the start of a picture perfect love there that seems ever so slightly too perfect for it to be true. Its pretty easy to spot where that's going.
They had been married for three months the first time he hit her. His fist landed right on her cheek like a kiss is meant to. A bruised bloomed overnight like a blush. It was a corrupted copy of love, but Jackson promised never to do it again. And Lucille believed him.
And she believed him the second time.
And the third time.
The forty-first.
The three hundred sixteenth.
Ooooh I love that little progression. You can just see how it starts as one singular issue that then simply just spreads and spreads until it has ended up almost a habit and somehow it seems those apologies are still being somewhat believed there. We do definitely get an idea of some strong tension building up there though.
Eventually, it became obvious that she just wanted to believe him. She just needed the words to be true, despite the fact that he made sure they never would be. It’s such a sad thing, really. You mortals depend on your hope to survive, but sometimes it’s the very thing that kills you.
Well unfortunately the narrator is a little too true there in their evaluation of just how mortals tend to work in that particular sense. It looks like the tension sure is building here with this hope giving way to nothing from the looks of it.
Lucille found out she was pregnant when she was twenty-one, barely old enough to drink alcohol in her state of Louisiana. Jackson was excited to be a father, and Lucille daydreamed of holding an infant in her arms. Of having a child running through the hallways. Of having a teenager ignore her and call her names, only to hug her at the end of the day. She dreamed of hosting life in her home. Lucille dreamed of being a mother.
What a shame, really. That she’s here instead of in that dream, she’s in this book instead of in a child’s life.
Because while Jackson was excited to be a father, he never acted fit to be one. And one day, during an attack he promised a thousand times would never happen, he hit Lucille’s head just right that it smashed into the wall. Her blood splatted across the paint. Her body crumpled to the floor. Jackson tried to catch her, but his violent hands had already stained Lucille too much. Her heart pittered to a stop. Mother and child died in one final breath. And Jackson was left with the wreckage.
Welp that happened a lot faster than I thought which is creating a terrifying effect because we realize quite how much is left to happen then to Lucille in the times to come. This is quite the powerful moment too already with Jackson snapping and ending Lucille's life. As tragic of a moment as it is, you can sense how much more there is to the story by quite how fast paced that section is. It just hits you over the head out of nowhere and you know things are very much about to go down.
And that could’ve been the end. Jackson could have gone to prison for being human, but a wretched one and Lucille would be ushered by Death. Maybe she could raise a child in Death’s domain.
But this was a snap moment. And the only things that truly died that day were Lucille’s child and her humanity. When Death came to collect Lucille’s soul, there was nothing there.
Lucille had shed her death. She became a Pontianak.
Love the lines here. There's something very chilling to the way that you construct those lines there and especially the way that you mention that Lucille's child and humanity were the ones to die. It looks like things are gearing up for a truly terrifying creation born out of sadness and hatred here.
Gone was the hope for something better, for Jackson to finally keep his promise of never again. Never again meant nothing when Lucille would never breathe again, when Lucille would never feel whole again, when Lucille would never dream again.
So, she wandered Earth aimlessly for some time. All she knew was that she felt torn to pieces. She didn’t have a place to go. The Earth wasn’t built for the dead. A Pontianak has no place in the world.
That was until she heard a story on the wind. A story of a man named Jackson Ebony who was convicted of manslaughter and took a plea bargain. A story about how he served three years in prison and was released on good behavior. And it’s stories like that that give a Pontianak their purpose.
Love the really chilling tone continuing to persist on this one. There's a melancholy sort of continuous strife permeating this. Its a stark contrast to having an obvious crush on Death or the hilarity of the yara-mara-yha-who and it seems almost like a story so sad and so powerful the narrator has to respect it in a way they don't normally do.
You see, Jackson had picked up alcohol as a hobby since his in prison. So, his counters, his three-and-a-half-legged coffee table, and large chunks of his floors were covered in bottles and cans. Some would say it was the grief going to his head; he had lost his wife, after all. Some would say it was the guilt; he had killed her, after all. I say that it was because Jackson Ebony had always been an absolute bullet train wreck of a human, and he didn’t know he was if he wasn’t falling apart.
