When I was in primary school, the girls had to wear black Mary Janes as part of their uniform. I was probably 9 when I cut my ankle on the small piece of metal sewn into the inside of my Mary Janes. I think it was a faulty shoe. I think it was carelessly made by someone who was paid too little because the shoes were cheap and they had a velcro strap. There was no metal buckle and there shouldn’t have been a piece of metal sewn into the leather. I remember I spent half the school day twisting my foot around in the shoe because something pricked. It dug into the skin. But we were nothing but disciplined and I said nothing to anyone. I just twisted my foot and rolled my ankle and swallowed back every wince. Something was wet, too.
My mom picked up me and my siblings from school that day. That didn’t happen often because my mom worked 12 hour shifts but she came to get us that day. When we got home, I had to climb 21 stairs. I remember because I used to count them a lot. When I went up the stairs that day, I remember I ground my teeth and bit back tears. The thing in my shoe was cutting into my ankle. When I got upstairs and took off my shoe, my white sock was red from the ankle down. Drops of red dripped on the marbled floor. I’d never seen so much of my own blood and I started crying.
When I told my mom that it had been hurting me all day, she was angry. Angry that I hadn’t taken the shoe off earlier, angry that I hadn’t told a teacher, angry that I hadn’t told her earlier. Angry that I hid my pain and stood in my own blood for hours. She was angry that I adhered to the discipline she taught me.
I said I was probably 9 because it was before I turned 10 but not too far back. I said probably 9 because I asked my mom when it happened and she said she doesn’t know. She said, “Now that you mention it, there’s a vague memory. But I don’t know when it was. Can’t remember.” More than 10 years later, I still remember the cutting pain. I still bear the scar on my ankle. I still grit my teeth and swallow down my pain.
summary: a girl who is both a reverie and a nightmare—both are, after all, dreams.
══════════════════
Zahra Jamal had a complicated relationship with mornings. She was not a morning person, but she woke up every morning before the sun broke through the horizon. Every morning, she blearily walked out of her shared room with Jeny and washed up in the bathroom. Every morning, she rolled out the prayer mat her cousin had gotten for her from his time in Iran. Every morning, before the sun woke up, she prayed by the window in the sitting area. Every morning, after she prayed, Theo walked in from the kitchen holding two steaming mugs and the pair watched as vibrant colors streaked the sky. In those moments, the bleariness was gone and Zahra marvelled at the wonder that was the universe, that was her world. The miracles she was witness to every day. The monotony and comfort of them. Darkness giving way to light and color. It was everything.
And then, every morning, she curled up on the couch next to Theo and fell asleep because she really was not a morning person.
When she woke again, it was to her friends milling about the suite. Theo was usually gone to class by that time and Connor was still asleep in their room. Riley surveyed the arrays of succulents on the windowsills. She was trying to be one with nature and Zahra admired her for it—from afar. She wasn't trying to be one with anything; she was just glad for the bit of greenery. She and Shannon had breakfast together, but usually they all did that in turns. Their classes didn’t match perfectly and most of them skipped the morning meal, but Zahra couldn’t. It was a habit ingrained in her from the wee days. Jeny ambled into the kitchen when Zahra was on her way out the door. Friday mornings it was just Zahra and Connor left in their rooms because their only classes were later in the day. It was a practiced routine.
Today was Friday. Zahra was reading a book for class when there was a knock on her door and she pulled the drawstrings on her hoodie.
“What do you want?” she asked Connor when he walked in.
“I’m bored,” he said. He did that often. She’d tell him to go out and he’d say no one was around. She’d tell him to get some work done and he’d say he thinks better at night. She’d tell him to take a nap and he’d say he just woke up. She’d tell him to watch Netflix and he’d say he just finished a show.
“You can get me something to eat,” Zahra said.
Connor considered her for a moment. He stood in the doorway wearing Christmas-colored plaid bottoms and the most hideous pink shirt dotted with oranges and mulled over her words. Then he said, “Okay,” and turned away.
Connor was a good one. Zahra got along with all of her roommates swimmingly, especially the girls, and Connor wasn’t far behind. They had some of the same classes so they occasionally studied together and Connor was an excellent partner. When the others were in class or busy with club meetings that they weren’t a part of, the two of them knew how to entertain each other. Connor was full of questions and Zahra had an answer for almost everything.
The first time they really bonded, she had just taken a shower and was drying her hair when Connor walked through the open door. They’d both yelped, Zahra grabbing the closest thing she could to cover her hair and Connor scurrying out of the room with the word sorry dripping off his tongue.
“Dude, you can’t just barge in here like this, oh my God,” she had fussed, twisting the towel around her head as she walked out into the hall. “I thought I’d be alone. What are you doing here?”
“The meeting ran short, I’m sorry,” he’d said. He’d looked so small despite being a foot taller than her, his face crestfallen with guilt. “The door was open so I thought it was fine. I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry. Can I do anything?”
Zahra had narrowed her eyes, testing just how far this man’s guilt would go. “How much did you see?”
Both of Connor’s hands had gone up in surrender. “I swear, it was only for, like, a second. Barely. Like barely a second—if that. And it won’t happen again, I promise.”
She had known he had meant every word and it had been kind of funny. She didn’t go out without her hijab now, but she also hadn’t been wearing it for too long. She wasn’t a stranger to men seeing her hair and Connor’s genuine shame had been just a little bit funny. She’d wanted to milk it a bit, but his face had twisted in pained remorse so she’d waved him away.
“Just knock next time you need something,” she’d said. Then: “what did you need?”
That had brightened him up. “I got ice cream. Want some?”
As they ate, he’d fired question after question at Zahra about her hijab.
Now he returned with a bowl of mac and cheese for her and a bottle of beer for himself. Zahra didn’t like eating in bed, so they went to sit out on the couch and Connor put on season two of Hannibal. He wasn’t one to binge shows and it drove Zahra out of her mind to watch only a few episodes at a time. But it was something they did together so she swallowed her petty annoyance and kept up with their back and forth about Will and Hannibal. All she wanted was to see the upper level of Will’s house, but episode after episode it was never shown. It was maddening.
They were halfway through their third episode of the day when Mara and Shannon walked in.
