The boy was born with his eyes open and fists clenched. His parents thought it quite unusual to see a baby so ready for the world. Well, I suppose every parent wants their child to be special.
Of course, they weren't wrong. He certainly was special. Despite that, he cried. He wailed and wailed and wouldn't stop. The moment the chill autumn air touched his skin, he wept. Not tears of... whatever distress the common baby may go through, but of joy.
The one, inhuman thought that rang through his infant mind: "I did it... I'm one of them! That gaud listened! I'm finally a monkey!"
Well, not quite in those words. Obviously, a baby can't think in a language he's yet to learn! Though, a misunderstanding persisted. He was no monkey.
A human.
The boy had lived countless lives spanning millennia. Not long, fulfilling lives, like you or I may have, but insignificant and simple ones. Inhuman ones.
Naturally, the boy—no, it, didn't remember its life as a brainless bacterium in the abyss of the sea. Nor did it remember its life as a dumb gecko, crawling around the ground.
The first life of any memorable quality that it lived was as a small little mouse. Why was it memorable, you ask? It was the first time it saw them—the 'monkeys,' as its mother said.
From then on, it lived many short and harrowing lives. I suppose 'lived' isn't the right word. Surviving.
It didn't know of any other life. It was but an animal. Until it wasn't just an animal.
Its first 'memorable' life was that of a cat's. No ordinary cat, but an idol of an ancient city in the sand. It lay down all day, sprawled across the throne, being fed fish and fruit as if it were a king. It was the first time the creature had experienced such luxury.
Its only thought was: "so this is the life the monkeys have been hiding from me!"
The monkeys entertained it with magic tricks and duels and sacrifices. It had never felt so content.
But it only lived as a cat for so long before the city was ransacked, burned to the ground, and their idol, the creature itself, was paraded on a stake.
Something snapped, and, after the now countless deaths, the creature could no longer feel pain. But that didn't lessen its now growing, consuming fear. Again, back into the wilderness it was thrown.
The cycle seemed inescapable. It was beyond its animalistic comprehension, and before envy or ambition, a fear formed inside of it. The crippling fear of death.
Unlike the physical feeling of pain, its repeated exposure to its own death did little to quell its fear. It couldn't get over it.
Not knowing it, the creature had entered its 'final' life. It flew through the sky, a colorful and intelligent parrot of the jungle. It had never felt so free.
But this life, like all the others, was doomed to end. It realized, there on the jungle floor, that it had never seen one of those monkeys die. And so, with its last breaths, it squawked a terrible mimicry of the monkeys it so admired:
"G-gaud. Gaud. Gaud! Gaud! Gaud! Gaud! Gaud!"
And it thought to itself: "this word, that the monkeys say so often. It has to mean something, doesn't it? 'Gaud.' When they live, when they die, when they cry, when they laugh, when they scream, when they kill. Gaud! Oh, gaud, why can't I just be a monkey in my next life? I've suffered enough, haven't I? I don't want to die again!"
When it—no, he, opened his eyes, he was overcome with that joy. Though only an infant, it felt as if a shroud had been lifted from his mind. The intelligence and clarity of a human mind.
And he wept.
"Shut the fuck up! Damn! Shut it up already, Liena!"
"Calm down! He's only a baby!"
Liena, the mother of the boy, shielded him from his father. The boy hadn't been born into a life of riches and luxury like he'd hoped. No, he'd ended up with a real rotten lot.
His father waved a bottle in the air, and the boy couldn't quite understand what was happening. The bottle flew across the room, shattering on the wall behind them. The father stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
Scenes like that became a common occurrence, and as he grew into a young boy, he quickly learned the realities of his human existence weren't as fantastical as he'd imagined they would be.
"Mama, look what I made," the boy said, showing off a drawing.
Liena groaned and swiped at the drawing, tearing it to shreds.
"A drawing? You think you're some artist? Why don't you get a job, then, selling your pretty little pictures you useless dumb—"
"What'd I tell you about talking to my son like that you dumb whore?" the father came stomping in.
He put his hands on her, and the boy tried his best to defend the mother who had grown to hate him so.
Not so long after, the boy ran away from home.
"This isn't what I expected at all... I'd be better off back in the wild!" he thought.
Six years old, he wandered the streets looking for scraps of food.
"Come here, boy, tell me, are you lost?" a nun called him over. "An orphan, aren't you? Come with me to the orphanage, we'll treat you well."
The boy thought she seemed nice enough, and followed her to the church. There, she threw him in a bath and scrubbed him clean. She put him in a warm bed, surrounded by other orphans, and bid him goodnight.
In the morning, she educated him, along with the other orphans. But he couldn't stand it. He couldn't sit still.
"Excuse me, miss! If she was the most beautiful and holy, then why didn't anyone paint her then?" he called out.
"Well, they did. But paintings are expensive and hard to make, so we only have one, and it's kept—"
"Can I see it?"
"Well, as I was saying, it's very—"
"Please?"
The nun brought him and the other orphans into a dark room in the back and showed off a painting of that holy lady. The boy, for the first time since he learned to speak, said nothing.
"She's... beautiful..." he thought to himself.
He reached out and leaned as close as he could. If only he could touch it, he thought. He had never touched a painting before. And as the nun was ushering the orphans out of the room, he lost his balance and fell through the frame.
The nun, so patient and caring, forgave the boy and shakily closed the storage room.
The boy was teased by the others for being small, stupid, and annoying. Every day, they would play without him, and every day, they would take his food to make sure he stayed small.
One day, the boy had enough, and to an older boy who teased him more than all the others, he clawed and scratched and punched until the two were a bloody mess.
"You can't fight! Bad boys!" the nun scolded. But of course, she forgave them.
Soon enough, the boy gained his own following in the orphanage. A group of small and sweet boys that were awestruck by his show of might. Despite the size difference, it was clear that the boy had won.
The education continued, but it fell on deaf ears. The nun refused to admit that the boy was hopeless. That is, until it became impossible to ignore.
One day, the boy was taken over by his urges. He was hungry, and the nun had gotten a chicken coop for the orphans to play in. He opened the door and grabbed one of the chickens.
When the other orphans found the remains, it was clear who had done it.
"What? There's no proof it was me!" the boy shouted.
"You're covered in blood! It's all over your face like a demon! You're a demon!" the orphans said.
"Oh, I should've thought of that..."
The nun couldn't help but shoo the boy away, labeling him as an unsavable demon child. She swept him away with a broom and slammed the church gates behind him.
The boy was once again left to fend for himself. But he wasn't alone, as a few of the other orphans that had admired him followed the boy into the streets.
That's how the demon child 'gang' was created.
Though, I can't say it was much of a 'gang...'