4 Where Did You Come From? (Mono's Backstory: Part 1)

An unknown amount of time prior to the current storyline...

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Destruction. The sound of boards of wood breaking apart, the thick smell of smoke drifting through the air. It was all I could see at first. And I slowly started to wake up, and I found myself at the bottom of the floor, with a massive hole in the floor right above me. Around me were several broken chunks of wood, some still burning from the aftermath of the raid. I remember when I was trying to get out of the orphanage, when the floor below me collapsed, and I passed out. Only now I found myself here, at the bottom of a broken floor.

I slowly got up, my back aching as I tried to recover. I could still hear the roars of the flames in the distance. Through a crack in the ceiling above me, he could see a group of some other orphanage children, running away, screaming in fear, trying to get away from the flames that were consuming the building. I'm not exactly one of their friends, mostly because the majority of them didn't really treat me as one of their friends. But Mono knew he couldn't leave them to die.

From a young age, even as a toddler, Mono stayed in this orphanage. He couldn't remember who his parents were, what they looked like, or why they dropped him off to live here. Needless to say, he never knew who his real family was, or if they even remotely cared about him anymore. Over time, the people who took care of him tried to get him to interact with the other children. A few seemed to accept him, but most of them shunned him for being less socially interactive than the others. They also made fun of him for his other "abnormal" qualities.

One of these was that whenever he touched a television screen, he would always be lost in some kind of telekinetic illusion. At times he feel like he could see people watching TV from the other side, all from different places. Like he could see through it and see the lives of other people. Many people didn't buy it, though, while others were just simply weirded out by it. It didn't exactly help his social standing either, as he was more of an introvert person than an extrovert. Although he still wanted someone to be by his side, even if they annoyed him.

And for the last year or two, maybe more, he didn't keep count, the orphanage was one of the few safe places for Mono and the other children to be. News from what was happening in the outside world motivated them to keep inside for safety and protection. Although right now, this place was anything but safe and protected.

By the time he tried to crawl out of the hole he collapsed from, he could still see many children, shrieking, trying to find a way out of the orphanage. The doors were barricaded by rubble from parts of the building that had collapsed, and the fire was only spreading quicker. Mono could already feel the heat emerging from the flames. He first decided to try and help any of the nearby kids, who were trying to remove the rubble from the exits.

"Mono, please help! We're trying to pry this thing open! We need all the help we can get!", cried one of them. But even with Mono's help, there was too much heavy rubble to remove. "Well, we're clearly not getting out that way," Mono told them. "Let's split up into groups. See if you can find a safe exit so we can get out of this hellhole."

Normally, the rest of the kids would've probably ignored Mono and let him off alone, but given the circumstances, they knew that they would have to be efficient and organized if they wanted to escape with their lives. The children split up to find any signs of an exit, and the closest thing they could find to one was the large door to the exit of the building. The main problem was that it appeared that the door handles had been chained together with locks, and even with the children's effort, they struggled to break free of the chains.

"How the hell are we going to get out of here?! I don't want to die, not here, not now!", said Onz, one of the few children there that was at least slight friends with Mono. The other children started panicking as well, as they knew that the fire would only grow worse if they didn't escape. "How did this even happen? I thought that this orphanage was one of the few safe places we could stay at. But what caused the fire?", Mono asked the others.

"The fire sprinklers should've put this fire out by now, but they've been malfunctioning, for all that I can tell! If we don't get out of here soon, we'll all die, Mono!", Onz screamed. It was at that moment that a strange rumbling noise started to rush through the roof, and all the children immediately payed attention to it. What was that, Mono wondered. Thump, thump, thump...

Then, Mono saw that the fire sprinklers, which weren't working before, were about to finally do their job. A loud CRANK came with it, and in a few seconds, the sprinklers started spraying water all across the orphanage. Mono could feel the water soak up his clothes and his mask, too. Well, I'm going to have to let this dry afterwards, Mono thought. But frankly he could care less about that. The children screamed with joy, and the flames began to slowly die out. It seemed that for once, the crisis had been averted.

"We're saved!", Onz cried out in relief. Mono let out a sigh of relief, too. Even though a lot of the building was damaged by the fire, at least this would help prevent any further damage from being done. It looked like the heavens had blessed them with this.

Then a loud, obnoxious rumbling came from inside the building. Judging where it came from, some children thought it was coming from down the main hallway. Since the sprinklers put out the fire, it also put out the main source of light in the room, making it very difficult to see. In a quick flash, Mono thought he could've seen something moving through the room with them. Not an animal or a person, no, it didn't seem to be like that.

More like a moving shadow.

One of the children in the group was standing far away from the others. From right behind, Mono sworn he could've seen a tall figure standing behind him, a dark and slender figure, reaching out a hand behind the child. The figure was as quiet as a mouse, so the kid didn't even realize it until it was too late.

"BEHIND YOU!! RUN!!!", Mono cried, trying to help him.

