The Better Times

Ingrid pushes her way through the city. Dust persists everywhere; it’s in the alleys and the streets, in the houses and the shelters, in the faces and the lips, in the souls and in the shadows. Everything is aging, even the new looks old. That scent of death colors the stifling air. The war, it’s faraway, but its pain is everywhere. People smile, they do. At times, it’s to mask that pain, and at times to forget it, but it always infiltrates their feeble faces to strike them with its coldness that freezes all expression. It’s all so bloody. That stink of bloody, bloody war!  She stops abruptly and forces herself to halt that flow of thought. She must move forward. She is late.

   In their last meeting, everything in Matthew seemed to be subdued to a definitive sense. His voice, especially his voice, it always felt so ancient, but that time, something was different. She turns the matter over in her head, yet, with all her might, she pushes that one possibility away. Could that be?  Now? No. Never.  The mere thought of it makes her cringe.

   She is now standing before his door in the motel. She knocks it, six times, each three with a different tone. It is their sign. She holds the doorknob, in her mind, a desperate wish for him to be in there. She sees him. A sigh of relief escapes her mouth carrying with it a mountain of fear. 

   He looks at her face, as though trying to bury it deep within him lest he will forget. It makes her sure now. It makes her see it all. He leaves her without uttering a word and stands by the window, the dusty horizon stretching before him.

   “You are leaving,” she says. It’s not a question. She knows. She has known it since that stranger broke into her life, he’d have to leave. It never entered her head  though that now is the time.

  “Yes.” He is still looking away.

  “Is there anyway you can stop it? It’s all about a machine, right? Destroy it then, or …. I don’t know.” Desperation leaks to her voice. “Please don’t go, not now. Stay in my time”

  He now leaves the window and looks her way, an agonized smile on his lips. “It’s not quite the way H.G. Wells described,” he says. “ I got no hand in it, my cells are pre-programmed to jump back to their original time. That’s the longest they can hold in yours.  They already gave me a hard time trying to adjust. Remember?”

  The memories fleet through her head, of a stranger following her in the dark streets. It wasn’t until she saw his body crumple on the asphalt  that she knew he was only asking for help. They were near a motel, that place they are standing in now, where she’d sneak whenever she could to attend him. He looks too different now. And it’s hard to believe it was only three months ago. But what can’t she not believe after all that he told her?

  “Yes,” she utters through puckered lips.

   He sits on the bed in the center of the room. “Come,” he says, half-whispering and gestures it with his hand. The tears blur her vision. She sits on his lap and feels his fingers penetrating her hair in rhythmic motion. Every now and then, she  lifts her eyes to see his unfocused. At times, his lips part and then close again on something he can’t find his way around. The weight of silence makes the air heavy.

  “Is it ever going to be over?” she raises herself from her position abruptly. That movement surprises him and her words leave him puzzled. She now has his full attention. “You refuse to tell me anything about your time, but this I need to know. Will the war ever come to an end?”

  He breathes deeply. “Yes.”

 “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Will the world better?”

   “No.”

  “Why?” It provokes him deeply. It flings him out of whatever thought deluging his head.

   “Because…because we are human that’s why. We crave the scent of blood and tread on others to have it. We want authority, we want control. Nobody and nothing is ever allowed to be beyond us. They’ll kill  you because you have different color or religion. They’ll kill you because you don’t agree with them. They’ll kill you because you have more fuckin’ money. They will kill you because you are not as human as they are.  Believe me, they get very creative when it comes to inventing causes, but, they have only one cause, they kill you for the sake of having killed you.  My hands bear the blood of more people you can imagine. They’ll say that killing is ugly and put on the masks of saints who do such a great sacrifice when they take another life. But no, killing is not ugly. It’s you, being liberated of all that is human to be a pure animal with your filthiest desires moving your hands to shred bodies. You know why they’ve sent me in here? To kill you. You will give birth to a child who will cause them much trouble in the future. They want to eliminate all possibilities of him, or anyone like him to be born. Nothing was known about the father, so they sent me here to kill you.”

  The blood is flaming in his veins. The words, they sprung out of him, out of the deepest part of him, they left him gasping for air. Amidst his hectic speech, Matthew got so caught up he forgot all his surroundings, including Ingrid. She is shaking violently, her mouth half opened on silenced screams that fear to come to existence. Instead, they cause a hurricane within her heart. She collapses on the bed, and around the bed, everything collapses. Including Matthew.

