From the point of uncertainty, the lantern of hope still breaths the slightest illumination. I’m still terrorized by the memories that you left within my temple, memories so deep, like a pond in the winter, a trembling surface and sensitive to every breath. Memories left by the most insignificant existence. Memories so deep, my hearts sinks, the water pushes down on it from all sides. The more I struggle the more disoriented I get. I give into the darkness and let the water take me.
I give into the darkness… darkness…
I gave into the darkness a long time back. I still remember the day as acutely as if it were happening before me. The summer air, warm and crisp, beam of sunlight glowing against my skin, the laughter of small children running, the bark of a dog in the distance; it was yet another evening in Jinnah Park. An aloof young boy sitting against a tree and an unfortunate little fly that altered the metamorphosis of that boy.
There I sat thinking as to why I couldn’t fit in this accursed society. Why was I hated by everyone and everyone hated by me. Why was I bullied over time and time again? I sat pondering over the customary theme, when a fly came by. ‘Maybe it’s because my parents were murdered and no one was ready to adopt me’ the midnight black colored bud started bumbling around my head. ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a geek, people don’t like biology freaks’ hitting my forehead after every second or two. ‘Maybe it’s because this world is unfair and cruel, and one has to take his happiness’ the fly hummed around my ear banging against my forehead one last time. One swift strike and I had the fly between by index finger and thumb. Trying to break free from the grip, flapping it’s wings against my fingers. I brought it directly parallel to my sight, watching it buzzing helplessly ‘Maybe this world is filled with trash, trash that needs to be taken out every once in a while’.
‘That was my first time’ I whispered to myself. Maybe if I had stopped myself from that day, maybe if I had stopped that one memory becoming my forever life motto, I would have been a different person. I picked up my knife and felt the cold steel against my skin as Mubashir became conscious.
He realized he was tied around a table, nude, with his mouth covered and his surroundings over spammed by portraits and pictures of angels, Jesus and heaven. He tried to break free and make a sound but his efforts were a waste. He was afraid like most of them, looking here and there waiting for explanations; some last source of hope knowing it won’t come, knowing this is the end of the trail for his mischief and sin.
I took out a picture and showed it to him. A picture that demonstrated an angry Mubashir shooting a pregnant women during one of his robberies. For a moment Mubashir seemed to lay still and then he started trying to break free again, this time more aggressively. I closed my eyes, tightened my grip around the knife, and struck him in the chest as blood gushed everywhere. He became still, lifeless, like a cadaver waiting to be worked upon. A cadaver whose innards pumped the blood stained by the death of the innocent. I raised my knife once more and then did what I assumed to be the work of God.
