SCW Boards
Roleplay Boards => Archived Roleplays => Climax Control Archives => Topic started by: Alexander Raven on September 26, 2025, 08:22:29 PM
-
Today was a good day. Things were better. Things were… peaceful. He’d been having more good days lately. Which in of itself should have been suspicious. There was no real reason for him to be free of his own prison this often. To be out in the world, experiencing things. Maybe it was because he’d had his head rattled a few more times. Maybe it was because in some place and time he’d found his peace again. Memory took him to places he never really thought about being in.
Maybe this wasn’t real.
He wasn’t really sure what was real anymore. Days fell away and with each one, he was becoming less and less of himself. Scurrying, struggling. He was a rat trapped in a maze of his own mental machination. A torture that he was inflicting upon himself but he had no one else to blame for it. His own personal hell.
So much had changed over the last year, and the more he looked inwardly, the less he truly understood it all. James, his best friend, had died. Alex had held his bloodied body in his hands, and if he had known then what was to come. He might have put him out of his misery then and there. No, instead he got to watch his best friend fade away. To become a hollow and shrivelled version of himself, a shell. A fragment of what he once was.
A man, a creature. A… something that hid behind a mask had offered him a chance at turning back the hands of time. Of changing fate itself, if only he could do one thing for him. He just had to win The Triad. He’d failed, and with that failure things became further and further unhinged. Vita Mors, the business minded cult freak, had possessed him for months afterwards. Demanding he find a willing host. A host that wouldn’t fail him.
Alex would never forget the sight of what existed for the poor soul who was to be trapped by the temu Hellraiser freak. A prison of flesh and carrion, barbed chains and an unending view of absolute nothingness. No, that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t nothing. Nothing is still something. No, the Void that would serve as the eternal viewpoint of the tortured was the complete absence of anything. An eternity of blindness but your brain knowing it should be seeing.
Alex had sacrificed one of his few remaining living friends to Vita Mors. He’d handed Sullivan Pleasant, the walking skeleton wearing an over tight suit of skin over to Vita Mors as a punishment. Punishment for Sullivan shooting James. Punishment for starting the domino effect that would be the inevitable end of his life. The longer he spent dwelling upon it all, the more he wondered if he’d made the right choice. Was eternal punishment the right thing?
He’d been so desperate to be free of the creature that lived in the back of his mind, the voices that delved into his dreams, he’d never stopped to think. Was it the right thing to do? He wasn’t so sure anymore. Not since everything that had happened since. Not since he’d become acutely aware of the fact that being free of one voice, one torturer, had just left him open to his own self-destruction. The Lost wasn’t something that he’d created though. Not intentionally.
The Lost was always there, always a part of him. Everything that had happened, that was just the catalyst that let it out. James’ death, his marriage to Luna. The unlocking of his mind to horrors he was never meant to know in letting Mors in and in turn ousting him, his mind had fragmented. Fractured. Created a prison for his very own psyche and unlocked a part of him that he didn’t even truly know existed.
He sat in a room, a plain hotel room. A bed that remained unused, a window that looked out into the world he was being denied. No matter what he did, nothing changed, nothing could be changed. He opened the door, stepped through, and he was in the room again. Sitting in the chair that looked over the bed, staring at the empty bed. Sometimes it was filled with phantoms, things to make him give in. To stop fighting back. To let The Lost take over completely.
It seemed today wasn’t a better day.
“This is a strange little place. It is nicer than that which exists to bind me, but just as tortuous I assume.” The eerily familiar voice of Vita Mors bounded through his mind. He snapped his head around, looking around the room, before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He blinked, and for a moment, he knew he was free. He was given a few moments of freedom, every now and then. To show him that life continued without him in the driver seat.
He looked at his shoulder, and pulled away sharply. The Cheshire smile of Sullivan Pleasant staring him in the face, but he knew better. He knew Sullivan was locked away. Trapped in a place that didn’t give him any reprieve. No, it may be Sullivan’s face, but it was Vita Mors. Why the fuck was Vita Mors here?
“I must say, Mr Rabenschwarz. You are an interesting man. Though, it seems that the limitless beyond was not for your reckoning. Things are happening, Mr Rabenschwarz. A chance to redeem your prior failures. Luckily for you, your sweet and loving wife, Luna, reached out. She seemed to think I may have something to do with your current… situation. I hear you’ve become violently unstable without her presence. She blames me, and as much as I would like to take ownership. Well, you are your own problem now, aren’t you?” Mors rattled off, seemingly intoxicated with himself.
It was horrifically unnerving looking into the face of the man he had turned over. It was horrifically unnerving to stare at someone who boiled his blood, knowing that in their final moments of conscious reality, they had happily accepted the punishment. Sullivan didn’t deserve this.
“What do you want, Mors?” Alex asked, staring daggers into the man. Mors simply smiled, and placed his pointer finger to his forehead. A sudden searing and excruciating pain ripping through his head. His body felt like it was on fire, and no matter how hard he tried, his eyes were forced open. Months of memories flooded his mind, things he had experienced. Things he had seen, done and felt. Things he knew were his own memories, but not ones he had made himself.
