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By the time of his 10th birthday, Alastor LeBlanc committed to covering up the entirety of his body at all times.
It wasn't to hide the bruises. He had used to do so, but after a while came to the slightly deadening revelation that no one would come to help, whether he bothered to obscure or showed them off. The lovely lady with the sweet laugh next door gave him a lollipop when she saw a fresh bruise on his face, and the cheery bearded man down at the liquor store gave him a small coin when he went to fetch something for his father, but ultimately that was it. Some small display of sympathy that didn't exactly help him when he was being slammed into the wall and a vase was broken over his head. Something that soothed their conscience, nothing else.
He grinned when he was hurt, instinctively. He didn't used to, but once he started he couldn't stop. His mother said it made him look charming. His father said it made him look like a freak. That if he was going to have an expression like that, he was asking for it. He was taunting him.
As he ran his fingers over the raised scars on his arms and legs, proof of his growing madness, he wondered if anyone would care about this either. Most likely would be that he would be thrown into a mental institution, where they would doubtless torture him. Not that he would tell anyone; he liked the freedom this activity brought.
The knife he had first used on himself was the same one he used to dissect the rabbits he found from the woods, and the rats he was given by the family cat. Oh, poor Bella the cat. His mother had purchased her as a kitten and she had lived happily with them for so many years before his father had stomped her bloody in a blind drunken rage one day. She had to be put down not long after, in far too much pain to continue. Alastor had put her out of her misery himself, slitting her throat as she wailed on his bedroom floor, unable to walk or turn her head.
After he had put her down with it, he buried the knife along with her. He couldn't harm himself with that knife anymore, it was tainted. He could harm rabbits and mice easily, but not cats. Something about cats made him dislike harming them.
He had cried when he buried Bella, but hadn't made a sound. His lips were pulled taught to his cheekbones, even as the tears ran down his face. His father had broken his leg when he found the mound where he had put her to rest. He had resented that- he'd wanted to break it himself. To find out what it felt like.
Was it the thrill of the pain? Was it the sight of the blood? Alastor mused as he stared at the rivulets streaking his arm, dripping from his elbow. Or was it the power, the control, the knowledge that he was the one inflicting pain on himself and not another for once? He wanted to hurt things. He wanted to exert that same power that others had exerted on him all of his life. He didn't want to feel weak.
Blood was so intoxicating to look at. The stark crimson against his skin, the way it made lines across his flesh...
He wanted more.
He dug the knife into his father's throat whilst he laid sleeping in his bed, and pulled across before he even had the chance to scream. The blood spraying his face blotted out his glasses, smearing, obstructing his vision.
He'd done it. He was in control. Just like the disfigurments he forced across his flesh, this proved he was in control.
Others could not harm him. He was the one that would harm them. He would never allow another to seize the opportunity to destroy him as his father had.
He had to do it again.
He wanted to kill again. He wanted to prove that he was in control.
A woman groped him, and giggled amongst her friends. He hung her from her rafters.
A man called him a racial slur. He disemboweled him and strung his organs around his body.
An elderly couple spat at a coloured child on the road. He swapped their heads and dropped their mismatched bodies into the river.
He needed more. He had to hurt more. He had to kill more.
The cuts grew deeper. The kills grew more vicious. His reasons for killing them became weaker and weaker.
He needed blood. He needed to be in control. He needed proof that he was in control.
He had nearly killed himself on multiple occasions, very much accidentally. There wasn't enough, not enough blood, not enough pain, not enough anything. So he would dig more, and slash more, until until until- until even he had to stop, hands trembling in shock as the puddle beneath him expanded, dropping the butchers' knife and watching as it hydroplaned, staggering to wrap himself before he bled out in his own home.
His mother was diagnosed with incurable lunacy after the years of abuse, bloody death of her husband and increasing psychopathy of her child eventually lost her mind. The anxiety had overcome her, and she became a gibbering paranoid mess. Alastor was certain she still held more of her mind than was shown, but the asylum wouldn't have let her go anyway. He took her cookbook as one of the few reminders of home that didn't make him retch.
He used the cookbook often, and found it applied to many a thing. Who knew human flesh cooked as well as a pigs hide?
He broke his wrist slamming it against the wall, and barely held back his proclamations of death on the radio. He tore more of his flesh away with his own hands, until it was raw. He hardly managed to stop himself from lunging at a woman in the street. He saw his mother in the mirror behind him, staring at him, with copper eyes that bore through his skull, and broke it with his knuckles, tearing away at the pieces, until his hands were too slippery to pull anymore and he allowed the frame to break against the floor.
He took to wearing gloves, and staying out of public. He couldn't hide the stench of death in his home. He grew sloppier. He nearly burst out laughing as he recounted a victim's tragic fate on air. The man selling his cigars gesticulated wildly as he talked, and his hand trembled with the need to reach out, to grab it, and skin each finger one by one. He blew out a haze of smoke, and imagined suffocating in it.
She ran. He ran after. Stay still. Control control control - and then he hit her, and she stopped. He didn't like chasing. He didn't like running. It made him panic. It made him feel out of control. He liked luring them. Into his house. And then.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Light. Policeman? Dog.
Hurts.
He touched his shoulder. Blood? Bullet. Fuck. No. He couldn't control this pain. Bad bad bad. His face twisted. Bark, bark. Fuck. Fuck.
He kept them in the bathtub, sometimes. Easier to drain. Their faces made something disgusting in his stomach churn. He decided it was hunger.
Tastes nice.
Ow. Fuck. Noise. Fuck. What
He couldn't kill children. He had considered it, sometimes. A child had passed by his way, and he was certain he'd heard something quite profane muttered under that boy's breath. His fingers had flexed, and his smile had grown taut, and he'd considered the merits of it.
And then the child laughed, hand intertwining with his mother's, and all Alastor could hear was his own screaming, and his mother's hands on his shoulders. The cat's yowl. His father's slap.
No. No no no no, not children. Never children.
Ah. Dogs.
Oh dear.
Smile. Smile. It hurts. It hurts, smile. Always smile when it hurts. Don't let them think you're weak.
Smile.
A bullet buried itself in his forehead, and the last thing he registered before it blacked out was his lips arching downward.