8.1
11/11/2009
The group of three had been traveling north for five cold, rainy days.
Jelani, Echo, and Eve. Skye had urged them to bring others along, but Jelani insisted against it. Had Bone Creek's leader had any sort of plan, she wouldn't have allowed them to split from the main group so easily, but the future was murky.
Now that Blake had taken Hoodsdale, there was no telling what his next move would be.
Jelani stared blankly ahead at Echo's back, nothing but a wet, gray expanse of trees facing him.
Eve walked at his side, close, but not so close that their hands might accidentally touch. There was no telling what Echo's reaction would have been to that.
Jelani felt his eyelids growing heavy, and his view of the forest blurred. After monotonous hours in which the only sounds were the pattering of raindrops and squelching of boots in the mud, his mind tended to wander.
Today, he saw his hometown.
Until this journey, he'd been suppressing every memory of it. But now, with his mind finally made and his destination growing closer with every step, he couldn't help letting them in.
The sprawling suburbs of little rickety wooden houses, all of which appeared under a filter of grayish-brown. The dense downtown of even grayer concrete buildings, always dirty and usually covered in graffiti, particularly in the North Side, which was separated from the south by a highway running right through the center of downtown.
At this particular moment, Jelani's mind found its way onto that highway. He hadn't given it a single thought in years, yet somehow the sounds of car engines, the sweetish, rotten scent, and the brown grass baking beneath a relentless sun were so clear in his mind it was as if he was physically standing there.
It was as if he was standing on the bridge, looking south then looking north. He would stand there, and then reluctantly, as if facing into a strong headwind, turn north and cross the bridge.
But he didn't want to go there, and the discomfort of remembering shocked him back into reality.
He inhaled sharply, eyes wide awake.
"Are you ok?"
Eve was looking at him. Her eyes matched the color of the rain.
Jelani responded with a soft nod.
"You wanna talk about it?"
He shook his head. It wasn't nearly time for that.
These weren't typical memories of the distant past–they weren't the sort of stories he could tell with a smile, laughing as he recounted trials that had seemed so difficult at the time.
He was still standing on that bridge. The trials he'd faced then were the trials he faced now. Until he defeated the past, relegating it to its proper place behind him, it would be no different from the present.
Now, his feet returned to the cracked wet concrete. He was on the other side of the bridge, and the sun was no longer shining.
"Yo, Lil P!"
He swallowed and slowly turned his head.
There were four men approaching. They wore an assortment of jeans, baggy t-shirts, unzipped hoodies, bandanas, and grins on their faces.
Their mouths moved, but Jelani couldn't hear what they were saying.
All he could see were their twisted smiles and yellowed teeth
In an instant, the dark interiors of their mouths swallowed him whole and the scene morphed into something else.
No
He desperately tried to return to the bridge, but he should have known that there would be no turning back.
His back was against the wall in a dark alley. Blood was dripping from his face, but he couldn't tell the exact source. A throbbing pain reverberated through his entire head, burning his mind into fuzziness and threatening to put him to sleep.
But that was what he wanted–to fall asleep.
His head slumped involuntarily and his body slid off the wall, thudding against a pile of garbage on the ground.
"Sit up."
He could barely hear anything.
Something hard drove deep into his stomach. He gasped for air, scrabbling at his shirt with his hands.
The impact came again. It felt like a metal bat.
He choked, and it hit him again.
"Sit up."
Again.
He writhed on the ground, but he gripped it with his hands, struggling with all his might to do as he was told.
A hand grabbed him by the hair and lifted him upright. Now, his back was against the wall again, and his eyes fluttered open.
What he saw was a kneeling figure whose face was less than a foot from his own.
But it was dark–so dark that the only features he could make out were strands of white hair and a pair of purple eyes.
The darkness melted, and the scene changed again.
No!
He saw fire.
Under a brutally black night sky, not shining with a single star, the flame's tongues licked the air.
A voice screamed. Its shrieks tore into his soul. With every cell in his body he strained forward, but feet flew out beneath him, knocking him down.
Their laughter echoed around him as he stumbled to his feet, hearing nothing but the scream coming from inside the fire.
"Jelani!"
A hand shook him, and his scrunched eyes shot open.
Eve was facing him, brow knitted in fear.
"At least say something," she pleaded. "I don't want you to be alone."
Jelani pursed his lips.
"It's just bad memories. I really don't want to talk about it."
"Was it really all bad?" Eve asked earnestly. "You must have some good memories too, right?"
Jelani looked up in surprise, meeting her passionate eyes.
He smiled a little.
"You're right. I'll try to think of something happy."
Eve's expression softened and she turned forward again.
"Come on, let's keep walking."
Jelani focused his eyes on Eve's back and the rainy forest around her.
Eve's right, he thought.
Thinking only bad thoughts meant disrespecting all the good things that had happened to him.
He smiled now, picturing the face of his little brother.
He would be… 14.
Jelani had last seen him when he was 12. He was an innocent boy bursting with energy then, and Jelani was certain that nothing would have changed.
He imagined arriving back home at their dull yellow house, watching as his brother played basketball in their tiny driveway on their rickety hoop. If his dad wasn't at work, he would be out there too, laughing heartily as he passed the ball to his son.
Then Jelani almost laughed, imagining his older brother reluctantly standing outside to greet him. He wouldn't have been playing basketball, firmly believing that such things were a waste of time.
Jelani's older brother–the most driven person he had ever known–was in the Russon military. He wouldn't share his goals with anyone, but Jelani could tell that he was aspiring to become someone great. He almost never smiled, and he was often cold to Jelani, but he loved his family.
Jelani was looking forward to seeing all of them again.
Finally, he pictured his mother's face–beautiful, intelligent, and kind.
But for some reason, he struggled to bring life to the still image. He tried to recall scenes of her laughing, the sun shining through her dark brown hair as she pulled a younger version of himself into a hug, but it only appeared in bits and pieces.
Like stop motion, he could see only one frame at a time. There was no real movement–no real life.
He shut his eyes and strained his face. Suddenly, this task of recalling his mother became the most important thing he had ever attempted.
Failing to remember meant disrespecting the life she'd lived.
But the harder he strained, the more prominent a small blot of darkness in the images became. He tried to force it out, but it only grew.
The darkness crossed his mother's face, stretching to all edges of it and covering every one of her features.
Every eyelash, every crinkle in her smiling eyes and curve in her lips, they all disappeared.
And in their place a pinpoint of glow emerged.
It was positioned on one side, exactly at the position her left eye had been, and it grew, exactly to the size her left eye had been.
No
The single green eye glowed dimly against its dark backdrop, lacking sorely for a partner.
It was ugly. Vile. Asymmetrical.
Jelani gritted his teeth.
His lips twitched, and his jaw clenched.
Fucking die.