G Callen was never a normal boy. He witnessed killings far more often than any boy should, mostly in his head, but he still found a strange comfort in his Tiger's protectiveness.
A beautiful golden orange tiger with black stripes, who was enormous in little G's mind. This tiger always remained a few steps ahead of him, and never let him love. Anything little G loved, the tiger would eliminate from the game. The killings played over and over in G's head, but sometimes, it happened for real.
It was always when they were going to touch him. Little G could never remember being touched in his life. Anyone who was going to touch him, Tiger would eliminate. G didn't like it, but he couldn't stop it. He wanted to feel the touch of another person, but Tiger wouldn't allow it. It wasn't in The Rules.
G never actually witnessed Tiger's murders. They happened much too fast, less than the blink of an eye, that's all the time it took. The person would reach out for G, and Tiger would be right behind them. Suddenly, without warning, the person would be eliminated and Tiger would be stretched out in a corner, licking his faintly red tinted chops, often he head a piece of fabric stuck in one of his claws, the air smelling faintly of fresh cut copper.
Tiger was the reason G's parents were gone. It had been a cold Saturday night, and G was only 3. That was when Tiger had first appeared. Tiger lay in the corner, and at first G was scared, yet he knew faintly what this tiger was here to do.
His mother reached out to tap G's hand to ask if he wanted more steak. His mother had cut up the meal in bite sized pieces, but that was before both his parents got drunk as hell. Now, her words slurred, and the way she waved that damn knife around scared little G in ways he didn't think possible. Before he knew it, the tiger was standing in the middle of the blood spattered floor, his mother gone, chair tipped. This only lasted a screaming second since his father was behind him, shouting, reaching for him, and in one moment, all that was gone. G was outside in his backyard, swinging like he always does. The tiger was in the middle of the yard, watching him intently.
He remembered he was hungry, so he went towards the house. It was only then that he realized that the house was barely more than a charred piece of rubbage. Smoky gray tufts swirled up from the crackling wreckage. G entered anyway. He came to the kitchen, which appeared untouched by the grayness around him. Blood smeared the floor, wall, and ceiling. The table was on its side, the cloth clinging limply to it. One curtain was on the ground and there was a bloody handprint on it. The prints were also on the wall, the cupboard, and faintly on the tiger. It finished chewing and yawned. It was the first time G noticed the copper smell in the air. He looked back towards the tiger again, and as its jaws snapped shut, G could feel that something had changed. He turned back to the kitchen, and it was gray, like everything else. Floral wallpaper cracked away from the wall in little flakes that joined the ceiling bits and ashes dancing their way to the floor.
And that was the first encounter.
Since then, Tiger had eliminated hundreds of people, and G was proud of him.
"He thinks he's in a game. The killing and everything, thinks it's all a game."
"yeah?"
"Yeah. Killed his parents when he was 3. Stabbed them out with a steak knife."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Police got him when he was 11. He had already killed hundreds. He thinks he's still going, though."
The two men stared through the re-enforced plate glass at the man curved in the corner of the padded room, hands tied off behind him in a straitjacket.
"Maybe one day he'll wake up."