Grell's Cinematic Record.
After 100 years of service, Shinigami are allowed to apply to view the cinematic record of their lives before they died and were brought on as reapers. Most reapers are approved. Grell never has been.
The memories of a child are dim early on. The child is in a graveyard, watching a burial. His understandings are simple, and vague. He knows his father is in the coffin, and the coffin is going into the ground, and that father isn’t coming back. He also knows that mother is very sad. The woman is indeed in tears, holding the child tight against her. The grip is tight enough to hurt him. The boy is merely bewildered, tired, and wants to go home; too little to take it all in. He doesn’t cry.
At home, everything is cold. There is no fire in the stove, and mother won’t laugh and play with him the way she used to. All she does is cry, or stare out the window. Cold and hungry and lonely, the child cries now too.
Time passes. The child is noticeably larger and less dependent. He plays alone. The mother stays cold, despondent, distant. Soon, there is a figure leaning over the child. Whether the man is huge, or if it’s simply the child’s perception of him is impossible to determine, but he appears to be an enormous brute of a man. He’s dark and rough, with large, flat, callused hands, ink black hair and unshaven drink-reddened cheeks.
Once again, the child is a bit bigger. Time is passing. The child is taller, but thinner. His expression is skittish and anxious. The goliath of a man is still present. The mother is still distant and unresponsive, but now her face is disfigured with bruises and swellings. Arms outstretched, the child tries to go for her, but the way always seems blocked. Everything changes again, and there is a cry. An image of his mother’s body, bloody and broken at the bottom of a flight of stairs comes vivid and clear.
This time, at the funeral, the boy understands.
And weeps.
Mere days pass before the huge goliath begins to bring new women to the home. He gives them leave to take the mother’s clothes. He takes them to her bed. The child is confused. He asks if one of the women if she will be his mother. The blow from the Goliath sends him reeling into a wall. While he wipes the blood off his cheek, the woman just cackles.
It didn’t take long for the boy to learn to stay quiet, stay away. But, one night the braying, painted women didn’t come. Goliath took to the bottle, the boy could smell it. He silently slipped into the tiny attic bedroom, threw himself down onto the bed, and stayed quiet. But suddenly, the door flew open and the man entered. The child screamed and tried to run past him for the door, but was caught by the arm. There was a tearing sensation in his shoulder, and pain.
The memories scattered after that. Large callused hands were on him. Touching him. The child didn’t understand, but he knew it was bad. And then there was pain; so much pain, pain that made his stomach lurches and rise. Fear washed over him in great waves, and he fought to push the man off. The man was just too big… much too big. Next, it was morning and the child lay on the bed, dimply wondering if he’d had a nightmare. But, there was too much blood on the sheets for that to be the case.
Time in the memories seemed to become disjointed and ragged. The large man was with women; they were lewd, loud women with painted faces and loose clothes. There was a realization that, whenever there were women around he was safe. It was the nights when they weren’t there, that things were quiet, that the man came into his room. One night he tried to barricade the door with some furniture. The memory scatters, but there’s a sound of banging, and splintering wood. The child hadn’t been able to walk for some days after the attempt to shield himself.
Years seemed to pass this way, and the memories were fragmented and broken. Some moments seemed to black out entirely, some were frighteningly clear. Still, the only thing that was plain was that the cycle of pain remained in place. The abuse was clearly systematic, and regular.
But through the scattered memories, a face begins to appear. The child, now becoming a youth, appeared to take to admiring himself in the mirror.
The face was, in fact, remarkable. Large, searching eyes, cast in a light hazel, seemed to explore the image in the mirror intently. A tip of the chin, and he examined the neatly proportioned nose. The mouth was wide and generous, but soft. Brows well defined and arched and cheeks smooth and round, it was an uncommonly beautiful face. It seemed he had some understanding of that too as he watched himself in the mirror. He smoothed the straight, auburn hair with his palm, and looked over his shoulder.
There was screaming, coming from downstairs. This was not unusual. But, there was a new sound mixed into it. He drew his arms in close around his stomach, and walked on the balls of his feet to the stop of the stairs. The man was shouting at a woman, and this one was screaming back. He would never dream if scaring away the man’s female company. Not ever. But this seemed different.