When Lucille drifted into his apartment, the first thing she stumbled into was a crooked line of beer bottles on the floor. They were all empty, and each one played its part in making the stench of the room unbearable that Lucille’s long-dead senses flared to life in offense. She looked around, spotting the signs of a morally decayed man, and set her jaw. Tonight, he couldn’t hurt her.
Welp it looks like this is the part where despite all the factors pointing to Jackson as someone who perhaps deserves what is headed his way we can't really help but feel ever so slightly sorry for him. A rather powerful entity born of some of the strongest emotions seems quite intent on rightfully destroying him.
She leaned over Jackson’s face, her misty grey form flickering, and whispered a single phrase. “Wake up.”
Jackson startled awake as if he had just had the worst nightmare of his life. He snorted, sitting up in a flash. “Huh? Who’s there?”
Lucille floated away slightly, her feet hovering an inch above his soiled carpet. Jackson turned to her, suddenly turning ghostly pale. “Lucy! Lucy, baby. Oh my god.”
Lucille shook her head. “No.” Her voice echoed, flowing from her lips before repeating back to itself like a ripple.
Jackson blinked. “No?”
Wow that is someone who is either very drunk or very dense, probably both I am going to safely assume. The way that he just goes ahead and calls her by her pet name and tries to act like everything is perfectly alright just kind of ends up dooming him there to have no one feel all that much sympathy for him.
Lucille growled and raised her hand, lifting Jackson along with it. Jackson choked on nothing at all, suspended by nothing but Lucille’s anger.
“Forget that name, Mr. Ebony. That name belonged to a human that died a long time ago.”
Jackson’s breath was barely a wheeze by the time Lucille dropped him. “What…?” He coughed, his voice dry and raspy. “What do I call you then?”
“Call me what you left behind when you stole everything else.” Lucille only glowed brighter. “Pontianak.”
Jackson blinked. “Pontianak? I don’t understand. You’re just a ghost.”
Well it looks like the Potianak is definitely a rather powerful entity there if she can just do that to Jackson here. I also just love the cold efficient way it seem Lucille is going to go about this, humanity truly has completely been forsaken here.
Lucille lowered her hand again. “Lucy was not the mistake, no.” She pointed at Jackson. “You always were.”
Jackson spluttered. “What?”
Lucille swayed slightly in the air. “You heard me.”
Jackson looked around his apartment as if his walls would start spelling reassurances that she was wrong. If anything, I’d say his apartment only held evidence that Lucille was right, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I am not a mistake.”
Lucille hummed. “Humans are what they put into the world. You are human, aren’t you?”
Oh I am loving the way this is coming along here. The systematic breakdown of Jackson and everything he holds dear and this little explanation that's making it increasingly clear that the Pontianak is simply this embodiment of vengeance and sadness but not anything like the actual person.
Lucille shrugged. “Still a bad argument. Marrying a woman you despised so much that you killed her and every dream she ever had for her life was your biggest mistake.”
Jackson blanched. “I loved you. I mean, I loved Lucille. She was the greatest part of me.”
“Does a dying man terminate his healthy arm or his festering leg, Mr. Ebony?”
Jackson shook his head. “What does that even mean?”
“Do you remove the parts of you that sustain you or kill you?” Lucille hovered closer to Jackson, making him press himself into his filthy couch. “Why else would you kill Lucille except that her being so much better than you were slowly unraveling everything you made yourself to be? You lashed out because she demanded that you learn to be better, and you took that as a death sentence. You don’t know who you are if not selfish and unkind and the worst a man could possibly be.”
Oh this is really ruthless and efficient here. Something about how very direct and clear these explanations are, almost like a judge giving out a sentence creates an entirely different chilling effect in this one, much different to what we saw in the previous piece but no less powerful.
Jackson frowned. “I… I was her family.”
Lucille paused before she laughed. And laughed. And kept laughing. Soon, her laughter rang through the entire apartment, bouncing off every wall and echoing through every corner. It seemed to drown out every sound that ever was, ever will be.
