Perhaps

• Sophia Hui, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2022

Is it unusual to feel the shivering pain that slides down your throat whenever you see blood? Is it weird to want to scream whenever you hear the sound of agony from someone’s mouth? Is it strange to run and hide whenever you feel a hand on your shoulder? Perhaps if the answer is yes, then does this make me a monster? A freak? If not, then why does nobody talk to me? Why does nobody want to come near me? What did I do to deserve the cold glares that I receive from my surrounding people? Why can’t I be a normal girl just like everyone? What did I do?

From the very beginning, no one wanted me, my birth mother died from a mysterious murder and my father quickly disappeared after, I was left alone and tossed around like a game of hot potato around my family relatives. They were the only people that would dare talk to me, they believed that I was just an average behaved girl, that there was nothing awkward or different about me. Yet they treated me like a dog.

‘Go get my glasses!’ They said,‘ Move out of the way!’ What is the different in saying:
‘Go fetch the ball!’ They said, ‘Go and sit in the corner!’.

Why should my life be valued as low as a four-legged creature? When did I suddenly become a servant to their lazy bodies? But however much I have tried to please them, they seemed to believe that I was just a lowly parasite that clingged onto them desperately. But no, I don’t need them, I don’t need to be treated like a disease, I just want me freedom, the same that goes for a caged bird, let out of its wired container. Am I also trapped in a glass illusion? Where no one ever acknowledges my presence?

I ran away, I was sick and tired, it was never a home to me, it was just like torture, orders to obey and commands to follow. The miles I walked to make sure that no one could follow after me, the regret that I suffered for stealing apples in carts and pickpocketing innocent children, the pain that I felt for having to suffer alone. No one was there for me when I cried, no one was there for me when I felt fear engulf me.

Then I experienced trauma. Agony filled my heart. I screamed and wept whenever someone came close, whenever someone had an injury, whenever someone was yelling. Yet no one came.

Until a friendly voice approached me, a beautiful smile painted across their face with hair as bright as gold and eyes glittering in the sunlight, they embraced me with a warm hug.

“Don’t worry, you are loved.” They said I looked up to see someone who had a mirror image of me. Someone who looked like they had lost a loved one. Someone who was trying to find their abandoned daughter. Perhaps.