Defining Darkness - K E Osborn Page 0,56

they thought it would be funny while I was outside playing to take the light globe out from my closet.” He shudders. “When I went in that night, and the door was shut, I tried to turn on the light, but it wouldn’t illuminate. It was pitch black… I was terrified.” I gulp a lump down my throat. “I moved for the door to open it, but those fuckers had locked me in.”

My heart pounds for my poor little Alec. How innocent he must have been. Those boys turned him from a normal kid into a scared little boy in one instant. Shit like that causes psychological trauma.

What I don’t understand is if he was scared of the dark, why does he now hate the light?

“I spent what felt like hours banging on the door, crying, screaming for them to let me out. My foster parents didn’t come to my rescue. They were just as scared of them as I was. I was so frantic, I broke my fingernails clawing at the door.”

“Jesus, Alec,” I whisper, my eyes flooding with tears.

“Then as the darkness had truly set in… I gave up. I sat back in the shadows of the closet, shaking, crying, wishing for hell to swallow me whole. That was when I heard the lock click.”

“They let you out?” I ask.

He tenses all over. “Much worse.” He inhales with the memory. “They opened the door, I stood, racing forward to get out. They shone the brightest flashlight I’d ever seen directly in my eyes…” He winces like he’s blinded by the light all over again. “After being in the dark for so long, it was like I was instantly blind. I fell on my ass back on the beanbag while they all poked fun at me, then slammed the door shut, locking me in again with the key that’s in my closet. I was disorientated. I didn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t see. The light had completely thrown me off. I felt sick. I was so emotional from the stress of it all I threw up all over myself and the bean bag, but I still couldn’t see what was happening. All I knew was they could hear me losing my shit, and they were laughing their asses off.”

A fat tear falls down my cheek as pain crosses over his face.

“I was back in the dark, lying in my own vomit with my anxiety through the roof.” His nostrils flare. “And every night they would do the same thing. Keep me in the dark, then open the door flashing me with the brightest light, disabling me completely. Then, they started throwing things in when they would flash me with the light. At first, it was simple shit like a pie in the face or a bucket of mud. Then the real torture began. The spiders came next…”

I let out a gasp.

“Then there was shit I don’t even want to remember. So, you understand how I was living in darkness all that time, it became the only thing I could rely on. When the light came, so did the boys. So did the torture. Light was pain. Light was my enemy.” My bottom lip trembles thinking of the horror he went through. “They didn’t let me out of that closet until social services came… four years later.”

My hand flies to my mouth. “What?” I shriek. “I hope they were arrested!”

He clears his throat. “No… just taken to other homes, but they’re the reason I joined the club. So my brothers could help me find my revenge.”

Gulping a lump down my throat, I’m pretty sure I comprehend what that means. “And did you? Find your revenge?”

He finally smiles a genuine smile. “Let’s just say I found that fucking key, and they met the darkness. Unlike me, they didn’t get a chance at being blinded by the light.”

I have no idea what that means, but I’m pretty sure it means all those boys are now dead. It scares me a little that I’m actually happy about it. There’s no doubt in my mind they deserved it. There’s no reason to torture a poor little defenseless boy.

Animals, nothing but animals.

“I’m so sorry you went through that. It fucking kills me to think about what they did to you.”

His muscles relax a little from the tension they were holding, and he exhales. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for them. Did they fuck with my head? Hell, yeah. Do