2 - Child Dream

I pushed the teenager against the glass, listening to that sharp sound of cracking that echoed through the night air. I could hear him scream as each bone in his body snapped in a slowly agonizing torture. It was revenge…because he had looked at my face with his tongue rolling over his lips before he bit down on his lip. He had thought of me without paying…and I was hungry. People were disgusting.

"What…?" I heard the voice of someone a few years older than me call. I stopped and turned to face the child, watching his huge, bright blue eyes stare at me in shock.

"It's just death…nothing that hasn't been offered to me," I replied to him as he leaned over me, pushing something in my hand.

When I opened my clenched fist, I saw a candy bar. I tilted my head at him, only to have him take the candy bar back, open it up, and then place it inside my mouth. He smiled with delight and moved away from me, looking down at me before he nodded a few times.

"You're skinny, so you should eat more, okay?" he told me.

My grip on the teenage boy weakened. His body fell to the ground as I ate the candy bar in a state of confusion. He was supposed to hate me for being strange… That was the way the world worked.

I started to shiver with a fever sending it's fingers across my body as I had often experienced when I had been a child. When I used them too much, or lost control…there was always the after effects. They were nothing compared to what they would be if I had ever over-used my ability once I had grown. I could do a lot before that happened, however, so that pain was foreign to me. That fever though, and that violent illness…that had been something I had known well in childhood.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tightly against his chest. I stared at him in disbelief, but not bothering to squirm away. His clothes were too clean for him to be a rat too. His eyes were too innocent for him to have been beaten and raped as I had been. I didn't know what he was…but he wasn't society…he wasn't that which believed all the world's lies…but he was so happy…he was that which I hated…and yet…confusion.

"Mamoru!" a grown voice shouted. "Mamoru, father's going to rip my head off when we get home if you don't get back here right now!"

The boy pulled away from me and I understood again the cruelness that every life inflicted. I was alone again in the dark and I could hear the teenager's groans of pain. The boy waved to me, bowed, and turned back to his brother without another word. As a child I had been sad…but as I had grown I had been angry. Mamoru…I hated him. He was just another deceiving face in the crowd.

"Morning," Schuldig's voice cut in like a knife.

I opened my eyes and stared up at him as he pushed his tongue into my mouth and his hand down my pants. I stood up immediately, zipping up my pants and pulling my uniform back on before I glanced back at Schuldig's disappointed expression. I could hear his thoughts entering my mind… He was mad I'd have a dream about there being another little boy with me without letting him take me afterwards.

"If I go now, maybe I can watch him," I told the telepath as I ran out of my room to where I could slip my shoes on at the entryway.

I pushed open the door and started sprinting down the roads. It was still early with the sun of dawn not yet showing its visage as I landed before the flower shop, panting heavily with my weight pressed against a power line. I took in a deep breath and looked across the way to see him setting up the flowers with that blond Schuldig had found fun to play with smoking behind him, watching his every move with a certain hunger in his eyes I could spot from miles away. He was the type of person I would use to gain what I desired…and so it looked like he offered me the perfect opportunity.

I knew exactly what it was that weakened the will of those with souls. With each step I took I made sure another deep wound was inflicted upon my body. I lifted a shard of glass off the ground, deeply cutting myself across my stomach, a quick breath coming into my lips from the pain that flowed over my fragile body. I felt another pain as I used that same glass to slash my arm so that a river of it would pour forth from me. I grabbed onto the wound with my good arm, taking a few more steps as the glass cut me just above the neck so that blood would cascade across my face when I fell forward, hiding my identity for any immediate discovery. At last, I allowed the pitiful glass to break into shards so small that any evidence of it would take much effort to expose. With that, I fell forward against the glass door, watching as I streaked it across the surface. That was what weakened men.

I could feel my blood leaving me, my only life source. It fluttered away on butterfly's wings, but never hesitated to touch my skin for one moment longer. It was…death, but in a way that brought a person closer to living. True life lies at the lips of death. All those times I have killed…that has been what I've learned, and yet I preferred to avoid it. Living wasn't all it was cracked out to be.