~ Chapter 3: Reflection ~

[His point of view]

Every step I took on the cold damp sidewalk felt like an eternity. The drizzle covered me with small drops of rain, soaking me to the bone. I was cold, I was hungry, and my body hurt after being pushed down the flight of stairs back at school.

They all laughed at me when I fell. The teachers didn’t even bother to give me helping hand or send me to the infirmary. I just hoped I didn’t suffer anything worse than a bruise; I couldn’t afford to go to a hospital, or rather I was afraid that going there could result in much more serious injuries.

With every step I took, I dragged my weight forward, and while doing so, I remembered what a random old man once told me: “People are born with a certain luck, sometimes good and sometimes bad.”

He told me those words right after a car almost hit me on the crosswalk. It was not an accident; the driver was definitely trying to run me over. Afterwards, he even complained to the cops that he missed, but despite all that, he was not even fined let alone sent to jail.

I shook my head as I tried to stop myself from remembering that frightening moment. A heavy sigh escaped my lips as I stopped walking to look up at the sky. Just then, a car drove by and did not even bother to avoid the big puddle in the middle of the road. The torrent of cold water struck me right in the face, as if I wasn’t already drenched to the bone.

“Arf! Arf!” a dog barked at me.

I turned around and saw this little pooch, it was a Boston Terrier. The little bugger ran straight at me, dragging his leash behind. He did not even hesitate a single moment before sinking his teeth into my ankle.

“Ouch!” I flinched.

Of course it hurt, what dog bite didn’t? Besides the torrent of pain, I could almost immediately feel the warm blood dripping from the punctured wounds caused by the canine’s teeth.

“Pedro! Pedro!” shouted the owner as she came running towards us with her yellow raincoat beating against the drizzle and her boots splashing water left and right.

The dog reacted to her master’s call and unhooked his teeth from my ankle. He wagged his little tail and barked a few times towards her. I leaned down and covered my wound with my hand. It hurt, but at least there were no severed tendons or veins, so I could still walk fine and if I was lucky enough, then it wouldn’t even leave a mark behind after it healed.

“What are you doing to my dog?!” screamed the woman.

I looked up at her with a raised eyebrow. Did she not see that it was her pet who bit me? I did not even touch the little bastard!

“Your dog... Ouch!” I tried to say but before I had the chance to finish my words, the woman mercilessly struck me with her umbrella like a baseball player hitting a home run with his bat.

The hit connected to my forehead, sending me flying on my back. I landed in the bushes by the sidewalk. The branches scratched me, and my head pounded like crazy. My ears rang, but at the very least, I was still conscious. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that she placed her full strength in that one swing.

“Ugh... Why did you hit me?” I asked with a groan as I rubbed my forehead.

“You pervert! You bad man! How dare you try to... to harm my Pedro! Hmph!” she shouted at me.

I looked at her amazed by the false claims she threw in my direction and then watched her as she walked away as if nothing happened. I started to wonder for a moment if maybe the woman wasn’t right in the head.

With a sigh on my lips, I sat up and looked at the wound on my leg. Using gathered rain drops, I cleaned it of blood and dirt as best as I could. When I was done, I did not try to chase after her to give her a piece of my mind. With my luck, I was certain to get in three or four more accidents before I reached her. The other reason why I did not go after her was because all the possible hate, disgust, or negative emotions I had towards her as a result of my current predicament had already vanished in the blink of an eye.

Someone else would have ran after her, would have cursed her, would have tossed a rock at her face; someone else maybe but not me. For some reason, I was never able to gather and use that negative will to cause someone else harm, which for others was as easy as cake.

With a slow limping walk, I continued to move forward, hoping this was the end of my bad luck for today.

Wherever I looked, I could see people meeting with better fortune than I ever could. They found love, they had jobs, people were nice to each other, the absolute complete opposite of myself. Looking back at my life, I could never say I ever had moments of happiness or luck as normal people would call them. By all standards, my life was a complete and absolute nightmare from almost every imaginable point of view.

Least to say that for a seventeen-years-old, I was far from normal. But with what could I even start to explain this properly? Maybe it would be best to go as far back as the very beginning of my life?

Well, I was born to a normal family of office workers in USA, Washington DC. The strange thing was that even while I was in my mother’s womb, I could recall how she avidly cursed my very existence, begged God to kill me, she even ended up hitting herself in the hope of making me vanish from her life. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the point of view, I was born like any other healthy baby in the hospital.

