1 Prologue
The sky turned a vivid shade of orange as the sun began to set. The air was fragrant with the sweet scent of honeysuckle, and the warm summer breeze gently wafted through the pretty lanterns strung between the trees. The staff bustled about contentedly, checking that the spread was perfect and doing a once over of the flower displays for signs of wilted blooms. No one noticed the unassuming figure carrying an immaculately wrapped box as it weaved its way down the gravel drive, past the manicured lawns and brightly coloured potted plants to the impressive marquee whose ceiling twinkled with fairy lights.
Inside, was an abundance of chic sofas and glass tables, with luxurious comfy cushions and throws strewn at random intervals. Blue and silver helium ballons were anchored with weights around the marquee, and a banner emblazoned with the words,Welcome to my baby shower,in gold leaf, wasmounted proudly in the center of the main wall. The figure placed the box on the gift table and grinned, their gloved hand forming into afist.
“Welcome to the world you little shit,” it snarled, “time to play!”
2 Problem child
Growing up in a sprawling mansion as an only child was a pretty lonely existence. Sure, I had an abundance of friends who all loved coming round so they could relax in the jacuzzi or a swim in our Olympic-sized pool, but I still felt completely alone.
My parents were the quintessential jock and cheerleader who fell in love at school. My mom, Taylor Forbes, was blonde, blue eyed and slim, with enhanced titties, porcelain teeth and a whole load of injectables in her face. She was polite and loved to appear to be good, when in reality she was a cold-hearted fucking bitch who took great pleasure in molding me into her perfect trophy child. Trouble was I didn’t want to be good or told what to do. She didn’t work per se, but had a website promoting health, mindfulness and clean eating. Oftentimes she’d film herself doing Pilates with Youri, her Dutch instructor. I was pretty sure she’d fucked him, and had been doing so for several years, but I guess I could see why since his package looked like a baby’s arm in his Lycra shorts.
My dad, Braiden Forbes, was the founder of a sports television network, where they showed everydiversion known to man, even some of the lesser-known ones such as Zorbing. It was mega successful. That was how we afforded to live such a lavish lifestyle. He still had a good body, and women still swooned over him with his ice blonde hair, chiseled cheeks and mischievous smile. But my dad lived for the excess his money could bring. He loved whores and cocaine. He and mom no longer fucked, in fact, they rarely spent more than two minutes together in the same room.
I didn’t like my parents’ world of ass kissing and rubbing shoulders with bland rich fucks, who all sounded the same and loved to drone on about how much wealth they had or what designer fucking clothes they were wearing. Whilst I loved having power and the ability to do whatever I wanted, I felt misunderstood and lonely most of the time and criminally fucking bored. Nothing was a challenge. I could bed any girl, purchase any car or even buy loyalty, but nothing compared with the indescribable feeling I got when I felt warm blood on my hands. Of course, my sinful desires and wants had been relegated to my dreams that began when I was younger.
The first of these occurred when I was six.
I remember the evening clearly. It was a pleasant night, and the stars were abundant in the sky. Isabella, my nanny and my world, who I loved more than my cold, self-absorbed parents was tucking me in. She was Italian and made me carbonara from scratch, which pissed off my mom who saidshe didn’t want to have a kid that was fat and that I should lay off anything that had dairy in it. So Isabella was warned to feed me bland food such as oatmeal and steamed fish with vegetables, but she secretly loved defying my mom and when Mom was busy simpering to her online fanbase, Isabella would give me some calorie laden meal saying that I needed to be fed properly to grow big and strong. Isabella was in her late thirties, only a couple of years older than my mom and was mighty attractive. I did catch Dad checking her out once or twice, and one time Mom caught him looking and scowled at him. She wasn’t jealous of the fact my dad wanted to fuck her, she was just jealous of Isabella’s beauty period. Isabella was curvy and womanly. She had long black curly hair and large chocolate eyes and also something that my mother completely fucking lacked, warmth.
My bedroom looked like a toy shop since my parents thought that spoiling me meant that they loved me. I had a life-sized toy dinosaur in the corner. He was a cuddly version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex with big googly eyes. My bed was in the shape of a spaceship and had lights embedded into the headboard. Isabella fluffed my galaxy bedspread and got me all snug. She picked up a battered box from the plushily carpeted floor next to her feet and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked curiously.
