"Big bro! Big bro! Look, look, I finally did it! I mastered your dribbling technique."

"Whoa! Great, you have the potential too, just like me!"

"But your dribbling skills are much stronger, and your shooting technique is too hard to learn."

"Hahaha! That's my ultimate technique, not something you can just easily learn!"

....

Xiao slowly opened his eyes, as if he had just awakened from a deep slumber.

"A dream, huh?"

Xiao shake off the dazedness and observe his surrounding.

"And this is not a dream."

The kitchen was a mess, with silverwares shattering around the place and the broken drawer that was smashed to pieces.

Slowly, Xiao stood up and starts walking, he walked to the place where his parent's bodies lied.

"Mom, Dad."

Xiao called out his parent as he looked at them, there was no answer, for they had long left the world, leaving a husk and a pool of blood.

Tears started building up in Xiao's eye, along with an emotion which was slowly boiling up, but he did not cry nor sob, he just stares at his parent's dead body for a long time.

After that, Xiao moved to the upstairs, and stopped beside Kang's body, he does the same as he looked at Kang's body. Xiao sits down and touches Kang's face, which was out of warm, something Xiao would never feel from the Kang before.

"DAMN IT! What the hell is this?! Some kind of sick joke?! How the hell is all of this happening?!"

Unable to contain his emotion anymore, Xiao screamed out loud and start sobbing as he slammed the ground with his fist, it has been too long since Xiao last cry, and never in his life did he cried in such despair and soul breaking, for he had just lost his family in one bizarre night.

It was supposed to an ordinary day, like any usual night, it should go by him got wakes up by Kang from his sleep to have dinner, his favourite chicken chop would blow away his tiredness, he and Kang would help his mother to do the cleanup, he would relay the girl's message to Kang and Kang would just laugh it off and said okay, after that he would go back to his room and play some computer games with his classmate, all of this was supposed to after he woke up, not this tragedy.

Xiao wanted to believe it was just a joke, a prank pulled by his family to teach him a lesson for wasting so much time in the video gaming. But this was his reality now, bizarre as it sounds, his family were killed by an unknown monster while he survived as the monster mysteriously fades away to thin air.

Xiao cried until his tears and energy runs out, that's when he manage to calm down and think of the next step he should take. Seeing as the situation was completely out of his hand, the only people that he can depend on is the police. So he went to the living room and use the home phone to make a phone call to the police station.

After the phone call, which Xiao told everything from what he had just experienced to the police, he walks to the sofa and just sits there, looking up to the ceiling as he had no idea what to do next, or what to feel as all the crying and emotion turmoil has left him burned out. Xiao's mind was just empty as he waited patiently for the arrival of the police.

After waited for half an hour, Xiao heard someone was knocking at the front door, Xiao opened the door and saw two policemen, both of them were quite fat.

"So, you were saying that a monster attacked your family, and.....umm, let's see."

One of the police was looking through a small paper note while talking to Xiao, both of them with a disinterested expression, as they thought it was prank call or something.

"It would be better if you guys come in and take a look."

Xiao let the two policemen into the house and guide them to his parent's location.

The two policemen changed their expression instantly once they saw the dead bodies and the pool of blood.

"Jesus Christ! What is this?! So you were the first one that found out this?"

"Ye...Yes!"

Startle by the sudden question from the police, Xiao answered his question while shuttering his words.

"When did you found out about this? They are your parents, right? And where were you when this happen?"

With a harsh toned and tons of question bombarding Xiao by one of the policemen, Xiao begins to panic as he never thought things would go this way.

"Hey! There another dead body upstairs, a young male, there's a hole punctured through his heart, damn man, this is sick."

Another policeman had found out Kang's body at upstair while Xiao was thinking what to answer.

"The hell?! This...this is a freaking massacre case!"

Hearing the report from his colleague, the policeman beside Xiao was shocked by the incident happened in the house, he checked Xiao's parent dead body and found out that their cause of death was a punctured through their heart.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Hey you! You haven't answered my question yet, where were you when all of this happen?"

Immediately, the policeman change to a loud and harsher tone to question Xiao.

(Shit! Shit! Shit! Why didn't I thought of this? What am I going to say? That I woke up and saw an unknown monster killed my brother and parents, I ran and fight for my life until it eventually disappears? It just sounds stupid and bizarre! Who the hell is going to believe that?!)

Xiao cursed his stupidity as he might have just dug a hole for himself, he should carefully plan first before calling another party to intervene, and what worse, he called the police for this bizarre situation.

(Whatever! Better tell them the truth than to make something up.)

Looking as there's no time for making an excuse or plans, Xiao took a few deep breaths to calm himself and start explaining everything to the policeman from the beginning till the end.

After Xiao finished explaining, both the policemen had this same confused expression as they were trying to think of something to say.

"Monster? Crow Head? And you are saying the monster disappear, just went it was about to kill you?"

"I know this is hard to believe, and it sounds like a fairy tale, but I am telling the truth! Even I am not sure what is happening, I am just as confused as you guys!"

With the confuse expression on the policemen's face, Xiao tried with all his might to persuade the policemen that he was telling the truth, and he too was victim in all of this.

"I....see, alright, just stay here for a while, I'll be back."

