The Other Face of Love

I just love animals. I’ve loved them since I was a little child. Dogs, cats, turtles, all kinds of pets, even animals most people are squeamish about – laboratory rats, snakes, spiders. I remember spending hours and hours sitting in front of a TV screen watching documentaries. I also had a huge collection of cards with wild animals. Naturally, I soon wanted to own and breed my own pets.

My mum and I were living in a small flat in a dirty part of the city. Dad had left us shortly after I was born.

It was a run down neighbourhood full of misery and filth. I didn’t mind that – however dangerous the streets were, I never had a chance to experience them, since I spent all my childhood in my room. Mum would teach me stuff, she would come and see if I was OK a few times a day, we ate together, but most of the time I was just sitting in my room going through my animals collection, watching TV and observing people through the window. Our flat was on the fourth floor and the window looked at a dirty yard full of boxes and junk. Children would play there and I would just watch them from above without them noticing my waving at them.

I don’t know why I didn’t go out and play with other kids. The only thing I remember that could somehow explain it happened when I was three or four. It was an early morning visit to a place where people wore white. One of them examined me, ask me questions and then sent me out of his room. Mum stayed in the room with him and they talked for a long time. After we got home, mum told me I wasn’t allowed to leave our flat.

With no friends to play with and talk to, my interest in animals gradually got stronger, since they were the only joy I had. When I was like five or six years old, I started begging my mum to buy me at least a little mouse. My cravings became almost unbearable. After months of my constant pleas, she finally agreed. Maybe she got dead tired of my begging, but I didn’t care because I got my first tortoise and my mind was fully occupied.

I named it Robbie. I can’t count how many hours I spend watching Robbie eating, drinking or moving slowly from one side of the vivarium to the other. I also got a little cat. I named him Jasper and played with him a lot. I tried to train him, but since cats are almost impossible to train, I soon abandoned the idea and begged my mum to buy me a dog.

She agreed after weeks of my constant crying. The dog was a Golden Retriever bitch and I immediately fell in love with her. Training an animal can be hard when you’re not allowed to attend a training centre, but if you’re patient enough, you can at least teach it the basics. When I was eleven, I had a room full of turtles, spiders, snakes, guinea pigs, laboratory mice, a dog and a cat. By then, mum had moved me to a bigger room and took my room instead, so me and my friends had enough space. I had been living a comfortable and happy life.

One day, it was late afternoon, I was watching kids playing outside. Suddenly, something terrible happened. It almost made my heart stop beating. You know, sometimes you find yourselves in a situation you can’t handle – but you know you must do something. Anything. And I did. That is when my love for animals showed its other face.

A boy approached a group of kids right under my window. He was dragging something, holding its tail. It was bleeding terribly. When he came closer, I saw it was a dog, an Alsatian. The boy was kicking it, beating it and laughing light-heartedly as it was fun. Blood ran into my head.

When the other kids saw the boy’s prey, they started laughing, too. Some of them took wooden and metal sticks that were lying around and joined him. It was unbearable. As I was watching the dreadful scene, it ran through me that I should help the poor thing.

It happened in an instant. I remember opening the door of my room, running through the hallway, knocking down my mum, throwing the flat door open and rushing down four stories. Without thinking, I jumped at one of the kids and knocked him down. When the others saw what I was doing to him, they didn’t even try to help their buddy. They ran away, leaving the dog lying on the ground, bleeding, whimpering and breathing disjointedly and laboriously.

When I attacked the boy, my desire to punish him for what he had done was indescribable. You might have heard or read those stories of mothers seeing their children in danger – such a mother can do things physically almost impossible. I think something similar happened to me now. I smashed the boy’s face against the paving, broke every bone in his body and ripped off parts of his skin. The smell of his blood even boosted my craving to hurt him.

When I finished, my first thoughts were of the poor creature. It was lying on the ground. Alive, luckily. Now when people were gathering and screaming in shock at the terrible sight, I begged them to help the dog. None of them seemed to listen, they were turning their faces away from me in disgust. Finally, mum came dashing, grabbed me and took me back home.

That evening I was taken to a place where people wore black. Mum and I spent hours and hours answering their questions. They sent me out, but mum stayed in the room with them and they talked for a long time. In the end, they let us go, but later they would visit our flat from time to time.

That is when the rumours started to spread – rumours about children being killed by a creature living in the dirty part of the city, resembling a child with two faces, each with its own pair of eyes.