Maybe, in a very weird, twisted way, my mother’s behavior would have probably been considered understandable if I was the result of a rape or something atrocious like that, however, I was a child born of love, so why did she hate me so much? I could never find a reasonable explanation except that maybe she was not that sane as she appeared to be.

At that age, however, I technically was not supposed to remember anything, but I was born with a one-of-a-kind perfect memory. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, thoughts, everything was recorded by my brain. At times, I felt as though the only reason I was offered such a gift was to better remember the beatings and sufferings I received throughout my life. That’s why, even after so many years have passed, I could still remember quite clearly what happened when my father tried to hold me in his arms for the very first time. Back then, in my innocence, I thought he did it out of care and love for me. Soon enough, I learned that wasn’t the case. His big sturdy fingers wrapped around my small neck, and he tried to strangle me with all of his might. He cried and screamed at me like a wild animal. It took three nurses and a good dose of sedative to calm him down.

Despite their odd behavior, the Child Protection services didn’t pull me away from them. They left me in their care as though nothing ever happened. Well, their ‘care’ didn’t last long though. As soon as we stepped out through the gates of the hospital, my loving mother threw me in the first dumpster she could find. The last memory I had of her was as she smiled with an overwhelming joy and happiness right before she committed that cruel and unforgiving act.

Normally, I should have died there, but that did not happen.

My cries out of fear, hunger, and loneliness caught someone’s attention. At first glance, she looked like a sweet old lady. She picked me up with great care and held me to her chest, patting me on the back and stroking my head to calm me down. When my sniffles turned quiet, she walked away from the dumpster. Like a loving grandmother, she held me close to her, but once I reached her home, things turned for the worse.

Instead of putting me on the bed, she placed me on the table, on a big platter. As an innocent baby, I looked around with big eyes, sucking my thumb and trying to figure out where I was. Even if I was too young to properly see, I could still distinguish a couple of shadows and some odd shapes.

Meanwhile, the old lady began to sing me a lullaby while she sharpened her knives. I had no idea what was about to become of me. The old lady didn’t bring me to her place to take care of me, she brought me there to eat me. I was to be her next meal.

When she finished with the knives, she approached the table and looked at me with hungry eyes. I was to be sliced and diced and cooked as her weird delicacy, but just then, there was a loud noise at the door, screams and gunshots could soon be heard. I had no idea what was happening around me, but I got scared, and I started to cry. I whimpered like the scared little baby I was.

Moments later, I could only hear the sirens of the police cars outside, the officers talking as they detained the old woman. According to a newspaper clip I would manage to find years later, the old lady was nothing more than a notorious cannibal on the loose, who managed to elude the police for quite a while now. A passerby saw the old lady taking me from the dumpster and instead of heading for the hospital, she went the other way. After a phone call to the police, the detectives were informed of this lead and shortly after, they were at her doorstep.

At least, that was how things went according to the media. What was interesting was the fact that I wasn’t mentioned at all. The officers found me where the old lady left me, on the dinner plate, whimpering and crying. One of the cops picked me up, but just like it happened with my father, he suddenly felt the urge to harm me. Fortunately, he passed me along to another cop before anything bad happened.

The next thing I knew was that I was in some weird place. It was cold, smelled funny, and there was no one around me. If I were to guess, maybe I was thrown into the prison? Well, given the way people acted around me at that time, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that was the case.

Thus, I wasn’t even one month old and already serving time, for the crime of being alive…

I didn’t stay there for too long. The very next day, I was picked up by two nuns from a local Catholic orphanage. Normally, my luck should have changed, but for some strange reason, my new caretakers always forgot to feed me, and the local priest tried from time to time to exorcise presumed demons out of me.

Every day, I was hungry, alone, scared, and crying. I had no one to come help me out, no one to call out to... My very life hanged on a thin thread ready to snap at any moment. Even now, I highly doubt I would have been able to survive for too long given those circumstances. The funny part was that I wasn’t the only one in their care. There were three other babies there, but unlike me, they were all dotted on by the nuns and priest. They were being fed at the right times, calmed down when they were about to cry. They were loved, cared for, and played with constantly. Unlike me, they received absolutely everything they needed. It was almost like the adults deliberately tried to kill me through neglect because that was a very good way through which, I, an innocent baby, could suffer the most.

