Dead. The trees around him, his parents, his soul, all dead. As he gleamed at the corpses of his family with his grey, stormy eyes, he didn't have any emotions; no tear in his eye, not a feeling of sorrow. It was night. Crickets were chirping. But other than that, silence. He held a pebble in his hand as a car arrived, taking him to an orphanage. He sat down, thinking about what life is. 

    “I'm so sorry for your loss, hun.” said the elderly woman driving the car. “I'm sure you’ll feel better in your new home.” After thirty minutes or so of driving, they arrived. “Here it is,” she said. “Your new home.”

    They went inside the orphanage where he was taken to a firm, stiff bed with yellow stains. It was night. So he didn't have time for a tour. Everyone was sleeping. It was still. And he hated it. So he snuck out of his room to see the place. He heard a faint noise. And followed it, where it led to a wall. He put his ear on the wall, hoping to hear what was going on. Then, something snatched onto him from through the wall. He felt it, tightening around him for him to only see a glimpse of the figure. His breathing became slower as the thing started to choke him to death.

    “Son, what are you doing at this time of the night?” questioned the headmaster. Hunter turned around as he flicked on the light. He told him about the thing he saw and how he was choked, but the sir only glared at him. Lunatic. For the next few weeks, he saw the same thing appear by him . Over and over, he got yelled at. After some time, the headmaster couldn't take it anymore. So Hunter was taken to a psychiatric hospital. They tested him and diagnosed him for severe schizophrenia. But he knew that wasn't it. He felt the thing choking him the days before. 

At night, he was sent to his room, with peeled off walls, mold, scratch marks all over the place; it seemed like something from a horror movie. With a straightjacket on, he struggled to get on the bed. Until something came from the other side of the room. Where the darkness was. The figure. Hunter stared at the thing as the hand locked on to his mouth. The thing started to strangled him. He tried to call for help but couldn't. As for the old black and white security camera, it just seemed like he was crazy.

 The thing finally let go where he choked “help”. He was barely breathing. Crazy. The doctors rushed in questioning what happened. The next few days, he was taken to a psychologist and was taken medications. 3 pills for every 6 hours of the day.

    The psychologist then told the doctors to stay with Hunter for the night. He felt ashamed. Ashamed that everyone thought that he was crazy. Ashamed that people needed to help him with something that may not even be real; That his mind was so messed up that even doctors needed to keep an eye on him at all times.

Even at night. He was dragged to the room where he was given electroconvulsive therapy. 

    “Just let me live a normal life!” He yelled at the spirit staring at him through the front door. The doctors leered at him. And Hunter noticed that he said it out loud. How embarrassing. After it was done, He was dragged out of the office, to his own room. The night drifts by slowly. Tossing and turning in his sleep, Hunter fails to let his consciousness take him. 

 The memory of his parents dying stuck in his head. “I can’t sleep,” explained the uneasy Hunter. The doctors stared at him. “Hello…” They were not allowed to speak to him. But it wasn't until 3 am until he stopped talking to the doctors. 

    The next day, the doctors found nothing abnormal about the boy and didn't disturb his sleep for the next few days. But Hunter knew there was something off. Like someone or something was following him throughout the day. All his life he thought something was wrong. Like he wasn't meant to be here. Was he? Why- why was he here? Why hasn't he thought of escaping? 

“It's not real, is it?” He would murmur to himself. Oh, he hated it. The only thing he would think about throughout the day was how to escape this dark and lonely place. He was held captive. Prisoner in a place where it wasn’t even his fault. A few days later, he made a plan with someone else on how to escape. Hunter never knew his name.

    The next day, they snuck out of the psychiatric hospital by breaking a window in the basement of the hospital. They struggled to get out but later managed to while getting a few shards of glass pierced all around his stomach. Freedom.