20 years ago (Imogen's Background/World Building Story)

It was a humid, bug-ridden night of Halloween. Parents already started to call their kids around a small neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston. The unpleasant weather was mitigated by the cheerful energy that can only be found around kids sorting their candy between friends and siblings, jokingly showcasing their loot to the awe and jealousy of those surrounding them. 

Houses started to turn their porch lights off as families welcomed back their kids inside. The sojourning scene of crowded streets filled with gleeful children gave pass to the windy emptiness of an autumn night.

...Yet at the tail end of the town, next to the main road leading into the highway, no seasonal glee could reach the mean-spirited scene unfolding between a group of kids who didn't understand what would eventually befall them.  

Laughs and mocking remarks drowned a scene already filled with screams and cries coming from a circle no different from a pit fight. A little girl was stomping a boy 2 grades above her on the sidewalk, her face bloated and smeared in tears and snot as she frantically kicked to the ground little Lewis Hofferman, who no longer tried to plea for her to stop, simply covering his face as he cried due his broken nose from which he could no longer breath from, filled with clogged blood and mucus, his friends pointing and laughing at him without an inch of sympathy. The girl whoever, after enough screams and visceral treats towards everybody around her, was left to do as she pleased, part of her costume already torn off near her knee as she was too chubby and the costume too poorly sewed to withstand the frantic motions it was subjected to. 

The girl was the school's laughingstock; the fat ginger was forced to use braces since preschool due to concerns about growing malformed teeth where they shouldn't. Big expensive round glasses that she didn't need but was forced to use thanks to a poor diagnostic from the town's doctor. Wearing a cheap Mexican costume from a tv show she never watched. Her mom simply stated -"You are NOT gonna go around dressed like that fish whore!"- As she only had old Disney VHS tapes to watch. Her name was Gertrude Yarielis Narvaez de la Cruz, but thanks to one bad joke at her expense during Irish-American Heritage Month, she was now "Imogen", her frizzy hair reminiscent of an unflattering painting of an Irish woman with said name that her class saw during a museum trip. 

Lil Lewis was not a bad kid, yet his constant desire to be accepted in a friend group made him prone to be the lackey of whomever he came across. Imogen's messy mane made her the target of some stingy remarks from the kids Lewis was tailing, just a block away from the little girl who was alone going from house to house to get some candy already late at night, tired of waiting for her mom to wake up, tired after doing a double shift in the nearby fish processing factory, going on her own around the neighborhood, making her the perfect target for extra free candy. Lewis was pushed to go and pick Imogen's basket for the other two older kids he tried to impress. 

What he didn't account for, was the extreme state of mental distress the little girl was going through, already endured the mockery of most kids she tried to be around to gather candy in groups, going to whatever house was left with some candy or even people who would open the door twice in a row just for one child, leaving her alone, with almost no treats, and constantly be made fun for her cheap costume. When Lewis pushed her to the sidewalk, scattering whatever little candy she had left, along with Lewis laughing in a sardonic way to make everybody notice what he did for his so-called "new pals", made the little girl snap with such a feral stupor, that led to the last crowd of kids near the edge of the neighborhood to gather into a makeshift cage fight.

The jokes and laughs coming from the crowd of children slowly gave pass to horror and pleas to stop as Imogen just kept going at poor Lil' Lewis, the childish banter from which this whole ordeal started was no longer in anybody's mind. Now frightened to be found by some adult who heard the squabble that none of them tried to de-escalate, and answers for an unresponsive kid on the ground, coughing for air as a red trail guided by the cracks on the sidewalk let everybody know that this was no longer funny. 

The little girl was now screeching to the point that dogs started to get agitated across the neighborhood, and people started to turn their porch lights back and go outside. The oldest boys already jumped into the nearby fences, leaving those last few kids without anybody to vouch for them. And only after the smallest kid in the crowd started to cry Imogen snapped back to reality, looking at what she did. And then to the horrified audience, she gathered around her.  Lil Lewis no longer cried for help as he lay motionless on the same spot covering himself, now drenched in pee and sobbing in pain, barely able to call for her mom as if he was howling like a hurt animal. 

The night ended with everybody scattering into the woods, Imogen hid within the bushes for hours until her mother came with a flashlight, finding her with part of her costume shredded and covered in dirt. Her glare and iron grip on the flashlight telegraphed the poor girl who was coming back home. 

Few to no kids said a word about what happened, and Imogen became even more reclusive and stingy with those around her. But the few people who saw what transpired that night, still remember. 

That feat of unhinged animalistic behavior would lead to bigger things in her future.

The End