A Rare, Black Unicorn.
Weeping Monsters
“Yoojin, go back to your room.”
I quickly snapped my eyes up to meet the hazelnut eyes of my worried mother. I hadn't noticed her coming, I hadn't heard the usual pattern of her heels making contact to the floor. I had been sitting around here for three collective hours and I hadn't thought someone would come and visit me any time soon. I furrowed my eyebrows at my mother, and I didn't bother closing the book lying on my lap.
“Why?” I murmured, hoping for an answer. Just like all the time, I didn't get one.
“It's for your own safety. Now go, and no matter what you hear, don't come out.”
Of course it's for my own safety. Everything is, even my solitary. I continued to furrow my eyebrows, sealing my lips and standing up to collect my book. I gathered the other things I had attained from my room, located in the furthest corner of our basement.
Silence, it has always been the answer I had been given, and it gradually become everything to communicate with between my parents and I. It was a game played from two sides, and none of us bothered to upgrade it.
Once I reached my dull green room, the uncomfortable sensation I always feel in such a confined place started attacking me again, and this time my frown was more involuntary than before. I paused momentarily in front of my mahogany door, unwilling to go further inside the source of my suffering. I don't think either of my parents cared about the intense suffocation I feel each and every time I’m thrown back to my room, and I’m not sure they bothered to think if they should let me live my life, for once. I hadn't asked to be born something special, something rare, but I was paying the consequences nevertheless. It was unfair.. immensely.
A soft hand was placed on my shoulder, and then a push forward. I stared backwards at my mom, finding her softening eyes piercing through mine. What was happening? She had never looked at me with such affection and anxiety before, and I didn't know what the cause of it. Should I be alarmed?
“Sweetheart, move forward,” She told me, pushing me tenderly up ahead. Her touch had always been softer than her face whenever she looked at me. I preferred her touching me, rather than looking at me with her sad pair of eyes. “You need to move. And close the door using your lock.”
“What's.. going on?” I urged, a courageous spark igniting within me for a millisecond. I even turned to face her. My mother’s face flashed with horror, and before she could answer me, I heard it.
Steps.
Herds of them.
My superhuman ears caught on to that, unlike my mother’s, and they perked up at the intensifying sounds. They were getting closer to us, whoever they are, and they were coming fast. My eyes widened immediately. Werewolves.. they were past our borderlines and I could tell they were in a large number. Was that why my entire pack had gone away a few hours ago?
What.. was going on?
“Yoojin, go inside your room and lock your door. Your father will go ballistic if he found out you aren't hidden yet.” My mom’s voice caught me out of my terror daze, and I snapped my eyes to her for a second, before dashing inside my room and locking my door. The books and all other things I had taken with me, fell off my grip and gathered along my feet. I gulped, straining my ears to hear what my mother was doing. I heard her steps going further inside her room, and then retrieving back to stand in front of my door. I wondered for a second why she came back, when I heard the soft sounds of a perfume bottle being sprayed.
She was hiding my scent.
It had happened a lot of times for me not to grow bizarre over her actions. Each time a new guest had come over to our house, I was sent on a lockdown with all sorts of perfumes and natural scents spread around to overbear my own scent. Werewolves had strong sense of smell, accompanying strong scents themselves. You can always identify werewolves, they usually smell like wet dogs mixed with a faint scent of after-smoke and wild berries. My father had told me once my scent held a soft texture of gentle strawberries instead of wild berries, and he claimed it was because I don't wonder around the forest for a daily run like they do. Ever.
Their tricks usually worked because no one knew of the fourth family member aside my parents existed, a female, let along. My parents had been so scared of my existence that they had hidden me away. They told me I wasn't supposed to exist, because of my , and I had read enough books to realize they were right. Apparently, there hadn't been any female werewolf for two decades, because the remaining women suddenly stopped conceiving them for no apparent reason.
But here I’m.
My father told me I was something precious, like a lost treasure or something. Once I’m around, proclaiming my existence, everyone would want to match me to their sons, so hopefully they could have their own breed of female werewolves. He was particularly worried about the werewolves that weren't respectful enough to ask permission to have my body, so he did what everyone usually do to a treasure box.
He buried me.
Comments