You see, I'm not, the most popular person in the world. Or in my town. Or in my school. I live near Arlendiai in Magnolia and you know how that place is, or, I guess, was. Kids can play out in the streets, you could leave doors unlocked and no one would take anything. Despite the tight-knit community that we lived in, I was that loose thread that a lot of people just wanted to snip.
It's not like I was hated. We couldn't hate. Not us. Magnolia was a perfect little place in the armpit of the largest city in the known world. We couldn't hate. Hatred brings me to kill you and you to kill me. Hatred tells me that your unborn children should be exterminated and you that mine are no more than vermin. Hatred climbs under our skin and pumps fear into our veins, switching off any part of our minds that should protest. Hatred convinces us that others will come to harm those we love and the only way out is to end their lives first, for without the abuse of loving feelings hatred is too weak to cause damage.
However, I was neglected. The opposite of love isn't hate, that's just a warped version of love itself, one that uses the same bit of the brain. Hate tells that once there was love and that love is still possible. The opposite of love is indifference. It's something cold that never stirs itself, never cries with passion; indifference ignores, abandons, acts as if the other doesn't matter at all. It is as cold as the void, an emptiness that cares not if the other suffers.
I got bullied when I was younger. I still do, but it's not as bad. There was this one girl all through grade school. Her name was Noka. She wasn't mean out of malice, rather an exaggerated sense of self-preservation. She wasn't the only one like it either, all the kids that went through school were just the same. Soft kids either got tough or beaten every day of their lives. That's just the way it was. Rare ones reformed afterward, understood that those ways were cruel, but stuck with safety and what's safer than being the bully?
I have a large red birthmark covering a majority of my face. I try to hide it behind my hair. Most of the time I can make it by without much notice, however, occasionally, there will be someone who, out of spite, will make an offhand comment about it or perhaps even go so far as to insult me directly. Normally, we try not to verbally harm anyone. Or physically harm anyone for that matter. The government is very strict about violence, verbal or physical. And despite the tight restrictions, people still got away with it. Children especially were hateful, and since the government couldn't arrest kids, they were basically free to break any law they pleased as long as they were careful. However, children who got caught with worse enough offenses were sent to the Control Camps which were tucked up against the lower border of Magnolia.
My grandmother had told me she remembered when those Control Camps went up. Said she knew some of the first people that were taken there. She said she knew a girl who strung up a man in the city park back when she was twelve. She also told me when she was eight she went with some friends to buy candy. One of the children with her and her friends gave her second cousin a sugar stick. It basically is what it sounds like: a little pencil thick, plastic tube of sugar. However, after Grandma's cousin ate it, she almost immediately began convulsing and died within the hour. Turns out the kid who gave Grandma's cousin the sugar stick had ground up cyanide pills and replaced the sugar with cyanide. Another kid intentionally set his house on fire, killing his parents and sister before running away. Another girl, who happened to be Grandma's close friend, unexpectedly stabbed her two adopted siblings to death out of hatred for them. Even a three-year-old, actually just four years ago, by the name of Clyde Robinson found a pistol playing in his father's study, thinking it was a toy, he shot his mother and was almost immediately given up to the Control Camps by his father.
The Control Camps were assumed to be psych wards for children with malevolent tendencies -- intentional or unintentional -- and were also assumed to be very safe. But, that wasn't always the case. The kids who were released were sometimes worse than they were going in. Sure, their malevolence had abandoned them, but it left the kids… empty. They were pretty much rendered emotionless. I'd only seen one kid who made it out of the Control Camps. He was fifteen years old. Been there for four years. Never heard him speak. My mother knew his, and she said he just would sit outside and stare at the forest. Just sitting, barely eating, barely moving. The kids were dead. The Control Camps killed children.
There were a lot of… how do I describe this… gaps in Magnolia. Things just sometimes disappear. People will blink out of existence. Even memories can fade. I've lost several memories before. My moms always insist on buying two of everything in case one disappears. We didn't really know what caused these disappearances. Well, until Dia disappeared. No people had ever disappeared before. Just things… I think that was why we were all so rattled. Why our safety was suddenly questioned.
I remember the last time I saw Dia was outside my house in the street, crying under our mailbox. I was watching from inside the screened in porch. It was raining, and my moms wouldn't let me go outside because they thought I'd get a cold. So, I just sat there and watched her sob, feeling only a little guilty for not doing anything, but at the same time, I didn't want my moms to yell at me. They do that too much already. But, in a split second, there was a flash of lightning and in the poor light, there was a figure standing on the other side of the street watching Dia. I pitched open the window and screamed her name, but a perfectly timed roll of thunder drowned out my voice. The next time lightning flashed, Dia was gone, and there was blood running with the rainwater down the street.
From there I don't really remember what happened, just a lot of screaming. From me, in fear. From my moms' disbelief. From the police sirens wail. Be still, I barely heard my mother's voice. The wind screamed. Rain falls hard as stones. The trees bend and moan in wrath enough to scare the gods, branches torn like paper limbs. This storm is wicked because of the death that happened in it. The rain soaks through all of our clothes as my moms hold me close, and the police officers and a scrappy detective try to analyze the situation. There is no evidence but the blood and the footprints were quickly washed away in the vicious downpour.
__________
We had a funeral for her… Dia. It was a shitty way to start our summer.
