Episode 2 – Frau
Chapter 9
It was a Friday morning. Frau was sitting by the window, in the highchair with the painted stars drawn all over it. The chair itself was blue, and the stars were golden and silver. It was a chair that used to belong to his father, when he was a child. His grandfather, his father's father, made it in his workshop. He even painted it himself. It was a family's treasure.
The girls with their backbags were walking down the road towards their bustop for school. There were three of them, two twin sisters and one neighbor girl from across the sidewalk that went between the town houses in this particular suburb neighborhood on the outer circles of Sydney.
The twins looked Asian, his father said they might be Korean, but he wasn't sure. The other girl was with long straight brown locks of hair, and greenish eyes that were glowing whenever the sun hit them. Her mother was the woman that his father always smiled to when they went to their weekly shopping day.
'What a coincidence!' The two adults would smile to each other in the corner mini-market two streets south. It was always a coincidence that the two of them happened to be shopping at the same local store at the same day as Frau and his Father at same time since Frau could remember.
Frau was leaning his elbows on the windowsill, looking out. The girl with the brown hair, the one he never got the name of (even though the begged his father to ask her mother) was wearing a red skirt that looked new. Or at least, he never saw her wearing something so nice before.
He unwrapped a blueberry gum and started chewing on it with great dedication. He would finish five more gums exactly like this one until he's father would return from the daily cheese and bread trip he made with his bycycles to the bakery fifteen minutes away towards the central station.
That gave Frau almost fourty minutes of much needed alone time.
When the bus rounded the corner and honked at a car that blocked its way by parking on the road, Frau already started sliding off the chair. He could finish his daily routine while standing up, that way he can spare seven seconds of getting off the chair after the girls get on the bus.
The car that blocked the road moved, the wheels rolling sleekily. It was black and looked brand new and shiny. Frau liked cars. He chewed on the blueberry gum and watched with wide curious eyes as the car passed near his window on the road under the house.
He looked inside the car, and a pair of eyes looked right back at him. Frau blinked, but didn't look away. What a strange man. Maybe he was looking for somebody? Trying to find an address of someone he knows? It sure appeared to be so. The car continued with its snail-like phase and Frau lost interest. He leaned his head on his hands. He rose to his toes to see better.
The bus stopped and hid the girls from view. Frau bounced from one leg to the other in anticipation. His hands made little fists. When the bus started moving again, Frau almost swallowed his gum, almost! He made a really complicated move with his tongue that saved the candy and returned it back to the front of his mouth, near his teeth. Frau made sure not to look away and not to move his eyes. He waited and waited and then…puff! The girls were gone. Like magic. The bus came and made them disappear.
He knew it wasn't really magic. But it felt that way. Good enough.
Frau hummed and walked away from the window toward his own room. His feet made no sound on the carpet. He opened the lower drawer in the closet to grab another blueberry gum and take it with him to the kitchen. He filled a glass with water, put the old gum in the trash, and had a mouthful of super cold water, so cold his nose itched and he rubbed on it and shook his head to get the weird sensation off.
He was in the middle of unwrapping the new gum when the bell from the door rang.
Frau frowned and looked in the direction of the entrance with honest confusion. It was extremely rare for someone to ring the bell at this house, because it was rare for people to arrive unannounced.
It was the first time someone came over when Frau was alone in the house, and his father wasn't there to answer the door. He was conflicted between ignoring whoever it was. Or maybe going over to check. He wasn't sure what kids were supposed to do at this kind of situation.
The bell rang again, and Frau sighed. He put the gum in his mouth and walked over to the door. There was a small hole where someone tall like an adult could look though and see who was there. Since Frau was too short to reach, he decided to walk to the next room. He climbed the rolling computer chair, concentrating on balancing himself and not moving the chair too much. His father would have thrown a fit if he'd seen him doing that, but since his father was not around – and Frau was the only witness – he allowed himself the small sin.
He hardly saw anything out the window since it wasn't facing the entrance directly, just two heads of men who were standing outside the door to the house.
