WARNING: This story involves some themes that will be very disturbing to some readers. Child molestation, non-consensual sex, VERY HEAVY Bondage, Domination and Sadism scenes.
Author's note: This is only my take on Schu's and Brad's backgrounds - I
know for a fact that most of it is wrong. ^_^
Mutti/Mutter = Mommy/Mother in German.
Vati/Vatter = Daddy/Father
I think the other German words are mostly self explanatory.
Possession
First in the Sinners and Saints arc
It was cold. Cold, and dark. And empty. And lonely. Where was he? He? Yes, he was a he. He was pretty sure, anyway. Who was he? Not sure. Can't remember. What happened?
So cold! It was too cold to think. And his thoughts were bouncing off the walls, echoing around him in different voices. Or were those his thoughts? Maybe they were someone else's. Maybe there was someone else in here with him. That would be nice. Then it wouldn't be so lonely.
"Mutti? Vati?" Names. Whose? Oh yes, his parents. He'd like to see them. They would make the cold and dark go away, just like when he crawled into their bed after the monster in the closet tried to get him. That seemed like so long ago. How long had it been?
"Mutter!" He strained to catch an answer. Surely his Mutti would not leave him alone for long.
*Poor little thing...*
Who was that? A woman, but not his Mutti. Go away! I don't want you, I want my Mutti!
*Poor, dear little thing. So sad. I'd like to take him home with me. He looks so delicate, like a snowflake would break him...*
He started to cry. He was cold and upset and confused, and this strange woman was yelling at him and not making any sense, and he wanted his Mutti!
*I wonder if he'll ever wake up. His poor parents...*
*If we up the IV and increase the shock therapy to twice a day, perhaps...* A new voice, masculine, overlaid the first, creating a jumble in his mind. *Ah, but the parents have no insurance... this will be such a drain on their finances. And they have that autistic daughter as well...*
Autistic? He'd heard that word before, though most of what the man was saying didn't make any sense to him. Autistic was what they called his older sister, Anneliese. Was the man talking about him?
*Likely never wake up. Not with that much damage to the brain. All that swelling... if he ever did wake up, he'd be a near-vegetable. Perhaps...*
He sensed a hesitation, as if the man were struggling with something. He felt conflict, guilt, pity, and other things he couldn't identify. It scared him more, and he cried harder. "Mutti..."
*Perhaps it would be best. Spare them the agony of waiting, hoping, for a day that will never come. Let them free up their finances, for the daughter, or for other children they might have. He'd never live a real life, anyway...*
It scared him, the things behind the words. That man meant to hurt him, hurt him badly. He felt a touch on his arm, and he jerked away. The man and woman both gasped, and finally...
"Lukas!"
His Mutti! He opened his eyes, squinting into the bright light, and reached toward where he'd heard her voice. "Mutti! Mutti, I'm scared..."
"Lukas, baby, baby, you're awake! Oh, Gott in Himmel, thank you! Thank you for sparing our baby..."
Mutti had gathered him up into her arms now, and he cried shamelessly into her shoulder. Beyond he could see Vater speaking with a man and a woman, the same ones who had been talking in the darkness. The strange man was shaken and pale, and was staring at him as though he'd seen a ghost.
"Miracle," he muttered, wiping one hand across his brow. "It's a miracle. Herr Diederich, you're very lucky." He moved forward to touch the boy, and Lukas screamed.
"Nein! Nein, Mutti, don't let him touch me! He's going to kill me, he wants to kill me..." he sobbed hysterically into his Mutter's shirt, and saw the strange man turn paler.
"Lukas!" His Mutti spoke to him sharply. "Don't be silly. This is Doktor Gottschalk, he wants to help you. You had a car accident, baby, and you hit your head. You've been asleep for nearly a week, and we were afraid you weren't going to wake up..."
Lukas shook his head frantically. "Nein! I heard him, he said it would free up your fi... fee... finces..." he stumbled over the unfamiliar word. He didn't know what it meant, but he certainly knew that the doktor had meant him no good! That needle he'd just shoved into a pocket, so no one would see it...
*How did he know? Gott in Himmel, how could the boy possibly know?* He heard the doktor's voice, but the man's lips didn't move. The voice echoed strangely inside his head, like the time Vater had let him put on the earphones for the radio.
The doktor pasted a smile on his face - the kind of falsely hearty smile that children instantly distrusted. "Now, Lukas," he said, his voice condescending and patronizing, to cover the layer of fear that Lukas could feel underneath. "You've had a very traumatizing experience, and I imagine that your brain has produced all kinds of strange dreams from the things that you've subconsciously heard over the last week. I would never do anything that would hurt you..."
"You're lying!" Lukas accused him, crying harder. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, doktors were supposed to be good people who helped you, not people who lied and tried to hurt you. "Go away! Go away, I hate you! Mutti, Vati, please don't let him touch me! Please!"
