How to Make Life: Chapter Three

Inigo

The soldier, the one with the gray hair and cool voice, upon seeing Father walk out of the house, drew his gun into his hand and pointed it at Mother. “I want both of you on the ground, hands behind your heads. Nice and easy; we don’t want to make this any harder than it is.”

Mother, with hatred plastered on her typically soft face, kneeled to the ground, and my dad joined her, slumping over in sickly pain.

The older soldier, with a nod of approval, turned his head slightly to address his subordinates, eyes never leaving his prey. “Soldier Ander, come.”

A boy perhaps no older than twelve with dark skin looked around in confusion, and he slowly tread over to the older soldier. His presence shook with uncertainty, dwarfing him in comparison to the older man. “Com – Commander Uttbridge? Yes sir?”

Uttbridge, with a nod of encouragement, said, “I want you to show them the severity of their crime.”

Ander, young face contorted, took out a small figure from the pocket of his uniform with shaky hands. It was made of sand, and even though its wings were chipped off, detached from the body, its identity was still unquestionably clear.

It was the little hummingbird.

“A golem,” Uttbridge said, monotone slicing through the air, an agent of the cold wind. “A severe crime, and one that needs to be punished accordingly. In the name of the King, I sentence you both to death.”

“This is absurd!” Mother interjected. She tilted her head up, eyes flashing dangerously. “How do you know that’s ours? How on Earth do you know?”

Some of the soldiers, in reply, put their hands to their holsters in anticipation of a fight. However, Uttbridge just held up a hand as though to soothe the situation.

“We always know, Mrs. Chayyim,” he said. “We are always watching. There is never, never an escape.”

At this, Mikeita clutched for my hand from behind the hidden building. I began to shudder almost in perfect unison with the sound of the wall.

Hum. Hum. Hum.

“Iggy,” she whispered, but we both remained motionless, held down by the atmosphere heavy with terror.

Uttbridge drew his gun, a small thing just a little bigger than the golem bird, and he shoved it towards Ander who received it with tentative hands. “You have to learn sometime, Soldier.”

Ander stared at his commander for a few moments, eyes uncomprehending. But when he finally understood the weight of Uttbridge’s request, he dropped the gun in shock. A couple of the other soldiers laughed. Mother choked out a sob.

Ander slowly picked up the gun, and glanced worriedly at Uttbridge. “I . . . I don’t . . . Sir, please – “

“Oh – dammit – I’ll do it.”

A soldier stepped out from the crowd of red, and his features solidified into a singular, menacing presence. He withdrew a long, glimmering knife, and held it in front of his lean, threatening body. He shoved his way past Ander and knelt in front of Mother and Father. His green eyes stared into theirs, and he grinned with wide, toothy thrill. I clutched Mikeita’s hand tighter. I had never seen such compassionless green eyes.

“The name is Vyn. Bo Vyn, if you desire to be polite to your executioner. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you,” the soldier said, holding his blade aloft. “Now, let’s do this properly. And don’t worry; I won’t pussy out like our other so-called soldiers.”

Ander had dropped the gun again.

 Uttbridge stood watching with cool indifference, but he did mutter, “Try to follow at least a fraction of the protocol, Vyn.”

Vyn responded to the statement with a Cheshire grin. “Do you know what that is?” he asked, and he pointed a slender finger over to the small golem. It chirped feebly in the commander’s hands.

Mother pursed her lips. “How should I know? It looks like a child’s toy to me.”

“Are you sure that’s your answer?”

“Of course I’m sure! My husband and I have been nothing but loyal to the crown for years; we are just a normal family in this freak of a town.”

Vyn gave her a dangerous smirk. “We’ll see about that. Check the house!” Obeying the signal without hesitation, a couple of soldiers ran into the Chayyim’s modest home. Within only a few moments, they returned with handfuls of the toys made of mud that had once held enchantment in my eyes. Father hung his head in feverish despair, but Mother held her body straighter. She looked directly into the venomous eyes of her killer.

