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Still Ere

Chapter 8: I Am A Monster

Jordania Vance didn’t expect her little boy to be waiting for her on the other side of the door. Usually he was in his room, working on schoolwork, or sometimes he was in the living room, watching the television, but today her little Eré was waiting for her next to the back door. Jordania smiled at the unexpected greeting.

“Hello, mum.”

“Hello, love.” She smiled and pushed her exhaustion aside. “How was your day?”

“It was fun. I learn a trick.”

“Did you, now?” the woman purred as she stepped past her son and placed her satchel on the nearby hook. “And what’s this trick you’ve learned?”

“It’s a surprise. I wanna show it to you.”

The woman smiled and stretched, “That’s fine, love, but let me change out of me work clothes.”

“Aye, mum.”

Jordania knelt, kissed her boy on the forehead, stood, and walked up the nearby stairwell. The boy smiled wide and imagined the smile his mother would give him when she saw what he could do, when she saw what he had learned this morning.

A cat crossed the street and Eré was hypnotized by its gate. Its muscles contracted and released like waves lapping upon the shore, like a cloth flapping in the wind. The boy could feel its calm.

Eré concentrated, tried to control the flex and release of his own muscles, tried to mimic the cat. He strained to silence his steps, strained for every iota of control. His focus took him away from the world and away from where he was going.

The boy was snapped from his revere when his butt hit the sidewalk. Still in the mindset of a cat, he bounced up and glared at what he had collided with. A hiss caught in his throat when he recognized who he had run into.

“What are you looking at, Vance?”

“Mattae.” Eré rasped as he named the boy standing over him.

Mattae Laudes was the biggest boy in Eré’s class, and he was flanked by two friends. These boys were well known as the meanest kids in Eré basic school, and Eré had seen them at work before. The boy had no desire to get a bloody nose or black eye today.

Without reading the expression on Laudes’ face, Eré turned like a cat faced with a large dog and darted away. He didn’t look back, didn’t pay attention to where he was going, he simply ran. He raced around a corner and stopped just before running into a chain link fence. It was tall and topped with barbed wire, so Eré spun around to backtrack, but his path was blocked.

“So that’s it? You hit and run?” Mattae fumed, “Not gonna apologize?”

“Sorry, Mattae. I didn’t see you.”

“Too little now, Vancey. Now you’ve gotta pay.”

The big boy and his goons stalked in, and Eré raised his hands to defend himself, but something moved with his hands. A wooden crate in the corner floated into the air, Eré could feel the thing’s weight pressing on his arms, but he wasn’t touching it.

The bully’s goons saw the box rise and immediately scrambled backwards. Their shuffling caught Mattae by surprise, and he spun around to meet all threats head on. He hadn’t expected a box flying at his head.

The boy dove as the box careened into a wall and shattered into splinters. Eré took advantage of the distraction and dashed past the boys who gave him no chase.

When Eré finally stopped running, events started to replay in his head.

“How’d I do that?” he asked himself while he fell into the memories and examined their facets.

He locked onto the feeling, the clarity he had experienced when he faced the bullies. Then he focused on a rock lying near the side of the road. Strange words fluttered from his lips, unbidden, and soared on the wind like musical notes. They sounded like gibberish, but to Eré he could sense their meaning and power.

His arms circled each other, flowed like the cat’s body, and then he felt it. The stone’s weight pressed into his hand and Eré lifted the weight. The stone rose.

He twirled it, bounced it around in the thin air a few times. After a moment of playing, the boy felt a tendril of tire crawl into his chest, so he dropped his hand, and watched the stone clatter to the pavement.

Eré smiled. Did he just learn how to use magic?

“Alright, love. Come show me your trick.” Jordania called as she descended the steps into her living room. Eré came running from the kitchen.

“You’ll love it, mum.” He prepared to wave his arms and mutter words, but the doorbell rang.

“Now what’s all this?” the woman grumbled, “Hang on, let me see who’s at the door.”