“Y’all ever do anything except eat without us?” Shannon asked.
“Keep drinking so much, Connor, and your liver will get jaundice,” Mara said.
He didn’t drink that much. Mara was just an antagonist at heart.
Connor laughed and threw one of the couch cushions at Mara. She caught it and came to sit next to him.
The other trickled in one by one. Even though Theo was the first one out the door, he was the last to return. And when he did, he looked exhausted. Far too tired for someone to be on a Friday.
“I spoke to Deborah,” he said. Deborah was the on-campus psychiatrist he saw. “I, um… I think I’m getting a service dog soon.”
There was a chorus of Oh my God around the room. Theo groaned and curled so far back into the couch Zahra was sure he was trying to disappear.
“It’ll help,” Connor said. “A friend of mine had a service animal in high school after, um, her grandma died. She was pretty shaken up about it and it helped her.”
“I’m allergic to dogs,” Theo said. “And I’m not depressed.”
Mara cut in with, “No, you’re just an insufferable insomniac suffering from debilitating anxiety. Not a big deal.”
Two of those three things were true. Theo was an insomniac, he suffered from debilitating anxiety, but he wasn’t insufferable. That was why he was awake every morning when Zahra got up to pray. That was why he made her tea and drank his coffee with her afterwards. He was the opposite of insufferable.
“Don’t listen to her,” Zahra said.
At the same time, Jeny said, “You should look into medication.”
Theo rubbed his temples. “I think I’m going to look into sleep. Good night.”
Everyone knew he wouldn’t be sleeping, but they didn’t argue. Riley draped herself over Theo and he made a sound that could only be contentment. Riley would definitely be asleep in no time having Theo as her human cushion. And that was that. None of them planned on going home that weekend, so they went out to dinner together and then spent hours at a bowling alley.
On the drive back, Zahra felt exhilarated.
She sat passenger side in Connor’s jeep. It was usually Riley’s spot because she was a spoiled brat, but tonight she drove in Skylar’s car. Connor hadn’t put the top back on the jeep yet and the crisp Boston nipped at Zahra’s face. Six months ago, her hair would’ve been out of control. It nearly reached her hips and would’ve been everywhere if she had been in this jeep six months ago. Now, her hijab kept it in place and the cool wind hit her skin with no obstacles. Without thinking, Zahra undid her seatbelt and grabbed the door handle. She saw Connor glance at her in her periphery, but she ignored it. She held onto the handle and stood up, her knees trembling slightly as the wind knocked into her chest. She tightened her grip around the handle and, when Connor braked at a red light, she let out a breath.
Connor said her name and Zahra heard the question in it. She looked at him and grinned. “I’m fine,” she said.
A warm shiver dripped down her spine.
In the back, Theo and Shannon stood up. They laughed when the jeep moved again and Connor turned up the music. They drove through the night, laughter spilling out of them, and Zahra thought, I love them. She felt invincible next to Connor as they chased the night together and she knew she loved these people with a fire inside her. They made her feel like a part of something bigger than her, something that was so miraculous she wondered if it had always been fated. She believed it, too.
Miracles existed all around and three were in the vehicle with her.
☾☽
Zahra’s birthday fell on Christmas Eve. Her family didn’t celebrate the holiday, but she enjoyed the cultural aspect even if it was a result of her growing up in the States. Gift giving was, after all, highly encouraged in Islam to grow love and affection for one another. Zahra was fond of gifts and she perhaps liked receiving them more than she liked giving them. She wasn’t fond of giving something that wasn’t absolutely perfect, but she melted if someone so much as gave her a fraying bookmark and said it made them think of her.
The day before they all went back home for the holidays, Connor beckoned her to his room. A rare occurrence, as he usually brought his shenanigans to her room, but she followed anyway. His and Theo’s room was a dichotomy of their two most prominent personality traits: perfectionism meet anxiety.
Connor’s side was almost like something out of a college brochure. His desk was immaculately organized: laptop centered, two notebooks to the right and iPad in its stand to the left, and a bright red pen holder tucked in the corner. There was a file sorter hung on the wall next to his desk and it contained a small calendar, a pocket sized notepad, and a book Zahra didn’t recognize. Over his desk hung a cork board with pictures and stubs tacked into it. There were fairy lights making a delicate pattern along the wall next to his bed.
Theo’s side of the room was nothing short of a travesty. Connor sometimes caved in and sorted it out, but Theo himself didn’t care much about it. He just needed a clean bed to sleep in sometimes, he said. There were no fairy lights or pristine stationery holders for him. He did have food, though. There was always a coffee mug and a bowl of candy on his desk. He was always nibbling on something and didn’t mind when one of them snuck in to grab a handful of sweets. Zahra loved him for it.
Today Theo wasn’t in the room. He’d be coming back soon from his exam, but right now Connor had it to himself. He shut the door behind Zahra and she couldn’t help the lift of her eyebrows when he opened his closet.
“Um.” A small nervous giggle bubbled out of her. “What are you doing?”
Connor pulled out a golden gift bag. He came to sit beside her on the bed and put the bag between them.
“I thought we’re doing presents tonight with everyone else,” she said.
Connor gnawed at the corner of his mouth. He pushed the bag closer to her and Zahra didn’t miss the slight tremble to his hand. It was barely there, but she saw it.
“It’s not your Christmas gift,” Connor said and then he smiled. “Happy early birthday.”
Zahra was floored. She hadn’t talked about her birthday in a while and she hadn’t been expecting anyone to remember it. Actually, she hadn’t talked to her roommates about it at all.
“How did you know?” she asked.
Connor shrugged, but it was obvious he was nervous about something—like he’d crossed a line he didn’t know was drawn. “You left your license and stuff on the table a while ago. I just wrote it down.”
That was… Zahra got off the bed and took the few steps towards the desk where his calendar was. There, in the December 24th square, written in Connor’s neat scrawl were the words: Z’s birthday. There was a smiley face too.
“Connor…”
“Open it,” he said. He was fiddling with his hands, thumb rubbing over the triangle tattooed on his ring finger. “I, um. I didn’t know if, like, it’s okay for me to do it. I talked to my sister about it and she asked her friends and they said it’s fine.”
