17. They want to destroy you

Note: "Hurt" from Nine Inch Nails

"Their corpses were mangled badly ..." She quivered without looking at Hunter.

Hunter's first thought that this was a joke, but his stomach felt like lead and his head began hurting badly. His hands started shaking as he slid his back against the wall down in a crouching position.

Lilly tried to catch her breath as she wiped her tears with her sleeves. "The news was everywhere, but they didn't show your picture so nobody should recognize you. It was an open secret in the hospital as they made your examination after you were rescued. Even if it was deleted from your case fale." The head nurse had told her that the crazy University butcher was him, and so did the other nurses and a few doctors, after they learned how impressed she was from his picture. She couldn't believe it for a long time, and even dreamed about that beautiful face.

She whispered "I'm so sorry." and hurried inside.

Hunter sat there alone with his head spinning. His thoughts raced with recurring questions like

'Maybe she confused him for somebody else?'

'What could have made him a murderer in these two years?'

'What happened as he was taken hostage?'

'Why kill the students and teacher, why not just kill only the bad guys?'

"What happened to me..." He mumbled into the air filled with sand. He felt a cold shiver as he heard a sweet voice from his childhood, purring in his ear:

"That's what you do with men who screw you over, my darling"

He was a murderer like his mother. He closed his eyes as he remembered how she smelled.

She had whispered at that time "Don`t let anyone screw with you....they want to rape you, they want to posses you, they want to control you and they want to destroy you. Look, isn't he just a dead lump of flesh now? My little darling boy, you have to protect yourself."

He couldn't remember how his fathers body looked, though he lived for some time with his mother and the corpse lying on the floor of the dining room as if he wasn't there. He didn't even remember the faces of them both. But her voice he remembered, and it was crystal clear. How her perfume smelled mixed with the blood and decay. Nothing else. He wasn't even sure he would recognize the house where it happened. He didn't know how she killed him but 'mangled badly' was a key word he hadn't heard the first time today. The psychologist advised him not to concern himself with the case. He was in therapy for years but the gist was: 'Learn to breathe, don't concern yourself with things you can't change, live the life you want', and most importantly: 'you are not your parents.' It was like a mantra for him 'you are not like your mother' and he really believed it.

"Ah...I'm really a monster like her...." he sighed as he looked at the trembling left hand- the hand that she had held when he was a child.

Maybe it didn't matter, wasn't being a mass murderer cool? He had wanted the apocalypse so that he could kill, now - he killed before this, so what's the matter? He was taken hostage so maybe he just snapped because of the stress. The hostage-taker were the bad guys. He could be a antihero like in the comics. He had punished the bad guys, so what if some other people were in the way. He bent to his side to vomit out the content of his stomach. He retched till tears streamed down his face.

Finally he stopped and did his best to breath, he used the 4-7-8 technique.

'What can I do now about the situation?' The answer was nothing.

'What do I want to do about the situation?' He wanted to forget... and he actually had forgotten his past eleven years. So it practically hadn't happened to him.

He stood up with weak legs, and walked back inside. He grinned, suddenly walking steadily. 'Yeah, I'm fine.' He slandered back, his face cleaned up with the sleeves of his hoodie, looking absolutely normal, as if taking a walk, he walked to Jack to let him check the wound on his head. When he opened his room door vigorously and saw Jack sleeping sideways, dead beat on the bed. He grinned wanting to wake him up but he couldn't bring himself to do it, so he laid by his side.

After a few moments of silence, he cuddled up to Jack's warm and strong back and listened to his heartbeat.

He suddenly felt like crying.