But unfortunately for him, it was too late. In an instant, the figure's large dark hands gripped the child by the throat, and swiftly dragged him down into the dark depths of the orphanage. The child's screams were quickly cut off as he could barely breathe, but all the other children heard his cries of despair. There was no trail of the taken child now. The others started panicking frantically, wondering what the hell was going on and who, or what, was in the room with them.

The sprinklers were still going, creating more noise and more puddles along the floor. Because of this it was harder to listen for any careful movement. Before they knew it, the shadowy figure grabbed onto another child's leg and pulled them away from the others, following only a terrified scream before disappearing from their sight completely. Holy shit! If we keep this up, that thing's going to kill all of us!

"Run! We need to run now!" Onz cried out desperately. A lot of children seemingly agreed with him, so most of them started running away together, leaving Mono behind. "Wait for me!", Mono yelled, trying to keep up with them. Another kid had decided to follow him as well, but before Mono knew it, the figure had already taken the child, his muffled screams being the last Mono ever heard of the kid.

Shit, he's onto me! I've gotta hide somewhere! I can't run from this thing forever! In a bold move, Mono decided to break apart from the others, and decided to find another part of the orphanage building to hide in. I wish I could help the others, but I'll get killed before I even have the chance to do it!

After running for around a good couple minutes, Mono finally stopped to breathe for a little bit. The room he was in was in desperate need of some cleaning, as there was so much dust that it wouldn't seem too far fetched to assume that it hadn't been dusted since the 90s. He arrived at the entertainment room, where there was a wide, open window, a reclining chair, and a TV which had a broken screen. That was the result of Mono testing his "powers" beforehand. He tried to see if he could somehow talk to people across the globe through the television screen, but he got a bit too reckless, and ended up breaking the screen as a result. The others were pretty pissed off about that.

Mono tried to see if there was a way to exit the building through the window, so he went over there first. Turns out that the window opened up to around a forty-foot high drop, which would generally kill Mono if he took his chances and jumped. There's got to be some kind of rope or something that I can use to get out of this place! But before he could get to brainstorming, he saw that he still had a huge problem to deal with.

He could some very uneasy, coarse breathing, almost like if someone scratched nails on a chalkboard. Thump, thump, thump...a metallic clank followed it. That thing must've followed me! Quick, I need to find a way to hide, now! Panicking, Mono tried to look through his options, and the quickest one he could think of was to hide in the broken TV. Since the screen was cracked just enough, he could fit inside and hide in there. There wasn't exactly many others places for him to take shelter under, so he chose this.

Mono crawled up into a fetal-like position, trying not to make a sound, keeping his breathing down. In the corner of the room, he could see a large, ominous shadow lurking overhead. Whatever it was, it had a misty appearance given akin to a shadow. It seemed it had the shape and body of a man, but that it was made from some kind of tiny, minuscule particles. It's face, if you could even call it one, was almost completely blank, with two small, silver eyes and a large mouth, filled with long, sharp teeth, grinning at him creepily.

Mono then tried to gently peak out of the TV screen to see if he was there, and he saw the shadow man standing right in front of him. Its long, disproportionate arms slowly reached out towards Mono. The boy was paralyzed with fear, unable to move. His eyes couldn't believe what they were seeing. Even if he tried to escape, that thing could've easily captured him.

"Easy prey," the creature whispered at him. The monster's hand was so close to Mono that he was mere inches away from his face. Then, in a blink out of nowhere, a small light could be seen shining from the back of the room. The shadow man gave out a shriek of pain as the light flashed on him, and immediately lost focus on Mono and took notice of the other child in the room.

"Leave him alone!", Onz cried out, holding a flashlight. It didn't really hurt him, but it did sting the man, and it focused on Onz now. "Big mistake," the creature whispered.

The shadow lunged at him, while Onz tried to run away from it. This diversion was able to give Mono enough time to slowly crawl out of the broken TV without the figure noticing him. Onz made sure to keep shining his flashlight on the creature, as every time he did it, the creature would feel a sharp sting. The light seemed to hurt it. But that didn't stop the creature from attacking him.

It picked up the nearest object it could find, a box, and threw it at Onz. It hit the boy square in the chest, making him drop his flashlight and knocking him to the ground. The shadow then quickly rushed over to him, then gripped him around the throat. Suddenly, Onz started to feel queazy, like he was falling apart, and Mono, as he was almost ready to escape the room, caught a quick glimpse at the fate of his friend.

Onz had quickly turned to dust, his skin decaying and falling apart like ashes in a matter of seconds until only his skeleton and clothes remained. Mono watched in shock and horror as his friend fell apart in front of him, completely speechless. NO!! He wanted to scream more than anything, but he didn't want Onz's sacrifice to be in vain.

He had gone all the way back and distracted the shadow just so he could escape. In his eyes, he could feel tears forming up. Before the shadow had another chance to notice him, Mono quickly slipped out of the room through a small vent shaft underneath. Meanwhile, the shadow man dragged Onz's bones, wondering where Mono went.

He's a shifty one, I'll give him that, the creature thought. But where's the fun in that if there isn't a challenge?