Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.
Author's Notes: This chapter has been revised. Thanks for the reviews; they give me motivation to edit chapters and begin writing new ones. Just remember that this story is written through a filter, so things might seem a bit warped most of the time. I welcome constructive criticism as I am still learning how to write, and any reviews of any sort will make me happy and grateful.
Lies
Makoto examined the bright yellow toy. It reminded her of a telescope that Christopher Columbus might have used, except that hers was small, yellow and made of wood.
And when she looked through it—oh, it was magic.
Her father said that it was like looking through the eyes of a fly. Every glance through the toy showed a splintered image multiplied twenty times over with small compact squares. When she twirled her make believe telescope in a clockwise circle, the squares would change into diamonds and back into squares again, as the tiny pictures were repeated again and again in a pattern to create something entirely new.
She laughed and marveled at it—the distorted images of everything so familiar. Her father had given it to her on a whim; it was just something he had gotten when he walked back home one day.
Makoto looked and looked, and with all the fun that she was having, her father also took this opportunity to tell her what her name meant. This was a very parent-like thing to do. He was giving her a pearl of wisdom about the world.
And what was a pearl of wisdom? It was a grain of truth smacking someone in the face.
So, this is what he did. Makoto's father decided to tell her what her name meant. He said that her name meant "truth."
And later on, after a plane with faulty brains and a faulty skin exploded in mid-air over the Pacific Ocean, Makoto started to wonder why her father never bothered to take the time to explain why he named her this.
Because at this point she believed that everyone lied. It was a disease that people caught as they grew older. And if everybody lied, she reasoned, how could people name their children, Makoto?
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Makoto didn't remember a lot of what her parents said, but here is a story her parents told her:
"Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a beautiful princess. She was the prettiest and fairest princess in all the land. But one day some evil goons, (they were from the dark kingdom, you see) tried to kill this princess. They tried to kill her because they were jealous of her good looks and pure heart, and things looked like trouble for a time. Suddenly—a brave prince from a faraway nation came to the rescue. He saved the princess from the goons and together they destroyed the dark kingdom. They got married and they lived happily ever after. The End."
This story had a happy ending. And all the stories Makoto had ever heard, had a happy ending.
But Makoto didn't believe in happy endings anymore.
She stopped believing when her happy ending was stepped on, burned and shattered to pieces. The people who wrote stories were liars, because in real life only sad things happened. Happy endings only existed in stories.
She didn't believe what other people said, either. People told white lies. They were meant to protect the fragile minds of children but Makoto thought it was just lying.
Lying, it was all lying.
People lied, writers lied, and her parents lied to her too.
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Once upon a time, Makoto believed in Santa Claus. He was a man that lived on the North Pole and kept a big long list of all the good children and all the bad children in the world. On Christmas the bad children would get lumps of coal and the good ones would get presents.
These presents were made by elves. They toiled day and night in workshops to make presents for good children. People could call these workshops—sweatshops too. A sweatshop was a place where people would work all day for little money.
Sweatshops didn't look like such nice places. The people there worked a lot. They sweated too. Sometimes they even lost fingers. She wondered why people didn't call the workshops—sweatshops.
Makoto wondered about this because she had seen a documentary on sweatshops a few days ago. Her parents liked to have her watch educational things, since those programs gave her several pearls of wisdom about the world.
So, why didn't people call the elves' workshops, sweatshops? Makoto figured that it was very cold up there in the North Pole. The elves couldn't sweat so much, so they called it a workshop instead.
She also heard that Santa Claus was fat and merry. He had fat reindeer that flew. These fat reindeer pulled the sleigh that carried the presents and the fat man called Santa Claus. He traveled on Christmas Eve to every house in the world. He would then shimmy down chimneys and place the lumps of coal and cheaply produced presents beneath Christmas trees in every home.
He worked one day a year. Makoto thought this was why he was fat.
She didn't know that for a man to deliver presents to every house in the world he would have to travel at an average speed of sixteen thousand and nine kilometers per second and carry a payload of four-hundred fifty-three million, five-hundred ninety-two thousand, three-hundred seventy kilograms. She wasn't old enough or bored enough to know.
That didn't matter, because at one point, Makoto believed in Santa Claus, and one day she stayed up late so she could catch a glimpse of him. Makoto's apartment didn't have a chimney, so she always wondered how Santa Claus could get to her house. Every Christmas Eve, she made sure the window was open. This was so that Santa Claus could climb in from there instead.
Now, it was really hard to stay awake because her eyelids kept drooping as the sky got darker and darker; and every time her eyelids drooped it was harder to open them again. As this happened, Makoto hid in her dark corner and waited for Santa Claus to come. After several hours of eyelids drooping and forcing them to open again, she finally saw someone, but it wasn't Santa Claus.
