This is the lie the boy told today.
He watched his father kill his mother. His father made him. He wanted to show the boy how the Gore wanted it done.
‘You have to plan,’ The boy’s father said. ‘You can’t just bash them in the head or stab them through the heart, little Minnow. They have to be kept alive as long as possible while you remove the treasures.’
The boy said the treasures are the parts you’re made of. Your head, your arms, your heart, your legs, your feet, those are the treasures the Gore want. They need them to stay alive.
None of them are more important than the hands. The hands are the ultimate treasure. The hands are what they need most, but they want happy hands. Happy, happy hands.”
Happy hands are hands that are given willingly. A person needs to give up their own hands to the Gore as much as the Gore needs them.
The boy said his father tied him to a chair and sat his mother in front him. She had a smile on her face. The boy called it a goofy smile.
“Don’t be afraid,” she signed. “This is the happiest day of my life. I get to give my treasures to the Gore. The beautiful, perfect Gore. It is a great day, little minnow. And soon, when you’re old enough, and your hands are big and strong, you’ll have treasures to give, and you’ll join me. And it will be your happiest day, too.”
Those were the last words she signed before his father grabbed hold of her arm, placed it on the table and started to cut through the skin, muscle, tendons and bones of the wrist. He used a sawing motion at first, but his own hand cramped up, so he hacked away.
His mother cried and laughed and screamed and begged her husband to cut faster. Not because she was in pain – she was, terrible, horrific pain – but because she wanted the Gore to have her treasures as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to make them wait. It was so cruel to make them wait.
His father took the next two days to remove the rest of the boy’s mother’s treasures. The boy watched from his chair, or at least it looked like he did. He talked about hiding in a little room in his brain through most of it.
This is the lie the boy told today.
