The Freaks

Prologue

Carrie watched, quietly perched on the city rooftops, as a man and a boy dragged another figure into an alleyway. She had seen the fight earlier. There was a woman, supposedly called Josephine, who had been fighting with them, sometimes threatening murder, or worse. Eventually the boy, who could not be more than twelve years old, pulled a handgun from his coat and shot the woman. The bullet lodged itself in the woman's leg, intentionally, which could be told by the boy's sudden evil smile.

Carrie knew then, that the boy was like her, and she climbed from the shady corner she had watched from, and up to the tops of the buildings, where she could observe the scene without giving away her location.

"Josephine," she could hear the voice of the older man now, "how do you plead?"

The woman's limp figure didn't move as she spoke, a hint of dying humor in her voice, "not guilty."

"Nonsense!" The boy said angrily, and Hatta saw him fidget with the gun, like he was considering using it once again, "There are witnesses! For gods sake I am a witness! You're a murderer!"

"Ha... funny," the woman spoke, "tell me, Boy, are you any better? Can you say you have never harmed somebody in-"

There was a scream, loud and piercing to the ears, and a bang, as Carrie watched him shoot the girl. She smiled wider than before.

'So he has a temper.'

The older man scolded the boy for shooting, but no attention was really being paid to those words. The boy, Carrie could see, was smiling, staring at Josephine with a giddy, twisted look. He was totally insane, and seemingly satisfied by the sight of blood, and pain.

Doctors would diagnose it as Antisocial Personality Disorder, but Carrie knew better. If he had APD, he would feel no remorse when killing, but earlier he panicked and got angry when his own crimes were spoken of. He was fragile, just like Carrie was, and he was crazy.

Besides, Carrie did not know of a man who did not feel remorse when he killed, it was simply that their craving for blood outreached the guilt they felt later on. And slowly they grew desensitized. But still it hung over them, driving them into levels of depression that nobody else could understand, and they would go out and kill, hoping that it would cure them, hoping that it could give them happiness. And it did, but soon enough the sadness would return, and they would go out again.

The boy was new to the disease. He found satisfaction in fighting, and eventually it must have been taken too far. But Carrie knew, as she watched him point the gun at the woman's head, that he was afraid. He wanted something evil, and he realized he was becoming a monster.

He pulled the trigger.

Police sirens rang through the night. Hatta wasn't surprised, they had been making a lot of noise. She stood and ran, hopping over the tiny rooftop gaps that separated the buildings (after all, this was the city, and everything was built close together.) But she could hear, ever so slightly, the sound of a police officer, yelling into his radio or microphone or whatever:

"SIMON BLACKWELL DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP."

Carrie smiled. He was wanted. He had killed. He was crazy.

And so was she.