Chapter Fifty One
1183 Words
NINA
When you spend your whole life surrounded by everything that is bad, and bad is all that you know, you start appreciating the good, savoring it. Suddenly a child’s laughter is the most beautiful sound in the world and a cat licking its paws is simply delightful. You begin cultivating a serious relationship with nature. Sunrises become an awe, leaves seem greener, breezes refreshing, rain rewarding; life, grand. When you are surrounded by so much bad, you stop taking things for granted. Each minute of “normalcy” trickling by could be its last.
One afternoon my father barged in my room with a crowbar in his left hand his chest heaving. He had been “fixing” his car given the pungent smell of grease and sweat that had instantly filled my bedroom when he all but knocked down the door. By then I had been used to his frantic mannerisms. The familiarity of his violent nature, however, did not stop my heart from skipping a beat.
“Did you do it?”
“Do what father?”
“Don’t play innocent with me you w***e…Why did you do it? Haven’t you cost me enough? Now my car?”
Ever since my father discovered that I was using tampons, he had stepped up his “abuse game”. Stupid, tool and midget were beyond my age, I was a woman now. A lewd woman. I honestly had not done anything to his precious car. Years of broken bones, sputtered abuse and animal treatment had taught me retaliating only made things worse. And frankly, they never work. Sometimes I thought that the universe wanted me to undergo this constant cycle of torture. I genuinely could not point a single day I had not been fearing for my life.
And now Seth’s.
Seth. I had seen him outside that day. I had assumed he was taking advantage of father’s absence to get some sun on his skin. The boy had paled overtime, father hardly ever allowed him to go outside, to enjoy nature. I had smiled, thinking that he was relishing the good things in life despite being incessantly surrounded by bad.
“Are you dumb? You better speak up b***h!”
I panicked as a plethora of scenarios bombarded my head. The first in line was the possibility of my father mauling me to death with a crowbar. He would find a way to bend the law, to grease the justice system. My beating to death would certainly be flipped into an “unfortunate accident”. But he needed me. I was his best trafficker. I had never been caught and I brought him the highest profits. That was why I had been lavishing the good lately, because he did not want to damage his merchandize. Still, he loved that car, I never understood why, but he adored it.
“Is this what you wanted me to live with Sherryl? Is this the so called blessing you talked about for weeks? She destroyed the car baby! b***h destroyed our car!”
For the first time in years, he had mentioned her name. For the first time since I was born, I heard my father uttering my mother’s name. He had gotten enraged before, depressed, ecstatic even but he had never mentioned her name.
The car, their car. That was why he was so upset, it was memorabilia. Something he remembered my mother by. My eyes turned glassy with unshed tears. In his head, my father thought I had deliberately hurt a piece of mother’s existence.
I snapped.
“She’s not here…”
My father, a heavy-boned man with taut arms, lifted his crazed, enraged eyes to regard me. I watched as his grip tightened around the crowbar.
“What did you say?”
“I said, she’s not here father! I am, I am here, I am alive! Love me instead…”
Somehow, for a whole minute, I was still alive, still unscathed. Had I finally reached him? Had he finally listened to me?
Twenty minutes later, as I laid on the floor, raggedly breathing through my broken nose whilst tasting my own blood, I angled my head to view a crouching Seth. He was wringing a wet cloth, wiping the blood spatters off my face.
I cherished that moment, it was a good moment, despite being surrounded by bad.
* * *
“A submaryyn?”
“No, a sub-ma-rine…”
“I think she is saying subnarin…”
“What the hell is a subnarin?”
“What you said!”
This had been going on for a while. We were currently crouching before bare ground. I was holding a flimsy stick on my hand, trying to draw a submarine. Clearly I was not any good at sketching, just like my enunciating.
“It’s like a boat-“
“We said no boats, they would spot us from miles and take us captives-“
“Or do something to the water, I am not drowning again-“
“Again? Drowning is a normal occurrence to you?”
I suddenly couldn’t breathe. My chest constricted; I began feeling a burning sensation in my chest. It was as if a fire had been lit inside my lungs. I slapped my chest and clutched it, desperate to breathe.
No one can take away what is yours unless you want them to.
My mantra. I had not thought about it for a while, or my father, or how I got here. It was all still a mystery, me travelling through time. I did not understand any of it. It defied all logic. Yet I was still here, in a time where magic actually existed.
“Nina? Are you listening to me? Breathe okay?”
“Yes, telling her will make her do it. Move aside you fool!”
I laughed. It was a loud and full of life; it was a good laugh. I was a complete mess. One minute I feel like I am drowning and the next, I am laughing at the absurdity of these two mages. But wasn’t that the point of life, to cherish the good despite being surrounded by bad?
“That was not funny Nina. I thought you actually couldn’t breathe…”
Before I could explain my madness, Guzman had completely shut me out. He cared. Despite his obvious loathe for humans, he cared about me. I scarcely wondered why he hated humans so much. Rupert was a mage, he did not bear the same raw distaste for humans like his counterpart.
“This device? Can we build it love? Between the three of us…”
I honestly did not know anything about building or machines for that matter. But I had always been curious about methodologies and how things work. What was the saying, where there is a will…
- Writer
