(Disclamer: All property belongs to its rightful owners, except my OC. That belongs to me.)

(Note: To all reading this, I have always loved writing stories when I was in high school, but I was never good at some aspects of writing itself. So if anything is not punctuated properly I will gladly take pointers on fixing my mistakes. Thank you and please enjoy!)

...

The mind is something that is weird. Everyone knows what it is and yet it can sometimes be the hardest thing to understand.

Does it really exist?

Passion, Pleasure, lust, love.

What is an illusion?

--

Being lower class Zack and his southern family always just barely got by, sometimes even starving, but at least they stayed warm.

His mother would be what one would have assumed woar the pants in his parents relationship. She was always the strong one. Fighting tooth and nail when she was younger. A brunette with a bad attitude and fowl mouth. Motherhood had helped to cure a lot of her bad habits, but they just got replaced with mother bear tendencies.

To put it simply she was over protective of Zack. To him it was to much, but to the rest of us it would seem like what our parents might do.

His father would always come home drunk, or high. It was a regular hobby his father had found an interest in, well besides gambling that is. Having left his wife and Zack behind at the age of 5, they never really had a father and son relationship.

But that's probably what made there relationship so unique. Some would call them friends if anything. U always hear about the father that never returns or that shows back up, but not Zack he had a honest friend, sometimes brutally honest, but still a friend.

Zack was very humble, and too kind. When he was little he would cry even if a fly was harmed. He believed that all life was sacred, but at the same time he had no problems eating animals. He loved to hunt. It was one of the few things he could bond over with his grandfather, well at least when his younger cousin wasn't around.

Mostly Zack would stay by his great grandmother's side, helping her clean, cook, and sew. She had taught him to paint as well, but he wasn't that good at it. She had learned that he was very skilled with a pencil though, but where as she painted beautiful pictures of the forest or mountains and deer playing in the snow, his were dark.

She one time sat him down by her side and wanted him to draw with her. She had drawn the mountains and the sky, it was beautiful colors of blues purples and greens, all vibrant colors.

After an hour or so she had asked to see his drawing and in the beginning he wouldn't show her. He seemed disappointed when he had saw hers and went to tear his drawing up without letting her see it, but before could go through with the act she had swiftly yet gently pulled the paper out of his hands and looked at it causing the young Zack to tense up out of the corner of her eye.

What she had seen drawn was of something she didn't even notice herself. It was of a old, rotted tree. Covered in mushrooms of different sizes, and colors, and under the tree laid a old grave stone that's name had long since faded.

"It looks ugly", She heard Zack state in a saddened tone.

She smiled patting him on the head as she gave him back his drawing, "It's not ugly at all. You love the sad things. The things most of us would rather over look, you just have a very unique perspective."

What she has said only caused him to become confused, and made him want to strive to get better until he could draw art just as beautiful as hers, but in his own style. She was very proud of his drawings. To her they were perfect, and to Zack she was one of the few people he could be himself around.

Zacks' cousin on the other hand was what most people would consider the trophy child, tall, good grades, strong, blond and blue eyed guy that every girl by the time her turned 18 had wanted to get into his pants. He was perfect. If there was a picture next to the definition of the word, it would be his cousin.

He was everything Zack had wanted to be, and to him Thomas was might have been younger but he was clearly the better of them. Zack only standing up to 5'5, being a burnette with hair cut almost to the scalp, and bright blue eyes with odd yellow rings in them gave him a more terrifying look, especially since he didn't show much emotion. Pair that all with the scares he had all over his body, and he ended up coming off as what you would think a serial killer in the news would look like, or at least that's what some of the people at his school would tell him.

Don't get it wrong though Zack loved his cousin. He just always had a side that wanted to be the star. To be the hero. To get out of his cousins shadow.

However sometimes it just doesn't work out like that. Just a year later he had lost his great grandmother to a rare heart condition, he could still remember the feeling of her cold hand in his as he silently cried as he watched the heart monitor being turned off. Her death had completely destroyed his carefully balanced realty.

Zack's body was weak. Being born early and almost dieing in the process, his body had started out very fragile, at the age of 11 he had only weighed 80 pounds. To top it all off he even had to wear glasses because of a stigmatizam in his right eye that made the muscle lazy, so some times his eye would slowly trail off to the right. He had to take so many pills because of health problems as well, a total of 12 to be exact. He was just one messed up poor boy.

He blamed himself for his father leaving and his mother always having to work. He knew that it might honestly be better if he didn't exist.

But he knew at the same time even if he was weak, he was a pillar to his family. They had lost so many loved ones already. It was funny in a way. To them he was strong. But why did he still feel so weak?

He had beat himself so hard to become even stronger than his cousin. The damage that was done in the past however could not be fixed unfortunately.

He just couldn't keep up. He was just to weak naturally.

Mix that with a heart that is torn, and a broken mind that has almost given up. At those moments in his life, when his back was against the wall as darkness slowly suffocates him, with a knife to his wrist he had finally learned to embrace the darkness.

Instead of depression claiming another victim it was being used against itself in a way. Zack would just laugh when his mind went to more less than savory places and keep walking torward his own destiny, and to never give up.

Lots of dark times mixed in with the good ones , its terrible how its easier to remember the bad moments than the good ones. But sometimes the worse memories are lost, and that's for the best.

All these different things that had happened to him had made him who he was, it wasn't fair. But that doesn't mean he was going to let it affect him. Because what's a funnier joke than life.

Sometimes its better that monsters stay forgotten, and to just smile, and take your pills. Of course poor Zack never did realize just how much he had changed because of that philosophy. He became uncaring of his own well being. He became uncaring of the world he lived in.

"People will just use me to meet there own goals, or abandon me when I am no longer useful. Let the world drown in sorrow." These were the words he spoke and for the longest time what he thought about the world.

His heart had turned black. While continuing to wear a mask everywhere he went.

--

"Hay son you better wake up, were almost at your stop." A older gruff voice had said waking Zack from his sleep.

Jerking awake from his sleep he looked at the bus driver (A olderman donning a hat that covered his eyes, almost making them look like they glowed) "smiling" in confirmation with a nod. Grabbing his bag off the floor of the bus and pulling it onto his back.

"Careful out there. This school is one scary ass place." The Bus driver said pulling out a cigarette to light as he placed it's butt between his teeth.

"Thanks for the heads up old man." Zack said with a "smile" as he hopped off the bus, throwing back a wave over his shoulder as started his walk to his new school, and hopefully better life he hoped.

Letting out a puff of smoke, as he rolled the cigarette delicately between his fingers. The bus driver watched the back of the new student as he walked away, and he couldn't help but let a sad smile to form on his face, "I have a feeling thing are going to get a whole lot more interesting, let's just hope it's for the better Zack".