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"Hello, Max."

He stood there intimidatingly tall. The lookalike of David, the one who claimed he helped parole ascend a specula place even more heavenly than heaven.

"D-Daniel." Max cursed under his breath. "Shit, what the hell are you doing here?! W-we took you out, Goddammit-"

The voice wouldn't relent. Persisting like a mantra over and over again blocking Max's hearing as the voices forced him to focusing all his attention.

Stop.

It was needed elsewhere. The voices still refused in letting go. They loved controlling the bases in the mind and making Max do things he hated doing.

"You're struggling, aren't you?" Daniel's voice cooed, a sinister smirk contradicting his soothing attempt. "I know you're struggling with the voices."

Max gasped quietly. For once, the ten year old had no words prepared, not even the swears he'd become so accustomed to hearing in daily life.

"Fuckface!"

Dad shoved mother into the wall, she gasped in pain from the unexpected assault. Growling as feral, in unison the two begin their usual fights.

Right in front of Max. The six year old watched with glassy eyes. Constant arguments, beatings, his whole self shook as he heard his mother's yelp and father's snarling as his hands beat the woman.

"Asshole!"

Hands clasped the beer bottle. Swinging in the husband's direction, it clashed with a not-so satisfying SMASH! It broke into the skull.

Blood spewed out father's gashes.

"Slut!"

The man collapsed on the ground in a rather pathetic manner. His mother sneered evil, teeth gleaming in the darkness and looking like a creature's fangs.

Was she human?

"Honey?"

Mother's voice changed from the malicious deep ones into the gentleness a mother praised children their times of need and care.

"Help me move your father, please."

Max only nodded compliantly. Moving at the same pace his mother moved, he hoisted his father's arm over his shoulders, assisting the woman in taking him to their room.

"God, he's heavy."

She soon dropped him on the bed. Picking up Max into her arms, she cradled the little boy staring at his father's injured and unmoving body.

If he was dead, Max felt no remorse. Mother may have abused emotional, but Father inflicted the worse of the worst physically.

At least Mother often.

Daniel's hand settled on his shoulder. Max flinched, a sign Daniel secretly hoped would happen. It was something he could take advantage.

"They hit you." He couldn't keep the smirk off his face, mouth forming the wicked. "They hit you. Max, it's not okay."

His smirk turned into a frown. Max looked perplexed, brows creasing confusingly. No one's pointed how it's not okay. He's always thought it's okay, mother and father's words were law.

"It is okay." He tried defending, voice sounding defeated. He's tired of pretending. "Mom and dad taught me not to be a little shit. Isn't David meant to point out this shit?"

"Yet he didn't. If he's meant to point this out, tell me, didn't he say a word about your abuse."

Max paused his next words. As he much as he hated admitting, Daniel proved himself right. The camp counsellors are meant to notice campers off, depressed, whatever shit Nikki told him the first few days they were meeting each other.

The walls blocked David out once more. A mental picture painted itself in front of Max's eyes, an image the walls forced him to see. David's face with a cross over the eyes. There's only one sign.

And if the walls rejected, Max had to obey. They'd deciding for a while whether David deserved he claimed all campers could give him solving their problems, fears, mental issues.

And Max surrendered his rights. David no longer held a place anywhere in mind nor soul. Once a considered friend now reduced a simple enemy.

let suffer.

The wall closed themselves off. Max's eyes darkened, shoving off Daniel's hand and the walls formed a one personality beside Max's tempered outbursts.

HE HURT US.

The thoughts completely controlled Max's sighed, seeing nothing but walls in the abyss. Closing his eyes, Max's world blackened.

And his eyes opened with a smirk.

"Hey, ."

Daniel's plan acted. He pressed a cloth to Max's mouth, pressing the boy's face into the liquid spread the across the smooth surface.

Breathing in unwillingly, Max's eyes brightened and new feelings of happiness and affection invaded his mind and knocked down the walls he built so incredibly heard keeping anyone in nor out.

The walls broke down. And now only Daniel was the only person the voices trusted. The voices demanded justice for Max in the most horrible ways possible.

The true max shouted inside his one mind. Locked in chains, mouth gagged as he watched through a screen as the walls finally snapped letting the one thing he always kept out finally released.

.

It started just after Daniel, a voice whispering how David, Nikki, Neil were only using him to save the day. Max just listened closely, although never obeyed the orders to hurt, to aim, target the innocent.

"Stop! MOTHERFUCKER! I told you can't hurt them, my friends and even family! Shithead!"

He thrashed uselessly against the chains binding him to the abyss' floors. Walls built around Max slowly as if teasing the child about his impending, string along fate.

""

That voice. That God damn, creepy ass voice intruded Max's efforts in getting out of this shitty prison. Jesus, was he possessed or some shit?

"The fuck are you?" He tilted his head. "I don't remember a voice. Only voices."

The copycat tutted with a giggle. Bending on one knee, it's hand gently grasped Max's chin so his attention was solely on it and it alone.

"" A scowl took the smile, hand squeezing his cheeks. "

"Why others?"

Max chose silence. He couldn't form an actual retort. This other..persona witnessed horrible events the walls allowed another him to see through since they were one.

"So..." His eyes stared vacantly, broken, emotionless. It pleased the persona. "What now?"

""

"What are you?"

""

The other him. The one in the white hoodie turned around and left outside the wall. Presumably in the outside world causing chaos. Max sighed in his lonely prison.

Why did life suck so fucking much?

***

Daniel smiled like a damn psychopath.

He faintly had the one he targeted in his clutches, grasp, whatever you'd call it. The point was, stood in front now was a loyal sidekick who'd help Daniel in his little plan he had for the camp Campbell.

The people at that place didn't deserve the ascension he'd usually allow mercifully before. Daniel intended a rightful and deserved vengeance.

"So, Max." Daniel cooed again, ruffling the smiling boy's hair, oblivious to the hidden meaning. "Are you ready to help your superior now? Your mine."

The boy nodded and keeping that creepy happy smile in hoping to appease the disgusting man standing and lucky he didn't have a knife.

Daniel turned his back and Max's smile evaporated.

He would help Daniel. For himself, only himself and the true him deep down trapped inside his pretty little mind probably sobbing in memories.

I'm not yours. We're not anyone's.

Yes, he'd help Daniel. For now. Following the man deeper into the woods and into the direction of camp camp, the new Mac practiced his fond smile.

"Practice makes perfect."

As their mother once said. He's not evil. Evil is created and raised in a broken home of abuse and neglect resulted in a child developing an entity worshipped into an actual persona.

"I love you, Daniel."

The persona remembered those words weeks in advance. After leaving the gas tank thing, the persona was born into the harsh world with only memories of it's host guiding it's viewpoint.

"Fuck you!"

"WHY DIDN'T I ABORT YOU?"

"KILL YOURSELF!"

"I HATE YOU-"

It wasn't the best start. The persona's thoughts in freeing itself and the host from Daniel's control of them both. It brought him out and now he needed to find a way to escape.

"Good boy."

Daniel's voice kept that constant coo, the persona's body unwittingly relaxed. The damn liquid controlled him mind and body and soul.

All of it belonging to Daniel.