It was nearing the end of summer, and the pressing, seasonal heat was beginning to fade with each day that slithered past. Lights that lined the streets of the quiet suburbs began to dim with the diminishing light, and the sidewalks reflected a scarlet sunset with a flush staining their gray-washed surfaces. The scattering remnants of the neighborhood children began surrendering to the advent of dark and retreated, crawling languidly through the remaining heat from the day to reach the attractive glow which began to radiate from within their homes.
Everything seemed as peaceful as it always was in the community, a far cry from the mindless rush of the city heart nearby, pulsating wildly with its relentless activity. There, in the nestled society of hard workers and small-town gossip, it was ostensibly unruffled by the concerns of the city-dwellers.
But if one was to pass by the house nearest the corner of Kensington street, with dark jade trimmings and a coat of luster gleaming on its freshly painted door, they would hear the rising voices from within. It was not exactly a shouting match that drifted through the cracked windows, sifting through the thin fabric of their curtains and spreading throughout the thick, rolling air. But the tension was apparent in each answer, and it seemed only to grow as the argument continued on, until soon it resembled a poised rubber band, readying to snap at any moment.
Inside the house, Robert and Alice Napier stood in their humble kitchen, the walls vibrating with their sharp-edged voices. Tall and handsome Robbie never liked to argue with his wife, whom he'd come to rely on in the recent events that only seemed to get worse as the years progressed, and it was evident in the slouch of his broad, thin shoulders. He tried to remain indifferent, but Alice was demanding.
Ever since her father had taken her to Arkham, only a few months before, she had become somewhat agitated and inconsolable. The shadows that had seemed only ghosts beneath her eyes before became tangible and smothered all animation from them, if any had manage to remain at all in light of their son's unexpected descent into abnormal habits.
She never gave a straight answer as to what exactly had happened at the asylum, keeping to herself the details as if the secret were taboo and threatened to extinguish what was left of her typical existence. And the more Robert pushed for answers, the more she began to fray at the edges of her composure; the time soon came when he decided that he didn't want to know as her secrecy became even more foreboding.
Every last detail of events that came to pass in the Napier household, little Jack Napier knew. Being only four years old, the extent of his comprehension was based only on the observations of a child, but he knew the presence of confrontation and secrecy when he saw it.
Emotions, however – he rarely understood the intricacies of emotion unless his mother or father told him of them, and mostly it was because Jack had demanded they explain when he could not figure out the certain lines that presented themselves in their expressions. He knew jealousy and anger and an odd sort of sensation that gripped him upon seeing a dead animal in the street or an oozing cut on his hand – but never the same ones his parents felt. Those were alien to him, and his frustration only mounted as he realized their unfamiliarity.
It was the emotions of his mother when she coddled him, called him her little cherub with the golden halo of curls and bowed, red lips. The same conundrum that presented itself everytime her shapeless expression would mold into a new form. He hated it. He hated her love for him; it only made her weak.
But Alice still tried, remained stubbornly insistent when faced with the cold, hard facts of life. She was sure her baby was innocent.
But Jack knew it couldn't be any further from the truth; he was no innocent. There were rules established by humanity, and even animals, that he had violated thoroughly just by following his thoughts. No seraph in Heaven, no matter how rebellious its nature, that would allow its sympathies to be wasted on a deviant spawn. Jack had read a bible once, and pictures depicting the fall of Lucifer only reminded him of how truly delusional his mother was.
It was late August now, and that was the catalyst for the fighting. School would begin soon, and the question whether Jack should go or stay behind in the safety of his own home had yet to find an answer. But it would not be for Jack's safety, but the safety of his classmates, his teacher.
Jack snuck through the shadows of the halls, the windows open with the flow of cricket songs filtering through the breeze. He pasted his small body against the wall, peering around the corner through slit eyes and saw his parents. Their hands were wild, like they were filled with feral demons, and their faces were reddened with rage.
He liked it when they fought. The screaming, the emotion that flowed through their voices. And what made it all the more better for him, what made him shudder in little tendrils of delight, was that it was solely because of him.
He caused it and he didn't have to say a word or lift one little innocent finger to trigger the shouting, empty voices. The Monster roused within him and snaked a chuckle from Jack's pouting lips. The clown doll his mother had gotten him, the only toy he'd never felt inclined to utterly destroy, hung limp and faded at his side.
Robert thought it would be a better idea to keep Jack at home and teach him there, where they could control him better and try to train the Monster out of him. Where he couldn't hurt anyone else.
Jack didn't like the sound of it. Not. One. Bit.
Besides, no one could train the Monster. The Monster trained them.
