Fiona Engel was born on a dreary early March day in 1957. Her father was an uninteresting alcoholic who overworked at the Shipyard. Her mother was a quiet defeated woman, struggling to maintain an overcrowded and underfunded household. She was one of 5 children, stuck in the middle. There was nothing exceptional about her childhood. There was nothing exceptional about her family. She wasn’t beaten, starved or molested.
It is the lack of exceptional that hones certain people to seek it out later in life, or she was just bored.
Fio occasionally wandered when they started watching her. Where they the monster under her bed when she was five? Maybe they were the whispers she heard from the bushes when she snuck out with her brothers? Did they see them that night; when the three youths lost their innocence in a fit of rage taken out on a old man who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did they watch her wash her hands, over and over, unable to lock eyes with the twelve year old in the mirror? Could they smell the blood like she could when she went to curl up in bed and flenched at her own palms? If they were there then, then they saw as she stopped trying to wash the blood out. They would have taken notice that she no longer flinched away from the smell, but nuzzled into her palms.
They say some sadists are just born, but she was just a little girl playing at a game she didn’t understand.
By the time she was a teenager she could barely stand to go home to her cramped house. School was unfulfilling and by thirteen she had dropped out. Her disconnection with people grew. She started to have a difficult time sleeping; which only drove her further into her own mind. Reality was a myth. Pain was real. She started to go to underground clubs. At first it was the wild music, then it was the drugs, soon it was petty crimes of assault. She would tell herself she was doing it for the money, but there was enjoyment from flesh hitting flesh that she couldn’t get from a needle.
She really just wanted to feel something again; like that first time.
She quit using drugs rather easily at the age of seventeen and began to focus her energy on fighting. She had no problem enticing her brothers into a fray, but her viciousness was starting to worry them. She would go to the underground clubs and start fights with intoxicated patrons. It was here that a man turned her on to an girl on girl boxing group; turns out there was a niche market with the kink for watching bruises and blood appear on a cute feisty thing like herself.
It was never about winning, but it was even less about the money.
She wasn’t overly muscular, she wasn’t that strong, but she’d become brutal and relentless. The girl could take a punch. The fighting didn’t help with the sleep though, there was still whispering following her about at night; and now there were demons darting about in her side view. She started turning to the bottle, the only thing that quieted the world. She needed to get some sleep. Even half drunk the memories of that night are solidified in her mind. It wasn’t rare that one of the John’s would approach her after a fight. Some wanted to talk, some wanted to touch, and some even wanted to save her. This specific person struck her immediately as odd. It wasn’t just the fact that they didn’t seem to meet any of the normal categories; it was that it was a well dressed woman.
The woman offered to buy Fio a drink. Fiona rolled the ice cubes around in the empty tumbler, staring at her bruised and bleeding knuckles, and shrugged. The woman sat down next to her and ordered a drink; none for herself. She explained that there was another place where people fought. The rules weren’t as strict. In fact, there were no rules, and Fiona was just the girl they were looking for. If she was simply catering to Fiona’s pride she would have failed; she had no pride, but the lack of rules got an eyebrow raise from Fio. She was intrigued. The woman’s smile curled into something pleased and cruel and Fiona should have ran then, though now she knows it wouldn’t have helped.
She slept good the night before her first visit to James Island. It would be the first and last good night’s sleep she would ever have.
Arriving at James Island was something surreal. The property seemed completely empty, save for a couple of cars that denoted no specific economic position. She looked down at the address the woman had given her. The woman’s face flashed in her mind again and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself despite the lack of cold. As if she had conjured the woman with her thoughts she was there, slipping an arm in Fiona’s and smiling that same smile. Fiona flinched, but the will to pull away was stifled somehow. “Are you nervous Fiona?”
She was a little nervous. She shook her head no. Once they got inside the whole atmosphere changed. She could hear booming yells, shouting and something animalistic. The woman led her to a room where she could get ready. “Someone will come get you when it’s time.” Fio fell into her routine and it relaxed her. She pulled her blonde hair back into a tight bun and began wrapping her hands with tape. She stretched and cracked her body and closed her eyes to center herself.
Pain affirms life; Pain gives life; Life is pain; the mantra repeated until she heard the door open.
In front of her was a sad looking man, hunched in the doorway. He reminded her of a beaten puppy, the way he wouldn’t make eye contact, the way he flinched as she stepped towards his beckoning hand. She followed him down a hall. He didn’t say anything the whole walk, but she swore she heard a mumbled apology as she stepped through the doorway. It closed before she could question him and her attention moved towards the murmuring of a crowd. It seemed smaller than the crowd she’d heard earlier. She could only pick out a handful of individuals in raised seating surrounding the “ring”. The actual ring was stone walls, and as she looked about she felt fear, real fear, possibly for the first time in her life. It wasn’t the blood pooling off the walls, it wasn’t even the stench of death, but the flecks of bone...and….were those pieces of scalp? Was it fur?
Sometimes you follow pain down the rabbit hole and stumble upon the beast.
The woman she had met at the bar stood across from her with that same creepy fucking smile. Fiona still hated that fucking smile. “Are you ready Fiona?” The woman cracked her neck and sniffed the air; creepy bitch. (In retrospect the woman was feeding off her fear, bristling with it, enjoying the rush.) Fiona put her hands up and felt the woman’s fist abolish her cheek bone before she even had a second to block. She tried to shake off the blur, lunged at the woman, who easily dodged and pushed her to the ground. She stood back up. There was no noise. They were just watching. She shouldn’t be here.
There are no rules; there was only getting out.
She lunged at the woman again, this time grabbing and gripping a handful of hair. There was something wrong. The woman twisted her face to Fiona’s and she could see the gaping grin. She felt some oppressive force grip her already terrified mind. “You’ll need to bite me to survive this little one,” she wasn’t sure if the woman had spoken, the gaping mouth barely seemed to move, yet to ripple all at the same time. She wrenched the woman’s hair, pulling her cavernous mouth away and bit down on the woman’s neck as hard as she could. It was sickening, the way it felt with pliable skin and shooting cold blood filling her mouth, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to kill this woman.
She wished she blacked out then. She would never get the joy of blacking out into peace ever again. There would never be peace. Jezebel Holt, her Sire, dove her own teeth into Fiona’s neck and pain became her life, her existence. It was the beginning of an endless tide of pain and fear and nothingness.
She was forced to fight her demons, other demons, physically and in her mind. They kept talking about butterflies and deconstructing the caterpillar. They locked her in a cellar and ripped off her limbs and threw her siblings in the room. They cried over her, petting her head, trying to comfort her, and then their fear….the smell. She devoured them all. They broke countless bones, took out their own sadistic fantasies on her. She saw things that devoured every bit of fear she had to give them, until she was no longer afraid, and then they let her out.
When she isn’t rented out, she stays with Jezebel. Her own sick pleasures began to develop. She told herself it was their influence, but Jezebel would smile down at her and she knew that there was always something there, something that brought Jezebel calling. She hated that creepy fucking grin so much. The Blood Sports became her release. She walked into the ring and breathed in the fear and convinced herself she was alive.
Fallenreaper,
Izurich,
Ti
