There is self-harm in this chapter.

Running, running. He was running and teleporting but everywhere he went there were angry faces with fire and pitchforks. Damnation was at every corner and corridor and suddenly he was surrounded. He spun around in circles, trying to find a spot that was clear, trying to find a friendly face. "Monster!" "Demon!" "Devil!" "Be gone!" "Return to Hell!"

He threw his hands into his hair, collapsing in on himself and crying out. He begged them to leave him alone, to not hurt him. He felt a whip hit his skin and cried out. The ringleader was there, his whip in hand. "In the box!" He screamed, whipping Kurt again and again until the- suddenly- twelve year-old scurried into the box. The door shut and he heard electricity and there was nothing but darkness but in his hand was a jagged piece of glass.

In the darkness he could see the symbols and he was only eight again. He brought the glass up and it glinted in the light of his eyes. He saw his reflection and began to cut. He carved and curved. Blood ran down his face, down his chest, his arms his legs. His tail was quivering and he woke up to a dark room with no windows and one single light above the door. He was shackled but surrounded by scientists. Kurt was thirteen again. He tried to teleport but found himself suddenly drained of energy. His head dropped and he looked at the floor.

'Please, God. Save me.'

Blood. There was blood on his hands and his vision cleared. He looked around and found himself outside the room he had been trapped in for so long. He was guard was dead, and Kurt realised he had done it. His heart fell through the floor and he teleported away.

Right into a street sign. Luckily it was only his foot but the pain of having his foot go through the street sign was enough to make him scream and he bit down on his fist and looked around. It was late, but a window curtain was moved aside. He blinked away the tears and pulled his hood closer around him, his tail wrapping tightly around his torso. When the person in the window finally looked away, he teleported a few yards down, this time sitting down to look at his foot. It was bleeding but slowly healing now that the missing part of his body had a place to go. He cried and curled into an alleyway, uncaring of the blood that trailed after him.

The morning came and a young woman was shaking him. "Are you alright?" She asked, and Kurt's body stiffened. Somehow, she had not seen his skin or his face. He curled up tighter, hiding himself better in the cloak. "There's blood leading to you, are you alright?" She asked again.

Kurt squeaked out a yes, even though the pain in his foot was immense.

Time had passed, but how much, Kurt did not know. He had lost more weight than he thought possible, his foot throbbed even when he wasn't on it. He swam in the cloak and teleporting left him so tired that he could sometimes collapse wherever it was he went. He was sitting against the wall of a bakery, watching the feet of people pass him. His hair was long and hung out from under his hood. He felt tired and exhausted and his stomach growled. There was a small can next to him to people would occasionally drop a coin or two into.

Communities had been warned to watch out for a murderous demon, blue skin and yellow eyes, teeth sharp enough to rip out throats. The fliers made had been stapled to posts and taped to insides of windows. There was one right behind him in the window of the bakery. A young child dropped a coin into his can. "Danke," he would say to everyone.

Night came, Kurt prayed. He was on his knees and mumbling to himself, saying his prayers. In his hands was a Bible. Something he had made sure he never lost, despite everything that had happened and how fast it had all happened. On the blank first page was a handwritten message.

" To my brothers, Stefan and Kurt. There are many hardships in life and there are many people who will look at you like you are freaks. Do not believe them. I have never met two people so good and heart and so selfless.

Kurt, you are different and that is something you will deal with for the rest of your life. Do not let others put you down and do not let others walk all over you. But keep a kind heart and a pure soul. Love others, even when they hate you. Love because you have been loved. Love because you have been hated. Love because that is the best way to make those who hate you suffer the most because you can love even in the face of adversity and bigotry and that makes you so much more powerful than they can ever hope to be.

Whether you read this book and receive true blessings and messages from it, or just find it a way to pass the time, whether you believe the words or find them nothing but fiction, know that you are loved. By me and by God.

Love, Jemaine

Stefan… ."

His brother was standing in a room filled with blood, with dead bodies. He was looking at his hands with wide eyes and Kurt couldn't tell what had filled them. "I did this," he breathed before smiling.

Kurt remembered his promise. And so he killed him. He was fifteen.

With a heavy heart, he held the dead body of his brother in his arms, even though they weren't true brothers, he held him. He cried, sobbing, wailing. A group of people screamed outside, of murder of death of demons. People rushed in and blamed Kurt for all of the murders and he ran. He ran and ran and ran but he was surrounded and no matter where he went there were people and he was failing to run and he was failing to teleport and he turned a street corner and all sound stopped and the people behind him stopped running and there was but one man at the end of the alley.

And that was the day Kurt gave God a face.

Kurt found it hard the believe he had fallen asleep and would not have believed it if he wasn't waking up to his alarm. He groaned, rolled over and smacked it. He frowned at his three fingers and blue, fuzzy skin. He didn't want to go to school today and maybe the Professor would understand. His stomach hurt and his head felt funny and he hadn't slept well. Despite the few hours of rest he had received, those dreams poisoned his rest.

If only he had always looked the way his image inducer made him look, then those dreams wouldn't exist. He put it on and got up, sending a small prayer of help to God. "Let him understand," he pleaded as he turned on the inducer and teleported outside of the Professor's office.

