Fic: R Is For Red (1/1)
Title: R Is For Red (1/1)
Author: BradyGirl_12
Pairings/Characters: Kristen Bouchard, Leland Thompson, Orson LeRoux, Various Other Characters In Cameos
Fandom: Evil
Genres: Angst, Drama, Horror
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Author Chooses Not To Warn
Spoilers: For N Is For Night Terrors (2x1)
Summary: You always have to pay that pesky piper.
Date Of Completion: July 17, 2021
Date Of Posting: July 22, 2021
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em, Robert King and Michelle King do, more’s the pity.
Word Count: 674
Feedback welcome and appreciated.
‘Seeing red’.
That’s a great
Expression, eh?
Ruby,
Crimson,
Scarlet,
Slay on,
Yon varlet!
Malcolm Atterbury
“Going Medieval”
1969 C.E.
Kristen stared down as her wrists and ankles were manacled to the chair. She looked up at the expressionless guards, who left the chamber, shutting the door with a heart-sinking finality. Framed in a glass square, a priest intoned solemn prayers while the warden stared ahead, stone-faced.
She looked out the other window at a sea of blurred faces. She saw Ben and David looking sad, and Andy devastated. Her mother threw rose petals at the glass. Mira and Anya were stolid.
Kristen anxiously scanned for her daughters but was relieved not to find them. She tugged at her manacles, desperate to escape.
“No last-minute call from the Governor,” a sing-song voice said.
Why is someone in here?
“Pull the switch!” Leland Townshend said gleefully as he danced into Kristen’s field of view.
She cou;d hear the slow drip of chemicals, and it suddenly became hard to breathe. She coughed several times and started to gasp. A green cloud of gas began filling the chamber.
“Oh, now, Kristen, all this greenery is not where you’re going.”
Kristen could feel her throat burning and her eyes watering. The tears stung and she tried to breathe in a lungful of air that was not searing. She coughed several times and started to gasp. A green cloud of gas began filling the chamber.
“No, no, my dear, where you’re going, the color is a little different." He snapped his fingers.
The noxious green color turned a brilliant red, the heat squeezing Kristen’s lungs. The last thing she saw as she screamed was Leland gleefully cavorting in a red satin devil’s outfit, complete with pitchfork…
& & & & & &
Kristen jolted upright in bed, her scream silent. She heaved for breath, glad for the silence, otherwise there would be four concerned daughters in her room. She pushed her hair back with a shaking hand.
Why did I dream of the gas chamber instead of lethal injection? I suppose I should be grateful I didn’t dream of the electric chair.
She nearly laughed but pulled up her knees and rocked instead. She was drenched in sweat and could not stop trembling. Was she feeling guilty about what she had done to Orson LeRoux? She had told Kurt, her therapist, that she felt no guilt. Was she fooling herself?
Kristen thought back to that night, grabbing her ice axe from the utility closet and marching the few blocks to LeRoux’s house, chillingly close to hers. She had pounded on the door and he had answered it, smiling as he saw her.
& & & & & &
“Stay away from my family.”
Le Roux smiled wider. “I’ve been watching you and your girls.”
Kristen brandished her ice axe. “Stay away or I’ll kill you.”
LeRoux laughed. “You know what I’m going to do? Call the police, tell them you threatened me, and when they come for you, I’ll go over to your house and kill your girls, one-by-one.”
Kristen pushed her way inside, shut the door, and a red haze lowered over her vision as she raised the axe.
& & & & & &
Her next memory was of standing in her backyard clutching her bloody ice axe. Had she killed Orson LeRoux? He was a serial killer who had fooled the criminal justice system and was free to kill again, including her family. She had to stop him.
But the cost had been high, and she would have to pay the piper someday. Her old friend Mira of the police department was strongly suspicious, and Ben was suspicious, too. If Davis was not so distracted by Leland’s phony exorcism and his upcoming ordination, he would be wondering, too.
It was a nice fiction that her black-out could leave events ambiguous, except for that damned bloody ice axe and flashes of perhaps memory: a man with a bloody head crawling down a hall, desperate to get away from her as she raised the axe again.
Dream fragments or memory? Worried imaginings or stark remembrances? Catholic guilt or Catholic reality?
Whatever it was, she would have to pay that piper.
This story can also be read on AO3.
This entry has been cross-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment on either entry as you wish. :)