Draw cages on my eyes

I am bored so I wrote this. This is unedited. Wrote it under 30 minutes so quality is so-so. So, eh. Enjoy.

She hears them all the time. Sometimes the whispers are stronger, louder like hum of a busy beehive – noisy and full of life, or kind of life. In her world, a thread when plucked brings a conversation into life, a pebble when dropped into the pond makes the calm of forest die and rot, a snap of a tree branch erupts cacophony of disproportionate levels. This relapse is momentary. The whispers travel, traverse and incubate around her for days, maybe even months, but are audible for fleeting moments. When they become audible, she collapses – clutching her head and rocking back and forth, praying. Praying for this waking nightmare to be over. The whispers tell her things. Terrible things. Terrible things that she knows in her belly are stories that are yet to happen. They are inevitable fates of people she does not even know about. Sometimes she catches snatches of images during these moments. The images leave her gasping for breath every night for many moons to come. They never go away. Her memory becomes clearer. Shaper. Better. Perfect. She wishes, desperately to forget the things she heard in those moments, to be able to wake up one day to realize that the memory has faded a little. But no. the memory remains as sharp as whence it came. Every word is immaculately etched in her brain.

This is death awaiting, she thinks. She is only eleven. This burden is too much for her tiny shoulders to bear.

She does not know how wrong she is.  

It starts out as ordinary day. A day like any other where her mother wakes her up, her father makes her bournvita, and later her mother tells her a fable while making rotis for breakfast. She runs around the home, their quite large farmhouse she lives with her parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins. Except for one family, she finds everyone going about their day. These are the people who give her comfort, love, life, and affection. While she wanders around the house, scores a chocolate, a kiss on her cheek, a promise of chess game in evening, a comic book for night reading and her grandfather promises her ice candy. The tell-tale signs of whispers slams into her chest without any indication. Before she could call out for help, her knees give out and her breath gets stuck in her throat. The whispers have become louder. They are nearer. Almost as if they are caressing her. She crawls towards the storage room, an abandoned room with generations of storage forgotten, memories laid buried. The whispers grow louder, stronger and they nudge her towards a wooden box. She cuts herself while she tries to open it frantically. She doesn’t understand the sudden urge, need to find the thing. Its like her hands are moving on their own, guided by the whispers. Her hands are trying to find something as she mutely watches. Her hands snatch and throw papers, clothes, sheets, and other mundane things they encounter while finding the prize. It takes moments, after what feels like hours her hands stills. Her hands have found their target.

She smiles.

Its not her smile. Its familiar. But its not hers. Its not a smile belonging to one person either. It belongs to many. It belongs to them, many, all.

She walks out, calm. Her legs have purpose. Her hands have duty. Her mind is buzzing. Her heart is still. Her eyes are vacant. Her soul shrivels in despair.

The first shot spears through the silence like a blast going off. It probably was. It was her youngest uncle. Next was his wife. She was walking away from the two of them before her aunt’s body hit the ground. Their son who was playing did not have a chance to react. She could hear the scattering of footsteps somewhere from her home. In the names that were being yelled at, her name was there too. Someone was catching her throat. The scream in her throat was stuck behind her tongue. She was still smiling a smile not her own, doing a thing of not her doing.

There was a precision in her shots that would one day flabbergast students who would study crime. It was impossible for an eleven-year old, to shoot a gun with such precision in chaos let alone reload it and make it count. The little girl had managed to shoot every living soul in the family walking to where they were with ruthless accuracy.  

Her mother was the last one. Circle of life. From where she came. To where it will end. She wants to scream. She wants to stop the heavy gun pointing her mother’s chest. Her index finger is delicately balancing on the trigger. There is a pregnant pause. Since it all began, the whispers have been only getting louder. Their presence is almost tangible at this point. The multiple voices, human or something else are urging, begging, scolding, yelling her to pull the trigger.

Pull. Pull. Pull. Pull.

Her hands aren’t her own. Her legs aren’t her own. Her doing isn’t her own. Her voice, dear God, her voice isn’t her own either. She wants to tell her mother that this isn’t her. For a moment everything stills.

Her mother stops talking. She sees her mother’s lips stop moving. They press and move to a smile. A kind smile that warm any cold room. It thaws her chest. Her hands are heavy. The scream builds, builds and builds, stuck behind her tongue.

Her fingers shift.

A red flower blooms on her mother’s chest.

A scream builds in her heart and tears through the sudden quietness that’s fallen upon the farmhouse. Home is not home anymore but land of the massacred. There are no echoes of familial sounds but only that of terrorized screams.

She sits on the blooming bodies of red river.

The whispers around her begin again.