  “Listen,” he wrenches her in his arms, “You have to run away. Don’t get married, or just don’t have children. It’s not you they are after,  it’ your child, and if he never comes to be, nobody will be sent after I go to kill you.”

   “And what for?” she pushes the streams of tears out of her eyes. With one arm, she frees herself from his tight grip. Her head is so heavy she swoons and he supports her. “Tell me one good reason for me to live. I went on so far, holding on the hope of better times. Butـــ” the tears thwart her, “it’s all so ugly.” She again tumbles down and sinks in her sobs.

   “Ingrid,” his lips brush hers, “you are an angel. Everything about you is beautiful and I am so ugly I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. They will kill me when I get back, you know that? Make me die knowing I’ve done it for a good reason.”

  “No. I can’t. What is better, to live suffering, or to die so that you no longer have to suffer?” He has nothing to say. Instead, he lets a lifetime of sorrow melt away in violent sobs.

 

   The next morning, Ingrid wakes up to a day where Matthew no longer has an existence. The air burns with his scent, and in her womb, last night, he caused the life that  will bring them both to death to start beating. 

My Name ــــ Story

You saw me standing alone and asked if you could stay with me for a while. You never were considerate and the word “gentle” was an antonym to your name. It surprised me. We talked like there was never a thing between us and on parting, you didn’t remember my name.  It has been years, many of them and you conquered the rules of time in my mind to be always in the present so no second passes  without you sealing it. But you don’t remember my name. How come when you were the one who taught me how to talk? After years of silence, you granted me the words and I started writing, everything imaginable and maybe unimaginable and like a baby who has just learnt how to speak, your name was in every page, every line, every word, every dot even when it was not present, it was there, your shadow was there and when I had not the least intention to write you, your ghosts haunted my pen.

   You don’t remember my name…but you remember my face. Your eyes devoured it… you stole it and rendered me prisoner to yours. You held a rope at one end, and at the other, you  tied a knot around my finger. And you started walking around me, the way wolves do before attacking their preys, you were too stupid to see I had already surrendered..like a thief who saw no use in running, and gave up because it was easier. I wasn’t the thief..you were. Every time you moved, the rope circled around my hands, my arms, my legs, my body, me , all of me….remember me?

    You once admired a red dress I had. you don’t remember it, do you? I do. Red became my favorite color because of you, and it was your favorite color because it seeped out of the hearts you ruthlessly murdered and did not bother to know a name for.  They were all your victims, we were all your victims.

    Once, I dreamt of you..you were weak, vulnerable; everything you were not in real life and then, you started crying in my arms. I told you this dream and you laughed saying I must be feeling very sorry for you now. I smiled and said I did, but I was lying. I didn’t want to wake up from this dream where you happened to need someone, an imperfection you hated, and I was that someone you needed. I loved the feeling of your head spreading all over my chest and me holding you asking you to cry more, let it all out, but in truth, I feared that when you’d be strong enough, you’d leave.

  I bet my story  is too clichéd for you, you’ve heard it before and became weary of it …your ears created a shield blocking it away from entering your mind and being interpreted as a voice of someone who held a memory in your subconscious….that’s why you can’t remember, because unlike everyone else you knew a name of, you did love me.

    

Within Me

I once heard that when you are writing, you are getting into deep with yourself, that self you know, or think you do; then start talking in symbols, unfathomable to everyone but you. So I’ll try, I’ll try to break that boundary, try to decrypt my words for you to understand, making some room for you to enter me, be...within me.

  The fading strings of night circle around my heart, it never tries to escape them, they are its cords to play with the beating that keeps me alive; so that the night never really departs…today is tonight, and tonight is my ephemeral form of eternity where my imagination fires up and bits and pieces of my soul clamber for you to see. And when I imagine, nothing can be more real, or at least that’s what I dupe myself into believing. So many faces are mine but no eye gets to see them but that  of my mind. Remember that girl with shrill voice who uses her hand a lot while talking and has an awkward pronunciation of the  “r”? I hate her, and hate that she’s all they get to see of me. Me…..I always make you in my fancies the only one who knows her. We’d meet up and talk for hours about me, but you never reply. You know why? Because within me, you are not you, you are my reflection who can’t split into half and have a voice of its own to speak. And till  now, I still wonder if I loved you or merely  another version of myself. But you never got to see me, that’s why we talk a lot about her. Sometimes, I'd see you in my room, checking up the stacks of books on my shelves, and sometimes, you'd be reading my journals. I never managed to get over the fact that when you left, I was a person that makes me embarrassed when some fleeting memories stream in my head.

