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"please don't let me be a monster."
a small voice echoed in the room, the only indication of life in the otherwise empty space of the church.
"please," it pleaded again. "please don't let me be a monster."
the source of the voice was that of a child, a boy, with his eyes closed and hands clasped together in prayer, seeming as if he was holding onto a lifeline.
…
jaehoon had always been called a strange child—a "monster", as they called him—and he never really understood why.
was it really wrong of him to gut animals? they were just rabbits and birds, small creatures nobody would miss, and he was just curious. he was just curious about their inner workings, about how they looked on the inside. he wanted to know more about their stuff ("organs," his teachers would say. "they're organs."), wanted to see how they'd bleed, how the life would look like draining out of their weak bodies.
weren't children naturally curious, anyway? and it was fun, in a way, to be in control of their lives, to watch them slowly die.
jaehoon never understood their ire, their distaste and apparent hatred, and they never bothered to explain it to him.
so, he felt that it was unfair, unfair of them to be angry at him, to be disgusted at him, yet never bother to explain why.
("why?" he would ask.
"it's wrong, jaehoon-ah. it's wrong to hurt animals." they'd reply.
"but why?" he'd ask again, curious to know. he was always curious, always had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
an answer never came.)
he'd ask again and again, over and over: to his teacher once ("it's just wrong, jaehoon-ah."),
to his mother many times ("you shouldn't do it, my son," she'd say with a look in her eyes, a sad smile playing on her lips.),
and to his father, once, too (he would never do this ever again, because the one time he did, he got smacked and beat up, berated for his supposed abnormality.)
"please don't let me be a monster." the words tumbled out of his lips as his eyes squeezed further shut, body slightly shaking.
please don't make me prove them right, the unspoken words said. please let be normal, to feel normal things, to love and to empathise and to understand, he prayed silently.
please don't leave me alone, you're all I have left, he begged. please don't make me a monster.
his prayers were never answered.
or, maybe, they were answered in the cruelest possible way: the death of his entire family.
"this is my answer to you," he thinks he hears someone whisper as he feels his mother try to smother him to death.
she fails and gets flung across the room, and jaehoon watches as the light in her eyes seem to dim.
(this isn't fun, he thinks. he sees his mother smile sadly, feels her hand on his cheek.
this isn't fun at all, he thinks again. he hears his mother say something, feels her hand fall limp and hears her draw her last breath.)
"this is my answer to your prayers," he hears it again through the buzzing of his ears upon exiting the room to find his father bleeding out on the stairs, upon getting captured and hidden away while he thrashes and screams against the stronger body of his captor.
when he exits the foreign house, he sees his home, his family (his. they're his!) all dead, razed to the ground.
"oh my," he hears the whispers of his neighbours.
"poor child," someone says, all faux pity and care.
"why isn't he crying?" another asks, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
they all talk amongst themselves about him and about this tragedy, suspicion taking root and crescendoing in the cacophony of madness.
amidst the buzzing noise and the flames of anger being kindled, tongues of flame licking every fibre of his being, he doesn't hear the voice again.
(perhaps, he thinks in the dead of the night as he vows to take revenge. perhaps ignoring prayers is a form of answering too.)