Its bad parenting is what it is, plain and simple. Some people were not meant to have children. Daria Quentipo's fascination with her brand new smartphone did the job; with it's unlimited everything, it was all Daria could do to keep herself from swooning. The camera was the first thing she exploited, taking almost a hundred selfies in two minutes, she began to post her pics on every social media account she had. All the while, her five-year-old son Kahsh became overstimulated by all the bright, colorful lights and blaring music in the shopping mall and wandered away. Shoppers barely noticed the little boy in his three-day-old shorts, shirt, and slippers.
Neil David noticed Kahsh even before he drifted away from his mother. She was overdone, too much hair, too much makeup, and too much jewelry. It was evident that her son was just another knock-off, another collectible. Except this collectible was a living breathing human being. Neil watched as the woman tinkered with her new phone and handed the little boy a stuffed power ranger doll so that he would stay out of her hair, but he quickly became bored. Neil kept a close watch on the boy's movements once the boy cut his own meandering path through the mall and found his way to the escalator. Neil was beside himself. It was almost as if the fates were handing the little boy to him on a silver platter; the day could not get any better than this. Neil's mouth began to water, and he went dizzy for a second; the fever was taking over. His first inclination was to grab the boy right now and run, but he fought that temptation because he knew he had to be low key. It had to appear as if Neil and the boy were related so no one would suspect anything and try to stop him. There was always someone who couldn't mind their own damned business.
Always.
Once he and the boy were outside, he had to find a secluded place where he could kill the child right away. After that, eating him wouldn't be difficult at all, he would only consume the heart, the liver, and the pancreas. The rest he would burn.
…
The escalator gently pushed Kahsh to the landing on the second floor. The smell of cotton candy lured him to the left, where he saw a tall thin man standing there eating a huge pink ball of it. His hair was slicked back wet, his skin gave off the same kind of sheen like one of the fish from Kash's tank. Whenever his mother wasn't paying attention, which was often, Kahsh would remove the fish and scrutinize it. It had a gooey thing that covered its scales. That's what the man's skin looked like.
His glasses were thick, and it made his eyes look like a pair of dark jellybeans; the color offset the faded gray stripes on his buttoned-down shirt. His khaki shorts were old but neatly pressed, and he wore shoes with no socks. The tall thin man smiled and waved at Kahsh, and Kahsh waved back.
"Oh, I certainly couldn't eat all of this cotton candy by myself, I wish there was someone who could help me eat it," the man said in a sing-song voice. "Do you know anybody who could help me eat the rest of this cotton candy?"
Kahsh nodded and raised his hand, "Me, I can,"
"Here," the tall thin man said as he took a seat on a bench. "I'll sit here, and you can sit next to me, and we can share, like on Sesame Street. Sharing."
"Sharing," Kahsh nodded.
The tall thin man held the cotton candy stick between the both of them and let Kahsh take as much of the pink sugary delight as he wanted. Before long, the tall thin man handed the entire stick to the little boy and smiled,
"Ooooh, I'm full! You can have the rest!"
There was no protest from Kahsh at all, he worked on the airy confection with the zeal of a starving animal.
…
As easy as you please, Neil stood up and grabbed the little boy by his hand, and the two of them walked toward the double door exit of the mall. His plan was already in place; once he got the boy into his car, he would snap his neck and lay his body on the floor beneath the dashboard. The blanket in his back seat would come in handy to cover the body, he would then drive out to the Waipio soccer field. It was secluded, and the tall grass would easily camouflage his olive drab civic. It was his usual location, it worked on all the countless others, and no one ever found out.
Ever.
His mind was so intensely wrapped around the forthcoming task that he screamed when he bumped into someone who was coming in through the double doors. He was disoriented, and so it took him a second or two before he could recognize who it was that stood in front of him. The glittering shirt with the face of a kitten on it and Tabby's schoolgirl plaid skirt and shoes were the same. Her black backpack strapped to her shoulders and her pigtails seemed oddly familiar.
"Neil David, is that you in there?" the girl asked.
"I'm sorry, you got the wrong person," Neil replied.
"It might not be your body, but I know it's you, Neil." There was a menacing tone in her voice.
"Excuse me?" He shrieked.
"I was six years old, but you only managed to rape me. My father stopped you before you could disembowel me like all the other kids," the girl waited for a moment before a mode of recognition surfaced in the man's eyes, and there it was. His eyes went wide and then rolled over white.
"Tabby," Neil's voice was a low hiss with a growl just beneath the surface.
"Bazinga," Tabby replied. She deftly removed Kahsh from Neil's grip and wiped the gooey substance from his hand. Pointing toward the security guard who was on his cell phone, Tabby instructed Kahsh to go over to the guard and tell him how he'd lost his mommy.
"Can I take the cotton candy?" Kahsh asked.
"Of course," Tabby smiled. "It's all yours,"
Kahsh ran off to the security guard while Tabby continued her conversation with Neil David.
"We can do this right here, or we can go somewhere quiet," Tabby said. "Either way, you and me are gonna dance,"
"Some hero was your father, he caught me with you and turned me into the police. I was killed in prison, not by his hand!" Neil opened his mouth wide, and his protruding tongue turned black and green.
"Okay," Tabby sighed. "Too much talking,"
In one swift motion, Tabby grabbed Neil by the back of his neck and shoved a handful of Kaua'i salt into his mouth. Covering his mouth now, Tabby quickly shot a straight-edged knife kick into the back of Neil's knee and brought him to the floor. She held on as the body that Neil possessed began to shake violently. Tabby's free hand quickly grabbed an eyedropper from her skirt pocket and squeezed out a drop in Neil's eye. It was the first pure raindrop of the morning, which was gathered in the middle of a taro leaf, the most genuine blessing there can be.
The body went limp in Tabby's arms, and a greenish smoke came from the pores of its skin. It was only then that Tabby noticed a crowd had gathered.
"Epilepsy, he's okay now," she reassured the mob.
The crowd dispersed, and Tabby began to address the tall thin man who just a second ago, was possessed by the ghost of a child murder named Neil David.
"You okay? Do you know where you are?"
"How did I get here? I was at the airport about to get on a plane, and that's the last thing I remember," the man said.
"What's your name?" Tabby asked.
"Will Burney," he replied.
"Will Burney, your family, has been looking for you for the past two years," Tabby removed her backpack and took out a cell phone and handed it to Will. "It's a pay as you go phone, it's still got juice on it. Call your family, let them know you're alive."
"Thanks," Will was still trying to make sense of everything.
….
Tabby walked across the crowded parking lot to where her bike was chained up. Her natural instinct was to kill Neil David, but how could she? His ghost possessed the body of an innocent person who was not responsible for what happened to her. Should she be mad at her father, who chose to turn Neil David into the authorities without killing him on his own? Who would know? Her father would not let her brother finish the job either, but after that incident, Tabby began to receive her training. Maybe that training was her father's way of saying he was sorry? Or perhaps it was because she was robbed of her innocence that he felt he could teach her everything he knew? There was no satisfaction today, there was no way that she could physically murder the man who raped her. There was nothing tangible for her except her hatred, which could not be rightly quenched when the moment of truth was at hand. Instead, she had to do the right thing and save two innocent people.
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