Jackson covered his ears, but he could still hear it loud and clear. His heart beat in tandem with it, and it made him sick.
Finally, after what seemed like years, Lucille fell silent all at once. “No, Mr. Ebony. You were her prison. Her captor. Her killer. You wouldn’t know what a family was if it smashed your skull in just like you did with Lucille.”
Oh the utter certainly with which this is simply uttered is really generating the chills here and we've hardly seen the Pontianak actually go ahead and do some sort of attack here, well more so than the general verbal and mental attack happening at the moment.
“I mean that you hated facts until you could twist them in your favor when Lucille was alive, and you feel the same way long after she’s dead. Grief didn’t change you. Alleged guilt didn’t change you. Prison didn’t change you.” Lucille hovered closer to Jackson again, thrumming with dark energy, the kind that can only be described as steam rising from blood-boiling anger. “But I can.”
Jackson fell back onto the couch, cowering before Lucille the Pontianak. “I don’t need to be changed.” His voice didn’t sound very confident. In fact, he sounded rather terrified, if I do say so myself, like a toddler mistaking a pair of socks for the face of a monster. But Jackson was much more stupid than a toddler, and Lucille much more threatening than even the itchiest pair of mystery socks. Even Jackson comprehended the latter.
Lucille sighed. “They all say that. Lucille heard that lie a million times from you. ‘Oh, I will change, Lucy.’ to ‘Oh, I don’t need to change, Lucy.’ That’s the kind of thing that fractures humanity.”
Well it seem Jackson has truly realized his fate here. Having tried to argue his way out and do something to save himself it seems Jackson has finally realized he holds no power or sway over the entity here and he is at her mercy.
“I deserve an explanation!” Jackson’s voice was shrill now, seeming more like a tea kettle blowing into a whistle than an authoritative demand. “You burst into my house and accused me of awful things! And now you’re over here saying that you’re going to change me?”
Lucille scowled. “Do. Not. Talk to me. About what is deserved.” Lucille lifted her hands again, Jackson choking on her anger, on the Pontianak’s essence. He clawed at his throat uselessly as if any amount of flailing could break the grip of his sins. “If you got what you deserved, you would’ve died in prison. Not because of a life sentence, but because your fellow inmates would’ve stolen guns just to shoot you so many times, the only sign you died there would be a red haze!”
Jackson wheezed, his face blood red. His hands fell limp by his side.
Well here it begins, it looks like Jackson won't be doing much more talking in the times to come, we are running ourselves straight into the part where the Pontianak does its work and lets the hate and the fear it controls destroy Jackson here. He never stood a chance anway but this moment feels like the final nail in that coffin.
Lucille pushed him flat on his back on the couch. “In the name of retribution, I seal Jackson Benjamin Ebony’s life to his heart. Until the last valve is eaten, he shall not die. Even in fire and brimstone, blizzard and ice.” She laid her hand flat on his chest, pushing through his skin and gripping his heart. “He is unbound by mortal laws and now becomes the property of his crimes.”
Jackson whimpered around his bruising throat. “Wha…?”
Lucille, no. The Pontianak, now fully emerged, tugged at his heart until it gave, ripping out of his chest with a sharp rip. She held Jackson’s heart in her hands. It kept beating as if nothing had changed, and hearts were supposed to sit in the palm of someone’s hand.
Welp here we go. The Pontianak certainly doesn't mince any words or spend any time beating around the bush when it comes to swift and decisive action there. This is certainly coming to a head and its doing so incredibly fast and powerfully. It looks also like by tying this life to a heart kept out of the body Jackson is about to be tortured to death and back for a long, long time here.
For those of you reading this who are in danger of finding yourself in Jackson’s position, yes, it was bad. The Pontianak had cast a spell on Jackson, making him immortal until she ate his heart. Which might not seem like a terrible deal to some of you, but wait. It gets worse.
Well yup I think none of us are going to expect this to be a picnic right here with the way that Pontianak phrased that. As much as it sounds like any form of immortality would be nice, this is an eternity of just torture.
“I was selfish and evil, and nothing I did was ever your fault.”
“Go on.”