Zahra hopped on the bed again, crossing her legs and pulling out the white and black tissue paper from the bag. She didn’t know if Connor did all the packing and wrapping himself and she didn’t ask, but it was done flawlessly. She wouldn't be surprised if he had done it. Inside the bag was a rectangular box. When Zahra ripped off the festive wrapping paper and opened the box, she was confused. She lifted folded fabric out of the box only to find more of it inside.
It only took a few seconds and then she understood.
“Oh.”
Connor had gotten her hijabs for her birthday. He’d gotten her a pashmina and expensive hijabs. She could tell they weren’t cheap just by the look of them.
“Connor, you didn’t have to do this,” she said. She sounded on the verge of tears and felt it too.
“I know,” he said. When she looked up at him, Connor was already looking at her with a smile tucked in the corner of his mouth. “I felt really bad about that day, though. And I didn’t know if I should give this with the Christmas stuff in front of everyone, so I just. You know.” He took the rest of them out of the box and lined them neatly on the bed. “You like them?”
“Yes,” she laughed. Three of the hijabs were in neutral tones, two with floral prints, and one striped pashmina. “How did you—?” She didn’t even know how to form a complete sentence.
“My mom and sister helped. I told them what happened and my sister has friends who know about this stuff, so they told me where I could get good ones. Mom and Sam picked them out. Oh!” He grabbed for the bag and pulled out a much smaller box. Inside was a flash of gold and copper before Connor put the contents of the box on the bed. “Sam said these are nice.”
They were hijab magnets. Zahra didn’t use them because they were more pricey than her pins and she had to bite down on her lip to keep from actually crying. When Connor walked in on her drying her hair all those weeks ago, she hadn’t expected this to be the result of it. Her mother had been worried when Zahra told her she was going to wear a hijab now. It was a commitment and it wasn’t harmless and her mom had every reason to be worried, despite Zahra’s assurances. But despite her own assurances to her mother, even Zahra was nervous at times when she stepped outside in a hijab. One wrong encounter with one wrong person would be all it took for her life to go off the rails and she knew it.
Tears blurred her vision when she looked up at Connor and she saw his smile waver. She threw her arms around his shoulders in an awkward hug over the box and the bag and, with her heart in her throat, whispered, “Thank you. So much.”
She felt that warmth inside her, an all-encompassing affection for her friends. She hadn’t expected to bond with Connor like this when they all first moved in together. She hadn’t known him before all this and now, with his arms around her, she couldn’t imagine it any other way.
☾☽
Zahra’s mother worried about her. It was only natural, she said. Of course she would worry about her daughter. But Khalida Jamal worried about her daughter in ways she hadn’t before Zahra went off to college. I don’t see you every day, her mother said. Your father feels your absence, she said. I miss you, jaani, she said. Are you taking care of yourself, she said. Do you need me to bring you food, she said. I will send you biryani with Cookie, she said. She tiptoed around the thing she wanted to say. Zahra knew what her mother wanted to say was, Is anyone giving you any trouble? Do you feel safe?
That wasn’t something they’d always discussed. Before she started wearing a hijab, there was nothing distinctive about Zahra that screamed Muslim. Now it was the first thing people noticed about her. She knew how to stand her ground, but the underlying fear was always there—especially for Khalida. For Muslims, even places like Boston, Massachusetts could sometimes be deadly at worst and humiliating at best.
It happened during the second semester of Zahra’s freshman year.
She was in the dining hall with Jeny, Theo, and Connor. Zahra didn’t usually eat the meals provided by school because they weren’t always halal. There were only so many vegetarian options that a girl could handle. Sometimes she just wanted chicken on her pizza, but she liked joining her friends anyway. They’d put their things down at a table first and then get in line. This Wednesday afternoon, Zahra helped herself to a plate of fruit and a smoothie. She’d had a good breakfast, but two back to back classes were enough to drain the life out of her. Connor’s tray held a sad excuse for a poke bowl and Theo had gotten himself a salad. Jeny, bless her, had picked mashed potatoes and pizza.
They were almost back to their seats when they saw the boy put down Zahra’s hydro flask and screw the top of his silver flask back into place. Her blood instantly chilled, footsteps halting mid-stride. She knew what he’d done. Nausea crawled up her stomach and settled in her chest, sweat collecting on her palms. Shame and anger warred in her throat and she blinked back frustrated tears. Jeny turned back to look at with knitted brows and Connor’s eyes looked her up and down before scanning the room.
“What’s wrong?” Theo asked.
Zahra couldn’t speak. Her mouth was dry and her breaths came in shallow gasps as the boy sat back in his chair, raised his head and found her eyes.
Connor touched her elbow.
Jeny moved and blocked her line of sight. “What is it?”
Take up space, her father had told her countless times. Be loud. Be a nightmare. Make yourself heard.
Zahra didn’t look away from the boy when she said, “He poured in alcohol in my water.”
“Motherfucker—”
Zahra didn’t wait for Connor to finish. She walked to their table and put her tray down without breaking eye contact with the boy. He had tawny eyes and orange hair and there was a brown stain on his red Boston University shirt. He leaned back in his chair and stared up at Zahra with a smirk pooling at his mouth. She didn’t know the boy, but she knew his body language. She was intimately familiar with people like him. His two friends watched with rapt attention.
Be a nightmare, her father’s voice reminded her.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
He feigned confusion. “Done what, babe?”
Something vicious coiled inside her at the taunt curled around the endearment. The temptation to send his teeth flying out of his mouth was overwhelming but Zahra bared her own at him. “Hey y’all,” she said, voice loud without yelling. The people closest to them turned at her voice. “This motherfucker just poured alcohol in my hydro flask.” The cocky smirk wavered. “He poured in alcohol in a hijabi Muslim’s hydro flask.” She knew people were listening and she knew this nameless piece of shit was scrambling to redeem himself.
“I didn’t do that,” he said, his words unconvincing. “Why would I do that?”
“Put the flask on the table, honey.”
She hoped her voice was saccharine. She hoped it attracted hornets. The silver flask had disappeared in his pocket or elsewhere under the table. It didn’t really matter. Zahra showed him her teeth again.
“Did you know that Philip from the registrar is best friends with my dad? Did you know I have sleepovers with his daughter?”
