Darkness everywhere; Bo Ra couldn't stand their incessant crying. When one began, the others immediately followed in a chorus.
Girl A cleaned while Stein cut while he hummed that song he liked.
"A+ can you pick that up; I just dropped a finger."
Bo Ra had a hard time believing though she witnessed the scene daily, how poised girl A was in all circumstances.
Girl A was neither shaken nor stirred by the corpses. Bo Ra sometimes saw her playing hide and seek in his autopsy chamber.
Here she picked up the now stiff finger as though it were a ball.
The six-year-old showed no emotion. Without knowledge of what was right or wrong to do for girl A+, her surroundings were natural. She probably thought this was how most citizens lived.
Could one blame a child born in the stench of blood and rotten bodies for not crying while Stein split guts and chopped limbs in front of her?
Bo Ra was speechless, literally and psychically speaking. The woman's tongue stared at her from the shelf across her cell, reminding Bo Ra how her defiance brought this mutilation upon her.
Min Ju was different with her cannonball at her foot; the woman was docile. Girl A called Min Ju schling-schling because of the sound of metal she made as she shifted her feet.
The child was unaware of who Min Ju was, and the woman didn't tell her.
Perhaps like Bo Ra, Min Ju, too, didn't acknowledge Girl A's status.
Refusing to recognize the children as theirs kept the women from slipping into insanity. They were not children; they were samples of a macabre experiment.
Girl A set the tone. Bo Ra knew how the boys would end. They would become replicas of the serial killer whose genes growled in their veins.
So the woman took it upon herself to save the world and prevent disaster from striking by attempting to suffocate the boys, her boys.
Bo Ra couldn't let them live, conceived in fear and muffled screams. They were evil incarnate; their first murder would have been hers as the boys almost took her life as they came into the world.
"Chugeot, chugeot, chugeot, die," Bora screamed before being knocked out, only to wake up on an autopsy table without her tongue.
She had yelled and wailed, but the sound came out no more.
Stein was furious; Bo Ra couldn't blame him. She tried to kill his subjects—the demons who should have never seen the dawn. One anti-christ was enough, thought Bo Ra when she watched Girl A standing on a stool next to the dead body.
Girl A opened the corpse's chest and slipped her frail hands in the victim's thorax to extract the heart as Stein told her.
The liquids sitting in her stomach gushed to Bo Ra's mouth as the scene made the woman want to throw up. As usual, the woman wished to wake up from the nightmare, which surpassed in vision all the Stephan King books she used to enjoy reading. There she watched how Stein prepared the child to take his lead.
Recently, girl A had a + added to her name. Stein involved her more in his works. While he operated, the child would proceed to her own experiences. She carried the pots of eyes balls like one carried pickles sending chills down Bo Ra's spine.
Bo Ra wondered how Min Ju coped.
Girl A+ was smart; Stein educated her as a king would guide his heir. Of all the children, girl A+ seemed to have Stein's respect.
Bo Ra always thought Min Ju hated the child until Min Ju told Girl A+ to run.
No one, not even Stein, would have imagined such a scenario. Min Ju freed A+.
"Run, don't look back, don't ever come back. Please forget, forget us all. What you are living isn't life; there's a whole world out there. Good and good people exist. There is good in you; don't become him. You are not evil," the woman said, shaking the child with violence.
The Girl was young but not too young to understand the woman's plea.
Bo Ra had lost her tongue, trying to kill the babies. What would Stein do to Min Ju, who freed his protegé?
Tears of mourning streamed down Bo Ra's face in anticipation as she imagined death would be the only punishment that could appease the murderer's wrath.
The day was quiet. Stein had gone out; Min Ju didn't hesitate. She had been preparing everything for months. There was only one deed left for her to accomplish. No matter the cost, she had to free her child. She refused to have girl A+ become a killer like her genitor.
Min Ju's heart remained pure despite the years of captivity. The woman who always put others first followed her instincts and attempted the impossible. Girl A+ was an innocent, a victim like her mother of a ruthless man who only saw the child as a tool.
Though she never expressed her feelings with words, Min Ju's eyes always shone with tears, which remained barricaded behind her stare, prisoners of her eyelids.
Was it pity?
No, it was a mother's love for the child she carried while pulling the weight of the cannonball at her feet.
A+ plus didn't know the truth, but the farewell hug that Min Ju gave her said it all.
The child's eyes burnt as they met the sun for the first time.
"Run."
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