When I woke up this morning, all I could think of was how nice the world looked today. It was a different kind of silver, the kind that you see when you break glass and the light reflects on it. It was a little foggy, a little rainy. Another dismal day before I could tell myself on how my father told me that Jesus was going to come and burn the world away to small withers, because we were all sinners, and like all of the sinners that lived during Noah's time, they were going to drown like hapless newborn puppies, and I said to myself, "Good. I would like it if they all drowned. I would like it myself if I drowned, too."
He says we will all die when Jesus comes. He will come and save the believers who always said he will come, and then let the others who never believed and went about with their daily lives like usual die and either drown or burn away. Death by either water or fire. And I said to myself that I would rather drown. Because just at that perfect little few seconds you get before you die, you reach an euphoric like state, and you think to yourself, "Gee, thanks Jesus, for saving all the souls who are hypocritical asshats and have always said the world was going to end and have done everything in their rotten little miserable lives that they could to tell everyone on how he was going to come, but boy, I should've listened to them. I should've listened to them when they said I would burn in Hell for doing things that every normal 14 year old boy do, instead of being constantly worried stiff less that God was going to come and burn the whole world like a bundle of sticks on a cold October night. I should've listened to your hypocritical mouth, your hypocritical ways, and I should've looked inside your hypocritical eyes and said to myself, 'Yes sir, I believe in everything in the Bible, even that we couldn't eat shellfish and we shouldn't associate women on their periods. Good thing I'm not with a bunch of girls who started them yet. Turns out they're late bloomers."
But no, I could never make myself say that. I don't believe in my father, and I have a good reason to. Ordinary people who don't think about the end of the world shouldn't be sent to Hell because they weren't scared out of their minds to make a bomb shelter and say that there's only so much food in the world and I should only eat one small bite at a time every breakfast lunch and dinner, and that I should pray and read my Bible everyday. Doctors call that paranoia. And that's one thing my father is. There's so many things my father is, and that's one of them that stands out further than rest. There's another one that stands out right beside it. It's called "schizophrenic".
Paranoid schizophrenia. My father has it, and if you ever had a crazy nut in your family (which I'm very sure all families have at least one), then you have a good chance that you could have it someday too!
I wonder if there were kids like me growing up. Reading the Bible every day. Praying before breakfast, lunch, dinner, every time we went outside, when I woke up, before I went to bed, before I even had a single thought in my head that my father would consider "sinful" (and everything could be considered sinful in his eyes, even if all I thought was something as simple as how gray the world looked outside my window this morning). Every time I did what he considered wrong or even had one thought that was sinful, I was hit with a bamboo stick. It felt like the same as the prisoners of Vietnam getting bamboo shoots down their nails, which caused them an extreme pain that would make them confess to something, and I'm sure that there were even people who confessed to the crime they didn't even commit, just so the pain would stop. And being hit by those things, I thought I would get brain damage. But my father was too merciful to let me live in this abysmal shithouse. If only barely.
My father was obsessed with bamboo. He collected many bamboo trees he would see for sale in stores (and sometimes Wal-Mart had those cheap plant sales where the plant was nearly half-dead and he would take it under his wing, nurturing it so it would grow again. My father had a bit of a green thumb for one plant and one plant only) and he would arrange them all over his room. Sometimes the other children would joke that my father was like a panda, collecting all this bamboo. He would take a nail and carve little messages on their shoots. I've seen a few of them.
Scrawled out like a demon carving his skin and decorating the whole wall with his blood.
"Your wife is gone."
"God wants you to burn in Hell."
"You took your medicine."
"Your son is becoming a bad child."
All around him. All these tiny messages. Surrounding him. Reminding him of everything he did. And it made him crazy.
I know my father isn't like other fathers. I look at the other children's fathers at the church, and they seem so happy. Normal. Nothing wrong with them. My father was just an egg. He was okay, holy on the outside, but if something made him crack, his ugliness oozes out. At the very core he was rotten. Twisted. Bloody. Not a yellow, sane yolk.
My dad is an insane man. And I don't know how I survived every day with him.
He's a good guy. I can tell from deep down in that wretched core. He just wanted me to be a good, Christian child. One that had good values and believed in Jesus and God, so when the Second Coming came, I would be okay. That was all my father cared about. The Second Coming. He would hide me in the basement, where he kept all his non-perishable food items and water at. This happened to me many times whenever he thought the Coming was coming. He once forgot water and I drank from the faucet there. I soon had diarrhea and I couldn't hold it in, so I had to shit in a bucket. And my father just didn't care, even if the Second Coming was either here or nowhere.
