1 Ghost story

If I could explain it I would...but I have no idea how I killed my parents.

'While on a family picnic, six-year-old Michael King was charged with the horrific murder of his own parents.'

That's how the media covered my story when I was taken into custody. I couldn't speak for myself, and as a migrant, I had no one else to talk to. My life became what people read in the article, which continued to say,

'While police are not entirely sure how he did it, there is evidence proving that he is in fact guilty. This includes eyewitnesses at Stain City Park who say they saw young Michael dismembering the corpses of his parents with his bare hands. By the time they stopped him, it was too late.'

It caused quite a buzz in the city for a good two weeks or so, especially to everyone who knew my family. We may have not been well off but we were happy.

They couldn't understand it. What had gone wrong? Rumors started to surface as people tried to make sense of it. Some said I was possessed by the devil, others thought I was a zombie...the closest one to the truth was that I was an alien disguised as a kid. Soon I was a ghost story.

Eight years later and I still don't know how it happened. One minute everything was fine, the next I was bathing in my parents' blood in tears. It haunted me every night when I closed my eyes, and it always started with a whisper...but I could never make it out.

After that, my entire life was erased, and I was put in a strange facility. It was like a government prison for children much like myself. Turns out there were a lot of us with the same story.

Most kids here were broken. Like me, some had killed their parents, others their siblings, and some their best friends.

We all arrived the same way, drugged, and woke up in a strange bed.

The next thing we knew our identities had been cleared. My name was taken from me, and I was given a tag that read [Illusion No.38] in its place. They also put computer chips on the back of our skulls to monitor brain activity.

It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that we were lab rats, especially with all the tests they did on us. And the pills we were fed before every meal.

This place was off the map. To the outside world, we were in a 'mental health program'...whatever that means.

Our daily routine was pretty simple, wake up every morning at 6 am, shower. Pills. Have breakfast in the cafeteria. Pills. Go to the training hall until lunch. Pills. Go back again after lunch until dinner. Pills. Then have a brain diagnosis before bed. Pills. Repeat.

It soon occurred to me that they were trying to figure out where six-year-old kids got the strength or the drive to overpower fully grown adults. Or at least that's what I initially thought.

My theory did make sense at the time though, considering what they put us through for training. When we first arrived it was like a beginner's karate class. Learning to punch, kick, combinations, and all that stuff.

As we grew older they turned us against each other. We were given partners to spar with, no rules, no holding back. disobey and they fried your brain with the mechanical chip on your skull. Not literally but... that's what it felt like. Every time it activated it would feel like your head was on fire. That's how they made us cooperate, how they got us to stop crying. We were kids no more.

Winning a match without making your partner bleed was worthy of punishment.

They made us aggressive, heartless, and ruthless. But years passed and not a single one of us displayed the required level of aggression. The level that would cause one to kill loved ones. So ...yeah, conditions kept rising, and training kept getting more intense.

In the meantime, they used our skills for other things. Assassinations, Espionage, or just simple mindless bloodbaths, you name it.

Sometimes in training, we had to break bones, other times we'd have to make sure the other person didn't get back up. By the time they taught us weapon mastery, most of us had died...but our instructor would just call someone to pick up the bodies.

We were so broken that when I had my first kill, I felt nothing. This scared me so much that I didn't talk to anyone for weeks. Everyone thought it was because of the blood, but the blood only made me aware of my dying heart.

We no longer found the sight of a dead body disturbing. I was no different, and that scared me.

Even after some of us made friends to deal with our traumas, we always kept in mind that the person who smiled at us today would probably end up dead tomorrow. We grew indifferent towards death. This was our reality.

And honestly, I think that was the plan. They made us share rooms with three other people, and roommates were required to also sit together during meal times. Spending so much time together, it was difficult to not grow attached, especially when we were all so desperate for companionship.

Our instructor always used that need against us by pairing the two closest roommates for sparring whenever a new candidate was set to arrive.

Did you know that attraction to another human being isn't decided by your heart or the power of friendship like in anime? No, it's actually just a bunch of chemicals to your brain. 

dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. That's it. And turns out they can be measured.

The chips in our skulls measured this activity in our brains for the instructor, whom we only knew as Bishop.

"The chess piece," He clarified when he introduced himself. "Don't get it confused."

He was cold and hard to read. He always had his black hair combed down his face to hide his eyes and wore a gas mask every day, as though we carried some kind of deadly virus.

We were the only ones who didn't wear masks actually. The rest of the staff had them too, even the cleaning ladies. The only thing we shared were outfits. Everyone in the facility wore white long-sleeved shirts and white pants. But our shirts had orange stripes on the shoulders.

They did everything they could to separate us from the working staff. They didn't even speak to us much, and almost every door needed a key card to access.

The thick, white metal walls made the place feel like a shady underground lab with no way to escape, and there were no windows anywhere we were allowed to go.

My roommates were pretty fun though, they almost made me forget that we were living a nightmare.

Although we made each other laugh, we still tried to keep from getting close as one of us would probably die for it. We gave each other stupid names by the numbers we were assigned and distinct features so we'd remain strangers, and we also made sure we were never seen together outside meal times.

There was Illusion No.65 whom we called Sive, like, six and five put together. He was the last of us to arrive in the program. His pale soft skin and slender, yet tall body with a noble-like posture showed that he was nothing short of loaded before he arrived.

Then there was Shark'o, No.43. He had strangely sharp and pointy teeth. He was the loudest of the group and had a good physique. The first blonde I'd ever met whose hair didn't impress me though. It was always a mess.

Third was El, No.11. The senior of the group. He had been here the longest and unlike the other two, he had little to boast about. He always had a soft smile whenever someone spoke to him, but it seemed to fade when he turned around. The only thing he cared more about than us was his long, shiny black hair...which I thought was a little weird.

And lastly, me, No.38, AKA Afro. They just liked my bushy black afro hair, and they were pretty honest about it.

However, our plan to stay unnoticed didn't quite work. El was listed as my sparring partner before curfew that night.