Into his life, I pull the strings

ALICE

My sight started to shatter. Images bombarded me in full blast. Strings shot up in every direction. Like numerous colorful birds on their glorious flight. I can hear excited whispers. Of a woman, floating, hovering, embracing me with welcome arms. I can’t tell what she’s saying. Only a low distorted words of ‘thank you my Mistress’ is what my ears picked up. I’m still kneeling in the soft pile of grass. A bit mushy from the rain, pebbles scraping at my knees. 

I hear soft enchants. A foreign language I’ve never heard before. But some part of my brain oddly pin the words as familiar. Like a distant lullaby someone sang to me. Long long time ago.

I find it strange. Not upsetting. Just strange. The more I listened, the more my strength drained my muscles lifeless. 

I’ve heard these enchants before. Someone whisper them to my ears in my sleep. Soothing, palliative, a set of words meant to take my fears away. They were said solely for me. A calming effect blossoms in my chest. Spreading warmth to my limbs. Giving life to my blood. Raising my dead heart to life. Putting meaning to my brain to function. 

It’s been so long long too long ago since I’ve basked in this bliss. Estranged strings wrapped me in their midst. A woman giggled at my ears. 

“Ask anything and it shall be done.” is what she said, her voice lulling as if she knows how empty I felt deep deep down. 

“The boy… save him,” I croaked. White strings skyrocketed in the air, pulling me in its movement. Forcing my knees to move in its frozen state. I followed. To wherever they want me to go.

I’m aware of someone’s eyes watching me from the side. Bright crimson eyes observing my actions. Red glittering robes seized my eyesight as sunlight reflected in my eyes. I winced. Forcing my eyelids shut. My brain is too muddled to think. To process what’s going on. I kept heaving in space, anxiousness grips my skin. 

The screams of the boy are drawing near. Five, seven, ten feet away I can hear the harsh struck of brute against feeble bones. My eyes snap open in alarm. With my own eyes, I watch a man in his middle thirties beat the life out of a skinny not more than fourteen years old boy. His muffled call for help buried under the heavy strike of the man’s leg. 

Rage scorched my veins. Every muscle every tendon in my body reacts to the low level abuse unfolding in front of me. My fingers tense in recognition. My own screams from the past fraught my ears. I was once imprisoned in that cruel maltreatment. My Aunt will oppress me to the point of degradement. Sometimes pain was so much to bear I shut myself inside a four walled room I put up to protect myself.

I can’t allow anyone to undergo the same abuse as I did. I can’t allow an innocent child suffer under the frustration of twisted adults. Small fragile little humans are meant to be cared for, not used as play toy to gratify sadistic stimulations. 

“Mistress, what do you want me to do?” I felt a presence brushing my right arm. A fracture in the air forms a opalescent figure of a long haired woman beside me. 

“Let the man feel the pain he inflicts on the boy ten times worse.” I watch the woman figure shift in her place. Stretch her hand and the strings swiftly bind the man and drive him on his knees. 

I approached the boy, barely holding on with life. Lying feebly in the cold ground and coughing blood. Hesitantly, I brush his hair and touch his wrist. His tattered oversized shirt caked with soot. The carved wound made by a knife on his neck…

I gulped the horror, the recognition, the sharp icy edge slicing my throat. 

Double Vs. In opposite up and down direction. V∧. That’s the symbol of confederation where my Aunt is one of the founders. The second in command to their ‘Boss’.  

In public, they are big successful entrepreneurs who made it big in their businesses and professions. Little the public knows these people are responsible for the fluctuation of the economic growth of certain countries. 

They control global markets, international relations between countries, even manipulate top secret national securities to widen their influence in world expansion. 

The small country where I was from… the beautiful place where I was born, is now nothing but a barren field of wreckage because of their activities. Nuclear weapons, war declarations between countries, those tactics are not the wise steps to completely destroy a country. 

You must take it slow. Not garner too much attention that could expose the Mastermind. Build plans on solid ground than mountain crevices, that would stand erect in times of unforeseen circumstances. Create undetectable crimes even global associations of police task force can’t detect. World scale mass murder which the public rules out as natural disasters. Those are the crimes they excel. 

In some cases more than one, plague and virus break out is their resort. 

The Confederation call it their way of thinning population out. The weather is not constant. The animals are driven to instinction. Natural habitats were destroyed by man made disasters. Global warming peaks high temperature on all continents. The season is like a slow cooker and the earth is the ingredients. Causing everything in the surface to boil 1 degree at a time. 

Growing crops on fields are hard to come by. Flowers and butterflies can only be seen in rural areas. Natural vegetation no longer suffice GMO synthethize plants replaced the ingredients on our plate.

Nothing can redo the damage in the planet. The weather, the plants, the animals, all natural elements were at war because of man made abuse. And the Confederation concludes...if they can’t fix the problem on Earth they better eliminate the responsible for these destructions - which is us, humans.

The boy flutter his eyes open. Electric blue eyes rage deeper into his soul. Bottomless peak reflects his eyelashes. My breath hitches. It’s almost like I’m watching the sea. I slowly wrap my hands on his back, careful, mindful, of the injuries in his small frame. 

“Are you alright?” I asked quietly. His eyes reflect my eyes. Like I’m watching my soul disingreted to pieces in front of me.    

“Who...are...you?” He croaked between chokes. 

I watch his skin bone arms palette in purple and green bruises. I watch his small face lines with cuts and blood. Anger flared through me like bubbling lava inside volcanoes. Barely holding it in, I turn to the man who’s wrap in strings on his feet.

“Woman,” I whispered, calling out to the woman who refered me as Mistress. 

“Chordinis, my Mistress.” she introduced. Her voice pulsate from the filter of leaves swirling in the wind. 

“Heal the boy.” I meant that sentence as a question but it came out as an order. My voice turn stone and firm. 

“At your service,” 

In an instant, white strings looped around the face, arms and legs of the boy. Receding to nothingness when the work is done. Except for the tattered shirt, he came out clean and fresh. 

“What about the other man Mistress? What specific actions would you want me to do to him?” 

I did not answer. I watch the boy sleeps into oblivion in my lap. Entering the world of dreams where anything is possible but carries no hope in making the reality any better than before.

“I could kill him if you want Mistress,” 

I turn to meet her apparitions in dead air. I see no face, only figure blending in the background. 

“Killing is mercy.” I said and brushed the boy’s messy raven hair. 

“Drive that man insane. Make his life miserable he’ll constantly smack himself each time he saw a little boy nearby.”

“Understood.” 

I slid the boy’s sleeping figure in my shoulder as I left the man screaming his brains out in the ground.