Christopher Mortem-Through the relics lies a disturbed soul

*This story is underneath my folder titled “Christopher + Morgan’s conjoined bond”. Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33”. Enjoy!*

Christopher Mortem watched from the open door, biting down his bottom lip to stop himself from screaming.

Father liked to make different inventions. He thought that if he could try hard enough, he would be able to make something brand new, that would be a “big help” to the world, as father always said.

But everyone kept dying to his inventions. Christopher would watch it far away, and then father would find out that Christopher was there all along far too late.

Christopher felt the bile rise inside of him whenever he saw people die to father’s inventions, but never before had tears bubbled up into his eyes until that very moment.

Until he was in the basement, watching mother eat the meal that killed the little boy a few days earlier, the one that was supposed to make him “stronger”.

Froth was pooling from mother’s mouth, her eyes went wide, she was…shaking? Was she going to throw up? Was-

“Mother!” Christopher cried out, running towards her.

Mother didn’t see him. Mother kept shaking, the froth kept coming out…

And then she didn’t make a single noise.

……………………………………………………

Father, if Christopher could even call him that, never admitted to him what really happened.

Father said that it was a mistake, that the food wasn’t supposed to be poisoned, but then, he never fixed his inventions. He never seemed to believe that he could fail, because he always wrote mother’s death as “an accident”.

An accident? So what? Father still gave mother the meal. Father still wanted to “prefect his inventions”. Father still turned their whole mansion into an all-boys school and a place where he could make inventions.

Father said that it was because he was “good”, but what goodness was there? Father wanted an audience for his inventions. He loved to invent.

As Christopher sat on the window seat in his room, he thought of mother’s body, shaking in that chair, as though her bones would burst out of her skin in any second. Of how her eyes went wide, of how her mouth opened in such a way that suggested she wanted to scream but couldn’t.

He clenched and unclenched his fist, looking out at the dry, decaying autumn backyard. The leaves weren’t soft browns and reds, but aged-out black, like the exterior walls of their bricked mansion that had succumbed to mold.

Twenty-six years old, and Christopher still didn’t find a way out. Father said that he was going to give Christopher money, but there was “never enough”. Christopher himself tried to leave, but there were inventions that always caught him. That always stopped him.

But then, could Christopher endure another moment of having his mouth shoved with drinks and food that would peel his skin, being strapped in chairs that nearly swallowed him whole, and being told that “the wounds would heal anyway”.

Christopher looked down at his hand that kept clenching and unclenching, the only thing he could do for anything at the moment. His hand, which had faint scars criss-crossing his skin, etched lines engraved in flesh, lines that looked like wrinkles on his young skin.

Maybe he could get out when father wasn’t looking.

Christopher opened his window up. If he jumped out quick enough, he could find a place to stay. He could run away for a better life. He could-

“I did it! I MADE INSTANT INTELLIGENCE!” Father cried out, opening the door.

Christopher flinched a bit from father’s booming voice, but still, he-

He never made the jump. One of the many traps that father had built, a rusted metal claw, had snatched Christopher up, dragging him deep to the basement, right where mother had met her fate.

Why did father make all of those traps? Was it to keep Christopher in?

……………………………………………………

“Behold: Instant Intelligence! One sip of this and you’ll get all of the intelligence in the world!” Father exclaimed, holding up a bottle of oddly-colored liquid.

Christopher wriggled in the iron chair that kept him bound inside. He could tell from its build that it was once a soft chair that was stripped of its cloth.

Christopher didn’t recall what happened after the claw snatched him away, for he had opened his eyes to a classroom of kids and the teacher, Ms. Alaine, watching him sympathetically.

Father was walking towards him, holding the thing that he said was for “people with no arms and no strength, it was better for them to use when eating”. Christopher only saw the small, silver-metal pitchfork object once, when he was ten, in the basement. Father told him that he was saving it for the “people with no arms and no strength”.

Christopher bit his lips together, trying to keep them firmly shut. Father kept inching the tool closer…closer…maybe Christopher could stomp on his foot…something…anything…

The tool grazed his lips, leaving a trail of blood and a bolt of pain, leading Christopher to scream-

And then the thing was in his mouth, keeping it wide open.

Even as an adult, he was still trapped. Even as an adult, father still had the power over him. Even as an adult, father still poured the liquid in his mouth.

Instant intelligence. Is that what it was supposed to do? Make him smarter? His whole life, he knew what father was. His whole life, he was trapped in the mansion. His whole life, and he couldn’t even save himself. What would the younger boys think? What would his younger self think? Were the boys brimming with excitement or terror? Did they want to scream out of delight or disturbance?

Christopher felt his nails begin to grow, morph, twist, contort, as though his bones were being stretched away from his skin. Two of his front teeth felt like they were piercing his tongue, trying to grow away from him, like the mold on the exterior walls of the Mortem mansion, and his back…oh God, his back…

Like his spine was on fire.

Why was Ms. Alaine getting the boys to run away with her? Why was father…trembling? Sure, father may have not spoken to Christopher a few days after the mistakes in the invention, yet father’s eyes were so big, so terrified, so full of fright, as though they would jump out of his skull and bloom into poisonous plants on the ground.

Christopher would have smiled at such a sight, if not for the burning sensation on his spine. He felt the iron bindings go limp on his skin, as though they were made of nothing but fabrics the whole time.

There was one thought, and one thought that danced and twirled in his mind:

Vampire Vampire Vampire Vampire VAMPIRE you are a vampire you can feel it inside you the blood that flows in everyone the blood that you should drink the blood is yours you are a VAMPIRE you will bite into their organs because blood is not enough, it will never be enough, you are an ANGEL your wings will give you strength you will thrive getupgetupgetgetupGETUP

Christopher stood up from the chair, black, feathery swooping around him. The voice in his head sounded distorted, like it was coming from a person that was drowning in a lake, but there was a human quality to it. A gentle, musical tone that made him think of roses on a Spring day and a full, pale moon on a cool, crisp night.

His mother.

Christopher stood above father, savoring in his quavering, wavering state, his begging eyes, how he did not want to meet his fate.

Was that how father’s victims looked before he experimented on them? The people who didn’t ask to die? The people who did not know how much their bones would be torn from the inside out? The little boy he poisoned?

“You treated me as though I had no thoughts, as though I was nothing more than a being to be fed…well, look at me now. I’m nothing but a being that wants to eat.” Christopher seethed, his voice corroded with corpse corruption.

It had been awhile since he truly heard himself speak. Sometimes when he was little. Most of the time, father told him to “shush!” and no words would come out. After a while, he had nothing to say to father.

Yet in that moment, when Christopher had dug his claws into father’s flesh, relished in his screams, and tasted his blood, he felt it in his soul (or whatever fragments of it were left, anyway) that he had found his voice. That he had found a way out.

No longer was he a victim, but a vampire. A being that could take all the blood and organs he wanted, and nobody could stop him. Nobody could match to his strength that rang with the child part of him crying for freedom and the adult part of him raging for blood.

He was not only a vampire, but an angel.