He screamed in pain.
“Sometimes you have to wonder, if the cruelest joke in this world is life itself. Struggle, agony, pain. These are the things that feel so much more than the brightest of moments. The memories that stick, the ones that cut you deepest. They’re never the happy ones, not at first. Time heals all wounds, but not when we deny ourselves our very right to life.”
“The cruel reality is the backstabbing by someone I once thought of as a friend. The cruel reality was the blase care of another man who I thought I had earned the respect of. The painful memories are also the ones that once were the happiest. Dialogue, laughter, jokes. The cruelty of it all leaves me now scarred and broken. More than I once was.”
“So forgive me, if I am not the man who was being cheered for standing up against who was wrong. Forgive me for not continuing to pander and play to a crowd who so fickle will turn their disdain upon me instantly for doing nothing different. For simply changing my ire from one to another. From their most hated, to their most beloved. I need you to understand the pain that drives me forward, for that pain makes the most sense.”
“Broken, that is the truth of it. Lost, seeking a better tomorrow. Prophecy in a world where destiny and fate do not exist. Only the machinations of man can affect and change what happens tomorrow. Only the machinations of man can truly make a difference in the day to day. So you’ll forgive when I make my claims that they are at the expense of everyone you love. Listen closely, for a story is to be told.”
“But before that, there is a man being fed to the wolves. The man who somehow continues his career, if only for a moment longer. Justin, how awful it is to see you again. Credit where it's due, I appreciate you for discarding just a little bit of the trash that pollutes Sin City. I can’t say I’m saddened to see the passing of Felix. No, I’ve made my stance on that awful little man quite clear. I did not like him, I will never like him. In the same way, I do not like you, and I will never like you.”
“You see, Justin. My disdain with you exists in the way you carry yourself. In the way that you pretend like you fucking matter here. People seem to think that you’re a veteran. That you, the perpetual joke of the world, are at all a threat to me. You are nothing but an insurance by those who sign the cheques, that I am good to go. That I am ready to take what I have sought for so long. Four fucking years of my life have been spent chasing that damned World Championship, and now. Now I’m going to fucking get it. No friends to stab me in the back. No one to slow me down, no one to play second fiddle and try and get under my skin. No, this time, Justin. They are just making sure that I am good and ready.”
“I’m going to hurt you, Justin. That’s the simplest fact of this all. I’m going to fucking break you down, and when I am done hurting you, I’m going to kick you out of my fucking ring for good. If I never have to see your mottled face across the ring from me again, it will be too soon on this marred Earth for you. I have wasted years of my life dealing with miscreants like you. I have wasted years of my life dealing with nobodies who act as nothing but speed bumps on my journey. A journey that will end with me holding the World Championship here. That will end with whoever the unfortunate that is keeping it warm for me comes to the final reckoning.”
“Fear not however. I’ll let you in on a little secret. You’re a necessity in this. As upsetting as that is to admit, you are necessary for what must come. Your shrivelled, bleeding, pile of flesh is necessary in sending a message. A message to the eyes that are watching. To the people who must acquiesce to what I demand of them. A message to the final day. I will break you, Justin. Unlike the many who I will break, and lead to a better place. To guide the Lost on their path to a better tomorrow. You do not get that privilege. You do not get to stand tall at the end with my gentle hand having led you to euphoria. No, for you, Justin?”
“Your final day cannot come soon enough. You are no hardened veteran. You are a walking corpse who refuses to stay down. A zombie who does not comprehend that they are on borrowed, maggoty time. A visage of poor time and poor decisions. The man I will never be, for I will never allow myself to fall to a level that puts me in the same conversation as Justin Smith. A footnote, an unnamed. Another notch on the wall to say that Alexander Raven was one of the best. That Alexander Raven was the fucking best. The sheerest irony in all of this is that you are not a veteran, Justin. I’m the fucking veteran. I’m the man with the experience. The history. The background. I’m nine fucking years your senior, and you will respect that.”
“You are nothing to me, Justin. You need to understand that, I need you to understand it. For when you are staring up at the lights and wondering why your head feels so detached from your body. Why your fingers refuse to move, and the world just won’t come back to your feet. I need you to understand that you were just a pawn in a game that you do not belong in. That you will never belong in. You are a loser, and you will always be a loser. So take comfort in the fact that you will mean something, for a moment. If only to make me look better. Paint the horizon in your own blood, Justin. For that is the only place that you will belong at the end.”
“But this message isn’t just for you. No, I want you to watch, Carter. I want you to pay attention to what I do. For it is a sliver of what is to come. I expect you to be holding that championship when I get my hands on you. When I make you fucking pay for all the transgressions. When you finally must admit your wrong doing. I need you to understand this too. The pain I put upon Justin? It is nothing compared to what is coming for you.”
“For now, that’ll have to do.”