Severed [A series of one-paragraph short stories about Raining Steel]

(Severed: a series of paragraphed stories based on 20SixHundred's dark ambient album: "Absence")

WARNING: The activities being depicted in these stories are disturbing and highly violent in content, they should not be read without first consulting a psychiatrist. Since they can become seriously violent, you might also seek advice from a criminal attorney and a clergyman. In any case, I accept no responsibility for any harm you do to you or to others after reading these. Whatever happens, It's not my fault.

Enjoy the show.

1. Happiness:

  Happiness to me was only a distant memory of a lone existance I faced on quite a daily basis. Family was also as distant as that memory of a bright future, what with the constant alcohol and drugs and everything of that sort of nature. My brother, Hard Wired, told me our parents parents' weren't as bad as they were back then. They loved their families and families before they did. That means I finally have someone to blame for my crappy life.

1. Childhood:

Oh boy...my childhood. This is a painful subject for me, since it wasn't smooth sailing for old Mr. Steel here. Old Raining Steel, sittin' in his room, playin' with his ripped up toys and his air-driven football and his broken beer bottles scattered across the floor. Those were the days...those dark, deceptfully beautiful days in my neighborhood. Those were the days...

1. Pitch:

The pitch was the level of how loud the screams were in my neighborhood, at times there were some 4's or in rare cases, maybe a moderately loud 6 or 7. Only once was there ever anything above a 10, it was a 13. The 13 came from my house, when Step, my stepdad, came home one night with a box full of nails. It wasn't fun to experience any of that, what with the nails painfully embedded into my back like a branding mark. Mom got us away from home that night, and we didn't go back...not then not now not ever...good on her.

1. Threat:

The only real threat after what happened that one night on the 13 pitch was myself. I'd been disgnosed with a severe case of schizophrenia at the time, and sometimes when things got crazy and dark, I tended to drift off and see things that weren't normal, like the wallpaper moving in it's drab patterns or maybe even old family figures telling me to "join their misfortune". I was LIVING a life of misfortune. I hated almost every moment of it...almost, because of Hard Wired and Mom...I miss them...

1. Deep:

The Deep was what I called my schizophrenia events...it sort of stuck, y'know? Kinda like how a certain nickname fits a person in high school and he sticks with it for the rest of his either amazing or sucky life. Anyways, the Deep was a very unpredictable thing when there wasnt anything dark or insane goin' on, it just sort of happened at the most unneedable and unnecessary of times. One time, I saw this carving knife covered in what looked like very liquidy ketchup stuck to my wall...it was funny to me. I hated ketchup.

1. Home:

...home. They say it's where the heart is, home. Home to me WAS where my heart was and still belongs to a certain extreme...my mind is somewhere between Mareami and the Equestrian-Gryphon border...or maybe farther down the Heatwave Line, I dunno. Home was broken, dark, cramped with five people, smelling foul of burning bush and alcohol. It basically was a real hellhole, minus the flames and red demons. Well...only one demon...but I don't talk about him much...obviously.

1. Bleak:

If I had to choose one word to describe my life after 13 pitch...it'd be bleak. Bleak, as described by the dictionary, means lacking vegetation and exposed to the elements. I was on my own, in the Deep dark recesses of my mind, alone...not bothered or disturbed by anything around me, but scared and internally bothered by the things I've seen. Jeez, there were so many things I saw that made me feel...cold and miserable, charmless...nothing left to love about me, except that I was alive and kicking on the surface. Boy, if they had seen what was bubbling on the inside.

1. Shed:

Like most kids, I had a secret spot where I could just dissappear from all of the grey and black and dark colors in my new home...it was the Shed Down on Mist Hill. The SDoMH was a special place, it had once been inhabitated by some kid who abandoned his future to hermit down and live there for his life...then he became a bomber, and got arrested after '95 slunk into the backseat of the future of 2000 and onward five years later. The Shed was a very special place because it had a history that I could pretend was my own. The kid that lived there was a mathematician, almost wanting to go to Harvard. Goddesses, I'm so jealous of him...

