Jonathan was dead. At least, that was what the police told Hunter. After an unexpected run-in with the Hart Twins, he was stabbed five times behind a diner and dead long before the police arrived.

His parents had wept, cried and screamed as every good, traumatized parent would have. They denied everything the police told them. Screamed that Jonathan couldn't have been murdered and that the Hart twins couldn't have hurt him. Shocked and destroyed, they crumbled into despair at their son's death, but Hunter only laughed.

He laughed as the police showed him the blueprints, stained in a thick layer of his dead brother's blood. He giggled as they rifled through his room and pulled up more evidence that he could have imagined of their 'Great Disappearing Act'. Gagging on his twisted sense of humor, he rode all the way to the police station and laughed through the entire interrogation.

Then came the trial. Gone in the blink of an eye, Hunter hardly remembered more than the judge's terrible glasses and a lawyer that rambled too much. But by some strange chance, the jury had blessed him with innocence. In their eyes, he was being controlled by a sick child, manipulated into evil. Hunter was set free, yet as years compressed into seconds and seconds became weeks, Hunter could not have felt more terrorized.

He began to collect fragments of memories like broken teapots, each one useless and gorgeous all the same. He carried them to his first, rundown apartment and shared them with the stray cats that clawed at his ankles. He tossed them in week-old cups of tea and clung to them when blubbering depression gripped him.

Yet, as Hunter's madness swung through his mind on knotted strings, he couldn't shake the feeling that it was all Jonathan's fault. It would happen slowly at first; great fits of insanity that brought him his knees. It took any form it could grip: deep, burning anger or sobbing tears that immobilized him on the ground. Sometimes the laughter would resurface, dragging him through memory after memory of a bloody Jonathan, but always left him emptier than before. The madness manipulated him, lied as it promised to bring back Hunter's childhood or make his parent's stop pretending he never existed. Then it would give him a nice place to live where sirens didn't blare and bring him a good job and a pretty plate of sanity. Hunter would give into the madness and scream for everything that was stolen from him, but it always ended with him curled on the ground, weeping for what was lost.

And it was one of these tortuous hours, collapsed on the couch with a cat in his arms that the door shook from a knock.

"Go away!" He could hardly muster a voice from the demons tearing at his mind. His headache pulsed as he waited for everything to fade away.

"Uhh, Mr. Jokela?" The voice was small and filled Hunter's mind with images of lost girl scouts. It almost would have made him laugh if he wasn't so preoccupied reliving the terrors Jonathan threw on him. "I, uh I don't mean to bother you, but..."

"I said go away!"

"Look, it took me a long time to find your address and I can't stay long." The voice changed, frustrated fear laced through each childish note. "My mom's gonna wonder where I am and... and I think you might be the only one with the answers I need."

"I'm done with interviews! Just leave me alone!" His head fell back, unable to process her words with the pain in his head. He wanted Jonathan dead, gone and dead and stabbed through the heart over and over again. Hunter felt the laughter tickle his throat at the thought of a bloody knife but held it down as the voice returned.

"It's not an interview. It's for a...personal problem." With the voice fallen quiet and timid, he raised his head and held the demons at the back of his mind. The girl was curiously odd, nothing like the other reporters he dealt with. Cautiously, he got to his feet, brushing a cat out of the way as he placed his hand to the door.

"Thing is, I know your brother, but some things just aren't adding up." Scared, trembling words pulled on Hunter's twisted thoughts. Some lost drop of empathy stirred amongst the madness. "He, uh, he lives with these strange people and steals everything. And, well, I think the newspaper messed up."

"What do you mean?" Hunter fingered the lock, a raging storm in his mind debating whether or not to let her in.

"The newspaper says he's dead, but that's impossible. I saw Jonathan a few days ago."