Eré huffed and met his mom at the door where he wrapped himself around her leg. The woman smiled, reached down, and tussled the boy’s hair. With a sigh of regret she reached out and twisted the doorknob.

“Jordania Vance?”

“Yes, how may I help you?”

The man was dressed in formal business attire, and his clean shaven stern expression was disturbing. The woman pushed her son a little further behind the door.

“You’re the mother of Eré Vance, who’s enrolled at the Stellan Academy?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Stephan Grange, from the warden’s office. May I come in?”

The woman hesitated, but she knew barring the man would be futile. Jordania had notice the two other men who were standing out on her stoop. She also noticed the child they had escorted with them.

“Sure, come right in gentlemen. Is something wrong?”

“We’ve been told that your son has learned a special trick. We were wondering if we could trouble him to see it.”

“Taene, come see.” Eré called to his friend.

She had already taken a seat with her usual lunchtime clique, but Eré was a special friend, and Taene waved as she left her seat and moved toward the boy, but before they could rendezvous a large hand clamped down on the boy’s arm.

“We need to talk, Vance.” Growled Mattae as he spun the smaller boy around.

“Leave me alone.” Eré squirmed, “You know what I’ll do, if you don’t.”

“Don’t. You can’t do what you did this morning. If you do, they’ll do bad things to you.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I’m serious,” the bigger boy latched onto Eré’s shoulders. “My dad did stuff like that, and they took him.”

Eré ripped himself away from Mattae’s clutches, but he didn’t run away. The two boys stared at each other, one with hard eyes as the other’s pleaded.

“Why do you care what happens to me?” Eré asked with a chill.

Mattae answered with silence and a sheepish look that didn’t match his large frame.

“Eré?” the little girl squeaked as she crept up behind the boy.

He reached behind and took the girl’s hand, never taking his eyes off the bully standing in front of him. The little boy and girl receded as Mattae watched helplessly.

“Watch this.”

The little dancer toy spun and changed direction almost as if it were alive. It answered the call of Eré’s mind, and moved according to the boys waving arms. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.

Making the doll dance wasn’t like lifting rocks or throwing boxes. There was a fundamental difference that was sapping the boy’s energy. Before it could tire him out any further, Eré released his concentration and the toy fell to the ground it had just pirouetted across. The little girl, his lone audience member, clapped furiously.

“Fantastic. Was that magic?”

The boy shrugged, though he suspected it was. He hadn’t thought too hard about the source of his abilities.

“Are you a wizard?”

Eré shook his head. He knew enough about magic to know that wizards used books, words, and wands. He only used one of those components to do what he did. What did that make him?

“Are you a sorcerer?”

“What’s a sorcerer?”

Taene was honest and simply shrugged. She had heard the term before, but she had never been told what it meant. Eré was even more oblivious, having never heard the word before. In light of their ignorance, both children thought nothing more of defining either that word or Eré’s abilities. They skipped away, hand in hand, as Taene cradled her dancer doll.

The little girl strangled her little dancer doll with nervousness. One of the suited men walked her into the house of her best friend. She had been to Eré’s house before, but she had been with her parents that time. Now she was with strangers, strangers that her parents had called. The situation confused and frightened her.

“Hi Eré.”

The boy waved past his mother and the man who had preceded the two men and little girl. The man, Stephan Grange, looked at the girl for a moment, then to the boy, and then back to the girl.

“Miss Velos, could you come here a moment?” The man asked in a soft and inviting tone.

The girl complied and the man placed his hand on her back.

“Is this the boy that made your doll dance?”

She wanted to lie and tell him no, but she had told her parents the story, and they had made her promise to tell this man the truth. That promise would haunt her till her dying day.

“Yes.”

The man turned to Eré, “Could you make her doll dance for me?”

The boy turned to his mom for guidance, but she was glaring at the man. He noticed and stood to his full towering height. The woman refused to be intimidated and stood her ground, but that battle was proving futile as the other men stepped forward.

