Prologue – The Storytellar

"Every single night since that horrific night, I tend to have these...nightmares." The clock struck eight, a doorknob slowly turned and a door gently creaked open letting in a boy, a scrawny kid with white hair and blue eyes that seemed to glow in that dim lit room.

With his feet cradled close to his chest, he sat on the couch adjacent to the formally dressed spectacled lady who seemed to be in her early thirties and carried on her person, a small pink notepad with a black ballpoint pen.

"You dream?" the lady with the notepad wondered.

The little boy as scared as he was, wasted no time to share his thoughts as he seemed to understand why he was brought here...

"Yes, well... It's actually more like a nightmare." He had a British tone to his accent, same as the lady.

"A nightmare? I see... And what exactly did you see in this nightmare of yours?"

"What I saw...? I didn't just see things, ma'am, I remembered the sounds, touch, and smells. I remembered every single thing that happened that night, vividly; the sound of the pouring rain, the earsplitting police sirens as well as the flickering lights of red and blue that crept into that nightmarish living room."

"Hmm, I see..." the therapist said as she's noted his words down in her pink notepad.

"And most of all, I remembered the thick smell of..."

"Of what, son? What did you smell?"

"Blood... It was blood, ma'am."

She gulped, "Blood, you say?"

"Yes, I remember the thick iron smell of blood, warm blood that streamed through the floor and covered my feet."

"Ah, I see. Could you tell me just where did this... blood come from?"

"..." He kept silent, shuddered and trembled as he did not want to recall his nightmare again.

That is, until he felt a warm hand on his trembling hands, a warmth from the lady therapist who sat in front of him. "It's okay," she said as she assured him that nothing was going to ever happen to him."

"From where I stood, the blood slowly covered the tips of my feet, it flowed from..." The boy paused for a moment and held his mouth as if he wanted to throw up

"From?" the lady therapist urged.

The troubled boy nodded in response to her assertion and courageously answered, "...From the dead bodies of my entire family."

"That does seem like a very bad nightmare, to witness your family, dead all around you."

"It was... Especially for the fact that I witnessed my entire family; my caring mother, my cheerful father, my precious older sister, and my cool eldest brother tortured to death.

"That must have been scary to experience, Harry..." She comforted him some more.

"It really was..." the boy sobbed.

"I see-"

"-But that wasn't the worst of it," the boy immediately added.

"Ok...? What could have been scarier than that?"

"It was the look in those eyes of his..."

"His eyes?" The aura of the room seemed to change when she asked that. There was an intense cloud of oppressive fear and terror that oozed out of him.

And then he said, "Those wicked purple eyes of the murderer..." For the next few minutes, the therapist experienced just how far-broken her young client was.

The clock struck nine and the one-hour therapy session ended so that another could begin...

***

Once an hour passed, another boy came into the therapy room, he was a tall, lanky kid with a bit of an attitude.

He was yet another victim of 'that' horrific night.

Once he took a seat on the couch, the therapist asked, "I'm sure you understand why you're here?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... You wanna check my psyche or somethin'" the kid replied nonchalantly in his odd Texan accent. "Damn geezer, told him I didn't need to see some therapist, Tsk" He sighed.

'Well, he's gonna be a lot of fun' she sarcastically thought to herself. "I understand that you lost some loved ones in a fire?" She questioned the boy as she noted in her notepad.

"I didn't just lose anythin', lady!"

"Oof, rude much..."

"They were taken from me... Everyone, my entire family."

"Hmm, I see... And when you say everyone, do you mean-"

"-I mean everyone; my mama, my pops, uncles, aunts, men, women and children. None were left alive."

"-Except you?"

"Except me..."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"..."

"Does that bother you? Does it make you feel like you should have died as well?"

"..." He kept silent.

"I need you to know that the feeling you're experiencing right now is nothing more than 'Survivor's Guilt'. That regret-"

"-Lady, I'm sorry but you seem to be confused about something. I ain't regretful that I survived or anything like that. Nah... If anything I'm mad, I'm pissed!"

'Well... He's a rowdy one.' She thought to herself.

"And the only thing I regret is that I didn't take that bastard down when I had the chance. If given the chance again, I would have stabbed that bastard's heart instead of his leg."

"I see... I'm sensing a lot of rage there... Also, kid...?"

"Hmm?"

