Human or not? Am I?

It seems everything goes wrong lately. Madness fell on our little world.

For all I understand, it started with some missing girls in the neighbourhood, and people around here started pointing us as the culprit. They started protesting at our doors asking the keepers to deliver them some scapegoat to sacrifice. With that, they could feel better then. Don’t ask me why, it’s beyond me, an adult thing probably. All I get is that we’re the ultimate scapegoat, ugly mad things full of criminal thoughts that we are.

Some of them tried to play the righteous slaughtering miscreant scene, entering our compound and start crashing in the classrooms, ready to kill, and then, were surprised to find there only some poor kids and not bloodthirsty demons. Nevertheless it wasn’t enough to calm down so much hatred and most of the alleviate pure innocent folks still tried to breach the hell gates to reach us. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they just don’t know what to do with their feeling of powerlessness and need violence to vent their anger out.

That’s so basic! Everykid here knows how to react in those kinds of situations, that’s something the faces forced us to learn before everything else. We all know that because we all felt the same at one point or the other. So much hate and anger against the whole world. Without knowing what to do with all those feelings. We suffer from them, and it makes people around us suffer too, by lashing on them. So they forced us to learn how to deal with them before anything else.

How is it that us, do know how to repress those kinds of feelings and all the other regular folks don’t? What irony is that? Today, it’s us who have to suffer from them lashing on us. We’re supposed to be the dregs of mankind after all. How could they do worse than us! See? If we’re so low then, what does that make them?
Or do they think they could go wild against us because we’re supposed to be wastes without value?

Ah!

Too much laugh. That’s so absurd I’m becoming to feel like a kind of angel before a crowd of savages who don’t even know how to talk. They just know how to growls.

But I supposed I’m going a bit too fast for you there. Well, if I say I’m on my nest, the girl sleeping against me, watching half our school being torched and reduced to ash, will you understand a bit then?

But let’s go back a bit in time. I got a few stashes of goods here and there, in case troubles came to find me and I need to stay low a bit. I think all of us around here are doing the same, one way or the other. Stay in the system a few years and it’s a habit you’ll take, always preparing for the worst.

But with the trouble at our gate, I tried to grab more to hide it on my nest. Mostly food. And I know I’m not the only one doing that because the staff started screaming about how we stole them dry.

After a few days of chaos, things did seem to come back to normal, the barbarians went home and the keeper could breathe a little. But me? I stayed on my spot, I couldn’t believe they just left like that. I was waiting for a more aggressive attack and well. In the middle of the night that was it. Some of them must have crossed the small fence on the countryside side of the compound, like those who trashed the classrooms, and they started to put the buildings ablaze, torches in hand.

It was kind of surreal. I got that image from an old movie, with a doc putting life in a creature made with parts of others, and at the end, the people armed with forks and sticks, torches in hand, burned everything to ashes because they couldn’t suffer the creature who, at the end, has done nothing against them, to live. And that’s been it. The exact same scene was happening in front of my eyes, but with more screams, and in colours really more vivid than the mute, black and white movie I had seen could render.

Totally overwhelmed, a few of the staff people were running madly here and there in front of those faces … are they even still faces? I got the feeling they aren’t. Not anymore. There are no minds in those heads of them. They smiled wildly, feeling ecstatic, putting flames everywhere they could, watching terrorised kids in underwear and staff fleeing before them. What the hell could they thinking? I though they were protesting for some missing girls, why then, could they feel so exalted at hurting others, including some poor underage girls? It’s just plain madness.

I’m no better on my tree. I fancy to see myself as one of those heroes from time to time, but I know I’m no less terrorised than those running from the flames, or being beaten half dead by the mob. Maybe I could help some, but, at the same time, I just can’t get on the ground and risk being a target for their ire too. So I just stay there, watching, closing my fists so much that it begins to hurt more and more. Washed in powerlessness.

What? Did I hate them! Of course! How I cannot? But it’s better if I snuff that thought as soon as I get it on my mind or it’ll never leave, and then, I know for sure, where it could lead me. And even if not, I’ve got another perfect example in front of me of what madness could do.
And yeah I agree it’s no better to hate myself instead. But today I can’t play the indifference, and it’s easier for everyone, maybe myself included, if I just stop at hating me and not play the savage beast under the cover of the night like all those fools.

That’s when I heard noises from the base of the tree. It was the girl seeking refuge. For a moment, terror took me in. what if they followed her! What if they see me? See?! How fast disgusting me makes a come back. Talk about a hero!

Then I saw her eyes, the same terror as mine in it, but not against them, against me!

What if he pushes me down? What if he doesn’t accept me up there? Could I still run? But for how long? I saw all that in here, in those eyes.

Hopefully, I didn’t have too much time to think. Could I talk to her? Could I help her? If I grab her hands, will I puke on her? She's a face after all! Is she? What I’m seeing? The girl, Ellie, or the face?

I know I could have spent hours thinking in circles like that for nothing except running on edge, full of fears.

Instead, I jumped down on the grass and show her how to climb that tree. Dunno if the terror helped or not, but she was up there on the first try, and I followed close behind her.

When I sat in my spot, she jumped on me, grabbing me ferociously, crying, without a sound. I froze, completely still, like a statue, until, hours later, she silently cried all of her heart down. Then she was so exhausted she couldn’t even stay conscious and she kind of lay on me, half on me, grabbing me in a way that makes me feel like a teddy bear of sort. I just hoped she was asleep and nothing more serious but how could I’ve known?
That’s when I noticed she was only wearing her night gown and nothing else. Funny how your mind could analyse some things and not others or give a priority to some meaning against others. Then how your thought can wander, and how far they can get on their own.
Let’s just say I simply cover her with my arms and us under some blanket I got for when I spent a night here. I let my mind wander, and wander, like I always do. Except today, my journey had a completely new material to build on.