Chapter 4 – Shadows of a life once lived.

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The past is in the past. They say it’s better to forget the past and look towards a better future, yet why does my heart ache when I try to forget mine?

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The pain oh the sweet pain, the needles and injections an almost familiar rhythm. But this time, something had changed. The experiments, once just physical agony, now tore at my mind, pulling me deeper into myself, that short amount of time I dropped my guard was all it took. Baloria, the succubus whose blood ran through my veins, had found her way inside me. Her voice echoed in the back of my head, seductive and intrusive, as if she was unraveling me from within.

“Finally. You can’t keep me out, little one.”

I was too weak to resist her fully. As the pain consumed me, I let her in, if only for a moment, and in that instant, the world around me changed. The bloodied laboratory, the cold slab beneath me, it all faded, replaced by something else. Something far more frightening. The sharp smell of alcohol and cigarettes filled the air, and I was back in that old apartment. My home, Sam’s home.

The peeling wallpaper, the threadbare couch, the dim light casting long shadows. This was where I grew up. And now, I was standing in the middle of it again, reliving it as if I had never left.

“What… is this?” Baloria’s voice whispered in my mind, softer now, laced with curiosity.

I didn’t answer her right away. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want her to see this part of me, the part I had buried so deep when I was brought into this world. But she was here now, and there was no escaping her.

The memory played out in front of us. I watched myself—Sam—no older than six, standing in the corner of the room, watching my parents as they argued. My mother, gaunt and hollow eyed, was shouting at my father, her voice hoarse from years of smoking and drug use.

“Why don’t you do anything?!” she screamed, slamming a bottle down onto the table, its contents sloshing onto the stained carpet. My father, slumped in his chair, didn’t respond. He never did. His eyes were bloodshot, his face gaunt and unshaven. He was always either drunk or high, too far gone to care about anything, least of all his son.

I stood there, silent, invisible, as the shouting continued. I had learned early on that speaking up only made things worse. The few times I had tried to ask for food or attention, it had ended with a slap or worse. So I learned to stay quiet, to make myself as small as possible, hoping they would forget I existed.

“This… is where you lived?” Baloria asked, her voice filled with something close to disbelief. I could feel her trying to process what she was seeing, her curiosity growing with each passing moment.

“Yeah,” I muttered, my voice thick with old resentment. “This is home.”

“Home?” She almost laughed, though there was no humor in her tone. “This place is nothing but misery. You suffered here.”

I swallowed hard, my chest tightening as I watched the memory unfold. My younger self finally retreated to the corner, curling up into a ball as the shouting escalated. I could feel the emotions again fear, anger, sadness, all swirling inside me like they had all those years ago. I had been alone, trapped in a place that was supposed to be my sanctuary, but had instead become my prison.

The memory shifted, and I was now outside, walking down a cracked and broken sidewalk. It was cold, the wind biting at my skin. I was older now, maybe ten, trudging to the orphanage from school. My clothes were torn, my shoes barely held together. I had no backpack. I never did. My parents couldn’t afford one, not that they would have cared. The same could be said to the orphanage. I carried my books in my arms, their pages smudged and dog-eared, a testament to how little anyone cared about my education.

The other kids at school didn’t care either. They mocked me for my clothes, for my dirty hair, for everything. They pushed me in the halls, stole my lunch money when I had any, and treated me like I was nothing. And in their eyes, I was. Just another poor kid with no future.

“Is this what it was like for you? Every day?” Baloria’s voice was softer now, no longer laced with amusement. I could feel her beginning to understand, beginning to grasp the weight of what she was seeing.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “Every day. It never got better.”

The scene shifted again, and now I was older maybe fourteen sitting in the cafeteria at school. Alone, as always. I picked at the food on my tray, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. I had learned to keep my head down, to avoid drawing attention. But it never worked.

A group of kids walked by, laughing and shoving each other. One of them a tall, smug looking guy I recognized all too well, stopped beside my table and smirked.

“Hey, Sam,” he said, his voice dripping with mockery. “Where’d you get those clothes? The dumpster?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t even look at him. But that only made it worse. He grabbed my tray and dumped it on the floor, laughing as the other kids joined in. I just sat there, staring at the mess on the floor, my face burning with humiliation but I still kept a smile on my face.

“They treated you like this?” Baloria’s voice was filled with disgust now. “They were beneath you, and yet they… they made you suffer like this?”

I could feel her anger, her disbelief. To her, a succubus who thrived on power and domination, this kind of weakness was incomprehensible.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I said bitterly. “I was just a kid. I didn’t know how to fight back. And no one cared enough to help me.”

The scene shifted again, and now I was older twenty two, walking home from my job at the convenience store. It was late, the streetlights flickering in the distance. My life hadn’t improved much. I had managed to escape the orphanage at the age of eighteen, but I was still trapped in a cycle of poverty, working long hours for barely enough money to survive.

I had no friends, no family to rely on. Just the monotony of work and the empty apartment I called home. Every day was the same, every night filled with the same loneliness.

I was walking across the street when I saw the headlights. A truck, speeding toward me. Reminding me of those novels I love reading. My heart pounded, but I didn’t move. I heard some people yelling at me, telling me to get out of the way but I was too tired, too broken. I had fought so hard just to survive, but now, as I stood in the path of that truck, I didn’t care anymore.

“You let yourself die,” Baloria said, her voice filled with something like disappointment. “You didn’t even fight.”

“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t. I was done.”

The truck hit me, and everything went black. That was the end of Sam’s life. The life I had known for twenty two years, filled with pain, loneliness, and suffering. I had thought it was over. But instead, I woke up in this new world, in a new body, as a child again. I couldn’t remember the first five years of this life but its all the same to me, probably not worth remembering. And now, Baloria had seen it all.

She stood beside me in the memory, her expression unreadable. For the first time, she seemed… shaken.

“This world of yours… it’s so much darker than I imagined.” She paused, her fingers brushing against my arm. “But I see now why you resist. You’ve suffered so much already. You don’t want to be weak again.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if she truly understood. My suffering wasn’t just about being weak. It was about being forgotten. Being invisible. And I was terrified that if I let her take over, if I gave in to her, I would disappear all over again.

Baloria moved closer, her voice soft but insistent. “You don’t have to be that person anymore. You’re in a new world now. You have power, strength. I can give you everything you need to make sure no one ever hurts you again.”

I flinched, the weight of her words pressing down on me. She was tempting, her promises sweet and seductive. But I couldn’t trust her. Not yet.

“No,” I said, my voice firm. “I won’t give in. Not to you.”

She smiled, a knowing, predatory smile. “You say that now, little one. But we’ll see. In time, you may come to realize that I’m not your enemy.”

The memory began to fade, the apartment, the streets, the school all dissolving into darkness. I was being pulled back, back to the cold reality of the laboratory, back to the needles and experiments. But even as I returned, Baloria’s presence lingered in the back of my mind, her voice whispering promises of power and freedom.

I wasn’t sure how long I could resist her. The pain, the memories, the trauma… it was all too much. But for now, I held on. For now, I was still me.

But for how long?