False Incident

I do not have childhood, nor do I understand what ordinary human beings mean by the innocent dawn of pristine youth. Because when my eyes first opened to the artificial enlightenment of mundane world—enlightenment to sin, to violence, especially to pain; anything one could imagine-- the disorderly shell that accommodates me has well passed its eighteenth year of existence.

Therefore for the sake of this essay, I should pay a visit to Yuko—if I could possibly find her.

“What I am is who you are; what you are is who I am. What is above, so is below, and she is no exception. If you wish to find the missing one, will yourself to where there hide the memories of old times, she then will be shown before you. Beware, my brother, though she is only five, extremely vengeful she is, as malignant as the past itself.” Eros said.

“But good fellow, why do you exhume that should be kept undisclosed; what do you wish to do it for?”

“My assignment, sir, issued by Mr. Thompson.” I replied.

“Preposterous!!” he burst out. “There is power in me yet! Leave me alone this very instance, or you will rue this forever!”

Everybody else in the body stirs when they see the voiceless pictures, broken pieces like bleaching snapshots exposed to the dampened air, the microscopic massacre of the past, soundless, whispering, carried out by blindfolded insects. I extracted a scene from what she remembers, and everybody watched on.

There was a little girl, five years of age and wearing turquoise-blue plaid pattern dress, turning strenuously a rusty faucet in the sun-bathed balcony. The mid-day sun cast down golden wavering spots through the foliage of almost transparent plants on her damask cheeks, on which dew-like sweat trickled very slowly down. She exerted too much on the faucet so when it abruptly turned loose, it groaned and squirted out a few drops of brown water, which were followed by a violent torrent of fresh water. She darted backwards only quickly enough to avoid getting soaking wet, screaming with excitement when she toppled over a huge coil of dusty-yellow rubber tube.

She rubbed her knee, picked up the tube, observed it closely for a second to figure out what it should be handled, and then, seeming to realize that it was something more than a mock snake, she attempted to stick one end of it to the faucet without realizing she should turn off the water first. She looked around for a pail but couldn’t find any. She was all wet then, and her cheek-length hair stick to her little face and neck in shining black streaks. The tube had already become from dusty to muddy, and the unkempt surface of dirty tiles was soon intermingled with thin mud and black dust. There was water everywhere, shinny, shrill gold, strident yellow, Amazon plants, watery blue dress, and the girl’s unmistakably black locks.

The scene is the most beautiful, and surprisingly, when the girl stood up, stoop over to turn off the water, it seemed to me her figure was of an adult woman—blue dress translucent on her body like very thin membrane that I could imagine her naked with that curve of flesh, breasts copious of milk, with the elegance of movements. I could imagine her as one of the naked women Renoir made immortal on the canvas. She jumped across the mess to another corner, lifted and wringed her skirt to dry herself with her back to my eyes—a five-year-old full grown, voluptuous creature. I caught a glimpse of her side look; I saw her thick eye lashes and small nose. Her attentive face was as a whole crystal delicate.

When I came to this far, Yuko began to struggle under me. She shrieked, she cursed, and she turned and bit me.

“Damn you little foul monster! Damn your talons and your sharp teeth.” I cursed back. “I am Albert Fish, if you don’t behave yourself I will cannibalize you.”

Silent movie goes on. When the door was slammed open, the mermaid’s expression in her water world turned not only pale, but distorted with hatred, disgust, and the most extreme horror imaginable. It was the ugliest thing one can beheld with piteous awe just like when one is watching despondent children in a war documentary. She stood there, flint cold and stone white, for her mother.

Yuko writhed frantically and broke free from my control. As she vanished into darker subconscious the memory stopped in an eternal suspended animation.

“Eros, tell me what happened to her next.” I said into the darkness.
“I do not know.” He replied.

“A made up memory, a complete falsehood from another persona’s damaged head. Everything from personality to memory can be fabricated in this sickened shell. I should’ve guessed that… or was it real? Had it really happened? Goddamnit, shit.”

Eros was eyeing me.

“Am I going to be executed by you guys because of this?”

“I do not know.” He said. “But before that, live. Live as if you are alive; and remember. Remember as if you can live.”