When Donovan McGuire and his cronies backed Hansel into a secluded corner of the school come Monday, Hansel allowed himself a moment of panic before he submitted himself to whatever misery was going to come. Donovan was not known for his mercy or kindness, he knew already; he had experienced exactly what came with his package once before. But what Hansel could not understand was where the small kernel of fear strobing inside him had come from. Why was he edging away from Donovan as though his life depended on it? How could Donovan scare him at all? Even Felix and his promise of daily cruelties did not affect him so.

Every time he looked at Donovan, Hansel was reminded of a manic beast unleashed from its cage, hulking above him with a ghastly smile that could rival Felix's. Perhaps, what he feared was the moment he would be ripped to shreds.

They were standing at the end of an empty corridor, every door on either side locked, leading to classrooms that have been out of use for years. Classes had ended a little while ago; there seemed to be no one around the place except for Hansel and his bullies.

When he had been backed all the way into a wall with nowhere to go, Hansel finally calmed himself down. He exhaled through his mouth. If you couldn't go over a problem or under it, the next best option was to go through it. He was going to stay still and let Donovan go through him.

Let him do his worst.

And do his worst, Donovan did.

"Does anyone remember what goody-two-shoes preached to us a while ago?" Donovan taunted, grabbing ahold of a handful of Hansel's feathery white hair. He put his mouth next to Hansel's ear and sang. "You said bullying was bad bad baaad, didn't you?" His breath was like the smoke in a furnace, hot and stifling, but Hansel was chilled, not warmed. He gave Hansel's hair a sharp tug, tipping his head backwards so he would have to meet Donovan's eyes. "Nothing to say for it now?"

Hansel swallowed. He started to back away, then realized, once more, that he had already run out of space.

"Every time you commit a sin you are making the shadows grow stronger," chimed one of the other boys in a high falsetto, paraphrasing Hansel's own words. "Every time you bully someone you are feeding the shadow that will kill you."

"Respected Master," mocked another. "Please do enlighten us with more of your otherworldly wisdom. These humble servants beseech thee."

"Yes, yes, Great Master. We have much to learn from you."

Laughter rang out in the empty space, echoing endlessly. To have his own words thrown back at him with such disdain, Hansel had never felt so small in his life before.

"You will teach us everything, won't you?" asked another. "How to become such an accomplished hypocrite like you. Because, as it stands, hypocrisy is a prerequisite for world domination."

"Ooooooh," cooed a boy with hairclips in his hair. "You are starting to sound rather wise too, Mata. Has Master Schwein managed to rub off on you, perhaps? What will happen to the world, now, with so much wisdom flying around?"

"Shut up," said Mata.

The hairclips boy chuckled.

"A hypocrite, you say?" asked Donovan, clutching Hansel's hair tighter, causing his scalp to tingle with pain. He bored Hansel with his raptor gaze, the scar above his eye—a crooked, white slash—twitching in anticipation of trouble; trouble he was going to rake up himself. "Could be fun, playing with a double-face like you."

Slanted sunlight seeped in through faraway windows, turning from pale orange to evening grey, but the corner the boys were gathered in was lightless, boxed in by the walls.

"So you told me bullying was wrong," he continued. "Turns out you are the biggest bully of us all. How bad were you to have actually caused someone's death?"

Hansel, of course, could not summon the strength or will to answer that.

"Did you make her beg for mercy?" Donovan flicked the back of Hansel's kneecaps with his leg, causing him to fall to his knees. "Like how I'm going to make you beg now?"

Hansel made a half-hearted attempt to pull his hair out of Donovan's grasp, but he couldn't even manage to pry his fingers open.

"What other nonsense did you spew at us?" Donovan swatted Hansel's hand away from over his own. "That bullying was going to create more shadows? Then how terrible must be the shadow that you created." He stooped down so he could reestablish their broken eye contact. "I thought of something interesting. What if I bullied the bully? Would that work as some sort of reverse technique? Make the shadows grow weaker? Think about it, between you and me we could save the world."

