*4 Years Ago (Age 13)
Mrs. Pax would be looking for me soon, each evening I'd be forced to enter "The Room".
I hated it.
It hurt.
The first time was a few months after I arrived here at the large building that would be my new home.
I yelped in surprise when she grabbed me firmly dragging me down the hallway without explanation.
"Mrs. Pax, whats going on?" I asked, immediately feeling scared as she continued without even looking at me.
She didn't stop for even a second, the other children and older kids looking away as we passed.
As if I didn't exist, they made sure to lower their heads or to at the least, avert their gazes.
"You're hurting me!"
"Please let go!"
Her grip increased considerably and I could barely keep my feet beneath me as she quickened her pace.
Her face remained blank the entire time with each step as we neared the end of the hallway.
My mind was going haywire trying to think of what I must've done to be in trouble right now, nothing coming to mind, other than remembering that a few nights ago I had snuck out of the room I shared with 3 of the other children living there.
There were no windows allowed in most of the rooms, the closest one being down the hallway in an adjacent corridor.
I had heard that a red moon was expected on the night and my curiosity got the best of me.
So while the other children were sleeping I had gotten up and slipped out of the room as quietly as possible.
Mrs. Pax had a long list of rules set for all of us.
We were not allowed to leave our quarters after 8pm each night.
Mrs. Pax enforced an extremely strict regiment for all of us to follow.
Given a list immediately upon my arrival, the rules were made crystal clear.
The other children made sure to tell me how serious Mrs. Pax was about the rules she had set, and warned me of disobeying.
Telling me that she was not to be lied to nor deceived.
I had never witnessed any of the other children break any of the rules, but also I had only been there for a short amount of time.
So I had assumed that I probably wasn't the first.
Even so, I was sure that she hadn't seen or heard me, if she had I would've already been confronted by her about it.
The other children wouldn't have told on me either, we all got along pretty well.
Felix, one of the children I shared the room with, was my best friend.
The other two, Lyle and Peter, were also our friends but just not as close as Felix and I.
And I know no one else had seen me.
"Surely they hadn't said anything" I thought to myself.
Roughly twenty seconds later we were behind the door of the room that Mrs. Pax had labeled as "Off Limits" to all of us living there.
She flicked the lights on and ushered me further in towards a table and chair sitting in the middle of the room.
I had never been in here, looking around the room I noticed many metal cabinets strung along the walls with locks on each of them.
The room was bare for the most part, it was also extremely clean and the floors were a pure white linoleum.
I was sat down and finally Mrs. Pax turned, looking directly at me she said "Kaelen, I hope you will come to understand that what we do here is purely because of our love for you."
"We?" "Who is we?" I asked.
I didn't understand what she meant by that, first of all Mrs. Pax was the only person here running the group home.
She was the owner and the only adult whom the others spoke of ever seeing.
We had heard that she was married, but she never spoke of her husband and he had never been there with her, we didn't even know his name.
Secondly, what did she mean by that statement?
"What we do here is purely because of love?"
I shifted nervously in the chair and raised a hand in defense, "Mrs. Pax if this is because of the other night, I know I shouldn't have left after curfew, I just wanted to see the- "
"Stop my child..."
She smiled and walked over towards one of the locked cabinets before stopping and turning back around to face me.
"You are young and naive to the world and its woes"
"We see something special inside of you, this world is unfair to most people, it doesn't care for you nor does it look to give you kindness."
She continued-
"It gives pain and suffering."
That sent a chill down my spine.
None of this was making any sense, why is she telling me this?
She took out a ring of keys and began to walk to each cabinet, inserting a different color coded key in each one before continuing.
"Kaelen, what we are about to do is only for your well-being, this will make you a stronger person and one day you will thank me for this."
"Alive, or not"
"We can't let you be unprepared for the evils in this world, we love you dearly, do you understand what I am telling you?"
I was unable to respond, I sat there in silence trying to open my mouth and tell her how scared this was making me.
"Is she insane?" "How am I supposed to respond to any of this".
She unlocked the final lock, sighed and faced me again.
"Kaelen dear, you will answer when spoken to, unless you are instructed to stay silent, silence will be considered as insubordination. Insubordination will not be tolerated in this household..... do you understand?"
When she turned to look at me this time my blood ran cold.
Her face was different.
It lacked warmth.
It lacked humanity.
It was the face of someone with no remorse, one of someone who was willing to do very bad things.
I still couldn't answer, I was terrified.
Her expression turned darker, sour, grim.
She looked deeper into me, and then opened her mouth.
"Fine... we will make you understand."
With the wave of a hand, she snapped her finger and spoke a single word.
"Appear"
A coalescence of black matter started to materialize, slowly out of thin air.
The fear I felt mere seconds ago was nothing to what was injected into me now.
Standing nearly 8 feet tall was what one could only describe as a being known nearly by all man, woman, and child.
One all people would be warned of to stray away from living a life of depravity and sin.
A Devil.
A Monstrous & Wicked Devil.
My vision flashed for a split second and it was face to face with me, its awful, terrifying, and wicked eyes peering into mine.
A grin.
It's hand in my chest.
Everything went dark.
I opened my eyes, and then tried to open them again.
I couldn't see anything, everything was black.
Just pure black.
I felt nothingness, in the distance I could hear a drip over and over again.
"Mrs. Pax!" I screamed in terror.
I tried to jolt up, forward, back and forth"
Something had me restrained in a chair.
Just then after getting no response, a faint light started to radiate from behind me, slowly wrapping its way around to each side of me until spreading a few feet in front of me, illuminating the same being in the room.
Right in front of me, crouched down on its haunches it sat.
The Devil.
I shrieked in terror and its long arm shot forward as fast as a bullet slamming into my face knocking me backwards at least 10 feet.
I crashed onto the black floor, the chair breaking apart into pieces, my head cracking back making a hard impact.
Consciousness flashing for a second, I gasped.
My whole head rang and was immediately numb before an awful pain began to resonate into a wave of heat and then a splitting headache from the blow.
My eyes stung and I could feel a liquid oozing down my face.
*drip
*drip
*drip
*drip
That sound of dripping continued in the distance, over and over still.
I groaned a guttural moan and tried to roll to my side while reaching for my face.
It hurt so bad.
I didn't even have time to think before feeling a rush of air, the devil next to me again it's hand reaching out and grabbing me by the hair of my head, picking me up and holding my limp body upright.
*drip
*drip
*drip
*drip
It began to walk, making no noise whatsoever, effortlessly carrying me forward in this black abyss of nothingness.
Until there was something.
*drip
*drip
*drip
*drip
It threw me forward, I landed in something warm and sticky.
It smelled awful, it smelled of iron.
My head felt as if it was split into two, body aching with the worst, severe pain I'd ever felt.
*drip
*drip
*drip
*drip
I craned my head up from the floor with another moan, trying to see through the tears in my eyes.
What I saw made me forget about any and all of the pain I was feeling.
Illuminated by the light from the devil standing near me was something absolutely horrifying.
It was me.
I knew it was me, what seemed to be an older version of me probably in my early twenties, wearing the same scar on the right side of my face that I had received before being placed into the Custodial Queue.
Nailed to a black twisted tree with white iridescent leaves hanging from it's branches.
My corpse, plastered on the face of it.
My body mutilated, huge gaping wounds across my chest, stomach, legs and arms.
My face untouched, clear of any injuries, eyes wide open.
Soulless.
*drip
*drip
*drip
*drip
"Sweet child, do you understand now?"
Her voice rang out, from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
"We do this, for you."
"We do this out of love"
Then it hit.....
Pure unadulterated pain exploding from the core of my soul.
I blacked out.