“We found these, sir,” one of the soldiers said, dropping the toys to the earth as though they were laced with poison. The others followed suit, and a pile of whimsical playthings melted into the hopeless surroundings.

Vyn clutched at a toy cat which was mewing feebly on the ground. In just a few, fluid motions, he had completely torn off its limbs and left them wriggling on the desolate ground.

“Now, isn’t this interesting?” Vyn said, and he pointed the knife back at Mother’s head. “What are these?”

“They’re just my children’s toys,” Mother replied. Her voice began to shake in time with my own trembling. It seemed as the whole world was slowly starting to shudder in horror.

Hum. Hum. Hum.

“Tell me the truth! What are they?”

“I told you! Just toys!”

“Tell me the truth or I’ll stick you like the filthy pig you are!”

“They’re toys! I swear! I swear!”

Vyn’s eyes flared and he swung the knife around. It now rested just an inch away from Father’s throat. “I have killed more people, Mrs. Chayyim, than you could ever imagine in that miniscule mind of yours. I am the perfect assassin. I am the epitome of murder. I am the manifest of Death himself.”

Father looked at my mother with pleading, black eyes. No. Survive. But with the prospect of death hanging over her husband, broken from fever and years of hard labor, Mother finally burst into tears and began to sob, refusing to meet Vyn’s menacing eyes. Her once fortuitous figure had broken, just like her fragile hummingbird.

In a quiet breath, racked with cries, she whispered, “They’re golems.”

Vyn was silent for a few seconds, staring at Mother and Father with the most foul of expressions. But, slowly, he began to laugh, quietly at first, and then more furiously it crescendoed until it reached its insane climax. At this point, he gestured to the soldiers surrounding him, and said, “Pin these traitors down!”

Again, without question, the soldiers in red grabbed the limbs of Mother and Father. With minimal effort, they had them both restrained and immobilized on the ground. Father, in his feverish state, barely made a peep, but Mother began to sob louder and louder. Uttbridge watched with disguised interest.

Vyn, still chuckling, said, “I’ll tell you something about myself before I kill you, Chayyim. The Devil is my best friend, and he has been training me in the masterful art of murder for a very long time. And I’ll tell you something very simple about myself as well: I love killing. So thank you for giving me this opportunity.”

Vyn held up his knife, and took time to relish in the screams that followed his hellish act.

He sawed off the hands of both my mother and my father.

The garden, once so bland and uniform, was then marbled with splashes of dark crimson as the blood poured from the wrists of Mother and Father. The breeze carried the piercing screams of Mother who stared at her dismembered hands as they rested on the ground, detached from her body, the hands that had once brought so much life into the world. Father was silent; it appeared as if he had passed out from the combination of the fever, pain, and loss of so much life.

Vyn held the knife up to his chin, and he gently tapped it there a few times as though in deep contemplation. “Now what should we do?” He licked the blade, letting the blood, none of it his own, drip from his mouth which was stretched wide in a dastardly grin. “I know; I think I shall cut off your tongue, Mrs. Chayyim, for being so rude to me.”

My mother’s head was tipped back by the soldiers. Her nose was plugged, and she was eventually forced to gasp for air.

Vyn grabbed her tongue and sliced it off, laughing as she gagged on the blood spilling from the mouth that had once laughed ever so prettily and had told stories of magic and wonder. The mouth that had once kissed her husband’s, smiling a simple, “I do.” The mouth that had once told her children that she loved them and would always, no matter what, protect them.

From behind their hiding place, Mikeita had started. She had pried her hand away from mine and began to make towards the scene of horror in front of her, and with a tiny whimper, I grasped at my little sister and pinned her tightly against my chest. She struggled viscously, but I was bigger. I guess it’s one of the privileges of being a first-born child.

“Let me go! Inigo, let me go! Mom and Dad need our help! Let me go!” Mikeita cried, but I would not let her give her own life up. I would protect her. She would not leave.

