“Dreaming about a female goat (doe) is a sign that you should be looking for God. Dreaming about a male goat (buck) is related to something… unholy surrounding you”.

— What happened to David’s father? — asked the Doctor assuming the image of the human subject.

— He died… I… Almost couldn’t do anything about it…

— Calm down, you are showing stress signals. It’s gone; you aren’t David, no need to feel bad about it.

— That’s exactly what everyone says, even humans! — π12-45 shouted, almost jumping out of the recliner chair.

— I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt you. You can calm down now. What happened to David’s father?

— I… Didn’t do anything. I was just there bleeding and my senses have become cloudy… I just sit by David’s dad side until I completely faint from blood loss… Then I wake up as myself again. I wanted to go back and do something about it. My logical process was failing me and I couldn’t see straight. All I was seeing was how life was meaningless… And so I did…

— What did you do?

— I did what no logical thinking would have led me to do… I killed myself…

— Do you mean…

— I crushed my own mechanical body into one of the huge grinding machines my office uses for civil construction… My body was lost…

— So… Have you used a replacement body with a memory recovery archive to come here, right?

— No. I didn’t have any. I never needed to use and I never would save my memory with the last archives, it would be all corrupted.

— But… How are you here?

— David. David was my backup.

— I… That’s really curious. You said when you were turned off you come back in time and live as a human… but you destroyed your own body and had enough energy that point…

— Exactly and, even like that, I was right back to live as David once more…

_______________

When I wake up, I was in a hospital. My shoulder was wrapped in bandages and it was hurting like shell… Someone saw me awake and come to give me the bad news about David’s dad. The nurse said:

— He had a sudden heart attack…

I couldn’t say anything about it; I was the only one who knew it wasn’t an actual heart attack…

— Do you have any family or relative to take care of you?

— I don’t know anyone on my family besides D… — I was almost saying David’s dad. — …besides my dad. Almost one year ago, I just wake up from a coma caused by a car accident… I lost my memory and my… — I needed to force my voice to say it. — My dad didn’t say anything to me at all and no one has ever shown up to see me.

I could have talked about Gabriel’s mom, but I really didn’t think she would be an option at the time.

— I understand David. I could read your whole health history. That’s exactly what has happened. When you feel better, someone from the police will ask you some questions. Are you okay about that?

— Is it about my shoulder?

— Yes. Did you father do that to you?

— No… It was… the same person who attacked my cousin Gabriel and took his legs off…

— Are you the cousin of that boy? — She asked hiding her own mouth, knowing something I didn’t know.

— Yes… I guess… that guy just wanted a piece of me after I ruined his plans about killing my cousin.

— I understand… but no one was seen around entering or leaving your house.

— Lady, don’t try to ask me about the truth, no one believes in me. No one saw a man that day; it was too dark to see anything… We just assume it was a man… But, please, don’t think it was my dad, it wasn’t he, I swear…

— Okay, David, that’s all I need to know. Have some rest, you will need it — she said and left me alone.

I slept a little and then, after some hours, it was day again and the police came as the nurse said. The hospital offered me clean clothes and a man in his early thirty years old took me to the police station, so I could talk to him properly. His smile was strange, always smiling at everything, like there was nothing bad in the world, and he was always eating something. His body was normal, not a single evidence of eating too much, and yet, he was eating a lot.

I followed him to a special room in the police station, where there was a table, some chairs and on the other side of the room, there was a room with shelves and boxes, with some things they need to keep there; nothing that would be dangerous, I think. Then, I just sit in front of him, and behind him, there was this other door to the other room and no possible exit beyond that. He went inside the small room and come back with a couple of things: a paper with questions to fulfill with my answers, a file with some of David’s documents and a bag with some of David’s belongings and something for him to eat.

He sat and, after opening a bag of potato chips, he started asking me things while putting some pieces of the snack in his mouth after each question.

— How old are you? — He said, with his mouth full.

— I’m about to be 11 years old. Next week, in the first week of November, to be precise.

— Good — he licked his fingers. — Do you have any family or relative to take care of you?

— I don’t know anyone I could call for…

— Okay, we know that. We will try to get in contact with any relative and we will try to see if they want to take care of you. While that, we will send you to an orphanage. There you will wait for any relative to take care of you or someone that would adopt you. Is that okay for you?

— I wouldn’t say it’s okay but… Yeah… I have nowhere to go anyway.

— Don’t be afraid, this place is a good place. At least no kid had died there recently — he let it slip out of his mouth. I was shocked by what he said and I started to feel something horrible close to us. He finished the first bag and started another. — In which grade are you?

— I started the fifth grade recently… Will I be able to finish school?

— Are you worried about school? Never heard about a kid like that! Hah! — He already finished the second bag of chips and looked around looking for another. — Where are my chips?

— You ate it.

— Hahah… Nice one! I just brought two bags of chips here and there’s nothing inside them!

I swallowed it dry, fearing for myself.

— You… ate them all already…

— No… This isn’t possible. I don’t remember eating them…

— You… even licked your fingers…

— Really? — He smelled his fingers and licked them again. — Oh! It really feels like I ate them! Never mind, let’s just finish this and I can get another bag of chips! — He picked his pencil up and annotated something on the paper in front of him. — Do you have any decease or health care that should be noted?

