Amongst the journey of learning who I was and where I came from and is currently living on a confusing planet where I have a knotty idea about it. I came upon a shabby, decrepit wooden house just off the coast of East Ancient London. Notably, it was the countryside. A small home in the middle of nowhere on a bumpy field where I had to walk three miles to reach a small village was perfect for learning about myself.

The first thing I did when claiming this home as temporarily mine was to see if there were any electrical devices I could grab my hands on one. I don’t know why, but my gut feeling keeps telling me I need to find an electrical device that has internet, things I have never heard about in life.

When I entered the house, I spotted it wasn’t on a parallel line because one side was scorched out of the ground and hovering in the air while the other was delving into a deathbed underground as nature took over.

The expressionless, stiff door was practically off its hinges and withered away at this point so I could enter freely. As I stumbled inside, the wooden floor croaked clamorously, gripping the atmosphere with seared somberness. The furniture looked withered away as dense dust collected, and so did the wood as it shed the old skin off the thin walls. Everything was displaced.

I had to rip a part of my rotten white shirt’s sleeve to tie it securely around my mouth as the dust was starting to do numbers on me when I felt a tingly sensation stuffing my throat. I had to let my eyes dry up since I didn’t have glasses as I searched around the room, restricting the amount of contact with the furniture to avoid severe diseases to find anything that at least had electricity in it.

The night was beginning to disperse its reach beyond the clouds, darkening the world as the house I was in, already dark enough, darkened even more. Only one room left, and that room had a foul, intense smell leaking out of it. It was like a booby trap from how much it stood out. When everything else was dark, mouldy and lost touch with time, this one door was astute, gleaming and stood in the middle of the slim hallway on the right wall.

It was like entering heaven as concealed fulgent light stared right back at me between the spaces, inviting me to come in.

My flimsy mask was not enough to conceal my nose from the repulsive smell, but I had to investigate this terrible smell. Using one hand to cover up my nose, I extended out my other hand and cautiously nudged the door. The door creaked a cry as it uncovered an empty room where I could see the end of a queen-sized bed.

Then, as if the smell wasn’t bad enough, a strong, sickening smell of a rotting cabbage clobbers me with a deceitful urge to throw up as I enter the hellhole. I resisted and carried on as my throat strangled, leaving a little string of oxygen to leave and enter my mouth. Whatever this smell was, it was coming from something dead. No smell could be this bad unless it involves a deceased person or animal.

Every step weighed me down like a mountain was shattering my bones. My body was trying to drag me away desperately, but I pushed through, and the answer was evident when I poked my head around the door to see the remains of a whitened hollow skeleton with thin-fleshed skin and tangles of ragged, thorny hoary aged hair that snaked into the skull's eye sockets with a dropped jaw.

A dead body. I was looking at a dead human body spread across the bed, laid flat on its back while the bones caved in on themselves. There was one body only. The home probably belonged to whoever this person was.

For some reason, as I walked over to check the skeleton out, that trickery thought of disgust faded away, and it was like I was looking at a design instead of a real human being. Rather than throwing up, I searched around its body to find a phone or something that provided me with the internet.

Something deep inside me was telling me this was nothing. The dead human body existed long, and crying over it won’t bring the person back. It’s a careless conception to cry over the passed.

But, there was also something inside me telling me that even if this dead person was useless, I should at least respect it when completed with what I came here to do; grab spare clothes, learn about the current year and learn if I was living in a different identity, and possibly learn who I was.

I continued looking around and concluded that there wasn’t anything useful in the person’s home. Figures, it looked ancient, so expecting to find modern technology was like expecting a deformed human body to regrow its limbs again and move. I gave up, sat down on the bed and took a little breather before I walked out of the room.

Stopping at the doorway, I glimpsed back at the skeleton and perked around the room, doing a long sigh as a thought crossed my mind.

Perhaps, I can clean the whole house with whatever I got to pay respect to the dead.

Should I?

Yeah, sure. Why not.

–

Finding clothes was a failure as they were all rotten and sized to fit a female, so after cleaning out the house. I stepped out into the dark, processing the milky moonlight that gave me enough light to know where I was going. I didn’t want to go because of the paranoia of being caught thrice, but the village was the only place I could get help.

A long boring walk that was also freezing. The chanting, vocalised birds thickened, and the snaps of leaves and tree branches banged the stillness, shaking it vividly to announce where I was. Jolting landscapes overrode each other, clashing for the better stand of the world as I trampled in quiet. Long strides of callow, dreary grass coursed with the calm, camouflaged wind as it napped against my ankles soaked in mud.

I knew I had reached the destination when the horizon before me was prismatic and soothing for me to look at and admire. A small, solidly packed population of close residents walked the dark streets at night, laughing in their isolated, striped village veiled in mother nature. Not trying to frighten the elderlies, I moved in slowly, keeping on the rocky path, and made sure my movements weren’t suspicious and held vicious intents behind them. I faked a warm smile and walked up to two elders. The one on the right was a grandpa with arms tucked around his back, and the one on the left was a grandma hugging herself to keep warm. Both were similarly wearing black cloth pyjamas with white spots and white slippers.

I don’t know how they haven’t noticed me yet because I was standing under the light pole with them.

“Uhm, excuse me,” I spoke softly. It still made them jump with fear. They flinched around, showing their startled expressions as their mouths gaped open.

“Jesus, kid. You can’t just do that,” The grandpa exhaled his relief, rubbing the grandma’s shoulders to comfort her.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but do any of you have spare clothes?” I asked nicely, keeping my smile on my face.

“Spare clothes? Why do you need-” The grandpa stopped as he examined me in a white lacerated shirt and brown trousers where it revealed my muddy feet.

