Tiger Chronicles: Exodus

Chapter IV: In Calvin We Trust

…

If it's already been copyrighted, I don't own it.

Holy hell, sorry for the slow pace. Don't leave yet.

…

"I remember being taught I always had to forgive."

"It didn't matter if I was beaten to a pulp by a witch of a woman, or fucked in the ass THEN beaten to a pulp by a pedophile, it doesn't matter if a crime I didn't commit got me beaten and humiliated and demonized for six years, even if everyone else is a complete monster, even if they never consider forgiveness for something I proved right off the bat I didn't do, I had to forgive."

"Fuck. That. Shit."

"You don't get to torture me for years and then tell me I need to forgive because someone who treats being nailed to a cross as a minor inconvenience said I have to. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't shrug off that kind of punishment. I'm still limping from being worked over all these years. I still get sores on my face as a consequence from being fucked in the ass. I've been handed permanent consequences as many of you have."

"As will probably come as a total non-shock to most of you, not once did I get an apology. Ohhhh no. No, apologies are for children to make, and then it is up to the elder to decide whether the apology is sufficient. But an adult fucking kicks you in the ribs forty times and you're supposed to forgive them 50 times so they can have a few extra turns at you."

"That's not hyperbole, by the way. That was actually told to me after they found out I was innocent. 'They need to wean themselves off', my mother said."

"I'll summarize with this- why the hell should we forgive our offenders for things they've done, when we're punished, yes, even after the fact of innocence, for things we didn't do?"

-Kyle's first sermon to the New Exodus camp.

…

"My parents are idiots." April said succinctly, not even really bothering to look at the laptop's camera.

She considered her words for a few moments. Off to the side, other teens waited their turn to speak to Calvin.

"…yeah, I know that's probably said a lot here, but seriously- my parents are idiots."

Calvin's face was calm as he absorbed this assertion. "What was the final straw that made you join the New Exodus?"

April knew somehow that she was talking, but it didn't feel like talking. It felt like hitting play on a badly recorded home movie. Her voice was shaky, detached, like a nervous little girl reading a dictionary out loud.

She wasn't looking for more sympathy. In what was a much-needed affirmation of her faith in humanity's future, no one at the camp had given any indication that there was anything sexy or redeemable over stripping a minor down to her underwear in front of the school and forcing her into a gunge tank.

She knew it was reprehensible. A betrayal of trust in her school and her parents. But it healed her a little to know that an outsider could look at that situation and deem it fucked up.

…but a change had come over Calvin, visible even via laptop.

His eyes had gone cold. He wasn't blinking as much as before. He did not move or resettle himself in his chair. She looked briefly at the other teens, who were unnerved as she was…

Even across the gulf of the internet, Calvin's fury was palpable.

A thought came to her, that this might not simply be an interview, she considered as she affirmed that yes, Mr. Dregs, her principal, had tried to grab her and hold her to take a picture after she had been slimed, and Calvin's hand gripped his desk until the knuckle's became white.

This was not just some adolescent offering her a chance to tell the world she had been wronged.

Calvin Halgins. Avenger and destroyer. It sounded so ludicrous until you actually looked at him, and saw the promise of hell in his eyes...

Had she just signed three people's death warrants?

…

In the past, Hobbes noted, Calvin's rages were fiery and explosive, kicking or smashing the thing that offended him while ranting loudly and furiously that a beanie propeller hat that didn't let you fly was an injustice against him and kids everywhere.

But like an inferno, he could not maintain the fury for long, and whether by virtue of exhaustion or distraction the rage would dissipate.

He was not that Calvin, now. Not anymore, Hobbes realized.

He sounded calm. He looked calm. Only certain tics betrayed him, made it clear that the calm he had reached was not a zen impartiality or discarding anger as futile, but a cold, lasting hatred.

He could feel the icy cold across the room. He wasn't breaking things, or shaking with rage, Calvin seemed at first glance to be sedate.

"Well." Calvin said calmly, letting go of the desk after the interview, thirty minutes of listening to some poor little girl detail how her parents and principal had conspired, for no good reason, to humiliate her horribly and unconscionably in front of her school.

Calvin took a deep breath, then exhaled.

Explosive anger was dangerous, but like a wildfire if you saw it and stayed at a safe distance, you would be fine. Hatred could be focused, refined, perfected.

