Post by Affectionate Zombie on Jan 3, 2009 13:45:31 GMT -5
Write from the perspective of a feral child. Some person found you in the forest and handed you over to some guy calling himself a psychiatrist. You're nine years old. What happens?
These creatures make me so angry.
I never wanted to deal with them, you see; the forests were kinder, with their trees and their streams, their birds, their deer. These creatures have been foreign to me for as long as I can remember. Their two legs and upright way of moving are like me, yet I feel no kinship, no sense of belonging while among them. They are not my family. I have no family, save for the forest. The forest is my mother, my father, my brothers, my sisters. I like to think I was an acorn when I first started, and became what I am now because of the love the trees felt for me.
Love. What is love?
But now I am away from my family, my home, my... love, perhaps. These strange monsters came into my forest, and I watched them, watched the intruders warily because they didn't belong and I think they knew that, too. They didn't see me for a long time, even though I followed them. But the squawking of a bird alarmed one of the creatures, and it spun around, seeing me. It got a very strange look on its face, then. It seemed alarmed.
The monsters approached me and I tried to scare them off, growling and snarling. They should have kept their distance, should have been warned, but they kept coming. One of them made noise. It meant nothing to me.
At that point, all but one stopped coming. One of the monsters who stayed back pulled out a funny object, and they pressed it to their head, making sounds into it. The rest, save for the one in front and one in back, just watched me.
The one in front charged, then, grabbed for me, and no matter how I fought, it would not let go. I think I bit it and scratched it several times, but I was so furious, I couldn't have known for sure.
They took me away. Now I am here, in their den, and I cannot even see my forest. There are clear holes in the den's walls, but all I see through them are large gray things, and colorful moving monsters, roaring down gray paths.
I am angry. But I am also afraid.
The den is filled with strange things. I like the large, soft thing; it is nice to curl up on, even if it is different than I am used to. The floor of the den is soft as well, like grass, but not quite the same. I don't understand where I am, and I am alone. I tried scratching at the clear hole in the wall, once or twice, and at the barrier that blocks the entrance to the den, but I could not dig my way out, and the monsters did not answer me.
It feels like I have been waiting too long when one of the upright-walking creatures enters the den, and begins to make noise like the others had. This creature is not the same as the others; I am not surprised by their diversity, as I have seen the monsters before, of course. It has fur upon its head the color of tree bark, and the rest of it is bare, save for some odd things on its chest and legs. The things aren't fur, or skin, or scales, or feathers. These creatures like the things. I wonder what they are. Maybe they are for warmth, since the creatures are so hairless. (What fur it does have is too thin to be any good.)
Its noises make no sense and I stop paying attention very quickly, observing myself instead, comparing. I don't have those strange things on my body, and I have much more fur on my head, and my arms, my legs. I think maybe my teeth are sharper. Hm.
The creature puts its paw on my arm, and I snap my teeth at it, growling. Stupid monster. It recoils like I had actually bitten it, and I back onto the soft thing in the den, curling up. I want the creature to go away. It does not.
As it continues to make noise, I clamp my paws over my ears and whine. I don't care to hear his sounds, because they mean nothing, and I don't like them. It keeps trying to explain something, I think, and one series of sounds in particular is repeated: "help, help."
Finally it leaves upon realizing I am not listening. I try to rest, since I've nothing else to do. I am hungry.
Often after this first meeting, the same creature, the one with the "help" and the tree-bark fur returns to make noise and move me around. I fight with it at first, the first several times, in fact, but it does nothing, and soon I give up. The creature doesn't seem to mean harm. Being with the Help-thing is uncomfortable usually, though. It likes to dunk me in water, warmer than a river, oddly, and pour sticky, sweet-smelling, colorful liquid onto my fur. The sound "clean" is repeated when this happens, and I've learned to hate the sound.
Other times, it will bring food, and it usually tastes very little like the food the forest gave me. I don't care for the strange food, but the Help-thing insists I eat, and never seems to bring anything different. I eat.
After some time, Help-thing starts to repeat noises at me, the same ones over and over. It points at itself, first, makes a sound with no meaning several times until I begin to associate it with the creature. "Peter", it repeats. "Peter."
Then the Peter-thing, or the Help-thing, or the creature-thing, whatever it is, moves on to different things. The soft thing in the den is one he pointed out; "bed." I had been sleeping on a bed-thing, then.
These repetitive "lessons" became boring all too soon. I want out, and I don't care if the Peter-thing is a... psychiatrist? Yes. I don't care. I don't want his... help. He isn't a "help-thing", I've realized; he was trying to say that I needed help.
I want to leave the Peter-thing, the psychiatrist. Sometimes he takes me for prowls around the town, only we are not hunting, we are just moving. It is boring, and alarming, with all of the strange creatures that aren't like the Peter-thing and frightening, roaring beasts on gray paths. Cars, I think. There are flashing lights, as well, from cameras. Peter-thing tried to explain why the cameras were there, but I did not understand most of his explanation.
The clothes and the noises and the cameras and the creatures are too much, too much. The roaring of cars and staring of people. On one of our walks, I get the idea to run. It would not be hard. I know I am faster than these creatures. So when Peter is not looking, I run.
A car roars, and suddenly everything hurts and where am I?
When I wake up, Peter is there and the den (room) I am in is pale. The bed, the walls, the clothes I am wearing; all pale, white. I ache, and Peter tells me I will be alright.
I long for my forest, even as Peter says that we will be going home now.
(( Blargh I don't like this. :[ ))