Chapter 38: CH 038: The Voice from the walkie-talkie (MR2)
Mass Release For Wednesday!
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After the death of Dave’s parents, he had been sent to a foster home, where he became an orphan. The other kids there, the adults too, they all saw him as a burden, a bad luck. It didn’t matter that he was just a child; the labels were there, and they stuck.
The orphanage workers gave him no comfort, no solace. He was just another kid to be watched, another child to be ignored. He had cried in the early days, the overwhelming loneliness and grief making it impossible for him not to. But no one ever came to comfort him. No one ever told him it would be okay.
As time passed, the tears stopped. He had learned, as he grew, that there was no point in crying. It wouldn’t change anything. The world wasn’t going to change for him, and the people around him wouldn’t either. So, he embraced the loneliness, pulled it close, and made it his companion. If he was going to live, it would be by his own rules. Alone.
By the time he reached high school, he had already distanced himself from everyone. ’It’s better this way,’ he reasoned. ’Anyone who gets close to me will only die.’
He had been through enough loss to know better than to get attached. So, he didn’t. He stayed isolated, away from anyone who could be hurt by his presence. Even when Tyler attacked him, when he had almost died, it didn’t bother him. The world had never given him anything but pain, so why should he care if he left it behind?
He didn’t regret it. In fact, he had almost welcomed it. If death meant an escape, then maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
’Maybe in my next life, things will be different,’ he had thought before. And for a moment, he had thought that might be true, that maybe in another existence, things would be kinder. But those thoughts had been shattered when he woke up, in his own body, still alive.