Story of a boy.

He was a normal child in all aspects. He laughed, he cried, felt pain, sorrows, happiness, excitement. He was gifted with great and kind parents that tried to give him every single thing he wanted, and desired for him to lead a happy life. He was going to the kindergarten just like normal child and enjoying every day he was there.

It all changed when he turned 4.

On his 4th birthday, at night, when he was lying in his bed slowly dozing off, out of the pitch-black darkness, shapes would materialise. They were hazy and at first were nothing but bizarre forms. A week later they started to combine, outlining different creatures and human shapes. He was terrified and as he was about to call his parents they would jump towards him dragging him to his dreams. In there, he was tormented by them - slaughtered countless times as he revived over and over and couldn’t wake up. With the morning, once awake, he would remember nothing but shock.

Starting that day his dreams no matter if day or night, his home, kindergarten or friends’ house was all the same, torture and death. If awaken during his sleep, his memory would be wiped clean and once back asleep, the torture would resume. The shapes, ‘the shadows’ appear only in the dark and if he doesn’t call his parents, they would nevertheless drag him in his dreams.

His life in the daytime was full of friends, love and care, where his dreams were full of twisted torture, suffering and pain.

Without any chance to complain or tell his loved ones, he lived like that for at least 2 years. With each day, his bright like sun personality was becoming, darker and darker. His friends started to leave him and his parents worry over him screaming in the night and his changes in personality, sending him to many psychologists and receiving prescriptions. In the school he was labelled as crazy and then severely bullied.

One morning he woke up, vaguely remembering what was happening. He didn’t tell his parents, not as much afraid of getting more of pills, but the look of fear that they would have on their faces. Now, aware of the horrifying things that were happening to him in his mind, he couldn’t do anything but cry. After his tears were no more, what remained was blame. He blamed it, for medication, for bullying, for his friends leaving, for his parents worrying. That night he looked at the dark not with fear but hate.

His dreams felt as real as the reality itself. He could feel humidity in the air, coldness of the iron table and pressure of the leather belts, with which he was attached to it. He could clearly see the dark red room,full of disfigured bodies hanging on hooks.

It was torturer’s turn that day.

He looked at the naked fat man with goat skull dug in his face in front of him. His skin was red and had big disgusting blisters all over it. He looked at the man, first it was hate and disgust, then it was fear and lastly despair.

Torturer first would rip his nails off and break his fingers and toes, and then it would be wrists, knees, elbows, ankles and shoulders, while maniacally laughing and licking his skin. If he passed out, the torturer would kill him, restarting the process. The torturer was original and usually didn’t repeat one and the same method twice.

It was a group of monsters that would visit him on the other day. He would usually see a grey sky and black ground, before the crowd of creatures appeared before the horizon. Running never worked. All in different sizes and shapes but mostly looking hideous and disturbing. Some were dragons, some looked like distorted giant animals, some looked humanoid. They would either start tearing him in pieces, feeding on his intestines in a massive crowd, or swallow him whole, while slowly digesting him in their acid.

The last to visit before the torturer would start again, was the group of humans. It was in the open, just like with monsters, but unlike empty red grounds this place was stunning. Green grass, clear blue sky, enormous mountains and the forests afar. Sadly, he could never reach them however he tried. The crowd that hunted him was a lot bigger than the crowd with monsters. They would usually start cutting him apart and severing his limbs, thrusting spears in him, slicing his flesh and breaking his bones.

As the dreams continued, his hate was building up, while his hope, to live through all of this, was slowly dying. His struggle in those nightmares usually would not lead to anything. The futility of it was slowly crushing him. He thought of killing himself, but another thought crossed his mind, that perhaps they want him to kill himself, that it was their plan from the start. Thinking there is no escape even in death, he decided to change his approach.

