When Hansel returned to school the next day he found his desk mutilated. Messages were left to him in bold, jet-black letters, fresh enough that he could catch faint whiffs of the lingering smell of sharpie and permanent markers; messages that told him he was a stinking pile of garbage, that he was a waste of oxygen, that he was a disgrace to humanity itself, that he better watch his step.

HIGH-FIVE YOUR FACE WITH AN AXE, someone had written.

EAT CRAP, tagged another.

There was even a little stick figure of him accompanying the horrid messages, depicted as being squashed by someone's gigantic leg, complete with a footnote: DIE, BUG, DIE.

So much hatred, thought Hansel, dropping into his seat without a word. From people whom he had not hurt in anyway, who did not even see what he had done.

But that seemed to be the way of the world, distributing hatred with cosmic generosity and often, with a lack of reason, and spreading the disruptive ideology that evil negated evil, and violence was best answered in kind.

If he had thought his troubles would end with these messages, Hansel would have thought wrong; but he did not think so, he was not that naïve. He knew they were only the beginning, an opening act that would set the stage for a bigger play. The smoke before the fire.

They started bullying him in earnest, their treatment of him growing worse day by day, as though Hansel were a flesh-and-blood mannequin they had found they could take all their frustration out on. All their hatred, all their worries, all their fears of being trapped in a deadly desolation of a city, they thought they could shove it all onto his shoulders. They did not care if he could carry it, or if he would buckle under the weight.

Why should they, anyway?

He deserved it, did he not, after everything he did?

It could be a notebook thrown into the fishpond outside, or a gum stuck to his shirt, or a tennis ball that caught him on the side of his head, or the dead crow that tumbled out of his locker, wings stiff and beak splayed open. One after another they tormented him, with a startling and relentless ferocity he could not evade. But what he could not believe, what he did not want to accept was that this could go on forever, that he would always be the outcast, that there would be no end to this abuse.

However, this was also to be his penance. He did not know if there would ever come a day when he would have paid the debt for all his sins, when he could finally be forgiven, but he hoped it would come, he really, ardently, desperately hoped.

Things were no better with Felix at home, who seemed to have redoubled his efforts to make Hansel's life as miserable as he could after the latter refused to turn his pet cat out to the streets. Hansel could not understand why Felix hated the cat so much, but no matter how much he threatened or how much grief he gave Hansel, Hansel would not do it; he could not leave Dream to his death. He would rather die himself than let his cat die.

One day he picked up his long unused phone and tapped the screen on. He noted the battery was just seven percent away from being completely drained, and went to his mother's chatbox without wasting time.

Mother, save me, he typed, ignoring how absurd the text sounded. He pressed send. What were the odds his mother would read it?

The kids are bullying me at my new school, he typed.

My shadow wants to turn my life to hell.

I have a pet cat now. He's called Dream.

But my shadow wants to kill my cat.

He paused, thinking a bit, then kept typing. Could you please come home?

Or at least give a call?

I'm so tired.

I don't know what to do anymore.

It was only after he had typed all of that did he notice that none of the text messages were leaving his phone. He shook the gadget in the air, as if that might do the trick, but the messages remained unsent. He had a creeping suspicion. He grabbed a safety pin and inserted it into the pinhole by the side of the phone. A small card slot slid out, empty, confirming what he had already guessed. The SIM card was missing.

He waited until Felix appeared at night to ask him about it.

"What did you do with the SIM card inside my phone?" he asked coldly when Felix had just crossed the doorway.

Felix gave him a display of the world's most unconvincing expression of surprise. "What makes you think I did anything with it? I haven't even seen your phone around lately. Now, if you don't mind, go make me some pudding and apple tart. I'm starving."

"Stop lying to me," hissed Hansel. "Hand it over now."

This time Felix looked genuinely surprised. It was not every day he heard Hansel use that tone with him, or be this assertive. The cat was one case, but what could he possibly want a SIM card for? Felix asked as much. "If you are going to tell me you want to call some friend, I wouldn't believe you. You have no friends." He flung himself to the couch and stretched like a cat. "However," he added with a devious grin. "I could be your friend. You want someone to tell all your tragic life experiences to? I'm all ears."

"Who would ever want you for a friend?" Hansel spat, taking an aggressive step towards him. "I'm serious. Give it back to me."

