Slave

Southern US, 1954.

The backdoor of the truck slams shut as a fat hill-billy locks it and walks over to a couple standing a few feet away.

Inside the truck was a small child aged only two, crying and screaming in the horrible darkness that surrounded him.

"Here you are, fine people. Pleasure doing business with ya'!" The hill-billy who was wearing a red collared blazer underneath his blue denim overalls, said with a cheeky smile on his face as he handed over a small stack of cash to the odd-looking couple.

The two of them were as pale and skinny as could be, almost like walking skeletons. Their clothes were ripped and their bodies were covered in scratches and rashes.

They shook uncontrollably as they accepted the cash, a smile of awe was on their faces while they stared at the bundle.

As they itched away frivolously at their decaying bodies, the hill-billy said no more and walked off, getting into his truck before slamming the gas and putting on some jazz music which was popular at the time.

This was the last day that the unnamed baby ever saw his true parents. A few years after this, the two died together under a bridge due to a drug overdose.

In the span of three days, the truck traveled up north from Oklahoma to Oregon, to the edge of the country, where the traumatized child was sold off to a peculiar family who lived on a busy city street.

They were the Wilksons. Although their name wasn't shared much, close-by relatives knew them to be self-reserved. Their children, however, were known to be very sassy and troublesome.

On the first day of his arrival, the baby was named Zero. Zero spent his days with his family as every normal child would for the first few years while living with his new adoptive parents.

His mother would feed him, clean his diapers, and his father home-schooled him until the age of 6 when he finally learned to read and write. To their surprise, the boy was smarter than their expectations.

His life up until that moment was going fine, with only a few odd things such as him not being able to go to school like his two brothers who were two and three years older than him, and his sister who was one year older than him, and also how his parents would never communicate with him.

However, things started to change rapidly from the moment he turned of age to perform all the basic tasks that a family would need to do.

Days went by as all the work in the house was piled onto him while everyone else relaxed. His brothers, Kane - 9 years old - and Cole - 8 years old - would frequently bully him for this, laughing at his inability to fight back.

Of course, Zero didn't really know he even had the option to fight back. After all, he was raised without almost anyone to communicate with.

By the time he turned ten, Zero had realized that he was not a part of the Wilkinson family. As his father would always say when asked, he was a mere slave.

He had been purchased and raised by them only to perform their duties for them. Of course, this wasn't completely uncommon in those old days, but Zero still had no clue that such a thing could be real.

Then again, he didn't know anything about real life at all, as he wasn't taught about the outside world by his parents, and only about the basic information he would need to behave properly.

His father was now very abusive to him. Neither of his "parents" would be home often, but when they were, they weren't kind to him at all.

His father would taunt him and say horrible things, such as "You're nothing but a slave for my family." and "Working and serving us is your only purpose in life, don't think of anything beyond that!"

And his mother simply wouldn't want anything to do with him. Whenever he even glanced at her, he was always met with the same expression of disgust, almost as if she was looking at a monster.

Due to this, the young Zero always quickly retracted his gaze and looked toward the ground.

The bullying from his brothers had also gotten much worse, as they would abuse him as well, frequently beating him bloody like a pack of wolves, ferociously tearing at his frail flesh with their fangs and talons, whether those attacks were words or physical actions.

"Look at how skinny he is! Why don't you eat more? Oh wait, you're not allowed to! Hahaha!"

"Don't ever clean my room without permission, unless you want to die, you retarded fucking dumbass!"

Enduring all of this, Zero never fought back even once. He didn't know he had the ability to.

His father would always encourage this behavior when noticing it, telling Cole and Kane that he was nothing more than property, he had no rights, and therefore, they could do whatever they wanted with him.

With these values, the boys grew to be horrible characters, frequently kicked and suspended from school for getting into fights and beating up other kids.

There was even a time when one of them admitted to stabbing another child, but without proof, the police weren't able to do anything about it, even knowing that those terrible kids were most likely the ones that did it.

They got yelled at a lot by their parents, but Zero saw that the ferocity in the parent's voices was almost non-existent compared to when they spoke to him.

With the words of everyone around him, he meant nothing to this world. Not to his real parents, not to his new family. No one.

He didn't know who he was. There wouldn't be a single day where he didn't question his identity and the meaning of existence.

Along with that, he didn't even know the most basic things that a normal boy his age would know.

Games, friends, love. None of these concepts even made much sense to him. However, he couldn't just run away from this world either.

Why? Well, it was obvious. Beyond the world he lived in, there was no other world. Beyond that house, there existed but a blank plane of the unknown.

It was scary… so scary to think of what was out there. He had heard of how big it was, but this wasn't a good thing.