His mother, however, said that Jack deserved to go to school just like any other kid. Any normal boy. And she defended him, saying he wouldn't hurt a child – hurting animals was one thing, most boys did that. But hurting another human being was another. He wasn't a murderer.
Robert retorted, "Like your mother, right? Like her? She started out killing birds and setting the house on fire! What's next, Alice? Will he set us on fire in our sleep? We need to get him help before it's too late! You can't be stubborn about something like this…something as important as your son's life!"
Her voice got real low, and Jack settled against the wall and saw the look in his father's eyes. They were wide and unblinking, staring at the smaller figure below him. It was the same look he got when his father found unmentionables in his son's sock drawer, and Jack relished its aftermath, fissures in his father's young, but war-wearied face.
"Don't you say another fucking word. My boy is going to school. Just like the Jacksons across the street are sending their boy to school. Just like Anne is sending her girl to school. He's going to, just like anyone else. And you won't get in the way of that. I promise you…You. Won't."
Robert didn't say anything. He retreated into his office and shut the door. A malicious smile crept across Jack's angelic little face as Alice slipped into a barstool and rested her head against the cold countertop, weeping.
He was in control. The same control he was intended to have, a fate that was conceived the moment he was born.
He never held his mother's hand, even when she demanded the contact. She'd already given up, signed the ceasefire and allowed her small, golden-haired son to walk at her side, holding the same faded clown doll that he'd always had. They were walking toward a large building, with the consistent ebb and flow of crowds slipping in and out of the automatic doors. Windows were lined with advertisements for sales and mannequins donned wide-brimmed hats and loose-fitting clothes. Jack's little fingers, wrapped in their plump skin, itched to mangle the tall, statuesque figures, and the urge rattled his hands to the bone.
"Here we are, Jay." His mother sighed as she took his hand and led him through the opening doors, the fresh, cool air a reprieve from the torrid heat. Jack smacked her fingers away.
"Where is this mommy?" He asked sweetly, turning his upswept smile toward her. "I want to know where it is. Tell me!"
It wasn't the insistent demands of a small boy that approached Alice. They were almost vicious in the way that they wrapped themselves around her lungs and squeezed so she couldn't breathe; demands of the cruel entity that Jack claimed nestled itself in his brain. When asked about this entity, how it spoke, what its voice was like, Jack said it didn't speak in words or voices. It spoke in urges.
"Mommy, I said tell me!" Jack's voice was darker now, almost razor-edged.
"We're at the department store, honey," she said, breathless. "Going to get you some clothes for school, okay?"
Jack tilted his head, his neck craning and his dark eyes glittering with curiosity. Alice noticed they almost looked…black.
"What is…school?"
"It's where you go to learn, so you can grow up and know everything that everyone else knows." She said simply, and the words were so cryptic that Jack seemed a never ending stream of questions.
"But I don't want to be like everyone else. The Monster said so, that everyone else is boring and don't know what they want. I know what I want, and so does He."
Alice stopped abruptly and dropped to her knees, kneeling beside her child and taking his hand gently. He ripped it out of her grasp with a small disobedient huff, his expression downcast in a malevolent pout. "Look, baby…daddy doesn't want you to go to school. He says that it's not a good idea."
"What do you think mommy?"
She bit her lip, contemplating her answer. There were two ways she could go. Betray her husband, or betray herself?
"I think that…you should go. Because daddy doesn't think you should. Because you should prove to him, Jackie, that you can do it and that he was wrong."
Jack felt a cold, slippery feeling course through him, and it was an urge to do exactly that: prove that daddy didn't know what he was talking about. And he knew it was Him again, demanding that he should not only go against the grain, but to rush into it. Don't think, don't hesitate. Just do things. Just do.
"Alright, mommy," Jack murmured. "I wanna go to school. But only because daddy is wrong, because I knows he is. And so does the Monster."
Alice gave a sort of half-hearted smile, a placid peace offering when all there was beneath the surface of composure was complete anarchy. Questions barreled through the barriers of reasoning, her heart screamed at the top of its lungs, and venomous desires for revenge intoxicated her system.
But if there was anything Jack learned from his mother, it was her sense of misdirection, and that looks were everything but trustworthy. Behind the small, pixie features, sharp and honed into delicate angles, there was something lurking just as ugly and cruel as the being that directed Jack's thoughts. It may have been dormant, but it still simpered behind the closed doors of a reluctant subconscious.
Jack followed his mother quietly, peering at the other obedient children and their unassuming mothers, wearing brown, flat shoes and short hair. And as he tottered along, he realized many of the children were like him; small and plump, with fine hair that seemed almost like silk in the way it shimmered beneath the fluorescent lights. Some even had curls like him, and as a fiery redhead walked past, little flickers of delight surfaced from beneath the darkened russet of his eyes as he recognized the color of flame in the girl's hair. He wanted to yank on it, see if it would burn his inquisitive hands.
