Once upon a time there lived a naughty little boy named Roman. He had dark hair and mischevious eyes. Quite queer features for a boy with parents both adorning rosy cheeks, golden locks, and bashful blue eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Aingsley lived in a big house with their little tumble of joy. They cared for their new son just as they cared for one another. Exactly as they cared for one another. And little four-year-old Roman shared the same courtesy.
Roman watches his foster mother cry on the kitchen floor, sobbing hard into the palm of her hands. He looks up to the kitchen bench where he knows the jar of cookies is, "I wan'.." He says while pushing himself onto his toes and balancing his weight on a cabinet handle. It's been child proofed and does not open when he pulls on it. One of his hands taps the counter top louder, "I wan'a 'ookie." He tries again, reaching with all his might as he watches the woman ignore him. She looks at him from between her fingers which are red. Blood soaks her palm. Her nose is bleeding and harsh bruising around her eyes has begun to form, "What do you want?" She says bitterly, choking on the lump in her throat. Roman's big eyes look at her, then stops reaching for the counter and kicks the cabinet door in a mini tantrum, "'Ookie!"
"You're not getting a fucking cookie!" She screams.
"Cooookieeeeee!" Roman screams back.
"What is wrong with you?! This is your fucking fault!" She leers at him before lashing out and pushing him over. His small body drops quickly, but his reflexes are slow to process the sensation of pain. A long and painful silence drifts in the room, then he wails. He throws his head back on the tiled kitchen floor, causing himself more pain. More screaming. His tiny hands are in fists, his cheeks bright red as he tosses his head from side to side. Tears spill down his hot face and he bangs his feet loudly on the kitchen cabinet, only hitting harder when the woman becomes more frantic.
"Shh, shh!! Shut up, you little shit! Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up!" Roman is taken by the shoulders and shook hard. He screams a horrendously high pitched screech. Off in the distance, heavy footing comes down the stairs and stops on the last one, "What the fuck are you doing Stacey?" The man reaches the kitchen and sees his wife shaking the boy on the ground. Her bloodied face looks up at him, panic exploding behind her eyes, "He - he wouldn't shut up. I'm sorry, I tried to make him stop, but he - " The man strikes her in the face and she goes down again with her hands over her nose, "Do you want to kill him?" He growls, reeling back his leg for a kick for good measure.
The scene freezes. Four-year-old Roman lays still on the ground, a statue of stress. The man is posed with a hand on the bench and one leg arched back. Beneath him is his wife curled in a ball. He stares at this memory. Little details like the coolness of the tiling prick the base of a skull. Twenty-year-old Roman breathes in slowly as he processes what he is seeing, then opens his eyes again, "Why are you showing me this?"
"Fun trip down memory lane, huh, Kid?" The demon dressed as a harmless young woman with her hair in pigtails grins at him. Roman stares her, completely unamused. Having been torn away from his early morning run has not made him in the mood for jokes today. She scoffs, "This is important. You need to be reminded." He could do without her vague and cryptic choice of words, but he waits patiently for her to explain herself and this sudden kidnapping to a forgotten memory. As he expected, she continues, "Look at you. You had so much potential. The woman had been brutally beaten and all you wanted was a fucking cookie. She didn't give you what you wanted, so you screamed. You screamed because you know it would mean getting her ass beat on by her wife-beating dick of a husband. I remember this moment and I was so proud of you."
Roman says nothing. He turns away and leans back on the bench from his memories with his arms crossed over his chest, "What happened?" She asks,sounding defeated, "You used to be so wonderfully malicious and now look at you. Acting like a fucking sad excuse of a teenage girl waiting to be asked to prom. Where's the guts? Wheres' the Roman that I knew? The Roman who bullied his middle school teacher out of his job. The Roman who slayed Angels for fun. Where's that guy? This guy -" She shoves his shoulder, "- Is a quivering pussy and a boring good for nothing do-gooder who has forgotten where the fuck he came from. You better get your head out of your ass and remember who you are before I have to slap some more sense into you. And next time? I'm not gonna be nice about it."
She disappears and so does the memory. Suddenly he is back on the forest track, yet it is no longer early morning. The sun has risen and the park is too active for his liking. There is no telling how long he has been gone for. Worst of all, that demon bitch had a point.
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