"And who in their right senses would ever want you?!"
The woman was horrified, truly offended that a one handed boy with two crooked bones for legs would suggest himself to be her lady's lowliest of farm boys. The kind that took out the faeces of the animals.
Apparently, he was too disgusting a sight to be worthy of the work. The fourteen year old looked upon the woman, unfazed by her insult, very much accustomed to the stench of repulsion by now.
Even his own father had rejected and disowned him in shame. Nothing else could surprise him.
"I really would do a better job than any one you look to employ. As you can see, my right arm works well. I have no need for the left, missing as it is." He let out a small laugh that irked the woman further.
Seeing as she was not having his laughter as well, he quietened himself. He sat back down on the grime filled street of the village, never taking his eyes off the painted face of the lady. She was the so-called first handmaid of the village chief's wife.
The lower servants stood behind her, he could recognize two of them. They were girls he had grown up with before he was afflicted by the horrible disease that crippled him and took an arm.
One held a fancy oil paper umbrella over the handmaid's tall head of hair, while the other stood behind her with a basket of fabrics. The two servants exchanged strange glances at each other. It was clear they were making mockery of him.
The one handed boy smiled bitterly.
Finally, the Lady spoke. "What are you called, lowly thing?"
He raised his head, a smile still pleasantly sitting on his face. There was no coldness or bitterness behind it. It was truly a wonderful, genuine smile. The woman threw her face away, greatly unsettled by it.
"Zero, my lady."
She sniffed then, nose high up in the air. Of course it didn't matter what he was called. She waved her hands in two directions that didn't make any sense.
Just then, another servant girl came from far behind her where a group of servants stood with their heads bowed. "He shall be the new farm boy. Take him to the servant wagon." Then to herself, she grumbled, "goodness knows why I was tasked with this job today! I have encountered a joke of nature! Bad karma shall follow me now! "
Zero kept the smile on his face, ignoring the woman's biting tone. He took up his battered wooden crutch and wobbled his way over to the servants' wagon. Damned he would be, if he were to accept help from any of the servant girls who pointed and giggled.
Getting into the wagon was a chore with only a hand and two weak lower limbs. Zero didn't mind it. He threw the crutch into the wagon, then used the edge of the wagon as a means to pull himself upward.
When he was inside, he found all the servants, both male and female, that had followed the handmaid on her once in a blue moon journey to the market, staring at him. They all moved away from where he sat, ostracizing the joke of nature.
Zero smiled weakly again, then turned away to watch the market pass by as the horses in front flew with speed.
He briefly remembered his older brother and his wife and the words they had unleashed on him earlier that morning. Although his father had tossed him out of his rickety home, he instructed his older brother to be his caretaker. "The villagers should look upon me as a kind and big hearted man," he remembered his father saying.
Zero's mother was long gone, claimed by the same disease that had crippled him and the lives of many other villagers. He was too young to remember anything related to the plague. All he knew was, it had left him motherless and a useless fellow for life. He refused to be useless, however and strived to do things within the little capability he had.
So when his brother and his wife had lashed at him earlier that morning, he found it hard to comprehend what he had done wrong.
"Nothing you do for this family but eat and stain the floor with your crawling and creeping. Like a filthy rodent!" said his sister-in-law when he came to take his daily portion of soup and stale bread. Surprised by the outburst, he stared motionlessly at the woman.
Her eyes were red, her hair was wild. Her cheeks swayed this way and that as she screamed at his uselessness. His brother was sitting at the little floor table sipping tea and counting the few bronze in his pouch. He understood then. They had received a little sum of inheritance and they were most certainly not willing to share. His father had passed.
Zero, prior to this, had been contributing to the daily needs of their family without complain. He had done many menial tasks and had always brought whatever little coin he made home. Even with his condition, he remained faithful to the task.
But for inheritance that they guarded so jealously, they cast him out of their home, free from the obligation to cater for the family cripple and free from the extra expenses. That was how Zero had found himself on the streets of the village market, sitting among waste and dwelling among the rats.
He shook his head, still watching the road as it passed by. Humans were dangerously cruel and he was too weak to complain.
They had long since left the market and were going further from the peasants' settlement. He had never left the boundaries of Qiqi village before, although now he found himself at the outskirts, in a dense forest leading to the village chief's courtyards. However, something was greatly wrong.
Was the forest supposed to be this quiet?
He had explored a bit in his play time when he was younger, hunting for crickets and frogs in small bushes. The forest was just a bigger bush.
However, it was deathly quiet. As still as a tomb. Many of the servants were asleep as it was near nighttime. The rest were talking amongst themselves, failing to notice the shift in the air.
Zero was a very observant boy, noticing the slightest changes. Whether it was the emotions of a human or the feel of the atmosphere, he was always quick to react.
So when the shadows of the forest suddenly got thicker and the air became so stiff he couldn't breathe, he sat up, alarmed.
'what is this? Why is the air so heavy?'
He looked to the other servants and saw how they were still behaving in the same manner. Couldn't they feel it too?
His eyes caught movement in the shadows of the trees, a dark creeping substance that resembled a viscous liquid. It was crawling on the soil. Everything it touched died, resurrected and died again.
Zero's eyes widened, wondering what he was witnessing. "Look! There's something coming after us!" He exclaimed, pointing into the thick darkness. His hand was shaking, his lips were trembling. Somehow, he knew that if the liquid was to catch up to them, they would suffer fates worse than death.
The servants did not see it that way. All they saw was a crippled lunatic in need of attention. A balding man with a long scar over his face threw a jagged piece of rock at Zero's head. It scratched his eyebrow and bounced off his eye. "Be quiet, bastard," said the man in a hoarse voice.
The remaining slaves laughed as Zero clutched at his eye. The eye watered and he groaned in pain, momentarily forgetting the moving shadow he saw.
Refusing to lose his life, no matter how unworthy it was, he rolled out the open wagon, bouncing off the rocks and bruising his flesh. It didn't matter as long as he did not die.
With the force of the fall, he propelled himself to roll, landing in a bush of thorns. It was a painful fall but it was on the opposite side to where the liquid shadow was coming from.
He watched in silence then— and in weird satisfaction — hoping he would be right and something would happen to the wagon.
And indeed something happened.
The liquid Shadow emerged from behind him, creeping over his skin like slime.
Zero could feel it running over him. It felt like little pieces of glass were burrowing into his flesh. It was a chilling sensation coming from within mixed with the feeling of burning fire.
His eyes widened. He was afraid.
The horrors of hell tainted his mind. He shook in trepidation, for he was an ordinary mortal exposed to the intricate nature of sins. A thousand cries of agony washed over his soul, shocking him and putting him in a state of petrification.
Zero fell to the ground. His body was jerking from the aftershocks of peering into the periphery of hell. His soul was too weak and far too innocent, therefore the young boy perished.
The last thing he saw before he died, was the wagon in front bursting into flames that were as tall as the sky.
Dancing above his head, was a scroll and something that vaguely resembled a bloodshot eye.
The world went dark.