"Hell...?" The boy sounded unconvinced.
Joshua’s eyes blinked once, twice before he nodded, treating the subject with a surprising amount of certainty for his perceived age.
"This can’t be hell..." The boy frowned.
"And why not?" Joshua frowned back.
"There's no devil and no demons. Where’s the fire?"
Joshua took a good long look at the boy then, and for some reason that look made him seem older, more mature.
Chills ran through the boys’ frame as though someone had applied ice onto his skin right then and there but Joshua still stared at him unblinking, both of them staring at each other on that cold floor for a bit longer before Joshua finally answered.
“… Hell doesn’t look like how people think it does.“
The boy frowned, perplexed and confused. He felt his eyes move around the room as he tried to take in the blandness of it for something more, but what he found was truly nothing. A hot prickling feeling began to spread through him in subtle waves that became more and more evident.
“Well, what does Hell … look like then?” The boys’ eyes settled onto the cross that lie on the wall, never to move but always having more authority as an inorganic thing than of most the leaders of today.
“I’ve said it before. It’s here. This is hell.” Brown eyes finally peeled themselves away from the cross, although upon blinking he found that the image appeared even behind his eyelids in a blurry form of peculiar picture.
“Oh….I---“
Time felt as though it had slowed down for some reason, his responses becoming slower, his movements seeming sluggish. Nothing seemed to pass normally except for that accompanied image with every blink but then he heard Nikolai’s voice.
“The Devil is here.”
The boy whipped his head around to see Nikolai leaning against the wall right below the cross that had etched itself into his mind quite stealthily. His hair looked less vibrant, less golden. Face paler, youthful features… haunted. He looked like a ghostly image but it wasn’t just his exterior appearance that made the boy think of this, but also the way he carried himself; arms hanging limply to his sides, feet apart.
“Nikolai!”
Joshua’s voice was merely an adding factor to the already tense air. “…He’s here.”
Suddenly, the door shook and the tense air became thick, a loud click resonating through the small room before the door creeped open at a pace that was neither leisure nor rushed.
What was once cool floor became hot as a gust of wind licked his entire body with a venomous tongue. What was at the door didn’t come in as one normally would. It lingered to the side of the doorframe, and in terror the boy looked over to where Joshua was supposed to be, only to see…
Nothing.
Joshua was gone.
His head whipped around to where Nikolai was supposed to be but he had vanished just as Joshua had. The boy panicked, not wanting to be alone and feeling that unknown presence at the door grow closer. He scooted backwards quickly until his back was pressed firmly against the white wall and that was when the foreign presence decided to make itself visually known to the only other person in the room.
First it was a hand that gripped the doorframe, the grip strong enough for the boy to see the whites of the knuckles, and then appeared a man.
His hair was a dull brown that matched his eyes and his skin was a sickly sort of pale, but even with his dullness he was what could have been deemed attractive. He had a handsome facial structure and a handsome build, but what showed outwardly did not eradicate the fear that the boy had for man.
The man held a remarkable resemblance to the boy, nothing really being of difference between them besides age and the attributes that came with it.
“Well, well, well…”.
Brown eyes trained upon brown eyes and the strange man walked further into the room, closing the door behind him before his loose inspection of the small child on the floor began again.
It was a condescending look, a sadistic look, yet within all those negative things that the boy somehow could sense, the man’s eyes still seemed dull.
“Did you finally decide to wake up?’
It was so silent that the air around them seemed to croak.
“W-what?...who are you…? Where is Joshua?”
“Joshua doesn’t exist anymore.”
The boy’s eyes widened and the man gave a laugh that was rather unfitting for the situation.
“What?!”
“You heard me. He’s dead, do you not remember?” The man stopped right in front of the cross, in the exact same area that Nikolai had been, looking haunted—looking scared.
“Go away!” His statement was sudden but rational in his mind. There was a man near him who he did not want to be around. ‘Go away’ was the best thing that he could do for himself.
It was the only thing a child could do.
“Ah, but I can’t.”
“Go away!” The conviction in his voice rung, and he was crying tears that felt like acid on his cheeks.
The man crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head to the side, the action unnatural.
“Murderers don’t get to rudely request things.”
“Go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away!”
“Alexander!” The man’s voice was clipped and loud, authoritative and practiced and the hysterics that the boy pulled stop abruptly although tears still slid down his cheeks.
Alex….
Alexander….
His name, that which he had forgotten was... Alexander.
The man seemed pleased at his shock. “Good. Now that I have your attention, let us both go back in time to recall some important things, okay?”
A smile came from the unnamed man then and he lifted his left hand, positioned his middle finger and thumb together and snapped, and soon thereafter the walls began to croak as though the foundations of them were tearing. Alexander pushed off the wall but the action was so frantic that he clumsily knocked himself over onto his stomach in the process, and it was too uncoordinated, too unrealistic.
Yet as soon as he did so, he felt something warm and wet hit his forearm and he looked at it in panic before screaming.
It was blood. He picked himself off the ground and looked up.
The walls were bleeding.
A harsh, sudden scream bubbled up his throat, desperately trying to escape through his mouth although it never did, it was stifled by a hand on his mouth.
The man with eyes so like his.
He struggled but it was no use.
“It's time for you to grow up, Alexander.”
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