My first memories started when I was five years old, everything before then was hazy at that time, although I remember everything now.
Is it a blessing to remember everything? I don't know, never felt that way.
I lived with my mother, in a peaceful village. Everyone loved us in that village. They would bring fruits, vegetables, and even good clothes to my mother. They would line up the entire day near the village fountain to even catch a glimpse of her smile. Whenever she talked with someone or patted the back of a child, they would literally be in euphoria for days to come. So many men or women would ask her for her hand in marriage, but she always politely refused them all, why? I think it was because she did not want me to suffer; she cared about me a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot.
I also loved her a lot!
What about my dad? I wondered that sometimes. I did not have any memory of him back then. Maybe he left us because he got angry with me? Whenever I asked mother about him, she would always make a sad face but her smile would remain, no matter how much she tried to hide it, her pain was evident.
That's why I decided that I would always be a good boy so that mother would never get angry with me or leave me.
Hmm, now that I think about it, mother never really got angry with me.
Didn't that mean I was a good boy?
Yeah, that had to be it.
"My sweet little sunshine, where are you? Mommy wants to see you!" A sweet voice came out of the ground floor. I was sitting by my window when I heard her. I jumped down on the floor and ran down.
A woman with golden blond hair was standing amidst a few elderly and children. She looked like a sunflower amidst white lilies; she noticed my gaze and beckoned me to come near. Her golden eyeballs felt like miniature suns, not only her eyebrows, even her eyelashes were golden as if she was curved for thousands of years by an expert sculptor out of gold clay.
"Mommy, did you call?"
"Yes, sweety. Can you bring me the food from the other room?"
"Yes!"
I happily hopped towards the room beside me, mommy entrusting me with a job was my greatest matter of pride at that time.
But why?
Of course, because I wanted to be a good boy in front of her!
But why did I have to try so hard to be a good boy?
Uh… because I was not a good boy yet…?
Why did it matter even if I was not a good boy? It's not like she would kill me for that right?
Right?
Right?
.
.
I did not know.
Anyway, when I came out of the room with food, everyone looked at my hand with utter excitement. But when they accidentally looked at me, they would avert their gazes.
Why?
Because they loved me!
Mommy told me that whenever someone would avert their gazes from me, it was because they loved me and it was rude to stare at the face of someone you love.
She patted my shoulder and praised me. She praised me!
"Good job sweety, now you can go play. Your friends are waiting in the playroom."
The playroom was bigger than our entire first floor, nearly as big as mother's clinic.
Oh did I mention, that my mother was a doctor, she treated the poor villagers free of cost, so was well-loved in the entire village?
I went through a small opening on the left side of the room. The passageway behind that was dark, but I was never afraid of the dark because whenever I stepped in, a bright yellow light would cover the entire place from an unknown source.
"La la la~" I sang happily and ran towards the end of the passageway.
My friends were overjoyed to see me. They screamed and even cried tears of joy.
Yes, I was happy to see them too. But I also felt a little sad because the friends I played with two days ago did not come back. It was always like that, whenever I played with a group of my friends, they would never come back to see me.
One day mother caressed my hair and told me the reason, "My sunshine, it is because your friends are very happy after playing with you, didn't I tell you that your friends were sad before they met you? But they are very happy now. When they get sad again they will come back to you, because you are the only one who can make them happy."
I felt my sadness go away after remembering that.
I went towards the cupboard at the left corner of the room, it was also a part of the playroom, but it was separated from the main hall by a dark corridor, I did not know why. I pulled out a drawer from the higher most section of the cupboard and took out a toy, I would play with my friend with this.
"Eeeek!" "Kyaa!" "Oh my God!"
My friends started to scream again seeing the toy, did they like the toy that much? Hmm, my previous groups of friends also had a similar reaction. Should I give it to them? I mean, it's not the only time they wanted to have it.
"Uh, e-excuse me. C-can we talk without that thing on your hand?" A girl older than me slowly crawled towards me. I looked down from my sitting position at top of the shelves and saw everyone gasping in admiration.
I felt anger.
They are MY friends. Why are they praising her? I want to be praised too.