The brief levity on Felix's face dissipated like mist under the sun. He sat straighter. "I'm being serious too. You want your SIM card back? How unfortunate. I ate it one day when I was feeling particularly hungry. But you only have yourself to blame. You never cooked me any good food to eat. What else could I have used to assuage the vicious pangs of hunger that was ravaging me from inside? Try to understand."

Hansel inhaled slowly, taking steady, even breaths, calming himself down before Felix succeeded at properly riling him up. But having to look at Felix's trickster face, sneering up at him from the moldy couch was no help. Hansel turned on his heel and strode briskly towards the front door.

"Where are you going?" Felix demanded from behind.

"None of your business," Hansel retorted.

"Oh no," crooned Felix. "Everything is my business."

Hansel closed a hand over the knob of the door and turned; at the same instant, Felix, too lazy to get up to stop him, lassoed him with his shadow ribbon. A coil of darkness wrapped around Hansel's free wrist, stopping him in his tracks. But this time Hansel wasn't going to stay still and let Felix reel him back in like a fish on a line. He could not touch the ribbon, but he could exert pressure on it. He threw the door open and stepped outside, giving the ribbon a ginormous tug on his way—not unlike the ones Felix had employed on him several times before—and cleared the steps with a single jump, recruiting gravity to put more force into his pull.

The landing was not perfect, but Hansel did not fall. Felix, on the other hand, was too taken by surprise. He was hauled to his feet and propelled into a heavy teapoy in his path, and he hit his toes hard against the bottom of the furniture. He keeled over the tepoy, one hand coming down to brace himself against its wooden top while the other drifted away to soothe his mistreated toes. He let out a moan. "Oww..."

A flicker of disbelief strummed inside Hansel's brain. He had wanted to, but not expected to move Felix even an inch from where he sat. Even though they both shared the same physical stature, Felix had more strength in his core, enough strength to keep a boy his own weight from falling off a rooftop. Had Hansel really caught him off guard this time, or was Felix growing weaker?

Maybe it was because Felix was too focused on his toes that he inadvertently released his grip on the shadow ribbon. Hansel hastened his steps, taking the opportunity, hoping to get away before Felix noticed. However he had only taken a few steps into the velvet black of the night when he heard a little meowing sound from behind. He jerked to halt, spinning in horror. Dream had followed him out.

"No, go back," he whispered to the cat. "Get inside the house."

Dream just gave him an enquiring look and took a few lithe steps in his direction, wanting to accompany him. He darted forth, skirting by Hansel's legs and bounding into the murky night. Then he circled around and waited, expecting Hansel to follow him this time.

"Dream, you need to go back," muttered Hansel more urgently. He turned back to the house, showing his intention to return. "Come on."

Dream cocked his head, as if considering this option, then he seemed to decide to stay with Hansel and took a step in his direction.

"Good boy," Hansel encouraged, walking slowly, leading Dream back to the house. But by the time he reached the doorway he found Felix blocking the way in. Felix peered around Hansel maliciously, fixing his eyes on the cat limping in his wake.

"Such a poor thing," tutted Felix. "How sad is that it hasn't got much time left to live."

Hansel gasped. "You wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't I? Don't turn around, dear Hansel. If you don't want to see your cat die. I assure you, it's not going to be a pretty sight." Felix's voice was dead, eyes clouded with darkness. He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers, the sound of it a sinister crack that cleaved the silence of the night.

Hansel wheeled just in time to see sharpened black talons materialise from the sleek blackness of the night, Dream letting out a cry of fear, trying to run away, then the talons slashing downwards, slicing through the fleeing cat, and finally the arc of blood that spurted to the side, Dream falling, then going limp, still as death.

With a cry of outrage Hansel ran towards the cat, falling to his knees beside the blossoming pool of blood that was haloing Dream. There wasn't much light to make a good judgment, but one look was enough for him to know that there was nothing that could be done now. A gash had been raked through the cat's side, deep enough to kill. Even if Dream were still alive there would be no hope for recovery from something like that. But Dream was not alive. He was already dead, his small chest unmoving, frozen in death.

Moisture gathered at the ends of Hansel's eyes, condensing like morning dew on leaftips. He put a hand over the wound on Dream's side—a futile attempt to staunch the flow of blood, as if doing that might somehow bring the cat back to life. But it couldn't. And the knowledge of it was devastating. He lifted his head and looked at Felix wrathfully, his mind churning inside him like a sea at storm.

