Sleep comes easy for Lucca though he is aware that the bliss will only be temporary. “Mom?” He calls out to his mother, who is swinging on a swing by a lakeside. The sun is shining brightly on a hot summer day. The birds are chirping in the distance. “Ah, Lucca. There you are, my baby boy,” she whispered softly. She then pulls him closer to her breasts. He feels comforted and safe, at first, until the grip tightens and he starts to choke, trying to force his way out of her suffocating embrace. The scenes changed dramatically. It is no longer a sun shiny day. A storm is raging. He can hear thunder roars in the distance. Lightning strikes here and there. She is no longer embracing him. There’s a knot around his neck and he is struggling to be free from choking painfully in the air. She is in front of him, on another necklace of rope, blue, unmoving, eyes bulging out of their sockets. As he tries to scream for help from beneath his choking throat, slowly, just slowly, the corpse smiles at him with her teeth all crimson in blood.

That’s when he wakes up. He is drenched in his own sweat. He had expected the nightmare, but each time when he wakes up, he still sweats profusely. It is not a nightly occurrence though. But each time if he is going to have this particular nightmare, he can sense it early on before he went to bed. It’s always the same. Except for the beginning. In the beginning, he would dream of random memories of his mother who always seems to be perfect. In every aspect. She was indeed perfect in every aspect. And Lucca resents her all over again for that.

He sighs a little to the relief he felt deep inside to the thoughts that she’s gone now. All that’s left of her were the good old memories. It somehow felt wrong but also right at the same time. Lucca doesn’t like to think of his mother. It always confuses him and makes his head ache. As he finally shuts the memories and thoughts of her from his brain, he notices that there’s a shade of shadow lurking underneath the little gap in between the floor and his door of someone pacing back and forth steadily outside his room. He lifts his body up a little from his bed, rolling the blanket that’s already soaked from his sweat off of his body. He can feel it in his guts. Papa? He calls out in his head. He knew it is him there outside of his room. Please come in, he monologues a plea. He longs to feel his father’s touch. He misses him so much. Please…

The shadow lurks a little while longer before it stops in its pace and then walks off from the door. Lucca can hear it clearly. The footsteps that pace away from his room. The fading sounds of those footsteps. A little, slowly, heartbreakingly, a tear falls down from one of his eyes. And a deep hatred grows bigger inside of him. He clenches his fist, holding in the raging fire of anger inside from bursting out. He wants to scream but he can’t. He wants to throw things in his room, smash everything to pieces, rip apart the bed sheets and curtains but he can’t. He can’t do these as he must pretend to be the nice innocent boy for the audiences. He closes his eyes, trying hard to calm down. He inhales and exhales in an effort to cool down his anger but he ended up shaking. At the very frustration of not being able to vent, tears stream down from both of his eyes. He sobs lowly, trying not to make too much noise, covering his face with both of his palms. He cries for an amount of time. But…

Ahh Ahhh Ahh!

He stops crying when he suddenly hears sounds of someone’s moaning. It’s in a distance, but he is quite sure that that is the sound of sex. He gets up and walks over to his window which partly opens a little and allows him to hear sounds outside. His eyes grew wide in surprise at the sudden view in front of him. It was of a woman, completely naked, both palms pressing on the glass of the window. Her breasts are bouncing, her face looking lewd in pleasure as she moans loudly, shamelessly. A boy is taking her from behind. He is pounding in her over and over. Lucca can’t quite make out what expression he is making as the shadow hides his face well. But the moonlight shines brightly on the woman. “Fuck. Is that his girlfriend?” Lucca manages to mutter underneath his breath. It has been a while since something shocks him like this. He chooses to ignore them. The sound. The view. They anger him even more. He can’t believe that Caleb is such a shameless son of a bitch. As he’s about to lie back down on his bed, he then realizes that he recognizes the woman. She’s one of the servants in the house! He feels disgusted at the sudden realization. “What a perv,” he mutters to himself again and closes his eyes, transitioning to the state of the unconscious. He doesn’t feel like he will have another nightmare. Being awake gives him more nightmare than sleeping anyway.

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A week had passed and Lucca is more pissed off than ever. Every night, Caleb would have someone new in his room. And he would fuck them at the window, with his curtains wide open. Lucca is sure now that Caleb did exactly that for show. This is because Caleb always has his curtains shut during the day but it’ll be wide open at night, only during his fucks. He wanted Lucca to see him fucking random women, girls, men, and boys in his room. All ages. All ethnicity. He has no particular taste. Lucca is beginning to think that Caleb is the type who would just fuck anything that moves. And that makes him sick. He is now sitting right beside him at the dining table. There are only two of them for breakfast this morning. Lucca is even angrier to the fact that Papa never comes to his room. He had gone to party with his bitch of a wife every night for the past few days. Who the fuck parties every night? Well yes, his father. And his step mother is a fucking party animal too. Like mother, like son. Except that her son parties in a different way every night. At this rate, he won’t be able to gain success at winning his Papa back.

“-hey!” Lucca stumbles out of his own thoughts at the sound of someone calling after him. He looks at the person sitting next to him.

“W-W-What?” Lucca asks. He didn’t mean to stutter but he did. And that carves a smile on Caleb’s face. Lucca doesn’t know what to make of that smile. He is looking rather amused. Slightly, resent and hatred grow inside of Lucca. He feels like punching the boy right on his face or poke his butter knife straight through the boy’s cheek. But he steadies himself, still pretending to be that nice innocent pretty little boy that he is.

“I was asking you to pass me the butter,” Caleb said.

At that, Lucca looks at the butter in a plate next to him. And then looks back at Caleb’s plate. He has butter on the plate next to him too. Then, why? Why is he asking Lucca to pass him his butter?! He is slow to react to this. Is this bullying? Is he being bullied or is Caleb just fucking stupid? It’s so hard to pretend to be nice to this boy! Lucca takes his plate and slides it over to Caleb without a word. “There, there. That’s a good boy,” Caleb commented. Lucca is fuming with anger. What a brat, he thought.

Chuckling a little to himself, for whatever reason that amuses him as Lucca couldn’t quite figure it out, Caleb takes a bite of his bread without even putting on the butter on it. “Say…,” he started. “Did you enjoy the view?” He asked.

Lucca knew exactly what Caleb means. So it’s true. He intentionally let his curtains wide open to show off to Lucca? Lucca smiles a little but he doesn’t answer the question. Maybe there’s no point in pretending to be nice to this boy. He needs to be threatened. He needs to be shown who’s boss. How dare he looks down on a murderer, Lucca thinks hard to himself. “About that,” he now starts. “I-..”

“-Wanna come to my room?” He was cut in by Caleb before he could even say more. “I wonder what kind of face you will make,” he added. He looks at Lucca so steadily, eyes of a superior, looking down on Lucca as if Lucca is below him. Lucca’s eyes widened in surprise. He clenches his fist in a fit of rage. That’s it! Lucca loses his cool. He no longer cares. He stands up from his seat in anger and pulls Caleb up by his collar, ready to punch him on his face.