Obsessive Power

• Iman Ahmed, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2016

“Those once small words, written between lines of thoughts, were only a mere invention for emotional satisfaction. They brought no hope, no security, only lead stained words to distract oneself of the constant revolving world.”
- Wondrous Locked Door

I breathe at the ratio of 1:4:2, forcing myself to remember the smell of gravel and charcoal seeping through cracked floorboards. It was the feeling and vibrations of passing trains dashing by faster than usual. But most of all, my withered hearing blocking out unimportant concepts ever so detailed, yet insignificant. To simplify its complexity, it was like I was searching, desiring for something. Thrilling, intriguing, mesmerising…

That’s when I saw you… You entered the midst of my subconscious and memories. Your adolescence screaming at me for acceptance, mercy, but most of all a voice. Maybe a messenger or some sort of angel that can save you from your predestined future. Soaked in the slums and poverty. However, you begged… for your unaccompanied wishes to be heard in this chaotic evolution.

Remembrance of terror, pain, and fear that night uplifted; streetlights burned bright in the midst of my preoccupation. An Inquisitive aura knocking at my eardrums, breaking through to my awareness, left me confused, restless. Why did every vein and physical emotion intensify? And why did my pillow choke me repeatedly that night? How profound to place belief in a desolate and helpless woman, that carries nothing but scotch fingers and earl grey tea. For what intention would you burden and drag the wrinkled layers of my freckled face down to my Mary Janes?

I felt the presence of rumination, however, questions and thoughts that revolved possible outcomes of my situation, are memories that have no power to bend or manipulate the space and time continuum. It’s tattooed upon my legacy, existence and story. Blacklisted, the ‘insecure and fearful’.

Time manipulated and took advantage of my internal desire. The ticking of clocks crept in slowly, my reaction time towards pulsating veins, motioned in patterned movements, were still. Winds lurk, slender shadows stood silent; and the men with suits and fedoras entered.

As the men in suits and badges of authority interrogated me, I loathed in the thickness of transparent lies, introducing the conversation. “I saw the young man stab his father”. I glanced through their sloped eyes of frail judgement depicted by stereotypes, and took advantage of their naïve behaviour. Was it an action of impulsiveness, to invade another’s perception of life, through exposed emotions, or was it a sense of survival, when slammed between a rock and a hard place?

I realised in that moment, when science could not depict whether my organs were curdling or bruising of contradiction, that I had manifested power to invent and manipulate truth…

I yank at the collar of my blouse that choked me. Yes, everything hated me. Yes, I hated myself. Life will continue to remind me that, I stole the ‘possibility and opportunity’ from an innocent and young man, of experiencing life.