The Lost Boy


The waves of the midnight wind soothed the poor boy as he ventured out into the null void of the forest alone that solemn night. It seemed that nothing was going his way. His mother passed away years ago, shortly after he was born, and the father was an abusive drunk. The young boy would spend most of his time locked in his bedroom away from the wrath of the bottle of Jack Daniels that his father had copyrighted to his left hand so he could use his right hand as a brutal weapon. Most nights wasn't as bad as it could've been. The young boy has dealt with this all of his life and was used to it, he adapted... but not that night. 

That night seemed to have him overdose on that Jack Daniels and it left him with an uneventful fit of rage in his system and an empty bottle. His father only had one target and he unfortunately struck it dead center with the broken edge of the glass bottle. A long scar was etched across the poor boy's face, a jagged reminder that his father was no nice patriarch but more of a demanding hypocritical dictator.

It took the poor boy all of his strength to lift himself up and run out of the front door into the woods.

The moon was bright that night, peering through the colorless forest with its white pellets of illuminating specks. The young boy was wrapping himself around the stump of a dead tree, curling him paws around his legs like a safety net against the cold and damp atmosphere. It's been an hour and nobody was around. He knew nobody would come. Either nobody knew him or nobody cared enough to rescue him for the night.

Out of all that misery, however, a ball of light speared through the darkness and presented itself to him. It only whispered small words, "Hello." over and over again when the boy would say something back. It didn't matter. All it responded with was, "Hello."

The ball of light started disappearing, but a trail of red essence left a mark on the dew covered grass. It led a path throughout the forest. Knowing he had nothing else he could do and wanted to know what this apparition was, he followed this path until it ended abruptly and found a strange red pebble on top of a dead tree trunk. It was the same trunk from before! He turned his head and tried to the best of his ability to explain this, but his mind was blank, peering back at the blood colored stone. 

"Take it." A voice whispered in his ear. He spun around in a panic to find another ghost, but this time is was not in the shape of a ball, but of himself. It was like he was looking in a mirror, but the reflection was that of a dead one. Blood tainted his fur in a blotchy mess and his eyes were pure white, no color to it at all.

"What," the young boy replied and pointed at the stone, "This?"

The ghost nodded and put his paw on the boy's shoulder. A cool sensation ran down his spine and made his legs go weak, falling to the ground in a heap. Everything went dark. The wind stopped.

The boy woke up hours later, but not to what he was expecting. Instead of waking up to a moonlit night in the woods, he was on the cold concrete of his basement, stone in paw, and a mouth full of blood. He spit the blood from his teeth in a splatter of vomit, the smell of it emanating all around him. He was shocked. His father was hung from the ceiling with his own intestines and a small light peaked through his chest cavity, almost as if a lightbulb was stuck inside his heart and flickering.

The boy cried, running towards the door to escape, but the door wouldn't budge. 

"Don't you like it?" The boy froze. He turned to see the same figure from before standing in front of the corpse with a beating heart in his paw. It was still beating!

The boy screamed, "Who are you!?" His paws shook, sweat pouring down his face in torrents of streams.

The apparition laughed, merely pointing at the boy and muttering in a deep demonic voice, "I am you."

"No... no, you are not me!" The boy threw the stone at the ghost, but it merely shot through his body like a pair of curtains. "Leave me alone!"

The ghost laughed again, standing up and moving the legs of the father out of his way like they were blinds. "You know it's true, Evan."

The boy screamed, "NO!"

Leaping at the boy, the ghost latched onto him like a claw, digging its claws into his fur and making him bleed. The boy cried, lashing back at the invincible creature the best he could. the ghost wouldn't stop laughing as the boy panicked for his life. "Just listen to me, Evan. You can't fight this anymore. It's time to let go."

The boy ignored him and continued fighting for what seemed like an hour. It wasn't long after that that the boy stopped and hung loosely from the ghosts grip. A tear went down his face.

"Good boy." The ghost applauded as he closed the boys eyes with his paw. "Now count to ten and everything will be alright."

The rest of the night was filled with storms of rain and police sirens towards the house. The boy was found sitting beneath the body of his father and a small red stone held tightly in his paw, a grin on his blood drenched muzzle. He was slowly counting down to ten.