A/N: Okay guys, just a quick note. This chapter is going to be very OC based, so if you're not a fan of that kind of stuff than sorry. It's all in the day's work of trying to make developed characters. I just felt a chapter like this was needed to get rid of the past's mysteries as soon as possible. Anyways, hope you enjoy this slightly shorter chapter :)
I'm in my family's small apartment attempting to reach some books from the top shelf in my daddy's reading room, listening to hustle bustle of New-York's streets outside. I'm already five years old, so you'd probably think I like New York's style. But no. I'd rather have a life filled with peace and quiet. Just me, my parents, my books, and my toys. There's no way I would bring my stupid baby brother along! Because of that stupid kid, mom and dad don't love me anymore! I guess I'll just keep reading until my parents get home.
They're out on some cool spy mission and I really wanted to go, but they never let me do ANYTHING! They're capturing some guy who's been doing bad things. At least that's all my parents told me. They said his name was, like, Josh or something. I don't know and I don't care. I just wanted to see my parents' cool job, but of course they wouldn't let me. When he grows up, I bet they'll let stupid Adam go on secret spy missions with them!
Yes! It's getting cloudy! I absolutely love overcast weather! It makes me feel happy to be in a cozy little house. It's now starting to rain! I'm reading a cool book on the study of languages and how the human mind perceives different sounds as words! My parents have always told me that I have some weird capability to comprehend things most kids would be too young to understand. I also use words most kids don't even understand. Maybe all the kids at my school hate me because they're jealous of my intelligence! They probably wouldn't even know what intelligence actually means! They're all stupid and don't understand the world and it's wonders! But my books do. That's why they're my best friends instead of those idiots at my school! They could disappear for all I care! Especially stupid Brian Delansky! The amount of times he's made the class laugh at me is uncountable! I hope him and even the stupid kids he'll have die in the worst way possible! I hope they don't go to heaven either! They'll just wander around in search of a way to apologize to me!
In his somewhat sadistic rage, the infantile Jack began seething with anger. Just thinking about his tormentors made him fly into an insane temper tantrum. However, this time was different. As his anger reached it's peak, all of the books in Jack's father's study came crashing off of the shelf onto the floor without more than a movement from the mature five-year-old. Whenever Jack got really angry, he seemed to be able to change the laws of physics that any given object would follow. It was a peculiar trait about the small boy. He also had the remarkable gift of healing animals that seemed to be dying, or in some rare cases already dead. Maybe that's why his life at the orphanage would not be an easy one.
Jack spent most of his day reading while their baby-sitter attended to the two-year-old Adam. It was gloomy and overcast, but that was the way Jack wanted it. Noises from outside littering the apartment almost drowned out the sound of the old rotary phone ring. His baby-sitter was looking after Adam, so Jack took it upon himself to answer the phone.
"Ummm, hello?" The toddler said apprehensively.
"Is this Jack!?" Cried out a distressed female voice. He recognized the girl to be his mother. But why would she be calling in the middle of a mission.
"Mom?! What's wrong!?" The worried boy responded.
"My sweet, Jack… I need you to protect Adam for me, ok?" His mother was crying heavily, but sounded as if she was trying to hide it. Jack was too shocked to find anything to say. "I need you to be strong for me. Can you do that?"
"Ummm…. I guess," answered the confused child. Even using his analytical skills, Jack couldn't understand what was going on.
"I love to the moon and back." She wasn't even holding in her fierce tears anymore. The small boy even heard them fall gracefully on to the ground like a melancholic waterfall through the telephone.
In contrast to his mother, Jack stayed calm as he didn't even know what was happening.
"Ummm, I love you too, mom, but when are you gonna get home?" Jack asked innocently.
"I'm sorry to do this to you," she wept. "But I won't be coming back." Her last comment was said with extreme difficulty as if she was trying to lift cement blocks while talking
Jack was still as lost as a puppy, but his heart dropped at his mother's depressing revelation. Time slowed around the young boy as a hard reality began to dawn on him.