The question was not whether to kill those involved, it was how painfully.

The problem was that once one got used to killing, the reservations and mental safeties that made one hesitate to pull the trigger eroded. It got easier. Add reality-warping powers into the mix and you had a recipe for disaster.

In the back of Hobbes' mind, he felt that if anyone deserved the unchecked wrath of a vengeful, righteously indignant teen with the power to make someone's life a literal living hell, it was this Dregs asshole.

…

The teens of the New Exodus weren't there to be preached at. Most just wanted, with the desperation of a drowning man, to get away from a truly abusive environment for a little while, even if that meant roughing it.

And some would listen to your story patiently as long as you listened to theirs in turn, but no one really felt like being lectured.

So Jeremy Duncan had to admire this kid, whose balls probably hadn't dropped yet, giving a sermon that held all at rapt attention.

"You're going to be called crazy. Hell, if any of you are forced to go back, they'll probably send you to a shrink to get your head examined. Don't worry- it'll be a chance to lie on a couch and explain how being kicked and shat on has left you with some trust issues." Kyle explained.

"But you're not crazy." He assured them.

"You're not crazy, selfish, or rebellious to wipe a bloody nose after the umpteenth time daddy or mommy had a bad day and took it out on you, and say to yourself "I am not a punching bag". It's not spoiled to get away from people who… frame you for rape, FUCKING knowingly frame you for rape!-" he gestured at Jeremy, and there were sympathetic noises of disgusts, one boy saying aloud 'that ain't right'… "-because you know that sticking around will only get them to try again with something else, and when your parents go so far as to try and pimp you out for someone's sexual satisfaction in any shape, form, or fashion, stick a fork in your family- it's done."

"But they call us crazy. They call us unhinged. They call us ungrateful, unappreciative, uneducated, irredeemable, irreparable, irrational… they call us all these things, and they demand, not ask, DEMAND respect on a level that would make a Mesopotamian Death God cult cringe."

"And there's no winning!" Kyle continued, making Jeremy nod. "There is no win condition! Spend time with them and they'll complain to you, God, and everyone about you being unemployed! Get a job and bust your ass, and they'll complain you don't spend time with them! Get good at sports and they'll complain you don't study! Study and they'll complain you're not more active! And if by some Herculean feat you're a star athlete with all A's and a steady job who dutifully brings out cookies and coffee during their weekly meetings with other parents to discuss just how fucking awful 'kids like you' are, the moment you plop down in front of a TV or a computer screen to do something other than act like a wind-up doll, you're a lazy time-wasting bitch or bastard freeloader who wouldn't survive five seconds in their day, when in their day, they weren't working part time jobs, they weren't A+ students, they weren't respectful and obedient, they were finding everything they could smoke, drop, or drink, fucking each other, fucking themselves, fucking their future!"

Kyle stopped his tirade to let the message sink in.

"If you just decide to say, 'screw it, I'm doing what feels good now', they'll point to you as an example of what all kids are in there minds, but if you try to step up? Do something good? They will demonize you as worse than the mutant lovechild of Hitler and Satan! Stand up to a bully stomping the shit out of a kid he pulled out of a wheelchair? You'll get arrested and expelled while the bully gets absolutely jack squat done to him except at the most- AT THE MOST- being made to shrug and offer a barely audible 'sorry' to the paraplegic turned quadriplegic by him tap dancing on a kid's neck!"

A muscular girl, who Jeremy heard was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, stood slack jawed, blinking dazedly at that last part.

"But hey let's say that you doing a good deed doesn't even involve kicking the ass of someone who has it coming. Let's say your actions are lily-white, Jesus Christ is proud to call you his own, Mother Teresa innocent! Let's say you're Susie Derkins and you fork over a sweet hundred to try and encourage your classmates to help a bunch of homeless people engage in that great American pastime, 'Not Starving To Death'. And it WORKS. Kids get up and help, doing exponentially more than this one girl could hope to do all on her own, just because she decided she wanted to help more than she wanted anything else!"

Silence. Everyone had heard the horrible, gut-churning-rage story, but the point was still crystal clear.

"SURELY no one could find fault with her, whose only selfish desire was that it looked good on a resume! SURELY no one would ever have the gall to call her selfish, or an anarchist, or the WHORE OF BABYLON!