Hansel said nothing. He knew this was going to happen. He had always known.

"Say, do you think doing that would make me a good guy?" Donovan kept talking, feigning to be deep in thought. "In all the stories I know the heroes always beat up the bad guy. I have always been a villain. For once I want to know what it feels like to play a hero."

At last, Donovan let go of Hansel's hair and straightened up. Hansel stayed on his knees, eyes cast downwards as always.

Donavan sized him up.

"Alright." He rubbed his hands together like an evil bandit. "Let's take it outside. To the sacred spot where we made first contact. Everyone should have left the school by now. We should be able to do this without interruption."

By sacred spot it was the trash bins he meant, beside the storehouse. And everyone probably just meant Lydia.

The other boys agreed without questions.

So they dragged Hansel to the back of the school, guarded on all sides, as if he might try to escape, or could, not that they had to; Hansel had no intention to run.

They threw him against the trash bins once they were outside, the impact knocking the lid of one of the bins askew. Hansel fell, landing on a scruffy patch of grass, one of his legs bent beneath him.

The sky above was an expanse of ash-yellow, like a dying fire, shot through with streaks of crimson and orange. In the far horizon the sun blazed the colour of a blood moon; a perfect red disk unobscured by the grey veils of wandering clouds.

Donovan walked over and tipped the trash bin over, making it shower its contents out, some of them spilling into Hansel's lap. He then squatted down next to the mount of garbage and fished out a scrunched-up paper from the pile. He nudged it open. "Anyone got a pen?"

Mata had a pen. He tossed it to Donovan, who in turn forced it into Hansel's hand, along with the trash-bin paper.

"Do as I say," he told Hansel. "Open that paper and write: bullying is bad."

With shaky hands, Hansel obeyed.

"Do you know what this means?" Donovan asked, a grinning fiend next to Hansel. "This means your words are trash."

Hansel said nothing to this.

Snickers emanated from the rest of the audience, for sure delighted by their leader's wit. Excited murmurs swirled around.

"Want to guess what happens next?" asked Donovan, no end to his smug leering. His hand was in Hansel's hair again, wrenching. "I'm going to make you eat your words."

He balled up the paper in his hand once more. Then he forced Hansel's mouth open with his free hand and stuffed it inside. Hansel tried to spit it back out, but Donovan placed a firm hand over his mouth, covering half his face with it.

"Hurry up and swallow, then tell me if your words taste bitter."

If Hansel swallowed, he would die. Donovan had his hand pressed against his lower face hard, shutting off both his mouth and nose. He couldn't breathe, and if he swallowed, the paper would likely get sucked into his trachea and get stuck in there, blocking up his airway. He was going to choke to his death. He didn't know if Donovan knew that.

He laboured to break free, his lungs already craving for breath, but Donovan pulled hard at his hair, the way one would pull the leash of an uncontrollable dog, wanting him to give up his struggles.

The response came quick. Hansel gripped the pen in his hand tightly and stabbed it towards Donovan's thigh. With a howl of pain Donovan released him. Hansel scuttled away, spitting out the rotten paper from his mouth and taking in air in huge, greedy gulps.

There was no need for anyone to explain the situation to Hansel, or what the repercussions of his action was going to be like; he could clearly see it written on the fury-mask that was Donovan's face. He had kicked the hornet's nest; he wasn't going to be able to avoid the stings now.

And despite it, despite everything, Hansel laughed.

It wasn't a proper laugh—not even close—it was more of a huff of amusement directed at himself, at the irony of it all. But that little slip, that almost-laugh was enough of an ignition to spark an explosion from Donovan. With a cry of rage Donovan pulled himself to his full height, then he drew his leg back and kicked out with brutal force, grounding his boot into Hansel's gut hard. Hansel folded upon himself, his hands going to his stomach. He was bent so low that his brow was sunken in the grass, and just like that, his face pressed against the mud and his back open to his enemies, he began laughing in earnest.

