I woke up after that dream.
My body was sweating profusely, and my breathing was very heavy, but my heart was beating moderately.
Despite the strangeness of this dream,
That man wasn't scary. I can't lie to myself. His presence brought both calmness and anxiety at the same time.
His beautiful face, mysterious smile, unknown aura, and especially the Spectrum World...
Is it just a dream?
My stomach began to make sounds like forgotten ghosts, and I smiled and began to scratch my hair. "No, I'm just imagining. Maybe I'm starting to lose my mind from extreme hunger."
I took my time thinking about what happened while I was still curled up around myself, wrapped in that worn-out blanket.
The sound of water drops from one of the pipes above
Was the only sound breaking the terrifying silence surrounding this basement.
I watched those drops walking from that pipe, crossing the sloping surface of this low ceiling.
Drop by drop.
Until it formed a small puddle beside me. I kept staring at that puddle, how it grows and expands as it slowly advances toward me, making its way to my tattered bed.
The darkness in the basement was less desolate than the light upstairs.
Darkness was my only refuge... It doesn't pity me, but it doesn't mock me either.
It doesn't talk to me or hear me... but it doesn't interrupt me when I speak.
And silence... was a good companion too.
Even if it was a cold silence like this concrete floor.
Silence that sticks to the skin like damp mold on these walls.
Silence and darkness make all your senses shut down. Your mind begins to imagine several illusions as compensation for the lack of eye and ear activity. It was terrifying to see those faces on the walls as if they were devils crying.
This basement, and I know that repeating words might be boring, but it clarifies the image for people... it's...
In short, it's scary. Its narrow surroundings and low pyramid-shaped ceiling make it a sound breaker. You can almost hear your heart beating from the terrifying quietness of this place, which from its stillness makes you think you're deaf, and from its darkness makes you think you're blind.
I was crying too, like these walls surrounding me.
Crying from the severe excruciating pain in my ribs... from the intensity of oppression... from the intensity of hunger.
It seemed as if my intestines were screaming in pain. What increases the sorrow is that I still remember the tragic incident of the cat and how it ended... in that painful way.
I never imagined in my life that things would reach this extent. I wonder if my siblings will go further? I find it difficult to imagine this...
What makes matters worse is when I pass by the spacious dining room and hear the impact of plates and glasses colliding with each other in that harmonious rhythm, so I know they are eating. Fortunately, the smell doesn't reach this basement.
Because if it did, I would lose all my will and go crazy.
The tears dried up or perhaps froze somewhere behind my eyes.
Leaving behind a feeling of extended emptiness.
Avnes's mysterious words kept echoing in my mind like a distant echo flowing continuously.
"When they saw your birthmark, they decided you don't even deserve to be treated as a human."
Those words were tearing my heart because they were really painfully true.
He said them without any filters, without containing an atom of embellishment or falsification.
And no simple attempt to mitigate the impact of this calamity on me, but he held it as it is and spat it in my face, making me comprehend the extent of the injustice I'm in.
Despite the harsh truth, it was reassuring, even if in a simple way. At least a dream that isn't scary amid a huge swamp of nightmares. A consolation I don't receive every day, and it's wasteful to look at it with that negative thought.
But it wasn't enough to dispel the fear that clung to my soul like a stubborn tick.
I was still a 7-year-old child without a mind sufficient to think of solutions to life-threatening problems.
Being stuck in a body he hates and a world that seems determined to crush him is not just a challenge but... a slow execution, like a guillotine descending slowly until it splits my head.
I began to hear the sound of heavy footsteps on the worn wooden stairs, breaking the silence.
They weren't my mother's footsteps or those of some maid.
They were many footsteps with a light impact.
They were their footsteps.
Leon involuntarily trembled and shrank more into his dark corner on that old bed.
There was no real escape.
But the desperate survival instinct had no logical aspects and pushed him to hide like a small mouse hoping the cats would pass without noticing him.
The door opened with a sharp, intermittent creak resembling an evil laugh, and threads of pale yellow light seeped from the corridor, drawing distorted shapes on the gray floor.
Their shadows appeared first.
Long and extended like the arms of a branching octopus.
Before their bodies followed, and the impact of people's feet produced tones that frightened me on these old wooden stairs.
Yi Lian was the first to descend the stairs and jumped lightly at the last three steps while looking at Leon curled up on his old blanket and hugging his knees to his chest.
She smiled that cold smile that never reached her eyes.
Beside her, Karma and Sarah exchanged complicit looks gleaming with distorted childish cruelty, even Arthur, who seemed shorter and younger despite being exactly their age.
His face carried an enthusiastic and harsh expression inappropriate for his age.