Grange raised his left hand and both men halted. He stepped over to Jordania Vance, placed a hand on her shoulder, leaned in, and whispered in her ear.

“If he gets too excited, we’ll all be dead.”

The statement hung in the air for a long time, but the mother was not swayed by the words. Grange elaborated.

“If he gets excited, the blood of his friend and the blood of his mother will be on his hands.”

That struck a nerve. The woman stepped away, indignation riling her body into shudders. Grange said nothing else. His years of experience told him that another word might lead to a fuss, and that was a dangerous prospect for everyone on the block.

“Go on, Eré.” The man beckoned the girl closer, “Show us your trick.”

Taene placed the doll on the floor, and with Jordania’s retreat the boy found the human-shaped plastic lump laying at his feet. He had wanted to show his mom the trick, but the situation gave him pause.

My dad did stuff like that, and they took him away. Mattae’s words rang in Eré’s head. He understood now.

“If I make the doll dance, you’ll take me away.”

Grange’s eyebrow raised, Jordania covered her mouth. She was happy her son understood the stakes, but in the long run, it wouldn’t matter.

“No.” Taene screamed as she leapt for Eré. She wanted to protect him, to keep him right where he was, but one of the men stepped in. He grabbed the little girl’s arm, and then her doll slapped him in the face. Taene hadn’t the doll to throw.

“No!” Jordania Vance wretched as Eré’s arms lowered and words of gibberish faded from the air. The woman fell to her knees, sobbing.

“Come now, son.” Grange announced over the sobbing woman. “We need to take a ride.”

They sat side by side in the back seat of a black sedan. The man was calm yet strangely distant as Eré stared at him. Even as the boy was being driven to someplace he had never been before, he couldn’t help but to stare at his captor.

“There aren’t many people who can do my job,” the man offered unbidden. “Their hearts aren’t built for it.”

“But yours is?”

Grange looked at the boy, his face still solemn.

“Do you know how people’s hearts work?”

The boy shook his head.

“You see, life is made up of periods of suffering and joy, and the heart runs off of that joy. Unfortunately, most people live lives filled with far more suffering than joy, so they can’t survive on a job as hard as mine. There is very little joy in my line of work.”

The man adjusted his seating position before continuing. He leaned in closer to the boy, worked harder to keep his attention. He didn’t need to.

“In my job, most of the children I bring in wind up hating me—“

“I don’t hate you.”

The man stared at the boy for a moment before continuing, “Someday you will. Just as your mother does, just as your friend does. It’s a part of my job, and it’s another reason why not many people can do what I do. As I said before, there is very little joy in my job, Eré. And those few joys aren’t enough to sustain a normal human heart.”

“But your heart doesn’t need so much joy, does it?”

“You’re a very smart boy.” Grange paused to nod. “There are only two joys in my job. First, is knowing that I am actually helping children like you. Where you’re going will not seem like help, but I promise you it is. The second joy, is knowing that what I do saves lives.”

Stephan Grange elaborated no further. He merely resumed his stoic demeanor until the car came to a stop in front of a large drab building. The walkway was surrounded by armed guards, and the fence that circled the perimeter was topped with razor wire.

“Eré, where you are going is a hard place. You will suffer there, but if you stay calm and do as you are told, then your time here will go by quickly. However, if you struggle, if you resist, if you act out, you will spend an eternity here. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded, though he in fact didn’t understand. His brain was still processing what this man was telling him when Grange stepped out of the car and opened the boy’s door.

The ominous nature of the building finally took hold of Eré, and his heart began to race. He wanted to run away. That’s when Eré saw another boy his age being escorted into the building.

This boy was scrambling, fighting, and crying. He didn’t want to go into the big gray building, and he fought going into the place with spittle and dust. Stephan Grange sat a hand on Eré’s shoulder, and the boy could feel the man’s tension. They watched the struggle.

The wind kicked up, guards started flying like the box Eré had thrown at Mattae. He had never thought to use his skills on another person, but Eré wasn’t as full of guile as this boy.