1. Alone:

I lived alone in the Shed after 18. Didn't bother no-one, didn't go out and buy groceries, didn't kick the can over at the Lot near the convenient store Hard Wired worked at. I became the Mistwatcher. Yeah, that "creep" who stalked kids and hunted animals for fun. Even though I didn't stalk no kids, or even once bother anyone, to hell with the media and its' outlook, I got my own...solitude and comfort...somethin' I never had.

1. Search:

The only thing I really looked for was someone to spend my time with in the Shed...then I found her...her name was Cloud...a beautiful girl who didn't belong in a dreary town like the one after 13 pitch. She saw me, and took pity on me, and I did to her because we were both similar. Grew up in broken homes in a dead-end neighborhood, we both had a bit of a mind problem, and we both never had true happiness through and through. We connected quick, and five weeks later, kissed. Love traveled quick in the Steel family...and she became an addition to my survival.

1. Trails:

The worst day ever was March 11, 2005. I was born 27 years on that day. And the day I came home to find my love, MY Cloud dead on the rug near the fireplace, a carving knife covered in her sweet liquidy blood...my God...I never wanted to come home...I pack up my stuff, closed her beautiful jade eyes and ran...ran so far away but couldn't escape the past...heh. Funny where I ended up right after that.

1. Night:

My usual nights ended up like this after Cloud faded away: 7 PM, look in the mirror and ponder if I should have taken that carving knife with me...8 PM, walk around the streets of a community I found...9 PM, enter a bar and drink to my sorrows...10 PM, go home with a girl I met that hour ago. And 11 PM, I woke up from an apparent blackout and wondered where the hell the blood came from and how it got onto my shirt. 30 minutes into 11 PM, I'd remember everything and go dump the girl's body in a river or a dumpster. It'd get discovered and found, but they never pinned it on me. I never got caught for five years after that...the Mistwatcher became the new me.

1. Seek:

Unfortunately, on my birthday and the anniversary of my wife's death, being March 11, 2011, at approximately 2:42 AM in the morning, a cop knocked on my door. That was my world became a nuclear fallout. The cop never saw his baton leaving his holster...he also didn't see it coming as it rammed against his skull like a hammer to a nail...the branding mark of the Mistwatcher of Midwich Valley. I threw the body into my oven to hide any evidence...except for the baton. I left it on the doormat.

1. Somber:

"I find you guilty of murder in the first degree, murder of an authority figure, murder of at least 13 young females from our fine town, and resisting arrest. You are hereby sentenced to 25-life in prison, with no chance of parole." That was the closing statement of my trial when I got found out by a junkie who saw the whole thing from across the alley. I ended up in the Midwich prison, and fit in nicely with all of the others living in there...including my personal childhood demon. Him, the man who put nails on my back, was in the same prison as I was...and the walls were slowly closing in on his demise.

1. Death:

I planned his death quite easily and quickly. First, create a distraction or a riot in Cell Block F. Secondly, grab a glass shard from my buddy in prison, Sawed-Off. Third, quickly dash and bob and weave my way through the controlled chaos of the riot and enter my personal demon's cell. Finally, do the deed that I wanted to always do to him when he did the worst things to me...his walls had closed in...and his throat was open wide.

1. Attack:

I escaped Midwich shortly after, and hid out in the Shed back in the town after 13 pitch. I still never knew the name of it after all these years...it was called Anarchy...and I lived on the road it was named after...Anarchy Road...who'da thunk it? A couple residents found out I got cuffed and came knockin at my door. I had the carving knife...they had pitchforks and shotguns alike. It really didn't take long for them to fall...after all, my charisma and endurance and such in prison ranked up fast after fighting the big guys. I went to see my mom and brother after that...I hated every minute of their berating and verbal assault...I didnt strike back or say anything...I left. A lone survivor of the thing I called a peaceful existance.

1. Peace

[the following recording is from the office of Suzy Graham, a famous gryphon reporter interviewing an unknown individual on April 9, 2015] "Wow...that was some deep stuff there, Mr..." Ra-*Static interferes with his name* -Ms. Graham. "Well, it was a somewhat-disturbing honor to meet you." *handshake* Say, could I buy you a drink maybe later today? "If my schedule's clean. And as long as you don't bring out a knife of whateve-" *The individual pulls out a knife and stabs Graham, and the screams are at least at a 13 pitch level. The man smiles to the camera, winks, and drags the body out, before apparently cutting the wires to the camera.*