I'm Your Villain
13 Feb 2019Today’s prompt: “Write a short story in which you are the villain.”
You twist the base of your tube of Cherries in the Snow. Lipstick always works best for this part of the job. Your first inclination, of course, was to carve the sign with a knife or a scalpel, but it’s surprisingly hard to get a good, controlled line that way, especially a proper curve. You’ve tried blood, of course, and paint, but both were always too runny or too difficult to fix if you made a mistake. Oil pastels just didn’t spread very well. It makes sense if you think about it. What better way to draw the Yellow Sign on the torso of your victims than to use something designed to make a mark on human skin?
You draw the topmost curve with a practiced hand. Your canvas tonight, one Seth Andrews, is dosed with a tranquilizer, his hands tied behind his back, but he’s starting to come around. “Whaazzzaa,” he said. “Whaaarryouu doooonnn….”
“We,” you say, making a deft stroke down and to the left, “are getting you all pretty for Hastur.”
“Haaaztuuurrrr?” Seth asks.
“The King in Yellow,” you reply.
“Whoooozzzzaaaa?” Seth asks.
“Who is the King in Yellow? How to explain … what Renoir does with paint, Hastur does with madness. It’s his everlasting life’s work – madness, death and destruction, with a heavy emphasis on the madness.
“I’ve been working on finding a vessel for him,” you continue, your hand arcing across the lower right section of Seth’s bare chest in a loose swirl. “But it hasn’t worked. They’ve all gone mad, but – not the right kind of mad, you understand? Not ‘inhabitable mad.’ I’ve had to kill a lot of people trying to find the right one for my king to occupy.”
“Whyyyyyyyy,” Seth asks.
You’re almost taken aback by the question, it’s so obvious. “He is my king,” you say.
Seth tries to shake his head. It wobbles.
“No,” he says. “Whyyyyyyy killlll.”
“Well, I used to just drop the crazies off in the middle of nowhere. Let them cause some chaos. But some of them eventually found their way back here, and I can’t have that. Can’t have anyone drawing attention to what I’m doing before I’ve found my king his vessel.” You punctuate the thought by drawing a dot where the three lines join in the center.
A grin spreads crazily across Seth’s face. You put the cap on the lipstick, pause and watch him.
“Haaaztuurrrr says I’ll dooooo,” Seth says.
You look in Seth’s eyes. There’s no question. There’s madness there, but also – an entity. One you’ve waited for a long time.
“My king,” you bow your head. You bustle about the room. You grab a knife, its wooden handle stained with the blood of previous victims, and sever the ropes binding Hastur. You pick up a tattered yellow robe lying across a chair and a blank white mask hanging from the chair back. You hand the mask to Hastur and reverently wrap the robe around him, feeling for all the world like an attendant to royalty.
“Myyyy goood and faaaiithful szervaant,” Hastur says.
“Yes, my king.”
“Yooouur puurrpossse haazz beennn serrrrved,” he says.
“I know,” you say. You hand him the knife. “I wish I could see you work your reign of madness and terror.”
“It izz not the waaaayyyy,” Hastur replies, solemn despite the thickness of his tongue and the remaining stupor of the tranquilizers.
“I know,” you say. “Just – may I ask one last thing before I die, my king?”
“Anythiinng yooouu desiiirrre,” he says.
“May I have just a taste of madness before I go?”
Hastur smiles, a broad, sweet smile. “The maaadnessss was within yooouuu allll alllonnnng,” he says.