— No, but… — I saw him literally biting the eraser edge of his pencil and taking a chunk off. — I was in a coma for more than a year, almost a year ago. — He kept biting it and taking a piece of it each time. — But I have nothing that anyone should be worried about…

— I see… — he said still chewing a piece of the pencil while writing it down with was left of the pencil.

He asked about David’s dad and about how I was living until…

— Where is my pencil? — He asked without realizing he had the last piece inside his mouth.

— Did you eat it? — I asked just to see his reaction.

— Hahah! Boy, you are a good comedian! Of course not! It must be here somewhere… — he inclined to look under the table for a moment and I saw it, the thing that was making him eating so much. It had big yellow eyes with horizontal slits, horns, and ears pointing backward. However, it didn’t look like an animal. For a moment, I could swear it was a human with a disfigured face, scars all around, being covered by the darkness and then the police officer was back up on the chair. — Oh… Where did I put it?

I couldn’t see the thing again and the officer was getting stranger and stranger… First, he just went on the room in the back, picking up a new pencil and, as he sat back on his sit; he started to eat David’s belongings as if the material was nothing but a tasty spaghetti. After he ate the second pencil and looked for it again, I knew I would get into bigger trouble if he could eat David’s documents. He just started to look for the pencil again under the table and I picked the documents, hiding it on my back while he was getting back to his position in the chair.

— Where are your belongings?

— You ate them…

— Where are your documents?! — He said, getting angrier.

— You ate them!

— Stop saying that I ate them! Your filth liar! Enough of this joke! You will not like to see me angry! — Then he hit the table with his two hands closed.

— I… — I needed to think fast. — I hide them in that room! — I pointed to the door.

— You are lying!

— I swear! There are more bags of chips there too!

— Bag of chips…! — He stood up and looked at me. — If I don’t find my bag of chips, you are screwed!

He entered the room and looked at everything.

— Where are they?

— In the corner… — and I pointed to the other side of the room. He entered and I ran to push the door and lock him there.

— Open the door! Open the ducking door!

The door had a small window that was closed at first, but then he opened it from inside to look at me… but all I saw was darkness and a yellow glowing eye staring at me.

I ran back to the corner of the room, away from that thing and I looked to the floor, covering my ears. I heard cardboard boxes noises, I heard noises of things being thrown to one side to another, and I heard the police officer screaming… Then I heard chewing noises, lots of chewing noises. Everything that was somehow possible to be chewed it was chewed. The sound stopped and I looked at the door. The darkness was gone and I thought it would be fine to get closer. I took one step further, the officer reached out his arm to catch me, and he almost had me in his hand. He pulled his arm back, and then I heard a sound of something falling on the floor.

— Help! Help! — He said, trying to hold onto anything he could and reached to hold on the door window.

I saw his face looking at me from the window upside down. After that, he was gone for good.

I sat back on the chair feeling a little relieved and I didn’t even want to try and see what was left on the other room. Not long after, another police officer, a woman, entered the room.

— Hello kid. Did you saw my partner? He was supposed to be helping you filling the papers.

— I… — I didn’t know what I should say and I just think of saying… — Did you try that room?

She looked inside there and said:

— What the hell happened here?! — She then called on her communicator. — Boss, we have a problem. Someone stole everything from the storage room! Even your bag of chips! — She looked at me. — You will have to wait for a little more kid…

After all the trouble at the police station, they finally finished filling the papers and I was sent to an orphanage with only David’s documents.

__________

— After all of it, have they ever consulted you about anything? …not even your mental health? — asked Doctor M.

— No. First, David’s dad was out of money and they were about to make some of it opening David up and taking whatever they could. For humans it’s so problematic getting replacements, humans can make a lot of money out of them. David’s dad was also paying all the expensive treatment with everything he had. The previous house was pretty expensive, but even with all the money he could get, the treatment didn’t get any cheaper and he was also paying for David to stay there with the whole infrastructure to help with a delicate recovery for the boy. That made the doctors not check on David’s health and David’s dad didn’t have any money to afford another appointment.

— But, there wasn’t any free doctor he could have sent David?

— He could try. I asked him once. He only said we would have waited for it for months and it possibly would not happen. The Central city didn’t have any good health care in the 2’02X years and, if you wanted or needed to have an appointment, you would need to pay or wait for months, or years, for a free one.

— I see… and about the orphanage, have they asked you anything about it or sent you to see any doctor?

π12-45 laugh:

— Doctor, you have no idea how that place was.

— Then tell me about it.

— Okay.

__________

The orphanage was a small house; there was a hall, with two staircases leading upstairs, a small kitchen right behind the hall, some bedrooms upstairs, with four beds, two bunk beds in each room; a bathroom at end of the corridor that wasn’t enough for everyone, and there were more rooms on the first floor, but we were never supposed to go there. The yard in the front was small, big enough for some plants and vases and the backyard was only big enough for clotheslines.

When I entered that house, everything was so grayish, with no actual decoration; the strong moldy smell coming from everywhere and there were few adults doing things there, and most things were done by the kids. Actually, we were forced to do everything they said or we would pass the night without having dinner… even if we already didn’t have lunch…

It was horrible living there… and, as if that wasn’t enough, there were more shadow things waiting to catch any kid there. I saw dozens of kids coming. I saw none of them coming out… except for me.