Diruktober Day 8: [KR] Cube

  Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by re_be_ka_f. I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun. 

Some people say that only the winners get to write the history. Does that change in the face of well-loved idols or were they the ones who were the winners in the end?

Despite Cerid’s popularity, or perhaps due to it, he was still murdered. It was the company he kept that had started expanding beyond his control.

Cerid was pleasant, kind, and present. He recognized the inherent evils and having to murder for sustenance, yet still empowered us while preaching morality into it. His voice was so sweet that it wasn’t uncommon for people to willingly sacrifice themselves.

 Some rejected him for that, either reveling in being monsters or simply disliking the idea that others regarded him as a leader. 

For Axen it was both, a sick, sludgy cocktail of envy and self-importance. His following was a distant second. His lust for particularly brutal deaths had gained him a small cult who romanticized playing with their food.

Nights for him and his included stalking the streets, and this night in particular he did so with his closest pair. 

Axen had always found amusement in his orchestrations. One of his girls would walk down the street, another up it. He would wait in the shadows to capitalize on the panicked flee of a lone girl in the deepest parts of the night.

At the back of an alley, he waited as his companions cornered the girl. The poor thing tried to be discreet about avoiding them. She only started to run when she turned the corner, thinking she was out of sight. It was then that he pulled a knife from his perfectly tailored leather jacket. With a flawless and charming grin, a single arm reached out to bind the woman before she ever saw him.

She rasped a short-lived shriek as he flayed her throat. He worked like a fishmonger, unconcerned for the fading life in his hands for the sake of the freshest meal

His pair of followers closed in no sooner than his lips parted to suckle at the blood still pumping from the quickly fading body. Her struggle wasn’t over. She languidly tried to raise her arms in protest right until the end when Axen dropped her body in order to kneel and stab through her chest. 

His victim was dead when the other followers begin their feast at her neck, leaving Axen to rip the blade down her torso so that he could put his hands in to toy with her insides. 

“So warm,” his voice cooed as he stained his cold skin with blood. His grin never left his face, especially when one of his own girls dared to lift one of his bloody hands to hers. She kept his gaze as she licked and sucked his fingers clean over the corpse with low moons, invitation to act.

The three of them basked in, devoured, and teased until sunlight began to show its first signs to disperse their hedonistic masturbation. A grizzly murder was left as little more than a grease stain in an alley by then.

It was these wee hours that Cerid and his so-proclaimed family started to feed. They resided in a lavish club. In juxtaposition to the prowl of Axen, it was private and blacked out with no windows. Few strangers wandered in for its reputation of being exclusive and expensive. Its large building housing a maze of intentionally dizzying hallways, lifts, and rooms. 

This was part of the reason Axen so detested him. Of course, everyone wanted to be the most loved, but he found the idea of wining and dining his dinner so fake.  Cerid’s heirs of self-righteousness he found so pretentious as if he went against all that they were. It all ended the same. How could they all be murderers and he somehow less innocent? They used to be human, but no longer. 

Cerid himself had camped his whole evening in a sunken VIP room. He was lavished with praise as he hid away from his own event with a select few like a Gatsby. When the dancing models drifted off with some of the patrons or to retire for their evening, Cerid ventured out amongst the club littered with confetti, drink carts, and a few unlucky bodies.

“Party of a lifetime,” Ariel gushed from his side in pride of another successful event. Her regal stance and heels had her practically tower over Cerid, his dark roots were visible, nestled in his blonde hair, from her position. 

“And now it’s our turn.” 

He gave a cheerful grin, made all the more endearing by his youthful face often likened to a prince. He and his posse prowled the club for what they called "cleanup". Their fee for lobbying drunk young patrons home was a few sips from their wrist. Most considered it a mark of having been there and wore the tiny scars with pride. They’d survived a night at Cerid’s which means they’d been allowed inside. They tried their best to practice restraint, but rumor and mystery surrounded this nest of nightlife. 

Cerid and Ariel elegantly led the rest to spread and retrieve whoever was left behind at dawn and allow them back to the entrance. 

They, too, were once human, after all. 

Blood drunk and nearly finished with the task of cleanup, Cerid came across a young man hidden beneath a plush couch in one of the upstairs rooms. He grasped the youth's ankles to pull him free with the surprising strength of his small frame. 

The first thing he noticed was that the man was cold. The next thing was the light puddle of blood in which he laid. 

While it didn't happen often, a corpse was cause for concern. Either someone had made a simple mistake, gone a little too far in their fun, or someone was not one of them. 

There was always the off chance, too, that they'd simply drank too much, done too many drugs, or had health problems in the first place, and for that, he chose to keep it quiet. He quietly pushed the body back where it had been to be addressed once the second wave had finished their feasts. 

It was the next night when Axen would strike. 
As always, in an act that Ariel deemed cowardly, he sent his most loyal few to make it by security first. Axen just considered it smart. 

It was already deep into the night as they took their positions throughout the club, sirens of sexuality slinking around to scout and seduce humans. It was in their nature to take a few casualties as compensation along the way, and so easy to lure someone off to the bathroom in that context. They'd be happy to take it over. 

That was the plan. 

It was late into the night when the doors closed for entry and the security was off to join them behind barred 

Everyone's party was in full swing, and only a select few hissed whispers concerning rumors of a corpse, though whether it was the one from the night before or the fresh kill in the bathroom could hardly be deciphered. 

Cerid remained in a faraway room, more paranoid than ever by his night's discovery, though any lockdowns could cause unnecessary panic. 

Ariel remained by his side, his only confidant who kept on the lookout. She was the one who spread whispers, inviting only the most trustworthy to prepare themselves should anything happen.  

It was too late. Unavoidable. With his intel of cowardice, Axen had found his way inside, having the recklessness to make a beeline for Cerid with his gun aimed. The crowd spread for the fiery red demon, panic apparent as soon as he made his way across the stage. He reveled in that, enjoying the power that surged through his veins to watch the fear he invoked spread across the packed club. 

He kicked open the door to the room in which Cerid had made himself comfortable among his peers. 

Axen's gun trained to his target, a panic. Guns were pulled, and more than only Ariel tried to shield Cerid. 

"You don't have to do this!" She screamed, only mid-sentence before she was covered in the black blood of the man she'd dedicated her loyalty to. It was not only a great loss of a leader, but a family member, an era of protection from her family shattered in the pieces of Cerid's skull. So shocked that she tried to hold his head together, more gunshots barely registered, and she couldn't be separated from him until she was dragged away to safety. 

After all, everyone knew that she was the next in line should anything happen to Cerid. 

Years of tension and battles came to the head of a nasty boil who's puss leaked all over the floor in the form of both Cerid and Axen's brains. 

This was only the beginning of a new era.