Darkness—darkness enshrouded him. It seemed as though the light was no more. He could see nothing. He could feel nothing. The only thing that he could perceive was the shrill, piercing laughter of his tormentors. Ridiculing him at every turn—he was sure that there wasn't a single moment during his life that the other children at the orphanage hadn't been taunting him - blaming him for every thing that went wrong in their lives.
"You're stupid, Tommy!"
"You don't deserve to be here!"
The chants of the children grew louder, more shrill and piercing each second - endlessly reciting the smarting words that made him feel smaller and smaller each second that passed.
"Tom!"
"Tom!"
He could feel them shaking him from all sides.
"Stop it!" he screamed.
"Tom!"
He felt the shaking intensify.
"Stop!"
Suddenly, they stopped. He jolted forward, breathing heavily.
"Stop..." he murmured under his breath, sweat running down his face. He took a deep breath, and scanned the room for any possible intruders, but seeing none, he sighed.
I bet they're still around here...
"Tommy! Come out, come out where ever you are!"
"Don't be mean to us, Tommy. We just want to play with you."
"...No," he gasped, his hands covering his ears as he trembled, the mocking voices of the other orphans growing louder and louder. After a few seconds, he was sure that he had heard something thump against the door of the room. Turning slowly, as if that would help him hear the commotion outside of the room, he lowered his hands, and waited, not making a sound. For a second, he heard nothing, and then, he heard whispers. Faint, low, whispers that he could barely make out.
"Do you think he's awake?"
Snickers. "Wittle Tommy's always awake. He's afraid."
More laughter.
He frowned, and threw one of the pillows on the bed at the door, which barely made a sound as it brushed against it. He took another one of the pillows, and used it to cover his ears. More than anything in the world he wanted them to be distracted--have something more pressing to tend to then to have to bother him.
He leaned back down onto the bed, and closed his eyes so tightly that the strain of keeping them that way was beginning to hurt.
He lay there in silence for a few moments, not retaliating, not doing anything, but simply waiting--hoping the other children would lose interest, and go off to do something else.
It was times like this that he wished he had a pet of some sort--perhaps a rabbit, like Billy's, or a cat, like Amy's. Something that would be there to keep him company, especially since the rest of the children in the orphanage had a habit of avoiding him when they weren't taunting him.
Both Billy and Amy cherished their pets, as neither of them had any living family members left, and their pets had kept them company for years. It was a common fact. No one dared mess with Billy's rabbit, or Amy's cat, unless they wanted to be beaten up by the owner and his or her gang of followers.
Tom shot up--he could feel something hairy rubbing against his legs, and when he pulled back the blankets on the bed, he saw Amy's cat there.
He raised his eyebrows, and wondered how the cat could've ended up in the room, much less the bed, but when he thought back to Amy, and all the times that her cat had ended up in strange places, such as the kitchen, in Kirsten's room (who coincidentally was allergic to cats).
He pulled back the covers on the bed, and stood up, wobbling as he did so. His head was throbbing, felt his heart pounding in his chest, and stumbled back towards the bed, squinting because of a sudden sensitivity to the light in the room.
He sat on the bed for a few minutes, noticing that the other children were not actually in his room, and that the solace he had been seeking for the past few days had finally been granted to him.
Amy's cat appeared to have lost interest in him, pouncing off of the bed and landing lightly on the floor, and padding off softly. It scratched at the door, and Tom wandered over and opened the door a crack so that the cat could slip out of his room.
As Tom wandered back over to the bed, and sat down, there was something that tugged at the edge of his mind - something that he just couldn't ignore.
"...This is so stupid," he muttered to himself, shaking his head, and trying to free his mind of the offending thoughts.
I'll steal it from his room, and take it out to the shed. Yeah, to the shed. String it up from between the rafters, and watch it squirm as it's neck breaks and it dies. Billy will cry for days, but I don't care. He deserves it.
He shook his head once more, and stood up, pacing around the room. He bit his lip, and stopped in front of the mirror. He glanced at his reflection; there was nothing bizarre, or out of the ordinary about it. He didn't look crazy, he didn't see a reflection of anyone else in the mirror. All he saw was an eleven year old boy staring back at him.
He sighed, and sat down on the floor, his head in his hands. The voice in his head had been him. Or at least, that's what it had seemed like. However, it had had a snake-like quality to it - a nasty hiss reminescent of a snake.
You want to, don't you?
"Shut up!" he cried, holding his head. "Go away, you're not real!"
Of course I am...I'm you.
"No, you're not--"
It was at that particular moment that he saw it. He saw a flash of something moving around in the reflection of the mirror. Clamoring to his feet, he wandered over to the mirror, and stared at it, wide-eyed and breathing heavily.