   Last time I saw you in real life, all I’d wished to do was saying goodbye, even though nobody knew it would be the last, not even you, and not me, just my heart. But you know, it wasn’t really worth it, it came up too awkwardly. Years later, I learnt that ends are overrated, the final chapter in a novel is not the best; it’s the one that comes  before it. When I learnt that I’d never see you again, I cried,  I pushed myself into it, it was inadequate not to cry. I knew You never left, you were there. Always there. Hidden between those strings of night, breathing within the folds of my brain.

  I never knew how diluted is the effect my memory holds on the sight of you. But today I knew that;  I saw you again. The chance represented itself to me to finally have a mutual conversation with you. But we didn’t talk because you never knew I was there. I was stoned in my place. I couldn’t move, not a step and couldn’t breathe. But when I did move, it was the other way….I feared you wouldn’t be like the you I’d created. 

Heat

This is a Magpie Tale

A hazy vision tells me I’ve finally opened my eyes. I am soaked with sweat, from head to toe, and all the time last night I’ve been dreaming I was drowning. I don’t look at my torn watch lying on the next to my bed, I forget to do so, or I just got too used to not knowing time. Days feel like sand grains slipping through your fingers without being able to tell which was Sunday and which was Friday; or maybe like a desert with no landmarks telling you where exactly you are. At least my days are like this. I am still paralyzed in my bed, I am still drowning in the heat.

   The air conditioner is not working. My clothes are sticking to my skin and I can’t feel myself anymore. I need to breathe and I can’t tell whether the air has been sucked out my lungs by summer or by my heart. I am still confused. I forget to breathe. Breathe, Try to breathe. One tear escapes my eyes. I want to cry more but I can’t. I try to pull the tears out, but it seems like sweating consumed all the water within me. Summer has sucked the life out of me. No. Do not think like this. Maybe I am exaggerating, but I still can’t breathe.

   I open the window and stand. Behind translucent windows lives go on. I am the an audience of one to that theatre of life in which the fourth wall has been brought to the ground. A mother is shouting at her daughter. Two couples are fighting. Someone is talking on the phone. Do they realize someone is there seeing them?  It strikes me as peculiar.

   In my bedroom, I turn the T.V on. Was the idea of movies inspired by that person watching you behind his window? All holds no interest to me. Many times a fleeting thought of my life turning into a movie crosses my mind. And I wonder, do we follow the order of begging-climax-end?  No we do not. What if they create a story about someone, much like everyone else, much like myself, who wakes up, lives, sleeps? And in between, there are those moments, those scenes, that begin with the eye sand crystallize in the heart then reflect on the face; moments detached from everything, moments that last no longer than a moment. Things happen in life, major events you might want to call them; movie-makers kill the moments and focus on the days, forcing that second line of thought which has no relation with events, the one that comes from the self to fade. When someone dies, and his wife is mourning, won’t she notice if a woman wearing red blouse and green skirt passes by her in the street? Won’t that second line of thought even force a hint of marvel at her heart before her surroundings sink in again drowning trivial things away. They’d never capture that part in a movie, it has no influence on the plot.

   I fill the bathtub with water, icy water, then strip myself out of clothes. Hesitance pulls me back for a second. At first, I let one leg touch the water, then throw myself in, all of me in. It stings at first, but then I get used to it. I close my eyes and pretend it’s winter again. 

Lucidity

“Marcus”

“Yes dear”

“I think I started hearing the violins in my head again”

   I am in my old living room, I realize as I glance around the place. For some reason, everything is in black in white. My vision is hazy and I remember that when it happened, I had just woken up from sleep. Mom is standing, all dressed, and holding the door knob. I say something I cannot now recollect, then she closes the door behind her saying she is going to the market. She never came back.

  Me and Marcus are on the airplane. Everything is going down in ruins. Our hands are clasped tightly until I get this numbness in it that makes me think it broke into his. Amidst the screams, I recognize my grandpa’s voice singing to me “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine” with his usual enthusiasm. A wide smile is all I can see out of his face. Years later, I come to the conclusion that me and Marcus survived, just like that. I remember the crash and I look at us, we are here, which means we are not dead.

