The Search for Freedom

Lil

It was my first time seeing cars, vehicles, motorbikes, and many other forms of transportation going back and forth on the highway, though it was already night. The lampposts and the lights from them seemed like stars in the sky, illuminating and twinkling. But unlike them, the stars would never run out of light even though eons elapsed. I was walking against the wind, and I didn't know where my feet would take me. What I only knew was that it was searching for another victim again.

There were many huge houses on each side of the streets. Some have two floors, others have many, like buildings. The other thing I noticed in each house was that their doors and windows were all closed. It might have been because it was already night and nothing other than that. Nothing would happen if I walked all night on this highway. It needed to stop so that everything would come back to normal.

My feet eventually halted. I might be tired of walking, but I was wrong. There was a two-story house near me. Its windows were open. I knew what the plan of the curse was. It walked towards the gate, which was visible under the moonlight. The gate was widely opened. The weird silence seemed to swallow me. I saw the gate's dark silhouette with pointed spears on the ground and a few neighborhood houses.

When I was young, I was afraid of the dark. I was thinking that there were ghosts dancing in it, but then I realized it was normal because everyone had experienced being afraid of it, and some remained the same. They didn't know they could sleep with it, that no matter how much they'd avoided the dark, they could not avoid closing their eyes and enduring the darkness to fall asleep. That was what made me brave. The darkness would only appear if someone thought about it, if someone used their eyes, not their minds.

Others argued that someone was afraid of what might appear in the dark rather than of the dark itself. They were such idiots. They had not thought that every time they closed their eyes to sleep, nothing had shown up. The darkness itself was the only thing someone could see in the dark.

My hand slowly opened the gate and my feet walked on the grassy lawn towards the door of the black-painted house when someone showed up. The man was in a white shirt, black trousers, and a denim jacket without a fastening in the center. His face was a little bit diaphanous in the moonlight, and I know for sure he could see my face because it was lit by the moonlight. His shadow walked towards me.

"Hey, boy. What are you doing here? Don't you know that you're standing on Mr. Haggard's property?" He asked.Ccontent © exclusive by Nô/vel(D)ra/ma.Org.

I screamed in my brain, "Mr. Haggard?" How could I know if I didn't even know where I was? I would not do or say anything because it wasn't me who wanted to do something there. The curse was using my body to do its own thing, and I didn't know what it really wanted.

"Are you deft? What exactly are you-" The curse would not let him finish his words when my feet suddenly kicked him.

I had no idea that the curse had a special ability like martial arts; the man caught all its punches and kicks. However, he wasn't as easy to drop because he was also good at self-defense. Though he had caught all my punches and kicks, he wasn't affected, like he only considered everything a play.

"Do you really want to play boxing with me? Do you want me to teach you how to be a good boxer?" He tried to punch me in the face several times, but my body deflected all of his blows.

"Oh! It seems like you don't need any training!" He smiled. "It's already night. Why won't you go back to your house anyway? Your parents might be searching for you now."

Perhaps my parents were searching for me, because it was already afternoon there when the bluish cloud brought me there. Perhaps it was night there, or perhaps time wasn't moving there. I needed to think about an alibi so that my father would not scold me again if he found out I did not go home early. Perhaps they were already aware that I had abruptly vanished and would also abruptly appear.

"You don't want to go home?" He asked. "You have a home?"

I didn't know what the curse wanted to do. It wouldn't do anything but punch the man who could do nothing against me. He seemed to be playing boxing with me. Until I recognized his face, he had a high nose, black round eyes, short hair, a clean face, and brown skin.

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I felt like I could not go back home until daybreak because we were punching each other like nothing. What an idiot he wasn't to stop and give up instead. He was so uneducated that he would fight with me all night. Every time I punched him, he defended himself and punched me back. If it had lasted longer, my whole body would be full of bruises because of that nonsense thing.

It was I who would be suffering from the pain the curse had caused. Those kinds of things will always happen in the world. If those kinds of things always happened, I could not live longer in the world. There were many things I needed to do, and I didn't want to waste my time, but what my body was doing was absolutely wasting my time.

Minutes elapsed, and I felt the drops of sweat from my face were falling down. I didn't know why there were too many drops dripping from my face and whole body, though I had not drunk much water. I also noticed that even though I wouldn't drink water, I'd never be thirsty.

The man was panting. Soon he would not be able to endure anymore and would give up. I could see the moisture diffusing on his face, and his arms becoming wet with sweat. His whole body had surely felt the warmth because he was wearing thick clothes.

He might be tired because he eventually stopped punching me. Then he tried to remove his denim jacket. Perhaps he felt warm because of the nonsense thing he was doing with me. The curse also stopped for a while and seemed to be panting.

"Do you still want to play boxing with me?" He took a glimpse at his watch. "It's already eight o'clock... Don't you have a plan to stop, to go home, and take a rest?"