"Achoo!!!" I heard a cute sneeze behind me. I turned behind, looking at Arisa drenched from head to toe, her nose running.
I walked up to her and held her hand, "Let's go back home quick, our parents will scold us if we catch a cold". I used my wet shirt to wipe her nose and ran towards our homes holding her hands through the narrow shortcut we had found from the park to our neighbourhood.
I remembered this memory very vividly but this wasn't just a memory, It felt too real to be, I felt trapped in my own body, moving and speaking on its own. It was a dream, one that I didn't want to be a part of right now but I felt stuck and suffocated, all I could do was watch and let it play.
I grabbed her hand as we ran through the alleyways back home from the park. We were laughing and giggling all the way, jumping into puddles and drenching ourselves in water, those were days filled with innocence and happiness. We were both five years old and we had already known each other since we were three, I remembered wishing that these days would last forever and for a long time they did...
We ran into my home and immediately got scolded by my mom, she dried us off and went to the kitchen to make us some hot soup. We sat on the sofa, sipping hot water and watching the tv, the atmosphere warm and cosy. I felt myself getting sleepy, covered in the blanket, looking back at my mom who was just about done and at Arisa who already fell asleep, I kept staring at her, I couldn't believe this was the same person I had seen a few days ago on the rooftop.
I couldn't believe I had cared for this person as much as I did, spending so much time with her and watching over her. I didn't want to look, but my body didn't move...I was forced to look at my own weakness and failure, It filled me with rage, but then I heard my mom's voice again. She looked so much younger, she brought the soup over to us and kept Arisa's to the side. Blowing on the spoon, gently, before feeding it to me, all wrapped up in the blanket. I wanted to cry, I wanted to hug her tightly and tell her how much I loved her, but no tears were rolling down my cheeks, just silently slurping on the soup, taking all that was happening around me for granted. Not knowing that I may never see her again.
The very next moment I felt a sharp pain all over my body, I looked around to see the world in front of me crumbling, my mom fading away, my house and everything around me crumbling down. Arisa is nowhere to be seen. At the end of it all, everything was pitch black, I looked at myself and realised that I could move on my own, touching my hands and face and feeling the wounds I had gotten over the course of the past two days. Suddenly a door appeared in front of me, it looked exactly like the entrance to the school terrace, I had nowhere else to go so I opened it up to reveal the scene that I didn't want to see, but it was even worse. My mind was showing me things that didn't even happen, exaggerating the details, and intrusive and disgusting scenarios were playing right in front of me.
I immediately closed the door and turned around, my fist closed tightly and as soon as I did, the door disappeared and I started falling freely through the air and many memories were replayed in front of me. Crying at the base of the stairs, looking at myself through the glass in front of my classroom, waking up on my knees in another world, waking up gagged and bound, being thrown into a dark forest, running for my life from a monster, curling up in a ball in a dark and cold cave, killing a murderous animal for food. Through each second, I just wanted to hurt myself, I wanted to shoot my head off because I didn't want to go through this again. I was tired of bad things happening to me, in all my life I hadn't hurt anyone, I was just normal, average...nothing more. For all eighteen years of my life, everything had been normal, I was happy, I was the same as so many others but why me, why now. What had I done to deserve this...
I woke up, slumped next to a tree, I looked at my hands, my nails had dug into my palms as they bled. My veins popping all over my arms and neck, my eyes bloodshot and throbbing. I looked up with my eyes closed and a frustrated sigh leaked from my mouth. I was hoping for a decent night of sleep since I had a full belly but it seems it wasn't meant to be. I looked at my surroundings, a dying fire in front of me and the charred meat on top of it. The jackal's carcass still nearby, now attracting flies and insects and soon other animals.
I had spent the whole of last evening fending for myself. Shelter, fire, protection and was exhausted by the end of it. After eating the tough meat that almost chipped my tooth I promptly grabbed the new weapon I had made and fell asleep. It was also a spear of sorts, shorter but more deadly. Its tip was made of the large and sharp saber-toothed fang of the jackal, tied to a shorter but tougher stick. The other fang I had made sharper by rubbing it against two hard rocks I had found. I jabbed it in my pocket as a secondary weapon, to be used in a pinch as a dagger when all else fails.
I got up and composed myself, I knew it yesterday night itself but I affirmed it now. There was no point dwelling on the sadness of the past. What I had to do was focus on the anger and betrayal in me now, because it would guarantee my survival. I was surprised I made it this far, any average person, including me would have crumbled under the pressure, gone crazy at the very thought of all that had happened, but in a sense, I had gone crazy, something inside me had snapped. I had become spiteful, at those who wronged me, at those who betrayed me, at the world and at myself. I was consumed by spite and the only reason I wanted to live, to continue forward was out of spite and pure ill will at the world.
The trauma was so bad that I just accepted everything that had happened, I was bought to another world for god's sake, for the past two days I had been forced to live in fear of death. Do things that most do not do in their lifetimes and I was forced to accept that it was normal. I had been broken beyond repair and my sense of perspective on what was normal had been butchered...but if this what it would take to live, then so be it. If this was what I had to go through to show the world, myself and everyone who betrayed me that they cannot hurt me any longer...than I would accept this hell any day....