London, 2013
"Come on Laura, we haven't got all day! Get your bum into gear and hurry up!"
"I'm sorry, mummy, I was just doing my shoelaces."
"Oh, don't worry about 'em, you can do 'em up at the park. Now come on."
A mother and her daughter were walking down the street that day, that cold and empty street, along the footpath through the fog towards the park. It was nothing out of the ordinary, just another Thursday for Ann and Laura McKinnon. A more beautiful face than Ann's, one would be hard tasked to find, and a sweeter soul than Laura one could not find in the entire universe. Such innocence, such ignorance, with no idea that their lives are going to be changed forever.
Life is cruel. The sweetest souls can be taken at a moment's notice and the most beautiful of faces can be struck horrid with grief. Spouses lose their loved ones, friends lose their friends. Mothers lose their daughters. Poor Ann would blame herself for the rest of her life for not being fast enough to run up and grab her Laura. Her husband would blame her as well and leave her after a few years, and she would swallow an entire bottle of sleeping pills not long after. But that doesn't matter right now. What matters is what is about to happen.
Little Laura, her innocence practically palpable to the people around her, ran forward at her mother's request for her to 'hurry up', straight onto the road, at the precise moment a taxi pulled around the corner. Fate then decided that Laura would trip over her laces and stumble forwards, falling to her hands and knees.
Now anyone knows that people can be distracted by the smallest of things like a loud noise, or a bright light, or someone waving at you outside your right car window. These little distractions, mostly the last one, are what stopped the taxi driver from actually looking forward as he turned the corner.
If Laura's laces hadn't come undone when they did, if Ann had just been patient and waited for her daughter, if the young girl hadn't run forward with such speed, or if the taxi driver hadn't been distracted by someone waving at him, then maybe this little incident would have been avoided. But that's not how the world works, so the taxi smashed into Laura's side at 35 kilometres per hour. She flew for a bit before crashing back into the asphalt below, sliding slightly before stopping, eyes closed and lying on her back, unconscious.
The sad part is that Laura survived the crash, and after being treated in hospital for a few months for some broken bones, a fractured skull and a dislocated right thumb, she would have been the picture of perfect health again. But Laura died that day. Ann and the taxi driver both thought it was because of the collision, but the third bystander knew better.
He knew better because he killed her.
There was a screech, and a clang, and a thud, and a scream.
Stupid girl.
"LAURA! LAURA!" Ann screamed uselessly, running as fast as she could to her little girl. She stopped over the body, staring down at her daughter, not knowing what to do. She couldn't tell the difference between dead and unconscious if she tried, yet another reason why the girl died that day. Ann did get down on her knees and shake the little body before her in an attempt to wake the child, but to no avail. She may have been beautiful, but Ann was by no means intelligent.
Yes, because when you see a child get hit by a car, you shake them awake. Moron.
When Laura didn't respond, Ann just resorted to cries of anguish, howling wordless curses at life, the universe and God. The poor woman, her hair so black and her eyes so green, her gorgeous face wet with salty tears.
Oh shut up, you harpy. You'll wake the whole bloody neighbourhood, and that's something I really don't need.
The taxi driver had the decency to actually get out of his vehicle to see what the hell he had just done. He was also responsible for the puddle of sick that formed beneath him as soon as he laid eyes on the result on not paying attention to driving. He could have stayed. This man from foreign lands knew CPR, and maybe he could have woken the girl up, shown Ann that she was alive. But no, he got right back into his little black cab and drove off, ignoring the curses that the grieving mother threw at him. He never forgot that day, and rightly so.
Bloody coward. That's right, drive away from your problems. He really threw up. I guess he had cereal for breakfast this morning.
Finally, we come to the third witness, a seventeen year old boy. He simply watched from a distance, his vibrant blue eyes glowing with anticipation like a hawk watching a mouse. It was his fault that this had happened, and he knew it. He noticed the girl running towards the road, and he saw the taxi. He was the one that waved, ensuring his prize could not get away. He came running as soon as Ann began to cry for assistance.
"HELP!" she screamed, to anyone and everyone. She just wanted her daughter back. Unfortunately, she didn't pick the right person to aid her Laura.
And here we go. Showtime…
"Oh my God, she's…oh God." The boy said, slowing his running as he arrived next to the mother. He could act very well, though his innocent act was aided by Ann not looking for anything out of the ordinary. She was far too occupied. "Jesus…" he said, dragging his fingers through his hair, truly looking like he cared in the least. All of it an act.