Mutti stroked his hair soothingly, looking helplessly over his head at Vater. He'd seen that look between them before, usually when Anneliese had done something they didn't know how to deal with. "Herr Doktor?" she asked the doktor softly.
The man shrugged. "He really should have a few more tests, just to be certain there's no residual damage. But so long as they're negative, I see no reason why you can't take him home today. And I think perhaps, given the circumstances," he bowed slightly at them. "It would be best if one of my colleagues attended the boy. I'll see who is free at the moment."
*The boy is uncanny - he should not know such things. He had no way - unnatural. Let someone else deal with him...*
Lukas glared at the doktor, who paled further and turned on one heel, striding out of the room. Somewhere deep in his heart, there was a stirring of fear. How HAD he known? Where had those voices come from? What was wrong with him?
Why had there been such fear and revulsion in the doktor's voice when he thought of Lukas?
Lukas lay sprawled on his bed, hands over his ears in a futile attempt to keep The Voices at bay. That was how he thought of them now - The Voices. They were everywhere, all around him, all the time. Even when he slept, he couldn't evade them. It had been six months since the day he'd woken up in the hospital, and each day was worse than the last.
He couldn't even take solace in his Mutti's arms anymore - he couldn't stand to be touched. Touch made it worse, made The Voices louder. And the louder they got, the quieter his own Voice got, until he had trouble hearing it at all. When that happened, he panicked, and went into one of his Fits.
He didn't like those. Not at all. They hurt, twisting his muscles and making the inside of his eyes flash until he couldn't see anything anymore. Then he fell down, and didn't remember anything until later. Some of the other boys in Kindergarten said that he flopped around like a fish, and that it made the teachers cry when he did it. They all thought it was funny, and laughed at him for it.
Mutti had taken him to another doktor, who had given him little pills that he had to take three times every day. His Voice had talked a lot about a very long word - 'ehpa-lep-see'. That word, when he said it aloud to Mutti, had made her very upset. She made him take the little pills, and never miss one. The pills made him feel very sick, and they sometimes made him dizzy, which made the Voices louder, which made him have more Fits. That made Mutti and the doktor argue, because apparently the pills were supposed to make him have less Fits, not more.
Mutter and Vater had finally stopped making him take the pills, and had taken him out of school two weeks ago, after Gunter fell off the slide and broke his arm, and Lukas had screamed and screamed until they took Gunter away to the hospital. Of course, no one believed him that it was because of Gunter that he screamed. No one believed him about The Voices, either.
At first, when he tried to tell Mutti about The Voices and how they were drowning him out, she just smiled and said something about 'imaginary friends'. But he kept telling her about them, about how it was when The Voices got very loud that he had Fits, how he was afraid he would lose himself in a Fit one day and never come out again. Then she had gotten very angry with him, and told him that it was bad and wicked to make up stories and that he shouldn't tell lies to his Mutter. That made him cry, because it was unfair - he wasn't making up stories and he never lied to his Mutti. Never ever! He was a good boy. But he also cried because she was angry, because when she was angry and upset her Voice got very very loud, and he had to run away and hide so that she wouldn't make him disappear.
That happened whenever anyone got upset, now. Or even when they got very happy. Feeling lots seemed to make a person's Voice much louder. Sometimes the Voices didn't make any sense - either there were too many for him to hear them, or they were talking about things he didn't understand, like the doktor had. Sometimes, they even said words that didn't make any sense at all, like when Vater watched the movies from America that had the little white print at the bottom.
And if he was with any one person too long - that was even worse. Even if their Voice wasn't very loud at first, the longer he was with them, the louder and louder it got. It would drown out all the other Voices, and then it would start to drown out his Voice, and he either had to run away or go into a Fit to escape. And if they touched him...
The only person he could spend any time around any more was his sister, Anneliese. Her Voice was just as loud as everyone else's when she talked, but she didn't say much. Mostly her Voice was a quiet murmur, like she was talking to herself, when she was staring out the window and flapping her hands like she did.
Lukas buried his face in his pillow and kicked his feet against the bed. Mutti would be mad if she saw him doing that, but he didn't care. Mutti was always mad at him now, and for things that weren't his fault at all! Like right now - Mutti and Vati were arguing downstairs, about him. He knew it was about him, even though he couldn't hear their voices, because their Voices were talking about him.
Mutti wanted him to go back to the Nervenheilanstalt, the place where all the crazy people went. The strange doktor there - psychiater, Mutti said he was called - had asked him all sorts of odd questions, like did The Voices ever tell him to do things, and did he ever see things that weren't there. Lukas had spent the entire trip crying, because the Voices of the people at that place were all very scary, and made him feel strange things. The psychiater had said another very long word - 'skit-so-fren-ya' - that made Mutti even more upset. Lukas had gone into a Fit right then, from all the scary things in his head.
