[h1][color=PINK][center]MOSES MULLER[/center][/color][/h1] [hr] [u][b]8th September, 2014 - Santa Celia Police Headquarters - CONFESSION IN-3458[/b][/u] [color=PINK]MOSES MULLER:[/color] I don’t remember anything before Uncle Gerald died. I found his body by accident. End of story. [color=GRAY]INTERROGATOR:[/color] Kid, your uncle didn’t just die. Five people died alongside your uncle that die and detectives spotted a trail of prints directly from your uncle’s classroom. Their bodies were half-incinerated, some looked like they got mauled by a grizzly. You mind explaining how that happened? [color=PINK] MOSES MULLER:[/color] I don’t know. Uncle Gerald died. I found his body by accident. I - I don’t remember anything. End of story. [color=GRAY]INTERROGATOR:[/color] Kid, even a deaf bat can tell that you’re not telling the truth. [color=PINK]MOSES MULLER:[/color] I don’t know. Uncle Gerald died. I found his body by accident. End of story. [color=GRAY]INTERROGATOR:[/color] Tell me the truth. Your uncle didn’t just die. Something else happened that day. I can see it in your eyes. That sweating brow of yours. You’re lying. [color=PINK]MOSES MULLER:[/color] I don’t know what happened. I swear to god, that - [color=GRAY]INTERROGATOR:[/color] ‘Uncle Gerald died. I found his body by accident. End of story.’ You think people are just to take that for an answer -? [color=PINK]MOSES MULLER:[/color] I DON’T KNOW! What do you want me to say? That I killed him. It just happened so fast. There was blood everywhere and I tried to stop it in time and I tried to pull her off Uncle Gerald and next thing I know, I get knocked down to the ground. I wake up and the next thing I saw was fire around me. There wasn’t anything left of his fa-God. It’s me. I - Oh god - I should have saved him. I killed him. Oh god, I killed him. Why? [color=GRAY]INTERROGATOR 2:[/color] C’mon, get out here, Simon, you broke the poor kid. Look, Moses, you didn’t kill your Uncle, you didn’t kill your Uncle. Who was it? A woman - A man - Give me a name - [hr] The pencil splintered in half, the top half of it bouncing off a linoleum seat to his right and onto the floor of the public bus. Mo’s hands still grasped the fragments of the broken pencil, moving and sketching a ghost drawing onto the notebook. He paused in his breathe, realising that everyone next to him was now looking at him as he put the notebook back into his rucksack. Well, only two people. That being, an old grandmother and a shifty man who was tucked back within the shadows of the truck, a pungent oil-like aroma sticking to his clothes. He massaged his right hand, taking out a loose splinter that was caught in between his index knuckles. The bus rolled to a lurching stop, shuffling backwards and forwards before the hydraulic doors opened with a hiss. He stepped off and began to walk towards his flat, Rhombus’s pizza carefully stowed under the crook of his right elbow and his spray-painting supplies packed in his rucksack. Glenvale was located on the outskirts of the urban fringe of Santa Celia, near one of the main roads that led into the towering monolithic structure of Rook Bridge. It was a 5 story tall building that was squat and sheltered between the walls of two other apartment buildings like a scrawny kid shouldered between two jocks. Moses began to walk towards the apartment doors, his mind still locked in thought while that same oily odour lingered around. Hell, if he thought about it - maybe, it was just the paint on his jacket. He sniffed the air once again, only to taste the familiar scent of sweat and pickled paint accrued after a long day at work. Giving a brief wave to the guard on duty, Moses entered the entrance and began to walk up at a brisk pace up towards his own room. A minute later of wondering why the concept of elevators hadn’t reached Glendale yet, Moses thumping footsteps, laden with fatigue, reached the front of his door. Number 105. The door clicked and opened with a rusty whine. Moses waved his arms blindly in the darkness, feeling for the walls before managing to locate the small switch. He flipped it on and the low humming glow of incandescent light bulbs filled the apartment. It was more like a makeshift art studio. Unfinished sketches and paintings filled and crammed every corner of the room. There was a menagerie of pencil and marker sketches tacked to the right wall. A pile of overflowing scribbles choked the waste-bin. Moses signed as he palmed his paint-speckled face, dropping his rucksack and pizza onto his moth-eaten bed, ready to drop onto it and have a good night of sleep. Then, something wet and sticky wrapped around his lower foot, causing to fall and face-plant onto the sodden wooden floorboards. He groaned as his body was slowly dragged and lifted up, choking at the smell of noxious fumes of