“Your mom had all hands on deck cleaning out the attic to make her yoga room and I found this hidden in a corner. I thought you might like it, since it’s very different to all of your other toys, and I don’t know,something told me you should have it,” she said, lifting off the lid. Inside, laying amongst some black tissue paper, was a porcelain doll. She was dressed in a white frilly dress with mother of pearl buttons. She had fiery red hair that hung about her shoulders in tight ringlets, amber eyes that looked like they held smouldering embers within, blood red lips and she had little red booties on her feet. In her delicate little hand, she was holding a mask that looked like it portrayed some sort of animal. I was drawn to her at once.
Isabella put the miniature mask in the box and tucked her in next to me, then kissed my forehead before turning on my nightlight that reflected the Aurora Borealis on my ceiling.
“Good night Caspian,” she whispered and left my room. I glanced at the doll, and I swore I saw her head turning to face me.
“Are you going to be my friend?” I mumbled yawning and thought I heard the doll reply that she would.
I fell asleep and began to dream. The doll was alive; I couldn’t believe it. She took my hand and led me downstairs and out of the house. My bare feet crunched on the gravel footpath, but I didn’t feel any discomfort. We continued onto Lull Lane, and further, crossing the boulevard and onto Main Street. The wind blew and tousled the doll’s hair. She turned to me and smiled, her tiny teeth looking slightly pointed likea piranha’s.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Wait and see!” the doll giggled, her voice sounding like tinkling bells. We made our way down the quaint street past the ice cream parlour where Isabella would take me for an ice cream sundae, and then past the butchers where we would buy our prime cuts of meat so that our French cook Florian could whip us up something magical for dinner. Just around the corner, away from the main thoroughfare, was a creepy looking alley. Panicked I began to back up. I didn’t like the look of it. Smoke rose from the vents at the back of the shops, and a dim security light bathed the neatly stacked trash cans in a feeble glow. In the distance, I saw a man in scruffy clothes, rooting through the garbage. He looked completely out of place in our upscale neighbourhood. In fact, in all of my six years I’d never even seen a poor person, let alone someone homeless.
“Put this on,” ordered the doll, and handed me the mask she’d had in her hand earlier, only now it was bigger, and it fit my head. She began to walk towards the homeless man humming a song that sounded like one of those nursery rhymes that Isabella would sing to me sometimes. Weirdly, I no longer felt frightened, but had this insane urge to hurt this odious man and rid him from our beautiful neighbourhood.
The melody began to form into words, which I began to sing, like I’d known them all along.
Hear the gargle, feel the drip, gushing from your temple. No remorse and no regret, pop goes theweasel!
The man turned in shock, but relaxed when he saw me and smiled, showing a row of crooked, uneven, brown teeth. He was very thin and dirty, and he smelt bad like rotten eggs and vomit. I felt insulted that he dared to come into our perfect world.
“Hey small fry! What are you doing out here in the middle of the night? Where’s yo’ mama?” I ambled forward, realizing I must have looked real strange in my mask and tartan pajamas. I looked for the doll and saw her creeping up behind the man, a broken beer bottle in her hand. Her eyes were no longer embers but burned bright as if lit by some unseeable flame. Her smile widened, the sharp teeth glinting, looking terrifying in the grim light of the alley.
“It’s time Caspian,” she said, her voice oozing menace, “time you became the weasel.”
The man turned at the sound of her voice and almost jumped out of his skin.
“Oh man, that son of a bitch must’ve sold me some spiked shit!” he said rubbing his eyes. But when he blinked again, the doll was still there. She skipped towards me and handed me the bottle. My breathing became ragged, and my blood was rushing through my veins at a gazillion miles an hour. I felt my face flush and all I knew was I had to hurt him; it was like a silent force that egged me on to do bad things.
I rushed forward growling like the feral animal I represented and jabbed the bottle towardsthe man’s stomach. Bewildered, he jumped out of the way. But I knew what my end game was, and I was more agile than him and I spun back around and drove the broken glass through his threadbare trousers into his leg. He wailed in pain and fell to his knees, knocking over the trash cans.
“Stop! What are you doing?!” he said, grimacing at the blood dribbling steadily from the wound.
