He had always been alone.

Layers of oily fat separated him from his classmates as a child. Acceptance was a goal on a level similar to ascension to godhood. He was tortured with words, and when that reservoir ran dry, they used branches and stones. He had no one-no one at all.

He had always been alone.

No child dared stray within five feet of him unless it was to open another wound, whether slashed by a rock or stabbed by a sentence. No child dared soothe his pain, lest they were slashed at by the others as well. Not like any of them wished to help him, anyway.

He had always been alone.

Years passed like cars on a busy highway. Nothing changed. Words still caused wounds in his flesh larger and worse than those of a bullet. He had never heard a kind word, even as the ages had passed. Even as he spread from the tiny town that provided only the barest definition of a home, the world would not accept him as anything but bait for cruelty and torture.

He had always been alone.

But then he met her, his dear, sweet Beanie. Her pale blue skin held no contempt, her white eyes showed no malice, her yellow, fanged mouth spoke no spears. He had found someone, someone who would treat him not as an enemy, but as a friend.

He was no longer alone.

But his time with her was short-too short. They had taken her. Them. He hated them. They came with their gray haircuts, their eyes holding the malice all of those evil beings had. They had taken her, his poor Beanie. He had chased them, stumbling over the very blubber that had tortured him for years.

But they had not yielded. They spoke of something, something they called an "experiment." He was loaded, loaded with his Beanie, into the back of a four-wheeled hunk of black steel terror.

His Beanie was strapped to a machine, a long, spindly-armed thing. He was strapped to a table and hooked to the arms of the machine. One of them, the taller one, walked to the machine and pushed into it, like the words had pushed into his stomach. And he couldn't help but watch as his Beanie slowly dissolved, weakly crying out with pained squeaks of terror. And he felt her coursing into him, like blood flies through the veins.

He pushed through the arms of the machine and broke through the straps. The first man's skull was done in with a sickening crunch. The second was finished as he was broken against a wall.

He was alone again.