"Professor?" He called in. In his mind, he got his answer. He was to wait a few minutes because he was busy with someone else. Ten minutes passed and Scott walked out of the office, looking pale and tired and stressed. Kurt felt guilt but then felt anger at that guilt. Scott had pushed him away last night so any stress on Scott had been all Scott's fault. He walked in, looked at the Professor and began to cry.

He told him about the dreams, but not about the events with Scott. He didn't know if Scott had told the Professor and despite his anger towards the other, it wasn't his place to tell the Professor secret things about the other. The Professor looked troubled and Kurt thought that perhaps he'd be given the day from school. "No, perhaps it is best if you keep your mind occupied. Staying home instead of going to school and sulking about the dreams will do you no good. Go eat breakfast and get ready for the day. And if it turns out that the day was bad, well tomorrow is always a new day."

Kurt nodded and teleported back to his room to get properly dressed and ready for the day. He was so angry. First Scott made him feel alienated more than ever, then the Professor refused to let Kurt have the day off. There was a small part of him that was angry at himself for not understanding American ways and for not understanding himself and the emotions he felt when Scott had kissed him and when Scott had talked to him. He wasn't used to this.

It was all foreign and Kurt had a dreaded thought that he might be foreign forever. Everyday, there was something new that he didn't understand. Something new he had to accept as normal. The language, the food, the people. Kindness and acceptance. The religious bigotry in the world that made his religion seem like it was a horrible thing and he was just supposed to sit back and defend it instead of making it known that those people weren't truly God's messengers. He was sick of not understanding math and not understanding English and why did he have to know History? It already happened, other people know it, people that enjoy knowing it. He had been given the easiest classes that could be offered to him, he had been given a tutor. He took classes in the summers and when he first got here, he had taken them on the weekend.

He didn't understand the obsession with supermalls and amusement parks. Some television shows were so ludicrous and he didn't know why people liked them.

He understood a lot of things, but it seemed like he understood nothing some days. Now, he didn't understand Scott's feelings and he didn't understand his own. He didn't understand how he could feel like that but stay true to God and he didn't understand how and who to ask for help.

He didn't understand why he had been born a mutant and why he had to look the way he did and why people never took the time to know him before judging him.

He was sick of not understanding and feeling foreign to everything and he wanted one day off.

Even now, as he waited outside a bathroom with his clothing in his hand, he felt like what he was doing was foreign. He grew up getting sprayed down by a cold hose then air drying. He thought it was normal, despite the fact that he knew nothing about him was normal. Everyone in the circus had bathed that way; sometimes they had soap, sometimes they did not.

He hadn't known what a shower was until Scott had to come and explain it to him after telling the German that he was grabbing one.

"What is a shower and how do you grab one?" He had asked and the laugh that followed made Kurt feel so… inadequate.

Now, the memory surfaced as Scott came out of the bathroom, surprise lighting his face when he saw Kurt standing there. He had his dirty clothes in one hand and a towel around his shoulders to catch the drips from his wet hair. His cheeks quickly turned red and he hurried away, leaving Kurt standing there, feeling like the wind was just knocked out of him.

Kurt stormed into the bathroom, locking it behind him and muttering in German. He hated being so foreign to everything. To television, to books that weren't the Bible. Everyone swore so freely and the clothing style had been so weird. He wasn't used to fridges or microwaves, three square meals a day. He wasn't used to kindness or sympathy or people understanding him and what he was going through.

He hit the wall, growling, surprised by his own outburst and the sudden screech of surprise from whoever was on the other side of the wall. He frowned, yellow eyes filling with tears and streaking down his furry cheeks. He turned the image inducer on, hoping to find even a small comfort in the person before him. The white skin, furless and scarless, his ears not pointed, his mouth without fangs. His eyes weren't yellow. He had ten fingers and ten toes and his tail no longer existed.

Kurt felt even more sick. He ran his hand over his skin, disgusted that he could still feel the fur, still feel the scars. And suddenly, he didn't want this to be his body any longer. He felt it wasn't right for him to look so normal when he was anything but. He reached under the sink cabinet, pulled out a razor and began to work one of the blades out from it. When it was finally free and his fingertips were torn and shredded from the effort, he held it up to the light, studying it. It had been a long time since he carved the Angelic symbols into his skin, but now, he'd be doing it on something that didn't resemble himself at all. Naked and exposed, he began to draw the curved decorations on the skin of this imposter. Fresh blood began to run down his navel, down his groin and legs. He shivered but continued, biting his lip, invisible fangs causing it to split open. He carved until he knew that the cuts would scar, even on this body. He threw the razor into the bottom of the garbage along with the bloodied tissue paper and hopped into the shower. His image inducer, unfortunately not waterproof, sat on the side of the sink as he showered.

A few minutes after his bleeding had finally stopped and the shower had run cold, there was a knock on the door. "Hey!" Came Spyke's voice. "Whoever's in there needs to hurry it up. Professor X says we're all gonna be late if we don't leave in ten minutes!"

Kurt hopped out and dried off. The day would be long.