The policeman replied to him, carrying a confuse tone, he then moves away from Xiao and discuss with his colleague quietly at the corner.

After a while later, one of the policemen walks towards Xiao, with a kind smiling expression.

"Alright kid, we would like you to come with us."

"What?! Why? I thought I had told you it was the monster doing!"

Xiao was shocked and frightened by what the policeman had said as he subconsciously back away from them.

"Just calm down okay? We just need your testimonial to help us resolve the case, nothing more."

One of the policemen tried to calm Xiao down, while the other one has his hand on his back, readying something."

"Testimonial?"

Xiao did not notice the action of the other policeman, he was too confused and frighten to notice anything as he tried his best to answer the question to keep himself in calm.

"Yup, since you are the first withness, your cooperation is very much appreciated."

"Al....alright, I understand."

Although Xiao's danger sense was alerting Xiao that it was a bad move to follow the police, a part of Xiao wants to believe that they would believe him, believe that he was telling the truth all along, and he was also a victim from this mysterious tragedy, and they would help him.

Later did Xiao know, his ordinary life had already begun to shatter.

****************

It was a room, inside of the police department building, outside the room has a tag that wrote "Interrogation room".

Inside the room has a dim ceiling light, one table and two chairs, which was seated by two people, Xiao at one chair and another mid-age policeman sitting at his opposite side.

How long has time past, since Xiao got dragged into this room, and get questioning by this mid-age policeman on the same questions over and over again. Xiao was terrified at the start, and as time passes, his emotion begins to die out bits by bits while he kept on repeating what he had experienced to the policeman over and over like a preach.

Now, Xiao's emotion has gone numb, and the only words he is saying right now is, "Please, believe me."

The mid-age policeman was going through some files that had just bought in by his other colleague, he flipped through all the document and read them out loud to Xiao.

"A family with four members, father, mother, and two sons, average income from the father as an accountant and mother as a housewife."

The policeman pulled out another file case and proceed to read it out loud.

"The youngest member in the family, which is your brother, who's one year younger than you, has an excellent performance in terms of academic and sports, in fact, he is the captain for the school soccer team, a role model student and popular among both students and teachers alike for his well-behaved attitude.

Lastly, the policeman took out a thin file case and does the same.

"Alright, here's your file, the elder son in the family, 17 years old, no criminal record so far, average academic performance, average sports performance, a blank in the extra curriculum, and....nothing else, huh, nothing more than an average high school student profile, at least that's what written in the paper."

The policeman shakes his head as he violently throws Kang's file case to the table.

"Now look here boy, I am running out of patience listening to your fairy tale, please, for the love of God, give me something that makes sense! What did you saw? We got a testimony from your neighbour that said besides your brother entered the house around 7 pm, no one has left or entered the house after that, so what exactly happened in your house?! Why were they all dead while you are alive?!"

The mid-age policeman slammed the table as he looked straight into Xiao's eyes, demanding Xiao to said something that makes sense to him.

This has been going round and round, the policeman will mentally force Xiao to say something and Xiao would repeat the something over and over again.

"Don't tell me.....you did it right? You, killed your brother and parents."

Like a sudden thought, the policeman spoke his mind out loud.

"NO! No way! I did not kill my own family, it's not me! Like I told you, it was the monster, and then it...."

"And then what?! The monster just disappear and leave you alive?"

"Yes!"

"Bullshit!"

The policeman stood up and kicked away the chair he was sitting, his patience had reached peaked as he looked both furious and tired.

"Goddamn it, this kid's a psychopath, spouting nonsense and shit, you think this is a game to you? Do you think you can just kill your people and just blame it to some imaginary monster? There was no one else in the house except you! Do you know what that means? That means you are a freaking suspect!"

"No! No! It wasn't me, it was the monster!"

"And again with the monster, shit, this kid had some wild imagination, this is going nowhere, and just by looking at this psychopath makes me want to puke."

The mid-age policeman then proceeds to press something, which a moment later, two other policemen came into the room.

"Lock him up, and keep a close eye on him, freaking psycho."

Followed the order from the middle-age policeman, the two policemen pulled Xiao away from the chair, which then dragged him to followed them.

"No please! I beg you! Believe me! I swear! The monster! It was all because of the monster!"

Xiao was shouting and pleading, with tears and sweats has already dripping like crazy, yet his plead has answered by no one, except one parting words from the policeman that interrogate him:

"You haven't realized do you? You had just made yourself a killer!"

****************

The sound of the dripping water that goes "Tick. Tick. Tick".

It was a scene of an old prison cell, build with cold brick wall and no hole left open. The air was stunk with the smell of decay and death, there was no light, no warm, no living being other than one man. The best description for this place is "The place where despair sleeps."

"Compare to this, the prison cell from last time was thousand times much comfortable, hell, to me, it's not even considered as a prison cell, there were lights, the jailer will bring me food, I don't have to stay at the same position like forever, there's a guard outside who I can talk to, and the most important part was, that prison cell has a freaking bed, the comfy and fluffy bed!"

Once again he woke up by the sound of the dripping water, which both annoyed him and triggered his thirst for water, as it has been too long since his mouth entered a drop of water. He

Slowly, he closes his eyes once more, as to recall the memory on what happened next, he remembers that he had became quite a hot topic in the news after that, with a bunch of fans giving him so much of love.....