The conversation didn’t mean a lot to him. She was telling the man that something was ‘his.’ He argued quite fervently that she didn’t know it was his. There was some confusion as to what ‘it’ was, but there was a bundle in the woman’s arms that was making a noise.
A baby! The realization came very suddenly. He still didn’t understand the conversation, but the two screamed at each other for some time. The baby screamed too. At long last, the woman set the bundle down on a table and left. Once she was gone, the youth crept forward cautiously, to see the infant. He like the idea that he might have a brother or a sister.
But, as he crept closer to look at the bundle on the table, he heard the man at the pump drawing water. The man returned holding a bucket, and the youth clutched the baby to his narrow chest. The man tried to take the baby, but the youth held on. The man beat and bellowed and threatened, threatened to drown both of them, not just the bastard, but he didn’t let go. Wood splintered as the man flung a stool at the two of them. They fell across the his back as he ran up the stairs, into his attic, and locked the door.
Suddenly, everything became clearer, brighter, less scattered and more specific. The youth mends a large basket to serve as a basinet, and dutifully washes rags and old clothes to bed the infant. He fed the baby with milk-soaked rags and slept with the basket by his bed. The man downstairs seemed to hate the crying infant, so the two were largely ignored, and happy to be. As long as they kept quiet, the two were left undisturbed.
Years passed, curiously happy. Remnants of the years in darkness remained; nightmares and confusion, unexplained distress. But, the youth, while damaged, did not seem to be broken. He doted on the little one, who was the center of his world now. It was good to have something to give his attention too. He seemed to grow and struggle to bloom. Nights were spent with the two children shared the room in the attic; in the day they ventured out to theaters. One in particular he took his “little brother” to regularly.
Memoires of Shakespeare done badly on cheap sets holding the boys enchanted. The older in particular seemed fascinated with the entire experience. The dresses, the makeup, the entire act of dressing up and being someone different, all seemed to hold him entrance.
Many people noticed the beautiful young man, taking his little brother to the theater. Yet, the looks and whispers only seemed to make him anxious. A teenage girl tried to flatter him. She giggled lightly, her eyes full of hope as she looked eagerly up into his face, but the only thing he saw was the women who used to flatter and laugh and look for the attention of the Goliath; the attentions that were forced on him when they weren’t there. He saw that, and had to turn away in disgust.
Ahead again, there was the face in the mirror. He’d managed to acquire some greasepaint. The beautiful face was made garish. The generous mouth was painted red, and more red was spread on the cheeks. A rare smile appeared as he examined the effect, and he twisted his auburn hair up into a roll, turning his head to admire the more feminine effect. A noise at the door made him startle. He spun around, nearly throwing himself off balance. The brother was laughing at him in female makeup. The young man flew into a rage, screaming not to be laughed at. The little boy began to cry in fear. The youth tried to calm the child. He forced a fake laugh, telling him he’d done it as a joke, to be funny. He told the child to laugh. The child did, and the youth swallowed his pain.
Memories lurched forward again. This time, words, a realization. A stab of shame and horror hate ripped through him and he learned of something. A phrase echoed in the mind.
“You haven’t been worth fucking in years.”
And he knew the truth now. How did he miss it before now? It had happened again and he’d missed it, even though he tried to protect his little brother, it had happened again.
Everything flew apart.
With that, everything… broke.
The images were scattered and hard to make out. That beautiful face, twisted with rage, seen in the mirror. Then, the mirror shattering into shards of glass, the bright splinters falling to the floor, and the youth reached out and picked them up.
And dove for the man.
The man was large and strong, but the youth was fast. Red blood sprayed the carpet and walls. He was clearly dead, but the youth kept cutting. A memory of elation, joy, and release rushed through him. The blood-soaked shard of mirror fell again and again.
Then, a child screaming and sobbing. The youth ran to his side, tried to comfort him, tried to explain that the now-dead man had hurt them, and that they’d be save now, and happy. But, there was blood… too much blood. The child was much too afraid, and ran.
The youth chased him out of the room where the Goliath lay dead, but the light of day shone on his hands, his clothes, and the blood. So much blood.