"Oh, look who's here!" Yi Lian exclaimed in a theatrical voice, pretending to be surprised. "He's still alive. That's good."
Leon still remembered the apple incident and how she put a needle inside it, which made him tremble with fear and be terrified of looking at her more than the others.
Yi Lian was always the first to initiate speech. Her tongue was sharper than knives, and her words were arrows that never missed Leon's heart.
Every day, every time, her words became darker, unsuitable for a child of her years, as if she were sharpening a sword that increases in sharpness after each stabbing operation.
Arthur laughed a sharp laugh like breaking glass. "Look at this dirty blanket you're covering yourself with. How do you bear the smell of this basement?"
Leon didn't respond. He held his breath, waiting for what was worse.
Desperately trying to escape reality and become part of the surrounding darkness, but they always knew his place.
Yi Lian advanced, followed by the rest, their steps trampling on silence forcefully.
"Why are you so quiet today?" Sarah asked, approaching him. She grabbed a lock of his disheveled hair and pulled it violently and forcefully, forcing him to raise his head to her. The four were surrounding him. "Did the cat eat your tongue... again?... Or what was the name of that ugly cat?" she said in a gloating tone.
Arthur burst out laughing at her cruel joke, imitating a cat's meow in an ugly way. "Its name was Noel, most likely. Was that the name of a cat or a European general? Haha."
Their laughter began to rise.
Leon felt the sharp pain in his scalp due to her strong pulling.
But he bit his lower lip hard until blood almost flowed as a desperate attempt to endure.
He wouldn't give them the pleasure of seeing his tears this time. He tried to remember Avnes's words about strength, about the mind, but all he felt was a cold wave of despair flooding his mind.
Everything Avnes said remains just words in the face of cruelty you can't escape from.
"We have a new game for you today, Leon," Yi Lian said in a cheerful voice, seeming enthusiastic as she sat in a squatting position directly in front of him. Her eyes were staring at him with disturbing coldness, and her face was a little close to his. "The mirror game."
Leon spoke in a nervous, fearful voice, "M-mirror game?..."
She took something out of her pocket. It was a small hand mirror with a pale, scratched silver frame. She held it in front of Leon's face and very close until Leon's foggy breaths stained the mirror's surface.
"Look," Yi Lian whispered. "Look carefully. This is the reason we treat you this way. Do you see?"
Leon was forced to stare at his reflected image. His eyes were wide and terrified, swimming in a pale, thin face.
And the birthmark... it was there.
Covering a large part of his left cheek.
Starting from his eyebrow until it almost reached his mouth, curved and swaying.
A dark spot taking the shape of a crescent with a very black color like coagulated liver, deformed and repulsive in the dim light.
It seemed as if it was pulsing with its own malicious life under their examining gazes.
"Look at it," Karma repeated in a soft voice like a snake's whisper as he approached more. "It's your special mark... the disgusting pig's mark."
"My mother says it's a curse," Sarah added, tapping her finger on the mirror glass over the image of the birthmark. "She says it's the reason no one loves you."
Every word was like a needle embedded in his flesh. He couldn't respond. All he was doing was looking sadly, trying to suppress any sound suggesting he might cry, looking at Arthur who was nudging Karma with his elbow in a sarcastic sign as they mocked.
Leon felt the room spinning around him and the air becoming heavy and thick, difficult to inhale. He wanted to close his eyes, to turn his head, but Yi Lian's strong hand was holding his chin firmly, fixing him in place.
"Don't close your eyes," Yi Lian ordered coldly. "You have to see the truth. This is you. Ugly. Outcast. Just a monster. Useless. Have you really never thought about killing yourself before?"
Arthur approached, and his childish laugh turned into something ugly. He spat on the mirror, leaving his sticky saliva mixing with Leon's distorted image. "His face is too dirty. How could our beautiful mother give birth to a little pig like him?!"
The spit wasn't directed at the mirror only but at Leon himself.
At his existence.
He felt the stinging insult burning his throat. It's not the first time they've gone this far with him, but he felt that this time came suddenly, so he was surprised and couldn't respond.
But fear was stronger than anything and paralyzed any reaction that might come from him.
Karma responded, shrugging his shoulder, answering his brother's question, "This is a real puzzle we've all failed to solve."
"Do you know what we do with monsters like you... Leon?" Yi Lian continued, her eyes gleaming with an evil sparkle as she approaches. "We lock them in the dark. Or..." She brought her face close to Leon's ear and whispered words that made the blood freeze in his veins. "...or we remove their marks."
Yi Lian took out something else from her pocket, a small piece of broken glass with a sharp edge gleaming dangerously in the dim light. She passed it slowly over the surface of the mirror that Karma was holding.
