When Oliver was six, everybody in his class got invited to Johnny's birthday party except him. He watched during playtime as the invitations were handed out - pretty handmade invitations - and saw people whisper behind their hands as Johnny passed him by.
When he got up to use the loo, he heard one girl whisper, "I'm glad that weird kid isn't coming."
In his heart of hearts, Oliver agreed with her.
-*
When Oliver was ten, he tried to get people to call him Ollie.
His mother just laughed and ruffled his hair. "Don't be ridiculous, Oliver," she chided. "Oliver is such a beautiful name."
-*
When Oliver was twelve, he got his first friend. Peter Larkin was everything he wasn't. Popular, well-spoken, brilliant.
"Come along, Oliver," Peter urged as they stood on the abandoned railway bridge. "You can do it. Everybody else has! Don't be a coward."
The other children giggled behind their hands and Oliver felt a tight coiled feeling in his stomach. Slowly, he climbed on top of the railing and stood up, wobbling.
"Now walk along it," Peter told him.
Oliver lifted one foot and placed in front of his other one. This is just like pretending, he tried to tell himself, but it was no use. He knew that it was a ten metre drop down to the tracks and that one mis-step, one false move would send him crashing down.
By the time he had gotten to the other end of the bridge, he was shaking all over and his clothes were soaked through with sweat. As he climbed down, he looked around for Peter but everybody had gone.
The next day at school, Peter refused to talk to him just like everybody else.
-*
When Oliver was fifteen, he tried to make people like him by helping them. He did the maths homework of half of his maths class before he realised that it was no use.
-*
When Oliver was twenty-two, he got his first girlfriend.
For their third date, he brought her expensive chocolates and a dozen long stemmed perfect roses even though it took half his weekly wages to pay for them.
When he got to her apartment, she opened the door all red-cheeked and murmured an apology. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's not you. I..."
Oliver never got to hear the rest of her excuses because at that moment, a man came up behind her and kissed the nape of her neck. "Who's this, darling?" he asked.
"Nobody," Oliver mumbled and left, still clutching the chocolates and roses. It was only when he was at the front of the building that he realised that the guy was the waiter at the restaurant he took her on their second date.
-*
When Oliver was thirty, he started working for James Lester.
He did everything for the man. He brought him coffee, dry-cleaned his suits, and always offered himself to do any task, no matter how demeaning. He respected Lester and wanted to help him.
That was why it was so much of a surprise when he overheard Lester one day describing him as a "small insignificant pathetic specimen of a man who'll never amount to anything."
-*
When Oliver was thirty-two, he finally realised that to get anywhere in life, he needed to stop being nice.
He discovered that he quite enjoyed manipulating people, that most people were remarkably easy to manipulate. He also discovered, as he watched the efficacy of his predators at devouring human flesh, that he had a taste for the macabre. There was something sweet about watching the man being rendered limb from limb, his blood splattering the viewing window.
Afterwards, he went down and personally cleaned the room, enjoying the metallic tang in the air. When a small splatter of blood landed on his cheek, he wiped it off with one finger and licked it.
-*
When Oliver was thirty-three, he realised that manipulation had its downfalls and that somehow, it wasn't nearly as nice being killed by the predators as it was watching them kill.
-fin