Jackson swallowed. “I should’ve left you. I should’ve packed my bags and left a long time ago.”
“Yes, you should have.”
Jackson shrugged. “But I just loved you too much. For that-”
“Stop.”
Jackson blinked. He was apologizing. Wasn’t that enough for the Lucy trapped in the demon’s skin?
“You didn’t love Lucille.”
Oh well that's a powerful moment there. It looks like a last desperate and rather false attempt at taking some sort last stand and trying to save himself but Jackson really is only digging himself a deeper grave by trying to talk his way out of it even in this moment.
Lucille had known that when she was alive, not that Jackson could fathom that. He had hurt Lucille in that way, breaking down everything that she was. Hadn’t the Pontianak told him a thousand times already? Why was Jackson so shallow and stupid to realize? Was his brain so watered-down and useless that it couldn’t be seen with a microscope? Mortals like him sicken me. The natural ups and downs of life already hurt humans so much, so often. Why do you have to join the fray of pain? Wasn’t death painful enough when it was natural? Wasn’t grief vitriol enough when it was unavoidable?
I will never understand you, humans.
Well that's a powerful comment from our narrator here. While we see the absolute terror that Jackson is being subjected to we can see how this is all something of his own making, right down to the last moment when he was faced with Pontianak's punishment and he even tries to weasel out of that.
Jackson reached up weakly to cover his ears. The sounds… those moist, squelching sounds of tearing flesh rattled to his core. He could smell the blood and the sour smell of stomach acid. He didn’t know smells could be so disgusting, so violating. What had he done to deserve this? No one deserved a fate like this.
You're really nailing it on those descriptions there. The sheer detail of it all serves to convey such a strong image there. Its really visceral and it hides nothing, sparing nothing at all and we can see just the pure shock and pain that Jackson is having to undergo here.
The Pontianak shook her head. “This will help make up for that.” She turned his stomach upside down, splashing the acid across his face. He screamed again, writhing in pain as the acid burned. What had the Pontianak done to his stomach to make the contents hurt so much?
I rolled my eyes at that thought. I really hope I don’t have to explain here.
Well the Pontianak retaliating specifically there with each of these parts she consumes and the tortures she subjects Jackson too is really powerful too. Ever act feels not like single minded violence by a tortured entity but a decisive and necessary action for Jackson to feel the pain he caused Lucille.
Well, humans, that’s now how a Pontianak’s hunger worked. There was no stomach to fill, only a deep void where their humanity had been stolen. A black hole of anger. A vacuum of grief. You can’t satisfy something like that. And each bite of flesh, each sip of blood, only disintegrated under the weight of the Pontianak’s desire. Only Jackson’s painful death would last.
That seems to be pretty much par for the course there. Its kind of funny how in the case of the yara-mara-yha-who the creature was so whimsical the way it operated snuck up on all of us but the Pontianak is so simple in her rage that we can easily guess these explanation long before they come (not that it makes this any less terrifying).
Jackson could’ve sobbed with relief. It was ending. This torturous Hell was ending. He would die, and Death would balk at how unfairly he was treated, so he could have a good afterlife. He would forget the bite of this pain. This demon would one day be punished.
The Pontianak tore apart Jackson’s heart, tearing along the lines between openings until she had four parts. Each rip was like being shot point-blank in the thigh. Jackson still didn’t die.
The Pontianak set the smallest piece aside on her leg and put the other three on the table. “I hope you’re ready for the grand finale.” She put the smallest piece in her mouth and bit down.
Welp it looks like after that single minded display the Pontianak is going to really drag out the very last bit here and make a complete spectacle out of the last of this torture. Jackson already begging for his death is going to take some time to get to it from the looks of it and this part is going to heart a lot more I feel.
The next wave of pain was even worse as it shot through like scorching lava, setting everything in its wake aflame. Jackson burned as the Pontianak chewed slowly, thoughtfully even. She loved hearing his breaths come out in blood-splattered wheezes. She loved watching his limbs go entirely rigid, shaking under the weight of paint that made his consciousness melt. She loved knowing that he wanted to die, but wouldn’t, couldn’t until she let him.
