《Death's Embrace》Chapter 10: Xeno Real
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Ever since the day Xavior met Neo, he has begun noticing strange things about his previous one and only friend. It was almost like unlocking Pandora’s Box, like everything was always there but for the first time he could finally notice everything. One day, before the both of them even began kindergarten, Eve brought a puppy home for Elise. Xavior’s mother brought him over to play with it and her, a playdate. Everything seemed normal at the time, in fact, everything was normal.
He didn’t notice any suspicious behavior or anything that grabbed his attention because there wasn’t anything. It wasn’t until the play date was over that brought attention to the memory. He remembers that when he and his mother were finally about to leave out the door, Elise was holding the puppy in here arms. Eve asked her if she wanted the puppy to stay in her room for the night and Elise simply nodded. She was never one for words if she could help it.
She could definitely speak, although Xavior has personally never heard her do it at this point, but he asked Eve one day and she giggled and told him she could. Eve grabbed all of the dogs puppy accessories, dog bowl and things, and placed them into Elise’s room. What happened next, he doesn’t know. He had to leave before he could find out how the story ended exactly, but he knows that it wasn’t a happy ending. The next day his mother took him over for another play date, and that’s when he noticed something.
The puppy was nowhere to be found. Now that he thinks about it, her mom was being overly excited and hyper to keep the kid’s attention. When he asked to go into Elise room to play with the puppy she told him that she ended up being allergic to dogs and Elise’s room is in the middle of a cleaning session. It may seem highly suspicious now, but before he didn’t have any reason to not believe her. He wasn’t looking for a problem and so he simply didn't see one.
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He shrugged and moved on. Not only that, but during the play date he saw a small drop of red of his friend’s hands. When pointed out, Eve overheard and hurriedly took her daughter into the washroom to wash it off. When they came out she said that while cleaning the room they were also painting it. Funnily enough, the next time he came over, the room was fully painted red so he didn’t think much of it.
The last thing he noticed was that Elise was abnormally happy that day. Now she always has a smile on her face, but that day Xavior heard her speak for the first time. With a great big grin, she looked him in the eye after the the playdate was over and said, “I wish you could have played with that puppy with me more yesterday Xeno,” she giggled innocently while using her nickname for him, “we had such fun. Shame he’s gone so soon.” Needless to say, he was shocked.
At the time he didn’t notice the underlying tone though, his thoughts were only filled with her amazingly cute voice and how much he wanted to cuddle her with his grandfatherly ways. Maybe even give her a succer. He only ran to her and hugged her with an ‘awww’ instead of thinking of reasons why she chose this specific time to speak.
At this point, the only thing going through his mind now was what the fuck to actually do. He can’t just..drop her, not only for the reason that their parents are very close friends, but also because of the fact that she’s crazy. She literally kills puppies for fun. Just imagining what she would do to him gave him shivers. Make no mistake, that small child could still kill Xavior quite easily.
He has been getting better with his powers yes, but he would still have to touch her to actually kill the girl and because she could quite literally kill him with a thought, this did not bode well for Xavior’s conscious. Not to mention, that killing little girls wasn’t something he really wanted to do.
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“Hey,” the old man turned boy said aloud, “we need to talk.” He turned his head to look at her from across the table. She was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drinking strawberry milk with a happy smile.
At the sound of Xavior’s voice, she looked up from her snack, smile never dropping, but not saying anything either. He sighed. Ever since that day, she’s been talking more, but still hardly at all.
“That dog, the puppy you had, you remember him?” she nodded while taking another bite of her sandwich. “You killed it didn’t you? You murdered that puppy.”
Without hesitation she nods again, and her smile widened, as if she was looking back at a fond memory. He gulped, but continued on.
“Why? Why did you kill the puppy? Did he bite you?” she shook her head no.
“Did he scratch you?” she shook her head no.
“Did he do anything to you?” she shook her head no.
“Then why?!” he asked, losing his temper a bit. In all honesty, he didn’t know how to truly handle this situation, but he felt like acting like there wasn’t a situation in the first place would just bite him in the ass later. It was best to get this over with now, less he never feel safe around the girl again.
“It was fun.” she finally spoke.
Without a single word more, she went back to her food with a smile. Breathing in and out slowly, he prepared himself to continue on. If he didn’t get proper answers soon he didn’t know what to do. This also brought up several questions he had.
‘Elise….what happened to her in my timeline. I can vaguely remember hanging out and playing with a small child when I was little, but honestly the image is pretty blurry. I don’t even know if it was a boy or girl to be honest...Shit! It feels like 100 years ago, was Elise the person I played with? And if so... is the reason she suddenly disappeared because she was like this? Because she killed people or hurt animals?
“What about me?” he asked eyes squinted in her direction. She only tilted her head in confusion in response. It would have even been cute if Xavior weren’t fearing for his life that very second.
“Would you kill or hurt me?” At the question, Elise did something Xavior hasn’t seen her do much of since infancy. She frowned. Shaking her head no, she put down her sandwich and stared at me.
“Why not, you killed that puppy and that was fun wasn’t it? Why would killing me be any different?”
“Puppy fake, Xeno real.” was her reply.
This confused him, after all, he knew with absolute certainty that the dog was very much real and very much alive.
“Elise, that puppy was real. It was alive and everything.” to this she only shook her head frantically and did something else the boy hadn’t seen in a while. She cried.
“NO! Puppy fake!” she screamed. Looking into Xavior eyes, she repeated herself one last time. “Xeno real.”
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