Blood drained from the boy’s face.
Be a nightmare.
“Did you know my aunt is a lawyer? I can have her drag your ass to court so many times you’ll forget the inside of your own home.”
The boy’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Zahra smiled. She grabbed the hydro flask in one hand and slung her bag over a shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, I believe this is evidence. I’m going to take this up to Phil and get your miserable, bigoted ass thrown out of this place. But first—” With her free hand, she took out her phone and took a picture of the three boys.
“Hey, I didn’t consent to that,” the sandy haired one spoke up when he realized what she’d done.
Zahra shrugged. “And I didn’t consent to having alcohol poured in my drink, but I guess we all have problems. Eat shit, colonizer.”
She didn’t wait for them to respond. She picked up the tray and turned to her friends, who were all looking at her with expressions that ranged from confusion to amazement to unrestrained anger. There was a storm brewing in Connor’s eyes and Theo had one hand wrapped around Jeny’s arm. He was holding her back, Zahra realized.
“I’ll catch up with y’all later? I need to go and tell Phil about this.”
Theo nodded, but it was Connor who answered. “I’m coming with you.”
“I’m fine,” Zahra assured him. She didn't know if she’d be fine later, but that wasn’t for now. “Eat your lunch.”
“I’m not hungry,” Connor said.
One thing Zahra’s parents had taught her was not to turn away people who loved her. She knew she was lucky to have found her friends at this place, that they cared about her so deeply and selflessly. She knew most people wouldn’t offer what Connor was offering, so she nodded. When they turned to leave, Zahra realized the other boys were already gone. Cowards.
As they walked towards the registrar’s office, Connor nudged her shoulder. “You wanna talk about it?”
Zahra shook her head and dangled the hydro flask in front of them. “Just thinking that I’d probably burn this thing afterwards if it wasn't a gift from my brother.”
“I’m sure your brother would understand.”
“Hmm, I’m not so sure he’d be very understanding. He’d probably try to choke the guy out.”
Connor laughed, but it was a short thing. “Can you blame him? I nearly lost it back there too.”
Zahra hooked her elbow through his and leaned her head against his arm. “Thanks, you know. For all of it.”
The sun hung high in a clear blue sky and patches of forgotten snow littered the campus.
“Anything for you, m’lady,” Connor said in a voice an octave lower and they both laughed.
That was the moment Zahra realized with a surge of warmth in her chest that the doe-eyed boy steadying her, walking in sync with her, was her best friend.
☾☽
Zahra didn’t see it coming when Theo said to her, “You know he likes you, right?”
The he in question was Connor, who had just offered to go down to the first floor and get Zahra a drink.
The three of them were tucked away in a far corner of the library in an attempt to get some studying done. Zahra and Connor could help each other because they had the same professor, but Theo was on his own. They’d been there a while and a few minutes ago Zahra had mentioned craving a Pink Drink, a mindless complaint tumbling from her tongue as her eyes glossed over theoretical jargon. But she didn’t want to go downstairs just for a drink. She’d whined again and Connor had laid his textbook flat on the table.
“I’ll grab you one,” he’d said.
Zahra felt confusion knit into her features as she looked up at Theo. “Yeah, I’d hope so. We’re friends.”
Of course Connor liked her. It would’ve been awkward if he for some reason didn’t like her and she didn’t know about it.
Theo tilted his head to one side. His eyebrows raised in a Seriously? gesture behind heavy glasses. “No, you helpless, oblivious saint of a girl. He likes you.”
And it took more than a moment for that to process. Zahra liked to think she was an observant person. She knew there was something going on between Mara and Skylar, though she hadn’t yet mentioned it to anyone else. It was the way Mara laughed at Skylar’s jokes before anyone else and the way Skylar went out of her way to do things for Mara. They disappeared off to places together without the rest of them and no one said anything about it. They came back and meshed with the group without a hitch, but Zahra had a feeling. They were always in a bubble that no one else was allowed in. They had eyes only for each other.
Zahra and Connor were not in a bubble. They were friends, just like Zahra and Theo.
There was a tap on Zahra’s left shoulder and then Connor slipped into his chair on her right, placing her drink on the table.
Warmth spread across her chest, followed by something unfamiliar, something she didn’t welcome as memories of the past few months played in front of her: Connor ordering food for the group and taking special care to get something halal every time; Connor spending a ridiculous amount of money on hijabs to apologize for something Zahra wasn’t even angry about; Connor admitting he talked to his mom and sister about it; Connor staying up late to watch Netflix with her when the rest of their friends were asleep; Connor driving her around in his Jeep and letting her pick the music; Connor fighting back a storm of emotions when someone poured alcohol in her hydro flask; Connor choosing her to be his partner when they played doubles; Connor always having her back no matter what; Connor turning down the pretty girl who flirted with him all night last month.
Zahra and Connor were in a bubble. Connor had eyes only for her.
Connor’s knee nudged hers and when she realized she’d been staring at him. “What?” he asked.
Zahra blinked. Her mouth was dry. “Nothing.” She grabbed for the drink and said, “Thanks.” And then, when Connor turned back to his book: “I can pay you back for it.”
This time Connor looked at her with openly amused confusion. “Yes, Zahra, please, pay me back the five dollars I just spent,” he chuckled.
She knew she sounded odd offering to reimburse him for the measly five-something dollars, given that they all knew Connor was pretty well off. Out of all of them, he was the rich one—that’s why he sometimes paid for takeout instead of them all splitting it. He had the means to treat his friends and he didn’t shy away from it.
Theo kicked her foot under the table and she flashed him a look that she hoped said, Shut it.
The week following that evening was unsteady. Zahra was thrown off-kilter with the newfound knowledge of Connor’s feelings for her. He didn’t do anything differently. He still walked with her to class and they still watched The Silence of the Lambs together. He still went on a tirade about the parallels between Will Graham and Clarice Starling. He still texted her odd, out of context things he’d heard in a class or elsewhere on campus.
He was still the same Connor. But he also wasn’t.
