If if

Warning: This oneshot contains violence, mirder, and gore.

Do you feel like you're being squeezed by the world? Like a sandwich?

That feeling when people cut down your way of oxygen. Forbid you to drink water.

Rendered you a criminal because of eating.

That's what he feels in every second of his life ever since he learns how to understand things. He's always locked up away from the light. Drag down to the dirty depths of the dark dungeon. Alone, hungry, thirsty, sad…

Gehenna.

His clothes are torn, looking like a rug as it hangs loosely on the lad. He look like a beggar dressed like that. His comely visage is covered with specks of dirt, and he's chained like an animal.

When did someone visit him?

When was the last time he saw her?

He didn't know when. But, he wished she'd show her face again.

He missed human contact and he's scared to forget how she looks.

For being restrained with the four iron walls, tight painful chains around his arms, neck, and legs, do you not wonder how he lived for 13 years?

Ordinary people won't survive that long. Yes, ordinary. But, this kid? He is no ordinary.

Eating the rats he caught alive, thanks to his good reflexes, while enduring that nasty feeling just to deal with hunger, makes him survive that long.

Consuming rats for a very long time makes him forget what real food tastes like. Sometimes, he wonders if she forgets about him too..

Swallowing the last meat of his usual meal, he looked up to his bloody hands tilting his head like a confused child.

His taste bud fully accepts the taste with open arms. He uses his sleeves to wipe away the blood from his mouth. He has always been a messy eater. He remembered the last time he ate spaghetti. The sauce spread everywhere on his white shirt like blood. He smiles a little remembering that memory. But it quickly turns stoic when a glimpse of the past takes place. He can still clearly remember being dragged to the underworld. Being chained and left alone. He still remembers the first time he felt hunger. The first time he ate that meal. He felt like he's gonna puke. It tasted horrible! He just closes his eyes, crying, feeling the rodent squirm along with its weird sound of agony as he bites its head and tears it away from its body. He shoved everything and swallowed it all, just to get full.

One day as if a miracle, when the lightning strikes a flawed hole made an intro.

He was beyond relieved to see her fall from above. She was still the same; beautiful and still despised him.

He saw her flinch when she saw him all bloody. He saw the way she crawls back against the wall eyeing him like he's supposed to be fiction. She yelled for help from the above but no one could hear her weak cries because of the storm.

A big fallen tree cut her connection to the above as it covers the hole itself.

"No!"

Her voice sounds hopeless. She glanced at him and yelled, "Don't dare come near me!" She panicked.

He flinched, but complied.

It took half of the day until he heard her stomach complaints. She's not eating since her fall and he know the feeling of hunger.

He quickly alerts himself to get some big catch. Not too long, a big mother rodent appears. He magically got a good grip of it and sways it back and forth to hit its head on the ground making it weak. The blood spilled on the floor, some on his shirt, and some of hers too.

"W-what…" She covers her mouth because of the horrible sight.

He tore its head and offered the body to her.

"No! Stay away!" She kicks his hands.

He looks confused as he picks the fallen meal and offers it again to her but again she refuses.

"I SAID DON'T COME CLOSER! AND GET THAT NASTY THING AWAY FROM ME!" She looks at him, eyeing him as if he's some kind of excretion.

His face showed shock. The poor lad has no clue what the heck is wrong. Why did she become so revolting about it?

He believes it's tasty food because that is what he has been eating his whole life.

No, that sentence is wrong.

He believes it's a tasty food because that is what he kept on telling himself his whole life.

He gave up and just put it on the floor between them. Just lay it for her if she ever changes her mind.

He looks at her, eyeing her with a raised brow. He's confused with the difference in their clothing. Unlike his, hers with a little dust, dirt, and a little torn due to her fall but overall it seems nice in the eye.

His hazel eyes squinted because of the clear scratch on her left arm. He crawls slowly to tend it and get a better look but to his surprise, she quickly hits him with the rock she gets a good grip at.

It causes his head to bleed. With shaky hands, he touches his head.

He suddenly got cold and paled.

Blood. His blood.

His breathing becomes shallow. This is worse than hunger. His vision is starting to betray him. He tried his best to keep them open as he looked up at her. He didn't know why... How did the water come out from his eyes? It tastes weird... salty.

He tried to fight against the darkness keeping himself awake as possible but...

She picks the rock again and again hit him nonstop with it.

She's crying, yelling incoherent words, she's shaking too. Her hands are bloody but she never stops. She puts all of her energy on her right hand and lets the energy travel onto the edgy rock. Every time her hands came hard downward a spit of red hit her pretty face and a pale bloody hand grip her left hand tightly while shaking.

"M-ma…" He chokes on that word, blood coming out from his mouth.

She abruptly stops. Her breath hitched. Looking at what she'd done.

Her son seems like swimming in a red pool of his own, motionless laying on the cold dirty ground, with her pinning him down. She looks at her right hand, which happens to stop mid-air. It dawned on her, and now she's seeing red. She didn't know why, but she felt a pang of despair when her left hand, resting on his chest, lost the sensation of his heartbeat.

"...F-fallen?"

A sorrowful tear, indeed, fell from her eyes.

~ fin ~