The Edge

The Thirteenth Year:
(Third Person)

The day of Zachary Baker's thirteenth birthday was a day of intense confusion for the young boy. Being raised by Gale meant he was not allowed to celebrate his birthday, and for good reason. But no reason Gale was allowed to recognize, but Zacky's body knew the difference. Besides the normal changes endured by someone Zacky's age, a change of phsyc took place as well, a change not only of his body and voice, a change of his species.

He didn't know what was happening to himself. He shook, curled in the corner of his room, staring at the drab black wall, no longer decorated with the ravaged bodies of his dreams, blank, staring, igniting fear in the very soul of the child. Zacky clutched his head, releasing a cry of pain. The process had been very painful so far, he felt hot and cold at the same time, he felt splitting, ripping agony running through his spine, contaminating his veins.

Never before had Zachary Baker regretted aging as much as he did at this very moment.

No one came to help him. No one. He cried, he whimpered, he pleaded with the empty room, with his “mother” who could clearly hear the weak screams falling from his lips. The ignorant woman assumed he was having some kind of fit. He slammed his head against the wall, the tears tumbling down his pale, pain-flushed face, his hands braced against the wall, choked whimpers leaving him breathless.

He needed it to stop, if he was going to live. He couldn't go through something like this, he'd never (in his memories, at least) endured anything quite like this. What was wrong with him? Why was he suffering? Was this some wrath of some god, someone harming him because he had wronged?

Zacky couldn't remember doing anything wrong enough to make someone inflict this kind of pain on him. Nevertheless, he bagan to plead quietly with nothing, shaking and whimpering, “I-I'm so s-sorry, please... Please, I'm sorry...”

The inferno under his skin raged, sending his young body into spasms on the cold wood floor. It took every ounce of the dying strength he had left to scream, “P-Please, stop!”

The pain vanished.

The boy lay on the cold wood floor, his green eyes were huge with confusion and wonder. Had he commanded the pain to stop? Did that mean he had... some sort of power over it? Of was it mere coincidence the pain had gone in time with his order.

He needed to test his theory.

A moment of silence passed, Zacky's thoughts were deep and curious now. He seemed to have gained a new understanding and a new depth to his thinking. He had a vague idea of how he could test this odd ability he seemed to have gained.

“Strength...” he murmured.

After another moment, he felt light, all traces of exhaustion left him, all traces of wariness fled. He sat up, smiling. Whatever this was, it made his fingertips tingle and his body a livewire, but no longer of pain. He didn't know exactly how this ability worked, but he wanted to test it.

Standing up, he turned and walked confidently out of his small room and into the large, arched hallway outside, over to the carpeted stairs.

“Hm. What should I try here...?” Zacky asked himself, “Hover...”

His feet lifted several inches off of the hard wood landing. His eyes widened, a large grin falling upon his face. He could manipulate his body into doing and feeling certain things. He didn't know what this was, but it was stunning.

With a mere thought, Zachary drifted lazily down the stairs, coming to a gentle landing in the dark hallway below, his feet returning to the ground. He walked noiselessly down the hallway to the large den, where Gale was sitting on the plush couch.

Zacky's eyes narrowed in the face of his enemy, the woman who never cared for him at all and only did this for what she was paid. She was selfish and abusive, she cared only for herself and she didn't deserve this life. Zacky dictated who deserved this life.

“Pain.”

With the spoken word, Gale screamed, falling to the floor and beginning to seize weakly. A smirk flitted across Zacky's full lips as he stepped forward, whispering, “You've held me back my whole life. You've hurt me, you laugh at my pain. How does it feel, being helpless and having the one person who could help you laugh?”

He laughed lightly for affect, meeting his guardian's pleading eyes. Her pain-stricken eyes widened as she choked out, “Y-Your eyes...” followed by another shriek.

Zacky blinked, confused. He turned around, walking slowly towards a mirror mounted on the den's wall. As he looked at his no-longer-green irises, his lips pulled away from his teeth. His eyes were a deep, menacing purple, his teeth, dagger-sharp.

Whatever he was now, he was no longer helpless. He was powerful.

