Chapter Twenty-One: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul
“Stay here,” I tell them.
“One
step at a time,” I tell myself, as I take a step forward.
A few steps into the clearing I step on something fleshy and
slimy and I try hard not to cry out in revulsion. When I look down, the
luminous aqua light which is surrounding me makes it hard for me to see what it
is I stepped on.
“Keep moving.”
I feel something push against the centre of my chest, a jolt
of pain in the empty space where my heart never healed.
“Keep
moving.”
By the time I get to the centre of the clearing, Mark, David,
and Carly seem far away from me. They stayed where I asked them to stay. Mark
is holding onto a worried Carly protectively. David looks as if he is ready to
charge at the first glance of trouble.
The dark shapes surrounding the vast clearing on three sides
sway again, and I gasp as I scramble to find my footing. My arms are spread out
to my sides as I try to keep my balance.
From the corner of my eye, I see David sprint closer to me.
I hold my arm up, and shout loudly, “No. Stay there.”
He stops and looks at me unsure.
“I
have to do this alone,” I tell him.
A new sound joins the chorus of wails coming from the lost
souls surrounding the large clearing. At first, I think it is only my
imagination, but then I see it. A dragon appears in the clearing ahead of me,
and it says mockingly, in a voice I recognise, “Sunel.”
It is the same voice as the little man on my shoulder, the
voice in my head. The voice had turned into a physical being. Is the voice in
my head, my own demon? My very own demon who watches over me? Who appeared when
my soul broke for the first time? Who came to help me fight my battles, to
whisper from my heart, to keep my feelings safe, to makes sure I never feel
hurt and dejected again.
“This
is not real,” I tell myself.
“You
like daring games, Sunel, don’t you?” The dragon asks as its forked tongue
whips back and forth in its mouth. “Do you think you can beat your demon?” It
lisps amused.
Mist and fog seep from the ground around me and blends
eerily with the luminous aqua light already omnipresent.
I hear a voice say, “You're pregnant?”
A woman sobs loudly.
I look around me frantically to see where the voice is
coming from, but I am surrounded by fog. All I can see is the dragon with its
long scaly neck and small beady eyes looming above me.
“Okay,
come with me,” the first voice says. “We're going take you into the procedure
room.”
“Don't
worry, Sunita,” a man’s voice says. Sunita? My mum, Sunita?
“Everything's
going be fine. Come on. Follow me,” the first voice says again.
Another sob. “I don’t think I can go through with this,
Bobby.” The voice called Sunita says, and it sounds just like my mum.
The man’s voice says in a threatening tone, “Get rid of it,
Sunita or so help me God.”
The first voice says, “Now, I know we said twelve hundred on
the phone, but I'm taking a really big risk here, so it's going to have to be
two grand even.”
“What
the hell are you talking about?” The man’s voice screams. The sound is so loud
my hands come up to my ears protectively. “We had a deal.”
“Listen,
I'm not going to tell you what to do, and I don't know what you did to this
girl, and, frankly, I don't want to know, but it is two grand or nothing.”
“Just
get rid of it.”
Was my mum going to get rid of me? Who is this Bobby person?
Is this the real reason why my name is Sunel? The Su from Sunita and the Nel
from Donnel, because the man whom I think is my dad is not really my father,
and this is the only way my mother could make Donnel feel as if he has a
connection with me? Is this why I have always felt undesirable? Why I always
looked for more than I have because I believed those things will make others
want me?
With everything in me, I push the hurt aside. “I don’t
care,” I scream up at the dragon. “Even if Donnel is not my biological father,
he might as well be. I know he cares about me, and he has always been there for
me. I don’t care if my real dad never wanted me and he wanted to get rid of me,
my mum kept me, and she wants me… and so does Donnel… My dad. I don’t care!”
“Let
the hurt go,” I tell myself softly. “Just let it go.”
Genevieve’s voice is right beside me and I quickly turn my
head toward the dreaded sound, but she is not standing there.
The voice sneers, “Come closer, Ugly. Let me connect those
dots on your face with this permanent marker.”
I cringe away from the sound of her voice.
The voice sounds closer, “Let’s count those pesky little
bug-looking things on your face.” She laughs, “It will make the time pass,
we’ll be here forever anyway, and even then, I don’t think we’ll have enough
time.” She whispers in my ear, but the sound echoes in the aqua blue sky around
me, “You are so disgusting, nobody will ever love you.”
I hear the five-year-old me cry softly.
Genevieve laughs wickedly. “Shut up, nobody is going to feel
sorry for you, and besides crying makes you look a hundred times uglier than
you already do.”
I try to convince myself I can face Genevieve and the pent
up hurt I have stored in my heart.
Feeling fingers wrap around mine, I turn around startled.
David is standing beside me. “No,” I tell him. “I don’t want you to get hurt, I
don’t want you to see… The real me.”
He smiles slowly. “The number of times I’ve watched you
since seventh grade, without you ever knowing, I know you better than you think
I do.” He looks up at the dragon and proclaims, “I love this girl.”
I try to pull my hand from his. “Stop pretending. You don’t
have to act as if you love me.”
He turns to me and pulls me by my shoulders to face him. “I
know it’s too much, but I cannot believe you had to kill me first for me to
have enough courage to tell you how I feel about you. I love you, Sunel and you
are far from ugly. You should be proud of your freckles because they make you
unique and pretty, and so cute You are beautiful. I have seen you show
compassion and friendship when it was least expected. You are beautiful inside
and out.”
“I
can’t do this,” I say defeated.
“Yes,
you can. You are strong enough.”
I look up at the dragon and adamantly I say what I wanted to
say for more years than I can remember. Words and sentences I formed in my mind
while lying in my bed late at night, things I was determined to say to
Genevieve the next day but never, ever had the courage to actually act upon.
She made me feel insecure and self-conscious, she inhibited the way I looked at
myself when I saw my reflection in the mirror, she made me hate me. It’s all
her fault. Everything is her fault. “I am not afraid of you anymore, Genevieve.
You had to tell me I am ugly because it made you feel better about yourself. I
feel sorry for you and sad you felt as if we couldn’t be friends and that your
whole life revolved around making other people unhappy. I forgive you because
even though I have carried your hurtful, spiteful words with me for so many
years, they have made me stronger to the point where no matter what anyone ever
said to me after that, it was never as bad as what you said to me. You are
cruel and mean, and you deserve everything coming your way.”
David squeezes my fingers tightly between his.
“Let
the pain go,” I whisper softly. “Just let it go away.”
The dragon asks, “What are you really looking for, Sunel?”
“A
way out, I guess.”
“You
guess?”
“No,
I think I know what it is I want. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a dream,
and everything that seems to happen is always out of my control, so when I am
alone and I am thinking, always thinking, and the voice in my head is talking
making strange suggestions and leaving ideas in my head, it hurts. Not a
physical pain, but a feeling of being lost and it would be impossible for
anyone to find me. So, I guess what I really want is a way home. A place where
there will be laughter and happiness and all my pain will just be washed away.
Not a physical home, because I have realised, I already have all the love and
happiness I need at home, but I need a home for my soul. I want the darkness in
my heart to go away and I want my heart to be filled with light.”
“Only
you know what you need to do to get what you most desperately want. And if you
do... It will set you free. You could have pure and total freedom. Freedom from
the boredom of everyday life... Freedom from suffering... Freedom from blame...
Freedom from guilt... Freedom from sadness... The freedom to be genuinely happy...
The freedom to love.”
My voice sounds desperate when I ask, “What do I have to
do?”
Continue reading Chapter 22/25
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