A Month’s Chaos

———

I planned to wash his hair, but there wasn't any real need to. It was oddly clean. So I guess that was taken care of.

I began brushing the kid's teeth, but he started swallowing the toothpaste.

"Spit it out!"

Flipping the kid over, I began violently shaking him.

But it was all for naught, as he had fully consumed it.

Well, he'd be fine. It was a small amount of toothpaste either way.

I was definitely going to need to teach them not to eat it though.

I threw the child into bed and locked the door.

Then I realized that they could not be left alone. I did not trust them unsupervised.

So I went back into the room and sat down with my legs crossed.

Hmm, so far, he's copied nearly all of the things I do.

So I suppose I could take advantage of that to teach him.

And he could do chores for me… mwahahahaha.

I shook my head. I couldn't allow evil thoughts like that to take control of me.

Anyways, I covered them in the blanket and closed my eyes.

I went to sleep.

———

Upon waking up, I looked over at the kid.

And they were in the exact same sitting position as me, eyes closed. That seemed a little odd, but everything else was also abnormal, so I just ignored it.

I poked them in the head and their eyes immediately opened.

Getting up from my chair, I picked the child up and brought him over to the restroom.

Picking up a toothbrush, I began brushing my teeth.

Handing him the spare toothbrush, he began copying me.

After rinsing, we were done.

And there were zero mishaps.

It was amazing. This kid was a genius. Probably.

After I cooked a few eggs and made some rice, we ate breakfast.

Now, it was time to teach this boy how to talk.

Holy fuck I was stumped.

Whatever, I got a notebook and wrote down the alphabet.

Pointing my pencil to a letter, I repeated the syllable.

"Aaaaaaaaa"

He repeated after me, "Aaaaaaaaa"

"Buh"

"Buh"

And so we just kept on going. God this was gonna be so boring. 

———

Repeating the sounds to me, she pointed at the letters. Then she began telling me the name of the letters.

I repeated everything as I engraved the letters into my memory.

Then giving me a book, she started reading, "Long ago, there was a man named Iron. It was a pretty weird name, but everyone else's name was also pretty odd. So nobody minded."

After finishing the story, I had memorized all of it.

The only issue was that I had no clue what any of it meant. I did know that it was a mix of those letters I was taught earlier, but everything else was a mystery.

But it didn't end. After that, they began going over all the nouns.

Making a bunch of pictures, she wrote the words underneath them.

And then I understood what all of this was.

Her words corresponded to things and concepts through sound and visual cues.

"Cat." She pointed at a drawing of a cat.

"Cat."

"C-A-T."

"C-A-T."

"Good."

"Good."

"G-O-O-D." She pointed at a drawing of thumbs pointed up.

"G-O-O-D."

"Fuck. This might be a bit too vague of a picture…"

Redrawing it, she put a little smiling face.

"Good."

"Good."

"G-O-O-D."

"G-O-O-D."

This was a concept I couldn't understand easily.

I memorized it and kept going.

It got faster and faster as she hurriedly gave more and more examples.

Using pattern recognition, I was able to find the consistencies in how the words were pronounced.

Then she abruptly stopped.

And with that, she picked me up and went outside.

It was my second time seeing the sun. I stared at it, too captivated to look away.

It was really beautiful. After about ten seconds of my entrancement, she placed her hand on my head.

Grabbing and turning it away, she warned me, "Don't look at the sun. You'll go blind."

Through memory, I'd realize she used the words "don't" and "you" a lot. My memory was actually quite good. Allowing me to better understand everything.

She brought out a wooden dummy.

Raising her arms, she punched it a few times, before stopping.

After she stepped back, I copied her movements.

She raised her eyebrows and stroked her chin. "Woaaah!"

Smiling, her eyes seemed to shine for a second. Her laughs echoing throughout the area.