Faceless Night [Part 1].

The color was a gleaming black, as dark as the night. He walked among the wet branches of the trees that had been soaked by the rain. He could only carry two pearl-like orbs with him, the pearls that had grown on his face since birth, his eyeballs. Among the bushes, his body emerged once again, looking up at the cloudy sky, hoping that the full moon would never appear. Hoping that this time, the rain would truly be on his side, on the side of the curse that had befallen him. Hoping that he could continue to watch over his lover's body in the form of a black cat...

***

The two children ran to the front porch, looking at the grumbling rain. Their mother had left them to hang the laundry that had been left unattended since the afternoon. Rows of clothes hung on ropes. With a little tiptoeing, the twins, Gadis and Gilang, reached for some of the clothes that had already dried, though dampened by the night dew. The twin children knew exactly which clothes to take down and which ones to leave on the clothesline, without being allowed to be taken down.

Left there until late at night, then late at night it was replaced by morning, morning turned into noon, and the clothes were left to dry and torn by the afternoon wind. Until the sky was fed up, and the rain came back to fulfill its promise to the earth. The rain continued until the night, and the clothes were wet again, but still left unattended. If not, their mother would punish the twin children by making them sleep on the front porch until morning, using the clothes they were not allowed to take down as their pillows. A pair of clothes with black cotton pants and a white t-shirt with a crescent moon painting motif. The crescent moon drawing occupied by two lovers making love.

Once upon a time, on a rainy season night, when not a single star could be seen in the sky, leaving only the full moon peeking through the gaps of the cloudy sky. Gadis and Gilang couldn't sleep that night. The dew slowly crept on the glass walls, entered through the gaps of the bedroom window, and reached their backs. It was cold, they said. Gadis opened the bedroom window, and the raindrops tapped her small cheeks like the fingers of an angel, while Gilang curled up even more under the blanket.

"Sis, why did you open the window, aren't you cold? And aren't you afraid, Mom hasn't come home yet?!" (it was already past quarter past midnight)

"Broth, do you miss Dad?" Gadis stared straight ahead at the front yard of her house, filled with clotheslines and neon lights that illuminated the gate, occasionally overshadowed by lightning flashes, then silence. Again, the girl stared at the clothes swaying in the rain.

"Miss him? How can I miss him, we never even knew who he was?" The wind was too strong, making the rainwater even more torrential, tearing apart the clothes there. The girl reflexively closed the window and hurriedly ran out of the room.

"Where are you going?"

"The clothes fell, I want to pick them up, wait a minute..." "But...hey...don't...Mom will..."

The twin children now truly felt shivers on their tiny teeth. The girl slept on a pillow of wet white t-shirts, and Gilang wore a pair of black cotton pants that were also wet. They were cuddling on the porch of their sibling's house (at one thirty in the morning). When the sky always kept its promise. It was now the full moon's turn to claim its time, seizing the cloudy sky to become bright, so that its light could reach the porch of the house. Gadis and Gilang were still lying down, smiling at each other, feeling the warmth of the moon.

....

Continue to part 2.