"Symmetrophobia," muttered the bald man as sweat dripped down his flaring forehead.

"W-What?" The dean of orphanage questioned with her old voice, apparently taken aback upon hearing this unfamiliar medical terminology.

"Symmetrophobia, a- a sort of mental disorder that we psychotherapists just found and named," the bald man spoke again, this time a bit louder, and looked at the third person in the barn.

There stood a little girl on a short stool in the corner, with half her body leaning onto a run-down table. She was holding a pair of scissors in her hands, which was supposed to be too dangerous for a girl of only nine years old, but neither of the adults seemed to care.

The pair of scissors was the kind of ancient scissors that were quite incapable to break anything that it was initially made for breaking: one of its plastic handles was broken, and both the blades were rusty and blunt. That didn't seem to concern the girl, though. She just hasted to run them through a piece of paper, making nasty blurred lines along it, and eventually cutting it into entirely different pieces. She put the paper pieces away, giving a sigh of relief.

With hearing her sigh, the dean turned to the little girl, and demanded in her shrill voice: "Abby, put your scissors down! Come and see Mr. Andrew. He's gonna be your doctor from today."

Andrew nodded at Abby.

"Right, Madam," Abby answered as her scissors were snatched away by the dean. She stood from the table and addressed to Andrew, "What was the seem- thing that you just mentioned?"

"You mean symmetrophobia? Well, that's the thing that troubles you," Andrew paused, stared at the scissors for a moment, strived to draw a kind smile onto his face, and continued, "it means that you are afraid of everything that is symmetric and would like to destroy or avoid seeing it."

"But what is seem-a-treek? I don't quite get it-"

"It means that if you imagine to fold something together, you find the parts on two sides of the crease are exactly the same, you silly girl," snapped the dean, and then chuckled, "Abby - this girl - is quite a weirdo. She just keeps destroying all stuffs around her as long as they are symmetric. Never dared to let her stay with the other children, for god's sake, one little shredder brings enough problems to the orphanage already!"

Abby rolled her eyes in a very careful manner. Andrew blinked a little more rapidly than usual.

The dean kept twittering, "…crashed her milk bottle into pieces ever since she opened her eyes. We were terrified, and moved her to this barn as soon as she could walk, this little devil, and every day I have to order one worker to bring her meals three times- the plates have to be damaged somehow to make them asymmetric… Anyway, Abby, talk with Mr. Andrew and see if there's any improvement in your nasty symptom." With a last nod and a hasty smile to Andrew, the dean slammed the door and disappeared in the pale dusk, leaving Abby and Andrew staring at each other speechlessly.

"Well… Hello, Abby." Andrew swallowed and began.

A young maid interrupted Andrew's carefully started conversation by opening the door and putting a small basket inside, "Evening, Abby. It's some bread and eggs today. I'll come and take the dishes tomorrow morning."

"Thanks, Maria." Abby stood up from the table and struggled to carry the food basket onto her bed. She sat on the short stool and placed the dishes - two wrinkled buns, an egg cut into small pieces, and a bottle of water - onto her bed. The two plates carrying the dishes were, as the dean said, "damaged": the one holding the buns had a great crack that stroke across the once perfect china; the other was almost torn into halves. The bottle itself was luckily undamaged, but its glass rhino decoration had a look of pity with one of its horns removed.

"Look, Abby-" Andrew began again, and was interrupted the second time as Abby said, "If you wish to cure me by your simple 'mental consult', you should give up that idea immediately. Loads of adults tried in the past few years. None helped." She held a bun to Andrew. "Maria is the best at cooking. Here, wanna have some?"

Mr. Andrew shook his head, and continued despite her past words. His eyes searched wildly inside the small barn, and finally he pointed his finger at the small and toppling chandelier hanging from the ceiling of this small room, "You see, Abby. If you look up at your source of light, you can see that it is symmetric."

Abby glared at the chandelier and snatched her scissors up. Andrew hurriedly said "Stop!", but she had already managed her first try by throwing her scissors upward. It missed. Abby gave a short sigh, then looked at Andrew again with the greatest malice she could muster in her facial expression.

"You can't get to the ceiling and crash the light anyway, you're too young." Andrew quickly picked her scissors up, and snatched it tightly inside his hand. Smiling again, he pointed towards the rising moon. "The moon, Abby, is symmetric. It's much higher than the chandelier, and you definitely cannot climb up some ladders and crash it into pieces, can you?"

"Besides from that…" He reached for a mirror inside his pocket and handed it to Abby, adding harshly, "Don't you crash it!"

Abby stopped with a readable pity on her face. She looked into the mirror, and saw her own eyes. She imagined folding her eyes together. They coincided perfectly. "My eyes… They are symmetric, too." She stared into the mirror as if petrified.

Andrew blinked, and nodded.

Abby did not know when Andrew left. She sat on her bed, shivering, holding the mirror that Andrew gave her. Inside the mirror she saw her own pale, grey eyes.

They are symmetric, a voice inside her mind whispered. Abby looked at her scissors which Andrew put on the run-down table when he left.

Pick the scissors up, the voice enchanted, your eyes, the source of all your misfortune… What's even the point of leaving them in your eye socket? Abby approached to the table.

"Symmetric, symmetrophobia… Symmetric. Symmetrophobia." Her voice became dry and harsh.

Pick it up. Abby picked her scissors up.

Scoop them out of your eye socket, and everything is over. Abby hesitated.

What's the point of being uncertain?

……

It did hurt, thought Abby. But a wild joy replaced her pain soon; a lunatic delight burned through her heart, and she was finally rid of the problem once and for all.

She was gulping and gasping madly, her hands full of streaks of scarlet. Her mouth was open, and she could feel warm blood flowing slowly into it. She couldn't hear any human language coming out, though; a low growl of pain ran through her young throat, spread out of the small barn and into the dark night. She was also shivering, partly because of her excitement, and partly due to the cold north wind.

Now that the insane excitement faded a little, Abby felt a bit cold, and put her scissors aside and closed her hands to rub them. She paused. She couldn't see a thing, but she could feel her hands. She took notice that her hands were symmetric, too.

Another beast-like howl shot through the night sky, but soon evaporated into the fierce wind.

……

The flame in the fireplace cracked, and pale candle lights wavered gently. A four-year-old finished drinking a cup of milk and lay down in his bed. The dean was singing a gentle lullaby to him, and his eyelids drooped.

There was a sudden "Whoosh!", and the little boy opened his eyes apprehensively. "Madam, is there anything going wrong?"

The dean smiled and tucked him in, "Not to worry, Harry, it's just the wind howling. You're safe and warm in your bed."

Harry smiled, closed his eyes and fell into sound sleep.

……

The whole orphanage was woken by a terrible scream coming from the barn. The dean hurried to wrap herself inside a cloak, and ran to the barn. Panting, she saw the maid Maria standing at the door of the barn, completely stunned.

"What on Earth is going-"

A gush of north wind blew the ajar door wide open: there was Abby the little girl, her face with a weird, tilted smile, her body covered with blood and surrounded by her intestines and viscera; one of her hands was poked until only a meat chunk could be identified. The other hand, along with her legs and feet, rolled to spread all the way across the barn. A rusty, asymmetric pair of scissors lay beside her. A pair of eyeballs with pale grey irises rolled towards the crowd, which was scattering away in a tumultuous scream, and stopping at last, seeming to be staring at somewhere far, far away.