Bethlem Royal Hospital, or as it was grimly whispered outside its walls, "Bedlam," was England's most renowned and notorious asylum for the insane. Its ancient walls were steeped in despair, in cries that seemed to never cease, and in rare, deceptive flashes of mad joy. In this grim realm of lost minds, amidst the general access sections where madness flowed in its most unfiltered forms, sat a ten-year-old boy. He was like a tiny island of silence in the middle of a raging sea. Long, night-black hair fell over his face, shielding him from curious, and sometimes indifferent, gazes.
The air here was heavy, permeated with the smell of medicine, unwashed floors, and something vaguely acrid that settled on the tongue. Muffled moans drifted from behind doors, suddenly replaced by piercing screams that made one's hair stand on end. But the boy seemed oblivious to this chaos. He sat motionless, huddled on a cold wooden bench, his thin shoulders almost merging with the shadows cast by the window grates.
A strict, middle-aged nurse approached him. Her starched apron was impeccably clean, a stark contrast to the general decay around them.
"Victor, why aren't you having breakfast?" Her voice held a strange, almost maternal note, though tinged with professional detachment.
The boy cautiously, as if fearing to break the fragile silence within himself, raised his head. Long strands of black hair shifted, revealing his face, which was surprisingly beautiful and unchildlike in its refinement. His eyes – blue as the clearest summer sky, untroubled by the pain, fear, or madness that surrounded him. His skin was smooth as porcelain, without a single blemish, save for faint traces of scars.
The boy smiled, and this smile illuminated his face as if a ray of sunshine had broken through the clouds. It was sincere, yet slightly detached, like someone who sees the world from an entirely different angle.
"I don't want porridge," he said quietly but firmly. He turned away from the nurse, shifting his gaze to the window. Beyond the dirty glass, the grey silhouettes of trees flickered, and beyond them, the outlines of a city that seemed so distant and alien. Victor always preferred to look out the window; it was his silent, but constant, way of connecting with the outside world, which he observed, analyzed, and, it seemed, understood better than anyone else.
This boy was Victor Moss. At ten years old, he wasn't just special; he was phenomenal. His politeness and sweet smile were merely a thin veneer, concealing a mind as sharp as a blade. Victor loved to read books – not just read, but literally devour them. If left alone in the library, he could stay there all day, only emerging when hunger became unbearable or when he was forcibly removed. He absorbed information like a sponge, and he did so with astonishing speed and depth of understanding.
All the hospital staff, from the cleaners to the chief doctor, knew the boy was a genius. It wasn't just an opinion, but an undeniable fact, confirmed by countless incidents. Once in the library, he found an old, dusty book in German. Without hesitation, as if it were the most natural thing, he asked the staff for a German translator. At first, they laughed at him, but his persistence convinced a nurse to bring him a dictionary and several textbooks. To their astonishment, within just one week, Victor not only mastered basic German but began to read the book fluently, asking questions that demonstrated a deep understanding of the text. His linguistic ability was just one of many manifestations of his incredible intellect. He could dissect any system, understand any logic, solve any riddle, as if his brain were a superpowered computer.
So, what was such a boy doing in a mental asylum, amidst the screams and lost souls? It was very simple, and at the same time, incredibly tragic: at the age of just five, he had killed his adoptive parents.
It happened on a cold, rainy night. His memories of the event were clear and sharp, like shards of glass in his mind. He remembered every sound, every smell, every drop of blood. When the police arrived, a gruesome scene awaited them. They saw a small, bloodied boy standing in the middle of a blood-soaked living room, a knife in his hand that was impossibly large for him. His eyes at that moment were not blue like the clear sky; they were empty, like bottomless wells reflecting the nightmare around him.
Five dead bodies were found in the house. These were not only his adoptive parents but also their friends who had come that evening. All of them lay with their throats slit, their bodies drained of blood, as if someone had sucked the life out of them. Empty alcohol bottles and broken glasses were scattered everywhere, evidence of a wild feast that had ended in a horrifying slaughter. The house, which turned out to have been long abandoned and only partially renovated, now looked like ancient ruins, even more sinister after what had transpired.
Inspecting the gruesome house, the police stumbled upon something even more shocking: a storage room with a cage. Rusty bars, a dirty floor, a single food bowl. This is where the boy lived. Victor himself was very thin, his delicate body covered in multiple bruises and old, healed scars – evidence of systematic abuse. These injuries, both deeply physical and psychological, were invisible to most, but they had shaped him.
When he was examined by doctors, their questions were cautious but persistent: "What happened there? Why did you do it?" To which little Victor began to babble, what adults then perceived as "nonsense." He spoke of all these people in the house being evil sorcerers who killed other people, kidnapped children for their dark experiments. His story was full of fantastic details, too vivid and incredible for a five-year-old child, but at the same time, there was a strange, chilling logic to them.