Felix on his part was standing back against the wall by the door, looking a mild fraction...shocked?

Shock, however, made no sense on his face.

Fury seared Hansel from inside, a kind of anger that had been dormant within him for years. After all of this, after what he had just done, did Felix still have the gall to pretend? To act so surprised? The audacity of him felt abrasive to Hansel, like a sandpaper rubbed against his skin.

But Felix wasn't pretending any longer. His hateful lips were curving into an infernal smile, eyes drinking in Hansel's seething expression, celebrating victory. "Well, I did warn you not to look."

Hansel leapt towards Felix, his teeth gritted. Darkness shifted overhead, cutting itself into claws and knives and pincers, then swishing downwards in a whirlwind of sharp edges, aiming for Hansel.

"Stop!" Felix ordered, moving forward.

The shadow stopped. Hansel did not. He lunged towards Felix, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the wall behind him. Hansel kept him pinned in place, their faces close enough to share breath, and beneath his hand, he could feel the soft beating of Felix's heart, like a melody of misfortunes. It took him aback for a moment, the fact that Felix had a heart at all, but then he was twisting the fabric of his shirt inside his fist, pressing his knuckles into Felix's throat until the latter was close to choking.

The words that made it out of Hansel's mouth were a low rasp, each one detached, teeming with barely suppressed animosity. "Why. Did. You. Do. That?"

"Get your filthy hands off of me," Felix growled in reply, flinching from the blood on Hansel's hands, face contorted in revulsion.

Hansel did not heed him. "Answer me! Why did you have to kill my cat!?"

"I said," emphasised Felix, putting his hands flat against Hansel's chest and shoving him hard. "Get away from me."

There was enough power behind Felix's push that Hansel was hurled back, his steps faltering. He came to a stop about a yard away from Felix. They glowered at each other from this new distance, the looks on their faces matched for once.

The shadows rushed in from the sides the moment they were separated, funnelling towards Hansel like a school of hungry piranhas, thirsty for blood and death. One of them managed to swing a bladed limb towards Hansel, landing a surface slash on his back.

"I said stop," snarled Felix at the shadows. The shadows stilled; they hung back in the air subserviently, as if they had no other choice but to obey.

Then Felix did a sweeping flourish in the air with his hand, the way traditional farmers moved theirs when it was sowing season, flinging grains high and wide. But what Felix had scattered into the night was not grains, it was dragonflies, red as blood and beautiful like stardust, appearing out of nowhere, or perhaps from the centre of Felix's hand, swarming the shadows in astounding numbers.

"Get back inside the house," he hissed at Hansel.

Hansel ignored him.

So Felix tied him up with his shadow ribbons, completed with a few ostentatious knots, and hauled him back inside like a gift parcel someone had left in the mailbox. He deposited Hansel in the old couch back in the living room, purposefully rough in treatment, provoking airy groans from the stressed springs underneath. Hansel squirmed against his restraints, trying to break free. He would have shouted, if Felix hadn't also muzzled him tight.

"Stop struggling," Felix told him.

Hansel glowered at him.

"And stop looking at me like that." Felix drew closer to him. "Stop looking at me like you expected any different from me." He brought his forearm to a shaft of light, his clear skin acquiring a pale sheen in the dark. He lifted his other hand, revealing a tiny, sharp-edged blade clasped in it, soot black and made of shadow. Smoothly, he guided the blade downwards and made a clean diagonal cut over the back of his bared forearm, sliding the blade upon his skin with the flair of a magician.

The act was dramatic enough that Hansel took a break from his labours  to peer at Felix. He expected blood to ooze out of the wound Felix had opened in his own arm, instead what came out was glittering black mist, which rose up and dissipated like smoke into the night. Then the cut sealed itself, the parted skin sewing back together seamlessly, leaving no hint there had ever been a wound.

"See Hansel," said Felix silkily. "I have no blood. I have no heart. I am not a human. I don't think like a human or feel like a human. I'm all empty inside." His sharp incisors flashed white in the dark when he spoke. "I'm a monster. I have always been one. So stop throwing such a fit merely because I acted upon my true nature."

Hansel pursed his lips. He began struggling again, tugging at his restraints in hopes of loosening it. He wanted to leave. He had had enough of Felix and his cut-glass words. Enough of his cruelty. But Felix was not done.