The psychiater gave him MORE little pills, different ones this time. These ones made him very tired, which also made The Voices worse, because he didn't have the energy to move around enough to keep from being near one person for too long.
That was what Mutti and Vater were arguing about. Vater wanted to call in a priest, to do something called an 'ek-sor-sih-sum', and that was making Mutti upset again. Lukas petulantly decided that he was never going to use strange-sounding long words when he grew up, if they made people so upset all the time. He squirmed further under the pillows, wishing his parents would stop yelling, because their Voices were getting louder and louder and if they didn't stop soon he was going to have another Fit.
Just when his muscles were trembling with the first signs of an oncoming Fit, the doorbell rang, interrupting the fight downstairs. Lukas poked his head up from under the pillows, listening. He could hear Vater's heavy footsteps going to the door, and then low voices talking. Lukas frowned. He could hear the stranger's voice, but not his Voice, and that was very odd. Curious, he tiptoed out into the hall and peeked around the stair banister.
There were two strange men at the door, dressed in dark suits like Vater wore to Sunday Church, carrying briefcases like Vater took to work every morning. They were holding some papers out to Vater, who was reading them, Mutti hovering over his shoulder. But though he strained and strained, he couldn't hear their Voices at all.
The man who was not talking to Vater glanced up, and looked right at him. Lukas pulled back behind the banister, but the man had already seen him. He turned to Vater and said, "Would we be able to see the boy, at least? To discover if we can help him."
Help him? Were these more doktors or psychiaters? Would they make him take more nasty little pills that made him sick instead of better, and made The Voices stronger than ever? He peeked around the corner again.
"Lukas!" Vater called him. "Lukas, I see you there. Come down here." Lukas obediently came down the stairs to stand behind his Mutti, half-hidden by her skirts. He stuck his thumb in his mouth - a bad habit Vater kept trying to cure him of - and regarded them solemnly.
The man who had seen him spying crouched down to be level with him. Lukas braced himself. Usually grown-ups who did that either acted very childish, or very patronizing, like he was a puppy to be patted on the head for doing a trick. But the man surprised him. He didn't say anything.
Or rather - he didn't say anything with his voice. His Voice said, *Lukas, can you hear me?*
Lukas stared at him, wide-eyed. Sometimes the Voices talked about him, but they never ever talked TO him. He thought maybe he'd imagined it, but the man nodded slightly at him.
*You're not imagining it, Lukas. I'm talking to you. You can talk back to me this way, if you want to.*
Lukas didn't think he wanted to. This man was very strange, and he didn't like the things that he felt when his Voice was speaking. When his Voice wasn't speaking, he didn't feel anything at all, and that was even stranger.
"I don't like you," he told the man aloud instead, and clutched at his Mutti's thigh. The man chuckled.
"That's all right, Lukas," he said with his normal voice this time. "You don't have to like me for me to help you. I can make The Voices go away, you know."
He said it the way that Lukas always thought it, with the capitals. Lukas watched him suspiciously. "How?"
*Just like this,* the second man's Voice said - and suddenly all The Voices were gone. All of them. Mutti's, Vati's, Anneliese's - and all the many, many Voices from outside. Lukas gasped and lost his balance, thumping down onto the hardwood floor and staring at the man.
"How..." he started to say, and then just as suddenly as they'd vanished, The Voices were back. It was a little overwhelming, all of them coming back at once like that, and he had to fight to hold off a Fit. He didn't want to black out now, not when this man could tell him how to make The Voices go away!
"Lukas!" his Mutti cried, but he ignored her. All his attention was on the Strange Men, as he was starting to think of them, and he didn't have time to listen to her fuss over him.
The crouching man straightened up again. "I think we will be able to help him after all, Herr Diederich. But it will be a very long and intensive program. It may take years, and he won't be able to have outside contact at all until he improves. There is even a very slight chance that he may die of the procedure."
"Surely there must be another way," Vater said aloud, but Lukas heard what his Voice said. *Take the unnatural child away,* it said, *and never bring him back for all I care. Have done with him.* That made Lukas start to cry again, because in the beginning, Vater's Voice had always been full of love for Lukas, and now it almost never was.
