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 ^{(it's beta!)}

She loved pomegranates. She loved ripping them open with her nails and teeth, peeling back their rough flesh to reveal the juicy, bloody insides.

The purple glaze on her fingers and speckles all over her clothes and surroundings.

Sometimes the little girl would wonder, wonder if people were like that. If she were to tear back their flesh would it reveal those beautiful colonies of red orbs, if she were to squeeze it a little too much when plucking that fruit from its womb, if juice would spurt out and tickle her face. She wondered. She’d sit day after day in her kitchen pulling apart that wonderful fruit she loved so, and wondering.

Sometimes her parents would find her poking funnily at the cat and pulling at its fur. They thought she was only exploring her environment, and left it at that.

Little did they know, she was trying to see if the cat was like a pomegranate. She wondered if it tasted sweet and sometimes tart like that fruit she loved, and she tried pulling the skin off but if just wouldn’t budge.

Her parents would frequently find her crying and saying it was all the cat’s fault.

One day, she came home from school and had a note from the teacher. She had been pinching other students, the note said sternly. Her parents sent her to her room without supper and didn’t ask anything more.

They never thought the cat, the child’s fascination with pomegranates, and the pinching incident were connected.

Little did her parents know that she wasn’t just pinching the other children, she was pulling at their skin trying to get it to come off. She got frustrated and stared puling with all her might, at which the teachers pulled her off crying and yelling that the children were to blame.

The next week she came home with another note, she had been trying to bite the other little girls on the playground. The teacher suggested that the parents should talk to their child, she couldn’t get a word out of her.

And so they sat her down in the living room and asked her over and over why she was doing this, but all she did was sit there. The only time she opened her mouth was to ask them for a pomegranate. When they refused, wagging their fingers and saying she was a bad little girl, she collapsed on the floor crying and kicking and screaming.

By the time they got her calmed down she was unresponsive.

They talked to doctors and therapists, they all told them it was a phase. And the little girl sat there day after day, silently.

One day they offered her a pomegranate because they knew how much she loved them. She jumped at it savagely and started ripping it apart and eating it with a fervor never before seen. But still, she wouldn’t say anything.

It was as if she was thinking deeply about some problem she was having difficulty solving.

One day, they didn’t have any pomegranates, and that’s when she decided.

That small curly blonde haired girl, with her icy blue eyes, she walked into the kitchen.

She calmly opened a drawer and took out a knife, and walked to the living room where her parents were watching the evening news.