The guards still standing, instantly pulled their weapons and fired. The spirited boy fell to the ground, but the guards had not been fast enough. Air and dirt roiled around the fallen boy, who never quite touched the ground after his fall.

For the first time, Eré could see the other boy’s face as the wind whipped him around. The boy’s eyes glowed red, and his face was twisted by insane glee. Debris and dust engulfed the boy in a miniature funnel cloud, his two glowing eyes continued to peer through the brackish cloud. Guards flew like dust motes, and bullets ricocheted off the funnel with zipping whistles.

Eré noticed a man on the building’s roof. He jumped off. His gun was pointed downward as he fell, and he fired off several rounds before crashing into the ground with a wet crunch. The winds subsided, the body of the spirited boy spun to a stop and fell to the ground, motionless.

The funnel cloud had been no protection from the bullets that rained down from above.

Guards ran to their fallen comrades and worked diligently to help them. A few men closed quarters with the boy’s limp body, guns poised to fire more rounds, but the boy wasn’t moving. Eré suspected the boy would never move again.

Eré Vance turned to Stephan Grange. The man was looking at him, and he seemed nervous. That’s when the little boy realized something.

“I’m like him, aren’t I?”

Grange didn’t speak.

“If I lose control, I’ll become a monster.”

Now Grange looked sad.

The man escorted Eré past the mess, past the harried and angry looks of the guards, and into the drab building. He helped the boy undress, then gave him the uniform he would be wearing for the entirety of his stay.

That day, Stephan went further into the complex than he had ever been, further than he was required, further than he had ever wanted to go. He personally locked the door to Eré’s cell. The metal box was specifically sized for a person standing at Eré’s height. It allowed no movement.

Stephan Grange stood in front of the boy’s tiny metal box mesmerized by the boy’s repetition of one phrase.

“I’m a monster.”

Eré Vance opened his eyes and saw a tiny barred window directly in front of his face. The man smiled to himself. He knew where he was without needing to be told.

“I am a monster, and now I am home.”

Description
Still Ere

Chapter 8: I Am A Monster

Jordania Vance didn’t expect her little boy to be waiting for her on the other side of the door. Usually he was in his room, working on schoolwork, or sometimes he was in the living room, watching the television, but today her little Eré was waiting for her next to the back door. Jordania smiled at the unexpected greeting.

“Hello, mum.”

“Hello, love.” She smiled and pushed her exhaustion aside. “How was your day?”

“It was fun. I learn a trick.”

“Did you, now?” the woman purred as she stepped past her son and placed her satchel on the nearby hook. “And what’s this trick you’ve learned?”

“It’s a surprise. I wanna show it to you.”

The woman smiled and stretched, “That’s fine, love, but let me change out of me work clothes.”

“Aye, mum.”

Jordania knelt, kissed her boy on the forehead, stood, and walked up the nearby stairwell. The boy smiled wide and imagined the smile his mother would give him when she saw what he could do, when she saw what he had learned this morning.

A cat crossed the street and Eré was hypnotized by its gate. Its muscles contracted and released like waves lapping upon the shore, like a cloth flapping in the wind. The boy could feel its calm.

Eré concentrated, tried to control the flex and release of his own muscles, tried to mimic the cat. He strained to silence his steps, strained for every iota of control. His focus took him away from the world and away from where he was going.

The boy was snapped from his revere when his butt hit the sidewalk. Still in the mindset of a cat, he bounced up and glared at what he had collided with. A hiss caught in his throat when he recognized who he had run into.

“What are you looking at, Vance?”

“Mattae.” Eré rasped as he named the boy standing over him.

Mattae Laudes was the biggest boy in Eré’s class, and he was flanked by two friends. These boys were well known as the meanest kids in Eré basic school, and Eré had seen them at work before. The boy had no desire to get a bloody nose or black eye today.

Without reading the expression on Laudes’ face, Eré turned like a cat faced with a large dog and darted away. He didn’t look back, didn’t pay attention to where he was going, he simply ran. He raced around a corner and stopped just before running into a chain link fence. It was tall and topped with barbed wire, so Eré spun around to backtrack, but his path was blocked.

