The girl had been sleeping in her bed snuggled underneath the comforter against the cold that suddenly chilled the room after midnight. She pulled her legs up, curling into a ball as she shivered but didn't bring herself out of the bed to turn on the gas heater. The cold had jostled her out of her sleep, and she moaned rubbing her feet together to seek some heat for comfort. She, at first, thought of turning on the heater but decided against this urge and stayed in her bed. Because, if she had made any sound padding around the bedroom, he would have known that she's awake and she couldn't have born the terrific consequences in the middle of night. After some restlessness, she was finally able to heat her numbed feet from friction and got herself comfortable in the bed to sleep. She was about to touch the realm of dream when she heard the gasps and pants of someone inside the room. Her eyes fluttered eyes open in confusion, blinking few times when her ears met with a muffled sob as if someone had been crying. The girl immediately closed her eyes, shuddering in fear and tugged the comforter above her head brushing off the paranoid thoughts that sprang up from being alone in the room. She heard another whimper and sat up in her bed, clenching her thudding breast and looked around the room to find its source. She suddenly froze in horror when she realized that the sound had been coming from under her bed. The girl gulped and reasoned not to look under her bed to confirm her theory. But a sob after sob, made her to muster up her courage against her will. She covered her mouth with hand and bent to look underneath the bed. She barely held back her scream when a thing sprang out of the bed and pressed itself against the wall.
"A-Alan?"
The girl stared at the pale bluish form of her brother horrified who's standing like a dead corpse. The hollows of his eye sockets that were almost black in the dimmed room gave him appearance of a ghost. The boy's lips were blue poisoned from the sting of cold, and he wet his night pyjamas right in front of her sister trembling in fear. The girl immediately leapt out of the bed rushing to help her brother who stood barefoot in the pool of his urine.
"Alan, are you alright?" She asked shaking her brother by shoulder who craned his head towards her and blinked up at her as if he had been having a hard time registering his surroundings. The rational part of her wanted to wake Darren up, but it's the rationality that stopped her from telling him about Alan. The girl rushed inside the bathroom, filling in the bathtub with hot water and checked the temperature for him. She steered her ice-cold brother into the bathroom and helped him out of his ruined pyjamas leading him inside the bathtub, an act that wasn't foreign to her to bathe her brother since she had taken the role of mother after their parent's death. The boy pulled his knees up to his chest out of modesty and shyness in front of opposite sex wrapping skinny arms around his legs. The girl knelt beside the tub and touched his arm tenderly.
"Can you clean yourself?" The boy gave a blink in answer and sank his head against his chest.
"I'll be right back, Alan." She told him awaiting answer from her painfully muted brother who refused to utter a single word to her about the cause of his condition.
"Okay?" This time the boy nodded his head staring in the distant and she left the bathroom to retrieve his clean clothes and sweaters. She learned from their maid that Darren had been out of the station in some business meeting, to her relief, else he would've been awake before the siblings could have known. She pulled fresh pyjamas and socks from Alan's closet, fretting for her brother's condition and went back to the bathroom. She found him curled up in the bathtub just like she had left him and grabbed the towel wrapping around his shoulders.
"The water is getting cold now." The boy remained in the fatal position and didn't complied to her worried sister.
"Alan, at least tell me what happened?" She hadn't been his sister, sole friend but his mother and father too since it was ultimate responsibility on her shoulders to look after her brother. But seeing him near dead made her tear up despite the fact that she should have been stronger for him. It's then that the girl noticed the forming purplish bruises on his entire body.
"How did you get them?" The girl asked examining the bruises on his legs.
"Darren" The boy broke his silence and clutched his ribs scratching his skin that caked his nails with blood.
"He...he did this to you?" The girl shouted out in anger gripping his both hands from wounding himself.
"He made a promise that he'll leave you if I give myself to him." The girl staggered back, choking back a cry and slumped down on her knees.
"Did he...did you Alan..."
"He won't touch you."
The girl cried for her brother, questioning the God that why He hadn't protected them when she prayed to Him every night, it's something a child would certainly ask than an adult whom sadism in the High Nature hardly doesn't surprise. The boy, ironically, recovered himself sooner than his sister as he stepped out of the tub and dressed himself in fresh clothes. He unplugged the bathtub, draining the water and tapped the shoulder of his grieving sister on his way back to room.
"Can I stay in your room, Laine?" He asked to his sister who composed herself getting up on her feet and made the bedding for both of them. Alan took the right side of bed and the girl moved to the left side facing the back of her brother. In the morning, the boy woke up alone in the bed frowning and immediately left the bed to look for his sister, dreading the possibility that Darren had been back and had taken his another chance with his sister.
