Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The next morning, the boy found that he was not himself, but a new boy.

A new boy who ate his breakfast with the rest of the family and not only waved good-bye to his father as he left for work, but even gave him a hug. He was a boy who played catch with his older brother, who was still very much not dead, and helped his older sister in her audition for a commercial for a family product. That day he was a boy who reminded his mother of her lyrics when she sang and even helped her put on her mud mask for the day. He did not even as much as walk past the front living room, the one with the family couch, the wide flat-screen plasma TV, and the newly made chip in the wall.

Oh yes, he was a new boy. A new boy that had asked to play with his friends at the park that afternoon. Friends that their shallow minds would not know he didn’t have, at a park that they didn’t know had been turned into a McDonald’s earlier in the year. He was lucky, this new boy. His new family did not venture out into the local area of their town, the local area that they did not personally own, the local area whose houses were molding and whose money was dampened with the sweat of the working class.

A new boy that only needed an excuse to get out of the house to buy a lighter.

That night, he was all smiles as his new father and mother continuously praised him for his change. His “change for the better.” He didn’t even mind when his STD-infested brother slapped him on his back or cringe at the smile of his older sister who, he thought, still could use some tips from her surgery-junkie mother. The boy bowed good-night to his brother and sister and walked hand-in-hand with his mother and father back to his room. He let his father tuck him in and let his mother kiss him on the forehead. And once they closed the door, his smile faded from his young face.

He did not sleep that night, but instead waited. Waited for the clock to read one-fifty-three o’clock AM.

1:53 AM, his clock flashed against the pale moonlight. The boy slipped out of his bed, and looked into his mirror. He wasn’t as new as they kept saying he was after all. Like a mouse, he slipped out of his room and down to the servant’s sleeping quarters.

“Wake up,” he whispered, giving each of the two maids a hard push. If it were a cartoon, they would have jumped so high as to have hit the ceiling.
“Young Master? What is it?“
“I want to eat the sweet tarts from that shop in Datong.“
“Now? But it’s—“
“NOW,” he demanded.

The maids shook their heads. Young Master had become just like the rest of them. With a sigh, the two maids did not even bother to change out of their pajamas and instead grabbed a shawl. The boy walked them to the front door and watched them exit the main gates, before turning away. He then stripped out of his clothes and scattered them around the room as he headed toward the kitchen.

Quickly, he located and pulled out the potato sack he had found in the alley-way that afternoon and slipped his head through the hole he had cut. He would not be wearing any clothes that had been bought with money that had been soaked in his father’s blood. The boy waited on his spot on the couch until the correct time. ‘2:11 AM‘

He walked into the kitchen and opened the gas on all four of the stoves, making sure that none of the windows in the house had been opened. 2:18 AM. The boy quietly slipped outside and before closing the doors, placed one end of his spool of string on the ground underneath the welcome mat that had been ordered from Russia. Silently, he began to walk, unraveling the string with each new step that he took. He passed the fountain whose waters might have well just been spewing blood and walked between the Lexus and Ferrari and spat at them in disgust, for being fueled not by gas but by the blood of people like his brother and father. He shuffled on the grass, grass too green not to be covering up the hundreds of men who have died at his adoptive father’s greedy hands.

On and on he went, down the large hill that only their mansion sat upon, across the empty streets and alleyways that not even the hobos and bums would bother to sit upon at this hour, until he reached the street sign that pointed towards civilization and until his thick spool of string had finally ran out. Without bothering to look back, the boy took out the lighter he had managed to steal that afternoon and lit his end of the string.

The boy began to run. He ran to the nearest bus stop and convinced the driver to give him a free ride across the city and into the wilderness of the mountains, all using his potato sack appearance a few stuttering whimpers. He got off when the driver announced that he would not go any farther, and began to run with all the strength he had in his 8-year old legs. He knew he was running the correct way because the smell of the burnt coal mine was getting stronger and stronger, and he did not stop until he saw the blackened mass that used to be the opening to the coal mine.

Carefully, the boy walked over to the pile of dead bodies that had long been pushed to the side of the mountain by tractors and began to dig. Despite the scent of the burnt flesh, the boy continued to push aside the bodies of the other men, throwing decapitated hands and legs into the air behind him until he found his father.

And there he was.

Remembering quite well that men did not cry, the boy bit his tongue to hold back his tears. The boy laid down next to his father, nuzzling up to his charred, bloody body and buried his face in the dead, burnt flesh of his father’s chest that no longer had the strong beating of the heart he listened to each night while being rocked to sleep. What the boy did not know and could not feel, was that he had bit his tongue so hard that his teeth had cut through. A soft smile appeared on his face and a pool of blood began to dribble from the corners of his young mouth. ‘Father, wait for me.’

……………….

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Zhang Shu Han of CCTV Morning News, reporting on yet another tragic accident that occurred last night. A massive explosion at the mansion of Chan Fan Yuan, a local coal baron, has killed three of members of his family and nearly all of their servants. It has been determined that their youngest and adopted son, Kwok Pong — formerly Li Zhi Shen, age 8, is currently missing. Here with me, are two women who claim to be maids of the Chan household…‘

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4