"The officials are still searching for this escapee and label him a serious threat to anyone in his vicinity. Pictures of the escapee are on display on the screen right now, and the officials request that the people of Gravs be on high alert and immediately notify them of Isaav Gravs' presence, the escapee, and the last living person of the Gravs family. Isaav Gravs is considered to be mentally deranged and afflicted with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, with even doctors puzzled by his exceptionally unique circumstances."
Marionette wasn't someone who was interested in watching news broadcasts during her late evenings. She was also not someone who was fond of people calling her Marionette. She preferred 'Mari' or 'Marie. She was always questioning her parents' intellect and common sense when it came to naming her. But today, she was staring at the television, her face blank and stuffed with cheetos, her cheeto-stained fingers carefully trying to change the channel on her remote.
Mari was on her couch, half lying on the sofa in her living room comfortably in her night clothes of a loose T-shirt and some shorts. She had a bottle of cola by her sofa, which she was chugging periodically. It was the weekend, meaning she was free tomorrow. And that meant there was only one thing on her mind right now, Netflix. As she was scrolling down through the seemingly infinite options that Netflix provided, she heard a sharp sound of glass breaking. She was alone at home. And the noise seemed to be coming from within the house.
Slowly and grudgingly, she got up to inspect the source of the sound. She went towards her kitchen, which was in the direction of the sound and, coincidentally, also the direction of the back entrance to her house. As she went into the kitchen and turned the lights on, she started to scan her surroundings, and everything seemed in order. As she looked carefully, she saw a piece of glass on the floor by the path of the back entrance. Upon inspecting the place closely, she saw various shards of shattered glass, but she couldn't understand where they originated from.
Puzzled and confused, she went out to get her broom and swept up the glass carefully to dispose of it safely. While she was sweeping, she was engrossed in her thoughts; she couldn't understand where these pieces of glass came from or what it was that shattered. What puzzled her even more was: even if something did shatter, how did it shatter there in the first place? Though initially disturbed by this occurrence, she soon seemed to calm down as she made her way back to the living room after having disposed of all the glass.
She jumped into the couch and started to get comfy when she noticed something from the corner of her eye. Her main door was open. It was open. Not wide open or anything but open just by the slightest amounts. Simply put, it was as if someone just managed to unlock the door and then tried to slam it back, but it didn't end up being closed. Mari swiftly jumped out of the sofa and paced to the main door. She opened the door and took a few steps outside her house. She looked around her and tried to find anything unusual or out of place. It was decently late at night already, around 11:30 or so. She figured she might have forgotten about locking it in the first place and went back inside, this time making sure to lock the door.
Mari is back on her sofa, back to her comfortable solace of Netflix nights. She suddenly jumps off the sofa as she hears a loud knock at her front door. Puzzled and a little afraid, she walks to her front door and watches through the peephole she installed. She finds nothing. There was no one she could see from the peephole. She was still curious as to the source of the noise. She opened the front door to investigate the case and stepped out of the house.
The darkness in the surroundings hid him well enough to allow him to hide on one side of the wall. There was a gentleman hiding by the entrance to Mari's home. He was shivering or shaking, and his hands held something that shared its resemblance with a cricket bat. Mari could not see him, he hid himself well enough to stay out of Mari's sight. His intentions were unclear, he remained hidden and unseen but was also completely silent and still. Mari looked around for a while and was about to turn back into her home when suddenly, this man ran at her, screaming at the top of his lungs, and smashed her head with the bat in his hands.
"Asshole!", he screamed out loud as he fell onto his feet, crying like a wounded animal at the now bleeding body of Mari.
"That's,... that's my daughter over there,... and you made me kill you, you, you... ", he was mumbling to himself, his sentences incomplete and broken like his tears.
He slowly crawls towards Mari's sprawled out body. He looked awful; a concoction of sweat, blood, and vomit remained as a dry stain on his white shirt, and patches of brown smeared all around his body. He smelled worse than he looked, and he looked downright awful. He was trembling, and his body looked extremely uneasy. And suddenly, out of nowhere, a tiny creepy smile crept onto the tiny little fucker. His eyes were locked onto Mari's body; his face was drenched in dried up tears, but the uncanny smile remained.
"I didn't mean it", he whispered to himself. "I didn't mean to kill her."
He got up slowly, moved towards Mari, and cradled her head. He was brushing her hair with his fingers, almost in a soothing manner. He wanted to say something, he looked like there was something on his tongue, something on his mind, that wanted to come out, but it was almost like it wasn't a word in any known language. And then came the feral roar. Was he crying, screaming, roaring in pain, despair, and loss? Was he mourning?
"How are you doing?" asked my wife, outside the simulation.
"Same as always," I replied.
It's been a long year since the loss of our daughter. This asshole had brutally raped and murdered her, murdering my child in the digital Chromosphere she was supposed to be perfectly safe in! We thought she was safe. We thought she was safe and happy; we didn't know someone could even be digitally raped or murdered like this. Technology has been evolving as always and has resulted in my daughter's death at the hands of a technologically advanced paedophile. She was only sixteen. She wanted to explore herself, similar to any other sixteen-year-old girl.
This dude was meticulous, targeted, and extremely persuasive. He had a great grasp over the workings of the Chromosphere, the digital world that allowed people to traverse through the internet as digital code, as human intelligence, and as personas flying through the interwebs, almost like spirits. While it was mainly a mind-over-body experience, people could curate themselves as certain individuals and become characters of their own. This also led to people being able to hack through such consciousness, digitally enhance, remove, or even destroy beings.
This dude was extremely careful, hiding his traces and working through various proxies and masks, but he messed with the wrong person's daughter. Now, I'm going to make his life a living hell. I worked as one of the creators of the Chromosphere. I still work with the development team. I know my way through the nooks and crannies of this hellscape. And a hellscape I've created for him.
Isaav Gravs, as I liked to call him, was an anagram of 'Svarg Vaasi, which in Hindi meant 'a person living in heaven".
I found a way to trap his consciousness in a cut-off digital world accessible only by me. I could control him, his environment, and the world around him, and everything he once thought was just an imagination. I started with brutal torture: I beat him, thrashed him, starved him, drowned him, and ensured the pain reached his mental consciousness. I made sure he felt my anger, my desolation, and my loss. And then it got repetitive. So, I came up with stories about certain situations and plays to entertain myself and further his misery. I came to the realisation that mental pain was far stronger than physical pain. Hence, I soon introduced his own family. And I made sure that he knew.
"Please, please stop; I'm begging you, please!", cried out Isaav as I saw his face with a look I'd never seen before. And my smile grew.
"Not until the final act", I whispered to myself. And I let him know what my intentions were. The final act. I was going to make him rape his own daughter.