Now that she knew how he felt about her, at least to some extent, she couldn’t not be aware of the special attention he gave her. Whenever he was with her, he always scoured the area around them. When Zahra asked him about it, he said he never wanted anything like the dining hall incident happening again. When all of them watched Point Break together, Connor sat on the plush rug with his back against the couch. He said it was comfortable and halfway through the movie his head was leaning against Zahra’s folded knees. Because she was still Zahra and he was still Connor, her hand slipped into his hair, fingers lost in his curls. He fell asleep that way and no one said anything about it. Riley kicked him awake when the movie ended.
It was two weeks later when Zahra heard the words from Connor himself. She’d woken up in the middle of the night after an unsettling dream and stepped out of her room, freezing at the sound of Connor saying her name. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she wanted to know why someone was talking about her at this time. The other person speaking was Theo, which wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was Connor awake and talking in the dead of the night.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be like that,” Connor was saying, his voice hushed and rushed. “The two of them—well, mostly Mara— they’re more intense than Zahra is. They get each other, I think, and she gets me, but I don’t think we’ll ever be more.”
“Why not?” Theo asked. Zahra could picture him curled up on one end of the couch, hugging a cushion to his chest. He was probably still wearing his glasses. “Have you said anything to her?”
“No. But I know her. She doesn’t see me like that.” Connor let out a quiet chuckle. “I’ve been friendzoned from day one, man. And, you know, naturally, I’ve also been a fool for her since day one. Just my luck.”
Zahra slid down against the wall, holding her knees close to her chest. The floor was cool under her bare feet and the wall was no warmer. Connor sounded different than he normally did. There was a somber edge to his voice, like a summer night suddenly going starless. The cheer she’d always come to expect from him wasn’t there.
She didn’t want their relationship to change. She didn’t think she could live through losing a friend like Connor. She thought back to all the times he’d been the best friend she could ask for and she dreaded the thought of that slipping away.
Zahra didn’t know if she’d zoned out and missed part of the conversation or if the boys had just stopped talking. After a block of silence she heard Theo say, “Maybe it’ll pass. You’ll get over it.”
Connor's hollow chuckle followed. “Maybe. But I don’t think she’s something you get over it.”
And that chipped at Zahra’s heart. She didn’t want to be the reason Connor was hurting, but she didn’t know how to fix it. She pressed her forehead to the tops of her knees and closed her eyes, trying to think of just what she could say to him. There wasn’t anything she could offer him that would make him feel better. She loved him, but love only went so far. She couldn’t be what he needed.
Muffled footsteps moved down the hall towards her and Zahra looked up just in time to see Connor sit down next to her.
“Were you sleepwalking?” he asked. There was laughter in his voice, maybe because he really did think she’d been sleepwalking. She didn’t do that, though.
“I had a weird dream,” she told him. He was mirroring Zahra: legs folded up to his chest, arms around his knees, cheek atop his kneecaps to face her. She didn’t know why it made her want to cry. Guilt pooled in her stomach and she said, “I heard you guys talking. I’m sorry.”
Connor’s face was awash in the dim light that filtered in from the end of the hall. His disheveled hair stuck up in odd places and Zahra watched as the smile fell from his face. A shadow flitted across his features before his mouth slanted in the least Connor-like grimace. “Are you freaked out? It’s not weird, right? I don’t wanna make it weird.”
Zahra wasn’t freaked out, but she did feel inexplicably guilty. “Why me?” she asked.
A crease appeared between Connor’s eyebrows. “Have you seen you?”
That cracked the tension in the air. A laugh zipped out of Zahra and she made a show of flipping her hair back, even though it was all under her scarf. “I know I’m hot, duh. That’s not what I meant.”
Connor rolled his eyes and got to his feet, then held his hand out to her. She took it, letting him pull her up. “You’re one of the best people I know, that’s why,” Connor said. “And you’re my best friend. I think it was inevitable.”
Whatever Zahra might have said slipped away from her. She thought that word a lot. Inevitable. That was often how she thought of her friends—something inevitable, something fated. Somehow written into the fabric of each other’s lives. She wound her arms around Connor’s waist and said, “You’re my best friend.”
“As I should be.” He patted the back of her head twice and stepped back. “We can talk more about this later. Or not. You should get some sleep.”
“You should get some sleep.”
Connor left her with a smile hanging from his mouth and Zahra grabbed a pouch of Capri Sun on her way to the couch. Sure enough, Theo was still there. He had his headphones on and laptop in his lap. When Zahra sat next to him, he didn’t ask about Connor. Instead, he disconnected his earbuds and turned up the volume just enough so they could both hear without disturbing anyone else. They watched acrylic pour videos until Zahra fell asleep to the sound of soothing music, her friend a familiar and comforting warmth next to her.
written: @rosesau | graphic: @matchingbees | wc: 5100 | genre: thriller | cw: murder, mentions of abuse & sexual assult
summary: a girl who loves others to death and men who never think death might come knocking.
══════════════════
What it came down to was this: she would do it again.
Spilling a man’s blood is a mortal sin, but she was damned anyway. She would do it again.
✞
Mara Latterman didn’t like chemistry. She hated every minute of the advanced placement class in high school because the teacher was an ass, but she was good at it. Numbers and formulas made sense to her and she enjoyed seeing the color changes in labs. She declared herself a double major in chemistry and criminal justice when she got accepted to Boston University. It only seemed logical at the time. She would need it.
She didn’t decide when applying to college that she would kill him. That decision wasn’t made until much later.
When she was nine years old, she saw her father hit her mother. He struck her across the face so hard that his rings drew blood on her skin. Mara couldn’t stop kissing the bandaged wound that night. Days later, when her father was screwing around with something on the roof in the backyard, standing on top of a ladder, Mara kicked it out from under him. If the saw hadn’t shredded Jared Latterman’s carotid, she would have lathered the blood on her hands and smeared it on his cheek the way her mother had bled.
But she didn’t decide to kill Jason until much, much later.
Jason was a friend. They became friends at orientation and that should’ve been it. He should have faded from memory like the other faces from her orientation days, but she saw him again. He was in her Calculus class and he was funny in a boyish way. She should have known from the blond hair and blue eyes that he couldn’t be trusted. Not every white man is atrocious, but Mara had a general dislike of them for many reasons — starting with her own father. And Jason’s eyes, they weren’t like hers. He had the kind of blue that people wrote sonnets about, full of warm skies and precious sapphires. Mara’s blue eyes weren’t that. They were blue like coldest corners of the oceans, hypothermia and eventual death. They were her father’s. That’s why she wore brown contacts. She didn’t inherit her father’s skin and for that she sent up occasional gratitude.