Leading to his father's house was a small paved driveway coming from the road- enough for a single car. Then three steps up to the entrance that was covered in a canopy of ivy grown wild. The men were standing in the shade of it, leaning on the wall of the house and looking to be engaged in some kind of a private conversation between the two of them.
One of the men had dark hair and the other was blond. Frau struggled with the sill of the window, drawing the chair closer to the wall. He leaned on the wall and very carefuly rose to the tips of his toes.
The two strangers were not at the same height. The bolnd was taller by a few inches. They were both wearing what looking like formal button up shirts tucked into their dress pants.
Weird.
Frau chewed on his gum and started thinking. If someone was looking for his father, it was only fair that he would tell that person that his father would return later.
In TV when children answered their doors they always explained that their mothers told them not to talk to strangers. Frau didn't have a mother, so he wasn't sure if he could pull the lie of his own mother telling him the very same thing. His father never told him something like that, and it somehow made it harder to lie about it.
The bell rang again, and Frau could see the strangers shifting and talking to each other. He was so curious! What did they talk about? Who are they? Without realizing, he was leaning on the wall too hard, causing the chair to roll away. He looked down to the floor in horror, trying to find something to grab with his hands when the chair finally rolled all the way to the desk on the other side of the room, and Frau fell with a yelp.
It hurt.
Ow.
It hurt so so bad. It was hard to think. He was stunned for a few seconds, staring into thin air. When he collided with the floor it left him in shock, too surprised and unprepared to know what to do next.
"Dad." Frau started to plead. "Dad." His voice got high. He rocked back and forth on the floor, shocked and hurt and not sure what to do. His body told him to stay put and call for his father and wait for him to come and help.
But his father didn't come, and Frau was lying on the floor with his whole body hurting enourmosly.
Frau began to cry. "Dad!" Maybe if he called loudly his father would hear and hurry home. Frau looked down, his hand was radiating pain on such level he was't sure he had ever felt something so enourmosly alarming before. "Dad!" He screamed. The bell began to ring over and over again, the strangers from outside wanting to get in. They could probably hear Frau shouting.
The noise only made Frau afraid.
"Dad!"
"Hey there! Open the door!"
"Dad! I'm hurt!"
"Open the door!" The bell wouldn't stop ringing.
Frau wasn't sure if he should get up and go to his bed. His head started to ache. The pain in his hand wasn't fading, if anything, it was only intensifying. His father would usually be the one to kiss it better, but his father wasn't there, and it wasn't getting any better either.
"Frau!" Someone called from the other side of the door, making Frau pause. "Frau, hey, open the door for me, okay?" It was coming from someone behind the door. Frau was stilled into silence, not sure what to do.
"Frau, are you there?"
It was so nice for someone to ask about him, to want to speak to him. Even if it wasn't his father, it was nice.
Frau got up, making sure to protect his hand and holding it close to his chest. He walked to the door and leaned his ear on it, maybe he could hear better that way.
"Yeah?" He asked.
He could hear someone moving on the other side. "Frau, are you okay? We heard something falling?"
Tears stung Frau's eyes and he sniffed misrebaly. "Yeah."
"Are you hurt?"
Frau coughed on a sob, his breathe gasping on the pain. It was always worse when someone asked him if he was hurt, it always made everything somehow hurt even more. "Yeah." He cried, closing his eyes.
"Open the door, Frau, let me see. I will help you, get you some ice, okay?"
Frau wanted ice, his father always gave him ice to put on the spot where he was hurt. As a bonus, he would get a glass full of ice cubes to chew on. "Okay." He felt more relaxed now that he knew that someone adult was going to take care of him.
He opened the door carefully and looked at the two tall men standing at the entrance of their house.
They both took in his state, his crying face, the way he hugged his own arm.
The blond man kneeled in front of him while the other one passed him and walked into the house. Frau assumed he went to get the ice, so he let him be.
"Hello there." The blond smiled, and Frau couldn't help but smile back. "Yeah, that's right, want to let me see?" He made a gesture towards Frau's hurt hand and Frau was suddenly filled with dread.
