Jon Thomas Villafañe

Being Human

Once a storm had destroyed an island. In the wreckage, carnage reigned. Dead trees, dead animals, dead people. I remember the storm clearly. It was loud and ferocious… then calm. The silence was unlike anything I had ever heard before. My island was small, but I knew it could be so much more. I dug through the debris, and to my delight I found a bamboo shoot. I sought out soil and placed the seed into the ground. Soon, it had become a fully-fledged plant. I began to plant more and more shoots and other seeds I had found, and in what felt like no time at all, a forest had been born. I lived in the trees, I slept in the brush. I welcomed the weary endangered animals as they swam to shore, looking for a new home. I sheltered the occasional wanderer; someone who may have stumbled into my oasis in search of a new start. One of these wanderers became a friend. A friend who helped me plant more trees, feed more animals, and help more people. This was the highlight of my life. To live in the world as an extension of nature. When the next storms came, the trees protected us. It merely knocked loose the fruit that had been hard to reach. I had created something to be proud of.

Then it was taken from me.

The very same friend I had once welcomed into my forest turned his back on me. One night, a group of poachers offered him a fortune to help them hunt the last horned beast - a creature that lived in my care. As the poachers hunted their kill, my former companion torched the trees. The smell of sweet berries and nectar was replaced with smoke and the heat of a thousand suns. Gone. All of it, gone. A flash of light shot across the sky, and a mighty wind stirred. I locked eyes with the traitor as he flashed me a devilish grin. I rushed him, only to be blocked by a burning tree that had fallen in between us. As he ran off, something was missing. I looked down and noticed my shirt was covered in blood. I grew dizzy and fainted. This man. This fiend. He had ruined my life’s work, and he had taken something from me. Something I very much intend to get back.

I planted a forest. I created life. I created out of a desire to build and to better the world around me. Now, I hold only hate. A hate that can move mountains. A hate that keeps my blood pumping from my veins to my spiteful hands; hands that I have new plans for. Hands that may never build again, but instead have an itching desire to destroy. I hold no hate for the world. Though I have one target, for whom I plan on exploring the true depth of the bitterness I feel.

I sheltered you as I would have any other. I treated your wounds, I fed your hungry gut, I washed the grime off your weary bones. I thought of you as one of my blood, traveling a road of compassion for a kindred spirit. And perhaps I noticed the cancerous sore in your very being long before you burned me, but I ignored it. I ignored it against all better judgement, because above all else, you were a friend. A friend I had shared a home with. A friend I had grown with. A friend who had helped my joy bloom - my very own creation - flourish under a hopeful sky. And now all that remains are the cinders and ashes of my naivety. I will never forget the night you burned it all down. 

I long to know what my hands may feel like,

Wrapped around his throat and squeezing until the air vacates his lungs.

I long to know how much red can ooze from the cage he holds his organs in.

I wonder if death is too merciful.

I want him to suffer.

Sometimes I feel myself drifting down the rabbit hole. And yet, somehow, I seem to carry on. Two years, to the day. I have picked up small fragments of the life I once knew, though I still wander with one vision in mind. To see the face of a nemesis when I close my eyes. Travelers I have spoken with over the years say that it’s unhealthy to fester so much. Perhaps they’re right, though I seek no comfort in wisdom from peers. 

Perhaps I should have. It is not an uncommon occurrence for me as of late to drift into what I refer to as spitewalking. I’ve been told it is a form of mere dissociation, where everything around me ceases to exist. All I can focus on is my bitterness. I dream of violence and I crave the suffering of one person alone. I fantasize over how slowly I can make him bleed. However, outside of my delusions, I am still very much moving and occupying space in the world. Which is unfortunate, because once while spitewalking I had walked in front of a carriage, hurdling down a cobblestone road before catching sight of me. The driver did his best to avoid me, ordering his horses to make a hard turn. They obeyed his command, though the carriage they were carrying had not caught up in time. The vessel slammed directly into me from its side, sending me flying five paces through the air and landing bluntly on the stone beneath. Seven of my bones were shattered that day.

I stayed in my care ward, legs elevated to minimize future damage to my femur, stewing over my circumstance. Two broken legs and a permanent limp to look forward to, my doctor told me. I liked my doctor. He was older than me, for sure. Whereas my hair still holds the pigmentation of youth, it has begun to embrace a silver that kills monsters and holds great wisdom. A kind man, with a thick mustache and circular rimmed glasses that seemed to fog up if his passion inspired the words from his lips. He treated me for the duration of my stay, taking particular curiosity in my case when I had mentioned I was spite walking. 

“And how long have you been spitewalking?” he asked me.