But Jason. She should have known better than to trust a white man who looked like him.
The thing about Mara was that she wasn’t whole, not the way a person should be. After she let her father die, something changed on a fundamental level. A shadow that loomed over her even on the brightest days. She blamed her father for everything, but part of her wondered if he was the only one who deserved it. She didn’t feel guilty about what happened to him, but sometimes she wondered. When the shadow grew heavy on darker days, she wondered: why didn’t her mother do anything? Why did it have to be Mara who put a stop to things? Mara, a child. Why did her mother stay with a man who hurt her? Why did she marry a man like her father?
She didn’t want to shift blame. She didn't know everything about her parents’ relationship, but she knew Jared was the villain in that story. But he wasn’t all bad, Mara thought sometimes and she hated herself for it. But it was also the truth. Her father never hurt her. He never raised his voice with her. He loved her, probably. She didn’t remember too much from before the ladder incident, but she knew he probably loved her. He was good to her. So she didn’t feel guilty about killing him for hurting her mother, but sometimes she felt bad that she had to be the one to do it.
Wasn’t it her mother’s job to protect her? Why had their roles been reversed? Why had she become her mother’s savior?
She would do it again, though. She knew that.
Mara loved her mother so much that the weight of it was paralyzing at times. Her relationship with Alina Latterman was forged in love and loyalty, a fine line of resentment threaded through it that she didn’t know what to do with. She tucked it away in her stomach, hoping the acidity would dissolve it.
Jason was like her father. He was good when Mara befriended him. He was almost as good at Calculus as Mara was, but not quite. He was good at making people laugh. He was good at being there when someone needed him, whether it was to hold a door open for a stranger or hotwire a car with Mara. They did that a few times. She didn’t have a car when she moved to Boston. Hell, she didn’t even have a license before she started college. She’d taken the test twice and failed each time and she didn’t really care. She prefered public transport. It was unreliable and unpredictable even with all its rigid schedules and she loved it.
But Jason. He indulged her impulses. She stole cars and he sat in the passenger seat and the two of them sped down the interstate with wind breaking through their hair. She shouldn’t have, but she kissed him one of those nights. With the taste of beer clinging to his lips, it wasn’t the best kiss she’d had but it was enough right then. She was drunk and the moon was watching and, just right then, it was fine that she’d kissed him. He’d laughed into her mouth. He was growing on her.
Sometimes they invited other people. Mara knew Skylar from the on-campus knitting club. Skylar was interesting. She looked interesting. Her skin was so pale she may as well have been translucent and the tips of her short platinum blond hair were dyed a vibrant rainbow. She wore clashing patterns and bold colors and had three piercings in her nose. She was gay. Mara wasn’t one to stereotype, but she knew how to spot one of her own. Skylar was definitely not straight. She knit Mara an utterly atrocious blue and brown cardigan for Christmas, even though Mara didn’t really celebrate the holiday. She wore it, though, when she spent the winter break with her mother’s side of the family. Mara wore her present on Christmas day and sent pictures to Skylar.
Mara liked her. She was funny in an unintentional way, in a way that was so different from Jason. Her sense of humor was drier than the Sahara and sometimes Mara played a private game to see how long it took for other people to laugh at her jokes. Sometimes they chuckled nervously — confusedly — and Mara would wink at Skylar because she got it. Her own humor was fucked up enough that she didn’t have trouble keeping up with someone else’s.
Mara liked Skylar’s friends, too. Jeny, Shannon, Riley, Connor, Theo, and Zahra. Over time, they became her friends. Instead of hotwiring cars with Jason, she drove down the highway in Connor’s red hot Jeep Wrangler on Friday nights. They spent their Wednesday breaks at the arcade and sometimes Mara slept in their suite, usually in Skylar’s bed. She had a single person room and most of the time she loved it, but sometimes she liked the presence of other people around her. Sometimes it was nice to have someone in bed with her. Sometimes she went to the tennis court with Skylar and Riley and watched them roller skate, with the wiry fence at her back and an empty can of Red Bull by her side. Lorde’s Tennis Court blared from Riley’s bluetooth speakers. Sometimes she and Skylar went to the Mount Auburn Cemetery. Skylar had a cousin there and Mara had no one, so they went together and sat in silence — Skylar with a golden cross hanging from her neck and Mara with the moon weighing on her throat.
Jason didn’t tag along often. The more time she spent with Skylar and the rest of them, the less Jason was around. He had his friends, but they were the macho jock sort. Mara only really liked one of them — the tall, dark haired girl named Jolynn. She went by Lynn and always had a smile around her eyes, an aura of light trailing after her wherever she went. But her schedule didn’t align with Mara’s so they rarely saw each other. Jason and Mara’s friendship was confined to the few classes they shared and text messages, and Mara didn’t mind it. But she hated texting him. His dry Hahaha’s and No way’s became insufferable. His personality was barely tolerable as it was and keeping up with boring words wasn’t what Mara signed up for. So she didn’t particularly care that she saw little of him.
Her mind was more preoccupied with Skylar. She paid attention to Mara the same way Mara watched her. She asked about Mara’s eyes once, when they were at the cemetery. It was one of those days when the sun was hanging high, curtained by swatches of ivory in the sky. Skylar was reading Anne Sexton’s Transformations and Mara was on her back finding stories in the clouds.
“Why do you wear them?” Skylar asked without preamble. When Mara looked at her, she pointed with her frayed book at Mara’s face. “The contacts. I can see the real color underneath, you know.”
It wasn’t a secret and Mara knew some people could probably tell if they looked closely, but she never expected them to ask. Most people never looked close enough and knowing that Skylar did, knowing that Skylar waited for a quiet moment to ask about it, meant something.
“I don’t like the real color,” Mara said.
“Why not?”
She didn’t see a reason to lie. “They’re my father’s eyes. I’d rather not see him every time I look in a mirror.”
