PRIMEVIL

Chapter One: Nobody

Fear lives in the eyes. 

It was the first thing he remembered about a face. And when he etched a memory, that was where he began.

Viktor outlined an iris, then a pupil, pressing his pen tip into the eyes' center. People liked to say they're the window to the soul. People said a lot of stupid things.

Viktor had never seen a soul, but fear? That he'd seen. In every doctor, judge, and social worker that read his file. That look of revulsion.

He pressed firm against the pen, ink spilling into the pupil, filling it with emptiness.

The horror in his mother's eyes that night. The kind that left an entrance wound. Like a bullet, not the kind that passes clean through but the kind that buries itself in your head, festering.

And sometimes, when he peered into someone's eyes, their fear came bleeding out.

Viktor lifted his hand from the page to find the set of eyes he had drawn now crying black tears.

As if his thoughts were manifesting. A chill ran through him.

"Knock knock," a voice called from beyond the hall.

"Not now, Nathan," Viktor croaked. He hated how his accent betrayed him—a telltale sign of his agitation.

"Oops, would you look at that? I'm already inside," Nathan said, clipping the ring of keys back on his belt. His olive eyes scanned the walls of Viktor's unusual accommodation. "Everything okay?"

Viktor eyed the sketch, then his fingers. Relief came over him as he saw the flimsy broken pen he clutched, the ink still wet on his hand.

"If you could spare some proper pencils, I might be better," he retorted.

"No sharp objects without supervision, them's the rules Viktor."

Nathan thumbed through a stack of unfinished drawings. Eyes without faces, stories without endings.

"Still having trouble sleeping?"

"I'm not dangerous," he paused. "Anymore, plus I'm not your patient."

"Well, you're not legally required to be here, but until you're eighteen or someone agrees to take you in... you're stuck here. Which makes you my patient," said Nathan.

Viktor huffed indignantly. He stood, pushing away from his makeshift desk—a relic, an old church pew—and walked over to the sink to wash away the ink. He turned the faucet, letting the water run over his skin. Watching as the blackness swirled around the drain.

Everyone at the hospital was scared of the old chapel room. They'd swap stories about the devil and demons that lived in its dark corners.

Viktor never bought into that stuff. So, he walked right into the chapel, thinking he'd prove there was nothing to be scared of.

But it backfired. The other kids began insisting he was the devil, that he tormented them in their sleep.

When the doctors and courts finally deemed him sane, but with nowhere else to go. The director assigned the chapel to be his new living quarters.

A ward of his own.

Though it wasn't for his comfort, Viktor knew; it was for theirs.

"I uh—guess I should get to the point then," said Nathan. His voice cutting through the silence, hesitantly. A departure from his typical boisterous attitude. Was he nervous?

"You'll be seventeen next week," He said. "And I know you don't like to celebrate, so I won't make a big deal about it."

That much was true. Birthdays had always felt more like a reminder of mortality than a celebration of life.