Strongest Among the Heavens-Chapter 305: DASHA: Me and the Devil

A curse had befallen her child.

That was the only explanation, the mother thought as she watched him from a distance. What the hell was wrong with her? This was her son—

’That is not your son.’

The mother clutched her coat tighter around her body as she sat on the bench, her eyes locked on the boy who was alone in the park. The other children were playing, laughing, and chasing each other, but he wasn’t.

Dasha Pang, her little...boy. He was bored of the monkey bars. He was bored of the slides and the nearby skatepark. All of it bored him. He attempted it once, succeeded, then did it thrice and never again.

Dasha was crouched under tree and crushing ants under his fingers. He would walk, stop, crouch, and crush. He picked the carcass of the ant and study it until he was satisfied. Last week, it was with the grass. A month ago, it was with trees. A year ago, with toys. He was too curious.

Her heart twisted painfully. This was not normal. She had heard other parents speak of their children’s mischief. This was something else entirely. Every time they locked eyes, she saw darkness. She remembered when he was born, when she felt a chill running down her spine. The type of chill that a human being could never forget in their long life.

She screamed and told everyone to get him away from her. To kill that thing. The doctors spent hours calming her down and figured that it was a mental breakdown caused by a sudden, immediate explosion in postpartum depression. She convinced herself that it was. For a while, she truly believed it.

Until three years passed.

Dasha had been only three, standing in the backyard, staring at the neighbour’s cat with an unnerving intensity. She had been smiling, watching him through the window before going back to cooking. Moments later, there was a yowl of pain and she looked back. The cat was trembling atop the fence, a branch in its eye. The cat fell onto the neighbour’s side and died.

It was no accident. She knew what he did. He killed it. He murdered it.

The neighbours thought it an accident. She knew the truth. Especially now as she studied him as he studied the ants. He wanted to know their patterns, their habits and wants and needs.

The sun was setting and a shadow cast itself onto his lone figure. The mother glanced around, noticing that the other parents were beginning to gather their children to go home. She hesitated. What if...

’What if I leave him?’

What if?

Just for a little while.

M-maybe someone else would take him, someone who could handle... whatever he was. She pushed the thought away, ashamed. No, she couldn’t do that. She was his mother.

The idea lingered in her mind as she approached Dasha. He looked up at her, his eyes dark and empty. "It’s time to go home," she said softly.

Dasha didn’t respond, stood up, and followed her. She meekly held his hand. The walk home was quiet, the only sound being the rustle of wind. Her thoughts were consumed, however, by another kind of darkness.

Could she really do it? Could she leave him behind, just once?

Days passed, and the thought gnawed at her relentlessly. One afternoon, she found herself back at the park, Dasha once again alone, sitting on the small hill. There were more children and parents than ever before: no one knew that the two of them were mother and child. They came early and Dasha and her mother never interacted with the others.

She side-eyed him. He was done with the ants, so what was he doing now? Studying...people? Were those cursed eyes imagining them getting crushed? Dying?

His eyes craned over and they made eye contact. The mother smiled and looked away to the normal children. The happy, perfectly ordinary children and the mothers that were happy with them.

Since the day he was born, she had never felt an ounce of happiness with her child. She glanced at him. Dasha was no longer looking.

The mother’s heart pounded as she made a decision. She would leave. Just this once. She would leave and see what happened.

’Just...to see.’

Pretending to look at her phone, she rose from her bench and walked away, not looking back. Her steps quickened, her breath coming in short gasps. She reached the edge of the park and paused, her stomach churning with guilt and fear.

What if something happened to him? What if someone hurt him? Or worse, what if he hurt someone else? She turned back, ready to return, but something stopped her. A part of her, a dark, desperate part, wanted to run. Call her husband, tell him Dasha had run away, and then move from here.

She wanted to be away from her mistake. Away from this...thing.

The mother forced herself to keep walking, her legs feeling like lead. She walked faster, then broke into a run, trying to escape the nagging voice in her head that screamed she was a terrible mother. She reached her house, fumbling with her keys, and burst inside. The house was silent.

She had never been so glad for it. It was always silent with Dasha. But not today. Today, he wasn’t here.

She collapsed onto the couch. Her legs shook and her memories were whirlwind of panic and regret. She recalled giving birth to him. She recalled the melancholy that followed every little thing he did. Never smiling. Never seeming unsatisfied. Never loud.

She could never understand him. As a baby, as a toddler, she couldn’t understand and that scared her so much.

Minutes felt like hours when they really weren’t. And then, a sound broke through her turmoil. The front door creaked open. She turned her head, her breath catching in her throat.

From the doorway, her boy sauntered into the living room.

His empty eyes fixed themselves on her.

The mother’s blood ran cold. Somehow, he knew. Somehow, he had known she was going to abandon him, and he had found his way back faster than she could have imagined. It was as if he had explored every inch of their neighborhood, memorizing the paths and shortcuts. It felt that fast and clinical.

’But when?’

The mother hadn’t taken him. Her husband hadn’t either.

She saw him pull out the keys from his pockets. ’When?’

Was it a toy? Like that mattered. When had he done all this? When!?

Dasha walked to the kitchen and took out a snack. He didn’t once glance at her, going back to his room with the snack.

Neither of them ever spoke of it.