"No!" He stepped back, turning away so it will be harder for the man to reach the hand. He glared.
"Okay, okay." The man looked confsed for a moment. He blinked at Frau and appeared to be really uncomfortable with the situation. It made something inside Frau to feel really tight and sad. Why was someone looking at him as if he didn't know what to do with him? This man was an adult, why was he looking at Frau like Frau was the problem? Grown ups solved problems! Didn't they? Didn't they?
Where was the ice?
Frau turned around to look at the direction of the kitchen, when two hands grabbed him from behind.
"No!" Frau screamed. He trashed and his shouted and he kicked without seeing. His hand collided with something hard and he wailed in agony. "No! Let me go!"
"Hey! Stop! I just want to make sure your hand is not broken! Stop it!"
"No!" Something threw him and suddenly he was pinned to the ground, the blond man huffing above him. He had a bruise forming on his face and scratches near his eye. His cheeks were red. And his eyes were furious and suprised.
He was scary.
"Dad!" Frau started crying again, he struggled to be let go out of the firm grip that wouldn't let him move.
"God! Can't you shut him up?" Came another angry voice. The dark haired man from before returned. He didn't hold any towel-covered pack of ice with him. He gazed down at Frau coldly, and Frau was shocked into silence.
There was a really nasty feeling crawling up his throat.
"I think his hand might be broken."
Frau started to hiccup. It was hard to breathe.
Those men were too big, too strong. He was too hurt to deal with it.
"Hey, shh." The blond held his face in suprising geltleness. "It is okay, you're okay. You're good. We're here to help you."
"Fuck." The other man cursed under his breath. "I'm going to start the car."
Frau was so confused. He thought maybe he swalloed the gum by mistake, since it wasn't in hs mouth anymore, and it did feel like something was bloking his throat and preventing him from breathing properly.
"Shh." The blond whisprerd empty encouragments as he helped Frau back to his feet and started hording him out of the house.
Frau tried to fight him.
"It's okay, we're going to the hospital."
"I want Dad!"
"I know, we'll call your Dad. It will be fine, he will meet us there."
"He will?"
"Yes, we're already calling him, you see?" He pointed at the other man, the grumpy one. He was sitting in the car and speaking to the mobile phone in his hand.
Frau was reassured. Partly. It still seemed so weird. He was dazed with confusion, not sure what was the right thing to do. Maybe there was a reason children were not supposed to talk to strangers.
Frau had never met a true stranger, not like this, not without his father. When he walked down the street, on the way to the little shop a few streets down from his house when it was shopping day, he didn't stop and talk to any one the strangers he and his father were passing by.
It was so unlike anything he had experienced before, and he didn't know how to react properly. What were the rules? Who would tell him?
"I think I want to wait for Dad right here." Frau said, pulling on the writs the big man was still holding. The man paused and looked down at him. They were out the door to the house, the door the strangers chose to leave hanging open.
This was not right, when you pass a door you close it. Doors are not supposed to just stay open like that, that's why they were put there in the first place. Frau tugged on his wrist again, it was hard to both protect his hurt hand and to struggle with this man. Frau didn't like it. He wanted the strangers to go away.
"He will meet us there." The blond man said, more firm than before. Something changed in his tone, and he sounded more serious and dangerous.
"My Dad can take me to the hospital when he's ba- ah." Frau almost fell to his knees when he was forcibly dragged down the few steps leading to the driveway, and down the pavement to the parking spot, where the black car rested, the engine was already going. "No!" Frau cried. He looked back at the house.
The door was open. It was open.
Doors are supposed to be shut once you entered them. That's why doors were invented.
Someone needed to close that door.
He didn't notice that they were already by the car. The blond opened the rear of the car, pushed Frau in non-too gently. Frau gasped when the part that hurt the most on his hand collided with the seat beneath his body.
He started to cry tears of frustration and pain.