I do have feelings about my father. Angry feelings. I hate him. But yet I feel like he isn't at fault. His mind is just fucked up. But what's good in a person whose mind was so weak, they needed a pill to make it better? If they lived back when pills weren't around, they would've died. Or killed someone. They're weak, and they make everyone's lives miserable. And my father? He doesn't even take pills.
But yet I don't report him to Child Services. I don't report him to the local loony bin. Because if my father leaves, I have nowhere to go. I didn't want to be a foster child, a ward of the system. I have heard terrible things about the foster homes here, so I decided to be left with my father, even if he was insane. And I didn't want to let go of my home. It was the very last memories I had of my mother, before she died. Cause of death: surgical mishap. Surgical fucking mishap, they called it. Place the word mishap after everything and it sounds like a goddamn blooper reel you saw all the time at the Goodwill, where nobody wanted to fucking buy it because it was so stupid and cheesy and corny, and something that happened to my mother I would consider drastic and heart wrenching and destroying and fucked up and painful, much like a video you would see of someone bleeding and dying and screaming and crawling to you to save them, but you're on the other side of that glass, so you can't do anything, as they were only a person of the past, and you lived in the future. You lived in a time where you didn't even think about this man dying before you, until you saw it, right now, in the present, and you wonder if you could go back to fix everything. But I know I couldn't.
She probably had a benign tumor, but they fucked it all up, and now she's gone. Surgical mishap. Give my damn mother some fucking respect.
My room is the only room untouched by bamboo with tiny messages written across them, in a room with light blue walls, painted clouds on the ceiling, and a large airplane hung in the center. I'm not really into flying and airplanes anymore. This room hasn't changed for many years. But I know my father won't change it any time soon. Too busy praying to God. Too busy being blind. Many memories rush in my head when I go here. I used to have a pet turtle named Moby when I first moved here, when I went to the pond. My father told me to let him go. We also used to play catch at the park. As you can tell, that doesn't happen anymore. I keep my room clean, but once in a while I'll leave things lying about, because I don't see a point in things sometimes. Let that piece of paper lie on the floor for a while. No one is going to tell me to pick it up. And I don't care if all these things have dust. I don't care if it becomes hazardous to my health, because there was nothing in my life that could ever make me want to be a perfect "cleanliness is godliness" like human being that I thought I could literally puke whenever I saw them.
And I didn't even see a point in going to church today.
The bells were ringing. The pastor, who looked like a swan with a craned neck, wearing a white suit, is welcoming everyone who enters the doors. Everyone is wearing nice clothes. My father forced me to wear a suit. But when I got this over and done with, I would immediately take the damn thing off. My father of course was always so excited to go to church. He would always chat up with the pastor and nuns here. Be charming. Normal. If only they knew what he was really like. But if they knew, I would be in a foster home.
As the bells chimed and I walked with my father, seeing the green grasses and the many bluebells greeting us as we entered, I thought about myself. Who I was, what my father wanted me to be like. Maybe my father was crazy because I was everything he didn't want me to be.
My mother named me Shadow. I am 14 years old. When my father wasn't crazy enough, I went to school and got good grades. School was the only escape I had from my father and all this bullshit, but even if teachers said I was intelligent, I "didn't get along with the other classmates". Many times my father had to be in the teacher's office for my "inappropriate, rebellious, and disrespectful" behavior. And my father would scream and hit me for what I did. But what he said didn't really matter in the end, because I went to school the next day acting like myself. As if nothing happened.
We looked evil. Black quills, red streaks, red eyes. But nobody cares because the pastor welcomes me with a handshake while I stand there, saying and looking at nothing.
The church looked nice when I went inside, I had to admit. The sun was breaking through the stained glass, shining on all of us and on the floor beside me as I took a seat on one of the pews.
I didn't really want to listen to the pastor, or stand up and sing, even if my father was going to yell at me for it. As I sat, bored, I saw in one of the holders behind the pew in front of me was a Bible and the book of the songs we were supposed to sing. Looking to have something to make my fingers busy while I sat in this wretched place, I opened it and pointed my finger to a random verse in the Bible.
This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him.
After he drowned the world, sent people who didn't believe in him to Hell, and told Abraham to kill Isaac? Sometimes I wonder if the Bible was just being ironic sometimes. Like it was a big joke invented by one of the earliest comedians known to us. Maybe he just wrote all this shit just to see how many people would believe in it, and when he saw how gullible people were, he committed suicide.