He walked into the kitchen, slowly heading for the knife drawer. Zacky pulled open the drawer slowly, withdrawing a large, deadly sharp knife. He smiled. Zacky just seemed full of smiles today. The knife in hand, he smoothly returned to the writhing body of his caretaker, making sure the knife was fully visible to the panic-stricken gray eyes of the woman below him.

With deliberate slowness, Zacky began with dragging the blade along her arms, splitting the flesh there, smiling even wider as the blood began to flow. Another scream ripped free of the woman. But she wasn't dead yet, no, far from it.

The blade was pressed against her throat, inching through layer and layer of tendons and muscles and flesh. She had no time to scream, she was drowning in her own blood as the liquid bubbled up around the wound, only to close off her throat.

Zacky dropped the knife. He smiled.

~

They were coming for him, he knew it. Zacky also knew he could kill every one of them. But so long as they believed he killed Gale because of a mental problem, as long as they believed he was insane, there was no need for innocent lived to be lost.

Hey invaded his house, grabbing him by his arms and roughly jostled him out the door, tossing his tiny body into the back of their large white van. Again, Zacky smiled, but he didn't show his teeth. He'd just mastered the ability to disguise his eye color as their original green, he was learning more and more of these powers he seemed to posses.

The silly humans thought they could contain him. Well, he wouldn't hurt them, or anything. So long as none of them hurt him. He could inflict pain with a simple word. If his hypothesis proved correct, he could kill with one, too. He wasn't going to try it, the only reason he hadn't attempted it on Gale was his longing to make the woman suffer.

So now, he was tied up in the back of a white van, on his way to an insane asylum. It'd do him some good, he thought, to be away from home for a while. He'd miss Brian, but he wasn't sure if Brian would want to see him again after... after this little incident.

No matter. Zacky could always figure out a way to go see Brian. His mind was very advanced by this point, he was thinking on whole new planes than he thought possible before today. In one day he'd become a murderer.... So much can change in the course of a day.

“Zacky?” the timid voice of one of his captors asked him, “We're going to give something to let you sleep now, alright?”

Of course, it wasn't really a question, he had no choice in the matter. He nodded blankly anyway, trying to make himself seem rather harmless. After all, he was going to have to become a great actor if he was going to survive in the place he was going to.

The woman who had spoken to him previously administered the shot. After several minutes, it still seemed to have absolutely no affect on him whatsoever. Here began his acting lessons, it seemed.

“Sleep...” he mumbled, falling unconscious.

~

“He's where?” Brian's hands slammed down onto the table, his midnight eyes round with disbelief, “He did what?!”

“Calm down, honey, please...” Brian's mother said anxiously, rubbing her son's back lightly, “He requested they tell you about it. Apparently, he killed Gale...”

Brian winced lightly. How could someone like Zacky be capable of murder? How could the boy who'd slept over at his house, who wouldn't even let his damn fish die, kill a person? Unless, of course, Gale was harming him and it was self defense. But still, Brian knew the people working at the asylum wouldn't accept anything except unprovoked murder. Hell, maybe it was unprovoked.

But Brian was having a lot of difficulty processing the possibility that Zacky Baker, the innocent twelve-year-old (who turned thirteen today without Brian's knowledge) had committed a murder.

“Are they... Will they let us go see him?” He asked his mother. His affection for the younger man was that of an older brother, and he would want to ask Zacky about all of this himself if given the opportunity.

Grace sighed softly, placing her hand on his shoulder, “Brian... I don't know if we should...”

“Of course we should!” Brian exclaimed, “I need to talk to him! Please, mom, don't... God, I... I have to see him.”

It wasn't a question anymore. Brian's personality meant he refused to accept this how it was, he was going to find this out for himself, he needed to talk to Zacky.

“Alright, Brian, okay, okay. Fine. I'll take you.” his mother sighed, raising her arms in defeat, “I assume you'd like to go now?”

Brian nodded, his eyes fixing themselves on the ground as he walked out of his tiny, one-story tan house and over to his mother's van. He cast his eyes at the vacant Victorian-style house next to his. A house in which a murder was committed.

Brian shuddered lightly, averting his eyes.