She saw her father sneaking toward the Christmas tree. In his hands were presents. On the label it said it was from jolly old Saint Nick.
Makoto jumped on her father and yelled "AHA!"
The lie was over. Her father laughed. They both laughed.
And after that night she didn't believe in Santa Claus anymore. From now on she knew presents came from her father. She thanked her father properly.
Makoto was a bit sad knowing that Santa Claus didn't exist, but she was glad that those elves in the North Pole didn't have to work in sweatshops anymore.
It must have been cold.
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An eternity later, Makoto found that lies were cold as the North Pole. No, they were colder than that.
When Makoto discovered new lies, they chilled her right down to her heart, and her heart would skip a beat. They were so cold that they hurt.
Everybody could lie. Her parents could lie.
And her parents lied to her one last time as they began their journey to the happiest scab on Earth. Minutes before they entered that airplane with faulty brains and a faulty skin, her parents had said that they would come back.
They said they would come back, and they never did.
And that lie was so cold; it burned a hole right through her heart.
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The traumatized girl was only seven. Her parental units were dead. Her new guardians were not.
A cousin twice removed was taking care of her. This was because the rest of Makoto's family had a bad tendency to die. They died early and young. Somehow, the world didn't seem to like them so much.
The cousin twice removed had a big heart. It was ten percent larger than the average man's. It just so happened that the cousin and his wife couldn't have children, so they jumped at the chance to take care of her. They actually jumped and yelled and screamed. This was family and it would be like a child of their own. They would feel happy. They would be a complete family unit.
Makoto couldn't understand this so well, so she became angry. She never met her cousin twice removed. They were strangers.
She got angry. Her anger built up pressure. It raged and boiled and built up steam. Pretty soon she would explode just like a volcano. When she erupted, all her rage and anger would fly out and there wouldn't be a scab big enough in the world to make her stop. She had a wound somewhere in her heart and it wouldn't stop bleeding.
This was where the pressure was building up especially.
Makoto was slowly dying and everyone in the world was too, but she didn't understand that yet either.
She wasn't old enough.
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Makoto didn't understand a lot of things, but that was ok since the government already had a remedy for this. The government forced children to attend school.
And what was school? It was a place where children were brainwashed for the good of society.
At school they had this horrible tradition of allotting one day of the year for children to show off their parents. This was show-and-tell with people.
In the past, certain Europeans colonists did this with black people too. The only difference was that they were being sold. Makoto watched a documentary on this a month before. They were called slaves, and they did work for no pay at all.
Parents worked for their children. They did work for no pay at all. Sometimes they would get love instead. Sometimes they wouldn't.
Makoto had a problem. Her parents were blown to bits and scattered all across the Pacific Ocean. She would have to bring her twice removed cousin instead.
He was a garbage man, and this wasn't something you showed and telled.
So the children brought their parents, and in Makoto's case she brought her twice removed cousin.
They showed and telled. There were doctors, lawyers, housewives, policemen, fire fighters, businessmen and others. There was one writer, and of course, there was one garbage man too.
The children thought it was funny to be a garbage man. They were too young to understand that they might be a garbage man one day too. Then it wouldn't be so funny anymore. It was a job. It brought food to the table, and that was a very respectable thing. The children weren't old enough to know this.
The adults talked about what they did and said that the children had to work hard in school to get where they were. This was supposed to be motivational.
They were lying too. School wasn't everything.
The writer, in fact, had dropped out of school. He had just given it up because he was God's gift to Earth. This was what he thought, at least.
He had dropped out of high school to become a starving artist. A starving artist was a person who was creative, or thought they were creative, that starved. They didn't work so much. They liked to think about the world, and that was why they starved.
Fortunately for the man, someone liked his black scribbles on paper. This meant that he was published. Now the man made a respectable amount of money for thinking.
The writer thought he should give these children a pearl of wisdom. It was a parent-like thing to do. It was something motivational that didn't have to deal with school. So, the writer quoted: "The pen is mightier than the sword."
The man thought he was being brilliant for repeating a phrase, but he forgot that a parrot can do the same thing. Adults tend to forget a lot of things sometimes.
And the children blinked when they heard the saying, because they had a saying too: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words may never hurt me."
The two saying contradicted each other, and like oil and water they just didn't mix. Someone was lying. Again.
Makoto blinked and thought about it a bit before deciding that the man was lying. A sword could lob off a person's head whereas a pen could only spread black ink over paper.
The writer only convinced her further that people lied more as they grew older. It must be some sort of disease. She learned about diseases and bacteria last week, because there was a special about it on TV.
That was school. School traumatized small children on a daily basis and told them lies—it was a perfect brain washing machine.
School was a terrible place. They forced children to learn terrible things, and do terrible activities, and sometimes terrible events just happened on their own.
