Outsider
Years ago, a fire started from a simple lamp spill in the underground store of the house. The fire was at first, small and harmless, providing dim light for the store while safely inside the glass confines of the oil lamp. But once out of the glass chamber, it started to grow and spread until it engulfed the entire floor of the basement. Flames crawled up the wooden foundations and slowly ate at the wooden material with much ease. Smoke started to rise from the burning of the wood, but the basement door held it back from spreading into the dining hall.
Upstairs, a child slept in his room, the window open and with the dim moonlight giving small but assuring comfort. It was the way the boy liked it, the moonlight gave him comfort and was his angel in the night. In another room, the tired father, after a long day of work at the farm was sleeping so soundly that even the crashing of the wooden planks that held the living room floor did not wake him. Leaving the thick timber pillar to hold the house from total collapse, all three of them son, father and mother, they slept in imminent danger.
The fire, now an inferno, had managed to make its way to the upstairs. It was not until much later, when the fire had exploded some wine barrels that the father and mother woke from their slumber. Instantly, they smelt the thick scent of smoke coming into the room. Even as the father leaped out of bed and reached for the bedroom door, he could feel the heat of the raging fire. Suddenly, he sprang out of his daze and to his horror, realized that his son was in the other bedroom! He grabbed hold of the metal knob and his hands were instantly burnt. Ignoring the pain, he turned the knob and pulled open the door. He had to leap aside as the other side of the door came crashing down to the floor, engulfed in flames. He raised his head and witnessed the horror of the beastly fire as it lashed out and engulfed everything in its reach. The bedroom that his son was sleeping in, had already been burning long ago. The mother, choking from the smoke and spotting the flames that had started to lick on the bedroom walls, grabbed the dazed father and literally pushed him out the window. Then, she leapt out of window to watch in horror as the house burned down, with their young child inside.
But suddenly, the skies grew so dark that even the stars disappeared. Then, the house exploded in a flash of bright light. After the light had dissipated, there stood a small black box the size of a small room - a room exactly the size of the boy's bedroom. But there were no windows and no doors, the parents dared not touch it and instantly called the resident Bishop to examine the black box. The Bishop came instantly after hearing the tale of the fire. He examined the black box and at once called it Satan's Tomb. It's nature so dark and evil that even he dared not go near it. The mother and father, started to weep over their son's death.
The next morning, school started as normal, in fact everything went as normal. The parents, still in grief went on with their farming lives. With no money for a funeral, they had sufficed with a small ceremony conducted at the charity of the church. Though, one classes at church started, there was one unexpected student - the boy.
All the students stared, and the Bishop himself, who was going to relate the death of the boy to the other students, was stunned in disbelief. He happily welcomed the boy to his normal seat. But when the boy looked up at the Bishop, his eyes were fully black with no pupils! He stared some more and caught a glimpse of the fire burning and the agony the boy had gone through. The Bishop fell to the ground, with one hand on his chest as he caught his breath and one hand on the ground. A young apprentice priest asked of the Bishop's fall, but once he too saw the boy's eyes a feeling of utter fear overcame him. The students, now staring at the boy, had noticed his strange eyes. Even his friends, were afraid to go near him. The Bishop ordered that the class continued as normal and he went to pray and seek God's word on this strange occurrence.
In class, the boy acted of normal, except that he no longer spoke but used only gestures to communicate. Nobody dared approach him and when the parents came in search of him, they instantly broke into tears and denounced him as their son. They saw the child as possessed by a demonic nature and instantly fled from the church grounds. The boy seemed to show a moment of deep sorrow, it went away as quickly as it had come. There were no tears.
After class, the boy did not return to find his parents, he did not cry in a corner nor did he find his friends to play with. For everyone had deserted him in lessons earlier on. Instead, he returned to the black box that was in the place of his house. The first day, the Bishop had followed him. The Bishop was curious of the nature of the boy. When the Bishop saw the boy walk through the wall of the black box, he knew something was amiss. He willed up the courage and tried to enter the black box, but it was solid as stone to him and he could not enter. The boy had made no attempts to lose him or to stop him from following, and the box had done nothing to harm the Bishop. This was very strange to the Bishop and he went back to ponder on it.
As the days passed, the villagers all knew about the boy from the fire. He had now been named "demon child" and all the villagers were afraid of him. Some of the children were taken out from school by their parents but the Bishop let the boy stay on because the boy caused no trouble. Against the Bishop's better judgment, the villagers often cursed at the boy and threw things at him but missing on purpose. The boy seemed to just ignore the insults. The boy went on like this for 9 sad years, and through countless scorning and taunts he had emerged an excellent student and was much more intelligent compared to the other children. The Bishop noticed that the boy sometimes surpassed his own wisdom in some matters. The boy was 18 now, a grown man. But nobody knew what he ate; he was always in the black box. The villagers gathered each and everyday he went home and started to gossip about evil deeds. They had even made a tourist attraction out of the boy's dreadful existence. The boy's parents had managed to become wealthy and lived on big mansion on top of the hill. In those 9 years, they had never approached the boy again. It was a sad sight indeed. The Bishop dared not say a word against the people's acts. Even he feared their wrath.
But one day, the villagers decided that they had endured the wretched demon boy's existence for long enough, that it was time to be rid of him. That night, when the boy was on his way home, his friends from school all formed a band and gathered all the people in the village. Everyone brought torches and pitchforks. They followed the boy back home and waited for him to enter the black box. The Bishop had heard the men's plans to try and burn down the black box and quickly rushed to the scene. But when he reached there, it was too late. The crowd amassed was enormous, almost the entire village, and they had started throwing their torches at the black box. The Bishop stared helplessly and was even more disheartened when he saw that the boy's parents themselves had brought a cavalry of soldiers to help burn down the black box.
After a moment, the grass around the black box was engulfed in an inferno, one as intense as the one that had burned down the house 10 years ago. The air was suddenly filled with a bone-chilling scream and then a hiss so loud that everyone covered their ears. Then, the black box suddenly exploded in a bright flash, just like it had before it emerged in the village. Everyone except the Bishop was engulfed in flames. The villagers’ screams and cried for help filled the air. What had happened to the black box? Where was it? The Bishop tried to find it through the flaming bodies that were scurrying everywhere. It was as if the flames had taken human form as were screaming and yelling for their very lives. The pain and sorrow of a thousand years seemed to ricochet through the air and the Bishop was overcome with pain at the sound. He fell to his knees with his hands covering his ears.
Boom! Flash! Another explosion and flash filled the air and everyone was back to normal. There were no flaming bodies; there were no screams and cries for help, it was all gone. It had only been an illusion or some sort, and the villagers were thankful that they were still alive. Then slowly, one by one, they looked back to the black box. It was gone. In the center there was a piece of paper, addressed to Meredith and Peter - the boy's parents. The parents took up the paper, and unwillingly, read it out aloud:
"Father, mother, my friends and my fellow villagers. I do not blame you for your scorning and your taunting and your abandoning of me. I cannot change who i am, i had only hoped for all of you to understand me and for your acceptance. Though i live in sorrow and agony, i know that you all loved me, once before. But now, i am going away, i am leaving. For i know that i caused much trouble for all of you. I shall go now.
If you wish to find me now, i'm sorry...it's too late. I'm already gone."
2 comments:
gosh wat a long n an astounding writing! *claps* perhaps i hope u dont mind me sharing a collection of poems at http://www.fictionpress.com/read.php?storyid=2175971 and it has 5 chapters so far :)
i hope the ending is not ur version of suicide ah... lol..
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