He began to grow bored as his mother stopped at a large, rounded desk with curves that ended abruptly at the middle, where a swinging door was placed and he could see a woman's shoes beneath the cracks of the thin partition. She asked for the boy's department, and Jack prodded the area, looking for something interesting to delve into or pretty hair to pull. His interest was piqued as he saw the deep scarlet hair of the girl that had passed by earlier, standing quietly by her mother, looking so innocent in her overalls and pink, collared shirt.
He crept away from his mother, who was chatting idly with the girl behind the counter, and toward the redhead nearby. Her back was turned as he approached, her head upturned as her own mother sifted through a collection of small, polka-dotted dresses, and Jack saw his perfect chance as the mother turned toward the small creature behind her and told her to stay put. She moved away and Jack, like a hunter, approached his unsuspecting prey.
One small hand reached forward, wrapped itself around the long, fiery mane and the urge swept through him. He yanked it as hard as he could, and her shriek of pain resounded through his bones.
She pivoted on her pink sandals, clutching her head and her green eyes narrowed as they caught the culprit red-handed, quite literally. There was a clump of fiery scarlet hair in his fist, and Jack grinned innocently as he released them from his grip.
Jack giggled.
"Say you're sorry, you meanie!" She demanded, and Jack's giggle slithered away, back into its black depths. He glowered at her.
"Sorry is a stupid word," Jack replied adamantly. "I never say sorry. Not ever."
"You'd better say sorry or I'll tell my mommy on you!"
She stuck her tongue out, and Jack swiftly reached forward, swiping the pink tongue between his fingers. He gave one hard yank and she began to cry, fat tears rolling down her cheeks and glistening in the lights.
"See? I win. I always win." Jack gloated, and she looked at him with wide, searching eyes. Almost as if she was looking for the devil in him, and the fear that made her shudder told him that she couldn't find a trace of Lucifer in him. He was a demon all his own.
"Mommy!" She shrieked and ran off, and Jack returned to the large, round counter so nonchalantly that his mother never would have thought he had done anything wrong.
"Jackie?" She rushed toward him, placing her long, cool fingers over his cheeks. He huffed and pushed them away, glaring at her; he despised it when she put her hands on him. "Where did you go, sweetheart?"
"I was playing a game." He replied aloofly.
"A game?" She looked around with wide eyes, standing slowly. When Jack played games, it usually meant something had been broken or even utterly decimated beyond repair. Or someone. She'd heard the screams, but hoped to high heaven that it had not been on behalf of her son or one of his…victims. "What kind of game, honey?"
"The kind where I win, and she loses." Jack crossed his arms defiantly over his chest, signifying his lack of further cooperation. But Alice hardly needed more clarification.
A woman had appeared after rounding a corner, a small, redheaded girl walking behind her, as if frightened and basking in her mother's protective shadow. The little girl was sobbing, her cheeks streaked and stained with tears, and Alice realized that she was pointing at Jack, whose face was smooth and impassive as marble.
The woman looked outraged. "You!" She pointed toward Jack, and Alice instinctively herded him behind her. "That little…demon! He yanked my daughter's hair and tried to pull out her tongue!"
"My son would never do anything like that," Alice countered gently, lying through her teeth. "You must have the wrong little boy."
"That's him, mommy!" Sobbed the little girl, her short, plump finger pointing directly at Jack. "He…He pulled my hair!"
The mother's nostrils flared as she moved closer toward Alice, much shorter than she was. She outstretched her index finger, jabbing it toward Alice's chest in an aggressive and confrontational manner. "You…you'd better get that little bastard of yours in line. He's a monster."
Alice clenched her jaw, her lips peeling back to bare her teeth. "Leave. My. Son. Alone."
"Why should I, huh?" The woman challenged. "What're you gonna do about it?"
In that moment, the woman with the fiery redheaded child realized that this monster, so placid in its stance behind its mother, was not created. It had been born that way. And she knew exactly where its roots had been lain, within the same black, formidable gaze that sifted through her soul and made it tremble with fear.
The woman ushered her sobbing child away without another word, and Alice's fist did not unfurl from their defensive stance until the last ribbon of scarlet had disappeared from her line of sight.
Author's Notes: I put this one back up because people have been asking about it; a little short, this chapter, but substantial, I think. I've written chapter four already, and working on the end of five, but I will not post four until next week. Constructive criticism is welcomed; flames will be reported. Thanks for reading.
Extra Note: Thank you so much to Hoistthecolours for her words of wisdom! I'm reposting this story in honor of her and her utterly fantastic story, Clockwork. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to at least take a look! It's a great, suspenseful read!