Her brows furrowed, and a small vein seemed to pulse angrily on her forehead as she did, but she still wore a smile when she said, "You'll address me as Ma'am or Miss Robinson. You get that... punk?!"

Slightly intimidated, he answered respectfully, "Yeah lad- I mean, yes, ma'am..."

"What, are you scared of me?" She mocked and he chuckled, "That's embarrassin'"

All of a sudden, he menacingly stood up from the couch for a moment, and his voice seemed to deepen as he did, "But I've got to say, ma'am..."

Stunned at his sudden change in demeanour, she wondered, "What is it?"

"I just can't wait..." He stepped a little closer towards her. This action made her a little nervous, it wasn't fear per se, it was more of a special kind of intimidation that seemed to encroach on her very being with every step he took towards her.

"C-Can't wait for what?" She stuttered.

A menacing smile peered out of his face as he replied, "Can't wait to catch a glimpse of those eyes again?"

She uttered, "E-Eyes?" He cornered her with his arms blocking both sides of her chair.

Then, with an eery smile, a hint of fear and a whole lot of rage, he answered her, "Oh yeah, I just can't wait to see those damned purple eyes, eyes that could kill..." Just as abruptly as he approached her, he disengaged and silently went back to the couch, leaving the therapist in a flushed state.

'What the heck was that!!?' She screamed in her thoughts, her face redder than ever.

Perplexed with a lot of emotions, she hurriedly took a few more notes and asked a few more questions which were answered well before she sent him out and called in her next client.

***

An extremely frightened girl came in with her head faced down, she avoided making any eye contact with the therapist no matter what.

"Ah... Seems like another nutcase" she accidentally expressed her real thoughts.

"I... Um... Ahem! So tell me, little lady, what exactly is it that's got you so traumatized, hm?"

"..." The little girl kept quiet, covering whatever part of her face that was exposed with her golden locks.

The therapist took a serious look at the shaken girl for a moment, then, began to analyze her patient for a bit.

'Aura Eyes!' she exclaimed in her mind and her thoughts began to deduce everything about the girl, from her reactions to her little mannerisms; 'She'd been extremely silent from the moment she stepped into the room, she's covering a lot of her face but suggesting that she's just shy would be a rookie mistake, as she's actually trying to hide her scars below her- No, behind her neck?'

As if unsatisfied by her findings, she leaned in closer for a better look. 'And her demeanour and aura seem shaken, almost obscured. To an amateur, they would conclude that she was simply hiding from me and talking about her trauma, being defensive as she seems to be but that would be wrong!' The therapist finally closed her eyelids and let her aura eyes rest.

With her eyes resting, she continued in her thoughts, 'This poor little girl, she's not hiding from me, no, she's still hiding from her nightmare. Even now, in her mind. her nightmare haunts her constantly.'

'If I could just...' She stretched forth her hand towards the girl's head, the moment she made contact with the little girl, it all came rushing into her mind's eye, the terror, the fermented pain, it was too much for a single person to handle and yet... The girl was engrossed in it.

What claimed the therapist's attention most of all was the clear and highly defined vision of what seemed to be a pair of strikingly enchanting purple eyes that seemed like they could pull her into that abyss at any moment.

In a hurry, she let go of the girl and took a moment to catch her breath.

"...What happened to you?"

For a moment, not sure if it was the fact that they had shared a moment of pure pain or that the little girl just felt more comfortable from the head pat that came with the touch, but in that very moment, the little girl raised her head ever so slowly, then spoke calmly in a raspy yet cute voice, "Your blue eyes... They're just like mom's."

"..." The therapist was stunned by her response.

"They're beautiful and kind... They're not like the man with the purple eyes. Those eyes... Are a bad man's eyes." Her British was very sound almost like a native of the old country.

Before the lady could even reply, the little girl eerily added,"-And bad men don't deserve to live."

"I see..." She took a quick look at the little girl's file on her table, it was a yellow file amongst three others and what she saw in that yellow file, prompted her to say, "You know what? You're probably right, bad men don't deserve to live the good life." Once she said that, for a serene moment, they both shared a happy yet sad smile.

The clock struck midnight and the one-hour sessions for the day were over... But a meeting came to be that night, a meeting of fate between three of the very few survivors of 'The Massacre'.

With a gentle tap on the little girl's shoulders, the tall lanky boy with curly black hair asked, "Hey! Whatcha in for?"

"H-Huh?" The blonde little girl responded.

...