Exactly over the birthmark, making a long scratch in Leon's reflection.
Arthur and Sarah began to look at each other, unaware of what their crazy sister was thinking, but Karma knew what she was thinking about and remained silent, curiously wanting to know where these things would lead.
"Maybe we should help you get rid of it?" Yi Lian said and looked from the mirror directly at Leon's real face, her eyes fixed on the birthmark. "Just a little. No one will notice the difference."
Breathing stopped in Leon's chest.
He finally began to realize what she was planning.
His breathing accelerated.
His face changed from fear to absolute, cold, and rigid terror.
That piece of glass... in Yi Lian's hand.
It wasn't just an empty threat. He had seen this gleam in their eyes before. There were no limits to their cruelty.
His body began to shake violently uncontrollably. It was no longer about words or insults. It had turned into a direct physical threat, into the possibility of
real pain.
And deliberate disfigurement.
He wanted to scream, to beg for mercy, but his voice was imprisoned in his throat, choked with terror.
His body began to shake violently uncontrollably. His breaths became fast and short as if he were running in an endless race.
His heart was beating at an insane speed as if it wanted to jump out of his chest.
His muscles trembled, and his fingers gripped the concrete floor so hard that his nails bled, as if searching for something to hold onto. "No, no, no..." Leon whispered to himself, broken and inaudible words, but they were just a weak echo in his confused mind.
He tried to move away, but his body was paralyzed. He felt as if he were planted in the ground, unable to move. Then time began to slow down around him, as if time were passing with deliberate slowness.
Every movement of theirs was like in a slow nightmare. He saw Yi Lian raise the sharp piece of glass, and he saw the insane smile on her face.
"No, please! Don't do this!" his lips whispered, but his voice came out only as a faint, hoarse whistle.
Yi Lian brought the sharp piece of glass close to his face slowly, trying to touch that birthmark with the edge of the sharp glass.
Leon tried to move away, but he was surprised by the presence of Arthur and Karma holding his arms firmly while Sarah from behind fixed his neck and raised his face.
The three were holding him well.
Arthur: "Calm down, you fool. It's not like it's the first time we've hurt you, and of course, it won't be the last, haha."
Karma, tightening his grip and painfully controlling Leon while his smile didn't fade: "Haha, stop crying. It seems like you're encouraging us to hurt you more."
Sarah, staring curiously at Yi Lian: "Don't tell me you're going to stab him, sister. We still need him."
He felt his cold sweat falling on his forehead. His tears were falling from helplessness and terrible weakness in this situation. They were more like monsters, closer to being children with angelic and beautiful faces.
His head was spinning as if in a whirlpool, trying in panic to move away from the glass head, but he was fixed and tired after a minute of resistance. His very weak body, suffering from the most difficult conditions and severe malnutrition, was against him in an endurance battle that wouldn't last more than a minute.
"Please, I'm sorry... don't do this!" he said in a hoarse, crying voice, but they didn't respond. His voice was just a whisper amid millions of storms.
And it happened. Yi Lian inserted the glass blade slowly into the birthmark as if it were a terrible dissection operation. She made a small wound at the beginning. No blood came out of the wound, which made her wonder and stop for seconds with the glass head still inside.
She said in a curious tone, staring at the birthmark with a childish and curious tone, "Strange, isn't blood supposed to come out when you wound someone????"
But that wound in Leon's birthmark was very burning for him, and the white of Leon's eye turned red. Karma noticed that and said, "It's hurting him severely. The white of his eye is red despite this birthmark being part of his face and not having any swelling, but I think as we studied, there are places blood doesn't reach in certain cases. Haha, Leon, your face is really, even your blood avoids it, hahaha."
Sarah began to laugh, holding her stomach. "Hey, Karma, we study in the same department. Which book is this? You're such a liar."
Karma spoke with some annoyance, "Stupid girl."
Everyone began to laugh while Leon put his hand on his face in pain, but Sarah quickly hid behind Karma's arm. The latter was surprised by her frightened features. He said sarcastically, "Hey, sister, is Leon starting to scare you?" But it wasn't Leon. She was pointing with a trembling finger toward a cockroach that came out of one of the boxes. She said in a disgusted and repulsed voice, "This is disgusting! Why is this dirty cockroach so big?!?!"
Karma sighed and gently pushed her away from his arm. "Boring girl, fun killer. Anyway, this is a sewer cockroach, and its presence here isn't strange since we have another cockroach crying now."
