• There are many things in this world that I don't quite understand, but one of the things that keep me up at night is a simple question everyone comes to dwell on in their lifetime. Why do I exist? and if I exist for anything of great importance, why do people die in the end? Everyday I come closer and closer to that black abyss I have come to know. I see it when I sleep, when I close my eyes, when I think. What's there that I have to die to see? Of course, I have thought about the sweet calling of the grave. What person hasn't that has lead a life similar to mine? I don't know what I fear most about dying, but I have never once enjoyed falling asleep with these thoughts running through my head...

    I looked up at the class. They stared at me like I was nothing more than slime on the wall. My face felt hot as I quickly walked back to my seat and pulled my hoodie over my head. I had been told many times that this was not the way a third grader was allowed to write, but it had always been my passion. Why was I so ashamed of what I thought?

    "Thank you, Mr. Jamison, for that... wonderful piece," said my teacher, with the tone I always heard in his voice when he spoke to me. That same, worried, sick tone I had grown to loathe. He glanced at the clock. "It seems like we're finished for today. Tomorrow, Miss Carter, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Carpenter will give their opening paragraphs! Remember, Friday is the last day of school, so I will need all of your textbooks in sometime this week. You are dismissed."

    I picked up my bag and left the room. No one was outside to meet me and no one talked to me. It didn't bug me. I was always alone; a freak to those who had a simple view on life. My differences were too complex to those people.

    As I walked home, or to what you would call home, a man called out to me. I had known him ever since I had come to this place. He called himself Keir, and he was very good to me. Unlike the others he appreciated my writing, my strange behavior, my... originality, but he had been gone for several months.

    "Keir," I answered him with a bow. "What a pleasure it is to see you again, my friend."

    "Yes, I have been gone a long time," he replied. For a man that lived on the lowest of salaries, he was very clean-cut and gave me the most enjoyable presents. "Do you have time, Alan?"

    "Plenty," I said. "My mother and father will not hurt me if they know I've been with you."

    Keir smiled, gesturing me to follow him. I did as he wished. There was something about this man that I had always come to respect. You could almost call him my master. My parents even feared him. We walked down the ally that I had been found on and sat in the same spot my one-year-old self had been found, abandoned.