"Fuck." The man from before, the one with the dark hair, cursed under his breath again. "It's fucking nuts." He added, when his blond partner entered the car in the passenger seat.
"Just drive."
"I'm fucking quitting after this."
"Just. Drive."
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."
They exited the parking spot with such force that the wheels made a loud screech. Frau yelped and fell to his side, his head bumped really hard with the inside of the door beside him.
"Wear your seatbelt." The blond turned around in his seat to gaze at Frau as Frau lifted his legs to the bench of the car and started to cry openely and loudly. "Frau. Wear your seatbelt please."
"Go away." Frau wailed. His hand hurt worse than before, the pain was only getting harder and harder to bear. It was now waves of deep aches that crawled up and down his spine, making him gasp with it every few seconds.
"We're near, it's just a few more minutes. I promise."
"I want Dad!"
"I know, he's waiting."
"I don't believe you!" Frau glared. The man stared back at him with his pale blue eyes. There were gray circles under his eyes, his lips were thin and unfriendly. His hair was short like a soldier's. Frau didn't like him.
"Drive around until he pass out." The blond said without breaking eye contact with Frau.
Frau's eyes jumped between the two. He was still lying on the bench, cradling his hurt hand close to his chest. His breath was coming in harsh, deep bursts that hurt his throat and made nausea push its way up to his mouth. Frau pressed his lips tight together.
"I want to talk to Dad!"
"Shut UP!" The driver roared.
Frau gasped, then his tears were running down his chicks faster than before. He wailed once. For some reason it made him feel better. He closed his eyes and brought his knees up closer to his chest, then he opened his mouth and began to scream.
The car halted, and Frau almost fell right off the bench to the floor of the car.
"God help me, Kid! I'll fucking gag you!"
"I hate you!"
"Okay that's enough!" The blond raised his voice, glaring at the both of them. "You!" He turned to look at Frau. "Stop making so much noise, go to sleep, we'll arrive there in no time at all."
Frau felt angry about how he was the only one to get lectured. It wasn't he who cursed under his breath every few minutes.
He still had no idea when he'll next see his father, and it was making his heart squeeze with betrayal and disappointment. And, under all of that, something great and sad dug into his heart and ate at it until his chest began to ache.
Frau couldn't remember falling asleep, but he did realise he was waking up when he began to hear voices speaking softly somewhere around him.
He was warm and comfortable, and he wanted to fall back asleep. Until the alarm didn't go off he was supposed to stay in bed. The alarm beside his bed was turned to 6:30 am every day, and that way he knew when it was okay to stay asleep, and when it was okay to get up.
There was a distant ache all across his body, but nothing too serious to make him open his eyes before the alarm went off.
He needed to piss.
Frau squeezed his eyes tight and rubbed his cheek against the cool sheets of the pillow, he tried to relax back to sleep. The sensation coming from his blabber was nagging at him and making him annoyed at his own body.
Wait for the alarm. Wait for the alarm. What if it's only 6:20? Is it okay to get out of bed in 6:20? No. No it wasn't. What was the difference between 6:20 and 5:20 and then 4:20 and then he'll be awake all night and never sleep. It already happened a few times, alarm or not. That clock-alarm was set with a porpuse. There are rules that needs to be followed in order to keep himself safe.
"Don't stay awake all night Frau, normal people go to sleep at night."
"But Dad, I'm not sleepy."
"Frau."
Fondness and pure warmth spread inside Frau's guts, hearing his own father's voice inside his head. He imagined the way his father smiles at him whenever Frau whines about another rule he has to follow. Frau was comfortable with the rules his father gave him eventually, but it was still annoying to lie awake at night and watch the minutes tick by in the clock on the bedside table. Some nights, Frau reached 4 am, even 4:30, before he finally drifted off to sleep and woke again with the alarm.
Well, since there was no rule against waking up before the alarm, as long as he was staying in bed, Frau let his own eyes open, and searched for the clock on the bedside table.
He didn't find it.
Frau was lying on the bed, long moments of terror washed over him and made his whole body feel numb and cold. He didn't recognize the room. He didn't know what bed he was lying on, these weren't his sheets. His sheets were brown and black, always brown and black. These ones were red.
