I was just eight back then. I remember I was biking with a friend in a small forest. We were spending some time at my family’s country house; Summer holidays always meant having friends over and having a blast together. Up until that point, of course. Close to the entrance of the forest there was an old, abandoned building place. It looked almost like someone wanted to build a big warehouse there, in the middle of nowhere, and just gave up right after placing the foundations of the place.
Like good young, adventurous boys we went right in just to find a bunch of cinder blocks, a wheel cart, a couple buckets… So, naturally, we wore the buckets as helmets, we rode the wheel cart, and we trashed some of the blocks. In one of the corners of the place there was something, something we did not notice until it was time to get back home. It was a small, square-shaped hole that was hidden behind one of the pillars. Chris threw a rock, and the sound echoed through the place. It sounded damp and big. It could have ended there, that day. I could have just let it go, after all who would want to explore what’s most likely a half-flooded basement of an abandoned, half-built warehouse?
Truth is, I would not have kept exploring if Chris hasn’t had to leave. I was bored, so bored being all by myself. No videogames, no TV, all my comic books read… So I went there, decided to get a glimpse of what was inside the hole. I grabbed a flashlight, some rope, and my bike. It was early afternoon, the sun was as bright as it gets, and it was HOT, so hot that I was almost considering that, if that basement was flooded, it wouldn’t be so bad. I parked my bike and brought with me the flashlight and the rope, I crouched, and pointed the light into the hole.
It happened so fast; a flash, something that passed through the hole, and an oppressive feeling that something was behind me. I did not even have time to see what was inside the hole, as my body turned as it could to point the light behind me, not because it was dark but because I didn’t even have had time to think. I saw… it. In plain daylight. Two upper limbs, two lower limbs, then the torso fused into a circular, flat shape face that seemed to be locked into looking at the sky. It hungered, I knew that much out of pure instinct, like a primal, long lost reflex to danger, yet I was frozen in place. The feeling was overwhelming, so much so that I could feel my heart struggling to beat. Each heartbeat a heavy ‘boom’ inside my chest, as if there was someone pounding with a close fist. It was a feeling of powerlessness. There was nothing to be done, even if anything was a possibility. I just stood there, facing it, for what felt like hours.
And then it spoke. I felt the words inside my skull, I knew the meaning of what it sought, what it needed, way more clearly than what my name was. It needed not speak. And it needed more… Well, I knew what it needed, the same I knew I had to provide it.
I went on to call all my friends, just looking for someone that could get in here as soon as possible. Fun times, Summer holidays, normal stuff. Adrian could. He was a bit of a weird kid, but a good, loyal friend nonetheless. He did not really have any other friends besides me, and so he had no other plans besides coming. The following day I told him I wanted to show him a place I found. I could see the excitement in his eyes, being part of a big adventure, so he jumped right in. We got into the warehouse, early afternoon again. I handed him the flashlight and pointed to the hole. He didn’t see it at first because of the pillar, but when he did, he did not hesitate. Adrian crouched, he pointed the light inside, and I felt it. Nothing happened, but a hint of the powerlessness I felt the day before coursed through me. Adrian complained it was still too dark and he could not see anything even with the flashlight, disappointment in his voice. I knew we did not have to go further than that. The deed was done.
Two more friends followed in the next week. By the end of the Summer, Adrian’s dad had died in a car crash, his mother had lost her job and they had to move in with his grandma. Chris’ return to our country house was followed by a tumor the size of a thumb in his mother’s eye, the rape and pregnancy of his 14-year-old sister and the arrest of his brother for drug trafficking. I couldn’t tell it Kira’s case was better or worse, but she lost her parents and grandparents in a fire, along their house and belongings.
It was satiated, for now. My prize was to not have a prize, it told me. Something I understood some years later. What I understood the following Summer, though, was something more disturbing. Hard to put in words when it is something you know in an instinctual level, something you’ve learnt not through words or experience, but was put in your mind like a nicely wrapped gift.
I went back there that very same Summer. I knew it wasn’t something I could run from, as since I first met it I started to experience its omnipresence more clearly, like my own shadow. This time I didn’t even need the flashlight. It just… It was behind me. And I did not have to think, I was not allowed to. It poked around inside my brain. It took and put as it saw fit. My questions, answered; my fears, though? Multiplied. It wanted to be feared, not by everyone, just by me.
The sudden realization came once it disappeared. When my brain was allowed to work once again, unpaused. I can’t help but rethink if it is right or not to say or even write it but… it is God. It does not belong here, yet it is trapped here. It needed to feed, so it created. And it created us. Exhausting, so much so that it is weak. And yet I cannot even begin to think of a way to harm it. Not in a physical way, because something inside me knows that would not do a thing, but in a way that could meaningfully mark its existence.
It hungered, so it created us. Now it feeds, and does so off of misery. It transforms, and so the transformation satiates it. It moves, dances through entropy gracefully; all it takes, is given back, as is necessary. People suffer terrible fates just so others have a wonderful life.
This time, I chose Adrian, Chris and Kira, not knowing what I was getting them into. It was something that had to be done. It gifted them, so it took from them. First they suffered, they were robbed of happiness. Then, Adrian’s company value skyrocketed, making him one of the world’s one hundred richest people before he was twenty-five. Chris won a Nobel Prize on two different fields and become one of the most respected reference in many others. Kira became the youngest and first female president of the history of our Country.
I am thankful I was not given a prize; this was my prize. Yet I cannot stop thinking about the misery I put my friends through. I would like to say it haunts me at night, but it’s a completely different thing. It is knowing it is there. I cannot shake the feeling of its presence off me. I do not want to know it is omnipresent, I just want to forget all of this happened, because if our fates are decided this way, then we are all puppets.