The camera fades in and we see a static, almost faded that reveals a simple family home where three figures are seated over a small table. A young woman, a young man and a child, all placing pieces of a puzzle together.
“One of the happiest moments of my childhood was a simple one. Every Friday night we’d buy a new puzzle, sometimes 500, sometimes more and spend the night, maybe even the weekend slowly putting it together. There was laughter, sometimes arguments about what exactly a corner piece was but there was love, pure and simple.”
“But pure moments never last. The real world sinks in, breaks apart that which you so delicately crafted and takes a single piece away so it’s never the same again. That no matter how hard you try to replicate it, it feels hollow and broken without the single missing piece.”
The static fades back in as we see the same place the home was, now a simple hobbled shack where the young man sits on the dusty, decaying floor and begins trying to make the same puzzle.
“That’s what Arcadia is. That’s what Arcadia shouldn’t be and for the first time since I began my war, I am facing someone whose eyes have been opened to the bitter truth of what this world is. Isn’t that right Jasper?
“Your entire life has been left wanting with something missing inside your soul. Every bit of anguish, blood and torture you’ve inflicted upon others has been trying to find that single solitary soul that fills the emptiness within you. But no matter who you murdered, which unfortunate victim you strung up in your macabre entertainment, it all felt hollow.”
The man has nearly completed the puzzle…except for one single piece that seems be missing right in the center.
“Until you met him.”
“A plan of revenge went awry the moment you laid your eyes on him. The first person you ever cared for. The single piece you always needed. And now it’s in risk of being taken away. Now you feel his life slipping and you fear when he dies, you’ll be empty once more.”
The man scours the small shack, looking futilely for the missing piece that he knows he won’t find.
“Good.”
“Because Arcadia is broken because of men like you. How many pieces have you snapped in two with your actions? How many people did you make empty and soulless because you took away the one person they needed most? And because you feel something for another person now, I’m meant to feel bad?”
“No, I hope CJ Thorpe dies. I hope you’re there when it happens, that when the light fades from his eyes a part of you shatters into pieces forever. That a piece of your soul disintegrates and is never whole again.”
The man grabs the puzzle, flinging it in a rage before sinking to his knees in anguish as the static fades in but before the screen turns fully grey, two almost translucent figures stand beside the broken man.
“The Missing Piece is the worst pain imaginable, but that Jasper…is exactly what you fucking deserve”