Two feet landed on the soft dirt road after catapulting themselves through the air and into safety. The young boy tore through the throng of the market, sprinting away from the building he had been held captive in for over a day as he ran headlong toward his home turf. From behind him came furious shouts and a demand issued to follow and capture “The Brat,” but he was far gone by the time the first of them even set foot outside the abandoned home.

The town was a small, unincorporated hamlet claiming no nationality and lying well beyond the reach of any country’s borders. It had a very small market, a single inn, and a few modestly sized houses belonging to a family of merchants that had settled and brought a semblance of prosperity to the town. It was a silent, safe place; the kind of place where children didn’t need orphanages or jobs, where they could play all day until their cheeks glowed red from running and there were more bruises on their body than wildly fantastic stories that could account for them all.

The Brat was a king among kids. His posse was the wiliest, most successful group of pranksters ever to roam the Uncharted Territories. Little pranks, of course, like the magical appearance of stink bombs and onion pellets whenever a group of adults gathered or the oddly regular escape of chickens from their cages in the market, and while the adults were annoyed and punished accordingly any kid they managed to catch, not once had The Brat ever been even seen perpetrating a prank nor had he been punished afterward. It was his reputation for knowing when the adults were around and being able to hide so well that earned The Brat his loyal cadre of like-minded purveyors of misdeeds. It was to them he ran, hidden away in the cellar of another abandoned house on the outskirts of town.

Through the cellar doors he bolted, relief flowing through his veins as the adrenaline left them. He passed his friends, his compatriots of eternal playtime, and threw himself down on his throne, a silly thing made of sacks of rice and a crown woven from grass. Huffing and puffing still, he signaled his gang to silence as an onslaught of questions flowed over him.

“Lana!”

“You’ve been with Lana the whole time, boss?”

“BEEN WITH!? She kidnapped me!! She kept me tied up in the upstairs of the market house, and the whole time she called me names and let her stupid friends laugh at me!”

“Aw, no way! How’d you escape?”

“Tch, like a girl could hold me. She tried to feed me like some stupid doll so I kicked her in the face, smashed the chair, and jumped out the window.” This was met by the usual chorus of hushed awe and praise whenever The Brat told a story to the boys.

“Well, we gotta do somethin, right boss? We gotta get her back!”

“Yeah, yeah, cool it Ik. I got a plan. I heard ‘em talkin’ about some party. I think Lana’s birthday’s comin up, right? And they’re havin the party at her house…”

“So… we’re gonna smash it up?”

“Exactly.”

Relentless planning ensued and every possible way to ruin a party and disgust a girl was brought up and incorporated into the plan. The days before the retaliation were spent gathering supplies, preparing the stink bombs, and getting the paint buckets from the Hamb’s property before they used it all up--which was an adventure in and of itself. Every manner of animal feces was collected--the two pet dogs the boys kept made up the majority of it, but they went as far as the pasture land almost a quarter mile away to add that sickening smell of cow manure to the mix-- and placed in a rawhide sack which was left outside of the basement fort until the day of the attack had come. Lana would know never to mess with The Brat or his companions for the rest of her life after this.

The day came. The boys awoke and gathered at the fort to go over the plan one final time. Everything was set, perfect, and planned. They gathered up their things and walked up the stairs of the cellar into the open, inviting air of the outdoors.

The Brat was the first to be seized. A pair of large, hairy hands belonging to the innkeeper nabbed him before daylight even shone through his straw colored hair. The boys behind him scattered and ran, but two of the four were captured after a brief chase. A small crowd greeted the guilty three, about seven in all, and for the first time The Brat was caught--red handed, no less. He writhed in the innkeepers hands, fighting the truth, feeling the damage to his reputation and his legend as keenly as his waist felt the innkeeper’s fingers bite deeper and deeper in an attempt to keep him still. That raw, childish anger coursed through him as hot tears streaked down his face--he could hear his comrades already sobbing for forgiveness to his right and left, begging to be let go and that it was all his fault. It was a momentary glimpse, when he stopped thrashing to try and glare at his so called friends, but he saw her in that brief second. Lana.

She stood there with a pristine, winning grin plastered all over her face. His eyes locked onto hers, and he felt his emotions swing wildly out of control. She was the one who planned his downfall. He’d been led along like a dog the whole time. He bought into her lies, her deception, and while he planned to ruin her imaginary party, she planned to ruin his whole life. She watched and waited, letting him make all his bombs and gather his supplies just so she could turn it into evidence against him, just so she could finally be the one to catch the uncatchable. The Brats face burned with the fury of an undisciplined, spoiled child and he focused all of his hatred and his will at that smug, annoying face. She had tormented him in the market house, dressed him up and fed him like a doll just so she could ruin his life less than a week later. The anger was so hot in him now he felt it had to be boiling to the surface, like his face had to have been on fire and his very eyes contained daggers.

What happened then was unintentional. What he felt was a childish, fleeting thing, but something deep inside him took hold of it and used it to unleash his power. The innkeeper dropped him, staggering backward as if hit in the face by something as big and as awkward as he was. The Brat hit the ground with a hard thump, but he never broke eye contact with the white, gleaming smile of his undoing. He wanted her dead, right then. He wanted to rip her throat out with his bare hands, but he lacked the strength to do it alone. From behind him came two tremendous howls as the large stray mastiffs the gang kept rocketed out of the cellar and made a beeline straight for Lana. In that single moment of hatred and remorse, The Brat became vengeance embodied. He was the dogs, tearing the life from the girl as she screamed and thrashed. He was the teeth sinking into the flesh again and again. And when the act was done, he was the song that erupted from the canines’ throats as the called to the world of their great deed. It was the last thing he remembered before a solid thunk to the back of the head knocked him unconscious, and it was all he would dream about for years to come.

When he woke, his body was tied to the trunk of a tree far away from any road and farther still from the hamlet he had grown up in. He was left abandoned and alone, the victim of raw emotion and an unknown, unforeseen power within. The brat let the tears stream down his face then, as he realized just what had happened and what he had done. His voice would grow week under the strain of his screams and sobs and the unfathomable pain of hunger would etch itself into his soul as hours slowly massed to days. Bound to that tree and left to die in the silence and waiting evil of the dense forest, The Brat had a great and terrible epiphany. It was not he that killed the girl, but she that killed herself. She sought to end his life, so he ended hers for the favor. That wicked voice of survival repeated the argument over and over again in the dying boy’s ear until fear became anger and acceptance became stubborn hatred. As the boy degraded into an animal and the power from within washed over him, a deathly chill crept down the spines of his former townspeople.