Past.

I normally don’t think about the past; what happened may (or may not have) happened and things can’t really change when it comes to that. Still, we have to look back on what we’ve gone through in order to continue on with the present and future. My story…well, it was a lot less bloody then the stories of my kith and kin, and for that I am grateful. There are others who lived through worse, or didn’t live through them at all. But even with that gratitude fresh in my mind I can still smell the dank mold of the past, seeping through past the coolness and out into the open. My past is better then others, but it wasn’t fun and games.
The first few snatches of memory I have are of the four Walls and a blanket. I’ve talked about the Walls before; their comfort and existence as boundaries to my blissfully small, peaceful little world. Up and down the stair-Wall my mother and father would come, bringing food, water, and sometimes small rectangular things called “books.” The food and water would be happily consumed by me, while the “books” would be split apart into smaller, wafer-pieces called “pages’ and held open while a parent rumbled words at me. Over time it became clear that the books spoke a different language, a silent tongue called “reading” that I could speak too, if I scratched odd lines and curves called “letters” on the pages. Even though no sound came from me I could talk, and I loved it as much as I loved sleep and thinking. The books gave me new things to dream and wonder about—I didn’t have to just measure cracks in the wall and try to guess how long they’d be later, I could read about “philosophy” and “words” and all sorts of strange things!
Life went on—food, water, thinking, reading, sleeping—for some time, I knew not how long. My world was safe from the Outside, that strange thing that threatened me and I was never to try to go near. I had mother and Father. I was happy. Then, a new addition came to my little world—a structure with not four Walls, but six! One could move, in and out, and I bounced inside, kicking at the movable Wall and having a great time. I heard the rumble of approval from Father just as the Wall moved in and things got black. “Good boy.”
When the wall opened again, I clambered out. I was sleepy, and there was an odd feeling on the lower part of me. It hurt like a scrape or a cut, yet stung like when I jumped up and touched the “light bulb” that hung from the ceiling. A quick look revealed a long, thin cut to the area close to my legs, black lines and a hollow ache. The six-walled thing was taken away to the Outside. Though I had the means to ask about the strange wound, I never did. There was something shameful about it—the rumination of a part of me that Mother and Father seemed concerned and yet nonchalant about. A part of me that was not like them…but then again so much of me was not like them.
Whatever I was, it was not like Father or Mother, and I knew it. Only much, much later did I find out why I was different. At that point, I was simply freakish, a strange quirk that was rightfully guarded and kept away from the Outside. “Poleepkwa” or “prawns” were things I had never read or heard of, while “human” was a thing I read about but shirked for more fun things like “religions” or “isms.”
It makes me laugh a bit, how I figured things out when I was younger. All of it was assumption, little to no given, provable information available to the imaginary laws and standards I created. It’s funny how it was all upended when I was thrust out into the Outside…but then that’s another story I guess. I’ve droned on about the past enough; there’s the present here calling for me, in the form of two little poleepkwa called Jack and Jill. They’re much more important then the memory of what happened.