Student Spectrums

The house was eerily silent. There was always some racket, either inside or out. But this time there was nothing but my own shallow breathing as I peeked through the narrow hole. I drew my eye in closer when a hazel eyeball emerged. The lashes were quite long, with streaks of red in the whiteness of the eye, as if she had been sleep deprived. I immediately fell back.

“What was that?” Maymunah yelled out.

I grew completely still, not making a sound and even holding my breath for a few seconds. How did they know? Did they see anything? There’s no way they saw me… The questions in my head grew rampant as my heart pounded.

“Slap!” Hajirah slapped the wall.

I let out a little laugh, but immediately covered my mouth.

“It was a bug,” she responded to her younger sister.

Where did they go for so long? Were they not in the house? They never went anywhere… especially at 11 a.m. on a Saturday.

“The sleepover was so fun!” Maymunah jumped on the couch.

Hajirah moved away from the wall, and I went back to peeking through the hole.

“Yeah, but remember you can’t tell Mom,” she responded, with slight irritation in her voice.

Why not? She didn’t know? Sneaky girls…

“Mama loves us. She only wants the best for us. If she gets mad she has her reasons.”

The younger sister rolled her eyes. Poor thing was only eight and a half. She didn’t know any better. The elder one, being fifteen, knew the irrepressible truth.

“That’s stupid. Just go upstairs and change. And make sure you don’t wake up Mama.”

“She’s hungover. She’s not gonna wake up anytime soon.”

Hajirah shrugged and went upstairs, to a place I could only dream of. I watched Maymunah watch her sister walk up the creaky, mold-infested staircase. The moment she disappeared onto the upper floor, she pulled a peculiar box out of her pocket. Except it wasn’t a box, but a thin glass rectangle. It had four large circles on the top left corner, arranged in an interesting manner.

What on earth is that? A bomb?

There were, what I assumed to be, buttons on the side. It was completely black. Until she turned it on and it began glowing. But not so much that the light reflected onto her face.

“April…” she muttered. April as in her friend, not the month. “Ah-hah!” She pressed on the glass rectangle. Her eyes were mesmerized by the sight of it.

“Hello?” She brought it to her ear.

A phone? There’s no way. What kind of alien technology is this…? Phones are small and lanky and foldable. This is neither.

I inspected it even more. It had to be. She was making a call. I had been in this damp dungeon for far too long. I yearned for natural light. For the sky and the moon and the sun. For the snow, sprinkling bit by bit on my face. Those were nothing but dreams.

What’s the use of a dream? Martin Luther King Jr. had one and he was killed. But I fear my fate is far worse… to be an observer to a broken family. To children who are abused every day.

“Don’t call me. My mom’s gonna kill me.”

She closed the phone and shoved it in her pocket.

“Bam!”

A loud thud was heard upstairs. I angled my head toward the staircase, only to get a slight glimpse of it. I could only see the top half, which was useless at the moment. Maymunah turned her attention to where mine was.

“Ahh!”

A loud, piercing scream was heard. Hajirah! My heart began thumping.

“Hajirah!”

Maymunah raced to the top, but before she could do so, she was flung down the stairs, her head bashing the railing. I gasped. What wickedness is this?

I banged on the wall. It only resounded with a terrible metal clank that made me want to scratch my ears until they bled. I covered my ears. It took a moment to cease. Maymunah ran toward her sister and held her head, which was covered in crimson. I felt a drop of sweat pour down my forehead.

“Thump! Thump! Thump!”

Loud footsteps descended the stairs.

“You’re a monster,” Maymunah slowly picked up her unconscious sister and moved back.

Her mother glared at her, with a broken wine bottle in her left hand and a belt in the other.

“Where’d y’all go?”

Her southern drawl was so thick it peeved me. She cracked the belt. Maymunah moved even further until she hit the wall. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear this. I couldn’t bear this cruelty.

Except I could bear killing an innocent man with my bare hands and stare his wife in the face. His wife who witnessed the entire thing. His wife whose face was heartbroken because her husband was a good man. I had stained my soul that night worse than ever before. I had done more injustice than the one in front of me, but why was there a tear on my cheek?