The doctors, finding no other explanation for his behavior and faced with such a horrifying scene, diagnosed him with severe complex post-traumatic stress disorder, with a propensity for hallucinations and delusions. This diagnosis determined his future – he was placed in a mental hospital, where he had spent the last five years of his life.
The nurse sighed, her gaze lingering on the boy's thin figure. She saw in him not just a patient, but some inexplicable tragedy.
"Alright, Victor. Let's go to the dining room to find something else," she said softly, extending her hand.
The boy smiled, his blue eyes gleaming with an unearthly light. He nodded and quietly, almost inaudibly, thanked her.
He inhaled, and his chest filled with the stale air of Bethlem, but at that moment, he didn't feel it; instead, he smelled something distant, forgotten. Ah, ten years... Ten years had passed since he was reborn into this world. This thought, always present at the back of his mind, was his most cherished secret. In his previous life, he was a student, an ordinary young man, if you could call someone who had been special since childhood "ordinary." He possessed a photographic memory, the ability to memorize entire book pages after a single reading, and an unconventional mind that allowed him to see connections where others saw only chaos. His brain worked faster, deeper, than most people's.
The only thing that overshadowed his past existence was a heart condition – a congenital defect that could end his life at any moment. However, paradoxically, this threat didn't prevent him from living life to the fullest. He didn't hide from the world; on the contrary, he sought to know it in its entirety. He was at a concert of his favorite band, BABYMETAL, in Japan. It was the peak of his passions, the culmination of his dream – to see his idols live. The crowd roared, the music thundered, strobe lights blinded him. He felt euphoria; every chord resonated deep within his soul. In the midst of this incredible revelry, as his heart beat in time with the thundering drums, it suddenly faltered. A heart attack began.
The world spun, sounds muffled, colors faded. He felt himself being quickly lifted onto the stage, and through the haze of impending oblivion, he saw people's faces, their frightened eyes. And then, she approached him – the very one for whom he had traveled thousands of kilometers, flown to Japan. Suzuka Nakamoto. Her face was full of worry; her lips uttered in Japanese, "Are you okay?" This question, spoken in her voice, her concern – it was too much. It made him incredibly agitated; his heart fluttered one last time, like a caught bird, and then it stopped. But at the moment life left his body, he regretted nothing. After all, just before he died, he was close to his idol, and for a fleeting moment, when he was being lifted, he even, just for a split second, saw her panties. It was an irony of fate, but it left him with a final, slightly absurd, but bright memory.
Then he was reborn. There was no transition, no tunnel of light, nothing like that. Just darkness, and then – a bright, blinding light and a sensation of cold, hunger, pain. He doesn't know his biological parents in this world. His only memories are of the family of those "sorcerers," as he called them. Their faces were blurry, but their cruelty was distinct. They tormented him in every way possible, turning his childhood into an endless nightmare. They locked him in a cage like an animal, starved him until his ribs showed through his skin. They beat him for the slightest transgression or just for boredom, leaving bruises and scars on his body that never fully healed.
The last straw was when their friends came over – just as disgusting and debauched as the "parents" themselves. They drank, laughed, their voices growing louder and more unrestrained. And that's when Victor heard something that completely twisted his perception. They were discussing a plan: how they were going to kill a family, and then kidnap their child. For what? "For experiments," Victor heard, and that word made his blood run cold. He lay in his cage, listening to their drunken voices, and a plan matured in his small, yet already so damaged, mind. There was no hesitation, no fear. There was only cold, calculated determination.
Waiting until their voices died down, when heavy breathing replaced drunken laughter, and he understood they had passed out in an alcoholic stupor, Victor emerged from his cage. His movements were silent, like a shadow. He found a knife, a kitchen knife, heavy and sharp. And without any regret, without a single drop of hesitation, he slit all their throats. Blood gushed, soaking the floor, but he felt neither disgust nor horror. He did it coldly, like a surgeon performing an operation: precise, accurate, without extra emotion. At that moment, he was not a child, but an instrument of retribution, executing his own, perverted sentence.
Finished, he left the house. The fresh, damp night air sharply contrasted with the smell of blood and alcohol that permeated the inside. He met the first passerby – a man returning home after a late shift. Victor approached him, his small face surprisingly calm. He told him everything – about the dead bodies, about the sorcerers, about what he had done. He didn't try to hide or embellish. He simply told the truth, his truth. And then he returned to wait for the police, standing in the blood-soaked house until the first rays of dawn began to illuminate the sky. This is how he ended up here, in Bethlem, a place where his genius and traumatized mind became his curse and, perhaps, his only salvation.