'The Virus' - A True Pandemic

6

Dean was more than just a trouble magnet. Trouble didn't even begin to cater the events enveloping him throughout his life – from birth up until now.

Dean was born during an eclipse. His mom couldn't survive the delivery and so immediately after he cried his first cry in this world which marked the beginning of his life...his mother took her final breath which marked the end of her life. Ever since then Dean's father had been spiteful of him; reproaching him now and again and cursing the very sight of him. He had considered – more than once – throwing him out on the streets. To him, he was nothing more than a cruel reminder of his wife's untimely demise. However, he could never bring himself to actually do it. Once he came close but then his dead wife's picture suddenly emerged in front of his eyes and he felt all the sorrow and grief washing over him like a tidal wave all over again. Ashamed of himself and with what he was about to do to his wife's child – he never thought of Dean as his own child, he never could – he cried himself to bed that night; wrapped around a sheet of guilt, sorrow, remorse, self-loathing and hate. Since then, he has been taking care of this child whom he freely and very loudly deplored as 'the worst mistake of his life'.

One day, when Dean was only three years old, his dad went out to get some groceries in order to feed the kid so that he would finally stop wailing and crying. While on his way back home, he was robbed, punched, kicked, shot twice in the chest and then left to bleed out.

And so, at the age of three, Dean was somehow responsible for both, the death of his mother and his father.

But it didn't stop there. Wherever the boy went death always followed.

The man who found him three days later – almost on the verge of dying with exhaustion and due to lack of food – and called the social services was murdered on his bed in the dark of night by his ex-wife. The news referred to it as one of the craziest and bloodiest murders in the history of their town. Later, through police investigations, the townspeople came to know that George – the man who had found baby Dean – had divorced his wife because she was mentally ill. His wife did not handle the divorce well and kept refusing and trying to convince that she was completely normal – demanding to be left alone and allowed to leave so that she could go see her husband who would be worried sick for her. A few days later, the night George handed baby Dean to the authorities, Pamela – George's crazy wife – escaped the mental facility, broke into George's house and stabbed him to death in his sleep. The medical examiner disclosed that George didn't even realize that he was being stabbed until the knife was forced into his stomach and out for the third time. After that, due to major blood loss and shock, he didn't even have the time to take his last breath. He died immediately and painfully – no doubt. It was as if death held George responsible for not letting it claim Dean that night and so it had decided to seize him instead – as a sort of compensation for his mistake. After she killed her husband, Pamela killed herself; slit her throat like a melon and felt her life exiting her body right beside her husband's corpse. Some people thought it was painfully poetic in nature, like Romeo and Juliet. If they had seen the blood and the mess surrounding the scene of the crime they would have realized that there was nothing poetic about it... not even one bit.

Ever since then Dean has been jumping from one foster parent to the other. No matter where he went, no matter who took him in, no matter how clean or safe they were, in a matter of days they, along with their family...would be dead. Not just plain simple heart attack kind of deaths either. But real bloody and painful deaths...

Once it was a robbery gone bad. Not even the five-year-old girl survived. Each member of the family was gifted with a bullet between their eyes as their Christmas present. Luckily, Dean wasn't home that night and so he survived.