"Oswald, your parents are back to pick you!" a voice called out. The day was warm. There was a sound of children playing.

I have to go home now.

Wait what? I didn't think that. Why did I hear it inside my head?

They'll make me stay in my room again. They'll be having a fight again.

I saw a lawn in the back of a building. There was a slide, a swing and a sandbox. A boy stood up from the grass. Soil had stained his trousers. And something was hidden in his pocket.

A dead squirrel. I knew that because I could sense my excitement to go home and tear it open like a pack of chips, eagerly exploring what I had taken away from this sad little creature.

I paused. These thoughts weren't mine. I looked at the boy. He was standing in the middle of the playground. He turned to look at me. As if waiting for me to follow him. So I did.

Oswald's parents didn't get along. It was easy to tell by the uncomfortable silence they shared wherever they went. Oswald had gotten used to not talking or smiling at his family. His father loved booze more than anything and kept smoking incessantly. He coughed like he was about to puke his guts but he never quit the habits. The mother didn't care either.

Home was an apartment in a noisy tenement. Days were spent in more awkward silence. Nights were spent fighting over things that didn't matter. Oswald's mother often walked into the boy's room when he was asleep. She would often have a black eye. She would also have her husband's belt in her hand. She would use it on her son.

Oswald had gotten good at not making any noise. Mother would leave Oswald after she was done. Days would go on like they always did. The routine was set. Life was clockwork.

Oswald had gotten good at trapping birds. He loved the way they fluttered helplessly in his hands. He loved how inevitable he was against them. He could pluck their wings with his hands and they couldn't do anything.

Elementary school. Oswald was a great artist. He drew pictures of animals. His teacher was impressed by his skills. She put his drawings up on the classroom wall. His parents couldn't act like they cared when she told them about his excellence in class.

Days passed. But the year hadn't ended yet. Oswald couldn't remember the last time he smiled like a normal kid. He didn't find the sense of humor of his peers funny. Most children left him alone. They probably found his hands weird. They'd seen them stained with animal blood way too often.

The year still hadn’t ended. For the first time, Oswald's prey slipped out of his hands. He ran after it. Only to run into a woman in a red skirt that tapered down to her knees. A circular black cloud was painted on the front of the fabric. It resembled a black iris. The woman's face was hidden behind a large sun hat.

She held a pigeon in her hand. She gifted it to the boy who was mesmerized by the sinful red color of her dress.

Days went on. But Oswald had changed. He had a secret to keep now. He had gone from cutting up rodents and birds to strangling stray kittens. He had also learnt names and nature of chemicals that his classmates hadn't even heard of. He also knew when a muscle tissue was injured in the human body, lots of potassium was released in the bloodstream.

Days went on. The year finally ended. Oswald's parents had passed away. His father died of liver failure. His mother had a heart attack. The causes of deaths looked natural. And Ravenwind forensics weren’t developed enough to prove it otherwise.

Oswald went on to live with his aunt. On his way home from school, the woman in the bright red skirt met him again. This time she ruffled his hair and said something no one had ever said to him before. “Good boy. I'm so proud of you.”

Years passed. Oswald was in his puberty now. Girls found him handsome. Boys found him creepy because he was too quiet and didn't get bullied easily.

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He spent about a year with his aunt before he came home from school one day to find the Internal Police at his doorstep. His aunt had passed away at her office. Her coworkers found her asleep at her desk. When she didn't respond to any of them, they called the police.

The autopsy would conclude that she died of a heart attack too. Her blood vessels had been blocked by internal clotting. But she had been in fine health all her youth. So the cause of death had put the medical examiners in a state of confusion.

Oswald reacted to the news of his aunt's passing with a surprising amount of sadness. He had trained himself to tear up on cue and act like how most people did in situations like these. The police probably believed that the boy really saw his aunt like a second mother.

When in reality, Oswald had never even considered his aunt as a human being. That's what he thought of his dead parents and the rest of the society and everything that was sentient.

Years passed. Oswald graduated high school a complete orphan. He sold off whatever he had inherited from the family he had killed and left without looking back.

Years passed. Oswald graduated college. He still made no friends. Nor did he take any lovers. But more corpses kept appearing in whichever town Oswald lived.

There was a knock at the dormitory door on the day Oswald was packing his belongings and preparing to move to another place. Oswald opened the door to a man in a blood red business suit and a devious smile.

“Look at you, all free and independent,” the man said. “I’m proud to inform you that you’ve fulfilled all conditions.” He handed him a white colored box with a crimson eye on it, his smile not faltering for a second. “You have my best wishes.”

For the first time in a long time, Oswald felt a skip in his heartbeat as he took the box from the man. Inside the box was a vial of red liquid. The Scarlet Elixir. The same substance that had allowed Oswald to cause the clots in his aunt's veins.

But what he was provided with last time was a few measly drops. This vial however was what he needed to ascend.

Another year passed. Now Oswald was in Orowen. The Scarlet Elixir gave him those powers that he had used to kill those ten women. And the people who gave it to him had made him wealthier. He just had to do their busywork for them. However, what that work was I couldn't tell. That information couldn't make its way to me.

The last corpse fell at Oswald's feet. This was Samantha Canning. And in a flash, the next thing I saw was Oswald pinned to the floor under me, my ritual knife at his throat.

Then I carried out the liberation ritual on him.

If my consciousness had come unstuck after carrying out the ritual on him, it seemed to return to its original place after that. I was back in my body.

But I wasn't in Oswald’s house anymore. My surroundings had shifted into a lightless, formless space where time didn't seem to exist like it did in the real world. However, it didn't seem to hinder my ability to perceive things in any way. I was still reeling from a slight sense of whiplash when my eyes happened upon a tall black and white door in front of me, engraved with symbols that I didn't understand.

I was captivated by the sight of it when I felt a tug on my hand and a sound of clinking metal. I looked down to find a long obsidian chain coming out of my palm like a large blood vessel. The other end of this chain was locked onto Oswald's wrist. Or was it Oswald's abyss? I wasn't sure since his body looked slightly more translucent but less darker than all the other abyss that I had extracted. He tugged at my chain again.

“You want me to set you free?” I asked.

Oswald nodded and looked at the door with a longing in his eyes. “It is time for me to go now. Not like you can keep me out of that door for long anyway.” His voice was as monotone as it was when he was alive.

“Answer my questions first,” I said. “Who were those people dressed in red?”

“Scarlet Society,” he said briefly.

I had never heard of that name. And old Elsa's memories didn't help either.

“What was that eye that was connected to you?” I said.

“I don't know,” he said. “But that’s what the Scarlet Society had told me to do. To understand Him. To find the real Him.”

“Was killing people a way to understand Him?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I gave a single nod. “How do you know it wasn't the…real Him?”

“He felt incomplete. But now I'll never know where He is.”

“What did the Scarlet Society want to do once they found Him?”

“I don't know. They never told me that.” He looked at me. “Am I free to leave now?”

“Yeah. I'm done. I liberate you.”

The obsidian chain disappeared. The black and white door opened. There was a big flash of light. The last thing that Oswald said before he disappeared beyond the door was, “Thank you.”