Frau began to struggle with his breath. He was still lying in the same position, frozen into place, he wasn't sure what to do. It was as if someone took the snowglobe of his existence with both hands and shook it as hard as he could. Instead of snowflakes, little Fraus drifted inside with no direction.
Frau looked around inside the imaginary snowglobe at all the other Fraus. Some of them wore expressions of shock and confusion that mirrored the way he felt at those moments. Some were angry and red-faced. Some were crying and holding their hands up to their faces. Some looked completely dead.
One dead Frau floated close to him, coming from behind him, somewhere above his head. His skin was discolored and his limbs were floating limply in the water.
His eyes were open, unseeing.
Frau shot up in bed and struggled against the sheets until he suddenly felt like he was losing control of his own body and then
And then.
He was on the floor, the blanket cushioned his fall and it didn't really hurt. He was lying with his stomach up, facing the ceiling. He didn't really feel like moving. Something about the hard cold tiles under his back was comfortably grounding. He moved his head from side to side until the blanket beneath him moved a little and made space for the nape of his neck to touch the floor directly. That was nice.
"Frau?" It was a woman's voice, so it couldn't be his father. The only not-father people he had met in his life were very not-ineteresting. So he ignored the woman even as her shilloutte blocked the white light from the corner of the ceiling. "Frau, can you hear me?"
Frau had an unexplainable urge to anwer questions, he had it all his life. It amused his father to no end, and was a constant joke on his behalf whenever he father felt like teasing him. "What furniture it that, Frau?" "How much is three times twenty?" "What day is it?"
"What is her eye color, Frau?"
"Daaadd Stoop, It's blue! It's blue! Her eyes are blue!"
Frau looked up into the piercing blue eyes of the woman who was crouching near his head. "Yes." He answered.
Her features softened instantly, her gaze less intense.
"Are you hurt?"
Frau had to think about it for a moment. "I'm not sure."
"You're not sure? Why?"
"Yes. And it feels like… someone beside me is in pain, and not me." It was hard to explain, this was the best he could manage.
She looked at him silently for a few seconds, before saying. "I think you currently experience what we call 'phantom pains' from your arm, and maybe you have some bruises left from yesterday, I can see one right he-" She almost touched him, but Frau managed to flinch away and dodge.
He glared at her, he could feel the way his own eyes went large with alarm. The way the muscles all over his body tensed. His feet were resting firmly on the floor, in case he needed to crawl away and get up and make a run for it. He didn't know what was happening, he never felt this way before. But he did trust his own instincts. There was no rule against avoiding touch, so it was still okay to do it.
"Frau? I apologize, I won't touch you, I promise. Do you trust me?"
"No."
"Okay, well, I guess that can't really be helped right now." The woman was looking at him, and that deep intense stare of hers returned. Frau couldn't help but meet that gaze and look into her eyes. He would see her pupils jumping slightly, as if she was studying his face, he had no idea what she was seeing, but whatever it was made her back off until there was a large enough gap between there bodies for Frau's frame to relax. It wasn't something he could control, but he felt it happen all the same. He shifted to his stomach and then suddenly became aware of the cast covering his arm.
"Ah."
"Your hand is broken, do you remember how it happened?"
Frau looked at her, and then look down at the tiles under him. He mind was blank for a moment. "The chair was a rolling computer-chair and it rolled away from me when I climbed it."
"Why did you climb the chair, Frau?"
For some unexplainable reason, Frau felt like she was drawing a trap around him with all those questions. "I wanted to look out the window." As he said that, he let his eyes travel his body and inspect anything that could act as an answer to some of the questions in his head.
"And why was that?"
"Because I." He paused. The stuggle inside his head was physical. He didn't want to answer her question in detail. But then he looked up at her and she repeated the question. It was as if she knew it was hard for him to resist answering her and she was using his weakness. Why did you climb the chair?
