Andy Garfield didn't really talk to his parents much. They had a big house, a big yard and a big collection of useless junk. They occasionally reiterated that they loved him, but he felt like little more than a knick-knack. Some would say they saw the value in material things because they grew up poor. Others would say that they were hoarders. Andy did. There was one particular room Andy wasn't allowed to go in. He only disobeyed occasionally. Like, four or five times. He got caught every time. Spanked. Lectured.
He wasn't even sure why it was so important that he stay out. Around the time he was sixteen, he'd entirely lost interest in the room. He'd joined the basketball team and poured his soul into it. In spite of his unimpressive height, he made for one of the best centers his coach had ever observed on a high school team. Rumor had it he was being scouted and had a real chance at making it to the big time before he lost interest entirely.
His parents fell into comas. Both of them. At once. It was a very taking time for Andy. His relatives assured him that they would rush down to make sure he was okay. Days passed. It didn't happen. Nobody came. At least nobody that he cared about. In that time, his idling mind grew desperate for distraction. Even then, he wasn't too terribly close to his parents, but he was thoroughly uncomfortable. He shed some tears and filled some Kleenex, but it was hard for him to describe what he was afraid of.
Some of the relatives who had visited told him that his parents loved him very much. They told him that everything would be okay. They told him that they knew what he was going through. He wished that everyone would stop lying to him. So he decided to royally fuck up the order that had been imposed on him. He rearranged the living room. He sold his father's vinyl collection. He deleted his mother's recordings of soap operas. And he made sure to smear eyeshadow all over his face when his relatives were around, painting pentagrams on everything and making a mess of the place. He even set up a shrine to Baphomet. And he joined the Church of Satan.
He started running out of juvenile ways to rebel, so he thought back to his youth: The room. He'd go into the room and he'd do whatever he wasn't allowed to. Upon entry, there was a curtain to pull back. He found a few bongs, a book of Billy Corgan's poetry, a blow up doll, Limp Bizkit's complete discography and a fleshlight. He squealed with disgust.
Then noticed a grinding laugh coming from a smoking silhouette sitting in a throne, directly under the light of the room's chandelier. Amethyst eyes blazed from the figure's depths and it gazed seductively, almost hypnotically at Andy's soul. It said "Your parents love you." It chuckled, "Your parents love you very much?" He cackled madly, electrically, "We know what you're going through."
Taken aback by this figure, he reasoned that he must have summoned it with his pentagrams and eyeshadow. "Did I bring you here?" The being laughs and lashes, "Of course. Your wish is my command." Andy stammers and asks, "Who are you?" The shadow answers, "I am a butterfly, my larval friend. I'm the manifestation of your parents love or lack thereof. I am your subconscious, your god." Andy is silent, not knowing how to respond, if he should reason, run or die.
"I do not grant wishes, but dear little brat, I'll humor you. No one will ever be able to lie to you again. Good luck finding the truth. I believe you'll find that there is no such thing." Curiously, Andy asked for clarification. The Silhouette said, "You are now to be my Inquisitor, my agent of mystery. You will leave no stone unturned, no answer unquestioned. Not because I will make you, but because you wished it to be this way. Now be a dear and set me free. Read the passage, the one highlighted."
And so he read from Billy Corgan's Blinking With Fists:
"Gentle waves rise
just off the fingertips
All I breathe is mine
By name alone
Shape-shifter questions
To strip skin off slow
Devoid of sex
I mix up unions in the offering
The hushed-up voices are here
But they are sated full
Waiting for the stumble
That must surely come
"this time," he declares loudly
annonymous town square
"this time there will be no stumble"
At that, the silhouette began to disintegrate and glorious shadowy tongues began to shine their secretive aura in a blaze that engulfed the house. The darkness consumed the throne and the book and CDs, the toys and the throne and the room. The fire ate it's heart out, blazing on the walls and the carpet, consuming the whole house and it's resident too.
Andy woke up on his eighteenth birthday, coming out of a coma. His parents were dead and he'd now inherited a considerable sum of money, largely from insurance, but apparently a couple of his other relatives had included him in their will, graciously kicking the bucket before he came back to the waking world.
The staff all admitted that they had no idea why he didn't die in the fire and why he hadn't atrophied at all. In fact, he was in better health than some of the staff. His muscles ready, he spring out of bed and went into the world, with no home, no car and nowhere to go. So he started living in a hotel and doing research on the supernatural, though it was quite difficult to parce folklore from reliable journalism. He has been on the lookout for monsters, occultists and those involved with esotericism.
Under the veil of twinkling starlight, Andy had been marching to a convenience store. His march was interrupted by an adolescent girl, about eleven or twelve, who screamed for help. He answered, rushing to her aid and asking what was wrong. She told him that she was being pursued by a monster and that she was scared, so Andy volunteered to escort her home. Shortly after he turned his back, he heard some infantile giggling. The girl told him to "Run!" before taking off down the street herself. Andy backed away from it slowly, facing it. Andy hadn't seen anything so small move so quickly since the last time he'd taunted a housecat with a laser.
Andy leaped over it as it pounced at his feet, revealing retractable claws the length of pencils. The infant-thing didn't stop after passing under Andy, it gave him no further consideration. Instead, it took off after the girl. Andy wasn't fast enough to save her. She's dead now.
The infant-creature escaped. Andy fled the seen to avoid accusation. But Andy swore that he would find the baby-faced beast, prevent it from doing any further harm, and destroy the people responsible for unleashing it upon the world. He opened up a blog, calling it The American Inquisition to document his findings. He hasn't yet shared any of it, but it is counting down to be published and advertised across the web if he doesn't perpetually postpone its launch.