It flowed out of him like a monsoon river, uncurbed, unstoppable, bubbling up and spilling over without an end, flowing and flowing like something that had been pent up inside him for so long and was only just let out. He laughed like water, like rain, like drowning, delight and sorrow and madness all entwined.

He was unhinged.

This behaviour, however, did not bode well with Donovan. He heaved Hansel to his feet, laughing still, then punched him hard in the face as if it would wake him up. It did not, and with a feral competitiveness he kept punching Hansel over and over again, his fists striking Hansel's face one after another. But instead of cries of pain his assault only elicited a chain of giggles from Hansel, as though Hansel were trapped in a place of rapture that only he knew about.

"What's wrong with you?" snarled Donovan, finally sounding alarmed. He shook Hansel hard, trying to get him to stop. "Why are you laughing? Are you a lunatic? Stop it! Stop it right now!"

Hansel tried; he really did. He closed a hand over his mouth, trying to claw away the deranged smile on his lips, he put another against his throat, compressing his windpipe, trying to choke up the sound of it, but neither worked. The laughter had a life of its own; he could not control it.

With a bellow of rage Donovan flung him away from himself, straight into the waiting arms of the rest of his pack. The other boys did not handle Hansel any more gently. They batted him between themselves, a punch here, a kick there; pushes and pulls and jabs and thrusts. Slaps landed on him from every side and his hair was grabbed more than once.

It was a nightmarish game of free-for-all and Hansel was hopelessly caught in the middle of it. He was passed around and battered like a trophy that everyone wanted and hated at once. They came upon him so hard and so fast it finally smothered his crazed laughter. He was being overwhelmed, forced to endure past his limits, and he couldn't find a sufficient gap in the midst of this melee to catch a breath, to plead or protest, not that he would have done so, anyway.

Bursts of pain racked his body in a never-ending cycle. His thoughts shattered in his brain before they could fully form. He was bleeding from his mouth. His vision shuttered between moments, missing snatches of sight here and there. Nausea roiled inside him like a serpent. His breathing was rough and fast and every inch of his skin was on fire. He could feel his body weakening, his legs slipping from beneath him. But every time he was about to collapse he was pulled upright again, made to receive more blows.

This went on for a long time, until the sun had set in the distance and Hansel was toeing the line between consciousness and oblivion. And when they were finally done, Hansel crumpled to the ground in exhaustion, bruised and bleeding, utterly spent. He closed his eyes and did not move again.

Donovan, satisfied with his handiwork, left him in that state.

Hansel did not know if he had blacked out. Or how long he had laid there like that. But when he opened his eyes again it was to see a pair of dusty green shoes obstructing his field of vision.

Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself upright. The world faded out for a moment, devoured by blackness, then it returned in a sweeping cold rush.

There were spots of blood on the grass blades where he had been lying down, and as he kept his eyes trained on the ground, too tired to look up yet, a clump of hot ash dropped from above and fell in the space between him and the shoes.

This time Hansel let his eyes travel upwards, wanting to know who the shoes belonged to, and when he realized it was Julian—Julian with a cigarette in hand, smoking—he felt his own face slacken with surprise.

The Julian he knew was averse to all things addictive—cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, social media—he had spurned their use in public so many times. Hansel would never have thought Julian would pick up a cigarette, much less smoke one. Yet here he was, doing what he vowed he would never do. What had happened to him?

"Hansel," said Julian huskily, in lieu of a greeting. He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the rapidly cooling evening, the movement of his lips lethargic. His eyes were a frozen hell behind the haze of the smoke, piercing Hansel like daggers made of ice. "It's been a while."

Hansel's eyes were hooked on the burning end of Julian's cigarette, seemingly mesmerised by the way it burned orange when Julian took his next drag. He said nothing.