“Two years now, to the day,” I replied.

“And is this spite towards a greater purpose, or merely one man?”

“One man. But man is relative, for he is my prey, and I, a hungry predator.”

“I don’t believe you,” my doctor said.

I was taken aback. What did he mean, he didn’t believe me? Didn’t believe my story? Didn’t believe my rage? Didn’t believe in my plans to live up to my goal of retribution? My face must have gave my inner monologue away, for I had not even opened my mouth before he continued.

“Hate is a profession,” he said. “You, are a traveler by trade. To spite at the rate that you’ve been going? You’ll break before you even reach him.”

I had no words.

“Tell me,” he continued. “If a child was left stranded in the woods, crying out for her mother, would you help her find her way home?”

“I would,” I answered.

“And if a dying stranger could be saved with a mere drink of water that you had an abundance of, would you give them a drink?”

“I would,” I answered.

“And yet, you speak to me as if you are a spiteful creature. A one-dimensional being intent on only wreaking chaos and destruction. And still, I see very little havoc in your heart. What you need is not retribution, but rather, the understanding that the world functions by way of scales.”

“I care very little for scales. I told you already, I hold no animosity for the world at large. Just one man.”

“Exactly. And one man to this world is a drop in a sea of possibilities. One man who very well may be a creature of spite himself. And he has stolen something from you. I will not defend the actions of a wicked stranger, especially one who seems to have sent you on such a dangerous path, though I merely wish to ask one more question.”

“What is your question?”

“Is what he stole from you truly so important that you must walk into oncoming traffic?”

In this moment, I could feel that the doctor believed he had made his case. For this point to be the nail in the coffin of logic that may sway me to a life on a brighter path. But he underestimated my resolve.

“Yes,” I said. “Because what he stole from me, was my very beating heart.”

For several weeks I lie broken and shattered, slowly regaining my strength. Finally, the time had come for me to leave my sick bed, free to resume my mission. I was seen off by my doctor, who though I disagreed with on certain matters, I had come to regard now as a friend. He wished me good fortune as he shook my hand, and implored that I look deep down and reconsider the path that I am walking.

Unwilling to hear his plea, I thanked him for treating me and for the cane he had custom made for me. It was a sturdy cane with a classic arch, colored to match the earthy tones of a mahogany tree. Carved into the handle were the words, diabolous olim homo, something I’m sure was placed under my hand with the hopes of swaying my nature. Limping onward, I continued my journey.

Having lost so much time, I now needed to collect information on the whereabouts of my sworn nemesis. I found myself hunting his trail all the way to a benighted village with failing crops and starving people. How tragic, I thought to myself, as I looked on at a hungry mother offering her slim rations to her hungry child. Had this been my village, I would have given my own rations so that both of them may eat. I would have hunted for livestock to feed the rest of them. I would have traveled far and wide to find new crops that may flourish in the failing soil beneath us. And still, here I watch on as a traveler myself, with no village to even call my own. My rage had returned. My empathy had been deterred. I was spitewalking once more.

When I came back to my senses, the first thing I had noticed was that the sun had set and it was now close to midnight. What’s more, I was now in the heart of the decrepit village and not a soul could be seen loitering outside. While humble homes surrounded me, I turned in circles to see if somehow I had mistaken this village for populated. On a closer look, I had noticed smoke emitting from several chimneys. Everyone was, in fact, inside their homes. The scent of a rustic fire drew me towards a home with a large porch that revealed the craftsmanship of a masterful cabin - the sort I had never been able to perfect with my own hands. In awe of the artistry, I gazed upon the facade of the building a moment more. During my appreciation, I noticed a small clay sculpture, seemingly out of place as it stood in front of the door. The sculpture looked vaguely human, though the arms protruded in a manner that felt ever slightly off-putting. The fingers wrapped around in a sharpened crescent, a shape that did not resemble a hand, but rather, perhaps a sickle. I looked around and noticed that, not only did this home have a clay doll for this cryptid, every house seemed to have placed one of these dolls in front of their doors. A strange custom, I thought to myself. 

I started once more down the dusty road of this cropless town. As I walked on for what must have been nearly an hour, I started to appreciate how large this village truly was. At first glance, it seemed to be another pauper village, struggling for its own existence. However, I was too quick to judge. This was a town that must have been flourishing until late. A place that many seemed to call home, fallen on hard times for whatever reason there may be. And as my newfound appreciation for this land had grown, I came across a hunched over woman, staring blankly at the home in front of her. This home was noticeably older than those around it. In front of it was not only a clay doll, matching the others, but an array of smaller dolls surrounded it, all resembling small children. The woman’s hair was matted and dirty, obscuring her eyes and facial features. She wore a soiled white nightgown that had been covered in mud and worms, slowly writhing and wriggling up and down the exposed pale and blue skin that the gown had not covered. As I took one more step, her head spun around in an instant with the flexibility of an owl.

