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He had long, beautiful, dark hair. Hair his mother had loved combing every night before bed. Or at least she used to, until the tragic night three years ago, when she stopped loving anything. Stopped smiling at him, stopped speaking, stopped playing with him, and telling him what a good boy he’d been all day. She just stopped being.
He’d hit his head, and while he was sleeping, was gone.
That night, three years ago, the monster had returned. He’d taken the only thing left of Keyon’s mother—her body—and walked away.
Keyon had spent the entire night crying, huddled alone in the corner, frightened that the monster would come and get him too. And there would be no one to protect him.
His fears came true. Come morning, the monster came for him. But instead of beating him or screaming at him like he always did, he bundled Keyon into a carriage and brought him here. To this awful place.
Keyon was certain he knew what this place was. This was the place Keyon’s mother had warned him against. She’d said that if he was good, if he listened to her and did as she asked, he’d never end up here. And yet he had. What went wrong? Had he been bad?
His mother never said so. She’d always praised him and told him how good he was. She’d assured him that only good things were coming his way.
So what had happened?
Was he being punished for hitting his head and falling asleep when his mother needed him most? He had left his mother alone with the monster, and as a result, she’d died. She’d always said that as long as Keyon was with her, everything would be well.
But he hadn’t been with her at that moment. Instead, he had hit his head and fallen asleep. And at that moment, something horrible had happened and took his mother away from him.
Perhaps, children who failed to protect their mothers all ended up here.
In hell.
Because Keyon was certain that’s where he was. The most terrible place in the world.
He was not alone in this place. There were other children. And all those girls and boys had one thing in common. They had no mothers.
They must have failed to protect them too.
Besides other children, this place was full of monsters. They would come to him every day, praise his beautiful, black hair, delicate, feminine facial features, tiny, soft hands, and then do horrible, unspeakable things to him.
The same thing happened to the other children. Because there was something else they all had in common.
They were all beautiful. Or at least, that’s what the monsters kept telling them.
Perhaps, if Keyon was not beautiful anymore, they would leave him alone.
That thought had run through his mind a few times a day for weeks now. Maybe months. He could not keep track of the passage of time in this terrible place. He lived from one horrible moment to the next, hoping, praying, that one day nobody would enter his room. That one day, he would just be left alone. One day, they would just forget about his existence.
Nobody answered his prayers, though. Because, of course, nobody did. God would never listen to the prayers of sinners. Keyon was not in God’s house; he was in Satan’s. He was in a literal hell.
Keyon eyed the window of his room again, for the thousandth time, but it was locked and chained.
He was not the first person to live in this room; he knew that. The cot he slept on was old and creaky, and the floors were worn and dirty. He was probably not the only person to eye this window and to think that beyond it lay salvation. He stepped closer and rattled the chains again.
He could not unlock the window and escape; he had learned that lesson before. But perhaps he could use the window to gain his freedom after all.
Keyon looked around, moved even closer, and hit the glass with an elbow. The window crashed, the broken pieces falling to the floor.
Someone would certainly have heard the sound. They would enter his room any minute now to check on him, so he had to be quick.
Keyon took one large shard of glass off the floor and stabbed himself in the cheek. The agonizing pain was clouded by the excitement of the idea that he could be free. He smiled as he stabbed himself again and tried to cut a long line across his face. The blood and the fact that he could not see what he was doing hindered his progress.
Two guards ran into his room with a shout. They rushed toward him, trying to wrestle the glass away from him. Keyon kicked and screamed, fighting them off, waving the piece of glass around.
“He’s gone mad!” one of the men exclaimed.
“Master will be livid,” another one gritted through his teeth.
