Maybe the lullaby was just a cruel hallucination.
The volume rose, and I sprang to my feet.
It went higher.
Higher.
Now blaring so loud that I couldn’t even think.
Couldn’t even feel myself breathe.
My eardrums burned, so close to bursting, as the one song I hated assaulted me.
“Turn it off!” I screamed at the top of my lungs while holding my hands to my ears. “Turn it fucking off!”
It paused for a moment, and I heard an evil chuckle before it played again.
Louder this time.
Then louder.
Louder.
Louder.
Louder.
My legs gave out, and I slid down the rough wall. Tears poured down my face as I cried uncontrollably. Snot pooled at my lips as I desperately pleaded for them to stop.
That fucking lullaby.
Fuck that fucking lullaby.
My mother had sung that lullaby to me once in my bedroom when I was five or six years old. We didn’t celebrate birthdays, so I didn’t know my real age until I was older.
Since I didn’t know any better, I sang it that day while doing my daily chores. Someone overheard me and told my father. He stormed into the kitchen, yanked the mop from my hand, and cracked the handle across my face. I screamed for help as he dragged me out of the kitchen by my hair and tied me to a tree, telling everyone they needed to gather around.
They crowded around me and screamed.
Called me the devil.
Said I was evil.
I sobbed while begging my mother to help me.
When my father asked where I’d heard that song, I pointed at her. She shook her head and called me a liar.
She claimed I’d heard it from the Devil because the Devil lived inside me. With fake tears falling down her face, she told him she was scared to tell him all the evil things she’d witnessed me do, in fear he’d hurt me.
That day marked the moment my father believed I was evil.
That the Devil had sent me to ruin him.
To ruin everyone.
My punishment for the singing was confinement in a small, wooden shed for thirty days. He claimed it’d free me from the evil spirits within. Once a day, my mother would bring me food, a smile on her face, and then leave without saying a word.
Sometimes, I wondered if she was the one who had ratted me out for singing. If I’d known singing was forbidden, I’d never done it. I had been too young to know what I was doing.