SURELY if someone did do that, if someone had the black-hearted, puppy-stomping sadism to ever fathom doing that, they would be called out on the spot by those in authority!"

"No." Snapped Kyle, furious. "That is not what happened. Two judges came to her school, hired a crooked cop and his son- who I have to admit really was every horrible thing they say we are- and together they waged a campaign of physical abuse and humiliation against a girl for running a charity. And what did the police do? NOTHING! What did the courts do? NOTHING! What did other parents do?! NOTHING! NOTHING! NOTHING! It took the Destroyer, still recovering from a cowardly attack, to film them trying to shoot him in a restroom to get anyone up off their asses! For a solid month, everyone with the power to stop cold Highweller's campaign against the Patron Saint of Charity sat on their hands! And when they DID do something?! When they did start dragging their feet? No arrest warrants were made for Marrin or Highweller! None! And when Highweller came back and tried to bomb her school to the ground, who stopped him? The police? NO! Calvin freaking Halgins! A thirteen year old literally did better than the Newden police, the National Guard, and the FBI combined!" Kyle paused to let the lunacy of the events sink in, prompting looks of disbelief among the increasing throng.

"When the army arrived in Highground, Calvin had already rescued Susie and left dozens of kid-hating psychopaths dead! And when Highweller, this judge…" Kyle laughed bitterly. "This… JUDGE, who was somehow deemed fit to judge juveniles, and wasn't disbarred within his first month… This Judge decides that the only thing left to do is blow up a hospital! BLOW. UP. A. HOSPITAL! Now, listen! I'm pissed! You're pissed! If you're here and you're not pissed, you took a wrong fucking turn at Albuquerque! But no one here is 'I want to blow up a hospital' pissed! Sane, rational people, even when they are angrier than they've ever been or likely will be in their entire lives, don't blow up hospitals! So who stops him?! Who ultimately saves the day again?! The army? The national guard? This 'Superman'?! NO! Several got taken out by Susie's daddy, righteously pissed, but the majority got taken out by a "elevator malfunction". Sure, whatever. And then Highweller tried to kill Calvin and got struck by lightning." Kyle held his head in mock thought. "I dunno. Two simultaneous elevators that worked fine suddenly break and kill eighteen armed terrorists? Then their leader tries to shoot The Destroyer and gets lit up like a Christmas tree? People try to kill Calvin and nuke Newden and all that happens is that a bunch of terrorists and psychopaths get blown to hell and back? Makes you wonder who you should pray to. Maybe a burnt offering to Calvin would get you more results than twenty bucks in the offering."

Scattered laughter.

"The point I'm making is… whether or not you are obedient, whether or not you are a good student, whether or not you display the classic virtues, it does. Not. Matter. And yeah, I know anyone can say that in the long term, a thousand or a billion years, nothing matters, so I'm not going to make that argument. In the short term, obedience and respect to these authority figures does. Not. Matter. You are still an ungrateful punk or a prissy little bitch who probably deserves a few kicks in the rear to put you back in your place, and… let's… let's just be perfectly honest here? God help you if you're not white. God have mercy on your soul, the one thing that may still be intact if a cop thinks you blinked funny, if you're not white. Some asshole- an adult asshole, whiter than my scarred ass, robs a convenience store ten miles away, so a black, fifteen-year old male walking home from school gets two clips emptied into him by the city's finest because apparently holding up both hands above your head is a death threat." Kyle let his arms slump to his side. "OUR ROLE MODELS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" he shouted angrily.

A black girl near Jeremy, eyes dripping tears, nodded angrily…

"So what's the lesson to learn from all this, Unca Kyle?" Kyle asked in a squeaky, cartoonish voice. "The lesson is that in this system, this rigged 'heads I win, tails you lose' travesty, obedience. Is. Pointless. It's shoveling quarters into a broken slot machine with a sign that says 'fuck you' taped on the front. And after shit like, I dunno, busting your ass to make all A's so your dad doesn't bust your ass with a belt- and let's face it, it was never to help you, it was to satisfy his sadistic jollies- only to be told by some 'elders' so out of touch with reality they might was well be living on Pluto that you're expected to go on a four year mission trip to some dark corner of the world so your belt-wielding, soul-destroying, drinks-even-though-it's-verboten pappy can say he raised you right when the only thing he did was make every last comfort in your life a mortal sin… no one should get to say you're being selfish when you decide you're not going to sacrifice more years just to add a few inches onto his ego-penis."