Screams of women, horse cries from men, and the youth was sent running from grasping hands, forced to abandon the trail of his brother.
The next thing that was clear was the woods. The youth was in the woods, trying to rinse blood out of his coat and dry it. Trying to make himself acceptable. The coat only remained stained rust brown, and was now spoiled with river water.
Then, a man was talking to him, offering him shelter and some food. A pot of stew was on the fire, and there were blankets in the wagon. But, the man wanted something in return ; the lithe body, the sweet face, there was a price to be paid for the relief and comfort and safety. And, it was paid.
That night, while the highwayman slept, the youth took the knife off of his belt, and cut until the inside of the wagon was stained with red blood.
Lucid thought was fading fast. The memories were scattered and unclear now. Only the cycle was discernible. The individual incidents ran together. Only the pattern came through.
First, he would be hurt. Frequently the assault was sexual, but not always. Sometimes it was being taken forcefully, sometimes it was merely a robbery, even a bar fight would do. But, they all ended the same; the person who caused him the pain wasn’t so much murdered, as butchered.
What was more disturbing was that it gradually became apparent that he was seeking out people to hurt him. Still a youth, he was looking for pain, for brutality, and then for retribution.
There wasn’t much left of the cinematic record now. Yet, at the end there was one last clear memory. There was a mirror again, and there was that face one last time. But, no trace of the beauty remained. It was hard to tell passage of time by the age of the face. Though, he was still very young. It couldn’t have been more than a few years. The cycle he’d fallen into had completely ruined him.
One eye was missing, and a huge scar ran over his brow through the hollow where it had been, through his cheek, down to the corner of his mouth. The lips had withered, implying the loss of a significant number of teeth. Scars on his scalp cut through the growth of hair, leaving bald patches.
A hand missing two fingers grasped a heavy vase from the dressing table, and smashed the mirror. Selecting a large piece of glass, he began to dig into his own arms. A basin with warm water kept the blood flowing. Yet, even with that, it still took a surprisingly long time for the youth to bleed out. The little life seemed to cling for much longer than it should, given the condition of the body and the amount of blood on the floor.
But, finally, it was done.
The memories of a child are dim early on. The child is in a graveyard, watching a burial. His understandings are simple, and vague. He knows his father is in the coffin, and the coffin is going into the ground, and that father isn’t coming back. He also knows that mother is very sad. The woman is indeed in tears, holding the child tight against her. The grip is tight enough to hurt him. The boy is merely bewildered, tired, and wants to go home; too little to take it all in. He doesn’t cry.
At home, everything is cold. There is no fire in the stove, and mother won’t laugh and play with him the way she used to. All she does is cry, or stare out the window. Cold and hungry and lonely, the child cries now too.
Time passes. The child is noticeably larger and less dependent. He plays alone. The mother stays cold, despondent, distant. Soon, there is a figure leaning over the child. Whether the man is huge, or if it’s simply the child’s perception of him is impossible to determine, but he appears to be an enormous brute of a man. He’s dark and rough, with large, flat, callused hands, ink black hair and unshaven drink-reddened cheeks.
Once again, the child is a bit bigger. Time is passing. The child is taller, but thinner. His expression is skittish and anxious. The goliath of a man is still present. The mother is still distant and unresponsive, but now her face is disfigured with bruises and swellings. Arms outstretched, the child tries to go for her, but the way always seems blocked. Everything changes again, and there is a cry. An image of his mother’s body, bloody and broken at the bottom of a flight of stairs comes vivid and clear.
This time, at the funeral, the boy understands.
And weeps.
Mere days pass before the huge goliath begins to bring new women to the home. He gives them leave to take the mother’s clothes. He takes them to her bed. The child is confused. He asks if one of the women if she will be his mother. The blow from the Goliath sends him reeling into a wall. While he wipes the blood off his cheek, the woman just cackles.
It didn’t take long for the boy to learn to stay quiet, stay away. But, one night the braying, painted women didn’t come. Goliath took to the bottle, the boy could smell it. He silently slipped into the tiny attic bedroom, threw himself down onto the bed, and stayed quiet. But suddenly, the door flew open and the man entered. The child screamed and tried to run past him for the door, but was caught by the arm. There was a tearing sensation in his shoulder, and pain.