I sniffled.

I slowly opened my eyes, my eyelashes still covering them, when the bottle was flung at Maymunah’s head. She dropped her sister and dodged the bottle, but part of it slashed her arm. It shattered all over the floor like a mutilated snowflake.

“How many times have I told you not to leave the house!”

Her mother, if she could even be called that at this point, moved swiftly toward her and gave her a hard blow to the cheek.

“Ahh!”

She let out a piercing scream like her sister. Tears flowed down her face. Her cheek and eyes were red. Her forearm as well. Her mother vehemently grabbed her by that forearm and dragged her toward the kitchen. The kitchen where all the knives were. The same kitchen where a man could burn. The same kitchen where I had killed an innocent man. A hero. A savior to humanity.

She lifted her bleeding arm and placed it on the counter, holding it still as she grabbed a small knife with a sharp edge that shimmered through the sunlight pouring in through the window.

“You dare to disobey me…”

“Please! No!”

It was a pity the little girl was unconscious. She would’ve finally believed her sister about all the injustice otherwise. But this was too far. They had done nothing wrong. At least nothing to the point they had to be beaten black and blue. And then ripped apart like a stuffed animal.

“I promise I won’t do anything bad! I’ll always listen to you!” she pleaded, but of course it was futile.

My grief turned to fury. My head was quite literally boiling. I knew if I didn’t do anything in the next few seconds, I would die. Die from the grief. And the anger. And the contempt for the wicked lady.

I banged on the wall once more. The racket followed. I banged again. And again. And again. Each time I banged harder, using all my God-given strength, until my energy was depleted but my rage was still there.

“Bam!”

The final blow broke the wall. The wall that had kept me hidden for thirty-five years. That had kept me submissive. But I was no longer submissive. I was no longer myself. I was only a shadow of my former being, and intended to keep it that way as I raced toward the kitchen and pulled the woman off her daughter. We fell to the ground and there was a struggle.

I pulled the knife out of her hand, but the witch bit me. She bit me on my forearm so hard the marks were engraved on my pale skin, and I bled. I bled until I felt like I could bleed no more. And then I pounced. I pushed her outside, onto the wet snow. Snow. Which was once a dream. A fond memory.

She growled and spat in my face. Before she could say anything, I spotted an axe wedged in a stump and raced for it. She got up and chased me, but I pulled it out like King Arthur and swung it across her neck, chopping it clean off.

I dropped it and took a moment to rejoice, as her tattered head had landed about three feet away from her body. I smiled. I had finally used my talent for something good. I had finally saved someone.

But just then, a piercing, blood-curdling pain shot through my nerves. My eyeballs felt like they were bulging out. My eyes watered. My lips grew dry and as I looked down, I saw nothing but crimson. Everything stained. The white snow was innocent no more.

I fell back, and that’s when I noticed Maymunah wielding her father’s old shotgun.

What a strange betrayal this was… I thought to myself. She was supposed to be the sensible one.

And as I drifted away into a deep slumber, the memory of how I got here in the first place flashed in my mind.

It was 1991, and I was a young Soviet spy sent to kill a high-ranking American agent in his own home. I didn’t realize the house was a fortress of secrets with hidden corridors meant for Americans to spy on their own visitors. The corridors were so immaculate and well-prepared that men could stay in there for months at a time.

After I finished the job, the agent’s wife saw me, and I shot her as well. We ended up getting into a struggle, and with her final breath, she slammed the heavy latch, which I had been pounding on for decades, shut, locking me inside the cruel cage.

I spent years learning the layouts and how the vents connected until there was no more to learn. I saw families move in and out. Each time I screamed, they heard nothing. The same thing happened with my sobs.

My country, which I had been so loyal to, collapsed and the world moved into a new century, but I stayed behind, a Soviet ghost trapped in an American machine. A soldier of a war everyone had forgotten.

And with that memory, I drifted away, with betrayal on my mind and my longing for snow fulfilled.