Lou’s Diary – Entry 22 (text version)

He’s deaf.  The boy cannot hear a thing.  He had this back to me, and I dropped a piece of firewood on the floor.  It made a loud thumping noise, but the boy didn’t flinch at all.  I stood behind him and clapped over and over as loud as I could trying to get a reaction out him, but he just stood there.

I moved in front of him and signed my name.  He looked frightened at first, but a smile slowly spread across his face.  I signed my name again and asked him his.  After a few seconds of staring at me, he eventually signed minnow.

Confused, I asked him his name again. He repeated the word minnow.  “Your real name,” I insisted.  He signed minnow once again.

I asked him if the man was his father.  “A friend,” he signed.  “My father is dead.”

“How?” I asked.

“The everything monsters.”

“Everything monsters?”

He signed, “The things made of different creatures.  They killed my father.”

I got angry and told him he was lying.

He shook his head and signed.  “They killed him and ripped him from limb to limb so they could share his body parts.”

I fought the urge to smack him. “What about your mother?”

He hesitated and then signed, “My father killed her.”

I laughed and signed, “It sounds like your father deserved to die.”

Angered, he signed, “My father killed my mother, chopped her up and gave her pile of body parts to the everything monsters.  They made him do it.”

I yelled, “Shut up!” And then signed that the creatures he called the everything monsters would never do something like that.  They were good and pure and caring.  They weren’t monsters at all.

He growled and signed.  “That’s what they want you to think.”

I screamed as loud as I could just inches from his face.  He started to sign something, but I grabbed his hands and pushed him backwards.  I signed “Shut up.”  Before he could lift his hands to respond. I stomped out of the cabin and stood on the deck.  The boy was a liar, and liars deserved to die.