One night I lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He had been quiet for almost a day, never a good sign. It meant I was in for something, and I frantically tried to cover every angle. 'Tim and Kara love me.I don't give what the kids at school think about me.what happened to my family wasn't my.'

He laughed. It was a dark sound, the one the movies tried to duplicate. Low and quiet, it latched to my spine, paralyzing me.

'Scott, you know well as I that your parents' death wasn't your fault. Alex, on the other hand...'

I closed my eyes, pretended to be asleep. He didn't really care what I thought inwardly. His goal was to make me react for real: throw something, yell at Him, anything. I gave Him nothing. It aggravated Him beyond Hell, but I didn't allow myself the satisfaction of admitting it. He went on and my heart bled, but I gave no sign.

After a time, he sighed, if it were possible for a mental voice to do that. His tone changed to something I had never heard before and I couldn't help but listen.

'.grown tired of you, Scott. Perhaps if I was more patient, more able to wait for things to get interesting, I would stay. I'm not though...patient. Scott. Normally, this would be the part where you die an excruciatingly painful death. However, this is hardly a normal situation you've put me in. Typically, by now the child gives in, takes my.suggestions for his own. If he isn't warped enough, I kill him and start over.

He paused, then came back again, without the calmness he normally had. It was replaced with rage.

'That should be your fate, but you defied me. Me! Do you now how rare that is, for the amount of time I've invested in you? It's not rare, it's nonexistent! Any normal human should be irreparably twisted. You had to be different, a freak. You and your untouchable morals, your sense of responsibility for the weakling sickens me. How did I manage to choose the one modern Stoic?

'It would be pleasure beyond words to kill you the way I want, but that isn't enough, not for me.

He took on the excited sound of a kindergartener talking about the presents he wanted for Christmas.

"Just killing you is so sterile, painless. I want you lying before me, every bone broken. You'll heal, but all wrong, like a crystal goblet shattered into a thousand pieces, glued back together by a toddler. I'll force you to break yourself again to set everything right so I make it wrong again.

The familiar voice -sophisticated and faintly cruel, with an accent I couldn't place- came back.

'What I want, I can't have. Unfair, I know. I thought for a while, what would be the next best thing? It wasn't very hard to figure out. The future, your future, is a wondrous place. There is going to be so much you'll want to see, but you never will. Give me your eyes and I'll never touch you or yours again, just watch the show. Don't, and I'll burst your heart."