What was that terrible event? It was the day Makoto erupted.
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Some of the children found out that her parents had been blown to bits over the Pacific Ocean, this added to the fact that her twice removed cousin was a garbage-man was too juicy a target. People liked to laugh at other's pain. It was a human response that was un-human.
They taunted and teased her. They threw sharp and pointy words at her wounded heart. The wound there grew bigger, and as it did, she did she lost her restraints. Walls started to buckle from the sheer volume of anger bottled up inside, she built up pressure, she built up steam—then she finally snapped and all hell broke loose.
It happened because a little boy was stupid enough to say things he didn't mean.
If it had been another time and place, his mouth would have been washed out with soap. This was what he said: "Stupid Bitch!"
The little boy didn't understand that bitch was a noun for a female dog. He heard the phrase yesterday on the TV. He knew it was a bad word. He liked bad things. He also liked his bitch that he owned. It was a female dog. He probably shouldn't have called her a "stupid bitch." It meant that he liked her. He was a liar too. He just didn't know it yet.
At any rate, Makoto had already erupted. It was a silent eruption. This was the deadliest kind. People didn't know what hit them until it was too late.
And her twice removed cousin had given her a pearl of wisdom a few weeks ago. He knew that she was bottling up anger inside, when she should have released it. So one day he told her: "If you really get upset, just hit something. It's what I always do. Hit something and you'll feel better. Trust me; you'll feel a lot better."
So she did.
The closest target was the little boy who blurted out a noun that meant a female dog. He was a bit chubby so he would be soft and squishy when Makoto punched him.
She punched him. Then kicked him. Then punched him several more times in the face. Every time she hit him, there was a muffled sort of thwack sound that echoed across the room. If he had been a punching bag Psychologists would have called this therapeutic.
He was not a punching bag.
Sometime later adults pulled her off of him. She felt much better now. The little boy did not.
When she was done, his face was black and blue. She also knocked out one of his baby teeth. Some people called this karma. Others called it an atrocity.
Teachers were shocked. Parents were outraged.
She was a "problem child." She was broken someplace inside and no one could fix it. The teachers and the administration didn't want to try anymore. She was a danger. She was a threat to society. She was Humpty-Dumpty left in a million pieces.
Everyone knew this. They were too lazy to try.
She got expelled.
The only thing scarier than going to school was the monsters they put inside of them.
Words hurt, and Makoto knew that the children were wrong. This felt a million times worse than a broken bone. Words felt like red hot needles slowly inserted into her heart.
Her heart had freezer burn, and now it was being attacked by hot and pointy words. She wasn't sure if she could take it anymore. Her heart was going to shatter or explode.
And if the children had been lying about how words felt like, that meant that the writer may have been telling the truth. The saying that "the pen is mightier than the sword" could have meaning, and if it did, it would be the first true thing she heard out of an adult in a while.
Perhaps she could take a stab at it. Makoto already tried the sword. She punched someone into a bloody pulp and then she got expelled. That didn't work so well, so maybe the pen wasn't so bad. She decided to write a story instead, it would have a happy ending because this was how all stories were supposed to be like.
But Makoto didn't know that this was a lie too. She believed this because the people called adults were censoring the books with sad endings. They were afraid that books with sad endings were too traumatic for children to handle. They were afraid that children weren't ready to handle the real world.
The adults should have censored her life instead, but no one bothered to look, and no one bothered to care, so Makoto just went on to write her story with a happy ending anyway.
After a few scratches and scribbles on paper, Makoto created the moon princess.
Her name would be Usagi. The name meant "rabbit."
Makoto heard a story once that rabbits lived on the moon and made candy for children. This princess wouldn't be like Santa Claus. The rabbits wouldn't work in sweatshops. She would be pretty and have a good heart. She would help the rabbits and they would be her friends. The princess was named Usagi because she loved them so much.
She loved them and didn't get any pay. They loved her back.
She would never die either. Dying was a bad thing.
Dying was a bad thing because it was the final symptom of the lying disease. This was why everyone in the world died.
Makoto's parents died too.
Makoto scribbled away with her pen. She was huddled in a cozy corner of her room. She was safe here.
The dark ink flowed across the page. It was what pens did. She scribbled away and some of the pressure building up in her heart started to drift away. She stopped thinking about her blown up parents scattered across the Pacific Ocean. For a moment all that dispersed like ashes in the wind.
She liked to scribble words down on paper. It was fun. Psychologists called this therapeutic too.
Usagi and the rabbits only existed in her mind. All writers were liars. Makoto had grown old enough to contract the lying disease.
Lying, lying, everybody was lying, in all sorts of shapes and sizes from all over the globe. And as Makoto wrote and lied in her own corner of the globe, she wondered why her father gave her that name.
She wondered, because her name meant "truth."