Rotten

[Spell]

Subject Name: Jessica Margaret Mcgonigal
Date of Creation: October 27th, 1887
Location of Birth: East-Tower Compound, United States branch.
Type: False-Human.

Subject is the creation of Magic User: Anna Mcgonigal ( Registration Number: 302-21-11 )
It should be noted that the creation appears similar to Anna's deceased child.

Date: 1897

Subject joins the East-Tower Compound order.
Subject has been given the Magical User Resignation Number of 412-32-22.

Date: 1908

Subjects graduation thesis is titled "The 4th: A connection between worlds"

Note: Subject has stopped aging. Subject has willingly allowed us to study this phenomenon. She claims it is due to her connection with this "4th".

Date: 1910

Subject has become more reclusive
The color of her skin has begun to pale.
We are unable to continue further testing and will be asking for permission to transfer the subject to head office.

Date 1911

Subject lost.

Note: A strange occurrence. Subject was days away from releasing her findings of the 4th to the home office.

[Spell]

"How long has it been?

Day and night no longer here. Only existence, but is this truly to exist?
I implore you, daughters. Don't walk away from me.
Stretch far and wide. Bring back the worlds with you, for I cannot leave. Not now, not right now.
A glimpse of what they can be. Of the people you find. Their happiness, their anger, their sorrow. Everything that makes them - them.

Maybe I will find the answers there, within your memories.
The answers to the beginning.
The answers to this accursed place.

Don't be afraid. I will be there with you. Inside your heart."

[Spell]

"She couldn't have gone far! We need to find her!"

"We've searched all over. She's gone."

"She isn't gone! I.. I can feel her, she's still here. I know it!"

"Gerald. Don't tell me you've fallen for her. She's not hu-"

"Don't! DON'T even say it."

Journal Entry: Gone. There's no trace of her left in the compound. It's as if she were never here. A keen girl like her? I thought the world of her. She told me that she was leaving, that she would take me with her.

No. She's gone.

[Spell]

"I couldn't take him.
How could I? How could I subject someone to this?
Five minutes too late.
I had to go.
He was not there.
Gerald. It was fate, wasn't it? You not being there.
Because I would never forgive myself if you had been.
If I had taken you here.

There must be a God. He protects his children.

All I can do is say a silent goodbye.
I will not say he is better off without me. What person would say that?

Then again. In the in between? There is no person anyway.

A silent prayer. His place is in some other time.
The notes I left behind. Could he discover their meaning?"

[Spell]

"Are you the maker?
All all-seer?
The final connection?
The beginning?
The end?
Or are you only someone who is in a place they shouldn't?"

"I'm only your mother."

_______________________________________

1955

"This is your last out. Are you sure about this?"
"I've never been so sure about anything in my life. Seal the hatch."

"If you see God up there, tell him I said `Hi`?"

Laughter.

"I'll tell him more than that."

"Gerald... You won't be forgotten."

10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1.

Ignition.

Failure.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

"If you could replay one moment in your life, what would it be?

In the rose garden. With him.
I've never felt so wanted, so needed by another.
A mutual kinship that drew me closer.

But it drew me so far away from where I needed to be.

Love is a want and a need.
It is also a curse. I curse it with every fiber of my being.

That final moment when he was gone. I could feel it.
Now he is beyond my reach. He is beyond reaching me.

Study. Study. Study. It's all I can do. Study others.
Study other worlds. Study other paths. Find the answer.

The answer to it all.

Who. What. Where. Why.

They spiral into a void which could give the answers I seek.

[Spell]

"But what if I don't want to die?"

An anomaly. I never expected one of them to bring up the question.
Be a good girl, I said. Do as you're told, I said. Mother will always be here, I lied.

What's gone is gone.
Memories are all I need.
Memories make the soul.

But is that true? Or is it something more?
Each of them look the same, but are they truly the same?

[Spell]

She hadn't been seen for two days.
We had plans. The rose garden, as always.
To meet within the forest of thorns and red.
To be whisked away. Away from prying eyes.

Except I find her with another man.
Our own professor.

What man am I to continue loving a tainted woman?
How easily she felt the need to spread her legs for another?
Who does she think she is? A common gutter whore?
The look on her face. She hadn't been fighting it.
She wanted it.
I thought she was different.

No, she is different..

It's unforgivable, but why do I want to forgive her?
Why am I crying even now at the thought of losing her?
At the thought of another man using her when I have not?

"Used trash. Not worth your time. Give up on her and find someone new. Who wants a whore anyway?"

I killed him.
I couldn't control myself.
I strangled him to death.

My no longer perfect Jessica.
The halo above her head gone. No longer an angel.
A whore is a whore, but I'll make her my whore.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

"I don't even know you."

How could she saw that? How could she say she doesn't know me?
That whore! Who does she think she is?
The slut gets the taste of another man and now she ignores me?
I've been there, watching her from the start, how she's grown.
Yet now she shuns me?

Look at her. Bewitched by another man.
Gerald is a useless fool. What man of importance is he?
A street rat who came with nothing and will end with nothing.
Yet our little whore would rather be his than mine?

She can die then. Just like the rest of them
Just like the rest of the stained, heartless, and worthless women before her.
Why can't they understand that I love them?
Why can't they see that I would give anything for them?
Everything for them?

No, no. It's because we were at the professors funeral.
The little whore is struck with grief, it must be it.
Why else would she turn her back to me?
Even in death, he's making her turn her back to me.

All it takes is a stroke of a knife to stain that pretty face.
To make her look ugly outside, as she has become ugly inside.
Filth inside. Filth outside.

What did I do to deserve this treatment?
All women are monsters. Slithering snakes who crawl on their backs and bellies.
Ready to open up to the first man who gives them even an ounce of attention.
But I gave her attention! Why not me?!