He researched on the internet what dreams were and how they worked. Mainly the topics that he read, he either didn’t understand or thought as useless. Some told of dreams as reflections of our daily lives, some said that it was images or events from our past lives that influenced them, but the only thing out that pool of information he found useful, was a single line that itself was probably out of some old cheap movie or book. It suggested that we can control our dreams by the sheer will we put into it, that that it is our world and we can be gods in it if we wish to, something amongst those lines. As he read it his eyes sparkled, he was determined to oppose his tormentors.

After that he researched efficient ways to kill 'animals'.

That night when he saw ‘the shadows’, he had a challenging look in his eyes.

It was torturer’s night, that night.

Once he felt the cold iron table, he quickly looked at the belts that he was tied to, imagining them to rip apart or disintegrate. Torturer started with a wieldable meat hook, which was forced into his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch at that. The torturer with disappointment in his eyes turned around and started looking at something that resembled cooking utensils, seemingly perplexed in his choice.

He looked down at the belts and then closed his eyes. He started to repeat words in his mind ‘They don’t exist’ over and over, like some sort of mantra, while imagining himself raising his upper body. Strangely enough they answered to his desire and disappeared.

Leaving the table, he removed the hook from his shoulder as quietly as possible and tried to sneak up on the torturer. While grabbing some sort of curved knife beside him, he drove the hook in the torturer’s neck. Taking the knife with both hands he started to stab the torturer in the back, trying to reach any internals through his rolls of fat. The sounds of sliced flesh mixed with torturer’s choking sounds seemed to be like a symphony to his ears. His lips couldn’t resist but to form into a smile.

Suddenly the view has changed. Now he was in the middle of red plane, crouching with the bloodied knife in his hands. In the distance he could see something approaching, he knew what it was.

He tried to imagine a gun in his hand, but failed. He then looked at the knife in his hand and tried to create a copy of it. This, was a success.

Strangely enough he was able to cut down first 2 small monsters. Unfortunately, he couldn’t survive past that point. As his body was torn to pieces, now used to the pain, he was contemplating on the future plan he had in his mind, a plan to survive through his future nights.

The next night he expected to be monsters’, but he was surprised as he saw blue sky. He then tried to materialize knives that he had last time.

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This night was a progress. He killed 3 people and grabbed one of his victims ‘sword, with an idea of memorizing the feel of it, that is, before similar sword was stuck in his throat.

The next night was torturer’s show. He wasn’t belted to the table now, but standing, with the torturer looking at him, now not with dominance in his eyes but hate. He thought of trying to ‘conjure’ a sword, but gave up as he dodged a machete thrown at him and created knives instead. He jumped towards the torturer while stabbing both knives in his throat and then spreading them apart, almost decapitating him.

When the view changed to red wasteland, he threw aside his knives and tried to imagine the feeling of the sword and its weight. He felt the handle of the sword appear in his hand. The sword itself looked like a generic medieval sword, silver coloured blade without any sort of writing on it and leather handle. It was too heavy for him to wield in one hand efficiently, so he used both.

He killed 5 monsters that night.

One time he had an issue in the school with a bully that was annoying him all this time. Their bullying didn’t hurt or scared him anymore as he had much more terrifying things practiced on him every night, not to mention that he actually got used to the torture, looping deaths and so on. The school ended up calling his parents. He was lucky he wasn’t expelled. After that he had another round at phycologists.

He defeated the dark, when he was 8 and a half. That night he stood victorious over thousands of corpses. The most difficult part for him was the red flatland, as he revived without any weapons making him focus really fast on creating a sword as he was torn up again.

When his long nightmare has finally ended, all the memories about the dream disappeared, replaced, leaving only his harsh experiences sealed within his subconscious.

When he was 9 his family moved to another country, mainly because of his father’s job. It was English speaking country so he had no problems with attending schools. The kids in his new school were nice and kind, though he was of a quiet sort, thinking his own thing, he was treated nicely. At one point some kids tried to bully him, but that didn’t end well. He dealt with them quickly and efficiently, outside of the school grounds this time. His school life otherwise was quiet and enjoyable.

