"Isiah, what are you thinking about! please, talk to me "Adelita said while sitting next to him when he heard about Jivan stealing a piece of his skin as a payment.
" I am thinking about chiks"He said with an empty look on his eyes, he looked as if he was living on another dimension or reliving a buried memory from his life .
" Huh! that' interesting, why are you thinking about chiks?"
"Once, when I was eleven I took permission from my father to take care of chiks in the house, it was something trendy back then and a lot of my friends had their own chiks farm and I envied them .
I wanted to have what they had!
Surprisingly, my father accepted my demand and I went with him the next day to buy chicks. He wanted me to have only one, but I insisted on bringing two, to keep each other company. They were siblings, and I didn't want to separate them. They looked like sunlight, very cute, and they moved a lot.
They followed me everywhere, and I loved that. It felt like I had a puppy inside the house. I didn't name them because a lot of people told me that they are fragile creatures and that they have a tendency to die quickly.
I was very prepared to lose them the day I bought them, and yet, as the days went by, I forgot that warning.
I kept them in my room, fed them, and took care of their droppings. I was more responsible with them than I had ever been before. I felt like I was their mother, and I liked that feeling.
Whenever I opened the door, they hurried toward me with their cute little steps.
They usually slept next to each other, as if protecting themselves with that bond. At night, I put them in a big box. They were too small, and I didn't want to risk them being in danger."
"Sounds like a great memory, Isiah!" Adelita said, looking into his eyes with hope.
"Seven days. They stayed with me for only seven days!"
"And? What happened?"
"One day, I wanted them to see past my room. I released them because I knew that I was the only one there. They were tapping their beaks on the floor, making a huge fuss; they must have found an insect or something. I went to the kitchen to bring a mop to clean their droppings off the floor. Dad hated their droppings on the floor. I went to do that when I heard a high-pitched scream. It felt like it was coming from them. I ran toward the sound, only to find my dad leaning over the floor."
He started to curse non stop, i knew what happened immediately, he stepped on one of them.I looked at them and i saw the most lively one of them was crushed on the floor.he wasn't dead yet, he was closing his eyes while breathing slowly. his stomach shredded and the blood was on the floor along with its insides.
I held my head with my two hands, that was too much for me, I felt like my brain stopped at that time.
I didn't blame him, he didn't see them and I didn't tell him that I released them.
He continued walking while saying that I should dispose of it in the garbage.
"I stood there for seconds trying to process what happened, when I saw the one who stayed alive walking toward the dead one and starting to eat the part of his stomach that was on the floor.
I started screaming like a crazy person at him, trying to force him to move away from him. I didn't know what their relationship was anymore.
Eventually, I took him to his box while he was making a huge fuss. My dad went to the dead one and put him in the garbage.
I burst into tears, yelling at him that he should bury him.
He said that it was just an animal, but to me it was not.
I fucking raised them, and to see one of them crushed gave me a pain in my stomach. I still feel that pain whenever that incident crosses my mind.
I went with tears in my eyes to the kitchen, retrieved the body from the trash, and buried it in the garden immediately. That picture was vivid in my mind, and it stayed with me for a very long time.
As for the other one, I just gave it away to one of my neighbors. I couldn't bear to look at it. Whenever I heard its voice, I kept seeing the image of it trying to eat its brother's insides.
On that same day, I lost both of them, and I haven't gotten a pet ever since.
To make matters worse, my dad bought me two new chicks that very day as a replacement. I don't know what he was thinking, but for me, I couldn't even look at them without seeing my old ones."
He eventually gave them away and …"
Isiah looked at Adelita's eyes when he finished narrating that story, she said with a sad look on her face:" That must be awful, it is a horrible incident for a kid to see"
"I just remembered it now, is he going to eat my skin?"
"oh ..noooo..noooo…Isiah …nooooo…he may look like a pervert creepy dude but he would never do that ..ohhh..noooo"
" We are all animals and i think that there is no difference, those cute chiks were so adorable until the moment I saw one of them try to eat the dead one"
" I am sorry that you have seen such a thing at a young age, but please put some faith in me when I tell you that he is not going to eat it..Isiah .."
Isiah looked down at the ground as if he was seeing that crushed one in front of him, he felt sick in his stomach, he even was going to puke when Adelita said:" If this memory is so heavy, i could erase it from your mind"