I looked ahead in the pews, seeing blue quills shining in the light as they bounced up and down. Making sure the pastor didn't see I wasn't paying attention, I leaned closer to the other pew, seeing a blue hedgehog with olive green eyes, playing what seemed to be a Game Boy. He was also not paying attention to the pastor. He actually sneaked a Game Boy inside, so he could play it while the pastor was talking about whatever nonsense I didn't believe in. It looked like he was playing a Mario game, as the sprite that bobbed up and down in the screen looked like Mario. He didn't had the sound on so the pastor wouldn't notice him, as he quietly fiddled with the Game Boy while he whispered comments to himself, such as "Crap, I should've not got hit by that" and "Alright, got a mushroom!" I wasn't sure how no one was noticing this. Where were his parents? This kid was sitting by himself! Did he go to church by himself, just to play with his Game Boy?
"Hey kid, where are your parents? Why did you go to church today?" I whispered into his ear, which made him mess up in his game and start the level over.
"Sssssh!" he shushed me, putting his finger to his lips. He restarted the level over, while I continued to stare at him.
"Seriously, why are you in here? Are you just here to play your Game Boy in the quiet? I don't see your parents…" He ignored me, as he was completely focused in his game. He was now fighting a boss.
Still curious about why he was here, I continued to pester him, but he wasn't listening to my voice anymore. He was completely absorbed in his game, hitting the boss twice. He was about to hit it for the third time, about to defeat him, until I began to realize that I had to be more annoying to this brat so I can get his attention. I flicked his ear, as he died by the boss' fireball and was out of lives, getting the GAME OVER screen.
"Why did you do that! Did you see what you did to my game? I'll get you for that!" he shouted at me as he turned around, now the entire church audience focused on us. He threw a weak punch at me that I managed to avoid, while I grabbed one of his quills and started tugging at it, the blue child howling in pain. The pastor was witnessing this, so was my dad, and they thought they had enough. "You two! Stop that at once!"
My father grabbed me and put me back in my seat, as the pastor gripped the child's hand and took him to the far corner of one of the rooms in the church. Of course, since he was at a church, my father composed himself, as he gave me the look that said "We'll discuss this at home, lad", as the sermon was interrupted by the pastor reprimanding the blue child. I couldn't hear much, but the pastor did mention such things as "You do not ignore my sermons and act this way! It's the house of the lord for crying out loud!" and "When this sermon is over, you're in big trouble! You're 10 years old, boy! Act like it instead of a 5 year old!"
When the sermon was done and he announced the upcoming church events in our county, I told my father I had to use the bathroom. So I left the pews and went inside one of the church's chambers, to get as far away from my father as possible. I thought I might as well make the time before the supposed punishment linger as much as possible. I didn't felt like dealing with my father, especially when it came to church matters such as this. He thought I would burn in Hell every time I "acted up" in the house of the lord.
I saw the blue hedgehog again, as he was leaning against the chamber walls, playing with his Game Boy again. It was like he tried to ignore me the first few seconds I was there, staring at his game, then back at me. It was until he decided to shut it off and point a finger at me.
"You made the pastor get mad at me! You got me into this mess! Now because of you the pastor is going to make me stay here and do church work! It's all your fault!"
"My fault?" I repeated. "You were the one who overreacted when I tried to get your attention. You should've just continued to talk to me in whispers and none of this would've happened!"
"You flicked my ear, and I hate it when people like you do that! Now I have to clean the church floors, and I hate cleaning!"
"Boo hoo, at least you don't have a father who will beat you when you acted out at church like you made me do!"
He stopped, staring into my eyes, then he looked down. I could tell I said too much about my life, and he realized for a moment that things he was dealing with weren't that bad after all. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I even did that to you…"
"Well, you can't apologize now, because when my father gets here and we get out of here and back home, he'll beat me with his damned bamboo sticks, and he'll beat me hard this time, because when he sees me do things like what we just did at this church, he tends to be pretty pissed! And you're complaining because you have to do work? I'd rather have your punishment!"
He continued to stare at me with sympathetic eyes, as if he was been through all that before, and suddenly, he grasped me around his arms, hugging me tight.
I immediately wanted him to let go of me. He was some random kid who didn't know anything about what I went through everyday, he had no right to hug me! I pushed him away, the shove strong enough to send his back crashing into the wall, as I screamed, "Don't touch me!"