The memories scattered after that. Large callused hands were on him. Touching him. The child didn’t understand, but he knew it was bad. And then there was pain; so much pain, pain that made his stomach lurches and rise. Fear washed over him in great waves, and he fought to push the man off. The man was just too big… much too big. Next, it was morning and the child lay on the bed, dimply wondering if he’d had a nightmare. But, there was too much blood on the sheets for that to be the case.
Time in the memories seemed to become disjointed and ragged. The large man was with women; they were lewd, loud women with painted faces and loose clothes. There was a realization that, whenever there were women around he was safe. It was the nights when they weren’t there, that things were quiet, that the man came into his room. One night he tried to barricade the door with some furniture. The memory scatters, but there’s a sound of banging, and splintering wood. The child hadn’t been able to walk for some days after the attempt to shield himself.
Years seemed to pass this way, and the memories were fragmented and broken. Some moments seemed to black out entirely, some were frighteningly clear. Still, the only thing that was plain was that the cycle of pain remained in place. The abuse was clearly systematic, and regular.
But through the scattered memories, a face begins to appear. The child, now becoming a youth, appeared to take to admiring himself in the mirror.
The face was, in fact, remarkable. Large, searching eyes, cast in a light hazel, seemed to explore the image in the mirror intently. A tip of the chin, and he examined the neatly proportioned nose. The mouth was wide and generous, but soft. Brows well defined and arched and cheeks smooth and round, it was an uncommonly beautiful face. It seemed he had some understanding of that too as he watched himself in the mirror. He smoothed the straight, auburn hair with his palm, and looked over his shoulder.
There was screaming, coming from downstairs. This was not unusual. But, there was a new sound mixed into it. He drew his arms in close around his stomach, and walked on the balls of his feet to the stop of the stairs. The man was shouting at a woman, and this one was screaming back. He would never dream if scaring away the man’s female company. Not ever. But this seemed different.
The conversation didn’t mean a lot to him. She was telling the man that something was ‘his.’ He argued quite fervently that she didn’t know it was his. There was some confusion as to what ‘it’ was, but there was a bundle in the woman’s arms that was making a noise.
A baby! The realization came very suddenly. He still didn’t understand the conversation, but the two screamed at each other for some time. The baby screamed too. At long last, the woman set the bundle down on a table and left. Once she was gone, the youth crept forward cautiously, to see the infant. He like the idea that he might have a brother or a sister.
But, as he crept closer to look at the bundle on the table, he heard the man at the pump drawing water. The man returned holding a bucket, and the youth clutched the baby to his narrow chest. The man tried to take the baby, but the youth held on. The man beat and bellowed and threatened, threatened to drown both of them, not just the bastard, but he didn’t let go. Wood splintered as the man flung a stool at the two of them. They fell across the his back as he ran up the stairs, into his attic, and locked the door.
Suddenly, everything became clearer, brighter, less scattered and more specific. The youth mends a large basket to serve as a basinet, and dutifully washes rags and old clothes to bed the infant. He fed the baby with milk-soaked rags and slept with the basket by his bed. The man downstairs seemed to hate the crying infant, so the two were largely ignored, and happy to be. As long as they kept quiet, the two were left undisturbed.
Years passed, curiously happy. Remnants of the years in darkness remained; nightmares and confusion, unexplained distress. But, the youth, while damaged, did not seem to be broken. He doted on the little one, who was the center of his world now. It was good to have something to give his attention too. He seemed to grow and struggle to bloom. Nights were spent with the two children shared the room in the attic; in the day they ventured out to theaters. One in particular he took his “little brother” to regularly.
Memoires of Shakespeare done badly on cheap sets holding the boys enchanted. The older in particular seemed fascinated with the entire experience. The dresses, the makeup, the entire act of dressing up and being someone different, all seemed to hold him entrance.
