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I have not always known violence. As an angel, it welcomed me in its naked grasp with nothing but its blackened wings wrapping around my feeble flesh. The feathers sank into my skin as if leaving its imprint forever in my being, finalizing a blood bond with nothing but its aura. But it had held me in a way I had not known. And it was then that I knew there was nothing more in this world.
I had been broken after I had been created; shattered by a creator that once saw incredulous potential in me. The artist wasn’t satisfied with its work, and a masterpiece I was not. A forgotten piece that was tossed to the shadows to collect dust and become a distant memory of something I could never be.
The darkness seduced me and I became its comrade, finding utmost pleasure as it consumed my soul and took away the only thing that made a human:
Emotion.
What was sadness? What was it like to be angered at a crude remark by a passing stranger? What was jealously? What was the feeling that meant you felt shivers down your spine as your bones tremble with anticipation?
What was… happiness?
I had been rid of such feelings before I had experienced them, therefore I never knew what it was like to miss them. I wasn’t human anymore, if I ever had been. I could not feel for anything.
Through the darkness, the light reached for me. I could feel it yearning for me to reach back, and I knew no better, so I had requited. I felt the darkness beg for me to stay, but I let the light take me, for I felt no point in trying in life anymore.
I opened my eyes. My gaze burned with new surroundings. I felt everything. I smelled things that I have never smelled. I had heard nature in a way that I had never considered.
I was human. At least, that’s what I determined. My flesh coursed with streams of mortal blood that could easily be punctured and drained. Humans are weak, the darkness had whispered to me, and yet, when my hands were strong enough to hold things, I held living things. I held them, and felt an unspeakable emotion as I had dropped them.
I felt nothing as they died. While I was human, I still found myself having trouble reacting or responding to anything. When I had stubbed my nimble toes and blood had spilt from my skin, I merely watched as the red trickles exited my body. I didn’t know how to feel, mad that I had been so clumsy to get injured in the first place. Or even happy that my whole foot hadn’t been severed in my mistake.
I killed them because I wished to learn. I wished to learn how to react when someone threatened a life. I felt their lives leave their small bodies, and I felt no pity or sorrow for the deceased, for I had once lived in the darkness that their souls have been claimed in.
They call me a child. They say the murdered animals are the work of the devil.
The humans treat me with care as if they own me. I let them, because I wish to learn why they feel the need to treat superior beings with attempted pity.
The rain drenches my hair with waterfalls of liquid from the sky. I stand in the dirt, my toes curling into the mud created by the droplets above. The cliff I rest on is high, but I am not scared. I could not be nonetheless. I spotted its body from a distance and rushed to greet it as it collapsed on the ground.
A bird. It was only a baby.
I stare at it as it quivers with fear. It knows it is dying. I pick it up with my small fingers, staring at its blackened eyes like I had once stared into the abyss of God’s hell.
It stares back, and I feel it pierce my soul for a reason I do not know. I had not known this emotion before.
It scares me.
“Is it alive?”
A voice. It matches with my body’s age. I turn around and see a boy staring at me with considerate eyes and a plump face. His slender body whimpers in the rain as I stare back coldly. His gaze drops to the dying animal in my hand and I hear him audibly gasp from shock.
“Not for long,” I mumble distinctly.
The boy steps forward. His mouth drops open like a wooden door of a man-made cabin. I raise my eyebrows in confusion as he speaks again.
“Can it be saved?” He asks sincerely. I shake my head in reply.
My eyes widen with surprise as he falls to his knees in front of me, his legs plastering dirt and muck on them from impact. His hair is greasy and wet from the weather, and I feel disgust knowing that I look as miskept as him.
“What are you-” I begin. He stares up at me.
He is-
His eyes-
He’s crying?
The boy’s sobs soothe into the rhythm of the rain, creating an antagonizing melody that scratched my brain. I feel disturbed as I watch him feel sympathy for a simple creature. Why was he so affected by something so casual as death? Was there something in humans I had been missing?
“Sa-save it!” The boy shouts, I step back with dumbfoundedness.
Was death not a release from this cursed life?
“Stop crying,” I demand, his wailing stings the air.
“Bu-but the bird! It’s dying!” He shouts back.
I stare down at the animal. Pity. I feel that emotion. And suddenly it comes to be like a ton of bricks.
“It’s suffering,” I start, realization hitting me. I had forgotten that beings could suffer.
It wanted mercy.
“I’ll put it out of its misery.”
I clamp my hand around its neck. One simple, causal motion would kill it. And it would feel relief as the darkness welcomed it as it had once welcomed me.
Goodbye, death will hold you soon.
Then, he strikes me down with his ear piercing yell.
“Stop!”
The foolish child had knocked the hand down that was to rid the bird of its inevitable fate. Why had he stopped it? Was he an adolescent stupid boy who knew nothing of sympathy?