He leaned over Hansel and put a hand on the cushion beside his head, drawing his full attention. His eyes were like the space between galaxies, dark and empty. And when he spoke again his voice wasn't crude or gloating, but terribly toneless. "Now you know what it feels like to lose someone you like."

Hansel went rigid at the words.

"Remember this feeling," said Felix grimly. "We are both in this mess because you never gave it half a thought."

Then he drew back and walked out of the room, leaving Hansel alone so he could mull over what had just been spoken.

There was a certain frigidity in the air between Hansel and Felix in the days that came after. Felix continued to be his blithely mean self, while the open antagonism Hansel had been feeling towards Felix after he had killed his cat dissolved at some point, when he realized, even this, even Dream's death was deserved. He did not even have the right to love something for himself, or to mourn for it when it was taken away from him.

He went back to being a shell, unresponsive to everything, the small wellspring of emotions that had burst to life within him drying up and disappearing like it had never existed. Felix still ordered him about—sweep here, wipe there—and Hansel continued to do his biddings robotically, even though now Felix had nothing to hold over him or blackmail him with. This was his life now, and there was nothing he could do but to live it; for how much longer, he did not know.

Obeying Felix without complaints did not mean Hansel liked having him around. He wished to have Felix out of his life, or at least have him leave him at peace. But Felix stuck to him like a gnat, following him everywhere like the tenacious shadow he was, and even the thought of having him gone in the morning did not make Hansel feel any better, because mornings meant school, and school meant more harassment.

Late one night while Hansel was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, Felix sat himself on a granite counter and began juggling some lemons. In the darkened room there was no other noise, except for the tap-tap-tap of the knife knocking against the cutting board and the faint ticking of a miniature clock that sat on a narrow window-ledge above the stove.

"Hansel," called Felix, being the kind of person who was unable to bear silences for too long. "I found out that the sky is a different colour during daylight. I think it's amazing. Do you want to hear about it?"

Hansel wanted Felix gone from the kitchen; that was what he wanted.

"You seem uninterested in hearing about it," observed Felix.

Right. So leave me alone.

"What about I sing you a song instead," suggested Felix. "They say music soothes the soul."

Hansel stopped slicing the vegetables. He wiped the silvery sides of the knife against his shirt and held it towards the light, as if testing it for its worth. Then he opened his hand and put the sharp edge of the knife over it. He traced a shallow cut across his palm, beginning at one end and stopping at the other. Blood welled, black as onyx in the dim lighting; it trickled down his wrist and dripped onto the cold granite beneath.

He glanced towards Felix, who had forsaken his lemons to stare at him with an expression of deep displeasure, his brow furrowed. Hansel raised one of his eyebrows at him an infinitesimal amount.

"Very smart, Hansel Schwein," drawled Felix, hopping off the kitchen counter. His smile was sharp and malignant, just like the blood-smeared knife in Hansel's hand. He ambled towards Hansel, his gait smooth and gliding. "Very smart indeed."

He stopped when he had reached him and went on to take up Hansel's bleeding hand in one of his own. He looked at the wound as if he were inspecting it for the severity of damage. "Did you think you could scare me away if you showed me some blood?"

Hansel said nothing. That had exactly been his plan.

"Keep dreaming," whispered Felix. He brought his mouth to Hansel's hand and licked at the blood like a dog. Hansel stiffened, but before he could pull away Felix stepped back himself.

For a moment Felix stared at the ceiling, eyes unfocused. The fragile way he was holding his jaws and cheeks were enough indication that he had not swallowed the blood yet. He met Hansel's gaze, held it for about a second, then spat the contents of his mouth onto the floor forcefully, as though he were expelling poison.

Felix wiped his mouth brusquely with the back of his hand, then regarded the bloody spittle by his foot with extreme disgust. He jerked a thumb in the general direction of the liquid mess. "Go wipe it away."

Hansel made no move to obey.

Felix looked back at him in annoyance, then looked at his still-bleeding hand. His throat bobbed, as if suppressing a gag reflex. He decided he'd rather not be present in the kitchen anymore. However, before he passed the doorway he cast one last glance back. He spoke in a delicate, vaguely stilted voice. "Hansel, you are such a mean boy."

Then he left, and Hansel stared after him with a blank expression. Look who is talking.