"No, no, no, no," she screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Nyangdeng, wait, stop."
She didn't even look back. She was too scared to see that awful sight again. The image was still seared into her mind. Even with her eyes closed the image was all too clear. Nyangdeng didn't understand it. What exactly had she witnessed? They were people—at least they'd looked like people—but why were they covered in blood? Why were their faces so twisted in pain? Why did they die? How did they die? What exactly had killed them? Was it some kind of monster? All these thoughts flooded her mind. Every time she tried to find an answer, the same bloody image appeared. Tears flowed wildly down her face as she screamed in distress.
"Nyangdeng, just stop for a second."
"No. No, I'm not going back. I'm going back to my mother," she screamed, her breathing turning erratic and uneasy, as if that scene had its hands around her neck, draining the life out of her.
"Just wait."
Akeer managed to get close enough to tackle Nyangdeng into an alleyway.
"Get off me," she said, struggling to free herself.
"Will you just calm down for a second?"
Akeer had had enough. She seized both of Nyangdeng's wrists and pinned them to the ground. Nyangdeng, shaken by the sudden burst of force, stopped squirming and began to calm down, gasping for air, staring up at Akeer with innocent eyes coated in tears that reflected the light of the sunset. Seeing such innocence in her friend's eyes, tears began to fill Akeer's own, until a single drop slid down and dropped onto Nyangdeng's face.
"Listen, Nyangdeng, …I—" she paused before continuing.
"I'm sorry we dragged you into this. We were the closest people to you, and we should have known this wouldn't be easy for you."
"What. Did you already know they were going to be dead people there?"
"No. No, of course not. But we have to be strong. We have to be strong if we want to live," Akeer said, in a soft, trembling voice.
For a moment Nyangdeng stared up at Akeer with teary eyes, until she asked,
"Akeer, please tell me. How are you so strong?"
A few minutes later
They were now walking back to the building where they'd been staying. They walked in complete silence; neither wanted to talk any further about what they'd seen. As Akeer walked she could hear Nyangdeng sniffling. Then she was reminded of the question: Akeer, please tell me, how are you so strong? Her response had been I don't know, but she knew, deep down, that was a lie. In truth she wasn't strong at all. She just knew how to tuck her fears deep down in her soul and vomit them all up later. She began to reminisce about a memory she'd made long ago—an unforgettable one, and also a very dark one. The memory was so vivid it was as if she were there. The sky was overcast, windy, signs of an approaching storm. She was in her room when suddenly she heard an unusual sound; she knew it was coming from a living thing, but she didn't know what. Peeking through the curtains of her window in curiosity, her eyes immediately widened, and her heart seemed to stop for a second before beating relentlessly. In front of her were three men—one stood behind another, stabbing him repeatedly. Then she realized what she'd heard—that noise was the man vomiting his own blood, repeatedly. He tried to push his attackers away, but with each attempt his strength left him, until he no longer moved. The men kicked the lifeless body into a gully, then threw the knife in after it. Akeer was frozen; she didn't know what to do or how to react. The only thing she could do was witness the act in fright. All of a sudden, the murderer's partner tapped him on the shoulder, then pointed toward a spot she couldn't see. From that same blind spot a boy came running out, and immediately the men began chasing him. For a brief moment she saw the boy's face. Immediately she knew who he was. That face belonged to a boy in her class—extremely extroverted, always seeming to have the right answers for everything. Over time Akeer had developed a crush on him. He was always surrounded by friends, boys and girls alike, and even her own friends couldn't stop teasing her about him. But for some reason she couldn't remember his name.