One boy, straight-laced, who had never sworn once during the time Jeremy spoke to him, swayed. "How did he…?" he gasped.

"So, let's say, somehow, after years of being treated like you just raped an entire kindergarten class, you survive to be out on your own. You know what years of abuse and being treated like crap does to you? At best, you will be paranoid. You will be distrustful of authority, after years of being trapped in a network of adults who are convinced the bowel movement that took you three minutes longer than usual is a sign you're going to shoot up the school. You will wake up screaming and sweating over the horrors you witnessed and were subjected to. You will hear some fortunate few reminisce about their happy childhoods and you will wonder, 'huh, wow, so you got taken to Hawaii for your 16th birthday and I spent mine shoveling manure and getting beat with a bullwhip dragged through said manure, because my uncle thought it was funny? Interesting.'"

One girl near Jeremy jerked, blinked.

"On top of all this, we live in a day and age where, at any given moment, we can be shipped off to a… Death Factory to be tortured to death by… anyone. Our parents. Or, if you're lucky to have parents who realize you can't grow up to be a model citizen if you're dead, you can be shipped off by a teacher. Or a neighbor. Or a complete fucking stranger, anyone who can pin you down long enough for one of R.A.W.'s death vans to come drag you off to a place that will eradicate any faith in a loving God you might have left. Hell, some assholes aren't even patient enough to let R.A.W. do the work for them- they go out in groups to rape and murder children. One group killed a little boy, five years old, by shoving him into a deep fryer, after killing his mother and several other people who tried to intervene." Kyle shook for a moment. "…can you imagine just how sadistic someone would have to be to do that? How devoted to senseless and completely unjustifiable sadism for the sheer hell of it someone would have to be, just to be able to do that?!"

"So we are supposed to respect and obey unconditionally a system run by people who abuse, misuse, and falsely accuse us every God-damned day that we're stuck in their God-forsaken system, and when a few of us finally snap or just say 'fuck it', and hope shrooms or pills will give them a few good dreams, they point to them and use them as proof to condemn all of us, every one, as so far gone that the only way we can ever be salvaged is to pick up a torture manual written by a backstabbing, lying, child-killing asshole who didn't have the guts to stop his lies before they did catastrophic damage and let him instruct these assholes in a myriad amount of ways to eviscerate, humiliate, and eradicate us, and when we limp away, bleeding and crying in an effort to live a few days without misery before they decide in their 'wisdom-wisdom wonderment' to deep fry our face like they did to that poor boy, they call us crazy!" Kyle threw his arms up in exasperation.

"I don't know anymore! Maybe I am crazy! Maybe we all are! Maybe I'm howling at the moon here, unaware of how brain-damaged I am, because I spent six odd years getting the shit kicked out of me because some idiot pastor couldn't be bothered to look under his FUCKING PODIUM for a pittance of money I could have made up by mowing lawns for a week, only to be told that I need to forgive sans apology because Jesus understands that adults make mistakes once in a while, give or take an entire childhood, and continue being a sex slave to a pedophile parishioner and a goddamn butler to Satan's grandma because everyone is too used to making my life a living hell to be able to Cold-Turkey quit screwing me over literally and metaphorically! So is it really any surprise to anyone with two brain cells banging around in their skull that I am one more insipid, irrelevant, outdated child-abuse advocating bible verse away from COMPLETELY LOSING MY SHIT?!"

Dead silence in the camp.

Kyle took several deep breaths, exhausted. "…but hey." He said quietly, yet everyone hearing him. "It's not like this is news to you. I'm just recapping stories you've heard and lived before."

He gave a small, sad shrug, and walked away, without ceremony or adieu, to an ice-chest where he retrieved a coke and guzzled it down.

…

Orville Dregs returned to his home around 10 PM, still bearing the marks of savage vandalism, after an unsuccessful attempt to get drive-through fast food unmolested.

The rotund man parked his small compact in his garage, gingerly touching his left eye. That would be a shiner, definitely. A fellow patron at the McDonalds had recognized him and voiced his displeasure with a single, buffalo-dropping right. He had woken up two hours later on the floor of the McDonalds, with a small mountain of trash some others had felt justified in dumping on his prone form.

One joke. One. Little. Joke. That was all it took to turn the whole world on him.