“Food!” she cried in a voice with two tones, one baritone, one soprano. Her backwards head met my eyes. With speed I could not fathom, she was now standing directly in front of me.

“I have some bread in my satchel,” I said, as I reached for my pouch. I grabbed a loaf of bread I had been gifted by my doctor friend and I broke off a piece. As I extended my hand with the food, I noticed now that her hands had been replaced with two scythes. She impaled the bread with the tip of her inhuman appendage and sniffed the flour and grain that had been flaking away.

“Grain, not of this earth. You are not from here. Why have you come here?” she said to me.

“I am a traveler, merely passing through.”

“A traveler, yes. Merely passing through, I wonder.” She looked me up and down, then fixed her bloodshot eyes on my cane. My cane seemed to have sparked a curiosity in her.

“A stranger who would share his bread with a creature he does not know is a stranger I can welcome in my village,” she finally said. “Come, I will tell you my story.”

I followed her as we walked through the blighted community, silently slumbering in the dead of night. A smell of firewood encased my senses as I stared out at field after field of shriveled foliage. 

“There once stood an orphanage in this town,” the Sickle Woman began to say. “At the edge of town. This town grew very quickly. I was here when the founders laid the first foundations and erected the town hall. Before we knew it, the population had tripled and we had many more mouths to feed. When a population grows so quickly, there becomes greater need for specialists, for medicine, for food… For everything, really. We only had one doctor at the time.” Now we had stopped walking. We were standing at what I first mistook to be another crop field, though I quickly understood that we were standing over a pauper’s graveyard. Crude branches tied together to resemble a cross had been placed here, atop dozens of rows all filled with unmarked graves in this fashion. The Sickle Woman stood in front of one such grave, decorated with many dead flowers and unlit saint candles.

“Our mortality rate was unbearable. So many sick neighbors and friends, all dying because we couldn’t treat them in time. So many children left without parents. I built the orphanage for those children. The children who had nowhere else to go. I took them in. I grew their food, I learned to hunt, I learned to sew; I did everything I could. It wasn’t enough. And then one day, a beacon of hope had come through our town: three doctors from a faraway place. They were looking for a new home to practice medicine. I was thrilled. I had begged them to treat my children; so many had grown sick and weak. And do you know what they told me?”

I shrugged my shoulders; I had no idea.

“‘How much will you pay us?’ they had told me.” I noticed now that the Sickle Woman was crying, though the tone of her voice remained the same. “I told them I had no money! We could hardly get by with what we had, and that I worked by myself to feed every child. They didn’t care. They only cared about lining their pockets. Weeks passed. The doctors had set up permanently in our village, treating only those who had the means to pay their egregious fee. With each new day, my children grew sicker. Many started dying. One after the next, until I stood in an empty orphanage, barren of any soul beside my own. Something inside of me broke. All I could think about was how selfish these doctors were. They could have prevented this! They could have stopped this! And still, they did nothing, while the world around them suffered!”

The Sickle Woman’s voice grew angrier and harsher with each next word. Her head hunched down and her back bent at an almost ninety-degree angle. She grew in size until she was almost nine feet tall. Her sickle hands began to tremble in a righteous fury.

“So I let the hatred consume me, wholly. I tied a noose, and I picked a tree in the center of their clinic grounds. I screamed so that they would rush to their courtyard where I stood on a branch, ready for my final mortal act. And as they gawked at my mad resolve, I shouted, ‘For your gluttony and greed, this land will know hunger! No crops will grow, and you will grow sick! May your bodies reflect a hunger that your selfish desires could never feed!’ I thought this was the end of my story, but it wasn’t. As my lifeless flesh hanged from the gallows of my own choosing, I felt my spirit drift to the ground beneath me. I felt my hands change to sickles, much like the ones I had used to work my own land. My hair grew to cover my face, and my posture stayed altered as the noose had broken my neck. And ever since that day, I have walked this village at night, bringing a blight with me that keeps the people hungry; a punishment for the greedy men who could have saved people but instead saved themselves.”

I could not help but empathize with the Sickle Woman. I told her my own story. I told her of my town, and the man who razed it to the ground. I told her of my quest to kill this man and take back what was stolen from me. To my shock, the ghostly creature embraced me in a hug. A chill traveled up my spine and down to my feet as the frost of hatred softened around me. 

“Beware,” she said. “Hate of this magnitude comes with a price.”