Julian appeared unbothered by Hansel's lack of response. In fact, when he spoke again, he seemed to be addressing the wind, not the boy kneeling by his feet. "I should think you'd guessed already," he said, twirling the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, sprinkling the ground with more ash. "It was I who spread the rumour about you and Haley."

Hansel had guessed.

There was a breath of shared silence. Then Julian looked down at him, eyes empty, and held out a hand between them as though he intended to help Hansel to his feet. Hansel regarded this gesture with valid suspicion.

"Take my hand," said Julian explicitly, his tone leaving no room for a choice.

Hansel, used to being ordered about, did as he was told. He put his hand in Julian's and let him pull him to his feet. He thought Julian would let go once he was standing again, but he didn't; instead, his grip on Hansel's hand grew tighter. With his other hand Julian plucked the cigarette from between his teeth and brought its burning end to the inside of Hansel's wrist, scorching the skin there in a pulsing red circle.

A searing pain erupted at his wrist and rayed out in all directions. Hansel, who had been feeling woozy and muddle-headed up until that point was winched back into stark, callous awareness. He gasped, trying to snatch his hand away, but Julian's grasp on him was like an iron clamp, arresting his hand between cold, crushing fingers.

The pain in his wrist was unlike anything Hansel had ever experienced. It was worse than the cut of a knife, worse even than the regular burns he got from pans on the stove. This pain was intense and iterative, growing unbearable by the second. Hansel's fingers crimped on their own, quivering as if they were cold, and his entire arm tensed up in response to this active assault. It was all he could do not to cry out.

With a vacant expression on his face Julian watched him struggling. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he took the cigarette away and dropped Hansel's hand.

"I don't like you Hansel," said Julian, his voice no more alive than his eyes. Above him the sky kept inching from mountain grey to igneous black, marking the onset of night. "And I have not forgiven you."

The cigarette in his hand had been snuffed out, so he tossed it aside, where it rolled in the mud a few times and came to rest against a bent straw. "I think I never will."

"I can't forgive myself either," he continued, his voice growing awfully quiet. "I dislike myself too. Because I did nothing to stop you. Because I did not speak a word. Because I did not do the right thing when it mattered."

He ran his eyes all over Hansel, as if scrutinising him. "They gave you a terrible time, didn't they? McGuire and those other boys?" He angled his head ever so gently to the right, as if he was done observing and had not much of an opinion on what he had seen. "I was watching. I thought you deserved it."

The burn-mark on Hansel's wrist kept throbbing badly, sending shudders of pain up his arm. He kept his wrist turned outwards, so the passing wind might soothe it.

"You did such a terrible thing. Then you ran and hid. I thought wherever you had gone you'd be suffering for it. But no. I find you here in Heart, safe and sound. Where nobody knows anything about you. Where people actually think you are good person. Where you are living this happy, peaceful life with no more thought for the crimes of your past. Playing the quiet little saint where no one is the wiser. When all these years I could not escape the nightmares that woke me up every night. When I was still stuck in the past trying to find a way out. But you were here, without a care in the world. You who erred more grievously than me, looking more at peace with yourself than I was. How fair was any of that?

"I wanted to break this world of peace for you, as you had broken mine. I wanted you to feel the sting of justice. I wanted to see with my own eyes that you paid your due as well. I thought I'd feel satisfied once I did. But what is this I'm feeling?"

"Why, Hansel?" he croaked, a real emotion lighting up his eyes for the first time during his entire soliloquy, a flare of something raw and molten. "Why is it that no matter what I do I cannot be made to feel better. Why did we have to become this? Why did everything have to end up this way? Why did you have to do that to Haley? What did she ever do to you? What excuse do you even have?

"Even Finley I can understand. He was a dick. But his foster parents were bigger dicks. They treated him badly. I saw him once wandering the streets during a night in winter after they locked him out of the house. This cannot justify what he did, but it can at least explain it. But you. What can you say for yourself? What's your excuse? What did you lack? What did you stand to gain?