He sat there, exhausted. His house was a wreck, egged, spray-painted, windows busted, prize roses and lawn salted to death. When he wasn't assaulted trying to get necessities, people flat out refused him service- a cashier, fresh out of high school, had refused to ring him up, exploding into a profanity-laden tirade at him.

On any other occasion, she'd have been fired. Instead, her manager joined in the applause.

Yes, it was a humiliating experience- there was no fun if it wasn't degrading and embarrassing. But April had refused to listen, understand that in a few years or so everyone would forget about this, and that she needed to be a good sport…

Honestly, kids these days.

He grabbed at the door handle to head inside and resume sweeping up glass...

The door didn't open. He grumbled, and flicked the lock to open-

Still locked.

So now his car was broken as well. Just lovely.

He tried the passenger door. Nothing. Even his machines rebelled against him. Neither of the back doors worked either…

Panic struck him, until he recalled he could simply turn on the engine, roll down the windows, and climb out. Wonderful, yet another massive inconvenience, having to flop out of his car like some burglar caught in the act…

He turned the key, lamenting how everything was going downhill at an insane pace, and his engine gave a pop.

This made no sense. He'd had the car inspected recently, and the only issue was that the oil needed changing, which he'd done. What the hell was going on?

The sound of cracking glass in front of him got his attention, distracting him briefly from the reality of being locked in his own car.

His front windshield had cracked suddenly all over, jagged lines spider-webbing out in juts. He wasn't sure how, but he was certain that in the short time he'd been unconscious, someone had sabotaged his car…

The cracks spelled something.

He blinked, unbelieving the message spelled out by the fractured glass.

"NO MEANS NO"

A flicker of movement in his rear view mirror caught his attention, and he turned to stare out the back.

There, at the end of his driveway, clad in black sweatpants, jacked, and wearing a ski mask, was a boy or a very small man.

The boy shoved one hand into his pocket, and raised the other to flip the bird.

…

The target was trapped. His finger was on the trigger.

No one would mourn his passing, however violent and painful burning to death in a locked car would be. There would be an investigation, but he'd like to see them try to trace it back to him.

So why was he hesitating?

He'd done it before. Three times in a row. Find a van, find a bomb, transmogrify, BOOM, next one.

This… thing… he could not bring himself to call it a person… was a molester at best. That should be enough for anyone.

It should have been enough for him.

So why wasn't it?

This should be simple. He was a pedophile if ever there was one, with no regard for boundaries or basic human decency.

One squeeze.

One.

Squeeze.

It shouldn't be hard. He'd killed before. Two R.A.W. agents. Threw up, but recovered. Then lots more during the compound raid. Dozens dead when all was said and done with the Highweller debacle. Three dead when he detonated trucks carrying once-nuclear bombs. Then Joe Caldern…

There was a pattern emerging, here. Everything had been done in defense of himself or another.

It gets easier.

It got easier with every kill.

To extend that definition of defense to include killing a child molester in cold blood would make him something he wasn't ready to be.

Not yet, if ever.

As Dregs futilely kicked at his windows, he decided that maybe a night locked in his car would give him pause, and that he would let his crucifying of the bastard via blog do the rest.

He light-particled away before anyone could find him.

…

Susie Derkins was thought to be one of the most polite, modest girls you'd ever meet by mostly everyone that had met her.

Oh, sure, there were those who swore up and down that she was the Whore of Babylon, but those were the kind of people who could only achieve arousal by flogging children and who treated child torture manuals like a bible. Others felt she was humble, generous, and polite- give or take a few snowball wars with Calvin in the past, or odd dreams about running through a rainy field with him in the present.

But by her own admission, she had a bitchy side, a side that sometimes came out when the world just seemed hell-bent on screwing with her, like today, when idiots just would not take no for an answer…

"Let me make sure I have this straight." She began slowly, waiting for the preliminary aches that signaled a migraine to pass as she sat in her living room, she and her parents on one side, the Creeksons on the other.

"You basically tortured your son for six years, and now you want me to encourage him to forgive you now that he's run off to this 'Exodus camp' and is basically telling everyone that you used him as a punching bag over something that, even if he had done, should have been a month of punishment at worst."

