[The winter was unnaturally cold. That's what you remember most sharply about that winter. That, and what you did to him.]
[You had taken him out to an abandoned cabin near some... Well, there weren't woods in the City per se, but it was a collection of trees that thronged enough to spark a child's imagination. How old were you, again? Ten, maybe. But you remember he was six years old and clung to you like glue. You were neighbors, and his only friend, after all.]
[You'd always been a coward. He'd never noticed that, though. He was so much younger than you, after all! He looked up to you, like a superhero. He encouraged you to come along with him and you would shake him off or push him away when it frightened you. You didn't understand then, that he was doing it not to torment you, but because he wanted you with him.]
"Are we almost there?"
[It had been a long trek, at least for a kid his size. It was getting late, too. It was only natural he was getting grumpy and impatient. But you had something to prove to him: That you're better than he was. That you're stronger, that you're not a scaredy cat, and he can stop with all those mocking invitations because you're going to scare the shit out of him.]
"Yeah. Look, there it is."
"Woahhh... You're right, it does look cool! Can we go inside?"
"Go on ahead. I'll grab some firewood. There's supposed to be a blizzard soon."
[But you didn't grab any firewood, did you? Because you saw something in the trees that looked at you, and you ran away. You left him behind, alone, with that thing. He didn't know the way back home, either, not in the blizzard.]
[He came home the next day, but there was something... Different about him. The way he looked at you was fundamentally different, colder, faint. He would stare off into space. He would shiver uncontrollably in summer. You never addressed it, never talked about it, and he always came to see you still, but he came back wrong.]
[Or maybe it was you who came back wrong.]
[Ever since then, you've had a fascination that you can't get rid of.]
[No... To call it a fascination would be inaccurate.]
[You get pleasure from this. This is your perverted self-flagellation and you know it. You've always known it. This obsession, this fascination with the supernatural, the abnormal, this is you punishment and you would never admit it but every goddamn second of it gets you off.]
[Or perhaps I'm wrong about you. Only you can tell me, right? But that would mean finding and admitting the truth to yourself.]
