Dawn Hollow

XXXIII

Kane's heart seemed to beat slower and slower by the day. What if it stopped one day? What if it never beats again? What if he never sees PJ again? That singular thought was the only thing keeping him going; keeping his heart beating. It only ever beat for PJ. And his lovestruck heart didn't care what it took. He had to see him again.

The boy slowly stirred from his slumber, just as tired as he was when he went to sleep. His body was as heavy as his rapidly decreasing mental span. Thoughts and ideas left him day by day. This place was getting to him, making him weak. Making him the exact thing he hated being.

In control.

Being in control was never a gift he never had since being diagnosed. There was never any control. Everything in his life was always decided for him. He didn't want to come here; not the first time or now. He didn't ask to be this beast that everyone was afraid of. He didn't want to be such a deadly creature, and yet he was.

It was an awful feeling.

To know that you're the reason a child has nightmares or can't sleep at night. To be made a mockery of through ghost stories with lies upon lies upon lies. They call you sick. They call you a freak. A monster. A disgrace. A disgusting waste of life. All of the words, the mistruths, the garbage they drag you down with builds up until all that hate boils your skin to a raw, hot fire, and when you wake up...

... they're gone.

They're all gone.

He did that only once, though Kane barely remembered the day.

He killed a boy. That boy brought him here. If that day never happened maybe all of this never would've started. Wouldn't that be nice? To wake up and have it all be a dream? He's wanted it so many times before. Now more than ever.

It was a few months after his accident. Where the snake creeped up on him in his mother's garden. He had been sick for a while, but was seeming to recover smoothly.

Kane was fine for the entire day up until then. He had given a polite 'good morning' to his 1st-grade teacher, he let the pretty girl in his class have the book he wanted to read during quiet time, he even helped a new student find the bathroom. Kane was doing good, great even. But it all went wrong during the last recess of the day.

A child played in the far corner of the field where the girls would pick at the daisies that decided 'loves me, loves me not.' Kane was out there as well, marching along to a game of tag that he had been roped into. Everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. Children just being children out in the lot of the schoolyard.

Amidst the game, one of the children cried out for everyone to join him hunched over by a fenced-in flower bed. They all gathered around them, curiosity blooming bigger than the nearby roses at what was cupped in the child's hands. Kane was the last to see a small garden snake curled up in the boy's hands. The way it moved was desperate. Wanting to get out of the child's grasp but way too helpless to do so.

It didn't seem right to hold this being hostage in the boy's hands. A small Kane pushed himself to the front of the group, demanding the boy put the snake back down in the grass and let it be left alone. At first, the kid agreed, nearly getting ready to set it down before he clasped his hands together violently.

All of the children gasped. Kane just went white. As the boy released the snake, its body fell loose into the dirt of the lot. Everyone else just laughed. Everyone else just joked around about it. But not Kane. He handled it differently than everyone else.

His fists clenched together until his knuckles were pale. His face was glowing a vibrant red. He couldn't remove his eyes from the dead snake on the ground. All things in his body began cold with frozen blood, thoughts were blurry, vision was scarlet red.