The damn blue hedgehog pissed me off. He continued to look at me with a look of empathy as I began to reach for my Marlboros. Of course, it was a church, I shouldn't smoke here, but the whole bullshit with my father and all just had me pissed and stressed out, and I wasn't going to go outside to smoke. I hid my smoking habit from my father, hiding the cigarettes and smoking in the same undisclosed area he didn't know about. I was also hoping there was no smoke detector in the chambers of the church, otherwise my father would beat me for not only acting out, but finding out that I was a 14 year old 8th grade student who smoked.
The blue hedgehog said nothing as I continued to stand there, puffing out smoke like the factories (that always looked like cigarettes eternally burning in the sky) near the church. He didn't even mention how I was a child that started smoking. I guess he didn't want to piss me off even further. But he asked me a question while I burned out the tobacco in the first end of my cigarette.
"What's your name?"
While the smoke lingered in the air, curving and making white, smoky strands float, I decided to answer him. "My mother called me Shadow. That was the name that has stuck with me ever since."
"I was called Sonic before. I don't remember my real name. My real parents died years ago in a car accident. The pastor of the church takes care of me here now. But everyone just calls me Sonic, and that name stuck too."
This hedgehog was living my fear. Living as a foster child, living in this church and being this pastor's son. But hearing what his pastor would threaten on him, I would rather have his life than what I had to deal with on a daily basis. If only I didn't had so many memories I didn't want to forget.
As the last of my cigarette burnt out, I dropped it into the bathroom toilet and flushed it down. So they wouldn't see the evidence of anyone smoking in here.
The bells were ringing again, signifying that the sermon was officially over. I began to walk down the halls, trying to hide myself even further if my father came looking for me. It was until I began to hear more footsteps behind me that I stopped and turned around.
The blue hedgehog was following me, as he stopped as well and looked away. He acted as if he wasn't stalking me at all, but I knew he was.
"What do you want? Can't you see I'm trying to get away from my dad who's going to beat me for this?"
"There's a place in this church that the pastor never lets me in. He doesn't let anyone else in it too. Maybe we can hide there."
"Why do you want to hide too? Last I heard, you just had church work! It's not like you have an abusive father to come home to!"
"Because I'm really curious about this room. I always wondered what's in it. Maybe we can find out together."
I wasn't interested in hiding with this joker, but yet the sound of a room that a pastor never let anyone in to see sounded intriguing, and you can say I was up for a little adventure that day. "Alright, where is this room at? I wouldn't hide with you, but maybe my father won't be able to find me here," I said, gazing back at him.
He began to turn around, pointing to a nearby corridor. "The room is actually on the east side of the chambers, in a set of locked steel doors. The pastor doesn't even let me near the doors. When I was younger, he said that if I ever opened those doors, a monster would jump at me. And now that I'm older, I'm suspicious if he made up a weird lie like that for me to not open those doors."
I began to follow him as we walked out of one corridor to the other, hearing many feet shuffling above us. I tell the blue hedgehog to hurry, otherwise my father would find me and we would probably both get in trouble for even being here.
It was then that he grabbed me, and he began to run down the halls, the hedgehog taking no time to get to these doors. He took me by surprise, but I managed to keep my pace, as I overheard my father shouting for my name, and the pastor shouting the blue hedgehog's as well. "Shadow! Sonic! Where are you boys? I hope you two aren't acting up again! We are already upset with you!"
Like when he said that I was going to give out my location. Any sane boy wouldn't.
We made it to the doors, which was unlike any door I've seen. It was steel, but it was imprinted with the sun and the moon, both in the same sky, as wisps of clouds decorated the sides. There was a large sign that said in big bold black letters KEEP OUT, ESPECIALLY YOUNG CHILDREN SUCH AS YOURSELF, SONIC. There was a tiny gemstone in the front, a glittering pink amethyst that seemed to glow in the little light these chambers had.
It was definitely a mysterious door. And the fact that the pastor of the church didn't want children like Sonic and I inside it was definitely a mystery in of itself. And it made me even more intrigued, as I felt the gemstone with my fingers.
"What else do you know about this door? Any reason why the pastor doesn't want you in here?"
"No, that's all I know. He doesn't want me in here at all, and will even make up a lie that a monster will eat me up if I even go near here. It's definitely weird, because I never saw a church have a door like this."
I heard the pastor and my father coming down the stairs into the chambers, and we weren't that far from the stairs. They continued to belt out our names. "Shadow! Sonic! Come here right now!"
