Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace

My soul quaked with a deep–rooted fear of the orphanage, I was terrified because it was here that I had died.

Thankfully, when Eric took me, we went to the residential wing on the eastern side of the orphanage.

“Maybe the murderer just wanted to scare Colin and Carter, but they didn’t anticipate the fire getting out of hand. The whole dormitory was engulfed. That year, nineteen kids died in the orphanage. Nineteen, apart from Colin and Carter, mostly little seven or eight–year–olds.”

I knew that Colin and Carter were just back for some annual celebration, a coming–of–age ceremony for the kids around their age who had been adopted out.

And those who perished were the ones left behind, the ones never chosen by a family. Such innocent lives were lost.

“We found him in a room choked with thick smoke, gasping for air.” Eric pushed open the charred door; its hinges creaked in protest.

I stood rigid at the doorway, trembling uncontrollably with fear I couldn’t explain. Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

The room was sparse, beds reduced to mere frames, walls blackened by the heavy smoke.

Even after all these years, the claw marks of desperation were still clearly visible.

Marks of a primal struggle to survive.

My hand flew to my mouth as I crouched on the floor, my stomach churning with seasick waves of discomfort.

I couldn’t begin to imagine the agony and despair Colin and Carter must have experienced, locked in that room.

Their cries for help, the futile struggle against a door that wouldn’t budge, their bodies seared by flames, the smoke nearly devouring them whole.

The marks on the walls spoke silently of their final, desperate moments.

“Why… why didn’t you find them sooner?” I choked out, my heart sinking into that pit of despair. “That day, the Langley family faced a great tragedy as well. On the day of the orphanage fire, Mr. Ethan, Mr. Brendan’s most favored son and heir to the Langley Group, died in a car accident along with his wife and another son. Mr. Brendan was lost in grief, and the Langley family was shrouded in sorrow. Everyone forgot that Mr. Caleb never returned from the orphanage.”

Eric’s voice was hoarse, his eyes rimmed with red. “When Mr. Caleb woke up, he went mad. He was in a frenzy, Insisted on returning to the orphanage, and refused to leave with anyone, saying he was waiting for someone that he was told to wait there, and he just kept waiting…

12-07

even as his wounds festered, he wouldn’t leave. It was just post–traumatic stress, which, with patient guidance and support from his family, he might have overcome. But with Mr. Ethan

gone

and under the influence of Mr. Samuel, Mr. Brendan worried about the scandal might bring to the Langley family and had him committed to a mental institution.”

I looked up at Eric, my eyes wide with shock.

Colin… was he really locked away in a mental institution?

“How long was he…” Tears streamed down uncontrollably, my body still shaking.

Why was I mourning?

“One and half years…”

That one and a half years was Colin’s true hell. He tried to escape countless times, only to be recaptured, subjected to abuse, electroshock therapy, forced medication…

Those experiences, those images, I dared not even think..

“I’m sorry for bringing you here without asking,” Eric said, seeing my physical distress.

“What did he go through in the mental institution?” I looked up at Eric, my voice raspy. “Can you take me there?”

I wanted to understand Caleb.