"What's that look on your face, Hansel? Oh, wait. You didn't know that about Finley? Ha, I shouldn't even be surprised at this point. You have always been like this. So self-centered. Thinking yourself entitled. Demanding that the world revolve around you. That scar on Finley's neck he said he got after an accident? It wasn't him, it was his foster father. I bet you didn't know that. Really, what do you even know?

At this point Julian stopped, as if overcome by the onslaught of his own thoughts and memories. He inhaled deeply, the flame in his eyes flickering before it died out. When he started speaking again, his voice had fallen back to its previous state of deadness and dispassion. "I hate this," he said, as if he were merely making a passing comment. "I hate that I had to have you in my life, Hansel. I hate that there was ever a time when we were friends. I hate that I knew you. I hate that I let you ruin my life."

He exhaled, his breath rasping out of him. He looked Hansel dead in the eye. "I wish you were never born."

With this Julian turned, as if he could no longer bear to stay. He walked away from Hansel without another look back, darkness swallowing him before distance did.

Hansel sank to his knees.

Above him, a lone star twinkled in the twilight sky, before it vanished behind a swelling mass of cloud.

By the time Hansel returned home that night Felix had already arrived and made himself comfortable in the living room couch, sprawled out upon it like a heavy rug. He sat up when he saw Hansel trudge in through the front door.

"Oof, Hansel, you look a sight," he remarked, a glint of excitement already creeping into his eyes. "Did you walk into a door again?"

For a moment Hansel could not understand this leap of logic, then he remembered this was exactly what he had told Felix the first time when he had asked about the bruises Donovan left him with during their last encounter. Tonight, he must look far worse, but Hansel did not have any life left in him to explain. He gave Felix a weak nod and shuffled his way towards the kitchen.

"Human beings are so fragile," said Felix, not giving up. "Even a door can do them so much harm."

Hansel filled a glass with water from the tap and brought it to his lips.

Felix watched him curiously while he drank, his head cocked to the side like a bird's. It was only when Hansel set the glass back down on the counter again that he spoke. "So what are you making for dinner tonight?"

Hansel was so tired, tired from his soul, even, that he wished he could fall sleep and never wake up again. He turned to Felix and gave him a shrug. Whatever you say.

"Fine," rumbled Felix, obviously annoyed by Hansel's apathy, even though he was partly to blame after he had gone and gotten his cat killed and did all kinds of nerve-wracking things to Hansel. "Make me some casserole then. I'm craving casserole."

Wordlessly, Hansel went to one of the cabinets and took out a blue ceramic bowl, his movements mechanical. He walked towards the sink with the bowl in hand, intending to wash it. However, before he could reach where he was going, he felt a weakness rush into his wrist. The bowl slipped through his fingers and shattered on the floor, sending pieces of ceramic skittering in a hundred directions.

"I'm sorry," he said, going to his knees, already trying to collect the pieces. "I'll clean this up."

But then, Felix walked up to him and grabbed his wrist. "Where did you get this burn mark from?"

Hansel tried to tug his hand away, but Felix held on.

"Don't tell me you got it after walking into a door too?"

"What does it matter where I got it from?" asked Hansel defensively. He tried once more to free his wrist to no avail.

Felix squatted down before him, ignoring the broken pieces of ceramic scattered all around. His eyes had acquired a sheen of red and his voice was toneless, a clone of Julian's from that evening. "Who did this to you?"

Hansel was surprised by this question, but he did not let this show. "Nobody," he said, standing up all of a sudden. "Now let me go."

"When I ask you something you answer me," snapped Felix, also getting up. "Don't you forget who's in charge."

"Let me go," said Hansel more emphatically, his mind spinning towards a dark place. He looked demented, his eyes bulging in mad desperation. "Let me go!" he screamed this time. "Let me go let me go let me go!"

And Felix did, half scared. He took a step back, ceramic crunching beneath his shoe. "What's gotten into you?"

Hansel gave no answer. His mind was already far gone. Instead, he ran away and shut himself in the bedroom, locking himself from the inside.