A snake-like boy, pale, bald, and red-eyed was staring back at him, holding a rabbit up in the air. Upon a further glance, Tom saw that the rabbit was dead, hanging limply in the grasp of the snake-boy.
"Who are you?" he breathed.
The reflection didn't answer. It merely held the rabbit higher, and Tom was able to catch a glimpse of something else.
A rope.
There was a rope strung around the rabbit's small neck. Tom felt his stomach lurch.
Billy...I have to warn Billy...
While Tom heartly disliked the other boy, he didn't want his beloved rabbit to die, especially by hanging. Not wasting any time, Tom darted out of his room, leaving the door ajar.
"Billy! Billy!"
The corridor was deserted which was odd, because there was usually a least one or two people loitering there, and oftentimes, getting down to the Dining Hall would prove to be impossible because of the number of people that would spend time chatting with each other in the corridors.
He needed to find someone - anyone - perhaps they would tell him that Billy was alright, and was just spending time talking with his friend Dennis, and not discovering his rabbit hanging from the rafters in the barn on the grounds.
When he reached the entrance, he pushed the double doors open, and ignored the fact that Mrs. Cole had called after him, and ran out into the outside world.
It was springtime, and he often forgot which season it was during the years that he spent in the poorly lit orphanage. Flowers had just begun to bloom on the different trees that lined both sides of the walkway that led to the entrance, however, Tom didn't have time to notice them. A blood curdling scream pierced the air, making his stomach turn.
He ran as fast as he possibly could, ignoring the fact that he had nearly mowed a couple of smaller children over. Mumbling an apology to them, he continued on, rounding sharp corners, and skidding to a halt when he saw a crowd of children huddled together in a circle, with their heads bent towards the ground. It took him a moment to realize that Billy was in the middle of the group, and that he was shaking, and pointing towards the entrance of the large shed.
Traipsing around the group, and trying to slip by unseen, he crept inside the place, and stared up at the rafters, and nearly fainted on the spot.
Billy's rabbit was hanging from the rafter closest to him, strung up by a long, thin cord that wrapped around his neck; he dangled there, the eyes bulging and the face swollen. He gulped, and took a few steps backwards, and broke into a run.
Time.
When he was six years old, he had begged Mrs. Cole to tell him about his father, because one of the other staff members had said that his father was still alive, and that only his mother had died.
"But when will he come?" he had asked her. "Why isn't he here?"
Mrs. Cole had paused for a moment, and looked out at the courtyard.
"Yes," she said. "He will come in time."
It had been more than five years since that day, and his father had never shown up. He would often imagine his father walking up the steps of the orphanage, wearing a double-breasted suit and a fedora, and he would walk up the stairs and open the doors, and ask Mrs. Cole to make sure that Tom had packed all his things, because he was taking him away to his house in the country.
However, it had never happened, and Tom had spent five birthdays wondering when his father would come and whisk him away from the place.
"...It's just a stupid kid's dream," he said, biting his lip. "A stupid fairy tale that'll never come true."
It seemed that time was the only thing that he had, and he had to spend it in the orphanage with a bunch of children that regarded him as well as something unpleasant that they had stepped in.
He laughed to himself - a laugh of mockery. "Maybe he knows I'm crazy. Maybe that's why he hasn't come."
He stood up, and sat on the bed in his room. "He knows I'm crazy...Billy's rabbit! Everyone saw it. They probably all think it's me. What if it was? What if I had something to do with it?"
He got up and started pacing around the room. "Billy's going to come after me, and if he doesn't, Dennis and Amy will. What then? They're going to think I killed his rabbit, and then they'll tell Mrs. Cole, and then I'll get thrown out of the orphanage!"
Despite the fact that it wasn't the most desirable place on the universe, he didn't have any other place to go, and the prospects of finding a living relative or locating his father were too slim for any one to look into.
He flopped down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. There was a chance that no one had noticed him, or cared to notice him when they had found the rabbit, but he was certain that they were going to blame the incident on him - he was their scapegoat. Whenever anything went wrong, they blamed him. The week before the children had chased him into his room, several personal possessions of some of the orphans had vanished. Amy had lost the bracelet that her grandmother had given her, Richard, a large, brutish boy who often backed up Billy and Dennis, had lost a small rubber ball and Dennis had lost the dog tag that had been his father's. All of the items had ended up in Tom's closet, and he had no memory of taking any of them.
"Yeah, that's it. I'm going crazy. That has to explain it. The voices, the unexplained disappearences and visions--"
Oh, how I wish it were that simple.
"Sleep!" he nearly exclaimed. "That's what I need." He laid down on his bed, and right before he shut his eyes, he felt a long finger curl around his shoulder.
Good night, Tom.
He screamed.