Seeing as Aza was still awake and still gasping through the gore that was slowly suffocating her, Vyn held the knife up to her eyes. “You have rather beautiful eyes, Mrs. Chayyim. They are just absolutely stunning. But you know what will make them shine even brighter?” And, in perhaps the worst of his string of horrors, Vyn stuck his blade into the Aza’s blue eyes. He twisted with disturbingly little effort. First the left. Pop. Then the right. Pop. The disturbing sound was masked by the horrifying, tortured screeches of Aza, whose face was now beyond  recognizable quality. All that was left was just a mass of red blood and exposed flesh. So much red!

Finally, when she had passed out and had slumped to the ground in a puddle of crimson, Vyn wiped his knife on his pants, just adding yet another stain. He looked at the surrounding soldiers and smiled. “Well now, wasn’t that fun?” He turned to Ander and opened his arms, embracing the scene in front of him. “And that, newbie, is how it’s done. Viciously and artfully. Soon you will learn the pleasure.”

Ander was now slumped on the ground beside Commander Uttbridge, and he was shaking his head from side to side. His young, dark face was contorted with trapped terror.

Vyn began to lick the remainder of the blood from his blade, and Uttbridge regained control of the situation. He spoke forward and stood beside Vyn. The appearance of outward and inward malevolence so close together caused me to sob for the vicious barrage against my psyche.

“Burn these two conspirators against the king. I want nothing left of the filth,” the commander said.

The soldiers piled wood upon Mother and Father, and they cast torches upon their chests, which still rose up and down ever so slightly. In a burst of flames, they were consumed. The acrid smell of burning flesh and stinging smoke masked the flowery smell of my mother and the sweaty scent of my father. Or, at least, I thought that was their aroma. Now I believe they will forever be linked to the scent of carnage. Yes, my parents were no more.

The flames rose high into the air for a long while, the angry red contrasting with the blue sky which held so much hope for me. My sister and I watched and sobbed as the fire painted our old home with putrid smoke; I could smell the burning of our parent’s flesh. And we stood behind the building, giving up our struggle, observing the dreadfulness no kid should ever endure.

“And now the Devil has taken back the scum of our Earth,” Vyn said after the blaze had died. The smell of death was overpowering. A gust of air had grabbed fistfuls of warm ash and tossed them into the air. “It’s such a pleasure to make our kingdom safer.”

Another soldier spoke up; his face was a mask of black ash. “What about the children? I think they escaped.”

Vyn grinned again and billowed out his manic, terror-inducing laugh, but it was Uttbridge who answered.

“Let them survive for a while. But keep a close eye on them from now on; this is where the real struggle begins. Hopefully, what we did here today will pay off very soon.” Uttbridge cast an eye over to where we were hiding, and I drew my sister closer to me in dismay. But the commander just as quickly turned away and signaled for his soldiers to leave. The sound of the soldier’s heavy combat boots and Bo Vyn’s mad mind soon disappeared into the distance, leaving nothing but the sound of the angry wind and the swirling tornado of burnt flesh.

Mikeita was sobbing into my chest now, unable to look at the disgusting scene any longer, but I was still staring with wide, blue eyes at the garden which grew not flowers, but scorch marks, blood, and a few remnants of our parents’ bodies. While my sister’s body was being wracked with silent cries, I tipped my head back and let out a feral, tormented scream, letting it rip through the pleasant day like the knife that had defiled my mother. I serrated the sky with my cries. The sun bled along with my tears. Joy no longer had meaning to me.

I pulled my sister closer to me still, and I let my tears fall into her blonde hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

We stood like this, alone in the world, innocence stolen right before our eyes amidst the carnage and mutilation of our parents, the ones that were supposed to protect us against all the horrors of life.

And in the middle of a pool of blood, the hummingbird fluttered its wings; its body was cracked and scorched beyond repair. Its eyes, lifeless, rested upon me for just a fraction of a second, before it fell apart into just a pile of dirt, melding, yet again, into the crimson Earth. The creation of a mother’s love and magic touch would forever lie lifeless within a pool of blood.

Never again would it fly.