Genesis

• Soul Takawira, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2022

Abram ran on the ocean floor, tirelessly trying to push up to the water’s surface. His last bubble of air had escaped minutes before, but his lungs were clawing his mouth open. The addiction to breath — to life — killing him. His lungs had always hated him, having given themselves asthma so severe that just being alive made him ill, and even as he tried to save them they betrayed him.

He ripped at his throat as if it were paper, begging his lungs not to breathe, begging his body not to give in, begging God for his survival. But he had brought his lamb — his only lamb whom he loved — to the mountain and now it had to be sacrificed. What place did he have to ask God for salvation?

He could feel himself giving in. His lungs were evil and desperate, blowing through his trachea like it was trumpet and releasing air that his body didn’t have. For a moment it was as if his physical self had abandoned him completely; like it had died before he had.

Then suddenly, regret. Regret that scolded his lungs so viciously he had to let the water in to cool them down. His brain screamed the names and phrases he had heard his whole life and his legs no longer had the energy to stand.

“Abram, you idiot!”

“Moron Abram!”

“You should have never been born, Abram!”

The words his brain was spouting, however nonsensical, had stretched forth and grasped his throat in a chokehold. He ignored it. Abram glanced over his shoulder, a final attempt to find something to help him escape. A glass cup, broken and almost covered to the brim with barnacles, was all that sat there amongst the drifting weed. It reflected the Aries constellation in the sky.

A symbol of hope or a symbol of failure? Perhaps it was because he could no longer feel the sand upon the seafloor that he decided it was the latter, or maybe because all he could see were the gates he had originally gone to the beach to find.

A success? Perhaps you could call it that, after all, he was achieving his goal, fulfilling his own wish and becoming his own God.

Was he not just giving in to the hatred he had faced, though? Perhaps he was not his own God but just giving in to the will of other Gods, slaughtering a lamb he had never wanted to stop loving simply for their approval.