Not bad, if I do say so myself.
"Please, help her, please…" Ann pleaded, tears flowing down her face. She was practically begging, and would literally if she had to. The boy wasn't in it for that, though.
"Hold on, lady. I'll check her pulse. She might still be okay." The boy reassured the mother. He was struggling to keep the irritation at her constant squealing out of his voice. Turning his gaze to the young body below him, he knelt down and placed two fingers against Laura's neck. To Ann, it looked like just that, a teenager pressing his fingers into her daughter's neck, checking for any sign of life, helping just as she'd asked. What the boy was doing was much worse than that.
Bare flesh against bare flesh. That was all it took.
Zap! Ha!
The boy was not a normal boy, not at all. He was what some would call an energy conduit, or an electricity sponge, absorbing electricity in most of its forms and either transforming it into a source of sustenance or storing it for later use. He would never call himself something like that, though. The boy preferred to think of himself as an 'energy leech', and that was exactly what he was doing at that moment. He was not alien in nature, but was simply born this way. The energy draining would have been fine on its own, if it had not been coupled with a psychopathic mind. Knowing this, should come as no surprise that it was not the crash that killed poor Laura, but rather the boy draining all electrical impulses from her nervous system and internal organs.
While he was there, the boy also had time to take her memories as well, a little hobby of his. Much of the brain is energy travelling through synapses, so it was quite easy for the boy to manipulate the currents and peer into Laura's life, memorising it himself.
Alright, let's see what we've got today…
He saw someone looking down at a birthday cake, an ice-cream cake with big pink letters on it. "Happy 7th Birthday Laura" they spelt out. He could see the look of joy on Ann's face as she stood nearby with a digital camera, and the look of pride in Laura's father's eyes. He could see Laura giggling with her friends about how stupid boys were and how they would always stick together. He could see Laura's first day of school, and how she cried for her mummy. He could see her looking through the dirty magazine in her daddy's bottom drawer, giggling at all the naked people. He could see her running around the park with her father in the sun. And he could see the taxi slam right into her, from Laura's point of view.
And then she was gone.
Good riddance. Annoying little pest.
The boy stood, looked at Ann, and then looked down while he shook his head, copying what he had seen in a few death scenes in recent films. It had only taken four seconds to steal Laura's life from her, and a second more to read through all of the memories she had to share. To Ann, it really looked like the boy was checking for a pulse, when in reality he was taking it away.
Anne stood still, staring at the boy and shaking her head slowly, completely in denial. This quickly passed as she fell to her knees and cried, picking up her child and cradling her in her arms, muttering "Mummy's got you," over and over again. Perhaps if she had done that earlier, she would maybe have noticed Laura's heart beating.
Oh well. Too late now. Dumb cow. I should drain her as well. No, no, better to let her suffer.
The boy took that moment to slip away, quite happy with his prize. As he walked, he allowed a glimmer of a smile onto his lips. He was quite happy. Normally, he would have to pump his victim with enough electricity to paralyse them, and then drag them off somewhere out of the public eye to drain them. That cost energy, and he had a much greater chance of being caught. With this girl however, he had the perfect situation. He didn't have to shock her catatonic; he just had to pretend he cared about her living, pretend to be an innocent bystander just wanting to help out in any way he could.
A fair bargain, if you ask me.
The boy turned to street corner and walked down the footpath, whistling an old Beatles tune to himself as he did with a bounce in his step. Anyone walking by would have no clue as to what he had just witnessed, what he had just done, and so they would pay him no mind. The boy with his open black leather jacket, ripped grey jeans, white shoes and brown shirt would not draw attention. He never did, and that was exactly the way he planned it. He strolled merrily down the street towards the warehouse he called home, where even the rats and cockroaches had learned to stay away from him.
Back to base.
By then, many of the people in the surrounding houses had run out of their yards to see what all the commotion was about. If only they'd done that earlier, but by then it was far too late
Everyone has a reason for doing evil deeds. If you ask the Daleks, they will say that want to assert their supremacy by exterminating everything else, assuming they answer you at all. If you ask the Cybermen, they will say that they want to make every other human like them to free them from pain and emotions. Some people will tell you why they kill if you ask them. "I did it for the money." "I did it for revenge." "I did it so that I would be remembered." "I did it for a cause, man."
And then there's this boy, Chester, the opportunist who could so easily take the energy he wanted from street lamps or cars or vending machines or phone booths or even animals, but instead makes the choice to leech from the innocent civilians of London. What would he say if you asked him "Why?"
Why not?