Memories Of A Monster: The Black Rabbit

  --- Booker H. Freeman ---

  The few weeks after his mother’s… passing were… unpleasant to say the least.

  Every night he spent in their old home… staring into flames that did little to fill the chill that overtook his too quiet home. A cold lifelessness that he could do nothing to combat after burying his mother.

  He wanted to leave but… He couldn’t… (Not until I find out who killed her…)

  The fact that he couldn’t was slowly eating away at his sanity, had eaten away at his sanity until he’d… he’d cracked and… and… done something less than advisable. Something… monstrous… Something he felt no small amount of guilt for, given how even in that desperation he’d failed and the way he’d… reacted.

  His mother would be ashamed of him.

  “How… how could I do something like… like that?” He asked the darkness around him, his head falling into his hands. “What kind of monster am I?”

  “One just starting to find out what he’s capable of.” The darkness told him.

  He leapt out of his chair, eyes darting around as he reached for the nearest thing. “Who’s there?!”

  A pair of glowing red eyes cut through the darkness, their amusement apparent and a smile to their owner’s voice as they answered, “Something that’s going to take far more than a tea cup to harm.”

  He blinked as he realized he was trying to brandish an old tin cup as a weapon, before dropping it and and quickly shouting, “I have magic!” in an attempt to reclaim some dignity and wariness in his unseen intruder by conjuring a few small sparks in his hand.

  “I know!” A delighted laugh rang out from the darkness, pure glee in the blood red eyes as they told him. “Oh, you may not have much power behind it but your skill, your finesse, oh-ho-ho! I’ve met plenty of talented monsters over the years -even raised a few- but you… Oh you, you’ve got something special in your blood!”

  “What… what’s in my blood?” He found himself asking before shaking his head as sense returned to him. “No, better question- who are you?! Step into the light!”

  “Oh, if you insist~ Though I was trying to ease you into things.” The voice warned, still amused as a pair of black shoes and pants stepped into the light.

  “Ease me into… what?” He couldn’t help but gape as the intruder fully stepped into the light, the darkness pulling away from them in a clearly supernatural way.

  After all, what else could a human sized black rabbit with horns be but supernatural.

  “What… what are you?” He asked, his panicking mind trying to recall what he could of supernatural creatures in a vain attempt to identify the smiling rabbit man.

  “Oh, I am a lot of things… Father, husband, teacher, entrepreneur… Demon.” The rabbit man smiled, as if sensing the way his heart stopped at that word. “But most important to this conversation, I am your kin. And the thing in your blood, is my blood.”

  “That… that can’t be…” (How could I be related to something like this?)

  The Black Rabbit chuckled at Booker’s horror and disbelief. “I know it's hard to believe but trust me, when I say when you get to my age you’ll understand exactly what I mean.”

  “I-I don’t believe you.” Because if he did… (Is his blood the reason mother…?)

  “No, it was not.” The Demon interrupted with an inhuman growl, as if it could read his thoughts and found them offensive to its very nature. “Your mother was a saint who deserved better than she got.”

  The black rabbit’s rabid red eyes dimmed, before it straightened out its black suit worthy of the Barons themselves. “Which is why I am here to offer my services.”

  “Your services?” Booker hesitantly repeated, unsure of how to handle the demon’s apparent defense of his mother.

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  “While your… recent magical exploits-” He couldn’t help but wince at the reminder of his sins. “-failed to get you the answers you sought they did leave open a door of sorts for someone of the proper credentials to aid you. And given our shared blood, well… I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to help avenge a member of my kin.” The Demon explained.

  “You… you’re a Demon, why should I trust anything you have to say? For all I know you’re… you’re just trying to lay claim to my soul!” No matter how tempting the Demon’s offer was, nor how much he’d already sinned with his recent actions, he refused to fall to such a level of depravity that he couldn’t look his mother in the eye when they met in the afterlife.

  The fact that said Demon hadn’t quit smiling once throughout their entire conversation was proof of that!

  “Don’t worry, I’ve no interest in making a deal with you… Right now anyway.” The rabbit man chuckled as if a child had told him something particularly foolish. “No, what I have an interest in is- Well, tell me, how would you feel if someone killed your granddaughter the way your mother was killed?”