"Laine?" The boy came outside of the room calling the name of his sister in almost whisper. He descended the stairs, being cautious not to make a creaking on wooden step to disturb the silence of manor and caught glimpse of his sister making breakfast with the maid of house whom Alan detested the most and the hatred seemed to be reciprocated on her part too, that radiated from her person being.
"Why did you leave the bed?" His question made the confused girl stop in her movement to the dining table and she stared right back at her brother questioning the nature of his question.
"What?" She exclaimed out of perplexity.
"You left me alone?" The boy shuddered leering up at his sister in shy sense of possessiveness but clutched his trousers in anger that aroused from the thought of him giving himself to Darren for his sister and the least she could have done was to acknowledge his good sense of brotherly affection for her.
"You look pale, Alan. You need to refill yourself. Now come down and have breakfast." Mrs. Lucetta smirked in his direction and he spared the widow a murderous glare. He knew that she had known about Darren's perverse intention towards the siblings and had helped him in his vice pleasure. Hadn't she been the one standing outside the room as a sole witness when Darren finished with him last night? What else he could have inferred from her malicious grin that broke out in a strange sense of satisfaction out of his sufferance? Nonetheless, the boy grimaced going inside the kitchen and took his chair beside his sister at the table. The girl filled his place with sandwich and egg, and waited for the maid to leave the siblings alone in the kitchen.
"I had a perfect chance for us to get away." The girl whispered to her brother peeking up at Lucetta from the corner of her eyes. "But she caught me at the last minute of packing our bags."
"Lucetta won't leave us alone even for a minute." Alan mumbled sneering at the elder woman remembering the fact that the woman didn't let siblings to be in contact with each other when Darren was present at home.
"We'll get another chance." The boy nodded to his sister and finished up with his breakfast before going into his room to shower and change into proper clothes. He stepped back into the bedroom and noticed his forgotten teddy bear that fell from his hand on the floor when Darren pushed him on the bed to steal away his innocence that he offered in exchange of his sister. The boy bent to pick up his teddy bear, the witness of his impurity and sign of his childhood that he no longer had. Alan looked at the missing eye of his teddy bear and decided not to stitch it in its place because what he had witnessed in the basement about his sister had changed their lives and blinded his vision of goodness in the world. The one eye of the plush toy would remind him of trauma, the torment on his soul and justify him in seeing one vision of evil in men. Alan went downstairs informing Lucetta that he'd be playing outside the house for a while. The playground was crowded with children and he avoided to be in contact with anyone of them. He had been alien to them and so did they were to him. He sat on the swing holding his plush toy to his heart and pushed his feet to move the swing looking at the boys playing soccer. The ball rolled in his direction and a boy asked Alan to pass him his ball which he refused to do angering the boy. The enraged boy came forward and positioned himself to kick the ball in Alan's direction that hit him square in his chest knocking him off the swing. He fell on his back groaning and looked up to see the grinning boy towering him.
"Such a weakling." He jeered and boys with him laughed at miserable Alan. The boy stepped on his plush toy and kicked it up in the air catching it with his hand.
"Give it back to me." Alan was suddenly on his feet and glared up at the taller boy who's smirking down on him. The boy took the advantage of his height and raised his plush bear up in the air by extending his arm out of Alan's reach.
"Get it lose..."
"Danny, give it back to him." Alan turned to look at the jet haired boy who marched to stand between him and Dan.
"What are you going to do?" Dan pushed him back mocking him but the latter one stepped forward in threatening manner. "I'll tell your aunt that I caught you smoking with Harris." Dan scowled at the boy and shoved the plush bear into his chest leaving the both boys alone. The boy turned to face Alan and handed him his teddy.
"No need to thank me." Alan blinked up at the smiling boy and took his toy from his hand clutching it tightly.
"Rohan." He extended his hand at Alan who hesitatingly shook it and returned him his smile.
"Ala..."
"Alan?" The girl called her brother from behind and came to stop beside Alan eyeing the other boy.
"What are you doing to my..."
"He's a friend", Alan whispered to his sister tugging at her sleeve. "He got me teddy back from Danny."
"Thank you" The girl smiled at Rohan making Alan frowned at his sister. He shifted on his feet behind Rohan and scratched his left arm marring lines on skin with his nails in anger towards her sister who stole his friend from him.
"My name is Rohan."
"Hi, I'm Melaine"