“So that’s it? You hit and run?” Mattae fumed, “Not gonna apologize?”

“Sorry, Mattae. I didn’t see you.”

“Too little now, Vancey. Now you’ve gotta pay.”

The big boy and his goons stalked in, and Eré raised his hands to defend himself, but something moved with his hands. A wooden crate in the corner floated into the air, Eré could feel the thing’s weight pressing on his arms, but he wasn’t touching it.

The bully’s goons saw the box rise and immediately scrambled backwards. Their shuffling caught Mattae by surprise, and he spun around to meet all threats head on. He hadn’t expected a box flying at his head.

The boy dove as the box careened into a wall and shattered into splinters. Eré took advantage of the distraction and dashed past the boys who gave him no chase.

When Eré finally stopped running, events started to replay in his head.

“How’d I do that?” he asked himself while he fell into the memories and examined their facets.

He locked onto the feeling, the clarity he had experienced when he faced the bullies. Then he focused on a rock lying near the side of the road. Strange words fluttered from his lips, unbidden, and soared on the wind like musical notes. They sounded like gibberish, but to Eré he could sense their meaning and power.

His arms circled each other, flowed like the cat’s body, and then he felt it. The stone’s weight pressed into his hand and Eré lifted the weight. The stone rose.

He twirled it, bounced it around in the thin air a few times. After a moment of playing, the boy felt a tendril of tire crawl into his chest, so he dropped his hand, and watched the stone clatter to the pavement.

Eré smiled. Did he just learn how to use magic?

“Alright, love. Come show me your trick.” Jordania called as she descended the steps into her living room. Eré came running from the kitchen.

“You’ll love it, mum.” He prepared to wave his arms and mutter words, but the doorbell rang.

“Now what’s all this?” the woman grumbled, “Hang on, let me see who’s at the door.”

Eré huffed and met his mom at the door where he wrapped himself around her leg. The woman smiled, reached down, and tussled the boy’s hair. With a sigh of regret she reached out and twisted the doorknob.

“Jordania Vance?”

“Yes, how may I help you?”

The man was dressed in formal business attire, and his clean shaven stern expression was disturbing. The woman pushed her son a little further behind the door.

“You’re the mother of Eré Vance, who’s enrolled at the Stellan Academy?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Stephan Grange, from the warden’s office. May I come in?”

The woman hesitated, but she knew barring the man would be futile. Jordania had notice the two other men who were standing out on her stoop. She also noticed the child they had escorted with them.

“Sure, come right in gentlemen. Is something wrong?”

“We’ve been told that your son has learned a special trick. We were wondering if we could trouble him to see it.”

“Taene, come see.” Eré called to his friend.

She had already taken a seat with her usual lunchtime clique, but Eré was a special friend, and Taene waved as she left her seat and moved toward the boy, but before they could rendezvous a large hand clamped down on the boy’s arm.

“We need to talk, Vance.” Growled Mattae as he spun the smaller boy around.

“Leave me alone.” Eré squirmed, “You know what I’ll do, if you don’t.”

“Don’t. You can’t do what you did this morning. If you do, they’ll do bad things to you.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“I’m serious,” the bigger boy latched onto Eré’s shoulders. “My dad did stuff like that, and they took him.”

Eré ripped himself away from Mattae’s clutches, but he didn’t run away. The two boys stared at each other, one with hard eyes as the other’s pleaded.

“Why do you care what happens to me?” Eré asked with a chill.

Mattae answered with silence and a sheepish look that didn’t match his large frame.

“Eré?” the little girl squeaked as she crept up behind the boy.

He reached behind and took the girl’s hand, never taking his eyes off the bully standing in front of him. The little boy and girl receded as Mattae watched helplessly.

“Watch this.”

The little dancer toy spun and changed direction almost as if it were alive. It answered the call of Eré’s mind, and moved according to the boys waving arms. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.