  He didn’t answer… after what he’d done to someone who was just a messenger… He knew he was going to do something… sinful when he got his hands on the man who killed his mother.

  Something even worse than what he’d done to that poor messenger.

  “Exactly that.” The Demon grinned, while pointing a black clawed finger at him. “In fact, if I could I would make that man watch as I burn his whole world down and make him suffer for all eternity.”

  “But you can’t kill him?” He frowned in suspicion. “Someone who killed your granddaughter?”

  In way of an answer the Black Rabbit pointed upwards with a smile that was more a suppressed grimace of disgust. “They don’t like it when someone like me gets too active on earth. Only souls that have yet to die get a pass on that one. Which is why I came hoping the last of your mother’s bloodline would be willing to help me out.”

  He… supposed that made sense. (If this is god’s earth, then it stands to reason the divine would intervene if a Demon did something too overt.) “How… how do I know this isn’t a test? A temptation to drag my soul down with you?”

  The Demon gazed at him with a pair of rabid red eyes, staring at him as if the Demon knew Booker down to his very soul, before asking, “Would I even need to tempt you, given what you now know about yourself and this particular situation?”

  Booker’s silence was damning in more ways than one.

  “Of course, I could be wrong about you.” The Demon admitted, a black furred hand to the space between his horns. “About how much you love your mama? How much you want to avenge her for what was done to her? Perhaps you’re not the man your grandad thinks you are?”

  He winced, his mind flashing to his actual grandad. To the man’s final moments. To when he’d asked Booker to take care of his mama. To a promise he’d failed to keep…

  A sudden exhaustion washed over him as he told the Demon, “Just… just tell me who killed her…”

  The Demon smiled at him, the look more fitting on a cat than a rabbit. “Of course! After all, what is family for if not for helping you murder the man who spilt our family’s blood?”

  He winced again, this time not missing the amusement in the Demon’s eyes at the action. “Just tell me…” He practically pleaded, not wanting to think about what he was agreeing to do… what he’d been planning to do with or without the Demon’s aid.

  “Sure thing!” The Demon smiled before pinching two fingers together. “I just need you to do me one itsy bitsy little favor~”

  “Of course you do…” (What else could I expect from a Demon?)

  The Black Rabbit rolled its eyes at him. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I’m just wanting you to have a little… pizzazz as you do what you’ve got to do!”

  “Pizzazz?” He warily repeated.

  “You know a sort of signature from me saying that I helped you out.” The Demon explained. “Is that too much to ask when helping you avenge your mother?”

  He licked his lips. “Not my soul or anything like that.”

  “Nope in fact. Let’s make a contract of it, shall we?” The Black Rabbit suggested before snapping its fingers and causing a parchment to appear, red script burning its way into being. “I promise that as long as you add my touch of pizzazz to the moment, I will tell you exactly who killed your mother, why they killed her, and offer you the power to get to them no matter who gets in your way. No souls, no money, no other magic or hidden clauses!”

  He eyed the floating contract and the words burned into it, this whole thing reminding him far too much of stories of people making deals with the devil.

  “Come on, you don’t even have to sign it. I’ll trust you’re a man of your word if you just shake my hand.” The Demon promised as it offered its hand. “So what do you say, will you take this sinner’s hand?”

  For a brief moment he considered rejecting the Demon’s offer, his eyes on the contract that clearly wrote out what was happening here.

  Then he remembered how he found his mother dead for who knows how long, abandoned to rot.

  And he took the hand.

  He expected some kind of magic, a flash of something binding the deal in power, the Demon double crossing him in some way but the Black Rabbit simply smiled wide before throwing an arm around Booker’s shoulders. “Thatta boy! With gumption like that you’ll have your mother avenged in no time at all!”

  Almost in a state of shock about how painless that had been, he found himself asking, “What-what about the pizzazz?”

  “Oh, right?” The Black Rabbit laughed, slapping a palm to its forehead, before pinching Booker’s cheeks and lifting them up. “All I need you to do is… Smile like you mean it when you kill William Lafayette.”

  New Perk Revealed

  The First Smile: A Mark Of Sin And Blessing, Conviction And Damnation.

  -Any Turn An Enemy Unit Smiles They Gain Disadvantage.