I was actually planning on letting them see the toy but now I won't, and also mother told me not to hand over my toys to my friends, they would not play with me anymore after that.
I felt angry at the girl who got praised; I looked at her body which nearly got limp by inhaling the air in the playroom and said in a cold voice, "I will play with you last."
I did not want to play with her anymore, but mother said that I must always play with the friends who are brought to me.
I stopped paying attention to her and looked at other friends; they were sitting against the wall with an 'anticipating' face. I felt happy again, I went near them, picked a random person and started playing.
My playing consisted of hitting them lightly with my toys and they can also do that to me with their own toy, but the strangest thing was that they never brought their own toys. Strange.
The places of their body where the toy was hit on, started to get redder and redder until red water started to flow out of it. This red water was completely different than the water my and mother drank, it also tasted different, thicker, and a little metal-like.
Did the water we drink a discolored version of this red water? Our clothes get discolored too when we wash them often, I saw mother do it, was it the same for this water? What did they wash the water with? Were they from different places?
My friends were opening and closing their mouths without any sounds, their eyes nearly bulged out of their eye sockets.
No, it was not that they were not saying anything, it was just that I was unable to hear it.
Whenever I hit someone with 'it', the entire world around me started to fade away, there were no sounds except the sound of the sharp edge of my toy hitting against the fleshes.
Thwack! Thwack! Slash! Squelch!
The room started to drown in darkness and the sounds of flesh hitting against the floor started to dim too.
Was I losing consciousness? No. I was feeling pleasure. Although I was only five years old back then, I had already tasted the greatest pleasure of my life. The corners of my mouth started to curve up into a crescent and a maniacal smile was tearing its way out.
"A monster…."
A sudden muttering in 'anticipation' got me out of my dazed state. I opened my eyes whose corners were moist from the extremity of pleasure I was feeling. The annoyance on my face was clearly visible.
The girl I decided to play with last was curled up in a corner of the playroom and looked at me with widened eyes with tears falling out of them.
It seemed like 'anticipation' got the best of her. The air inside the playroom which had a limping effect on the inhaler but for some reason was ineffective against me had its effects worn off on her due to extreme emotions. She slowly got up from her position and with trembling hands pointed a finger at me and screamed at the top of her lungs.
"You! You monster! You… you killed them! Do you, do you think people's lives are plaything to you?!"
Huh? They were my friends though? Was I not supposed to play with them? I kept looking at her with confused eyes.
The girl huffed for a while and stared at me, she started to get bewildered.
"D… do you even understand what I am saying!? You murderer! Do you even know how many children of the village you have killed? Do you know how many parents you have caused grief to!?"
She started to huff again, seemed like the air of the playroom was indeed taking a toll on her. But what I did not know was that she was the daughter of the headmaster of the village high school and was a debate prodigy herself, she had a good way with words and was able to explain any situation very well.
She once again looked at me and was feeling more and more surprised by my confused face. She could not believe the conclusion she had reached on my face but still gave it a shot.
"Don't tell me you yourself don't know what you have done to those kids?" She had already calmed down a lot seeing me putting down the 'toy' in her thoughts.
"What is 'killing'?" I asked the big question I was most concerned about; I had never heard that word before. Maybe because I was not allowed to talk with my friends until we finished playing?
She seemed surprised but also seemed to have expected that question from my previous responses. She wanted to say something but suddenly stopped, she looked around and forced a smile before deliberately saying, "Can we talk outside? Isn't it quite stuffy here?"
I looked under my feet and the mangled flesh and torn apart heads were rolling on the white marble floor, getting tangled up with intestines.
"I have to clean these after mother comes here." I went on to take out the cleaning equipment.
The girl felt her entire stomach starting to churn even more, although she managed to ignore the scenes in front of her while talking with me, she could not completely fool her sense of smell. She ran to a corner and started to shake while lowering her head.
Blergh! Uagh!
A yellow liquid with hard pieces of something fell from her mouth.
Hick… hick…
She started to cry. She found it hard to believe that she had nearly grown comfortable around me. But she was extremely quick to regulate her emotions, she wiped her mouth and a benevolent smile crept its way out.
"I don't think I can explain anything when I am in this state, why don't we take it outside…?"