I remember. I was swaddled in multiple layers of underwear, clothes, and jackets, invigorated by the frosty air that danced through my golden curls and nibbled at my cheeks. My mother held firmly onto my hand as my family strode through the river of Beijing inhabitants, our path easily cleared due to our tall stature and fair features. No snow enveloped the ground, but it seemed as if the frigid temperature seeped from the cobblestone streets into my purple tennis shoes. I flexed the fingers in my free hand, attempting to loosen the stiffness in my bones as we continued towards our sight-seeing destination. The number of people dwindled until, very oddly, we were alone. My parents conversed as we leisurely made our way along a huge gray wall, which my mother said led to a very big gate that we would enter to explore a beautiful palace. I wasn't excited, and it was easy to lag behind with my five-year-old body, causing our connected hands to appear more like a rope that dragged me along.

I silently pouted, stuck in my own haze of exhaustion and boredom, when I detected a smell, a rancid, decaying odor that intermingled in my nose, contaminating the once fresh air that filled my lungs. In the corner of my peripheral vision, there seemed to be a growing smudge, a dark shadow that stained the silver fortress walls. My heart began to pound, and I gripped my mother's callused fingers. Mother would say not to look, Mother would say it was rude and insulting. Just act like it's not there, I lectured myself, walk away and leave it.

But I couldn't, and with a surreptitious glance, I crossed into the forbidden, into the unknown, into the world that I had no relation, no reason, no right, to observe with my childish, innocent mind.

My breath caught in my throat. I stared, unable to comprehend what my eyes held before me. There, like a depravity of mold on a holy sheet, was a figure slouched against the once silver stone wall, sitting in a grime and filth that spread and spotted the surface around him like a sickly disease. A faded duffle bag with fringing rips lay crumpled on the floor near the wall, its cover open, its contents rippling in the wind. Torn up paper, tattered t-shirts, molding shoes, and other rotting things lay on top of the bundle, while wrappers from candy bars and junk food, empty coca cola bottles, and soda cans scattered about the ground. In front lay a forlorn, upturned cap, its empty bottom searing a void in my gut.

Something twitched, and my eyes darted toward the movement, discovering a pair of worn lace-up boots that were too big for the stumped legs that occupied them. My eyes continued traveling up, my heart quickening, as I passed over thin camouflaged pants and a torn leather jacket. Short arms hung uselessly to the sides with big swelling hands that rested with its scarred palms open. I traced over the dark hairy chest matted with crumbs, across the wart-spattered neck, and stopped.

Its face-no. His face, I do not remember well. Something tells me he did not have the squinty eyes or the dark skin that the Asians had, but instead, reminded me uncomfortably of someone I would see in my own country. His features were pale but hard, and when the wind cut through his bones he did not shiver or flinch, but instead sat frozen, his eyes staring into space with a cold glaze, as if he refused to acknowledge the world around him. But that was not what I gaped at, that was not what sent numbing shock through my little body.

On top of his emaciated body and ragged clothes, on top of his balding head, grew a huge, bloated lump. A gigantic, skin colored, freckle-spattered boil that seemed to push out of his skull like another head striving for its own existence. It grew, consuming his own scalp like a massive parasite. In some areas, lifeless white hairs poked out sporadically, and in others, sunspots checkered the pallid skin. My child self was revolted, entranced, horrified, by what it saw. Was it filled like a blister? If he picked at it would it then pop and ooze putrid white liquid? Or would it bleed and gush out brain tissue? --Or was it hard as a rock? Were there extra bones beneath that skin? Would there develop a set of eyes? A nose? A mouth? Images mounted in my mind to explain this deformed body, this mutated, crippled blotch that hid in the shadows like a mystical creature from a dark fairytale.

Then his eyes turned, catching on mine.

A roaring fire of fury, loathing, and hatred radiated from the black abyss of his vision. The heat of his malice shot forth like a poison arrow, embedding deep in my heart and spreading its icy steel, leaving my limbs paralyzed in fear. Our eyes were locked in a time-stopping intensity, and the whole world held its breath as it watched the dark, broken creature seethe mercilessly at the human child, binding her body with his curse of malignity, suffocating her lungs with the heat of his rage.

And in his eyes, tying all of these emotions together was something my child-self was blind to, something my child-self could never know. Only one who had truly lived in this world could identify it, only one who had truly died in this world could understand it:

Pain.

Raw. Excruciating. Pain.

Conversation faded as my parents became aware of the frozen silence that hung in the air. Mother straightened and tugged through the barriers of shock and strain, pulling my mind out of the forbidden, and back into the safe, the predictable, the ignorant.

And the crippled man watched as the little girl turned.

And walked away.

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Thank you all for reading! Some might notice this is non-fiction--and yes, it is. I truly did encounter a man outside the walls of the Forbidden City who was truly shockingly disfigured.

As the memory came from a box that has 12 years of dust on it, I cannot 100% say that every detail I used was accurate--but two things I know for certain was there was another "head" coming out of his own that bore large sun spots, and that he DID look at me with such utter hatred that it rooted me to the spot (how could one forget such a thing?).

Comments and nice critiques are welcomed with open arms! I'd love to hear what you thought, or what surprised you etc. And also: votes! Those give me bubbles of happiness and also make it so others will be able to read of my experience:D Thank you again!

<3 Ruth

P.S. this is dedicated to @pikachuiscute for such a wonderful cover!

P.S.S. there is an abridged version that is shorter and a little different if you click on the 'next' button:D