Arthur began to laugh this time. His eyes teared up as he leaned his hand on Karma's shoulder. "Haha, do you want to kill me? Anyway, maybe it's his friend. Let's get out of this place. It's making me nauseous."
And they began to leave one after the other.
The last one, Yi Lian, threw the mirror on the ground beside Leon, where it shattered in front of him with a sharp sound, scattering into small shards reflecting light like gleaming insect eyes, and climbed the wooden stairs gracefully and with dancing steps.
Leaving Leon alone once again.
In the dark.
With his shattered image and the sound of their fading laughter echoing in his ears like an eternal judgment.
Leon collapsed completely at that moment.
Panting heavily, and his whole body trembling.
That birthmark was burning severely, and the pain was on another level. He was resisting the urge to tear it out with his fingers. It's possible that a small glass shard entered the depths of this wound.
He felt the deep cold inside him.
Deeper than the cold of this basement that seeped into his bones.
Avnes's words about strength were just a faint whisper in the face of this overwhelming reality. He had seen his face in the mirror and seen the monster they see, and for the first time, Leon began to believe them.
He began to believe that he... deserves all this and said while crying in a broken voice as if gathering all the sorrow in his heart, "Avnes was... Avnes was right...."
Blood began to flow from his cheek from the place of that wound as if his birthmark had been waiting for them to leave so it could tell concerns that no one but Leon would hear.
He let the blood and tears mix.
Weeks passed, or maybe more.
I no longer count the days or count the nights.
Time here for me is not measured in hours but by the extent of hunger expanding inside my ribs. And by the number of times I dozed off so as not to feel my existence.
Since I saw him... since that entity with silver eyes whispered to me, I haven't been the same, if I was originally "something" that could be said to have been.
I sit now as I always did, on the cold basement floor, hugging my thin body as a mother hugs the corpse of her drowned child. Not out of love... but out of fear that it will crumble more and be swept away by the waters.
Time passes and passes and passes... from siblings' abuse and beating and bullying at school to stinging, killing words from my mother, whom I dare not walk in any corridor where I smell her expensive perfume.
I passed by my father and stopped a little while looking at him, that cold face and that elegant suit and that aura that makes you look small in front of him. Despite my birthmark still being wounded from that day, he didn't care. He passed in front of me as if I were a trivial thing. He didn't even move his eyelid to pick me up.
I didn't expect anything different. Of course, this has been my life since birth, and nothing has changed in my life.
The days became similar until it seemed as if time itself had abandoned me. Night was no longer different from day, nor hunger different from pain. Everything melted into the ashes of silence as if life had decided to punish me with eternal stability.
I didn't know where the pain begins and when it ends.
Pain from the birthmark.
Pain from hunger.
Pain from cold.
Pain from family.
Pain from loneliness.
Pain from darkness.
As if one calamity is not enough, they gathered together and coalesced upon me as if each calamity is comforted by its sister.
That small puddle of water was still close to me, but it mixed with some shards of that mirror from that day. I looked at my reflection.
I approached it as I do every night.
My bare knees sank into the dirty water, and I bent slowly as if the earth were swallowing me.
I stared into my eyes, into that birthmark that devoured my face like an eternal sin, and found only one question:
"Why was I created like this?"
I whispered, addressing myself or no one.
Was I a failed experiment?
Just something incomplete born in vain?
Or am I a punishment for my mother or for a sin I didn't commit?
Everything in me is silent... except my eyes were screaming without sound.
"Agnes..."
I whispered the name as if I were summoning my shadow.
But he didn't answer.
Are you an illusion?
Or am I just a person who longs for his voice even if I don't know what it is?
I didn't know if he was real or imaginary until... but
I wanted him to appear, to tell me: "You're not crazy, you're not ugly, you're not alone."
But he didn't come.
My tears began to fall slowly on that water, and the reflection began to distort a little as if it were pulsing until tears exploded from my eyes without permission and without dignity.
There's nothing more humiliating than crying to a mirror of turbid waters.
Agnes.
Although he didn't return.
I began to doubt that he was just a dream, just an image from my incomplete mind.
In fact, I began to be certain, bit by bit, that he was just a beautiful dream.
But he...
Made me ask questions that a child my age wasn't supposed to ask.
Who am I?
And why do I feel this weight in my heart as if I'm carrying an eon of sadness?
Why do I long for something I don't understand?
And why do I wish he would return... even though he didn't bandage me or pat me or pat my head, he didn't say anything nice for my heart to long for with such intensity, like:
"Everything will be okay?"
Maybe because I hated the world to the extent that the first one who listened to me, even for a moment, became sacred in my eyes.
It was just... a beautiful dream.
The first beautiful dream.
The first creature to look at my face without averting his gaze.