Frau felt the sensation that he grew familiar with lately, of nausea climbing up the back of his throat.
"I wanted to look outside at the two men who rang the bell."
"So." She said. "It wasn't because one of them hurt you? The broken hand, I mean. It wasn't caused by one of them, but because you fell?"
"No. Yes. I'm not sure."
She sighed. "And did they hurt you somewhere else?"
Frau gritted his teeth. She saw that and again, repeated the question.
"I don't want to answer you!"
It was the first time in his life he didn't answer a question directed straight at him. He realized it was easier to dodge it if he said something else in return.
Easy peasy.
"But I need to know." Silence fell between them for a few moments in which they stared each other down. "Don't you want to know where your father is?"
He did. He did. He did. He did. "I don't like you."
She raised one eyebrow, and her mouth twisted into a small smile.
"Are we going to play a game? Are you going to try and not answer me from now own?"
Frau looked at her and felt hollow. "I don't like you." He said again, it was the truth, and it helped him.
Something changed in her, one moment she was smiling at him and then she was a hard solid, cole thing.
"What is you name?"
"I don-"
"Where is your father?"
He didn't know. "Leave me alon-"
"Why wasn't your father back home with you?"
Frau gasped. He looked down and trapped his own head between his lifted knees. He put his hands protectively over his head. The one with the cast as well as the free one.
"What did you last eat?" She asked.
She asked a bunch of surreal questions. Frau didn't know what to do. So he began counting. When that wasn't enough, he counted back. Her voice wasn't blocked enough, though. So he started multiplying.
Three threes is nine.
Nine nines is eightyone.
Eightyone eightyones is… six thousand five hundred and sixty one.
Multiplied against itself is… six-and-a-half-fourty-two-then-another-and-then-two-and-add-then-add-and-it's "Fourty two million six hundred thousand-"
He was speaking out loud, and it finally made the woman stop.
So he stopped, too.
He didn't dare look up at her, and when she opened her mouth, she didn't manage to complete the first question before he began all over again.
"Two twos are four. Four fours are sixteen, sixteen sixteens are-"
"What are you doing?"
"Multiplying to shut you up." Oh shit you were supposed to not answer her questions!
What good was he if he couldn't even control his own mouth? He was so frustrated. His chest was doing weird things and it hurt and was hard to breathe, and he didn't know how to stop it from happening. He clenched at his own shirt with his unbroken hand, seeking relief.
He glared at the woman. Yeah, and he hated her too.
"I hate you."
She chuckled, it didn't sound friendly. "Well, I already guessed that, thank you very much."
"Your shirt is ugly."
Her lips tightened.
Frau looked into her eyes, he wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was certain that it made a difference. He tried to remember all the movies he saw on TV. "You look like nobody loves you."
Her eyes widened in shock. "Wha-"
The sudden sound of something ringing filled the room and made them both jump. The woman hurried to take out of her pocket a mobile phone and answer it. Frau didn't know what was said to her, but one moment she looked at him, then she looked up at the wall behind him.
She was up and at the door in a blink of an eye. Frau watched her retreating back in surprise. She didn't even look around her shoulder at him as she exited that door and walked out of the room, leaving him behind.
He looked around him. The room was barely decorated, but the walls were painted in pleasant colors and everything was bright. There were several carpets on the floor. He walked over to one of the chests of drawers and began pulling them open. There were clothes and toys. He huffed at the toys. There was nothing entertaining everywhere he looked. He eventually gave up and went to sit on the bed, as there was no table nor chairs around to sit on.
Right in front of his bed was a wide mirror. He looked at himself in it. He eyes traveled the reflection in the mirror until he saw something unusual in the corner of his eye.
It was a camera, and it was planted to the wall near the ceiling, right above his bed. The camera was facing the room, and of course, the mirror.
If he could see the camera through the mirror, the camera could see him right back.
Even as he watched, there were several soft clicks from behind his back and a swrill of electricity. The camera was shifting focus.
His heart stuttered in his chest.
He hoped his father would finally be there to get him back home. Because this place was creepy.