Capture
To be born different; a death sentence signed at birth.
He came into this world quietly, with the skin the color of snow and eyes of silver. As he grew, his hair grew in soft curls of white. As time went on, the boy became so different, so odd and strange, so different from his god fearing family. Because of this, the the boy was thrown into a dark room and locked in, the town told of how he tragically fell into the old well on the estate ground and drowned.
They threw away the key to his room and covered the iron door with wallpaper and bookshelves. Even his mother, who mourned for her strange son, pretended that her son was somewhere in that old dry well.
In reality, the family had left that boy to die, alone, in the dark. But they had made a simple mistake putting him down there.
He was a smart boy, clever despite being so young, and he had discovered this room long before they shut him into it. He knew that there was a secondary room, the door hidden in the seemingly solid stone wall. The second room was smaller than the first, but it also connected to the crawlspace in the walls and floors.
From there, he had access to the rest of the house. Of course, the pale boy knew better than to try to rejoin his family. They had put him in there, after all. Had locked the door and thrown that old key into the well they claimed he'd died in.
Instead, he haunted them. He stalked their dreams and, in his growing hatred for them, drove each and every family member to ruin.
Perhaps he had been cruel, had taken his revenge too far; his mother hung herself in his old room, right above the place his crib had once stood. Somehow, he had not been saddened by her death. They all deserved to be punished, every single person who had let his family lock him away like this.
Their innocence did not matter. The boy had already decided that this crime had no innocents, that all the town people were to blame for his misery and pain.
For their part, the townsfolk still did not know of the boy's existence, they had cleared out the house - the workers ignoring the sounds of breathing from the walls - and the old estate had been put up for sale. Such an old, historical house at such a cheap price saw it sold many times. However, the new homeowners had each grown desperate and moved out in less than a year.
The boy only grew more and more enraged, and his screams only spurred the people to abandon the house again and again.
And now someone new had bought the house.
The boy had watched them, crouched inside the walls of the neglected foyer. He saw the exchanging of papers and money and knew that the house was once again going to be occupied by more than just him.
He kept quiet, at first, had let them move in in peace. They had no clue about his space behind the walls, didn't know of the crawlspace he had lived in and more importantly, didn't know about him.
The new family - if he could call them that - consisted of a couple and two kids. One of them only a little older than him when his family had abandoned him, an adorable girl who could do no wrong according to the doting parents. The other one was closer to him in age, a somber teenager with bitter amber eyes and a penchant for dark clothes and vulgar profanity.
This teen had moved into what had once been his room, had put up multiple posters for metal bands and blacked the windows. The teen was bitter and outspoken, and from what could be heard from the vents, an unplanned child who was more trouble than he was worth.
The boy inside the wall found him interesting, and so he watched him, listened to those metal bands with him and snuck into his room often to go through his meager belongings. At the same time, he had started moving a few things in the house; starting his usual "haunting" routine.
He just didn't think to factor in that the teen, who saw more than the others ever had, would eventually find out.
The family had gone out for the day, and so the pale boy had been left to wander the house without fear of being seen. He scrounged up something small to eat, a few slices of turkey and cheese and bread he knew they wouldn't notice. He had no need for supplies today and simply stood in the kitchen, quietly regarding the white counter tops and the neat, tidy spice racks.
These people reminded him of his family. The parents favored their normal little girl, but treated the boy with such bitterness and loathing. He was different, harsh and loud and he didn't fit their cookie cutter lifestyle.
He wished he could ponder the odd family more, but he had a list of thing he needed to complete before the family came back home.
He showered first, scrubbing the dust from his hair and skin with the little soap he allowed himself to use. Afterwards, wrapped in a wonderfully soft, fluffy towel, he wandered into the teen's room. Here he could easily slip into the crawlspace via the vent in the back of the closet, so he wasn't worried about being caught.
He picked through a few magazines, a few crime novels left out on the desk were leafed through. Still wrapped in the towel, he slid into the desk chair and gingerly opened the laptop there.
He was disappointed to discover it required a password. Oh, well, perhaps he'd watch the teen a little more closely when he next got the chance.
He spun in the chair, kicking his legs out to go faster, until he got an idea. The teen was taller and broader than him, but not by enough to look ridiculous in something forgotten or neglected. Raiding the closet, he found an entire box of clothes that smelled of moth balls and mildew. No matter. He still had time.