“I fear no price,” I replied.

 “I believe you.” She was no longer holding me in her frozen comfort. She took my hand and with a scythe she cleanly severed the index finger on my left hand. Shocked by the sudden dismemberment, I yelped, though if I’m telling the truth, it did not hurt… Nor did it bleed. Almost like the wound had been cauterized on contact. 

 “To remember you,” she said. “Someone has to.”

“But I am here now,” I said.

“For now.” She took my removed digit and fashioned it into a necklace with a tarnished thin chain. There was something almost loving to the manner at which she had unclamped the hook and wore the appendage as jewelry around her bumpy neck. It was now that I noticed for the first time the irregularity of the shape of her throat and upper spine. The head bobbed just too far to the right to show where the noose had snapped her bones on her freefall. She bid me farewell and I walked on. After moving well into sunrise, I had decided to take a rest under a large apple tree. Resting up against the mighty trunk, I looked to my cane. To my shock, the inscription had changed! Underneath where my hand rested at the summit of the cane’s bend was now the phrase memento te ipsum.

Once I was ready to continue on my quest, I set out. The village I had left behind became smaller in the distance, yet I felt as though I now held a tether to the Scythe Woman and her story. Hate had altered her form, but love had driven her to such hatred. Her love for the children she had protected. If love inevitably ends in hate, is there a chance the story could start again? I wonder. Maybe the Scythe Woman can find her peace. As for me, I remain steadfast in my rage. 

I walked East until the benighted village was a small speck of dust on the horizon. I came to an open field with one giant crabapple tree stretching to the heavens. I figured I could use a nice rest in the open air, a warm breeze drifting on by. I leaned my head against the bark, coarse and asymmetrical, and turned my head up towards the branches. For a moment, I could feel peace. Just a moment. 

My town had once boasted a tree like this. It was my favorite place to rest as I stared around at the lively home surrounding me. Our tree was in the center of the community; the epicenter of all that was. A younger version of myself could put aside the weight of the world to feel the breeze and people-watch. And still, I forget that the version of myself I see now is still young. The deception that comes with youth. For I am hardly even halfway past my second decade, yet I walk with a cane, and grey hairs line the corners of my scalp and beard line. I feel as though the mark of youth was stolen from me, along with my heart. Maybe it’s the result of losing my beating core. Maybe it’s my rage. I spiral into thought until I notice the breeze no more, I can only feel my bloodlust. I would say I began spitewalking, though my eyes had closed some time ago. I must have dozed off in my heightened state. 

Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes, and I was not alone. No, at some point, a child must have wandered my way. I lifted my head to the sight of a little girl; she could not have been older than eight or nine years of age. Her face was covered in mud, her shoes torn and beaten up, and her hair a mess. She had something in her hands, a doll perhaps, though I couldn’t decipher an exact shape. 

“Excuse me sir,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Do you have any food?” 

It was now I was able to see what was in her hands. It wasn’t any ordinary doll, it was one of those figurines resembling the Scythe Woman. Her story came back to me at once. A woman who in life had looked over orphans in need. Could it be that this child had once found refuge in her care? Without even replying with my words, I reached into my backpack and offered the child some bread and an apple. She eyed the food hesitantly for a moment, but her hunger quickly surpassed her caution. As she began chewing the apple, she looked up to me and beamed a smile that bore the simplistic joy of a child’s world. 

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?” I asked. 

“I dunno!” she replied giddily. 

“What’s your name?” I asked. 

“I don’t have one. The baker in town calls me a roach, if you want to call me that.”

“Roach? That’s no name for a kid. How could you not have a name?”

“I guess I never needed one. I never knew my parents and the orphanage I was brought to as a baby isn’t around anymore. I ask kind strangers for food if they have any, then I sleep under the sky!”

No life for a child. And it puts a lot of chance on these “kind strangers.” Surely the Scythe Woman watches over her, still. A nameless stray, wandering the world as aimless as a restless spirit. 

“Are you leaving the village?” she asked. 

“I am.”

“Can I come with you? I’ve never left this place before, but I’ve asked everybody I can for food and I think they’re starting to hate me. It’ll be so fun!”

“I don’t know if the road I’m on is any road for a child. I’m on a mission right now, little one.”

“If the road isn’t good for kids, how about we find a different road?” She began laughing. I couldn’t help but laugh, too. 

“You know what, maybe I can take a different road. Just a detour.”

“What’s a detour? Can that be my name?!”

“Detour is not a name. How about DeeDee?”

“I’m DeeDee! DeeDee, DeeDee, DeeDee,” she began to chant over and over again. 

“Alright, DeeDee. You can come along.”

“Hooray!”