My heart was beating faster. We had to open this door, and quick. I tried to shove it open, but it wouldn't even budge. It felt as if there was something against the doors that even if you used all your might to open them it wouldn't open. I began to lean more onto the door, using all the strength in my body to plunge into it, as I could hear the footsteps becoming louder. The door was firm, and it didn't even open a crack.
"Do you have any bright ideas, joker? This door won't open at all, and the pastor and my father are coming! Get a solution, and quick!" I snapped.
He looked back at me, trying to keep his cool despite our fathers getting closer to us. "I did see the pastor do this to the door, but maybe it's one of those doors that only let a certain person inside, so I can't promise you that this will work…"
"Well, what are you waiting for? Hurry up and try to pry open the damn thing!"
I could tell that the anger in my voice made him pick up the pace, as he shoved me out of the way and put the palm of his hand on the gemstone. I could see the shadows of the pastor and my father creeping close, so I once again told him to hurry up.
It was then that he uttered these words so quick that I could barely catch them, as he said, "In the power of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, you will let us open this door and let us see this world!"
The gem sparked, a flash of pink glowing light snapping. It was then that the big, heavy doors broke apart, and the room sucked us in, before the pastor and my father noticed what was happening. Right as soon as we got in, the doors were shut. And we were now inside another room, the room that the pastor forbid the blue hedgehog from entering.
It was a strange room. All around the walls, I could see numbers flying at me, many different minutes, seconds, and hours passing by. I could hear a thundering tick-tock as we walked by, as I saw many different clocks on the walls.
Many different varieties. The regular black and white numbers that were Is and Xs, sometimes Vs. Cuckoo clocks that had the little blue birds mock me with their laughter. Even those cheesy Felix the Cat clocks were on the walls, their tails and eyes swiveling back and forth, as if they were paranoid of anyone suddenly taking them away. All the times were different. Some said it was 10:24, some said it was 6:45, and some said it was 12:00. Looking at the walls you couldn't tell what time it really was, because they all gave you different answers, and almost all of them were wrong.
We didn't gaze at the clocks for particularly long, as we began to walk down a narrow hallway that seemed to get smaller and smaller as we walked inside it. I could feel claustrophobic going down it, as I began to feel cramped, and the blue hedgehog being with me didn't help matters. It was like we were going down a rabbit hole, probably one from the white rabbit in Alice Adventure's in Wonderland. I bet if he looked at all the clocks on the wall he would feel like he was running late and go down this hole, while I followed him, not knowing what I was getting myself into. The blue hedgehog and I weren't sure where we were going, but we were children, and we were fascinated with this room. We had to explore.
My body began to feel more crushed and tightened as we were going down this hole, so much that the blue hedgehog and I were beginning to crawl on our hands and knees. I was beginning to get a little fearful, as I felt the walls closing in on me and we would be trapped here for the rest of our lives. But yet something in me wanted to carry on, and I continued to follow the hedgehog, as he saw a glowing lantern that was shedding some light for us. He carefully picked it up, holding it up as we crawled further, and I was now noticing the hole was getting darker and tighter.
It was good that we were children, otherwise if we were full-grown adults we would've been stuck inside this corridor already. The walls were blacker, that if it wasn't for the hedgehog's light we would be as blind as moles, digging our way and hoping we would find the outside world. It was then that the hedgehog stopped, as he took the lantern and showed me why: he was near the end, and there was a blue checkerboard door, looking old and the paint a little faded and chipped, begging to be opened.
"Well, what are you waiting for, hedgehog? Open the door!" I shouted, as he stood there, gaping at it like a blubbering fool.
"But…" He looked at me, with worried eyes. "What if, behind this door…" He gulped. "…is a monster?"
"Oh, you big baby, just open the door! There's no such thing as monsters!"
He looked away, unsure, as he reached for the knob. "Okay, but if a big monster comes and eat us up you can only say I told you so!"
He opened the door, with shaking hands that seemed like they would break as if they were fine china, and we were greeted by the pitch blackness. So black that the hedgehog's lamp couldn't light it up. Blacker than my fur. But yet we journeyed on, as we dug through the earth, our eyes being bewildered like a puppy that just opened its eyes.
We were in a completely different world, a world much different than the one we were living in before. A world I thought that God has forgotten about.
"Sonic."
"Yes Shadow?"
He looked at me, his eyes and mouth gaping at such a wondrous world that was only under our feet, in a world we always knew about and despised, called the church.
"I don't think we're back at home anymore, are we?"
He shook his head.
"No Shadow. No we're not."
