The Unfailingly Perfect Mysterious Way of the Most High has taken Victoria from me. The Most High reminded my feeble mortal mind what it means to walk the path laid out before me, to teach me a lesson with the aim of rekindling the fire that burns so intensely in my soul. The Adversary was loosed upon me and allowed to chase me as far as the Outer Planes, but my toils are my stairway to Heaven, the glorious abode of the Most High.

It was early in the morning when I awoke to the angel Victoria my dearest and sweetest Victoria. Her soft warm flesh caused me to rise from my slumber and I blinked a couple of times in disbelief. I pushed her off of me believing her to be an agent of the Adversary and went for my weapons, but they had been removed from their location.

“Be gone foul beast of the depths!” I barked. But she just looked at me with sorrow in her eyes. I leaped at her and easily wrestled her to the ground and began to choke her with all my strength. I watched the colour fade from her eyes and it struck me deep in my heart. I rolled away from her as the sight was more than I could bear. What weakness of faith had I! I was straying from the path laid out before by the righteous and unfailingly precise Most High. I regained my faith and the my feet, inhaled, called upon the Lamb for strength, and determined to finish Victoria off. She had recovered somewhat from the attack. She wept, her tears leaving glistening tracks down her soft cheeks. All the air left my lungs before I could lament with all my strength, “anyone but Victoria!”

She sobbed and begged, “please, it does not have to be like this. We can run away together where no one not even the Most High can find us, the Land of Nod.” She managed to break a smile and the look of hope welled up in her; I could sense it.

“It has to be like this,” I growled for I am upon this Earth for one reason and one reason only: to harvest Lost Souls for the Good Shepherd. I once again descended upon this most delicate creature before me and easily overpowered her for her strength is not within her sweet and soft body but in her mind, soul, and heart. When I am in pain, she provides succor. When I am in need, she provides aid. And so it was with absolute ease that I wrapped up a pile of her silver locks in my hand and bashed her face into the corner of my night table. It was not long that her body went limp and she fell to the floor, her face broken and bloody.

“Your Will! Not Mine!” I screamed as I gave her head a final killing stomp with the intent of spilling her brains on the floor. But my foot rolled off of her head and I lost my balance. I fell on top of her. I jumped to my feet and I hissed through my teeth, “I have killed her!”

I wretched and I heaved and then I spewed the most vile vomit imaginable for when the agents of the Adversary are slain they return to their Unholy Hells, but this innocent creature lifeless upon my bedroom chamber floor remained, utterly motionless. I rocked my head back, looked skyward and howled, “why have you forsaken me?!” I gagged on my own vomit at this point and fell upon her, rolling her over, and cupping her face in my hands. I stared into the broken face and it was then I realised that she had yet been dispatched. I looked around like a wounded caged beast for something, anything. I ripped the leg off of my night table and I started to stab her in the face with the end of it repeated and with as much power and force as I could muster.

The room grew colder as I was losing sight of the path before me. This toil was not over. “She is still right there on the floor!” Although I could no longer recognise her face I knew I was not yet through with her. I overturned my mattress and ripped the shotgun hidden therein from its cradle and I swung it around towards her face. No, not just “her” face! She has a name! Her name, I screamed in agony “Victoria!”

But I was not permitted to finish the deed. My chamber door was thrown violently from its hinges and a hulking beast lumbered in. Its eyes glowed a hellish red and fresh flesh and blood hung and dripped from its claws. It growled something in its foul language, the language of the Damned, of those who have forgotten the Most High. I brought the shotgun up to go work on the beast but it closed the distance between us too quickly to get an effective shot at it before the claws raked across the gun ripping it out of my hands and leaving deep gouges in the gun metal.

Then another swipe but I rolled out of the way and recovered the gun. I needed some more time to properly prosecute this battle. I ran through my door and leaped head first through a window to the outside. Before the beast could give chase I called upon the Most High and I jumped up to the roof top where I would have a few seconds to mentally prepare. I closed my eyes and calmed myself. Just moments later I opened my eyes and saw the Damned Thing had come outside and it was looking for me but it was not looking up.

I jumped from the roof at the opportune moment and rocked the shotgun on my way down into the back of the head of the Hell spawned monstrosity. Magazine empty, I rolled across the ground, and came up using the shotgun as a bludgeon. The monster took just steps before I swung for the fences and knocked it down. I began to ram the butt repeatedly into its head just as I has used the table leg on Victoria and the beast disappeared under me in a shower of mercury globules. I collapsed to the ground.

When I regained consciousness I was on my feet and a police officer was clicking his pen closed and he slid a notepad into his pocket. “That is all I need,” he said. He turned away from me and I blinked a couple of times.

“Officer?” I called out.

“Yes?” he said, turning back to face me.

“What about Victoria?”

He looked perplexed. “Who?”

“The girl! What about the girl?”

He crinkled his brow and shook his slightly and slowly and said flatly, “there was no girl.” He turned without another word and entered his squad car.

I returned to my bedroom and it was over turned just as I knew it would be, but there was no evidence of my struggle whatever with Victoria. No body. No blood. Nothing.

The Unfailingly Perfect Mysterious Way of the Most High has taken Victoria from me. My toils are never ending and my path without an ending point. It was the Will of the glorious Most High that Victoria be taken from me by own hands through the work of the Adversary.

With Frank it's really difficult to tell if he's getting better or worse.

Nah, just trying to read into his public statements and compare notes to other cases I have worked that sound just like him.
I would add that he seemed more lucid when Gabriel and he were exchanging words some years ago than he did here.
But then if he killing off his delusions.....

I don't think anyone knows where Frank is.
Quite possibly including Frank.

Yes.

Victoria has been described as angel but here she seems to appear human.
He probably did that to make her killing easier.
That stood out the most to me, but I've been busy with actual cases that pay the bills to spend a lot of time on this.

Perhaps he's slowly going sane, if the symbols of his madness are slowly being washed away? Even if they're being washed away in totally insane ways?

The poor man hurts, in ways and places not even a master can fully heal.

Cybermancer wrote:I wonder what happened to set him off like that?

Frank would almost certainly say that he does not turn, the path he walks is turned by the "Most High" as he walks a straight line.
He remains dangerously maladjusted; the police were, after all, on the scene.
Although the lack of actual bodies is fortunate. Nobody was actually hurt.

He is apparently well armed from all I've read. He's even hiding shotguns in his mattress.
But he also remarked that his other weapons were removed from his room.
If I had to guess it was during sleep that his subconscious determined to destroy the delusion but he also had a very strong desire to not have to harm the girl he apparently loves, so he removed them himself, perhaps while sleep walking.
The subconscious trying to sabotage itself, essentially.

Furthermore, upon looking at the introduction of the story, he describes what appears to be a sex act performed by her on him.
Which validates his delusion that the "Adversary" had turned her against him, which the "Most High" allowed.
Which validates his delusion that she must be destroyed.

And it's all nicely explained by the mysterious ways of the "Most High".

I thought we had lost Frank.

I have mixed emotions about being wrong.