burnt paint. He then felt coarse digits, thick as meat-shop sausages, wrapped around the edges of his jacket before his entire back was slammed against the wall with unnatural strength. He blinked for a second, taking a moment to put his senses together, before retching at the sight at what was in front of him. The man’s features were contorted like some sort of obscure abstract painting by a psychopath, every orifice in his face in the wrong location yet still somehow talking. His clothes were made out of a combination of old art-room manila paper and crumpled newspaper. Droplets of wet thinning oil fell of its chin. There was a wet soggy path of paint that dripped behind him, leeching permanently into the surfaces of the room and seemingly fusing it with his entire painted body. It shouldn't have moved or existed yet it was animated with grotesque movements. Something stretched and cracked on its face to produce sound, as it spoke in the mixture of a high-pitched woman’s voice and the slurred masculine voice of a drunkard. [color=RED]“ [b]N[/b][i]eve[/i][b]r clea[/b][i]n u[/i]p your[i] messe[/i]s, do you, [b]Aristonancer[/b]?”[/color] [i]Wha - [/i] Moses didn’t have time to respond as the man threw him across the room, his body flailing around mid-air for a moment before crashing into a canvas bed and breaking it in half. He struggled to stand up, cringing at the pangs of broken ribs in his chest before he was once again grabbed by the neck and forced face to face with the entity. [color=RED]“ [i]Then, agai[/i]n, I [b]guess you[/b] inherited it from [b]Gerald[/b].” [/color] [i]How? -[/i] He was slammed again back towards the wall several times in a row savagely without any mercy whatsoever. The wind had been taken out of his lungs before the distortion began to choke him, placing both its melted fingers across his neck and pressing like a vice clamp. It whispered towards him, a playful cadence in its voice. [color=RED]“ C[i]ome on, Moses,[/i] [b]show me.[/b] Show [i]me[/i] like you showed [b]Gerald.[/b]” [/color] It somehow knew his name. Dark spots began to dance in Moses vision as he gasped like a beached fish, his mouth open and begging for air but receiving nothing. He needed to get out of this situation. His arms wildly flopped around, searching for anything to use as a weapon. He could feel nothing except for the canvas, the paper, his paintings, all useless. He was nothing. He was going to die in this apartment, alone and - [color=YELLOW] FOOL, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR PURPOSE? [/color] No. That was impossi- [color=YELLOW]YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO BANISH THE DISTORTION.[/color] Moses turned his head towards the right. A blurry white canvas. A half-finished painting. It would be better than nothing. He began to reach out towards the canvas slowly, his fingers crawling towards it for just one touch, the distortion slowly throttling him harder and harder and when he did touch it - Nothing happened. Before everything filled with colour. An aurora of burning energy seared the nerves in his right hand as he sunk it into the painting. A kaleidoscope of radiant colours, like an rainbow atomic bomb going off in slow motion, filled his vision for a moment whilst he concentrated to wrestle the energy under his control. It was a sensation akin to finding a lost puzzle piece and inserting it into himself. His heart trembled with nervous excitement as he drew out the object. No, the trinket. He felt the distortion’s grasp on him grew weak as it drew backwards, growling at the sight of the trinket in his hands. He coughed, his neck bright red from the pressure of the creature’s hold. He took a gander at his drawn trinket - the first one that he’d summoned in years - and then, frowned in frustration. Seriously, a frying pan? In his hands was a large metallic green pan that was folded like origami, hurting his mind the more he looked at it. He recognized where it came from. It was a art project that he’d kept out of nostalgia from Arido that was an attempt at imitating cubism. It glowed like melted glass, a soft candle-light suffusing the darkness of his flat. Its smooth grip had a waxy consistency to it. It was the complete opposite of 'intimidating'. Well, there was no use complaining now. He looked at the intricate cooking implement in his hand and then, at the monster in front of him. A second extended into an eternity of befuddled thoughts, nerve-wracking anxiety and trepeditation. The distortion craned its neck curiously before a pleasurable sign came out of its mouth, as if in anticipation. [color=RED]“[b]Finally.[/b]”[/color] His grasp tightened onto his weapon - frying pan - as the distortion lunged towards him in a feral movement. He raised the trinket with a gulp. And then charged his past head on.