A Fine Way to Die
Jan 13, 2021 23:32:49 GMT -6
Conrad Dukes, Punished Von Brandt, and 4 more like this
Post by Ransack Manson on Jan 13, 2021 23:32:49 GMT -6
 As they had been doing for several months, the doctors observed the man’s behavior through a little porthole window in the door of his 2:13 PM - Patient noticed a butterfly had flown through the bars on external window to his room The doctors knew little about where he’d come from, simply that he was brought to them after he was caught at a convent in the middle of defiling an enormous statue of the crucified Christ that stood over their altar. The statue came to rest on the floor of the chapel in hundreds more pieces than it had been in when it stood proudly over the house of the lord god. Given the conditions under which he was found, the facility’s orderlies were the first to take to calling him Ransack, and the moniker Manson took hold because of the vaguely similar appearance the nameless man had with the famed murderer and cult leader. Ransack Manson was not exactly a professional name to hoist upon a vulnerable man, but it was thrown around so casually in the halls of Devil’s Gate that eventually, it just stuck. 2:16 PM - Patient remained focused on the butterfly’s fluttering movements about the room and displayed a calm never before observed by Devil’s Gate staff When the pandemic came, the facility shuttered. While there were a great many patients in the facility who had families to whom they could return, those who were receiving treatment as wards of the state - like Ransack had been - were released to the wild to fend for themselves. They were hard days at the onset. Ransack had become so accustomed to the infirmed life: meals delivered, amenities provided, a roof ensured. It had grown to be something Ransack viewed as a small slice of paradise. But like the suckling calf ripped from her mother’s teat, he was evicted from the little respite he’d had which served as his only break from the hellfire within and the dystopian world all around him. The onset of a global pandemic meant everyone was feeling the sloppy caress of chaos. Ransack made his way across the country hopping train cars and stowing away within any means of transport in which he could get away with remaining unseen. Sure, there were near misses and close calls with armed and enraged engineers, truckers, and highway patrolmen, but that feeling of being not but a single misstep away from a shallow grave in the middle of nowhere was oddly comforting to the madman. As he reached the Las Vegas area, the bright lights of the city-before-shutdown burned holes into his brain. The city had always been designed to induce a dopamine hit unlike any other, and despite the times, Vegas remained Vegas. The sounds. The lights. Everything about the ambiance of Vegas was fundamentally transfixing beyond anything Ransack could understand. 2:19 PM - Patient overwhelmed to the point of tears (Joy?) as butterfly landed gently upon his arm and remained there for several moments The Las Vegas desert always existed in a duality. Being Vegas, it was always both the cradle of all things energetic and lively while also serving as a persistent mortal danger. Anyone who wandered out into the desert could die in any number of ways: hypothermia at night; sunstroke, heatstroke, or dehydration in the day. And when rain came? The area became less desert and more white water rapids given that the land just isn’t equipped to take on much - if any - water. The existential threat of flooding was why the city’s leadership built the labyrinthian system of tunnels under the city in 1977 that they’d hoped would redirect water safely and keep the strip out of harm’s way. Almost as soon as the tunnels came into existence, they began to serve as a makeshift shelter for the city’s homeless. As Ransack stumbled, one heavy step after another, toward the lights of Vegas, he came across an enormous concrete outlet that led into the tunnels. From the first moment that he took notice of the lights of the city, this outlet was the first thing that stole his attention away. It was just so out of place. Like Ransack himself. He felt a new pull, a drive to explore something like him, something that just didn’t fit. 2:21 PM - Patient sat completely motionless, attention seemingly monopolized by the butterfly Ransack disappeared into the tunnels’ outlet and discovered a world unlike any other he’d ever seen. There were people as far as the eye could see into the darkness and well beyond. The sounds alone were enough to indicate that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people living under Las Vegas, The Mole People. When the lockdown order came, many of the thousands of The Mole People who occupied the tunnels upon Ransack’s arrival remained there and continued to call the tunnels home. This community was one of the most likely to be ravaged by the virus, and to be sure, the underground community certainly suffered more than its fair share of losses as the pandemic spread like wildfire in the tunnels. Ransack was a man without a country: if he remained in the tunnels, he could die by the virus, and if he tried to escape - to leave Las Vegas despite the lockdown order - the result would still be death but by a bullet instead. 2:25 PM - Patient snapped and violently grabbed the butterfly in his fist before crushing and consuming it whole. NOTE: Facility must move patient to room with no external walls. After days of existing within the tunnels, Ransack stood at the edge of them, gazing out into the world around him with tired eyes. It sure seemed like everyone else had finally gone as crazy as the doctors used to tell him he was. He laughed as he thought about his former doctors and the fact that he hadn’t taken his medication in weeks now. He smiled a sadistic smile as he thought about all of the people who had thrown him away like a used condom that existed up on the surface and were drowning to death on dry land. He stepped a foot further out of the tunnels to feel the wind blow through his dirty, matted hair, and as he closed his eyes to bask in the caress of the breeze, a paper rode a gust and smacked him square in the face. As the wind died down, the paper fell into his hands. It read: Looking for work during the lockdown?! Check out Black Pyramid Wrestling! 16 wrestler round robin! $1,000,000 cash prize! Contact Ramses Spor… The rest of the flier and any possible contact information it would have contained had ripped off long before the paper came to rest in Ransack’s hands, but he knew where to find what he demanded. He knew how to get in touch to make sure he was involved in something like this. A bloodsport. During the pandemic. For money backed by an unstable regime. While everything about it screamed “BAD IDEA” and even a man only known by the name Ransack was lucid enough to understand that signing on with Black Pyramid might be as good as a death sentence, every other option before him looked like it would be, too. Ransack took a deep breath as he stood on the precipice of doom, and he closed his eyes as he exhaled the rancid air slowly and grunted to himself. “If I have to anyway, this’ll be a fine way to do it.” Simply put, the patient should not have been set loose upon the world unsupervised and with no means of seeking further treatment. I want to ensure my objection is noted officially here in the patient’s file. I fear that if the patient’s all but inevitable crimes are traced back to Devil’s Gate, our shutter will cease being temporary and the hundreds of people who depend on this facility for work and for mental health care will be left wanting. In the end, while I’m confident my team helped the patient by rendering aid as long as possible, his underlying desires to incite mayhem and violence were largely unabated. In many ways, the patient is unlike any other person I have ever treated, however the ways in which his personality overlaps with the German are significant. His violent tendencies surely mean his release would have likely never come under any circumstances one could describe as ‘normal.’ That he is among the general population is certainly a thought that fills me with dread, and even history’s greatest conquerors - Khan’s Mongols, Spanish Inquisitors, and the Vikings themselves - would fail to constrain the patient’s tendency toward explosive rage. The patient’s departure means this will likely be the final entry in this file. May god have mercy on us all. - Dr. Reginald Royce  |