I often dream of fire. 12 years, 9 months and 22 days since the smoke seared my lungs, flames tore apart the drapery surrounding my bed and the ceiling, to my child’s imagination, recalled as an inferno of red, capering demons. It was in these dreams where I relived the terrifying scene of people whose names and faces I could no longer remember dying in terrible agony. They were always indistinct figures obscured by the smoke and chaos. Some of those desperate figures called out to me by name, but no matter my responding cries to them, I went unanswered.

  I was still in my dream when a dark and wretched foulness smashed into my face. A terrible pain that flung me away and I was suddenly elsewhere. I was outside in the snow where I began to freeze to death. My face was agony. There was a lot of shouting, people running and then the point of view shifted once more and I was in a strange place with a lot of women wearing white. All I could remember of these women was the symbol of an open eye sewn in blue thread upon the front of their robes.

  I can still remember the cold indifference from these women, but they healed a deep wound I had sustained upon my head. I didn’t recall how I had received the wound, but even healed I was still dizzy and nauseous as a result of it. Part of my face, however, was ruined and wouldn’t heal properly. The sight of it was shocking and caused a different kind of agony. I can no longer bear the sight of my own face, nor can I recall what I looked like before the injury.

  Men I didn’t know came and asked me questions. Questions about the fire, about what I could remember, but all I could recall was pain. Then one of the men said a word I hadn’t understood at the time, but soon came to know far better than I would ever want. Orphanage.

  One of the women took me to a large manor in the middle of nowhere. The land itself was a barren, wasted place surrounded by row after row of dead vines and foliage. The manor looked like a dilapidated ruin that was close to crumbling from the weight of its years. Even then, I could smell the wood rot and mildew. I questioned nothing when I was told this was to be my new home. I did what I was told as any little boy would when an adult gave me an order. It was as if the voice inside my head who helped me make sense of the world had been rendered forever silent by what had happened.

  It was my new guardian, Madame Fevre, who taught me what the word obedience meant. This was her Orphanage, she tersely informed me on that first day. I was to obey every command she gave with alacrity and dedication. I would work and I would listen. I must not ever question. These were only the first of many important rules I would learn. The other orphans, for I was not the only boy in the Orphanage, taught me important new words over the next several years. Starvation. Bullying. Neglect. These words more than any other were what I came to associate with ‘Orphanage’.

  I was a quick learner. Lesson One was the importance of keeping silent. From this, I learned how to pick and choose which battles to fight and which to avoid. It kept me alive, if not wholly unscathed. Lesson Two was that children came and went. The world is violent and unfair and so orphaned children were never rare, but when children went it was usually because they died. Lesson Three was that my face was to be the source of constant ridicule and mockery. Everyone, even Madame Fevre, thought my silence was due to a simple mind. An idiot who could be exploited as a scapegoat for the mistakes of others or as a person who could be used as an easy punching bag. More years went by. In that time, not a single adult ever came looking for a small child to adopt. Not that they would want a disfigured one if they did. My face may have been difficult for the orphans to look at, but they grew used to it. New Orphans, especially young ones, always started crying the first time they saw me.

  “See that boy over there? That’s Davros the Bentfaced Hobgoblin! He’ll get you if you don’t watch out!” That was a phrase I heard once when a younger boy entered our dormitory for the first time and one of the older boys pointed me out. I didn’t have friends. Only enemies and those too frightened of me to get close.

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  My lower jaw is crooked and juts out awkwardly to the left. My lower left lip is curled up and over part of my upper lip. There is a dent in my skull on the upper right side I can feel with my fingers and my right eye is set lower than my left, as if that side of my face is trying to slip right off my skull. Or so I have always thought whenever I dare to look at my reflection.

  I came to understand that there was no other place to go. The Orphanage is in the middle of nowhere and those merchants and farmers who brought food and supplies in their wagons never spoke to the children and never lingered. Older kids who aged out of the Orphanage left as quickly as they could never to return. Several younger children died every year. There was very little care to be found for injury or illness. The dead were all dragged away and buried somewhere on the property by Madame Fevre’s stable of lackeys.

  It was always cold no matter what time of the year. The Withered Lands are aptly named especially during the freezing Winters when the thin boards barely holding up the old manor sway and groan with every gust of frigid wind. Each of us would huddle under our blankets in the night, but sleep is often hard to find when starved and freezing.

  Finally, a day came where I reasoned I was close to aging out of the Orphanage. I had grown taller than some of the lackeys by now and my voice was changing. It was time for me to make plans for the future, I decided. I was using a rag to wipe along one of the edges of the kitchen floor. I didn’t know who I was or where I came from. All I had was my name. Davros. It was better than nothing. I dipped my rag into a bucket of dirty water, rung it out and wiped at a particularly greasy spot near the counter where dry oats were mixed with goat milk curds for breakfast.

  Why is this area always so greasy no matter how many times you clean it? It smells like rat droppings today too. I wonder if the lackeys are mixing them into our food again?

  I kept my questions to myself. Madame Fevre frowned at questions especially when they pertained to the upkeep of her house. Madame Fevre sometimes went off on long diatribes about the history of the ‘Great House’ they were all privileged to be living within. The manor was Madame Fevre’s ancestral family home, but she had told us that in her great generosity she had opened it up to orphaned boys.

  “What are any of you, but the cast offs of a world that finds little value in looking towards its own future anymore? The glories of the past are forgotten and even the wretched think they can now stand beside their betters! Each of you owes me for the life I am giving you. You will repay it through your work and your obedience.”

  The Orphanage was all I knew. One never left the property, but then where were they in relation to anywhere else? There was a sparse forest at one end of the property and upon the other were open hills and fields of dead bushes I had learned were once heavy with grapes long ago. I didn’t yet know where I would go when I left, but anywhere had to be better than here?

  That night, I rolled over on my cot. It was freezing as usual and I clutched the blanket close. It was always cold in the dormitory even in the Summer. Some of the other boys said it was because the ghosts of all the other kids who had died at the Orphanage still haunted the place. They would reach out and touch you to steal your warmth. That’s why you were always cold, I had once heard one boy say to another.

  “I’ll get out of here one day and I’ll never be cold again,” I whispered. It was a promise I had started to make just before falling asleep. “And I’ll find out what this is too.” With a thought, I willed the strange window to open. A floating translucent rectangle appeared and floated above my head. As always, no matter which way I turned my head, the window always stayed within my line of sight. The window had first appeared the day after I had awoken from the fire. It was an omnipresent mystery year after year. Why had the Eye, the great Moon that dominated the night sky of the Withered Lands, given it to me? It was the Eye that governed the fate of all people, or so Madame Fevre said.

  Time to Awakening Reduced.

  Time Remaining: 3 days, 11 hours, 42 minutes.

  I had watched the Time Remaining slowly tick down over the years. It was how I knew how long it had been since the fire. I had been in the Orphanage for over twelve years. What would happen in 3 days? Awakening? I was afraid to ask anyone and I’d be damned if I did anything to draw Madame Fevre’s attention to such a thing. I never told a soul about the strange floating window. Three more days and something would happen. More than anything, I wanted it to be answers.