"Be the best person you can be for your brother. I love you both. Goodbye Jack. I love-"
The phone cut out as she debunked Jack's theory about his parent's lack of love for him just because Adam was born. That day, Jack learned that love could be shared.
Jack sat alone in his dad's study, blankly staring out a window into the streets of New York with tears in his eyes as he waited for something to happen. He didn't grasp the true severity of the situation, but he understood one thing for certain; he would never see his mother again.
He just sat there and stared for what seemed like hours. He couldn't even bring himself to tell his baby-sitter. Eventually, the sitter left after unsuccessfully trying to get me to eat dinner. Don't get the sitter wrong though! They were instructed to leave at a certain time.
"Protect your brother." That's what she said. Jack was at a standstill. He wished his mom would've been a bit more specific with her instructions.
Later that night, there was a quiet knock on the apartment door. The small child finally decided to get up from his seat by the window to answer the morose knock. After the little toddler who was usually energy-filled trudged over to the door, he opened it and finally understood the tragic reality of his now darker, less innocent world. There stood a uniformed officer at the door.
"Jack, we've got people coming in today. I don't want you to show off your strange talents today. It scares people. Just let your brother do the charming," explained the women I grew to hate as we walked down a grey and stodgy hallway with my brother who I had actually grown to like. It'd been like this for five long years and I was starting to think nothing would ever change. Stupid comments like that one always made me feel like I wasn't a correct person. Sure my brother was cuter and younger so he was more able to enchant these people, but did not have to be such a dick about it. She was the owner of that god-forsaken orphanage.
"I'm sorry Jack, but she's right. Just lay low for this one, k?" Adam whispered kindly to me. I scowled at my brother, but made it obvious that I agreed with him.
"Alright fine. No one wants to adopt a crazy ten-year old anyway," I muttered with a heavy sigh.
Last time people came in for adoption, I'd done my stupid trick of bringing a recently deceased bug back to life. It was a pointless talent I had. I could only do it on bugs and small animals too. It also only worked on things that had just recently died. I dunno why, though. Maybe parts of their essence still existed in the body as the rest of their spirit was escaping into who knows where. I guess I just had the ability to recollect these fragments of spirit and re-insert them into their previous owner.
Anyway, it freaked people out; including . She didn't want this voodoo-ish ability of mine to escape into the conscious of the press. She didn't want to give her orphanage a bad name. And so, most of the time, she treated me like I was some demon child; giving me less food than every other kid, calling me names, and sometimes even going into my room and beating me when I stepped out of line. and I both wanted me out of there pronto. Adam was apprehensive to protect me against the cruel orphanage owner, but he did his part in guarding me against the other kids at the facility who would tease me and call me names like: "Voodoo king, Spiritmaster, Devil Worshiper." That last one really hurt.
I respected Adam for his kindness and bravery, but I'm still a bit confused on his reasoning for this, as I wasn't the best older brother in my younger days. Sure, I still protected him like my mother would've wanted, but I surely wasn't very warm and loving towards him. But as he and I matured a bit, I guess I'd grown to appreciate my brother as a companion and less of someone else I had to care for and risk losing. Maybe I'd started being nicer to him, but I dunno. If I was, then he was certainly returning the favour.
After passing door after door in the banal looking hallway, we finally turned left to enter a warmly coloured small room with a dark oak desk in the center. Sitting in the two chairs in front of the desk were a couple who looked to be in their mid-thirties talking amongst themselves. made her way around the desk, sitting in a black mafia-boss-ish chair, after politely greeting the guests. The couple turned around to see us standing awkwardly in the doorway. As discussed, Adam took the lead and said hellos for the both of us. They seemed like a young couple; madly in love, laughing at each others jokes, ignorantly ignoring the fact they made the decision to adopt mentally dented children.
"Jack. Adam. I'd like you two to meet Mr. and Mrs. Banacle," said Mother Gordon sternly.
