Stephen became one of the many people who fantasize about me, who longs to feel my embrace. He thought of me as some kind of escape. He believed I could be his savior from a world he thought obsolete and empty and lead him to a place of happiness and bliss. I kept tabs on him for quite some time, making sure I wouldn't have to visit him prematurely before he was able to blossom. He withdrew from all his friends, growing tired of the constant "I'm sorry." He felt this sentence was an empty statement, for it implied that they knew what he was going through even though they did not. His father, Joseph, began flirting with me, becoming addicted to the delusions and peace that misleading substances provide. He often came home, after many nights of self-induced exile, in a drunken rage wreaking havoc like a bull in a china shop. Kaitlyn was to him as a story is to a writer. He took pride in having her and thought of her as a type of trophy. When I took her, I felt his heart and mind collapse within itself. Stephen often got his hands, at age 14, on the Dream Bottles his father came home with. When he drank the strong liquid, he felt free of the pain that shackled him like an inmate in a prison. Often I visited Stephen while he slept after a long day of dreaming. I would stand over him, a shadow in the night, waiting to take his seemingly purposeless soul, but night after night he would survive, although I today still fail to understand how he could achieve such a feat. He stopped going to school almost altogether and his father didn't care. They both mourned their loss in their own ways.
