Strings of white sunlight tug at my perception of the green scape,coloring grass tips amber.The wind threads through the cascade of black hairs rippling down my back in a mess of tangled frizzy hairs,and light breaks off when it kisses my acne-flushed skin.Light breaks off when the day’s light rolls down my tan skin.Light breaks off,light leaves as soon as it meets me,all that be sick and gruesome simmering under the guise of brown human skin.

Stop victimizing yourself,Aseba.

Stop…
 Stop…
  Stop…

I do not know what to think anymore.I feel scared,vulnerable,alone in a park.I sit mum on the bench under the drapes of tree leaves,hoping a branch would break off and clunk against my head nice and easy,and it would all be over.Clunk.I hear the sound 
in my head.So sweet,so succinct.I sit there,legs swinging.The branch,did not break.

The bench curls round the tree,backs lined against bark.Backs peel themselves off and go.Time ticks.The sky darkens.And then,I hear the sound of fabric sticking against the bark and unsticking as the person writhed,the sound as though crackling fire.I see the flitting shadows.I do not see her face.

Sobs break into the cacophony of crackling fires and rustling grass.The person is crying.I do not know what to do.I sit with my back to the tree,with my back to her.

”Hello,stranger.”

I blink.”Hello.”

”Don’t tell anyone what I ask of you.Can you kill me?”

“Can you kill me too?”I can feel a plan hatching in my mind,hatching,hatching,hatching.

”Okay.Okay,I will.”

I tell her my address.

See,I do hate living.But I’m far too scared to die.I only have this one life,and the fact that I won’t do much in that overwhelms me,pushes me off the brink.The fact that I for some reason can’t be as good at being a human other are,that I can’t reach the standard of joy no matter how much I have,that I’m not special,and that no one could ever love me.

But maybe,people could care about me more.Maybe,they would take me seriously,if it seemed like I attempted to let someone kill me.I could say my survival instincts kicked in last minute,and I killed her before she could kill me.I’d have scars for proof.People could care about me.

I could be loved.

I chug pills in the evening so that I wouldn’t be deterred by pain.I would be the one faster,stronger,and I would kill that nameless girl.No one would believe my story if I don’t believe it myself.So I sit myself down,and start telling myself I want to die,I need to die,this is the day it would all be over,before my mind runs on thoughts of finishing it all.Yes,I tell myself,heading to the balcony,today,I end my life.

Sometimes I wonder if words could be pretty as life.As drenching sunlight and butterfly kisses of sounds.The soft loose strings in fabric that snag my fingertips warmly,the heat of skin simmering under the breast piece.I let my hand cascade over the area down to my stomach,roll down my ugly stomach rolls,rest at my thighs.

I wonder if I would have the chance to have someone enamored with me touching me so daintily,if only I grew.I will not grow past today.The sky is a song,stars blinking quietly like how raspy voices,silken laughter washed over me for so long,dark,dark canvas staring me down.It’s not too late to change plans.I know this would be little-me’s main character moment,the trim black hair capping her head,shimmering in the heat of battle.She would be sacrificing herself.In some ways,I gave her enough sacrificial opportunities.I made it so the world zapped a bit of the fullness out of her heart.All I ask is that she make this last sacrifice.

Aseba,all I ask for is your life.

We’ll be happy when this is over.

The promise of joy has never failed to twist Aseba into the caricature that anyone asks for,and she twists and turns one last time.

Rest.

I feel the wind rip past.I feel my hair slap,lamplights bloom behind my closed eyelids.I feel pretty,pretty life,and wait for her to come.

It has been five minutes.

The girl said we would kill eachother.The girl said she would come.

I shall give it a while more.I have waited enough,what’s a last let-down?

She is not coming.I feel like I am sinking,however.Perhaps I overdosed enough,not just to ridden the pain when my neck was meant to be snapped off,but perhaps enough to just,drift into death.I feel so well-rested.I feel like I’m melting into crisp sheets in a hospital room,weathered and surrounded by people holding my hand,shaking as tears fall,people telling me they love me.I want to reach into the scene,but I feel so weak.This is not my scene.It is the life of human insignificance,and I’m different.But for some reason,my heart twitches at every wet-voiced “I love you”I hear to old me.To be old.Maybe everything would make sense.

I want to grow old.I want people to remember me.I think of so many people,so many things undone,and I want so much more than to drug myself dead.I want to be alive.But I just keep drifting.I cannot wake up,I do not think this is even some afterlife,this is just the world within my closed eyelids.I think of the world that extends beyond.Fairy lights wound around the balcony gates I slumped against.Pink cotton shirt manifesting faintly in the puddles dripping from my little containers for my soya bean seeds,features hazy and ripped into distortion.I think I was crying before my death.

I just cannot.Cannot do anything.Cannot cry or scream that I want to be alive,and this bone-deep feeling of all that I left unsaid unfurls into demons in my darkness,tugging at my perception on the scape of black,tugging me further and further into the dark and I think less.I feel off.I’m tugged away with so many thoughts left unsaid,and my “I miss you,Ma-“never was made into a thought,never in existence.I didn’t even get to think about those I loved before my death before it was all gone.It was all done too quick.I was but a teenager.I should have lived.Goodbye world,is the last thing I send out,before the dark shutters over me,and I just was.

”Oh,wake up,stranger,you can’t let me down now!Wake up!”She sure cried a lot.Wait,I could hear her.Groggily,jangled,my eyes peel open,my body shaking along with her clammy hands.”Who told you to swallow sleeping pills as well?You that scared of pain for when I kill you?”She was so stupid.But,oh-Oh!I was alive.I was alive?Oh,what bliss.My heart must have burst.Tears seeped out in silent earth-shattering relief,and she didn’t notice them through the haze of her own pained tears that she would kiss earth goodbye.

