The stranger walked around a dark, sleeping city. There were few people out on the streets, but whenever the man encountered someone, their mouth fell open, and they passed out in front of Him. That wasn't unique to the people here. Everywhere He'd ever been, this is how His interactions with other people went.
For this reason, this man had no companions. He couldn't remember much about His past to know if He ever had any, either. He simply caused all living things to go mad when they looked at Him for too long. Over time, He learned how to make Himself smaller, and He could avoid the effect as long as people didn't pay attention to Him, like in a crowd.
Because of His inability to form normal relationships with others, He treated them like toys instead. Every time someone lost their mind just by looking at Him, He wondered what that felt like, and He was sometimes jealous. Still, He enjoyed seeing others interact with each other instead of Him. It was the closest He could get to feeling something.
The stranger looked at the large building that loomed in front of Him as He stepped over the body of the latest person who'd fainted in front of Him. A theater. If the audience was packed, He could blend in. So long as He made Himself small.
♦
Only half of the seats were filled, and the stranger was able to take place in the back, with no one else nearby. The play was already halfway through, and the all-female cast was made up of albino creatures like the ones outside, but far shorter in stature and probably half His size.
But the man had a hard time paying attention. Instead, He focused on the audience members. Unlike Him, they were enjoying the show. Their bodies probably weren't screaming at them. The man grew frustrated at that fact, and the noise coming from His body only increased, like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Half an hour later, some of the audience members' heads had already exploded. The people in this room must've already started going crazy, because the play was still going. Every time someone died, the man moved on to someone else to focus on, feeding His jealousy even more. Another half hour passed and the play only grew stranger. The man wasn't paying attention to the plot at all, but even He could tell there was nothing left of the original script.
The more time passed, the more audience members lost their lives through either dismemberment or combustion of various limbs. Even some of the performers suffered this fate if they did something the man didn't like. This was going to end up like it always did. The man moved to the front row and waved any remaining audience members goodbye with His left hand.
He didn't do anything specific to exercise control over the remaining performers. It was a natural consequence of His presence, and their awareness of Him. Their mental state had changed so gradually throughout the past hour that they no longer went insane like most people did when they laid their eyes on Him for the first time.
The man was starting to find this pathetic. The performers were like scared monkeys dancing for their lives, and the man hated it. Every cell in His body screamed at Him again as He took out His anger on the person in front, reducing their body to a pool of liquid that coated most of the stage.
After some pause from the whole cast, some off-stage performers started singing again. It took a while before the stage's décor rotated all the way to reveal them. Two little ones and one normal-sized one. The latter caught the man's attention, as she did not belong to the same species of small pale creatures as the rest of the performers. This one had a normal skin tone and height, like a human. When the song ended, the spotlights turned on, revealing the girl's unnatural silver hair.
"Huh?" the girl muttered as she looked around, like she didn't belong here.
After studying the stage like it was her first time seeing it, her eyes went to the audience. To Him. There was something different about this one, like she wasn't affected by His presence at all. This intrigued the man. The last thing He wanted to do was kill her, and instead He sat back and waited to see what she'd do next.