Snapping out of her paralysis, she quickly drew the curtain and covered herself with a blanket. Her mind was blank except for the image of that man's face as he was stabbed repeatedly. It haunted her the rest of the night, until she eventually fell asleep, gripping her Bible. The next day she went to school. She tried to act normal, but didn't do a very good job of it, because multiple classmates and teachers approached her, asking if everything was all right. She reassured them she was fine and nothing was wrong. They didn't look too convinced, but they eventually left her alone. A couple days passed, and the class noticed she wasn't the only one acting strangely. The class star was too. He'd once been attentive and social, but now he was oddly quiet and gloomy. He no longer answered questions as quickly as before, and wasn't seen with a large crowd of children smiling around him anymore. Whenever Akeer glanced at him, he always wore a fake smile, as if something behind it prevented it from being real. After a couple of months, the crowd of children around him grew smaller, until there was no one left. He was completely swallowed and forgotten by the ever-changing noise around them, a product of his silence. But Akeer never once forgot about him. Even when her friends and classmates talked about other boys they liked, she always kept him in her sights. Akeer couldn't possibly just forget him, because in her mind they were friends—they shared a bond, because they'd both witnessed something horrifying. And that's why, one day after school, she went over to him. He was sitting on the ground beneath a large tree, staring at a field of soccer players. She could tell he was lost in thought, because no matter how close she got, he never once looked her way. For a while she just stood next to him, nervous, unsure what to say. Should she start with, hey, how are you, did you see a murder by any chance, or, hey, I can tell you're really lonely, so let's be friends. Sighing to herself, she mustered the courage to ask what he was doing there after school. Hearing her voice, he was a little startled, but told her the obvious answer to her question. There was a brief, awkward silence, but she saved the conversation by asking what he liked about the sport, and introducing herself. He was hesitant at first, but with each question he eventually opened up to her. They talked about things outside of sports too, like their friends, favorite toys, and favorite TV shows. But now that Akeer thought about it, he'd mentioned some strange things to her. For instance, he'd talked about dreaming of dying over and over, fighting alongside a brave friend, and with each death reincarnating in the past, with bits and pieces of memories from his past lives. She also remembered him muttering the words, I need to carry the burden. It's the only way to save him. She'd been weirded out by this at the time, but passed it off as nightmares born from his imagination, a way of coping with what they'd seen. Their conversation ended up lasting a whole hour, until it was time to part ways. From that day on they'd been inseparable. They even met new people and formed their own friend group, and that's basically how she'd met Nyangdeng and the others. Over the years she'd known her friends, her smile grew bigger and bigger, until she became a near-perfect version of the person she'd wished she could be. No matter how many times she laughed and smiled, though, she could never forget what she'd seen. The same was true for him. Over the years he'd begun speaking more, but Akeer had the feeling he was hiding something from her, and everybody else—she knew there was something he wasn't telling her. She knew it wasn't about the revolution, so it had to be something else. But she had no clue what. She'd gotten so close to him she'd basically learned all his likes and dislikes, to the point they might as well have been blood-related siblings. So she had no idea why he'd bother hiding anything from her at this point. An image of Eric appeared in her mind. Does it have something to do with him? she wondered. No—even though they'd gotten close, they'd only known each other for a day or two. There's no way it's because of him.
"Arop. What exactly are you hiding from all of us," she said, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes.
I have to protect everyone. Otherwise there's no way we can survive in this world, full of monsters of every kind, she thought, when suddenly Nyangdeng turned into an alleyway and froze in her tracks.
"Nyangdeng. Why did you stop?"
She didn't respond. She just stood there, mouth agape, as if trying to scream, but nothing came out. The closer Akeer got, the more her heart raced, and the more she heard a strange bashing sound that made her tense. As she reached Nyangdeng, Akeer turned to see what she was staring at. Her throat immediately clenched, her heart racing. At the end of the alley were two men, covered in blood, smiling, swinging a metal pipe stained with blood. With each swing, blood sprayed the walls. As one of them shifted slightly to take another swing, it gave Akeer and Nyangdeng a full view of what they were swinging at. It was a corpse—its skull completely smashed, its face unrecognizable. Its jaw hung on by only a couple of strands of muscle, and blood flowed from where its mouth had once been like a river, spraying out from its forehead, filling the air with the horrid scent of blood. Akeer eventually snapped out of her daze and, with trembling hands, grabbed Nyangdeng's arm. But instead of moving, Nyangdeng's head slowly turned toward her, staring deep into her eyes, tears glistening. For some reason, seeing her friend in such a scared state also made Akeer feel vulnerable, and her hands began trembling more violently. When she tried to pull her friend away, it was futile—it was as if her own muscles had turned to jelly. Soon she wasn't even able to control her arm. Akeer tried to whisper for her to slowly walk back and run, but her throat was clenched so tightly not even a single sound escaped. At the back of her mind she knew that if they didn't leave right then, they'd both die. Mustering all her remaining strength, she took a step back, and, as if the heavens were against her, her foot accidentally knocked over a glass bottle. The sound of it shattering immediately silenced everything around them, and she knew—if she and Nyangdeng didn't run that instant, they'd share the same fate as that corpse. Gathering every ounce of strength she had left, she pulled Nyangdeng's arm and said, in a low, strained, urgent voice, run. Akeer pulled her arm more violently, forcing her along. Before they could even get out of sight, a gray object flew past Akeer's face, barely missing her. In that moment she had a vision of blood bursting from her own head, her unconscious body tumbling to the ground. If we don't escape right now, we're really going to die, she thought, tightening her grip on Nyangdeng's arm and running even faster. Behind her she could hear the loud growls of the men chasing them, though it didn't sound like growls from men—it sounded like growls from beasts. She looked back, past Nyangdeng, and saw the two men running toward them at full speed, still carrying their bloody pipes and the foul odor of blood. The closer they got, the more Akeer could smell it. As she continued to look back, for some reason she couldn't take her eyes off those monsters—there was nothing beautiful about them in the slightest, but the way they looked at her, drooling, red-eyed, was similar to a predator's gaze, though not quite the same—a predator chases its prey to survive, but those men didn't need their lives to live. They genuinely, with their entire being, just wanted to kill them. They were binge eaters—beasts who killed for joy and pleasure and nothing else. Nothing else in the whole world mattered to them except that purpose. They were slaves to it.