The pain there really hits home. Its quite plain to see how while this pain may feel disproportionate to the physical pain Jackson causes it perhaps is less powerful than the mental torture he subjected pure Lucille to. As much as the Pontianak is a terrifying creature you can't help but side with her in this moment.
By the time The Pontianak swallowed, Jackson should’ve died from asphyxiation. But, instead, he gasped for breath again, his face an impressive shade of blue. I kind of liked it on him. It was suiting, at least.
The Pontianak grabbed the last piece, the biggest one. It kept pounding in her hand, even without the rest of the heart to sustain it. It was almost pathetic, really, how it struggled against the laws of nature only to be soon devoured by the very thing preserving it.
Well this is a lovely little medley here to have the narrator join in to the action to enhance this scene and to add quite how much even a being such as that cheers for Jackson's deserved death here.
Jackson doubted that. He never did anything this terrible to Lucy. He was good to Lucy. She loved him, and he loved her. If Lucille died because she couldn’t take a punch, then that was her problem! What was he supposed to do about it? The nerve of this Pontianak to burst into his house and act like he was some rotten killer just like the jury did was sickening. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t-!
The Pontianak slammed the piece into the table so hard the faux wood shattered. “This how it felt when you killed her ability to dream!”
Jackson choked on the pain, spasming again in a pool of his blood.
“This is the pain she felt when you, Jackson Ebony, killed her child!” She tore the piece in half with her teeth, chewing viciously on the piece in her mouth.
Well here comes the final act and you can truly see how even this complete horror couldn't ever fully match the level of pain that Jackson caused in the moment. The pain that was so powerful as to create this entity born entirely out of it.
She was used to the way he would slap her, palm biting into cheek. She was used to the way his hand would move down to her neck as he lifted her just slightly into the air.
She was not used to how he slammed her backward into the wall. Once for a cry of pain. Twice for a wave of dizziness. Thrice for a sickening crunch and a body gone limp.
Jackson was dying on his blood-soaked couch. One swallow to teach him. Two for punishment. Three for vegenace. And four for death.
Love this little section here. One final powerful reminder to us of exactly what it was that Jackson did and what his punishment for it shall be. Its a lovely detail to toss in at the end of this.
As the Pontianak swallowed, Jackson’s vision started to blacken. His phantom wheezes slowed until they came to a painful stop. His hands fell limp by his side. He died in the middle of the most ruinous bout of pain. Right before he completely faded, he spotted Death in the corner. Death looked like Death always did when picking up the soul of a wretched beast: nothing but smoke in the shape of a vague creature, one glowing red eye on each palm. Jackson felt no ease in slipping away, but that is Death’s story. The Pontianak did not follow him into death.
Oooh I love Death's form here. Love the little connection back to the first story too in which we see Death in a different form for a different soul that deserves an entirely different kind of journey to the afterlife.
A tear made its way down her translucent face. It was a peek of Lucille, of the woman that created this Pontianak. She could rest in peace, no longer kept captive by the man who stole everything from her.
AHHHHH this is such a beautiful detail here. Right after all the blood and the just pure unfiltered violence to see the final moment of clarity of this satisfaction should through just the one single tear as the Pontianak's duty is fulfilled is an incredible powerful moment there. Its the perfect ending to this tale.
And that is the story of a cruel, pain-seeking monster’s reign, reveling in pain, torture, and bloodshed, justifying its actions with a cruel sneer and thousands of twisted reasons. And, of course, the Pontianak who finally brought him to justice.
Love this ending here. It paints this rather beautifully I think and its honestly the fitting way to showcase the real monster for exactly who he happened to be this entire time.
Aaaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Overall, this is really a tale and a half right here. That's honestly all I have left to say. Its so powerful and at each moment you make sure we're right with the Pontianak feeling her sorrow and the rage it causes and the way Jackson just continues to prove he's the monster all along as we power our way through a righteous revenge. Its a beautiful tale here. For something so unabashedly violent and bloody, there's a certain tenderness at the end too and I think that comes down to how much you manage to make us invested in Lucille and her suffering in what is a relatively short span of time.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
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