Delirium

1: Linger

The small boy turned his mask around in his hands. This mask, a simple comic's mask, one side black and one side white, had turned into everything he was and could be. White. He could be good, like white. He could use his "talents" for goodness, to help people. Or black. He could be as terrible as black. They didn't deserve his services. He could do such horrible things to them, things as horrible as what they had done to him.

The mask smiled up at him in its peculiarly creepy way. The boy growled and sat completely down, sinking further into the muck of the basement. He'd been hiding in the basement of the corporation for months, biding his time, thinking, planning. It didn't matter how thin he had gotten, how hungry and thirsty and tired he was. All that mattered was this revenge. It possibly meant his death, but he didn't care about dying as long as he did some damage first. After what they'd done…

The boy placed his mask on his face, feeling a modicum of strength come back to him. He stood. He was short, barely reaching four feet. He was dressed in the only clothes he had been able to find; a jester's motley bearing purple and yellow stripes. How he hated it, but it went well with his mask. Besides, jesters were supposed to be crazy, and he was, wasn't he?

He was meant to perfect, handpicked straight from the best genes. His "parents" had spent months deciding everything that was supposed to be him. Blue eyes, black hair, with a fair complexion. He was supposed to be their perfect little angel.

But then again, things go rarely as planned. He came out deformed, different, too different for anybody's tastes. His face, his hideous face, how it was twisted into a mockery of human form. Out of sheer spite, they'd made it even uglier with their burns and their scars. That was his first memory, that pain.

Oh, there were other side effects too. He had an unnatural level of intelligence for his age. He was weak physically, but very strong in mind, so strong that he had developed abilities akin to magical powers. Even without his disfigurement, people could tell he was something not entirely human.

All his life, he'd been alone. Every time he tried to reach out, every time he called for help, he was chased away. Nobody had ever said a single kind thing to him. They'd thrown him out, hardly more than a newborn. They'd expected him to die, but of course he hadn't. He was too strong for that. All those insults hurled at him, soon he would hurl them back a thousand fold. Soon they would pay. Soon.

The boy leaned back against the grimy wall. He looked at the ceiling, intense, icy blue eyes peering out of the eyeholes of the grinning mask, boring straight into the flimsy material. Any second now. He smiled wryly, his expression matching that of the black and white mask. Soon. Now.

Screams of panic and terror filled the rooms upstairs, and the boy calmly strode over to the staircase, grinning widely under the mask, blue eyes sparkling intensely.