[Spell]

How easy it would be to take her neck into my hands.
To snap it like a twig, like I did with his.
Her neck, it feels so soft. Her skin is too precious.
Why did it have to become tainted? Why did she have to become worthless?

There's no point in trying anymore.
She's beyond my help. She's not pure. She's not the little angel I knew.
An angel with no wings is an angel who should not exist.
They are too precious to live in this world of monsters.

It would be wrong of me not to put her out of her misery.
Look at her. How she hides pain behind a smile.
How she smiles with him.
Her smile, so false, because it is not a smile for me.
She wants me. I know she does.
She is hiding it. She is toying with me.

When I kill her. I'll have her.

Then there will be no more games.
No more playful glances.
No more brushing her shoulder against mine in the halls.

"I don't even know you."

Oh how it haunts me even now. I know it was a lie.
A beautiful little liar you are, Jessica.

Once she's gone, then maybe I can find another.
Another who hasn't become a whore of this world.
Another who hasn't been stained and tainted.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

"She couldn't have gone far! We need to find her!"

He told me.

"We've searched all over. She's gone."

I lied.

Or did I truly lie? She's gone. She's gone because I took her from you, Gerald.

She's gone, no longer to be a tainted plaything of this world.
A plaything to men who don't deserve her. Like you, Gerald.
She deserved nothing more than to be with me.
She was mine. She was to be mine. We were supposed to be happy.
But now I can be happy in knowing she will not suffer.

No longer my little lustful whore. No longer the apple of my eye.

So with the last patch of dirt I buried her away.
I feel revitalized. I'm no longer under her spell.

What a whore. I didn't truly need you! You were the one who needed me.

Sleep well in Hell, Jessica. The resting place for a whore of a woman like you.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

"Gerald?"

We were to leave. Leave this compound behind.
Leave and find a new life. A life not controlled by the society.
The death of the professor has given me a second chance. There's no time to delay.

But it wasn't him. It wasn't Gerald.

It was a man I've seen out of the corner of my eye many times.
I would watch my step as I passed where he mopped.
I apologized to him when he found Gerald and I in his rose garden.

Five minutes before we were set to leave. This man was here.

Why?

The answer came when his strong, calloused hands wrapped about my neck.
No longer able to breathe, only there to linger and choke as the life was drained from me.

The 4th. The world between worlds. I never discovered the way there.
My research had been for naught. I couldn't face the council.

His hands squeezing tighter. The world around me becoming darker.

Then I was there..

[Spell]

The last breath I would have taken stolen from me.
Stolen like my very first kiss — by Gerald.
I still don't know the name of the man who ended that life.
No matter the worlds I send them visit.
He is never there.
Neither is Gerald.

Nevertheless. It was a success.
The 4th is real. My research had not all been a waste.
All I needed was a nudge in the right direction.
That direction had been death.

An attachment to what was in life?
The willingness to finally let go?

My eyes were so heavy..

"But I don't want to die."

They tell me. How can I not feel sorrow for them?
Does this grudge run deep?

"How can a little girl who never experienced life know what death is?"

Dance, children. Dance. The many worlds are your stage.
Fear not what death may bring. For your life is meaningless to begin with.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

Jesse...
The name he spoke as he whispered in my ear.
A name, meant for me, that he only knew.
It is the name I bestow upon you...

My daughter...
Our daughter.

Wishful thinking on my part. Isn't it?
To say you share any trace of him other than name.
But that name, that connection, that memory.
The feelings, emotions, that it brings to me whenever I recall it.

It is why when you spoke of your fear of dying that I told you to be not afraid.
It is why I feel no sorrow when I send you to the outside worlds.
Because there is not just one of you.
There are many.

And with memories...
How can you truly die?

Bodies, flesh and blood, are rotten things.
But memories, memories can live forever.

My little Jesse. Find me the answers I seek.
Through life and death -- find me the origin of all things.

And perhaps there, I can find Gerald.

And perhaps through you...
I can find him.

[Spell]

Search.
Search far and wide.
A never ending crusade.

That is my mission to you, my darling daughter.
Our little Jesse.

As long as I am without an answer, your searching will find no end, no completion.

From your search, show me the stages of life.

Experience them.
Bathe in them.
Emotions.
Reactions.
Such things that another can never take back once they've given them.

So wear your mask with pride and play the role of the fool.

And may you one day experience the happiness that I had...
Before it was torn away from me.

[ ♪ ]

[Spell]

Floating lifeless among the worlds.
He truly is a wonder to have made it this far.
A locket still clutched between cold and gone fingers.

I've discovered him.

The poor man, his body never meant for such a place.
He was never meant to dwell between these worlds.

To make it this far...
The drive of man can create miracles.

A spark. A small sign of life.



A hope that keeps him clinging to the edge.
I feel it. So faint. No wonder she could not find him.

No wonder she had to make me.

But if he's 「Alive」, would that mean the end of my search?
Would that mean the end of my worth?
Would that mean the end of my life?

If I bring light to his existence, would mine grow dark?

I was made to search, to find.
But what is a searcher without someone to find?
My life would be meaningless then.. forfeit to her.

"But I don't want to die."

I don't.
I don't want to die.
What am I to do?

Do I do as I am told?
Do I continue to be the good little girl?
Her precious Jesse.
Their precious Jesse.

For the first time.
I hunger for true survival.

This survival I can gain from him.

Dear Father,
Through you I will continue to live.
So do not weep, for you will be with mother soon.
Because through me, you will be by her side.
A hidden, dark little secret, never to be spoken of.
And I will be the keeper of this secret.

Your life is mine.

I'm a good girl, am I not?
Mother?

We play the fool and search these many worlds to your hearts desire.
We continue to search for something that is already found.
For what is already inside us...

[ ♪ ]