Making the doll dance wasn’t like lifting rocks or throwing boxes. There was a fundamental difference that was sapping the boy’s energy. Before it could tire him out any further, Eré released his concentration and the toy fell to the ground it had just pirouetted across. The little girl, his lone audience member, clapped furiously.

“Fantastic. Was that magic?”

The boy shrugged, though he suspected it was. He hadn’t thought too hard about the source of his abilities.

“Are you a wizard?”

Eré shook his head. He knew enough about magic to know that wizards used books, words, and wands. He only used one of those components to do what he did. What did that make him?

“Are you a sorcerer?”

“What’s a sorcerer?”

Taene was honest and simply shrugged. She had heard the term before, but she had never been told what it meant. Eré was even more oblivious, having never heard the word before. In light of their ignorance, both children thought nothing more of defining either that word or Eré’s abilities. They skipped away, hand in hand, as Taene cradled her dancer doll.

The little girl strangled her little dancer doll with nervousness. One of the suited men walked her into the house of her best friend. She had been to Eré’s house before, but she had been with her parents that time. Now she was with strangers, strangers that her parents had called. The situation confused and frightened her.

“Hi Eré.”

The boy waved past his mother and the man who had preceded the two men and little girl. The man, Stephan Grange, looked at the girl for a moment, then to the boy, and then back to the girl.

“Miss Velos, could you come here a moment?” The man asked in a soft and inviting tone.

The girl complied and the man placed his hand on her back.

“Is this the boy that made your doll dance?”

She wanted to lie and tell him no, but she had told her parents the story, and they had made her promise to tell this man the truth. That promise would haunt her till her dying day.

“Yes.”

The man turned to Eré, “Could you make her doll dance for me?”

The boy turned to his mom for guidance, but she was glaring at the man. He noticed and stood to his full towering height. The woman refused to be intimidated and stood her ground, but that battle was proving futile as the other men stepped forward.

Grange raised his left hand and both men halted. He stepped over to Jordania Vance, placed a hand on her shoulder, leaned in, and whispered in her ear.

“If he gets too excited, we’ll all be dead.”

The statement hung in the air for a long time, but the mother was not swayed by the words. Grange elaborated.

“If he gets excited, the blood of his friend and the blood of his mother will be on his hands.”

That struck a nerve. The woman stepped away, indignation riling her body into shudders. Grange said nothing else. His years of experience told him that another word might lead to a fuss, and that was a dangerous prospect for everyone on the block.

“Go on, Eré.” The man beckoned the girl closer, “Show us your trick.”

Taene placed the doll on the floor, and with Jordania’s retreat the boy found the human-shaped plastic lump laying at his feet. He had wanted to show his mom the trick, but the situation gave him pause.

My dad did stuff like that, and they took him away. Mattae’s words rang in Eré’s head. He understood now.

“If I make the doll dance, you’ll take me away.”

Grange’s eyebrow raised, Jordania covered her mouth. She was happy her son understood the stakes, but in the long run, it wouldn’t matter.

“No.” Taene screamed as she leapt for Eré. She wanted to protect him, to keep him right where he was, but one of the men stepped in. He grabbed the little girl’s arm, and then her doll slapped him in the face. Taene hadn’t the doll to throw.

“No!” Jordania Vance wretched as Eré’s arms lowered and words of gibberish faded from the air. The woman fell to her knees, sobbing.

“Come now, son.” Grange announced over the sobbing woman. “We need to take a ride.”

They sat side by side in the back seat of a black sedan. The man was calm yet strangely distant as Eré stared at him. Even as the boy was being driven to someplace he had never been before, he couldn’t help but to stare at his captor.

“There aren’t many people who can do my job,” the man offered unbidden. “Their hearts aren’t built for it.”

“But yours is?”

Grange looked at the boy, his face still solemn.

“Do you know how people’s hearts work?”

The boy shook his head.