I.Was.Alive.

The plan,was back.I would let her hurt me just enough for people to believe I put up a fight,and I would kill her.I stumble to my feet,knife in hand,gaze smouldering against hers.In light of the pale,pale moon,we fought to the death.

She swings,and I let her.Wounds paint my limbs,and blood splatters.She squeezes her breasts out her arms,as if daring me to stab her chest,but not yet.More scars.I need her,to actually come close to killing me.

”Don’t chicken out now!KILL ME!”

I looked injured enough;it was time.

My footing thumps against the ground and I hold the knife to her neck,and shove her back.Her eyes widen as the blunt knife meets her neck,drawing blood.”No,no cutting me like that would hurt,stop,STOP.STOP,STRANGER,I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE THIS-“

I tell myself it’s for the plan.But every jab into her throat,every shriek she gives,her eyes rupturing with blinding pain,I feel a bit more vindicated,like everything led up to this.I saw down the stupid girl’s throat,slowly,and I make it hurt.

It’s so moviesque,it’s so cartharic,and I think of the thoughts she had left to think,the people she may have not gotten the chance to say goodbye to,and I feel the beautiful,beautiful power of being able to take that all from her.

I take it.The nameless girl,stops shrieking.I slit gently at the skin of my own neck,and let blood crust along the knife slash.People would believe me.People would care about me,people would love me.

I see a paper sticking out her pocket.Tear drops mixed with the ink of letters smooshing together on the small paper.

’I didn’t want to have to kill someone on my last day.I brought my brother here,he’s very fond of me.He’s a little sick in the head,so don’t agitate him.He promised to kill you quick and easy and not try anything if you did the same for me.I hope for your own sake,you had my best interests in mind.He’s waiting near the pipes,as he said any good balcony has those when I told him where I was meeting you.I wish you luck.”

I drop the paper.I look near the pipes,and I see the mark of someone sitting in the water collecting there even in the dusty moonlight.He’s not there anymore.I hear someone breath deeply behind me.I don’t dare look.

”She was such a pretty girl.She was so cute when she cried when I forced her in bed,so fucking beautiful naked.She wasn’t just a sister to me.You’ll just have to be her substitute,won’t you?And I think you’ll be a lot more fun.”I feel coarse hands close over my eyes.

Fuck.

It wasn’t really the single beat of a ‘fuck’.It was rows,avalanches of shit shit shit,and tears faster than I could think.It was unfathomable I was being kidnapped.It was stupid,it was laughable,it was like everything was at the brink of being lost,my life,the people I wanted to love me so desperately.Love.

I blink through the haze of tears.What is love?

Maybe her brother loves me.He wanted to have “fun” with me.He wanted me.No one,no one has wanted me.Yes,yes,I stand nothing to lose.This boy was quite handsome in this angle,no,his strength that could kill me wasn’t terrifying and making my heart race,it was beautifully rugged.This is all for the best.His hands are pretty,his eyes are pretty,I wonder what sex is like,and I wonder why I’m cramming so much thoughts in my head right now while I’m shaking in the backseat of this stranger’s car.

Guilt.What do I feel guilt for?For killing that girl?She wanted to die.I helped her.She was just a suicidal statistic of the youth,who couldn’t look beyond her woes.I can.I’m different,and she’s just a stupid bitch that has no business not dying.But I could have talked her out of it and why…didn’t I finish her off quick?

Why did I enjoy it?

Thoughts flutter out as soon as new ones come in,and car lights,lamps,horns all erupt into flashing lights and colors as my head fills,fills,fills.She must have felt so desperate,in a backseat like me and her own blood killing a bit of her steadily.I could have given her a new chance in life.But I tortured her till the end.

I’m nothing like her.She was this cliche of a rape victim you see in fleeting news,I was this brilliant girl with this scheme and everything was working out,till her brother butted in.Was it,though?I would have surely gotten caught for killing her.And why was I dumb enough to get in the car just because he told me to a bit fiercely?

I’m not as smart as I think.

Another,dumb human.I’m a statistic.I’m scared.

I’m so scared.

I do not grasp half the emotions I’m feeling now.I sawed a girl’s neck and I’m driving in a car with a guy who says he’s about to rape me.I hate everything so fucking much.The words drop as heavy beats this time,final.For I don’t think I can survive if my head fills anymore.

What the fuck have I done.

The pretty,pretty man shoves me in.I tell myself I’m excited to have sex with him,I don’t know why.I’m disappearing from the scene at an alarming rate,and cower in my head,all flashing lights and pouring thoughts.But no matter what I tell myself,I cringe when his skin meets mine.Hard and lined.I’m beyond scared now.I know it isn’t the end if he rapes me,he’ll have to keep me somewhere or dispose of me.Either way,anything I have in me will die.

I was sitting in a fucking park.I don’t belong here.I’m a human,not fucking flash news.Do gods not exist?Is there a chance I might actually just,die?

What would death mean for me.

I think of Mdm Rajesh,her cascade of curls,hard voice and her entity-like prescence.She’s always there.No matter if she forces a laugh out of me or makes me wish I was dead.She’s given me everything.I know she would cry for me.I think,she has love purer for me than a black soul like me could conceive.I start panting.I can’t do this.I can’t throw everything away.I miss my Ma.

Ma,save me.

Ma,this strange man is forcing me inside an abandoned workplace.

Ma,he’s calling me a bitch and hitting me.

Ma,he’s taking off my clothes.

Ma,get out of my head.I don’t want you to see this.



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