Skylar knew Mara’s father was dead, but she didn’t pry for details. There were moments when Mara wanted to tell her, when she wanted to whisper between them, I killed him. Just to see what Skylar would do. She was always calm. Always in control. Mara wanted to see it slip away sometimes. So she sat up and swiped out the contact from her right eye. Skylar watched, quietly, as Mara flicked the lens from her finger, watched it disappear in the grass.
There was a warm buzz in the air.
Skylar put down her book and kneeled closer to Mara, her dark brown eyes unwavering from Mara’s cold blue one.
“I think they’re pretty,” Skylar said. She was close enough that Mara could see the dotting of freckles across her nose. The ring in her nose caught the sun and her hair was closer to white than yellow. Mara absently curled a finger in it. Skylar smelled like Christmas. It was late March, but the scent of vanilla cookies clung to her like always. Mara could inhale it.
She opened her mouth. Watched Skylar lean a little closer.
“I killed him,” Mara said.
It took one, two, three seconds before Skylar’s face twisted in confusion. Another five seconds before she spoke. “Who?”
“Jared. My father.”
Skylar’s hand was touching Mara’s ankle.
“Why?” she asked.
Mara looked for something in Skylar’s eyes, anything that spelled out fear and disgust. She only saw open curiosity. “He was hitting my mom,” she said. “I was nine.”
Skylar’s hand moved to her leg, an anchor. Mara didn’t know what people said after a confession like that. There was no protocol for it. She braced herself for more questions, cold judgment, barely concealed revulsion. Anything. Skylar was a friend, but they had known each other less than a year. It would make sense for her to run from someone who admitted to murder. Instead, Skylar’s arms wound around Mara and it sent them both tumbling down.
Skylar’s arms around Mara’s neck, Skylar on top of Mara, Mara’s arms around Skylar’s waist. The glide of Skylar’s cross on Mara’s chest. With the sun above them and the green Earth below, Skylar’s silence said more than any words could have. Then she moved and her mouth was at Mara’s jaw.
“I still love you,” she said.
Mara tucked the words away somewhere safe. She would come back to them later.
✞
Things didn’t change after that.
They didn’t talk about Jared Latterman and they didn’t talk about Mara’s eyes. Mara continued wearing brown contacts and no one asked why they were so strange under certain lighting. She sat at the edge of the tennis court and watched her friends skate around. She spent odd nights in their suite and sometimes fell asleep on the couch, only to wake up to Zahra curled up on the other end. Theo lent her his extra blankets and Shannon made pizza sometimes. She and Jeny were the only ones with any decent culinary skills. Connor sometimes paid them.
Jason had been a cursory thought for Mara for a while until the morning of April 18th. They had one class together this semester, but Mara deliberately sat away from him. Shannon was in the class and Mara preferred to sit with her near the front, a good distance away from Jason sitting by the window in the back corner. He still made his Jason jokes before class started and he still texted her from time to time, but Mara couldn’t be paid to entertain him more than what was absolutely necessary for her. Over time, his minimal appeal had diminished.
The indifference bled into red hot hatred when she woke up on Saturday to three missed calls and seven text messages from Skylar. All time stamped after midnight. Mara had been blissed out unconscious by then and she kept her ringer off at all times, so it wasn’t totally strange to have notifications waiting for her in the morning. But Skylar knew Mara was feeling under the weather. That’s why she hadn’t gone with them to the party.
12:37 AM: hey can i some crash in your room
12:39 AM: are you awake
12:44 AM: i'm sorry i know this is late you might be asleep but
12:45 AM: if you're not then can i come over
12:51 AM: mara
1:07 AM: okay i’ll see you later
1:07 AM: love u feel better
Waking up to missed texts wasn’t unusual, but texts like that from Skylar were unheard of. They didn’t come to Mara’s room often. When they did, it was only for a few minutes to grab something she needed because it wasn’t big enough for all of them. The suite was better. But this morning something was wrong. Mara knew it before she even pressed the call button by Skylar’s name and then hung up. She only put in her contacts before heading out. When she knocked on Skylar’s door, she didn’t know what to expect on the other side of it and dread swam under her skin.
Theo greeted her. There was nothing different about him. The same round glasses and the same fuzzy pajamas that Mara had grown used to in the last several months. The same sleepiness that always made him especially soft in the mornings before he had his coffee. She passed by Connor asleep on the couch. That was odd. He never slept on the couch. When she made it to Skylar and Riley’s room, something twisted in her gut. The shadow that often loomed near her lurched and settled directly over her.
Riley wasn’t there. She had gone home for the weekend for her brother’s birthday and Skylar was asleep alone in their room. Mara didn’t think before she shut the door. She crawled under the duvet behind Skylar and didn’t bother leaving empty space between them. Skylar wasn’t a small person, but she looked small now and Mara didn’t like it. She put an arm around Skylar and pulled her closer. Skylar’s bare legs fit under Mara’s clothed ones. There was a bruise on her neck. Mara closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at it. Skylar didn’t smell like Christmas. She smelled dark. Wrong. There was nothing familiar about the curve of her body away from Mara’s.
The shadow grew gnarly.
She didn’t know how long she stayed in bed with Skylar, but she didn’t fall asleep. When Skylar shifted in her arms and turned to face Mara, she was still awake. There was a mark on the other side of her neck too. Dark red seeping into blood purple.
“You texted. What happened?”
“Jason kissed me.”
Mara waited for more. She knew there was more. Skylar closed her eyes and inhaled. Slowly. A hand curled into the front of Mara’s shirt. Mara wasn’t a firm believer of God, but moments like these made her reconsider. Skylar’s cross hung between them and Mara touched it with one finger. This was sacred to Skylar. The thought made reverence thrum with her pulse.
“We had sex,” Skylar said. She didn’t open her eyes. “Or, yeah. He sort of started it because he was wasted. Like absolutely plastered. And I didn’t, like, stop it. At first. It was just a kiss.” She tucked her chin into her chest and Mara bit the inside of her cheeks.
She closed her hand around the cross.
Skylar didn’t say anything else.
Mara tugged on the cross. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” Skylar looked at her. “Let me see your eyes.”
“No. Tell me what happened.”