  I keep on searching for that shoes under the bed. There are stacks of shoes there but not the one I want. I am in hurry, Tim Perrson asked me out; only I can’t remember where that pair of shoes is. He is standing outside with his olive-green jacket. I can’t find it. I can’t find it. Beads of perspiration cover my forehead and fall on my eyes. They are blinding me and I can’t see through them. Tim left and went away.

   On the deck of that ship, I stand before a creased version of me. It’s stormy and everyone is panicking, but I’m not. I search for me and she’s too frightened. When I approach, I find out she’s my mother. I want to talk but then I step on something and I realize it’s the pair of shoes.

   I hear the violins again. My head rests against a brick wall. Beside me, is someone. I can’t see his face but the comfort he radiates is enough for me to stay. I am in love with that person, only I don’t know who he might be. I am drowning in the stormy sea. He is with me.

  Years ago, when I was five and mom left, I said in a voice low as a whisper for I had just woken up, “ How can you tell when you are not dreaming.”

She stood for a second and looked my way. “You can’t,” she said

  

One Beautiful Thing

The street lights bounced up and down before my eyes as they entangled with darkness of the night. Within my hands I carried you silently as we melted together into the streets.

I wondered what time it was? Was it today, or yesterday. Was it a year ago? It was just One day, I woke up with my watch broken down; I never got to fix it though, it was that one day when I discovered you grew within me to forever invade my alones. I hated you then, hated you with all the hatred my heart had been capable of. Then, I was too weak to hate you, so helplessly felt you in my body. That was the day I forever lost sense of time.

I sat on the sidewalk. Where to go? I had already shuffled through the places but a stinging pain within my chest told me all the doors were closed. I thought of many names; every name I’d known and beyond each face, there was a memory that bloomed within my heart and somehow the feeling of those past days brushed upon me. I smiled. Once, I smiled. My eyes fell on you and that smile froze, like the very fact of you in here killed away all my happiness, like you drew  a barrier between now and whoever I was before you came.

That night they got you out of me, you almost killed me. But I didn’t give a damn, you’d kill me anyway, I thought. Maybe when I decided to  hate you, it was me that I should’ve hated. None of that would make any difference…which left me wondering, is it soothing that feeling of letting go, or did it only hurt to know you’ve left something behind. You were that point of gravity standing at the heart of my life, and no matter how many years separated our departure, you always attracted regret to engulf the memory of you.

I sat on a sidewalk. Your eyes slowly opened for me to look at them and see they were mine. You even stole the only thing beautiful about my face. You saw me and went on crying. I rocked you but then you started a strain of screams. I rocked you again and you wouldn’t stop.

“Shut up,” I yelled, “just shut up!”

You screamed.

“Oh please  stop”

I too cried.

“Stop. Stop. Stop!”

But you wouldn’t stop.

You wouldn’t stop.

I then threw you on the sidewalk and ran away from your taunting voice not giving myself a second chance to see your face again. It might’ve changed everything.

I never had any babies again. And every time I pressed my hands against my tummy, I felt  the emptiness of my womb creating a shield around my life rendering it too empty. I loved you now. I missed you and hung on you every hope that my life should once again have a hint of a meaning. Maybe it was because you were unattainable.

Few days later, I came back asking for you. It wasn’t hard to inquire about the poor newborn baby who was left alone crying by a heartless mother. I learnt that someone picked you up and drove you to an orphanage and few weeks later, you were picked up by a family.

I saw you again. You were all theirs.

But you still had my eyes,

The only beautiful thing about me.

Would you forgive me?

Hard Velvet

The skin hung down your bony fingers, making them look big if compared to the re rest of your arm. You shook those hands with me and all I could notice then was my soul creeping from the rest of my body and hanging at my fingertips extending that one second in the time of my senses. For a moment, all that could be heard was that pesky noise as three of us settled ourselves into the chairs. It was just the way I liked it, the restaurant, with the huge walls painted beige and decorated with the life of the 18^h century hanging on them into the frames of drawings not quite capable of restraining them from spreading the feeling of those old times to fly in the air  as we, a young wife who three years ago only saw this place in her dreams, a husband who  owned enough money to pave his street in gold and a bachelor who had no plans in life other than staying as a bachelor.

      We talked. The two of you discussing things I could only understand few words in, still, I attentively heard and smiled quite foolishly every time you made a smart comment. Once, you looked at me and caught me looking at you and the only I thing I could do was looking at my golden watch; it had become a reflex reaction to your eyes, running away from them as they had eerie effects on every beat of my heart. I stole a glance again and your eyes had still maintained their position. Chagrinned, I fidgeted in my seat and tapped with my fingers on the table, then, rushed to the bathroom fighting that intoxicating impulse to look back at you.