A year later, his mother gave birth to his sister. He didn’t find her cute, like his parents did, as she looked all wrinkly and smelt weird.

That same year he decided to try out kendo, as their dojo recently opened near their neighbourhood. Before he read a book about samurai and Ronin, it would be a lie to say, that he wasn't inspired by it.

He did not continue it for long, as his stance was always diverting and sometimes during spars he would enter something like a trance, which would probably end up with his partner passed out or severely bruised, otherwise he found it a bit boring, as all the opponents seemed slow and amateur-ish to him, even sensei himself.

At 11, he started middle school. Almost the instant he started it, some fat kid tried to bully him, by extorting some money and covering his clothing in his lunch .He dealt with him and his company outside of the school. He was tempted to break all of their joints, as a price for his lunch and laundry, but had to be appeased only with broken noses and dislocated knees and shoulders.

In middle school, he picked up anime and manga; later it was light novels and eventually fantasy books. Nobody called him a bookworm or any of the sort, as pretty much all students knew what happened to the previous bully. Ironically at this point he didn’t care unless it inconvenienced him in daily life.

His marks throughout middle school and high school were considered above average. He, himself, was considered attractive and somewhat exotic as he had black hair and pale skin but looked British. He heard his great-grandfather was from Bulgaria or something like that. He was alright at sports but was never interested in it, preferring either procrastinating in front of computer or training his body, by his own program.

In high school, he wasn’t particularly popular or really known, hanging out only with a bunch of friends and having acquaintances here and there. It was a bit weird, when his school organised a trip to an aqua park. When female students saw his lean muscles, he couldn’t feel nothing but chills running down his spine. After that he was somewhat ‘known’.

At fifteen his height was 172 cm he thought of it as average or maybe slightly below it, expecting to have a growth spurt some time later, little did he know that he’ll never grow beyond 176 cm. Same year he got himself a girlfriend a solid 9/10. He didn’t really care but she really wanted to date him and was starting to become annoying, it didn’t obstruct him much so he agreed.

This careless life of his, sadly, was bound to shatter.

It happened, in April, when he was with his parents and little sister in the shopping center. His sister was annoying as usual and his parents laughed at his face frozen in irritation. The shopping center was noisy and full of people, but he still found it strangely relaxing walking through it. As they were about to leave through the huge glass doors of the shopping center, his parents remembered that they forgot to buy something. As he and his little sis were watching their parents quickly running off to the shops in the distance, they suddenly heard a loud noise. As he watched his parents being engulfed by the blinding bright light, the glass in front of him broke. He quickly grabbed his sister and jumped to the side trying to dodge deadly shrapnel of glass. When landed on the ground, he tried to stand up, but suddenly felt weak. He felt something leaking out of his throat and cheek before he passed out.

He woke up in the hospital, with bandages around his neck and face. He was told that his sister was in coma and she had aneurism. She was very unstable. She died a week later. The same day he learned it was terrorist attack.

He left the hospital with scars down his cheek and his neck and only aunt as his family.

She was kind and loving. He tried to repay her with the same feelings, but he just couldn’t. The pain he felt inside was very different from all the negative feelings he experienced so far, it was new and by far the worst.

He knew what he must do next. Hate has swelled in his heart yet again and he had to let it out.

After he graduated, he joined army.

A year later he has received his first uniform, with ‘Pvt.Thorn’ embedded on his chest.

It was a start of a long path.

04-INTERMISSION

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All right here we go. Sorry for late release, had stuffs going irl.

I plan to have at least 2 more exposition, type of chapters. [th_0v.gif]

Next chapter is gonna be back in fantasy world.

I've sketched a map of the world so yeah, i'll try uploading it with next chapter. [th_113_.gif]

Yeh the previous chapter does feel weird, fuck :...noo:

Anyway I hoped you enjoyed

Bye Bye :grin: