phr. an idiomatic phrase that refers to mute children
The man in black was fascinated with you. He took you in when you littered the streets, scavenging bins for leftover apples and fishbones. Abandoned child. Human with feline features. Smooth face. All the right makings of a circus freak, but you were too malnourished for him. He provided a cage and a feeding bowl, inappropriate items for such a beauty like you.
The carnival erupted in cheer, richly scented with the smoke of charred barbeque while their mindless hoorays smothered the crackle of flower-shaped fireworks. Unlike the other big top performers, you couldn’t mimic voices or catch butcher knives with your tail, but you had an endearing pout that snatched the hearts of the audience, and that was enough. One boy yelled cute girl! while you dreamt of popping balloons with darts, getting toy prizes and stuffing your face with a mouthful of mint cotton candy, but you were forced to be content with the dry kibble and dry compliments and dry stares you were given.
Whispers in the crowd. Discard her. She might slice his belly open if she got too attached. They thought you couldn't hear, but you were cursed with inhuman senses. How unfortunate that you had to learn your true nature: your kind had an instinctive tendency to consume their loved ones. But you couldn’t help it, you overheard—you were unwanted.
When the man found out about this, he clenched his sweaty fists and went inside your tiny shelter. But your dull claws could only scratch an adult. You rubbed your head against his grimy boots to pacify him—that always worked. Then you spit your teeth on the ground. He was a fast kicker. You didn't eye him as the sporty kind, but he might have been a nice striker in his youth.
He released you from your cage and warned you to never return.
To the woman in white, you were simply a pet that knew how to clean the house. When she took you in, you were amused by the maids you saw in her daughter's drawing books. You wore aprons and dresses, bowed your head when there were visitors, and baked potatoes for yourself. The woman found it peculiar, but she didn't seem to mind.
Her daughter hated the idea of you. She was disturbed by the image of a human breeding with an animal (and the fact that you had two sets of ears). She would hide in the closets when she saw you. When it was time to tidy them, she would sprint away without a word. When you were gardening, she would glare at the children playing on the ripe grass from her frosted mosaic window, carelessly trampling on the daisy families with their hands linked in a chain dance, singing ring-around-the-violets. Every morning, you placed cookies and a glass of hot milk in front of her room. You never knocked. You knew she waited until your shadow disappeared.
She would be exhausted after training in the night—when the dangerous people were at their most vulnerable—so much that she forgot to eat breakfast. She worked hard and long hours, all for the acknowledgment of a mother who wanted not the best for her, but the best murderer. You had served them diligently for five years, and when the woman decided to sell you to the factory, you were depressed. But you figured someone like you couldn't have a home.
It was target practice when you bid farewell to her. She used her revolver with a performative elegance (she spun the cylinder excessively, yet you found this habit adorable) but always fired it with cold, unwavering precision. It was undoubtedly her favorite out of the countless firearms she was never made to handle. When you said she would never see you again, you sighed with relief. But you were startled when she came running toward you, so you covered your face and braced for it.
And when she hugged you, you thought she didn’t hate you at all.
The brown-haired boy was different. He wasn't a half-breed like most of the workers, but he saw you as his confidante. He went on about marriage, freedom, and other foreign concepts. You didn't know what to do with him, so you ignored his advances. Rule number four: do not engage in conversation with others; it shall be treated as conspiracy.
The factory drained the soul out of you. That was its sole purpose: to mass-produce torture devices. Maximizing misery while the essence departed from the flesh made it “easier to extract and richer in flavor”—you read it in a culinary handbook left by a supervisor. That was why people from the outside tried to infiltrate, in protest of the unethical. You hoped that they succeeded so you could get out, but despite their efforts, they couldn’t penetrate the dense clusters of titanium-laden androids fueled by man-spirits, operating through insidious programming and delicate clockwork.
I saw explosives planted in the kitchen area. If the whole place goes down, we can escape together. He spewed some nonsense and told you they were made from try-nigh-trow-tall-you-in. Rule number one: no one leaves the factory. Even if you managed to evade the human guards with rifles, those bulkheads would march their unfeeling bodies to enact your demise. Yet he insisted—with a childish grin—that you and him could get away.
How could anyone smile in a situation like this? This boy was mad, but you admired his folly. Perhaps his delusional jests were his way of coping. Maybe someday you would find a place, unpolluted by the world’s hysterics. That someday came when the bombs went off and he offered his everything to you.
You couldn't resist his promises of a fresh start, so you fled with him. He held your brittle hand as you ran and ran while the workers were eviscerated by mechanical huntsmen, their craniums bursting like posies flittering in the wind—the factory reduced to ashes as they all fell down.
Your days on the mountain were simple and tranquil. You would wake up to the smell of goat manure and juniper leaves. You lived in a small hut with your partner, distant from the congregations of civilians and barking chatter. You had meals together. Slept together. Laughed together. For the first time in your life, you felt comfortable in your own skin.
One thing that bothered you was what you heard about your kind all those years ago. You had no reason to ruminate on your dwindling recollection of hearsay from an era long gone. But you had urges—nightmares. They were the same blurry visions every time: you would be sitting down, almost in a meditative posture. A mixture of drool and viscous fluid trickled down your mouth. You were gnashing, gnawing at something tender and saline. Sometimes, you bit your tongue and went feral in your sleep. Your partner worried that you were very ill, but you never talked to him about it.
You would stare at his arms and neck and wondered why they looked so lush and supple. You imagined morsels of bowels and tissue while you were chopping garlic and bread. When you caught yourself in these bizarre trances, you figured it out—not only did you want to eat him, it was because he was your beloved. You immediately regurgitated at this realization, and you couldn’t bear the thought of being abandoned if you told him what you really were.
I'm not a monster. It’s not my fault I was born like this. You kept telling this to yourself—and you eventually snapped. So you waited. And plotted. When the sun went down and he was snoring lightly on his bed, you snuck out. Surviving on the streets as a pitiful beggar was a better fate than waking up to your partner’s mangled corpse. You cared about him too much.
You left home in your porcelain-white dress and ran off into the night, ashamed of the sin you didn’t commit.
Sleeping in between the tall, brick buildings and narrow passages withered you, little by little. The cramped walls reminded you of your old cage; a time when you had value and utility. You touched the stumps on your head—severed the animal ears in the hopes of being permitted to work, but as they always do, they found out, and you were exiled. Your only company in this confined space aside from the cockroaches wriggling in the dumpster cans was a small tabby with sand-colored fur and white flecks. She was old, bony, and frail, just like you.
This wasn't the future you envisioned. In your late years, you wanted to be surrounded by your children, and their children would sing you sweet lullabies like you had for their parents. Here you were, starving in a dark alleyway and rotting on a mattress. You blamed yourself constantly for the life you wasted.
Perhaps they were right, you were a monster. A vulgar stain on the earth. Despite this, you were grateful that you were craved for. The innocent daughter. You recalled the moment when you said goodbye to her—her sudden embrace, soft skin, your clasped throat, chest tightened like a butterfly knot. Oh, how you cried that day. You kept playing this scene over and over in the projector of your granular memory, and your only regret was that you couldn't say it to her, not with your feeble voice, what it meant—what she meant to you.
The cat leaped onto the mattress and warmed your filthy legs. She could smell your longing—the juvenile fantasy that someone came and swept you away from here. Such intelligent creatures. If only you were smarter. If only you had cherished them, they would still be beside you. If only you weren't so naive, things could have gone differently. But those days had gone.
You lived.
You were loved.
In your final breaths, you dreamt of purring.