Akeer snapped out of her brief trance, averted her eyes from them, and kept running, still holding tightly to Nyangdeng.
As they ran, Akeer's lungs began to burn, her abdomen and legs aching with every stride. She looked back at Nyangdeng and realized she too was running out of stamina. But the two men chasing them didn't look tired at all—in fact, to Akeer it seemed as if they were getting faster. Every second that passed, they drew closer. So she dragged Nyangdeng along, running across streets and through familiar alleyways she'd been in before. But she couldn't lose them. Her lungs were on fire, her abdomen ached, her legs began to stiffen. Now she was in full panic mode; she couldn't tell if the rapid beating of her heart was from adrenaline or the fear of dying—maybe both. But that didn't matter in the moment; what mattered was keeping herself and Nyangdeng alive. Suddenly an idea came to her. Ahead there were two alleyways—one going straight, another going right. She remembered the right corner had a gate. If they could climb over it and get out of sight, they could escape. A smile of relief appeared on her face, before it wavered. It was a good plan, she admitted, but there was one problem—those beasts were so eager to kill them there was no way they wouldn't follow. But what if…
"Nyangdeng. I have an idea."
She looked at her, eyes swollen with tears.
"I need you to sprint like your life depends on it, all the way to that corner. Then I want you to climb the fence and run back to where we're staying."
Nyangdeng paused and looked at her, as if to say you're really letting me do this all by myself. She was about to say something before Akeer interrupted.
"Please, Nyangdeng. I need you to do this. I need you to be brave."
She wiped her teary eyes and nodded, then, with all the courage and strength she had, sprinted past Akeer and disappeared around the corner. As Akeer eventually reached it she saw the back of Nyangdeng disappearing around another corner. Seeing her escape, Akeer sighed in relief. As she ran across, she looked back and saw the beasts were still chasing her. Good. That means my intuition was right. Now it's my turn to escape, she thought, continuing the cat-and-mouse game with them, until it was getting too much for her. Her toes began to hurt, her abdomen ached with a pulse, and her head felt light—she felt as if a smack to the head would easily knock her unconscious. It also didn't help that she was slowly losing her vision; the world around her seemed to slowly collapse into darkness. She knew she had to escape, fast. Akeer decided to take another route, back toward the town rally—she gambled that she could lose them in the huge crowd. And besides, even if they found her there, they wouldn't dare do anything in front of thousands of people. Following this new instinct, she began running toward the rally, hoping she wouldn't just faint before getting there. As she ran she looked behind her and noticed something off—there was only one of the monsters now. Where was the second one? As soon as she turned her head forward again, she saw a bluish, zooming shape approaching her face, and before she could react it struck the side of her left cheek, immediately knocking her and her teeth to the ground. Before she could even try to get up, the monster—and the other one that quickly caught up—swiftly swung their metal pipes down over and over, targeting her legs and ribs so she'd have a difficult time getting up. Akeer tried to get up, but her body failed her; instead she curled into a ball, though that didn't help much. Feeling the urge to vomit, she put her hand to her mouth, but what came out wasn't vomit—it was a pool of broken teeth floating in a pool of her own blood. Strangely, she didn't even cry. She remained curled up in a ball, tears leaking from her eyes, but not a single sound escaped her lips—not even a slight cry of pain. Just silence.
"Wait. Hold on."
One of the men knelt down and grabbed Akeer's face, looking into her eyes. What he saw were eyes devoid of light, completely limp, as if she were no longer of this world.
"I think she's dead."
"What. We need the girl alive. Check her pulse."
The man checked, and felt her pulse—faint. If they left her like this, she'd certainly die.
"Sigh. The girl's alive. But we can't enjoy ourselves with her anymore."
"What."
"Any more and she'll definitely die."
The other man looked at his partner angrily before saying,
"I'm going to try to find the other one. She couldn't have gotten far. You take that girl to the president."
As the man began to walk away, the other called out to him.
"Hey. You'd better not beat her too badly—I want my turn too."
The two men smiled at each other before one said, "I make no promises on that."
"Damn greedy bastard," the man muttered, as his partner ran off to find Nyangdeng.
Then he looked down at Akeer and smiled.
"Well, little lady, let's get going," he said, before licking the blood off the corners of her lips, then lifting her by her hair and putting her over his shoulder.
As he carried her away, a single tear fell from Akeer's eyes and dropped onto the concrete, signifying, in her barely conscious mind, her grand failure.