"Oh please, just call your future parents by our real names!" Screeched the female as she jumped from her seat and pulled us both in for a group hug. "I'm Lily! And this is Theo! He is going to be the greatest father!" She delivered that as more of a compliment towards her partner than as a proper introduction. Theo got up and shook both our hands with a kind and warm smile. It was a refreshing thing to see this many enthusiastic people in one room at the same time. "Good day boys! Hmmmmm…. Ah yes, I see it in both of you! You'll both one day grow up to be strapping young men." The man was obviously trying to knock the gloomy look off my face, but it wasn't going to work. I wasn't even sure I wanted to get adopted.
"So…. Before we get into the logistics of it all, what would you like to know about the children?" The Matron asked with slight annoyance in his voice, as if he had spoken these lines too many times to count.
"Well, I wanna know about them! As people of society," explained Lily. Oh brother, having someone this joyful as a mother might be good at first, but I realised it might get old pretty fast.
"As always, I agree with the missus." Theo smiled at Lily and they shared a simultaneous laugh.
"Well, umm, this one's pretty cute. He's very good at public speaking, umm, he's pretty naive so he can still be raised as you would like him to be," began as as she pointed at Adam. I did not appreciate they were being talked about as if they were animals waiting to be bought. "Now this one, on the other hand-" she shifted her scowl towards me as she started. "-Is a little rascal who likes to cause a lot of trouble. He pretty much only reads, so you wouldn't be seeing him much outside of the library. Now anything else he might say about himself is false.
I grimaced at Gordon as the Banacles finally seemed to take into account my presence. Theo studied me for a good while before spouting out: "How old are they?"
"Well, Adam's about seven years and Jack is… Ten." Mother Gordon tried to reveal that information as slowly as possible. Lily and Theo looked at each other disappointedly as she explained the reasoning behind their suddenly sad look.
"We'd like to adopt Adam," Lily announced. Holy hell, it was happening again! Every god-damned time, someone wanted to adopt Adam, but not me or didn't want to adopt at all. Usually the Matron found a shred of kindness in her heart and turned down those people, explaining that we came in a pair, but this time was different. She went right along with Lily and Theo's plea.
"Well alright then, just sign these documents here and-"
After seeing a horrified look on Adam's face, I took action and stomped over to the desk, pushing through the now standing Lily and Theo. I slammed my arm straight down over the desk, directly over the adoption papers.
"Sit down immediately," muttered loud enough for only me to hear, including ferocity in her voice that would be enough to scare off lions.
I grabbed a pair of scissors from within one of the desk drawers and quickly sliced a painful wound across my arm, revealing spattering red blood. Lily gasped and shielded her eyes, while Theo snatched the scissors from my hand and yelled: "Holy shit! What the hell were you thinking!?"
I quickly waved my other hand over the wound, and it began to slowly, but surely seal up completely.
This was another one of my tricks that freaked people out the most.
Theo was watching intently at the spot where the wound was, trying to make sense of what he just saw, as Mrs. Gordon quickly took my arm and pulled out into the hall and straight back to my room, Adam following closely behind.
She threw me in as she muttered unpleasantries under her breath, Adam awkwardly making his way into the room as well. Mrs. Gordon slammed the door shut before sternly blasting out a threatening comment. "We'll talk about this later, Jack!" She yelled from the other side of the door.
"Thank you," Adam said quietly after making sure Mrs. Gordon was gone and on her way to address the Banacles. "I don't know what I would've done if I had to be taken away alone with those people."
"Ummm, don't mention it," I whispered under my breath. "I would've hate to see you go too."
The rest of that night hadn't been fun for me. Of course, the Banacles had stormed off, yelling about crazy witchcraft or something. Mrs. Gordon definitely had her say in dealing with me. She bursted into my room after her short meeting with Lily and Theo and kicked me right in the stomach, knocking the wind outta me. The beatings continued all while Adam was forced to watch. She eventually left, leaving me broken and bruised on the ground with tears in my eyes.
The years of neglect went by until Adam and I both were too old to ever have hope of being adopted. So on the night of Adam's sixteenth birthday, we fled without a trace, convinced we were prepared for the world ahead.
Little did we know at the time, we weren't even close to being ready for Freddy.