15 Ah Youth!
Spring: 20 years ago,
A little girl was packing up her pretty red schoolbag excitedly. He soft black baby like hair glistened under the artificial lighting of the room. A wide grin was plastered on her face as she went through her new stationery again and again.
"So pwetty! New penchil box!!! Yay!!" The girl looked at the normal cheap pencil box with a certain yellow bear cartoon on it. She hugged it as if it was her most precious treasure. This was the first brand new thing she had been given by her Mama. She always had to use the hand-me-downs from her big brother, but this time she gets her own new pencil box and school bag. And the best thing was she could go to school from now on.
She could make lots of friends to play with. She didn't have to wait for the big frother from their neighbourhood to come back to play. And she was a big girl now.
"Pearlllll!!!" A woman's voice came from the other side fo the door.
"Yes, mama!" Pearl replied excitedly and packed up all her stuff in a flurry and toddled over to the other room at her best speed. He the bear ears on the baby pink onesie bobbed up and down with each of her steps. The fine smooth black silky hair was short, only reaching up to her little ears, tied up clumsily into pigtails.
In the kitchen was a small table, which was apparently the only table in the house. A middle-aged woman dressed in a business suit was sitting on the table cross-legged with a bottle in her hand and a few more bottles lying here and there. She looked 7 points similar to the little girl, with similar black hair and eyes. The woman looked a little red as if she was a little drunk. Even though she was sitting on the table she still wobbled, the room itself was full of alcoholic smell, mixed with the odour of stale food in the trashcan and unwashed utensils in the sink.
Little Pearl's face scrunched up at the stench coming from her mother, and the whole house in general. But she still went towards the woman obediently.
Her previous happy demeanour was completely replaced by an obedient and serious face, something not really suitable on a three years old child. It showed that this was not the first time the little gorl was seeing such a sight. She quietly walked near the woman, careful not to trip on the empty bottles on the floor.
"Mama...You called?" She obediently went in front of the woman, but still kept a certain distance.
"Y-you- *hic* Wherez your papa?" The woman asked in a drunk stupor, taking another sip from the cheap alcoholic drink.
"P-apa.... umm.. left with a pwetty aunty....." Her voice was lower than a whisper as if she was afraid to say this line aloud to the woman in front of her. "He said he will be back tomorrow...?"
"Huhhh? What are you..*hic*.. mumbling about?.....*hic* Say that out aloud you llil brat!" The woman yelled angrily slamming her free hand on the table...
The noise scared the little girl and she took a step back, tears started welling up in her dewy eyes and she tried to control herself. She started tearing up without making noise and replied, "So-sorry mama... I will be good."
"Why the hell are you crying*hic* right now? Did I beat you up? Huh? I should be the one cr- *hic* crying here!!!" The woman stood up suddenly and put the bottle in her hand down with a thud. Seeing her angry mom, she couldn't stop herself anymore and started brawling loudly. "My life has been a misfortune ever since you *hic* were born..."
"Sorry, mama! Please don't be angwy! I'll be good!" The girl said taking another step back, but only to feel her back against the wall. she saw the hands of the woman in front of her moving towards a certain cabinet and she started running without looking back crying "Sorry mama!" and "Please mama! I'll be good!"
The woman stood up from the table and the girl seemed like she knew what was coming. She turned around and started hurriedly running to the living cum bedroom in the house and sped up as she heard hurried footsteps behind her. She hurriedly tried to get inside the cabinet in which they kept their futon and just as he was crawling in as fast as she could, she felt a tug at her feet.
"WAAHHHH! MAMA PWEASE DONT HICH ME! I'M SOWWY! MAMA- "
[Disturbing events of child abuse ahead. Please skip a few paragraphs if you don't wish to read. I hate this part it but its something in the story]
The middle-aged woman had dragged out the toddle out of the cabinet she was trying to hide and was hitting her calf with a bamboo stick.
*SMACK* *SMACK*
"You wanna cry huh? *hic* Lemme give you a re- *hic* -al reason then!" The woman held the toddler by her arm and smacked violently with the bamboo stick at her legs or whatever body part it hit. The child's painful scream only infuriated her further.
"I said *hic* stop CrYiNg!!!!" The woman screamed as the intensity of her beating increase. Each hit left a bloody red mark on the toddlers soft skin. Soon her pink onesie was stained with bloody marks and the wailing of the child too stopped after a while.
The woman discovered this and stopped her barrage and looked at the child limply hanging. She raised the girl by her arm as she dangled like a broken doll.
"Ma-...ma....." The child whispered, struggling to speak properly. Soon she couldn't help herself and closed her eyes.
Obviously, a three-year-old child was not able to bear such brutal beating and had fainted.
.....
In a certain underground cellar-like dorm room with stuff littered everywhere as well as dust and cobwebs decorating the whole place in an eerie way, a certain clumsy ghost was startled awake. She wiped of the drool coming out from the corner of her pale lips and looked around in the simply lit room.
"I didn't know ghosts could dream too....!!" Pearl mused to herself as she was startled awake. "Strange... I've never seen my mother after that...."
After being alotted the messy dorm room, she put everything at the back of her mind and decided to go through the mysterious looking tomes on the table as well as littered.... well.... everywhere else. Without knowing when, she had fallen asleep and had a dream of such distant memory. She only remembered bits and pieces of that incident, since she was very little back then. She remembered the long hospitalizations and a few lawsuits on her mother which went on for quite a long time as her father took complete responsibility if her later.
"Not a big deal..... lets get on with the cleaning I guess!" Pearl said with renewed vigor as she stood up..... and her body tumbeled down leaving her ghostly self floating around confused.
"EH?... dead?....Again?" The confused blob of spectral energy mused to herself.
