Chapter Thirteen: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul

“Scoot closer,” Mark says to Carly. “If we are going to try to fall asleep, I think we should all be as close to each other as possible.”

I hear her rustling closer and then I feel her pressed close to us. I am still huddled in Mark’s lap, and he moves his arm away from my waist, and I suppose he is putting it around Carly to keep her protected. It is not as if we can both sit on his lap.

The little man on my shoulder starts to complain: Why is he holding on to her? He should be keeping you safe, keeping you warm and protected.

I try to block him out of my head. The little man on my shoulder, I call him. He has been with me since I can remember. For the first time in my entire, short life I start to wonder why he is there. Does everyone have a little man on their shoulder, or is it just me? I am sure if people started talking about their own personal voice in their head, there would be more people locked up in crazy houses than there would be people living a random, ordinary life. But do they? Do other people also hear a voice? If it is only me, is there then something wrong with me?

I try to think when he first started talking to me. Was it the time Genevieve called me ugly, freckled face all the way back to kindergarten and teased me every single day for a year until she lost interest in me? When she made my five- year-old self, doubt my own existence. When she used to swing her long blonde hair like a Disney Princess, and I envied her pretty dresses and the way everyone wanted to be her friend. Was it then he entered my life and helped me to stand up for myself, helped me not to care when people were mean to me for no reason whatsoever, because he helped me to have a quick come back to any rude, nasty or sarcastic remark, so much that I became the self-proclaimed queen of snarky comments. Since he arrived, I was always up for a laugh. The great prankster. The great pretender.

What I did on the bus was the worst thing ever, but then again, how was I to know it would have such dire consequences. It is not as if I can predict the future.

April Fool’s day is my most favourite day of the year; it is even better than Christmas morning. A day when pranks are legitimised. What a wonderful day.

Then I met Lionel and Charlene, and the little man was pushed to the side a little, but whenever I started to feel a tad insecure he would loom to the front of my mind again and urge me to do something funny, something foolish. To get everyone to laugh, because then for a small moment everyone would have their full attention on me.

Gosh. I am starting to sound as if I craved attention and my parents never gave me any. I grew up very normal.

My mum worked from home, and my dad worked as a Manager at our town’s one and only large grocery store. Important man, you might think, seeing as we lived in such a small town. Population two hundred and eight, and in one horrible afternoon reduced to a mere one hundred and forty-eight. Technically still two hundred and eight souls, but now sixty of those souls has moved on, as they say.

My mum, though, is a very pre-occupied woman.

Not with herself, mind you. She did not spend hours grooming or staring at herself in the mirror, neither did she spend hours out of the house at the gym or drinking coffee with her friends at the small little coffee slash bookshop in town. She was preoccupied with the internet, making websites.

Sounds fancy and you could be forgiven if you imagined we also lived like the rich, envied folk of our little town up against the green hill and looked down upon the peasants in their little pastel coloured houses built in neat symmetrical rows.

No. Even though she was, or I suppose, still is, good at what she does, she did not rake in the big clients. She has a small heart, tiny, very tiny little heart and feels sorry for people too easily.

Little, old me have envied people on that hill since I was only five years old, maybe a little older, just shy of my sixth birthday, because Genevieve lived up on that hill in her Disney castle, which made my heart grow dark and shrink into the prune it surely resembles these days. Not tiny and full of goodness like my mother’s. Oh, no, it is dark and scary.

Thus, one, and most probably, the only reason, I know a mistake was made when we entered through those gates after we arrived here at the Academy.

Even though the worst thing I have ever, ever done is make the bus crash, my heart is evil and the little man on my shoulder keeps it that way. He is the keeper of my black heart. He stands beside the door to my heart, and there is no way anyone is allowed to enter through those thick iron doors. Never.

For a short moment, I thought I had been given another chance.

God could see past all the hate and that is why I got a second chance. He might have believed there is some good lurking in me somewhere and I might have unlimited potential to do good, but I guess this time the joke is on me, because, and as they say, things have a way of working out, I am now on my way to the other side.

The side where people like me go.

The side where evil lives.

I feel as if I should not be sitting so close to Mark. He is good. There is absolutely no debate about this. My evilness might leak into him, so I try to move away from him.

His arm around my waist tightens and his voice whispers in the nape of my neck, “Where are you going, Sunel?”

“I don’t think.” I am not sure how to say it without sounding silly.

“You don’t think what?”

“Did you fall asleep?” I ask him.

“I must have dozed off there for a second, but this is not the best place or the most comfortable position to fall asleep in.”

I move again. “Sorry, I must be adding to it sitting on your lap like this.”

He laughs softly. “No, it’s not you, at all.”

“What do you think is on the other side of this forest?”

“I’m not entirely sure, guess we’d have to wait and see.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Maybe a little, and you?”

“Yeah, I am.” I am not only a little afraid, I am a lot afraid.

“Do you think we’ll find our way out of here?”

“Yes, maybe we just walked in a circle. I saw that building and it was straight across from where we entered the forest yesterday, so I am almost positive we will find it soon after it gets light again.”

I murmur softly, “I think you should say that prayer again. The one from last night.”

He pulls his arm around my shoulder tighter so I am squashed against his chest and he starts to say the words softly, “As I lay my head down to sleep, I pray the Lord, my soul, to keep and should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

I hear a rustling of leaves and hurried little feet squirrel away from us. Briefly, I wonder if there is something in the dark – watching us, wanting us. I clear my head. I don’t even want to go there. I would start panicking and then I would start running, and who knows where I will end up then. Lost forever and ever, I suppose.

I feel Mark’s warmth seep into my arm, and then it starts to spread through me, making me feel drowsy. I do not want to fall asleep, though.

If I am full of sin, as I do believe I am, I really hope God would give me another chance and if I died in my sleep, I hope he would take my soul and show me the right way of doing things, instead of just throwing me to the Devil, so to speak. I do not want to tempt fate, so I plan on staying awake instead.

“Just relax, Sunel. It’s okay.” Mark whispers and I feel the wind from his breath lift the hair on the top of my head, a little.

Carly startles me when she asks, “Why was David sent to the other side? Is he sinful?”

“I wouldn’t say he is wicked. He does only care about himself, so… I don’t actually know. All I know is he preferred to go out with his friends, he stole my parents’ car a few times, got in trouble with the police a lot of the time, but I really don’t think he is so bad to deserve to go to a side we are all presuming to be for the wicked.”

“How come you were the one who stayed to take care of your sister while he ran wild?”

His chest shakes against my cheek, as he laughs. “I don’t know, maybe he was looking for attention from my parents and he thought the only way he could get it was by doing things which would force them to pay attention.”

“Did it work?”

“It did. He got all the attention for all the wrong reasons.”

“And you? And your sister?”

“Not so much.” He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter, though. In the end, none of it matters.”

“Your parents must feel really bad, losing both of you, all at once.” There is a crack in her voice.

“I don’t want to think about it, Carly.” His voice is suddenly sharp and harsh. “Let’s just try to get to sleep, and tomorrow we can find my brother.”

I cannot help saying it out loud, “What are we going to do once we find him?”

“I don’t know; I just know I have to find him. I can feel it in my bones, since the moment I walked away from that big gallery, I felt it. It was as if I was given a mission.”

Continue reading Chapter 14/25

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