A young man searches through an empty mansion in search of a youth who disappeared a little less than a decade back. A youth he knew well. When they were the same age, and were on very friendly terms. The mansion, as formerly mentioned, was empty and abandoned, dust and thick cobwebs caking every noticeable piece of furniture or surface in general. The man who used to live there with his son had long ago died after moving in, the cause referred to on the certificate only as 'birds.' Not much was known about the two that had lived there then. The man had known the younger was adopted, the father was rich, and that was mostly it. The investigator had gone into the house to search up further on the two, just to see if there was more to the father's death and the all around later disappearance of the boy. Nothing was coming to light, however.
Not until he stumbled into a bleak room which smelled suspiciously terrible.
His foot had touched something sticky and unnerving as he moved into the room, causing him to recoil a split second before reaching a hesitant hand back in and flipping a neat light switch that was discovered on the wall. The sight that met his eyes in the dim lighting of the room was terrifying, to say the least. Huge masses of black goo that resembled oil and many raven-like feathers sitting on or in the sludge covered the outside edges and walls of the space, the overheard lights flickering with a little buzz as the lights got used to working again.
On the floor in the centre of the room laid a boy with striking white hair and a pair of dark sunglasses concealing his eyes, clutching something close to his chest and laying in a puddle of the black stuff. Upon further examination, it was revealed this boy was dead. Dead for more than at least half a decade, but the cause of death was unidentifiable. His body remained perfectly intact however, not having begun to have rotted at all. The investigator noticed that the carpet surrounding the pale boy (when not overcome with goo) looked soft and a sharp cream color, comparing to the worn beige all around the rest of the room. He dared a step closer, noticing a closed and shaded window on the back wall of the area. Stepping around the… everything, he grasped the edges of the window and threw it open with a sharp heave, coughing at the sudden dusty shift in place. The soft light streaming through cast down on the boy once more, and the man drew closer, noticing two clear marks on his back, exposed to the newfound light. Lines, to be particular. The man kneeled by the corpse and squinted at the confirmed slits. They seemed to leak the thick oil, and small remnants of bone could be seen through the large lacerations. What was causing this, however, he could not tell. It was as if the mysterious liquid was a natural occurrence. He decided to take a chance and examine what was held against the body's chest.
The boy clutched a little bottle, perfectly together and shiny. He pried it out of the soft grasp of the adolescent and noticed a good amount of papers curled up within the container, slightly faded out of age, but he could tell the printed words were still fully legible. Opening the glass, he shuffled the papers out and straightened them out so that they may have been read. It was clearly a very long note, and so before he started to read, he walked over and sat neatly on the edge of the musty bed in the corner by the window, surprisingly not covered in the goo. He straightened out the papers once more, and began to read with a quiet eye, crossing his legs officially.
"My name is David Elizabeth Strider. I have a story to tell, before someone finds this little bottle and probably my rotting corpse on the ground.
I'm not sure where my life began. All I know is it's been pretty shitty from the start I guess. But anyways I guess a good place to start would be like, elementary school? That seems about right.
Ok so I get it, I wasn't popular or anything when I was in elementary, and I guess I got that/respected that a good bunch, but I don't think anyone else really cared. I always did pretty good, I thought. Advanced classes, or as advanced as a third grader could get, anyway. Life was pretty fucking sweet. Like, wedding day to Liv Tyler sweet. Not a cloud in the sky, everything's lookin' hella gorgeous, and then you see Ms. Tyler there, comin' down the aisle with her fancy thick little veil on, about to be Mrs. Strider if you get me. Her face was all hidden and shit. Well, in fourth grade, I finally saw her face, and tbh, it was like everything punched me all at once. Including the fifth grade jerkwads. Like, suddenly it was stormy raining out, and a tornado appeared off to the south along with a hurricane directly overhead and Liv Tyler was actually a high-level lizard boss in a game that I had skipped ahead in, having no gear to back me up. Long story short, life smacked my ass pretty hard.
It had started off when we moved in the middle of my fourth year, so I literally had no idea what exactly I was doing at this other school, and as far as I was concerned, nobody was going to bother to help me. Rather, nobody did. More like left me in the gutter to die after being hit with like fourteen cars kind of left-you. Not only to add onto this, the school was a looooot harder. The advanced courses were becoming too stressful on my tiny, naïve, nine-year old brain. And I guess that's when the hitting and sneering started.
Everyday, I wore sunglasses to school, because my dad was all afraid I'd scare everyone off with my freaky eyes- of which I will mention are red, stfu- and those kind of started the whole rumor that my life was just a huge secret and I was really this hella cool guy? Which is really ironic considering I didn't even know what ironic meant in elementary school. I like to think of those as my fat and dumb years because that's exactly what it was. Anyways, I can remember one time I let my façade slip, if only for a second, and a few guys came up to me and told me to explain myself. Me, being, myself, immediately got nervous, realizing they had figured out that I was actually a huge nerd. They were not hesitant in kicking my ankles and mocking me by covering their eyes in a dramatic sort of manner. It wasn't very funny, ngl.
Next thing I know these assholes are telling everybody. Literally, everyone. I didn't have any friends at this school so like, this was a huge deal in that everybody knew I was a liar. Obviously this didn't transfer well over into stuff. Getting mocked and teased and told that 'nobody should ever be my friend cause all I do is lie.' Which, in hindsight, is kinda true I guess. I mean we were like, the most hella secretive people on the block, living in this giant old dusty mansion.
From then on, I guess I was pretty fucking hated. For more reasons than just that, too. The hate grew by the day, and it was relentless and taunting and I really just wanted to die. For a long while. Like literally this continued on for years. 'Till 8th grade at least. I held back, though. Kept it cool. But then, a day happened. A day I won't and couldn't forget, for as long as I have now. Hell, maybe when I'm dead I'll remember too. But that day, was the day shit got messed up. And is part of the reason I'm hurting myself in a few. Turn to the back."
The investigator, intrigued and bothered by this boy's encounters, though he knew of them, slowly took out the rest of the papers and flipped the one he was holding onto the back. The paper was old, but this writing looked fresh, as if the ink had just been put on the paper. But there was something about the words that was saddening and slightly terrifying.
With this ink on the page, the words sounded frightened and angry, and very, very bothered.