He was careful, picking out only a plain red t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants from the box before he boxed it back up and put it back where he'd found it.
He had enough time to wash the ill gotten clothes with the rest of his stuff before the family came back.
By the time they came inside, the pale boy had slipped back into the walls, the only evidence he'd even been there were some crumbs on the kitchen counter and the missing clothes. Nobody noticed a thing.
Sometime later, in the evening after the little girl had gone to bed and the parents went into their bedroom to complain about their pathetic lives, the teenager was still awake. This was a common routine, however, and so the pale boy did not worry. As with every night prior to this, he retreated to the vent in the teen's closet.
He had always spent this time reading or untangling knots in his hair as the teen played loud music and scribbled in a sketchpad. This time, something felt different.
Peering into the room through the holes in the vent, he couldn't see the teen anywhere, and while there was music playing, it was nowhere near the volume that it was usually set at. How strange. Perhaps the teen was feeling sick?
The pale boy had just started to lean away from the vent when a shadow fell upon it, and he could see the teen's feet through the vent.
As he watched, the teen pushed aside the hanging clothes and knelt down in front of the vent. Because of his own comings and goings, the vent had nothing concrete holding it in place; the teen pulled the flimsy metal right out of the wall with almost no effort.
"I knew someone was in the walls!" The teen was crawling forward, trying to get through to where the pale boy was sat, horrified at being caught like this. It seemed as if the teen would be too broad in the shoulders to get through, and for a moment he had hope that he could dodge past and slip into the rest of the house's crawlspace.
The moment he tried to put this plan into action, however, a hand caught him around his ankle, pulling him down with a loud thump. Stunned, he didn't fight as he was pulled out of the crawlspace and into the cramped space of the closet.
The teen let go of him, only to grab hold of his waist and pull him closer, effectively pinning the thin, scrawny boy beneath him.
"I knew you were real! I could hear you every night, when you thought I was asleep and you kept creeping into my room..." There was no use fighting - no matter how hard he struggled, the teen had a good foot of height over him and he was much stronger anyway.
"Aren't you gonna speak? Come on! I didn't catch you just so you could ignore me. I'm Zeno." The teen leaned in, grinning so widely that the boy was sure his face would split open. He almost wanted it to happen, at least then he'd know this was just one of his nightmares.
When he didn't respond fast enough, Zeno pressed his thumbs into the boy's stomach, sharp nails scratching snow white skin through the thin material of his shirt.
With a gasp, the pale boy arched his back and attempted to kick the taller boy off of him.
"Fu-fuck you!" He gasped out, trying and failing to twist out of Zeno's grasp.
"Maybe later." Was the frustratingly cheerful reply. "Can we start with names, first? Do you have one?"
He just glared, chest heaving and eyes burning. He wasn't sure where or when he fucked up, how this edgy teenager had somehow figured him out. But he had to live with this, now. If he tried to drive these people out, this kid might out him.
The thumbs pressed in again, harder this time, and the boy flinched, slender hands flying down to grip Zeno's wrists.
"I'm going...t-to fucking ki-kill you..." He didn't bother to fight this time, just going limp in Zeno's hands. "Abbot. My name is Abbot."
"See, was that so hard?" Zeno cooed, leaning into Abbot's face. When he turned his face away, he was shocked when a hand snapped across his face. Mouth dropping open, he stared up at Zeno.
"Let. Me. Go." And, to his surprise, Zeno let him go, let him scoot away and let him examine the angry red marks on his stomach. However, when he tried to return to the vent, to crawl past Zeno and lick his wounds in peace, he was caught once more and dragged back.
"I'm not gonna hurt you, shh, stop fightin' me, Abby."
"It's Abbot!" He snapped, straining against the arms wrapped around his thin chest. "Let me go! Right now, you asshole."
"Need I remind you that you're the one living in my closet? You don't watch my sister, do you?"
"I hate kids." Abbot gave up, letting himself sink into the solid chest he'd been forced against. He wasn't getting out of this any time soon. "What do you want from me?"
"Right now? Stay in here with me, in bed with me. Or I'll scream."
And so Abbot let himself be dragged out of the closet, too afraid of being outed, of being arrested for the things he did; he didn't fight back.
But oh, he had plans.
