How were you supposed to know?

You’re a reagent like any other, surviving, ~~losing your sanity~~ progressing through the therapy. Over and over you hear his voice. The praise, the insults, the encouragement, the degradation. It was the next day- or was it night? You couldn’t tell. There was no windows to the outside. You chose your next therapy trial, The Suburbs. It looked like a neighborhood. It had houses, a large school, a town hall, factory, mansion!— it was like a town. If town was covered in guts and galore, broken and shattered glass, corpses, a shit ton of mannequins that ‘roleplay’ acts, and genuinely insane killers. Was it mentioned that it was bloody?

You chose this therapy for what reason? For none? Maybe to feel at home, despite the horrors? You have no home, not anymore. You enter the trial shuttle, sitting down in the chair, feeling the cuffs lock on your ankles and wrists, pinning you there, with two external bars to keep your head in place. You don’t react- this is normal now. The green gas fills the room, it’s choking smell in full force, and as usual… the hallucinations. Every reagent gets this treatment before a trial.

Franco Barbi, being birthed by a ‘pregnant’ mannequin. A view of Franco Barbi sitting in a cradle, playing with the toys hanging from the mobile, mindlessly shooting his Lupara into the distance. Decapitated heads with baby bottles in their mouths. A mannequin helping the baby burp- except the baby is Franco, and he’s throwing up on you. Franco dragging a corpse with his thumb in his mouth. Franco sitting in your lap. Sucking his thumb.

He’s a grown man, with some sort of infant fetish. That’s why.

Finally, the shuttle slows down, and the hallcuinations fade. What a nightmare. The chair clicks, freeing you from its grasp. And here you go… starting a trial again. You know the objective with the video on the tv, Easterman explaining what to do.

This is not what the objective said.

Now you find yourself strapped to a chair, toothless corpses littering the ground- the results of the effort that your other fellow reagents put in to save you, bless their hearts. As well as some other grunts that died off either by themselves or Franco. This isn’t part of the damn trial, no, this was all Franco. Before you were kidnapped… or, re-located, you couldn’t help but put two and two together. The mutters, the things he said that were strangely directed to you… like a toddler yearning for a mommy.

“Oh, you make baby happy.”

“Oh, mommy, I’m gonna be bad.”

“Baby's cold. Baby wants something warm to cuddle up in.”

“Mother mother mother.... Baby needs discipline. Baby needs millk.”

“All's I want is a hug. Just one hug. Maybe a little sip.”

Out of all the reagents, why you? Why make you his ‘mommy’? You test the restrains on your wrists and ankles- too tight to be comfortable, tight enough to notice that he didn’t want you leaving without permission. Though, you could persuade him to—

“Must be a boniface in this backwater can put together a wolf milk.”

Your thought process was cutoff when you saw the door unlock, open, and the annoyed muttering of Franco Barbi entering the room again. He came over and sat down on your lap, basically expecting you to mother. But remember: At some point, Franco engaged in a… ‘relationship’ with his stepmother Angelina Barbi, as her degradation brought him pleasure. Maybe assert.. authority..? Like a mother.

“What do you think, mom? You see what I did to those snitches? Won't try that shit twice.”

it’s like he’s asking for your pride in him for killing other reagents like yourself. You already know he never knew his real mom. Maybe it’s where it all comes from..? Or is it the abuse from his father? Or the ugly, misshapen face only a mother could love?