"You can't take my baby!" Mutti said, and her Voice didn't make her words a lie. *Not my Lukas, not my baby!* it said, crying and sad. *You can't take my baby boy away from me...*
But for the first time, he heard a second Voice, underneath the first. Lukas hadn't known that people could have two Voices, and the second was very faint. But what it said was not at all what the first Voice said. It said, *First Anneliese, now Lukas... it's not my fault! Whatever he says, it's his seed that is bad, this is nothing of my doing! I raised my children right and proper, and I was a good Christian wife and mother, and it's not my fault!*
*And now you realize,* said the first man's Voice, *that people lie to themselves even more than they lie to each other.* Lukas stared at him, fat tear drops sliding down over his cheeks at his Mutter and Vater's betrayals, and he understood. Mutti told him that only bad, wicked people told lies, that good little boys should always tell the truth. But the truth was that everyone lied. Everyone. And sometimes, the lies were even true. He knew his Mutti and Vati loved him, he knew that. But there was too much hurt and anger for the love to show in their Voices now, and the longer he stayed, the worse it would get. Eventually, the love would go away completely, and all that would be left would be the anger.
If he lived that long. If the Voices didn't drive him crazy, and make them put him in the Nervenheilanstalt, with all the other crazy people and their scary Voices. These people said they could make the Voices go away. And they weren't lying, at least not about that. It might kill him - but wouldn't it be worse to live with his Mutti and Vati hating him, or with the crazy people?
"I want to go," he said aloud. "I want to go with them, Mutter. They can help me. Please?"
Mutter and Vater argued and cried and argued some more, but Lukas knew it was already settled, and so did the Strange Men. They didn't say anything else with their Voices, and he was glad. He stared at the floor, not wanting to listen to all the conflicting things his parents' voices and Voices said, rocking slowly back and forth from foot to foot.
Finally, they agreed. The Strange Men made Mutter and Vati sign some papers, and then they told Lukas to follow them and turned to walk out the door. Now that the moment of truth was at hand, Lukas balked. "Wait!" he said, and they looked at him. "What about all my things?"
"You won't need them," the first man said. "The Institute will provide you with everything you need from now on."
Not take his clothes? His teddy? Unthinkable. But the man's Voice said, *You won't need such things. Do you want to be a little boy who hears Voices, or a big man who can control them?*
I want to be a big man, Lukas decided. But... "Can I at least say goodbye to Anneliese?"
The Strange Men looked at each other, and Lukas thought they might be discussing it with their Voices. But try as he might, he couldn't hear them. Finally the first man nodded. "Be quick," he said.
Lukas scurried up the stairs to his sister's room. It was locked from the outside, so that she couldn't get out and go wandering. Left to herself, she always ended up at the edge of the stream out back, staring into the water and humming and flapping her hands. Mutter and Vater were afraid that she'd fall in one day, so they locked her inside 'for her own good'. Lukas had always thought it was a little mean - Anneliese hadn't done anything bad to get her sent to her room for punishment, and being by the stream always made her so happy. Sometimes he'd turn the lock and let her out, and follow her outside to make sure she didn't hurt herself.
He turned the lock now, and slipped inside. Anneliese was standing by the window, rocking back and forth and humming that tuneless little song of hers, though she wasn't flapping. Lukas tugged on her sleeve.
"Anneliese," he whispered. He always whispered to her, he wasn't sure why. It just felt like the right thing to do. "Anneliese, I'm going away. They're taking me away, and I might never come back."
Anneliese rocked back and forth, humming, ignoring him like she always did. But her Voice murmured, just a little. It might be in reaction to what he'd said, or it might just be one of her random little burbles. Lukas chose to believe it was because of him. He reached up and hugged her, carefully, then went back out into the hall. He deliberately left her door unlocked, knowing it was the last time she'd get a chance to go down by the stream.
The Strange Men were waiting for him patiently by the door. Mutti fussed over him, hugging him lots, and Vater even knelt down and touseled his hair. But Lukas held himself away from them, already separating himself from them in his mind. They're just lying again, he thought to himself. They're putting on a show, because it's expected. This is how a good Mutter and Vater would act, as if they were going to miss their boy, so that's what they did. And they might even miss me really, a little. But they're glad to see me going. They don't want to deal with me any more.
And then he thought, That's okay. I'm going to learn to make the Voices go away, and I'm going to be a big strong man. And someday they'll see me, and they'll be sad that they didn't love me when they had the chance, because I won't care about them at all.
*That's right, Lukas,* the first man said. *You're going to be very powerful, and many people will wish you loved them. You're a very lucky little boy, that we found you when we did.*
Lukas nodded, and followed them out to their big black car, never looking back though his Mutti cried and cried at him to take care of himself, and to remember her. As he settled into the seat and pulled the too-large buckle around him, he worked very hard to ignore the tears sliding down over his cheeks. Tears were for little boys, and he was a big man now. No more tears for Lukas, and soon no more Voices, either.
And if he'd heard things under the men's Voices, nasty, horrid things that they wanted him to do, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, if they could make the Voices go away. He'd do anything, anything at all, to be a normal boy again.
|Part 1| |Part 2| |Part 3| |Part 4| |Part 5| |Part 6| |Part 7|