He moved through the crowd, gracefully, as if he were floating on air. Looking at him, it seemed he was a normal but handsome teenage boy, wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt with some hard rock band on it, but the way he looked, the way he moved, it was surreal. No human would have such a perfect face, such flawless, white skin, smoother than metal. No human would glide on those black, steel-toed boots he was wearing.

He turned. His eyes were hard, blacker than tar, blacker than night without stars, and they rippled with power, making them dance, dance insinuatingly, insidiously, with the power in them calling the weak to him.

He exited the crowd, a group of young children no more than ten years of age following him. They disappeared, vanished into thin air. But they were not gone from the face of the Earth. They were far from it, in fact. They were caged, residing in a building not too far away. The building was made of black marble, with black shutters and even blacker shingles. The walls were thick; no sound could get out of them. Not even the high-pitched screams and cries of the children.

He continued walking. Walking purposefully into a building, he asked at the information desk where he could find the bathroom. His voice sang insinuatingly, rippling with more power than his eyes. It was dangerous, but danger seemed to be a part of his everyday life, and he could care less. He was powerful, that was for sure, and for one his age, that was uncommon. The woman at the desk looked dazed as he left. No one noticed that he never came out of the bathroom.

In the bathroom, he disappeared as suddenly as the children had. He reappeared where the children were, and listened, drank in the cries and screams of the children. He laughed a harsh, mirthless laugh blacker than midnight as they cried out for their mothers or fathers, or both. He silenced the children’s cries and harnessed their minds, searching for a weakness in their already weak minds. The children groveled, wept tears, tore their hair out, screaming silently for the pain to stop as he searched their minds, went into their deepest, darkest secrets, replaying their worst fears in their tiny minds. But he cared not for the children’s pain; he dug deeper still, subjecting the children to agony beyond belief, and most of them just curled themselves up in pain, not bothering to scream or cry anymore. The rest killed themselves to escape the torture they were in, dashing their little heads against the cage walls. Blood flowed in torrents and the room was lit by the aura of souls flying away from the area. He cared less about these than he did the groveling children. Their ordeal would be locked away; not even they would be able to remember it, yet it would torment them forever.

As suddenly as he started, he let go of the remaining children’s minds. Panting and sobbing could be heard as the children felt the torturous pain leaving them, and then the screaming started again as they discovered their comrades’ bloody bodies on the floor next to them.

He herded the children out of their cell and led them to individual cells, cells no bigger than a refrigerator box, cells that would have made a refrigerator box seem luxurious. Each child went into a cell and was locked up. He knew he would soon hear crying, and that they would soon look upon this day as being wonderful in comparison to every other day in their lives. And none of them would live past twenty.