At that time, I couldn’t ask or question why was God being so mean to me. Why did he make me suffer and cursed my very existence in such a way? Was I not a soul like all the others? Did I not deserve the same love and care any other baby did? For what sort of unspeakable sin was I condemned that even my own flesh and blood parents wanted to kill me and abandon me from the very moment I came into their lives? My death and suffering seemed to bring joy to all those around me.

Just as I thought of this, a car drove past me, hitting all the puddles on the way. I had but a split second to dodge, but in doing so, I stumbled on my feet and landed on the patch of mud just a step away. A glass shard cut my hand, leaving a red line near my little finger. The fresh wound stung and hurt, but I ignored it. I pushed myself off the ground and continued to walk back home.

“Another cut… another day…” I told myself as I forced myself to swallow the pain and keep on moving.

Continuing with my life story, a few months passed after I was taken in by the nuns of the Catholic orphanage. I lost weight and every minute of my existence felt like a living nightmare. The only times they remembered to bathe me was when the smell became unbearable for everyone. Unfortunately, that was also when they tried to drown me. Luckily for me, they always managed to regain their senses before they committed the horrible deed.

Afraid I would eventually drive the nuns and priest mad, they decided to get rid of me. Thus, I was sold for the incredible price of $20 to a shady-looking couple. The nuns had no idea, but the people they sold me to were a bunch of slave dealers. They bought me for the sole purpose of raising me as a slave and then selling me to the highest bidder.

Thus, my next seven years of living hell began. They treated me as nothing more than an animal, but just like it happened back at the church, these people had similar dark intentions towards me. Among all the slaves there, I was treated the worst, fed the least, and beaten the most. No day passed by without me crying because I felt pain and suffering as warm tears flowed down my cheeks.

For seven years, they treated me as such until finally a buyer came for me. To my surprise, the ones who offered to purchase me was actually my old family, the same one who tried to kill me upon my birth and abandoned me in a dumpster. I could not recognize their faces, but I did recognize their voices. That was how I knew they were my biological parents.

I was sold for cheap, just a couple of Benjamins. They did not even recognize me, but I did, yet I could not call them father and mother. The reason why they bought me was quite simple, they needed me as nothing more than a slave and replacement for the baby they had abandoned a long time ago. Thus, I hilariously became my own replacement.

That day, I met my younger brother. He greeted me by trying to stab me with a fork. I was saved by my parents. They scolded the boy by telling him that he should never waste a good fork on me. Least to say, a lot more years of pain and suffering would come my way.

A month later, we moved to Paris. Apparently, my parents were forced to change their jobs sometime during the past seven years. Now, the company was sending them off left and right all around the world. Eventually, they found themselves unable to handle the French way of living. Stressed out and homesick, my mother convinced my dad to apply for a transfer to the Tokyo branch. Just like that, a year later, we were on our way to Japan, the birthplace of my great grandparents from my father’s side.

On papers, I was their son, but in real life, I was their “pet” or a more modern version of a slave. They didn’t want the authorities snooping around as to why they kept me at home all the time, so they went and registered me to a normal school. They picked one at random and didn’t care that it was one hour away on foot.

It didn’t take a genius to understand that not only my parents but the entire world, from the best to the worst treated me in this horrible manner.

At the next intersection, I was greeted by two familiar faces. They were both students from my school and had been my classmates until last year when they made class rearrangements. They behaved with me the same way as everyone else did despite the fact that they weren’t that high on the social hierarchy either.

“Oh look! If it isn’t the loser of the school!”

These words of hate were thrown at me by the infamous otaku of the class. He was fat, wore glasses, didn’t bother to look after his personal hygiene, always blamed others for his shortcomings, and was also a pervert who often tried to peek under the young teacher’s skirt. Normally, he should have been the target of the school bullies, but instead, everyone pointed their fingers at me.

One time, this guy was caught taking peeping pictures, and I, who happened to be walking by, was suddenly accused of looking at them, and this became the bigger crime somehow.

I raised my head from the ground and returned his impolite greeting with a smile.

“You should go and kill yourself, you freak!” shouted the other boy, who was a friend of his.

This guy, somehow, was normal when compared to the peeping tom.

“Nobody needs you! Go die!” shouted the otaku.