“A slave? Dear God, Elijah. It’s a slave,” The grandma was troubled, uncertain of what to do.

Is this how it is going to go? They’re going to help the law enforcement track me down and hurl threats at me, destroying me and making me lose faith in humanity because they are all dirty scumbags? Should I kill them and take their clothes? I should knock out the grandma first and strangle the grandpa afterwards. Then I will kill all the others living in this village.

It is the only way to roam free, like Carina said, and live to the fullest.

Now is good-

“Glenda, do not call him a slave. He is a human too,” Elijah scolded Glenda, clicking his tongue as he shook her head at her.

Huh?

“Come, boy. My grandson is on holiday for a month, so I can spare you some of his clothes he never wears,” Elijah offered with a gentle smile.

“Y-You’re just going to accept me?” I was startled.

“Of course, unless you are using some insane magic to hide any of your weapons because all I see is a broken, unwashed boy empty-handed and probably starving.”

“O-ok, Uhm, thank you.” I stuttered, baffled by the kindness I was receiving.

“No worries, get yourself cleaned up. My honey here will cook food for you, and I will find you a nice pair of clothes to keep you cosy.”

Like that, I followed Elijah to his little village house, with Glenda following shortly behind. None of the other residents caught wind of what was happening, and I went inside the old couple’s house without an issue. It was warm. The smell of coffee and roses broadcasted in the air, welcoming me as Elijah took me up the stairs sheathed in aqua blue carpet, tunnelling around the walls with dark purple paint.

Elijah gave me a towel and left me alone as I entered a small room with black tiles wrapping around the walls and a leathery grey carpet on the floor. I undressed and got into the bathtub to my left after lifting my leg and hooking it over the bathtub, heaving my other leg over afterwards. Then I twisted the handle in front of me on a silver tube with a shower head attached at the top, feeling the water rush down my grimy skin.

It was undoubtedly short as it was for the elders, so when I glanced down to wash around my balls with the shampoo I took from the bathtub counter and looked back up again, I bumped my forehead onto the shower head and almost fell over. I never felt scared after feeling so satisfied in my life.

But, now cleaned, I got out of the bathtub just as I heard Elijah’s voice call out to me.

“Boy, I bought you clothes. I’ll leave them out here,” Elijah said, sounding unintelligible past the door.

“Alright, thank you,”

I waited for a few seconds, opened the door, grabbed what I could feel and snatched it into the bathroom. I laid the clothes on the floor and saw a black v-shirt, tanned cargo trousers, dark grey pants and white socks with black stripes near the ankle.

Beautiful! It was beautiful! The grandson has style.

–

“So, you are Alvin, the elf who escaped from the princess for the third time, making it a piece of international news?” Elijah interrogated me with crooked eyebrows and eyes fury with curiosity. My hair felt like it was being pulled out of my skin every time Glenda aggressively coned out the knots that piled up, and with every stroke, balls of black clouds slumped onto the floor as I sat up straight on a tanned settee facing Elijah, who was sitting in front of a fireplace with a large-sized television above on a sofa that was in the shape of a halved circle.

“If that's what they said on the news. Then yes, I am Alvin,” I assured, taken aback a little as I remember that name being my former self before I came into this world.

Subsequently, that means I am the same person with the same appearance and past? But, then, why do I have elf ears? It was confusing, and nothing was making sense. My memory is still blurry.

“Not to bother you, is there a device I can use? I want to check something,” I asked.

“Sure, you can borrow my phone,” Elijah approved, shifting his body around to pick up a slim phone that looked like a Samsung Galaxy S10. He handed it over to me. I stared at the phone screen, puzzled.

Samsung Galaxy S10? How do I know what model it was? I strangely worked around the phone like I was an expert in this stuff when it was my first time seeing something this complex. I went on chrome, an app that lets me surf the internet and searched what year it was.

The app said the year I am in is 2022, and it’s the eighth month of the year. I searched up ‘elf’ into the search bar, and countless answers filtered the screen, going into full detail about the pre-evolution of elves evolved from the Homo Sapien species and having its specialised species - the Homo Magicisente species - twenty thousand years after the Homo Sapiens came to a thing after spending centuries in forests.

Both species lived peacefully together, but it did not stop the two intelligent, similar species from going to war for millenniums, breaking out world wars and fighting for dominance over the food line. Recently though, for the longest time, humans and elves have had their prolonged peace with each other for a hundred years, but internal wars between elves and humans never stopped and still carry on to this day.

There are similarities in population. Humans have nine billion while elves have eight billion, making it seventeen billion. However, there has been a rise of tensions lately between the two caused by both the species enslaving the poorest people no matter their species and plans on colonising the galaxy, hoping to find another planet more sizeable than Earth as so many elves and humans couldn’t possibly live on a tiny globe altogether. These plans made both sides accuse each other of racism, but nothing serious like conflicts have happened.

Suddenly, I fell back into reality after being too immersed in the world’s history. I raised my chin and made eye contact with Elijah. He was observing me and appeared done with finishing a sentence.

“Did you say something?” I asked to make sure.

“Yes, I did. Teenagers and phones, already addicted to looking at the screen,” Elijah chuckled.

“Your hair is now brushed.” Glenda twittered, patting me on my shoulders as I awkwardly laughed back at Elijah, “I’m going to start cooking now for our son,”

“Son? I thought he was on holiday. Well, your grandson?” I inquired, looking over to Elijah for clarification. Elijah returned the gaze, and a small smile carved his face as he clapped his hands together.

“No, you, she meant you.”

“What? But-”

“Do you want to be our adopted son?”

At that moment, my heart stiffened, and sadness overwhelmed me.

I was speechless…