Was everyone else also just as unloving to him as his adoptive family? Maybe they were even worse, or there was even the possibility that he simply could never be loved by anyone, simply because he was born that way.

In this world of despair and confusion, the only bud of light he had was his sister, Jen. She was the only one who ever cared for him or had any positive emotions towards him.

If it had not been for her talking to him like he was an actual human being, the young boy would have been driven to insanity by now.

The look in her eyes when she talked to him was indescribable, but at least they didn't have any hatred inside of them. They were genuine… innocent.

Just like this, four more years passed by...

They weren't fast, rather extremely slow and painful as the abuse and bullying only became more of a problem.

He was now 14 years of age. His brothers were 16 and 17, and his sister was 15 years of age.

The day progressed like normal. After cleaning the upstairs, Zero had come downstairs and had begun to clean the living room floor.

His "brothers" were on the couch cracking silly jokes at each other while hyping each other up about the show on the TV they were watching.

The parents and Jen were in the kitchen, which was about 10 meters away.

Right now, the expression on Zero's face was a bit brighter than usual, as he was thinking about just yesterday when Jen said something to him that really made him happy.

As he was cleaning her room after a confrontation that included bullying with Cole and Kane, she slowly wrapped her arms around him and stared deeply into his eyes, her face having the same innocence as always.

"You know… I don't know what I'd do without you." She said in a soft voice.

"Wha- what do you mean?" Zero managed to say, slightly startled by what he had just heard.

"I get bullied by those jerks too, ya' know. We are more similar than you think. You are the only reason I'm happy. Please never leave me."

Zero was stunned for a moment. This was the first time he had heard such kind words in his life.

"Of course! I would never leave you if I am the only thing keeping you happy!" He quickly replied, scratching the back of his head as he laughed nervously.

Back to the present moment. He grinned a little more after thinking of that time. He had a purpose now. To keep Jen happy.

It wasn't much, but it was enough for him, who was purposeless before.

"Yo, fuck-face! Why are you smiling so much over there? Stop it, it's irritating me." Cole suddenly yelled at Zero.

A shiver ran down Zero's back on hearing this. He was very afraid of the two, so he immediately stopped smiling.

"I- I'm sorry! I won't do it again!" He replied, trying to end the drama quickly, so it didn't become anything bigger than it already was.

At that moment, Jen entered the room and took the remote from next to the TV before beginning the change the channel to something that she liked.

"Hey! What the hell are you doing!? It was just getting to the good part, you bitch!" Kane yelled, still engrossed in what they were watching.

"You should have told me, just watch it sometime else now!" Jen replied.

Kane suddenly became enraged, quickly standing up and ripping the remote from Jen's hands.

Jen stood up, but Cole forcefully pushed her back down onto the couch. The two always supported each other, no matter who was right or wrong.

"Think before you act, you retarded bitch. You're beginning to act like fuck-face over there." Cole said, looking at Zero.

Zero quickly looked towards the ground and continued to clean.

"Humph! Whatever!" Jen said, standing up before beginning to walk away from the living room.

Just as she passed the boys, Kane pulled her back by her hair.

"Who the fuck do you think you are, huh? Do you want to get beat up like him, too? Apologize before I smash your motherfucking skull in with this remote!" He screamed.

They were extremely violent kids who knew no better due to their parent's teachings. From the looks of it, Zero knew that most likely they were not kidding around.

He could tell when there was true hatred and rage in one's eyes from experience.

As soon as he saw this, his body wanted to curl into a ball and hide. The years of trauma caused his entire body to start shaking uncontrollably.

They continued to yell at Jen, even giving her death threats as they violently pushed her around.

At that moment, Zero felt scared, but a part of him even felt a bit relieved that he wasn't the one taking the brunt of the abuse for the first time.

Still, the guilt of how he felt made him feel awful. Just moments before, he was promising himself that he would keep Jen happy, and now, he was glad that she was getting bullied instead of him.

He tried to clean still, holding in his fear, but once he heard the loud ringing of a slap reverberate throughout his ears, he simply couldn't keep it together anymore.

He promised to keep her happy. There was no way he could live with himself if he didn't do something right now.

Even though he was scared beyond comprehension, traumatized all his life by these beings, he turned to face them.

Jen faced down, her expression shadowed.

'She's probably crying.' Zero thought to himself, giving him more confidence in the situation.

He wanted to do something at that very moment, or at least say something, but neither his body nor lips moved. Instead, they quivered in fear.

At that moment, Cole raised his hand once again to slap his sister. That action jolted through Zero's body, causing it to move on its own.

Out of nowhere, he appeared in front of Jen and put his arms out to the sides to guard her.

"Stop this! Please!" He screamed frantically.

This was the first time in his life that he had ever said anything back to anyone.