They always tossed remarks like these at me, and although I thought that one day they would stop hurting, they never did. Closing my eyes and biting hard, I continued to walk, ignoring the pain in my hand and leg. I tried my best to ignore their words. Dying would do me no good. Everyone would be overjoyed if I ended my miserable life, that was why I continued to live on.

Least to say that ever since I was allowed to go to school, my life did not exactly take a turn for the better. Both people on the streets and those at school made fun of me, pointed their fingers as though I was the worst living entity in existence. Some students even went so far as to hit me or ruin what few books and notebooks I had. I got used to simply hiding the few possessions I had and bringing them out only when I was sure the teacher was going to ask me something. My memory saved me a lot of times from bad grades, but even if my answers were perfect, I would still get a low grade. The teachers never gave me the appropriate marks, there was even one who actually bullied me together with the rest of my classmates.

Everyone hated me as if I were some kind of germ, who needed to be destroyed through torture. I grew up knowing that I am an existence which brings only hate and despise upon itself…

Because of that, I couldn’t even dare to make friends, not to mention fall in love with a girl. My life was a toy for every human and animal alike. There was no place for me to retreat to, to seek comfort or relax, even God and his angels cast down hatred upon me. I lived every day scared and terrified of what might happen to me next. The only thing I knew was pain and suffering, yet I couldn’t bring myself to hate God or my own fate. I couldn’t hate those who saw only to bring me harm. I couldn’t despise my family for the horrible ways they treated me. I couldn’t grab the kitchen knife, stab it into their hearts and look at them while laughing at how their lives slipped away with each drop of blood shed on the hard cold floor...

No, that wasn’t me.

Although living in a world which only knew how to hate me, instead of showing the same feelings and acting upon them, I harbored love… I loved my family and all those around me. Then again, all that time, maybe that was the only way they could show love towards me, a twisted love enveloped only in hate and suffering.

That was the only thought able to ease my pain, the only thought, which for a brief moment, could stop my tears of sorrow from flowing down on my cheeks. The same thought I constantly repeated in my mind as I walked back home, if you could even call it that.

When we moved to Tokyo, my family bought a house with three bedrooms, one living room, two baths, and one kitchen. They had purposely chosen an apartment in a building with a flat rooftop, so they could hold me up there. I was the slave, the pet, thus I had to be treated as one. With nothing more than a few cardboard boxes for shelter and a few newspapers for blankets, I spent my past ten years there. At the age of seventeen, while other teens worried about love, exams, and parties, I worried about my food and shelter. While they feared they wouldn’t be getting the latest techs as gifts from their parents, I feared the dreaded cold nights, the howl of stray dogs, the encounters with the local hoodlums, and the orders of my own family.

In my entire life, there has not been even a single person to show me even the slightest sign of affection. Then again, what was love? Although I knew and for some reason understood it, I never experienced it in my entire lifetime. From what I could tell, I knew it must be the opposite of hate, of what I constantly felt the world submerged me in.

If not even God could come to love me, then what hope could I have to be loved by another soul in this world? What reason would she hold in order to come close to me and instead of stabbing me in the heart, hold me in her arms? Was it so bad to ask for something like this? Was it so hard for the Universe itself to grant me such a wish? The wish of not living in pain, in loneliness, and in suffering?

I stepped inside my apartment building and started to squeeze the water out of my clothes. I was a mess, and I knew I would have to wash my clothes later, that is if they let me, if not, then I would be forced to do so while they were not looking.

“Oi! Michael!” I heard him calling for me.

Looking up, I saw my brother holding a big grin on his face. A shiver of fear went down on my spine.

“Yes, master?” I asked.

He wore casual clothes, a pair of jeans with a chain attached to it, a T-shirt with a weird drawing on it, and sneakers on his feet. He had short spiky hair and a slim build. He was not very tall when it came to height, a little bit shorter than I was. Judging from his attire and the folded umbrella in his right hand, I presumed he was about to head out.

“Ma and Pa want to see you! Family meeting so get yo ass up there!” he said and spat in my face.

I flinched and looked away.

“Now!” he ordered me.

My legs trembled, and I nodded. With a reluctant step, I walked past my brother and went up the stairs. He clicked his tongue, cursed me a few times and then walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

As I wiped his saliva off of my cheek, the only question crossing my mind was whether it was going to hurt or not whatever my parents had in store for me?