The Monster I Have Become

It took a while for the crying to stop, and once it did, I slowly walked up to the dead child, his body still warm, and hesitantly picked him up. As soon as I did, the first child to mourn for the child's death in my hands began hissing me in my left arm while everyone else was looking at me with daggers in their eyes.

I then moved the child away from the jaguar carcass before putting him down and walking towards the river, and throwing water from there onto the child's injury to clean it off; all the while, I was still being hit by the other kid.

It was only after I walked away from the dead child that he finally calmed down and stopped hitting me. From there, I grabbed the ax stuck onto the neck of the jaguar before hitting it again to chop its head clean off.

After that, I grabbed a thick stick I found on the ground and sharpened it until I could use it to stab into the jagua skull from below. Once I did that, I walked up to the child's corpse and placed it into the ground in front of him as a way to signal his grave.

With that finished, I just stood to the side and waited for everyone to calm down. Eventually, though, I could hear footsteps behind me, and when I turned around to see who it was, I saw Omar walking towards me with food in his hand.

After he arrived, he offered it to me, but it felt wrong to accept it, especially when the children next to me were probably still hungry. Once I rejected the food, Omar gave the food to one of the kids that showed to be really hungry, and from there, he pointed at a stick of Suri and then signaled them to follow him back to the settlement children hesitantly agreed to.

Before they left with him though, although most held their head down as they were still sad, the kid that had hit me before looked at me with hated and suspicion, almost like he was warning me not to step out of line. I just nodded with sincerity, and he slowly caught up with the rest of the group.

I couldn't blame him for his behavior, as from his point of view, although I had killed the animal that attacked his 'brother,' I wasn't able to save him, plus I had randomly picked him up before he was done mourning completely.

When they were gone, I took a deep breath, knelt before the dead child's body, and then began praying; although I knew that it would not be as valuable as a normal prayer since it came from me, it was the only thing I could do, it was the least I could do.

After I did my prayer, I walked into the jungle and looked for any flower I could find, eventually coming across a purple one that caught my eye. And while I was already in the jungle I also chopped off a branch from a tree and made a shovel by tying it to a group of sticks tied into the form of a rectangle.

As I dug the child's grave, I began to think back on what the system had said. It truly did seem that I had been blinded by success, as I had almost forgotten that things could go wrong; otherwise, I would have been able to foresee something like this happening and figured out another way to attract nomads here.

As much as it hurt, I tried my best to ingrain the images of everything that happened into my brain and stopped it from suppressing the memories. It would only be more of a tragedy if I ended up forgetting what happened. I needed to remember so that something like this would never happen again.

After I put the child's body into the grave and filled it back up, I realized that the sun had begun to go down. I decided to stay though, it was pretty obvious that I wouldn't be able to sleep anyways, not after what happened, plus it would feel wrong to leave the kid behind.

As the night went dark and all that was left was me and the cold, unforgiving wilderness. I didn't move though, there would never be anything I would able to do to atone for my sins, but at the very least putting my life at risk for a day was my way to try and pay my respects.

'I don't think I'll ever be able to get his image out of my mind, and perhaps that's a good thing. It would only show that I was a true monster if I forgot….' I thought as I looked up at the starry sky, wondering how he was doing in the afterlife.

As the night set in, I also began to contemplate the mortality of everyone around me, including me. Although at first, I believed that I was prepared to see all of those around me die eventually as I would be able to live far beyond their time, now that I could imagine a world where they had all died, all I could do was cry.

One of the great beauties of life was that life wasn't permanent and that all of us would die eventually. As much as I would like to live a normal life, I knew that I was cursed to stay on this earth for as long as possible. After all, my sins are far beyond what could be forgiven on a whim and blamed on ignorance.

'You'll never get to grow up, but I hope that me going to hell when I die will satisfy your dissatisfaction,' I thought as I began to close my eyes.