“It is dying,” I say as the sunken boy stares at me head on, his yellow eyes greeting me with a presence I had never known.
“I know,” the boy replies, “but please, don’t kill it. It can be saved.”
Saved? How? It was impossible. The bird’s wounds could not be healed, so how could it be saved?
“You are ridding the bird of relief,” I say profoundly, he takes a step back from the volume of my voice. Intimidation? Fear? I do not know.
“It can be saved,” he repeats subtly.
“It is an animal. It will die, and you are postponing the inevitable.”
“I can save it,” the boy tries.
“It is too late.”
“We have to try,” the boy tries again.
…we?
“Who are you? Why do you care so much for such an insignificant being?” I ask. This is human behavior I had never seen before. I had seen them jealous, frightened, angry, and increasingly unintelligent. But never had they cried for the pain of another species that wasn’t themselves.
“Akira Fudo,” the boy declares on his knees, “please, we can save it!”
“Akira,” I say back to the whimpering human in front of me, “it can not be saved. If you wish to help it, I will kill it to end its suffering.”
Akira’s eyes widened with fear. I wait for a response as the bird in my hand struggles for breath in the wetted air.
“Please,” Akira starts, tears coursing down his cheeks.
I cannot believe this human who feels for such a dismissive animal. The bird means nothing to him, yet he cannot let it die. Why?
“You are an idiot,” I say with spite, “have you no sense?”
“Ryo, please don’t hurt it!” He screams. He grabs my attention.
Ryo?
I wince at the name that spills from his lips. A name I was given by humans who labeled me as one of them. It was as if I was at their level. It boils my skin knowing that the stupid child had known it, while I had not known his.
“Do you want him to suffer?” I ask.
He shakes his head no.
“Then death will free him. Do you understand? He needs to die to stop feeling pain. It’s either that or he suffers and dies slowly.”
Akira shakes his head no. Anger fills me as I stand before the stupidity of the human race. Why had the light made me into this? Into some pathetic, sad child who knew nothing about life and death. Why did he cry? Why did he feel sad? It wasn’t his life being sucked from him. So why? Why? Why?
“Because he is life, and life is precious.”
…precious?
“He is suffering,” I urged him.
“We have to try.”
“Death is final. It happens to all of us.”
“I will not kill a living thing,” Akira complies, tears continuing to shed on his reddened skin.
I recognize him now.
I had forgotten his sadness.
I had seen it when I stubbed my toe. As they had healed it, he stood in the corner crying at the sight of the injury. I had not given my injury a second look, but he cried for me as if it were him.
As if he had felt the pain that I could never ponder.
That’s right, Akira Fudo, the boy who cried for those who couldn’t cry for themselves.
The bird no longer lives. I feel its life leave its soulless body as it lays gently in my hands. It had suffered, and it had died, just like I knew it would. Akira stares at me with sorrowful eyes as if to hear that the bird could be saved. He wants to hear the words leave my throat, not to be sure of the bird’s survival, but to be sure that I believed it could.
My heart pounds vividly as the rain comes to a halt. The mud hill sits peacefully on the Earth as God signals the clouds to stop using a somber tune. I feel a sharp dig at my chest as he presents himself in front of me.
“I will not kill him,” I mumble indefinitely. I do not wish to tell him of the bird’s fate.
Akira rises suddenly above the dirt, his knees stained with disgusting soil. His tears stained his cheeks, making them pink with rashes. His hands frantically wipe excess teardrops under his eyelids as my words meet his ears with ecstasy.
“Thank you,” Akira speaks with compassion.
He leaves then, without saying another word. And I stood there as the night came on scheduled time.
I buried the bird, not pleasantly, but with more sympathy than I had given the previous animals that have died from my grasp.
I think of him, and how I felt when he had cried for other people’s suffering. He had cried for a bird, and he had cried for me when I couldn’t cry for myself.
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I remember that day as I stare into the darkness that now engulfed the once bright world. The dirt below me stains my white skin as I had remembered it had done when the boy pressed his knees against it while begging for mercy.
A smile peers across my lips.
I hold him against my bare chest as a tear falls from my eyes.
“I finally understand, Akira,” I speak into the blissfulness of the air as the world falls apart from around me. I finally understood humans, and why they felt as they had felt. I had known kindness, as it had welcomed me and held me in a way that the darkness never could.
I kiss his cold, lifeless lips as the world caves in. The darkness beckons me into its embrace, but I do not care.
I cry knowing that he had taught me to love, but not how to stop.
“Thank you.” The words he had spoken, and the words I now repeat.
Thank you, for showing me love.
I love you.
Come back.
Akira.
I love you.
Hold me.
Kiss me.
Soothe me.
I miss you.
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