[ Direct link to the OP art in the media included in the external link. Please leave a favorite and comment there to support the artist. ]

____

Helen is 10 years old. He is a cheerful child who has a lot of friends. Like other children, games and laughter is everything to him.

His best friend, Phil, often visits Helen's home to play with him. Helen's parents are always busy with work, his father often travels for several months, and his mother always returns home at midnight.

Compared to the others, Phil is a more mature kid. Both he and Helen enjoy drawing. But Phil's drawing is always negative and creepy graffiti. He said it was a sort of venting, and it makes him feel better.

On a snowy day, Phil, as usual, took his drawing bag and goes to Helen's home. Helen opened the heating and welcomed him in. Although it is winter, the heating in the room makes Phil feel warm.

"You're sweating! Take off your coat, I'll hang it somewhere." Helen says, as he sees Phil sweating everywhere.

Phil hesitates for a few seconds. "No,thanks." he shakes his head.

Helen rushes forward to pull Phil's coat sleeves, and sees his wrists covered in bruises.

"Is it your father? Did he get drunk again?" Helen asks worriedly. Phil lowers his head, but doesn't respond to Helen's question.

"Come to the bathroom. I'll help you put on analgesic cream, " Helen says. They entered the bathroom, and Phil took off his coat. His neck and back are full of bruises. Helen's hands rub the salve on his back. Helen cannot imagine how Phil's father treats him.

Phil's father is a drunkard. He was violent to his wife and child. Phil's mother couldn't endure it anymore, so she left the family. After then, his mother remarried, and lived a happy life. Occasionally, she would bring some gift to Phil. His father complained about this. He distorted the truth, pushing all blame to Phil's mother.

"You should stay away from him, he isn't fit to be your father" Helen says.

"I know that, but I don't know what to do. We're just children," Phil says.

"I just don't want you hurt."

Phil goes silent for a few seconds, and replies, "Things will get better.....right?" He smiles bitterly.

Helen doesn't understand why Phil doesn't fight back, and why he always pretend nothing happened in front of everyone else, even if it's something severe.

One morning, Phil wakes up before his father does, and prepares to go to Helen's house. He puts on his shoes, walks out, and after walking for a few steps he sees someone waving to him.

"Phil, my dear. It's mom!" Phil's mother calls out. Phil rushes to her for her a hug.

"I bought new clothes for you, it's cold in the winter, please remember to wear warm clothes," His mother carried bags full of new clothes, toys, watercolor and pastel, as well as her caring words. Being able to meet his mother is the happiest thing for Phil.

After chatting with him for a while, she prepares to leave.

"Mom, can't you stay with me for a little longer?"Phil says.

"I'm sorry, dear. My husband is waiting for me in the car." His mother leaves the gifts to Phil , and proceeds to the car.

Phil picks up the gifts, proceeds to the park, and sits on the snow and gaze at the sky; he doesn't know what to do. Once, when he took the gifts back home, his father was very angry with him and he threw the gifts into the fireplace to burn them. He doesn't want this to happen again.

Just then,three kids come to him. "You have the bitch's garbage again?" One of the kids says.

"What did you say?" Phil looks at him.

"We saw your mother, my parents told me she's a bitch who abandoned her husband and child to live with another man."

"NO, SHE ISN'T!" Shouts angrily at them.

"That's the truth, what the hell can you do about it?" He snaps back aggressively. He pushes Phil's shoulder to provoke him, Phil punches him and starts a fight.

One of the kids picks up a stone and throws it at Phil's head. The stone as well as the white snow is splattered with red. Phil falls to the ground, eyes wide, and stops moving.

"OH MY GOD! What did you do!?"

"I got scared, I wanted him to fucking stop... What should we do now???"

The boy is very quiet for a long moment. "Perhaps, we can bury him? "

---------------------------------------

At the time, Helen waits for Phil. He looks out of the window, and sees no one. He rushes out to look for Phil, as he's worried about him.

However, he can't find him. He travels to the park, and sits on the bench. He then sees unusual colors in the snow... Red blotches?

He suddenly has a very bad feeling grow in the pit of his stomach. He takes off his gloves, and digs up snow with his hands. He sees more and more red. This isn't good, he thinks.

He thinks he touches something, a nose, then a face - Phil's face. Helen's best friend is buried in the snow.

"Oh no..." Helen touches the face and cries.

Just then, he heard footsteps, and he sees the three kids standing beside him. They looked at him with a despising manner and run away without saying a word.

Helen doesn't know what's going on, and doesn't understand what it means.

Helen cries for a long time beside the body. Until someone grabbed his shoulder from behind. "Are you Helen Otis?" Helen turns around and sees a police officer and his mother.

The three kids framed him as the murderer. Helen doesn't have any evidence to prove what was going. They know, however, Helen threw a stone at Phil's head, killing him, and tried to bury him, according to the three witnesses.

After the investigation and interrogation, Helen goes home, enters his room, and sits on the bed. After a few minutes,his mother comes in, and sits beside him.

"Mommy, I didn't kill anyone." Helen's blue eyes show fear.

"I know, but the situation isn't good for you." His mother hugs her child as she speaks with a choking voice. 

There is no clear evidence that Helen killed Phil, but as an accused person, the force involved doesn't have any specific argument to refute, not knowing what happened.

The next day, Helen sees other children playing in the park, and all of them looked at him. "Hi, what's up?"

"......."

"You killed Phil, my parents told me to stay away from you," A kid says.

"Dad said you're a killer."

"THAT'S NOT TRUE!!" Helen shouts.

"We can't be sure. Maybe you're lying." One of the children say.

Helen knows whatever he says will be in vain. All of his friends backed away from him, no one believed him.

Everyone regards him as a murderer.

---------------------------------

"Helen, good news!" Helen's mother wakes him up in the morning."There was a witness to the whole thing, he is willing to testify for you."

Helen is surprised, he can't believe to have someone who witnessed the whole thing. He explained everything, and finally let the whole thing end.

"Helen, I want to thank them tomorrow, do you want go with me? Maybe you can become friends." Helen's mother prepared some gifts for the person.

"No, I want to stay home to draw." Helen has given up making any friends; he has changed. He has become indifferent, with his drawing full of negative and strange graffiti.

When it comes to the snowy days, he will remember... Those dreadful eyes of the corpse that was in the snow. That memory is what he can't forget even if he wants to.

Three years later the witness, Vic Steven, changed his name to Tom Steven.