| Jestlon Tirioni -- Prelude and Background |
| Henry Messing was a hard worker, a devoted husband, and the father of three beautiful little girls. He owned a modest home in a small Pennsylvanian town, raised his children to know religion, and often volunteered himself for neighborhood services. When the United States was drawn into the second World War after Pearl Harbor, Henry was called back into active duty to serve in France. After a few weeks of watching the men under his command die in combat, his hope of returning home safely was quickly diminishing, and he began suffering severe bouts of depression.
When his decision-making capabilities began failing him, he sought council from the medical staff. A young nurse by the name of Catherine Porter took a liking to the man, and often tended to him. After years of not seeing his wife, save for a picture he carried in his pocket, Henry began an affair with the beautiful young woman, and both were quickly swept into the romanticism of love in times of war. After she was found to be pregnant, she returned to her home in New York City. For the next year, the two stayed in touch through letters, even after Henry was wounded by shrapnel and discharged from the Service. Unfortunately, maintaining the affair proved troublesome, and after Henry�s wife of six years discovered the letters he had received, he shot himself through the temple, rather than face the guilt and scandal of his actions. Messing�s wife wrote to Catherine of his death, explaining that she did not hold her responsible. Catherine, however, did, and soon after she too took her own life. Love in times of war. Facey, as he often referred to himself, along with a myriad of other names, was sometimes a man of distinguished character, full of pride and giving a great impression of wealth, or proper breeding at the very least. Other times he was a drunken vagrant, roaming aimlessly down lamp-lit streets, liquor bottle in hand, scrounging for valuables near sewer drains. Ask the right debutante, and she might regal you with tales of the most splendid evenings spent watching the moon cast shimmering reflections through broad, oak tree leaves onto the lake, whilst she and her gentleman caller debated Dickenson, Moore, or Baudelaire. Take a walk in the right cemetery and you might find a man in soil-ridden rags knee-deep in a random grave, well on his way to a hidden stash of cash buried in a casket. In either account, the man in question may just be the shapeless Facey Face-face. Although, surely, he�d be using some other name... |
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| In one such example, Jackson Bennet (or Facey, as only a distinguished few knew him to be) swore allegiance to Petain�s France in 1942, working with a small cabal of German loyalists whom kidnaped, interrogated and assassinated persons they believed could become problematic to Germany�s sovereignty over French politics, with hopeful eyes towards a German version of the Roman Empire. Jackson worked primarily in securing funds for the groups misdeeds, through any means necessary. When the Allies entered France in 1944 and Petain fled the country, Jackson�s cabal disbanded for fear of capture. Facey soon after assumed a new identity and opened a safe-house for Allied troops to rest comfortably in. Two weeks after D-Day Normandy, Henry Messing�s mind began to crumble. Leading his platoon through the french countryside, he had to consciously urge himself to stay standing, to keep calm, to continue thinking by the force of his stubborn will alone. After another week of fighting, his will just wasn�t enough. He managed to keep himself glued together until regrouping with other Allied troops outside Paris. Here, a french loyalist had began running a safe-haven and makeshift hospital for Allied troops. The proprietor, one Preston Milligan, claimed to be a former surgeon and was often found collecting medical supplies (morphine, bandages, blood bags...) in the late hours of the night. One such evening, Milligan overheard a conversation between an aging officer and the Army medical staff. The officer reported claims of depression and delusional thoughts, the occasional hallucination of his youngest daughter standing atop a given hill as he passed by, his wife�s face on the head of every dead woman he saw. The medics offered that these were understandable side-effects of the stress his responsibilities over his men placed on him, and advised that he rest easy while he could, before the fighting resumed. Milligan was instantly intrigued as the officer had listed his symptoms, and took it upon himself to seek out aid for the poor officer. He recruited an attractive young nurse to do the job, sending her to visit the officer after implanting deepest sympathies within her impressionable mind. Under the cover of night, Henry Messing and Catherine Porter began their affair, and in the shadows, Preston Milligan watched his plan unfold. Next Page Character Sheet |
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