Many people noticed the beautiful young man, taking his little brother to the theater. Yet, the looks and whispers only seemed to make him anxious. A teenage girl tried to flatter him. She giggled lightly, her eyes full of hope as she looked eagerly up into his face, but the only thing he saw was the women who used to flatter and laugh and look for the attention of the Goliath; the attentions that were forced on him when they weren’t there. He saw that, and had to turn away in disgust.
Ahead again, there was the face in the mirror. He’d managed to acquire some greasepaint. The beautiful face was made garish. The generous mouth was painted red, and more red was spread on the cheeks. A rare smile appeared as he examined the effect, and he twisted his auburn hair up into a roll, turning his head to admire the more feminine effect. A noise at the door made him startle. He spun around, nearly throwing himself off balance. The brother was laughing at him in female makeup. The young man flew into a rage, screaming not to be laughed at. The little boy began to cry in fear. The youth tried to calm the child. He forced a fake laugh, telling him he’d done it as a joke, to be funny. He told the child to laugh. The child did, and the youth swallowed his pain.
Memories lurched forward again. This time, words, a realization. A stab of shame and horror hate ripped through him and he learned of something. A phrase echoed in the mind.
“You haven’t been worth fucking in years.”
And he knew the truth now. How did he miss it before now? It had happened again and he’d missed it, even though he tried to protect his little brother, it had happened again.
Everything flew apart.
With that, everything… broke.
The images were scattered and hard to make out. That beautiful face, twisted with rage, seen in the mirror. Then, the mirror shattering into shards of glass, the bright splinters falling to the floor, and the youth reached out and picked them up.
And dove for the man.
The man was large and strong, but the youth was fast. Red blood sprayed the carpet and walls. He was clearly dead, but the youth kept cutting. A memory of elation, joy, and release rushed through him. The blood-soaked shard of mirror fell again and again.
Then, a child screaming and sobbing. The youth ran to his side, tried to comfort him, tried to explain that the now-dead man had hurt them, and that they’d be save now, and happy. But, there was blood… too much blood. The child was much too afraid, and ran.
The youth chased him out of the room where the Goliath lay dead, but the light of day shone on his hands, his clothes, and the blood. So much blood.
Screams of women, horse cries from men, and the youth was sent running from grasping hands, forced to abandon the trail of his brother.
The next thing that was clear was the woods. The youth was in the woods, trying to rinse blood out of his coat and dry it. Trying to make himself acceptable. The coat only remained stained rust brown, and was now spoiled with river water.
Then, a man was talking to him, offering him shelter and some food. A pot of stew was on the fire, and there were blankets in the wagon. But, the man wanted something in return ; the lithe body, the sweet face, there was a price to be paid for the relief and comfort and safety. And, it was paid.
That night, while the highwayman slept, the youth took the knife off of his belt, and cut until the inside of the wagon was stained with red blood.
Lucid thought was fading fast. The memories were scattered and unclear now. Only the cycle was discernible. The individual incidents ran together. Only the pattern came through.
First, he would be hurt. Frequently the assault was sexual, but not always. Sometimes it was being taken forcefully, sometimes it was merely a robbery, even a bar fight would do. But, they all ended the same; the person who caused him the pain wasn’t so much murdered, as butchered.
What was more disturbing was that it gradually became apparent that he was seeking out people to hurt him. Still a youth, he was looking for pain, for brutality, and then for retribution.
There wasn’t much left of the cinematic record now. Yet, at the end there was one last clear memory. There was a mirror again, and there was that face one last time. But, no trace of the beauty remained. It was hard to tell passage of time by the age of the face. Though, he was still very young. It couldn’t have been more than a few years. The cycle he’d fallen into had completely ruined him.
One eye was missing, and a huge scar ran over his brow through the hollow where it had been, through his cheek, down to the corner of his mouth. The lips had withered, implying the loss of a significant number of teeth. Scars on his scalp cut through the growth of hair, leaving bald patches.
A hand missing two fingers grasped a heavy vase from the dressing table, and smashed the mirror. Selecting a large piece of glass, he began to dig into his own arms. A basin with warm water kept the blood flowing. Yet, even with that, it still took a surprisingly long time for the youth to bleed out. The little life seemed to cling for much longer than it should, given the condition of the body and the amount of blood on the floor.
But, finally, it was done.