   When I came back, a glass of wine was between your hands as you raised them quite eloquently rendering it weightless while suggesting to ask me about a matter you two had disagreed about. Every part of me burnt to know it and abruptly, all the intelligent stuff I managed to read in newspapers while imagining I was discussing them with you jumbled in my mind and then, I could feel cold sweat breaking into my forehead. I never r got  o know the matter. His sarcastic smile that had killed every beautiful thing in my life stretched upon his ugly lips censoring you for asking me, about such a clever thing. He laughed. His laughter was caught up between the atoms of air as every shade of it kept on echoing back and forth. I wanted to silence it. I wanted to fling one of those stained silver forks into his throat. I wanted dig his heart out so that he would never be again. But I stood, helpless. After he  stopped, a tear escaped my eyes. But no glance of you went my way. I went again to the bathroom and looking back, you apparently did not notice my absence. With a heavy heart and light, quick steps, I entered and looked at that shiny reflection of a doll who had sold her soul. I cried. I remembered you and a glimpse of hope lightened within my dim entity to be put off again; you didn’t even notice me in there. I cried even harder. And seeing how that made me cry, like  the whole of my being was only weighted by a move from your eyes, a twitch from your fingers, a word from your tongue, I realized how pathetic I was. But I couldn’t but love you.

A Summer Day ــ Short Story

 Today marked the first day in the second week of our annual summer visit. It changed, changed very much from those days I could remember. But  no, I couldn’t remember days, not a whole day anyway, just fast glimpses that flickered within my mind then went away before wrapping my hands around them digging for more depth, more memories.

    The first instance I entered the house, after one year of not seeing it; the little changes that seemed so natural to the inhabitants of the house took my surprise. Little details year by year, that must’ve been imperceptible one day, now swept away the place in my reminiscences, and the people within it. This year, gramps put a T.V on the table facing his favorite chair in the bedroom where he and granny stayed. I watched as she entombed herself beneath the many layers of quilts her bones incapable of taking the air conditioner artificial coldness whilst she repeatedly asked her husband to turn the damned TV off as her ears were fed up from hearing the reruns and he would either ignore her or tell her to stop controlling his life. I passed their room and advertisements were on. Funny! So funny how they seem to disentangle life’s deepest conflicts and true heart of suffering into simple products that buy you happiness. The toothpaste will get you the girl. Coke will make you dance. Soap will make all men want you and cologne will make women have hard time resisting your charm. And at the end, all are happy, all a smiling. I watched the sullen face of Gramps and the light in his eyes put off before the cheerful ads and the  irony overflowed my heart and I couldn’t resist smiling contemptuously.        

    At the end of the hallway, there was the kitchen where mom was standing under a cloud of smoke. Seeing me dressed up, she said, while stirring whatever it was in the bowl, “Where to miss?”

  “Going for a walk.”

   “Okay, just don’t be late.”

  On my way to the door, I saw my sister in the living room playing with my cousins; both toddlers whose mother left five months ago. My bag fell and when I bent down to get it, the youngest approached my face with his mouth still incapable of kissing, yet his almost-kiss had more purity and innocence in it than other thing I had ever seen. I kissed him back and wondered how any mother could do that to her child.

   In the sky, the sun was blazing and almost immediately, I was covered with beads of perspiration that made my clothes stick to my body. I had second thoughts about heading back home, but visualizing what awaited me of  dullness made me push my legs faster away.

   Before me stood a clothes’ store and just a glance at it told me that there was nothing there my parents could afford; and really, I took only twenty bucks with me, so anyways, I’d buy nothing. Still, I entered.

   It was a hobby I had, entering fancy places and acting like I had a mine of gold in my backyard. It wasn’t like I ever had dreams about these stuff, but it always amused me to see how the treatment changed when they knew your purse was full. I could act well. I knew how my posture determined everything. Using hands and especially pointers implies a feeling of superiority that makes people feel inferior to you and thus, hate you; but when you go ‘shopping’ in places like that, it was inevitable  to act proudly in order to gain respect determined by how much money is in your bank account, and since I had no bank account, I had at least to make them feel like I was a millionaire.