"Disciplined." Paul Creekson amended. "It was harsh discipline, but we meant well-"

"You meant well." her father, whose face had been frozen in disgust and disbelief, repeated emotionlessly. "You meant well when you punished him for six years for something you had no evidence he did, and now you want my daughter to convince him to forgive you, the pastor that punched him, and the church that abused him?"

A moment of awkward silence passed. A nudge in the back of Susie's mind prodded her. It might have been God, or just gaining a really cynical sense of how these things went, but…

"Have you apologized to him?" Susie asked, already guessing…

…knowing, with absolute and total icy clarity, the answer before she asked…

"Well, you have to understand, when a parent apologizes for making mistakes, it weakens their authority-"

"Have. You. Apologized. To. Him?" Susie repeated.

"You know, it's really, really rude to interrupt-"

"Stop." Susie said, exasperated. "Just… stop. You're wasting my time and yours. I should've slammed the door in your face, and told dad it was Jehovah's Witnesses or a wrong address. You don't want forgiveness, you don't want absolution, you want to be told that somehow, you were right all along. You have Midas Delusion- the belief that no matter how badly you mangle something, everything you touch turns to gold. You want him to forgive you very quietly, very covertly, so everyone can pretend it never happened."

"You have to understand, Susie," said Natalie Creekson, her voice sickeningly condescending, "sometimes grown-ups make decisions that are painful in the short-term and make no sense to kids, but in the end they only have their best interests in mind."

To her credit, as soon as she'd finished her sentence, the realization she had said the absolute worst thing to the absolute worst person of choice hit her full force, and she blanched.

"So." She spoke finally, with a tone that could have frozen hell. "Highweller had only good intentions when he shot my classmates, kidnapped and tortured me, blew up a hospital, then-" she lifted up the left side of her shirt, and both of the Creeksons winced at the faint dot and line like scars, "blasted me with a shotgun?"

She lowered her shirt. "I know you haven't told me everything you've done."

The father jerked.

"I don't know what made you think that I would be willing to help you bring him back to a church that made a religion out of abusing a single child, or even if I was that he would listen. What I went through destroyed my faith in the justice system and the belief people are inherently good. I can only imagine what your actions have done to your son. Get out," she snapped, pointing at the door. "and don't come back."

"But we need you to lead him back to the light," pleaded Paul. "before being around all those angry teens makes him hate God-"

"You did that well enough yourselves. Now get out."

Paul stood angry, started towards her, but a quick glance at the behemoth of muscle that was her father made him reconsider, and he and his wife trudged towards the door.

As his wife exited, Paul turned to give Susie one last spiteful look.

"Highweller was right about you. All of you."

Then he left, slamming the door behind him so hard it made the windows rattle.

"Remind me again why we let them in?" Andrew sighed.

"I think it was politeness." Susie grumbled, now wishing she had suggested some painful and pointless form of penance… maybe peeing on an electric fence…

…

"Simon Highweller had a name for Susie Derkins- the whore of Babylon. I have a much more concise name- Hypocrite."

"A self-professed Christian, one would think that she would jump at the chance to lead a child gone astray back to God, the child in question being Kyle Creekson who, as you all know, is the same old song and dance of 'I got punished for something I hadn't done yet, now the world owes me an apology and a blowjob'. Well, his parents went to Susie Derkins, in the hopes of using her, someone whose name for better or worse commands respect these days, to try and patch things up with their son. And what happened, my faithful?"

"She told them to get out."

"A grieving mother and father, torn from within over a simple mistake, begged her for help in mediating reconciliation, and she spat in their faces. She called them unrepentant."

"This is beyond nonsensical, considering her relationship with a boy who has admitted- OPENLY and WILLINGLY without any coercion of any kind, he has admitted to killing dozens of grown men and women in the name of his twisted campaign. Or perhaps I'm mistaken. Maybe it takes disrupting a lawful court proceeding to rescue her from the consequences of her own selfish actions to gain an indulgence from her holiness."

"I know I must sound like a broken record, harping on this, but I feel it bears repeating, just in case any of you are still in that safe-feeling delusion of "No, no, he couldn't have said that, that couldn't have happened". Susie Derkins, the girl the media would have you believe is a victim of 'cruel and baseless slander and assault', prefers the company of a mass murdering sociopath to aiding a Christian family in coming back together."

"No. You're not in hell, and you're not having a nightmare. This is our new reality."

-Malefides on the Creekson Family