We stood at the front of the funeral. Everyone's heads were down. Maybe it was them showing respect of maybe there were too afraid to look at what was coming. The coffin was pulled from the hearse by six strong men, all wearing suits. The silence dwelled as they entered the church. It wobbled as they carried it to the front and gently placed it down.
The coffin was dark stained cherry and it was perfectly polished. It had a cushioned and silky lining. It seemed inviting. It was good to know that at least Dia was resting in a comfortable place.
I held my mom's shaky hand the whole time. She wiped tears onto her sleeve and rested on my shoulder. I kept it together until they passed a picture of her to everyone and that's when all the memories came flooding back like a tidal wave. Her face seemed so alive and happy and I couldn't help but wonder what she looked like under that closed wooden box. I stared blankly at it hoping that a miracle would happen and she would rise again and come back to the world, come back to us. But nothing happened.
She was gone.
It's crazy how things can turn upside down for you. You see the person every day and suddenly, they're gone and when they go, a part of you goes with them too. Who knew where she was going to end up if there even was a heaven. I liked to believe that the place is inviting and calm and there's nothing but good in it.
Mourning didn't last long. Four days. It rained for four days. It was as if the gods were bent on washing away the bloody streets. Four more people died. One a day. Mourning turned to fear. We began to look over our shoulders wondering with dread: Am I next? I began to spend more time inside. Usually, in the summer, my friends and I would be out exploring the endless wonders of Magnolia, but after Dia was taken, I began to feel heavy and paranoid, locking myself in my room only emerging to eat and drink before tucking myself away again. I would sit on my bed and watch out the window. Sometimes, I imagined Dia was sitting on my window watching with me. She loved my window with its little alcove. We would read there all the time and make up stories and pretend to be trapped in the window and sometimes we would jump out the window, squealing, and chase each other around the yard. I miss her.
My moms eventually had to force me outside. I met up with my friends Dahla, Megrim, and Vixen at the ice cream shop downtown. The air hung thick around us, anything we said dripped with emotion. Dia's absence had affected us all. It really burned at Vixen the most. Dia was his twin and the abrupt separation and ripped something out of him. I couldn't tear my eyes away from him. He seemed older, the dark circles that smiled mockingly from under his eyes indicated that he spent more of his nights crying rather than sleeping. I wanted more than anything to console him, but I couldn't seem to find the words to say. None of us could.
It took at least a month or more before we saw Vixen's smile again. By then we were foraging ahead through the third week of July and it was hotter than I could fathom. Megrim, Vixen, Dahla, and I retreated into the Dry Forest just outside of downtown, desperately seeking shade. We decided to play hide-and-seek. I knew exactly where to hide. It turns out someone had beat me to my hiding spot.
I saw him in the well in the Dry Forest. I was only wandering by there. People said it was not safe. People have fallen in. It's kind of easy to miss the well when you're not looking for it. But I made sure I looked for it. I found it as I figured I would, and when I turned to leave when he saw a pair of eyes looking out of the shadows in the well. I bent down on the ground near the eyes. He shot out an arm to grab my wrist that must that must've nearly broken with the pressure. He was a weird looking boy. The light was far from good, but it was good enough that I knew what I was seeing. He was merely a boy, yes, but his face was etched with unearthly wrinkles that gave him a demon-ish appearance. I really couldn't see him though. The wrinkles could have been a trick of the light. But at the moment I did not know.
It was beginning to grow late and he still hadn't let go of me. His eyes looked red. Like two angry street lights. I gave a little involuntary whimper. Why was I afraid? All of a sudden he looked normal. His wrinkles smoothed. He let go of me, and I fell onto my rear. His eyes faded to a pretty blue. They were so enchanting, I thought to myself, how could I have imagined them so devilish? He leaned forward, coming into the waning light, and in a sweet little voice, he said.
"Hello, Leslie."
"Hi," I replied warily. "How do you know my name?"
"Oh, I know all children's names." He still looked like a child, although his head was a little large, and he was mostly bald, aside from the odd-looking spurts of hair jutting out in strange angles on the sides and back of his head. I felt sleepy all of a sudden. It pressed down on me like an invisible weight.
"Really? Most people don't even bother to remember my name."
"Well, I'll remember your name." His eyes were so bright, they almost looked silver, and his thin eyebrows were permanently furrowed, even though his mouth was turned up in a smile. He was really pale too. Probably because he had been in the well a long time. His little nose was the only thing that was not that milky white color.
I giggled. "How'd you get down here?"
"I fell in. Just walking. Thought you'd fall in didn't you?"
"Nope, I was watching."
"You're a good girl." I noticed his mouth was stitched closed, but he still spoke like a normal person. His mouth moving like a normal person, the stitches pulling taut and vibrating with every word.
"What happened to your mouth?"
"It fell off when I fell in here, so I put in back on with some needle and a little black string." He held up a wicked sharp needle, and a spool of black thread.
"That must've hurt," I said, sympathetically. My stomach gave a little start. There was something malevolent in his eyes. Then it faded. He looked so pitiful down there.
"Yes. It did."
"Can you get out?"
"No."
"Do you want help?"
"Please." His smile widened, and his brow furrowed deeper. I reached out, and he grasped my hand in his. White and bony, sickening green veins bulge through the paper-thin skin. I heard a low, wet growl. I looked at him to see his eyes midnight black. The wrinkles were definitely there. His hair had turned into spikes, and the stitches snapped as his jaw unhinged to reveal a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
I screamed.