   I tried on a beige dress that had fake but beautiful jewelry all over it reflecting the lamp’s light. Looking at the mirror, some changes had to be made. I took off the rubber band and let my hair glide gracefully down my back; the shoes too, I threw them away for they didn’t fit. I saw the reflection and it was no longer me. It was someone beautiful. For the first time in my fancy stores adventures I wished I could own it. The price of it appalled me; it was what my dad made in a month. I hid it away and focused only on that beautiful reflection that I seemed to have stolen away from someone else, for it couldn’t be mine. Through my head, ran a million fancies, when abruptly I heard a knock on the door from the salesgirl that made my feet land back on the crude lands of reality. Embarrassed, I gave her back the dress tying my hair and wearing my shoes and the me I had  always been came back.

  I moved forward with a destination unknown. It made me insecure, walking without a target. Within the wide streets, I felt my skin melting into the particles of air as the y burnt in it. My eyes could determine no end to the way.

   I was snatched away from my thoughts by a smell of cigarettes that at first, I let pass unrecognized but when I felt the proximity of it was something I couldn’t neglect, I looked beside me. There stood that kinda guys you always seemed to instinctively avoid saying, “wanna talk a walk with me sweetie?”

 “You go to hell!” I sneered going further away. Going back home.

  I remembered the way he smiled and it made me nauseous. There was always something humiliating about a guy hitting on you; turning the person in you into nothing more than a body that would be rotten when your soul leaves it. Few tears escaped my eyes, and for some reason, the way back home was longer.

   I pushed the door open. No one was in there. It scared me a little but then I saw them all, in the bedroom, around the TV. Gramps was more  alert and granny finally awake; mom out of the kitchen and my sister sat beside her with the little boys on her lap. All were laughing. I couldn’t say happy. Laughter is a spontaneous act that has not the least relation with anything within you. You can laugh when you are happy, and sadness could never stop you from it. Nothing could. You laugh and have no control over it. I searched for an empty room and threw myself over the bed choosing to pass the rest of the day blissfully sleeping.  

To Catch A Thief ـــ Short Story

 For so many years, more than I can remember, I enjoyed the sight of people as they hesitate  near me feeling their pockets and a certain look of confusion accompanied b y the straying of the eye  colors their faces, as though doing some calculations within their heads before they either walk away or throw me a dollar or two, mostly, without even looking. They never do that for me, or for anyone like me, but solely so that they can be so full of themselves and before putting their heads over the pillows, use the missing dollars as a reminder of their act of benevolence. Often, I smile trying to hide my sardonic thoughts at their faces.

   Straying in every corner of this town, my home is always a sidewalk; and  I do not claim that I ever came close to liking it. It has become inevitable, people averting their eyes when they fall on me as though they fell on nothing, shouting at the top of their lungs within my head, “You are nothing!” And I look at that sidewalk and feel that somehow, everyone has rendered be part of it.

    I steal. And I cannot tell when it started for, like the sidewalks, it became part of me. Of course I do it for money, but I will not deny how enjoyable I find it. The rash of adrenaline as my hands pass swiftly over whatever they fall on then quickly hide it into the long sleeves of my only jacket; the fear of being caught that somehow, challenges me into doing it; and after it is done, the feeling I have when I own something I never got to pay for; all make stealing a source of momentary delight. But then, there comes this time when, before sleeping, I stand  defenseless before the guilt that inhabits the unreachable places within my soul. It talks  to me like an outer being using telepathy to inject something good within my filthy being that feeds on hurting others. I tried to quit. A lot. other rosy dreams of a happy conscience that permits sleep to pass through my eyelids without horrible nightmares fill me but quickly fall on nothing. I can never stop it. If not for getting money, then for its pleasure. And then I go and steal, and after that ephemeral happiness comes to an end, I feel self-dread overwhelming every empty hole within my being until it makes me want to peel my skin and get out of it. I crawl back to the sidewalks and feel their uneven surfaces scratching my back , they too, trying to torture me.   Conscience is not my only punisher, neither is it the worse, for as they, sometimes it “sleeps”. Fear never leaves.

  Today, while passing the fish market, I felt a couple of eyes  fixed on my back. Without looking, I ran fast as I could. This all was new to me. After many turns and desperate trials to escape, dirty hands got me.  They took turns punching me and I could feel the salty taste of blood all over my mouth. My head felt as though being twisted in a hurricane. Finally, they let me go throwing me into mud. My blood mingled with mud, The whole of my entity was in mud, And right then, the only thing I thought of was, “You came back to where you belong.’