Monsters Are Real.

~6~

I scramble as quickly as I could off of the man. I crawled backward, hitting my back on the wall. My hands found their way to my throat, clawing at it as I tried to gain the ability to breathe again.

     "Hinge, meet Thomas Lexter, your father," Ivan said, flicking a light switch. That's when I truly saw him. He looked nothing like the pictures.

    My mom had said that my dad had died when I was only one year old. He had supposedly died in a car crash while on the way to work. That was obviously a lie...right? Thousands of questions flowed through my head, but knowing Ivan I wouldn't be getting any answers
anytime soon.
  
     The man in front of me seemed old and tired, not anything like the happy cheery man in the photos. His eyes were a dull grey with a yellow tint. The pictures showed him with eyes as bright as mine. His brown hair was striped with white. This man was old, not young like the pictures were taken some years ago. I don't know why I was expecting something good.

       Ivan looked over at my father. He had a large, malicious grin on his face.

     "Tom, do you have anything you would like to say to your son? I know you haven't seen him in a while." Ivan's voice had taken a sinister tone. His grin had shrunken down to a small smirk. My father sat up a bit, looking over at me with his tired gaze.

     "H-Hinge. It's been so long. Th-The last time I saw you, you were only a baby." He gave me a weak smile. "You're so big now."

     "You're not at like the pictures," I stated bluntly. He winced a bit.

      "Its been fifteen years, bud. What'd ya' expect?" Knowing the question was rhetorical, I didn't answer.

     "Mom said that you'd died." I showed nothing at all, trying to stay as emotionless as possible. He let out a shaky sigh.

      "I did. Ivan brought me back, because of that I have to do his bidding. It's a repayment of sorts. I-It's not that bad once you get used to the blood."

      Now that, that made me mad.

     "Used to the blood...? Used to the blood?! You're killing innocent people, and you feel no guilt? You jerk, you even killed mom!" I was furious. If it could the anger would be pouring from my body. I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew I was in front of my dad, my hands around his throat. They were clamped around it, squeezing tightly. He tried breathing, sucking in raspy breaths.

     "You monster!" I growled out. He clawed at my hands, his face going purple. He let out gagging like sounds as he attempted breathing. There was a flash of bright light, and the next thing I saw was Ivan as an elephant, and then I blacked out.

   I woke up in what looked like a nurses office. Raze was sitting by my side, a worried look in his eyes. The look then faded away as soon as he realized that I had finally woken up. He let out a sigh of relief.

    "Finally, you're awake. I was scared that you had hit your head again," he said, gently nuzzling my cheek. Something about having him near me kept me calm. For once I
didn't freak out about something this big. It felt nice to be calm for once.

    Raze suddenly seemed to notice the large bump on the back of my head.

     "And, again I'm right." He sighed a bit, used to me being hurt at this point. "Mind telling me what happened?" I sat up on the bed a bit, ignoring the pain in my head. I then went on, telling him about how I was why the shapeshifters came to earth, and about my dad. By the time I was done talking Raze seemed just as stressed as I had.

    "How are you taking something like this so well?!" he asked, his blue orbs widening. 

     "I'm not quite so sure myself. I just feel extremely drowsy still." I shrugged a bit, lying back down.

    "Painkillers. Or Ivan had thrown you into the wall too hard." I heard a female voice say. I looked over to the door, finding Oliva standing there. She was leaning against the wall. "Raze, head back to the weaponry shop. Sell the guns you and Trittney had made." Raze obeyed and scurried off.

    Olivia walked over, sitting down where Raze just was. She seemed sad, which was a huge change compared to how angry she normally was.

     "Hinge...I'm sorry." My breathing stopped again at that. Olivia never apologized to anyone, ever, so this was a huge shocker. "I wish I had tried to stop him. Then maybe you wouldn't have so much stress on your shoulders."

      She looked like she was about to break down into tears. "I wish that I wasn't so hard on him that day. Maybe Ivan wouldn't be so cruel, and Raze would still be with his family." A single tear fell, and then she stopped herself. "Come on. Let me get you back to your cell."

     She took my hand, leading me back to the cell. It was extremely odd for her to be acting like this. She was crying and apologizing, but was it all really real? Was she just acting? She helped Ivan destroy the world and never then did she apologize, so why now? I eventually stopped myself from thinking. I had done enough of that for one day.

       We eventually reached the cell. She silently unlocked it, opened it, let me in, and then left. She seemed like she no longer wanted to talk.

      I sat down in my corner, hoping to get some sleep so I could end this long and stressful day. That plan then changed when I heard a sob from Trittney. I didn't even see her when I entered the room, I wasn't really looking for her.

     I sat back up, turning over to face her.

   "Whats wrong, Tritney?" I asked her. After a couple minutes of the answered.

      "I-I m-miss my p-parents, " she whispered out. It pained me to see her so sad.

     "If you don't mind me asking, what happened to them?" My voice was equally as soft. Trittney responded quicker this time.

      "He killed them when I was 13."

     My dad killed her parents....that bastard!

      "I went from town to town, slowly hunting Ivan down so I could get my revenge. His killer took my only family from me." The idea of revenge flashed through my mind for my own situation, but that would end horribly for me.

   "Revenge never ends well. That may not've been the best idea," I stated. Brittney looked me in the eye.

     "Sometimes revenge is the only thing that can make you feel complete again. Revenge can be as sweet as they tell you it can be. Now, goodnight. I'm going to sleep." She lied down in her bed, leaving me to think again.

    Maybe revenge could work for.my situation with Ivan?