“You see, life is made up of periods of suffering and joy, and the heart runs off of that joy. Unfortunately, most people live lives filled with far more suffering than joy, so they can’t survive on a job as hard as mine. There is very little joy in my line of work.”

The man adjusted his seating position before continuing. He leaned in closer to the boy, worked harder to keep his attention. He didn’t need to.

“In my job, most of the children I bring in wind up hating me—“

“I don’t hate you.”

The man stared at the boy for a moment before continuing, “Someday you will. Just as your mother does, just as your friend does. It’s a part of my job, and it’s another reason why not many people can do what I do. As I said before, there is very little joy in my job, Eré. And those few joys aren’t enough to sustain a normal human heart.”

“But your heart doesn’t need so much joy, does it?”

“You’re a very smart boy.” Grange paused to nod. “There are only two joys in my job. First, is knowing that I am actually helping children like you. Where you’re going will not seem like help, but I promise you it is. The second joy, is knowing that what I do saves lives.”

Stephan Grange elaborated no further. He merely resumed his stoic demeanor until the car came to a stop in front of a large drab building. The walkway was surrounded by armed guards, and the fence that circled the perimeter was topped with razor wire.

“Eré, where you are going is a hard place. You will suffer there, but if you stay calm and do as you are told, then your time here will go by quickly. However, if you struggle, if you resist, if you act out, you will spend an eternity here. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded, though he in fact didn’t understand. His brain was still processing what this man was telling him when Grange stepped out of the car and opened the boy’s door.

The ominous nature of the building finally took hold of Eré, and his heart began to race. He wanted to run away. That’s when Eré saw another boy his age being escorted into the building.

This boy was scrambling, fighting, and crying. He didn’t want to go into the big gray building, and he fought going into the place with spittle and dust. Stephan Grange sat a hand on Eré’s shoulder, and the boy could feel the man’s tension. They watched the struggle.

The wind kicked up, guards started flying like the box Eré had thrown at Mattae. He had never thought to use his skills on another person, but Eré wasn’t as full of guile as this boy.

The guards still standing, instantly pulled their weapons and fired. The spirited boy fell to the ground, but the guards had not been fast enough. Air and dirt roiled around the fallen boy, who never quite touched the ground after his fall.

For the first time, Eré could see the other boy’s face as the wind whipped him around. The boy’s eyes glowed red, and his face was twisted by insane glee. Debris and dust engulfed the boy in a miniature funnel cloud, his two glowing eyes continued to peer through the brackish cloud. Guards flew like dust motes, and bullets ricocheted off the funnel with zipping whistles.

Eré noticed a man on the building’s roof. He jumped off. His gun was pointed downward as he fell, and he fired off several rounds before crashing into the ground with a wet crunch. The winds subsided, the body of the spirited boy spun to a stop and fell to the ground, motionless.

The funnel cloud had been no protection from the bullets that rained down from above.

Guards ran to their fallen comrades and worked diligently to help them. A few men closed quarters with the boy’s limp body, guns poised to fire more rounds, but the boy wasn’t moving. Eré suspected the boy would never move again.

Eré Vance turned to Stephan Grange. The man was looking at him, and he seemed nervous. That’s when the little boy realized something.

“I’m like him, aren’t I?”

Grange didn’t speak.

“If I lose control, I’ll become a monster.”

Now Grange looked sad.

The man escorted Eré past the mess, past the harried and angry looks of the guards, and into the drab building. He helped the boy undress, then gave him the uniform he would be wearing for the entirety of his stay.

That day, Stephan went further into the complex than he had ever been, further than he was required, further than he had ever wanted to go. He personally locked the door to Eré’s cell. The metal box was specifically sized for a person standing at Eré’s height. It allowed no movement.

Stephan Grange stood in front of the boy’s tiny metal box mesmerized by the boy’s repetition of one phrase.

“I’m a monster.”

Eré Vance opened his eyes and saw a tiny barred window directly in front of his face. The man smiled to himself. He knew where he was without needing to be told.

“I am a monster, and now I am home.”