It was evident that she was asking for my name, but I had no intention of answering. I also realized that she wanted to escape, but what I did not understand was why. Why did she want to escape? Is Playing a different thing than Killing? Why did she not want to feel happy after playing with me?
My curiosity, which was nearly non-existent for the past few years started to get the best of me. I decided to pretend not to notice her deliberate escape attempt and heath to her suggestion.
Now that I think of it, I was pretty mature for my age back then. Nowadays when I look at children of five years, they do not even know the difference between a rubber candy and an edible candy, and there I was cracking the motives of the people in front of me at that age. I know I sound like how someone's father would talk about their childhood but for someone who did not know the difference between Playing and Killing, my maturity level was indeed strange.
Anyway, I grabbed her arms and started to crawl inside the cupboard I took my 'toy' from. She was confused at first but as a mature kid, decided not to bombard me with questions.
After crawling for approximately half the time taken for sand to flip to another side in an hourglass, we saw something green.
The floor there was covered with green thin strips of paper which were standing vertically and swaying in the air without any extra support. The green paper strips were covering a vast surface of the ground with tiny boxes at the end of the green ground.
"Just how long did it take for them to cut so many paper strips?" I muttered in awe, never did I ever see something so different. A ground covered with paper strips but not a soft carpet was a completely new concept to me.
"Paper strips? It's grass, you idiot! Have you never seen it before?" The girl felt completely relaxed after coming out of the playroom, which was nothing but a butcher shop for human beings to her. She also deduced that a kid of her age would never be able to kill her without any weapons out here in the open field, because of the village which was nearby, her scream would inevitably reach the village crossing the grass field.
I looked at her and it felt odd, grass? I did read about it in the fairytales, but how come I had never seen it before? Although I was never allowed to go outside, I could still gaze outside from the big floor-to-ceiling window we had on each floor. I could only see the village fountain, market and the houses of people buying in the market. I could hear the market vendors selling staples for cattle, but how come I had never seen grass in it? I read in the fairytale that it was the main dish for cattle.
My mind was telling me that something was wrong.
One of them was lying.
About this whole 'outside' thing.
Who?
The girl with me had already started running towards the houses at the end of the field. I started to follow her. She felt scared when she saw me following her to eventually catching up to her. She wanted to shake me off by running faster but felt the possibility of having a long-range weapon hidden on me. She knew that she could at least dodge an attack she could see to a certain extent, but not something coming from behind her.
The both of us started running through the field. Feeling the awkwardness between someone who nearly became a victim to someone who thought killing and playing as the same thing, she asked a question.
"How old are you?" She did not expect me to answer and rather focused on running away from that damned building.
"Six…" My words got cut off in the middle when I saw a man looking at the two of us with a confused look standing outside the field.
"Sixteen? Oh, so you are a year older than I am? That's unexpected…..?..... Papa?" Her expression turned from raising an eyebrow to squinting her eyes to infinite happiness being smeared on her face.
She started to run like an ostrich on land and slowly closed the distance between her and the man she called papa.
Suddenly, the entire field and the sky above it turned extremely bright golden, as if a miniature sun had descended upon the lands. The man who was also running towards the girl was forced to stop in his track and cover his eyes from being roasted. Neither he nor she could see each other anymore in that brightness.
I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. When I looked back, I saw a goddess standing behind me, smiling. She raised her hand towards me as if asking me to hold it.
The illusion of a goddess broke very soon.
"Mommy…"
"Yes, sweety." Mother gave me a very warm smile and gestured towards the girl who was holding her eyes and tears kept falling out of it.
"Wouldn't you play with her, sweety?"
I was dreading that question, but I never expected mother to catch us so soon. I had never talked back to mother before, if I am asked to do something, the answer would always be 'yes' but it felt a little different that time, I felt like there was no reason for me to agree to her.
As if a magic spell on me had been lifted that very moment.
"There's no need."
Mother's head tilted to the side a little bit and with a confused tone, she asked, "Why? You don't want to make her happy?"
Even if I was a child who had never gone outside and the only human interaction I had was that with my mother and only learned whatever she taught me, I still felt like I could differentiate between happiness and sadness.
Although her eyes were nearly red from constant exposure to the 'sun' and she had seen something horrible just an hour ago, her face was smiling. She was happy. She was happy to see someone dear to her. I realized that moment that she was happy; I did not need mother to explain her emotions. I also realized that whatever I did to my friends before, gave them anything but happiness. How did I know that? Their expression was very different than hers.
I looked up towards her and said with a smile, "She's already very happy."
Mother continued looking at me with a smile and she crouched down to get to my eye level and looked me in my eyes for a second before leaning on my ear. She whispered in a soft tone, "Then would you want to be 'happy' with her?"
A cold shiver ran down my spine, I clearly understood that the 'happy' she was talking about was the same she taught me, not the one I realized seeing that girl. I felt an emotion, which she used to call 'anticipation'.
Suddenly, the light started to dim and it was completely gone along with mother in a few seconds. I felt confused but also happy.
Maybe she truly wanted me to realize what 'happy' meant? She left because she saw me understand it.
As if. As if she did all that for just that reason. The fairytales were making me delusional, I thought.
She was not a lunatic, neither was I..... yet.
Anyway, feeling a bit confused I turned around to the girl who was still on the ground, I wanted to tell her that the danger was gone.
I was not met with a whole living person but a mangled corpse of some rotten animal. The blood had turned black and the flesh was pouring out puss from it, there was no skin on it and the head was wrapped up with intestines and long hair. The only thing which resembled a human was the eyes, which still had some hope and happiness left in them. It was evident that the 'playing' was done so soon that she did not even realize what was happening.
I kept looking at the bloody mess and could only sigh, I was neither shocked, scared nor sad, although I learned the last two words way after that incident.
"'Playing' was really different than I thought huh?"
I could only chuckle helplessly realizing that she probably did all that while talking with me, wearing that warm smile. But my reverie did not last long.
"Uh-ahhh, m-my child!" The man from the other side of the field took almost no time to recover from the shock which came from the blinding light and ran towards the mangled corpse.
I completely forgot about his existence.
The people from the village started to gather around the field hearing his soul-shattering scream. The man ran like a maniac and a woman and another child joined that run. The three of them started shaking when they saw the corpse. The woman crouched down on the ground and slowly removed the intestine on the head with utter disbelief. When she finally uncovered the eyes of the corpse, she could not help but scream in…. an extreme end of 'anticipation', I still did not know what the exact word was.
It did not take her long to hold for her to recover from that emotion and hold the corpse's head very gently in her lap with sobbing eyes.
"Ah, my child! Why, just what did she do to receive such cruel fate!?"
I realized what was the consequence of me 'playing'. It had no happiness after it, even though I was taught otherwise, I could acutely feel what that girl's mother was feeling, although they were not the main topic of my thoughts, it was a few questions.
Questions I never had in my life in that house with mother.
If I can 'play' with others, can't others also 'play' with me?
Why do I even need to do this?
And the biggest question of all,
Why is mommy lying about 'playing'?
Even though no one yet explained to me what 'killing' was and what exactly happens after I am done 'playing' with someone. But I really did realize that something very bad would happen if I let mother continue.
My maturity was really weird for a five-year-old, now that I look back into the past.