“I want to see you.” Skylar’s grip on her tightened infinitesimally. “Please.”
They didn’t do this. Skylar didn’t ask for things like this. She wasn’t the kind to text impulsively in the middle of the night or ask for things she knew crossed a clearly marked line. But no one had ever asked to see Mara, either, and it was a double edged knife. Skylar wasn’t supposed to see Mara and Mara didn’t want to hide. She had already shown herself under a naked sky.
For the second time in a month, she took out her contacts for Skylar. This time she removed both.
“You’re seeing a dead man’s eyes,” she told Skylar. Jared Latterman was long dead but he left his ghost alive in someone else. Parasite through and through.
“I’m seeing you,” Skylar said.
“What happened with Jason?”
Skylar’s hand was still twisted in Mara’s shirt. “I didn’t want to fuck him. I told him I didn’t want to fuck him, but he was drunk out of his mind and not really listening. So we did it in Michael’s bathroom and he said something about you.” Her foot skimmed Mara’s ankle. “He said something about you. That I stole you away even though he was your friend first.”
Mara wasn’t listening. That was the moment she decided she would kill Jason.
She wasn’t nine years old anymore. Her mind was running combinations of arsenic and carbon monoxide and cyanide. Her father’s gun was still at the house. Jason being from a well off family and living in his own apartment didn’t hurt her. Classes ended in two weeks. That gave her plenty of time.
Skylar’s hand was on her face. “Say something.”
Mara didn’t know what was written in her eyes. She hated the windows-to-the-soul bullshit. “Jason is not my friend,” she said. She pressed a thumb to Skylar’s neck and covered the hickey. Mara pulled her closer. “You are.”
She tucked away the other iteration of her words. You are mine. She would come back to them later. She opened the safe with Skylar’s words for her.
“I love you.”
✞
Mara invited Jason to go camping with her.
She hated camping. Something about the woods at night and the lack of plumbing made her skin crawl. Jason, though, was a man. He was all about camping. He was a little surprised to hear from Mara after the stilted silence between them, but he was game to go camping. She asked him right after exams were over because she didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of it all during exam season. She wouldn’t sabotage her academic record for the sake of a boy.
They agreed to meet at Jason’s place first. He offered to pick her up, but Mara was not going to sit in a car with someone whose life she would be ending soon. The fewer things connecting him to her, the better. She brought cheap beer with her — a case of Budweiser because she had already spent far too much money acquiring everything else she needed to deal with him. Getting roofies wasn’t difficult, but hydrofluoric acid wasn’t found lying around. She had to work for that. She had killed a man before, but planning a murder wasn’t part of her skillset — until now.
Jason let her into his apartment without question. He greeted her with a hug that felt like slime on her skin and made her want to dislodge his shoulder from its socket. His apartment was boyish. It wasn’t extravagant by any means and there were posters of some boy-things she didn’t care for. Above the couch hung a portrait of Alexander Hamilton. She didn’t ask about it. Jason had a roommate, it turned out, but he had already gone back home to his family.
It was just Jason and Mara.
She wanted this to be over with. She wasn’t really going camping with him.
They sipped their beers by the dusty balcony and Jason told her about his plans for the summer. His older brother was getting married in June and some cousin was ready to give birth any day. Mara didn’t really care. If it were anyone else, she would have. If Jason were anyone else, she would have asked if he liked his brother’s fiancée and what he would name his own kids. But it was Jason. And all Mara saw were the bruises on Skylar’s neck, the fingerprints on pale her ribs.
She asked him for a glass of water. “I’m a lightweight,” she told him. “Gotta pace myself.”
When he turned away, she dropped the white pill in his beer. Mara was delighted by poetic irony.
Jason returned with water and drank his drugged alcohol.
Mara walked them back inside the living room.
It didn’t take long for Jason to be completely useless after that, but the minutes crawled by like hours. Quarter of an hour later, Mara had him gagged with a T-shirt she found. It was pitying to see him like that. Mara wasn’t typically a vindictive person. She hadn’t come here with the intent to torture Jason, but seeing him lay there pathetically just made her think about Skylar. Every time she blinked, the image of Skylar’s skin dotted with his marks flashed red hot behind her eyelids.
“He was drunk out of his mind and not really listening.”
Jason was essentially paralyzed when Mara took out the small bottle of hydrofluoric acid. There was no awareness in his glassy blue eyes. For once, his eyes reminded Mara of her own: hypothermia and eventual death. She wondered if Jason could sense the Grim Reaper approaching.
“My father named me Mara,” she told him. She had thought about this a lot in the years following Jared’s death. “I don’t know why anyone would name their child Mara. It means bitter. But I’ve also read that the bitterness implies strength borne of spite.”
She poured droplets of the acid on Jason’s hands. She didn’t have to wait before his skin pinkened.
“My mom’s dad is from India,” she said. “I can’t really speak Hindi very well, but I know Mara isn’t a name in it. Mara is a verb. A conjugated form of to hit or to kill. Fitting, don’t you think? I was the thing that killed him.”
It was Jared’s anger and carelessness that killed him, but semantics weren’t important right now. Mara kicked the ladder out from under his feet.
She let acid trail an S on his arm. Jason slurred a sound and his body jerked then stilled. Mara knelt by the couch.
“I slipped a roofie in your drink. For Skylar. I bet you’re wishing you’d never touched her.” She touched a gloved finger to Jason’s ruined skin and pressed down hard. She hoped he felt every burn through the drugged haze. “You wanted me, right? She told me. Here I am, your psychopathic crush.” The smell of the acid irritated her nose. “But here’s the thing, Jason. I’m not Lorde. I’m not blowing all my friendships to sit in hell with you.”
She unbuttoned his shirt carefully.
“I was going to cut you open and bleed you out, Jason. Have you ever been to Wells State Park? I had a spot picked out for you there. Mother Earth would have kept you warm. But I really cannot be fucked to stay with you for that long, no offense. I’m sick of looking at your face.”
Mara pulled out the two knives she had brought along. She had no experience with maiming human beings and she was not particularly thrilled about the prospect of adding it to her repertoire, but as she looked at Jason’s ice-blue eyes and his ruined fingers that violated Skylar, she felt no guilt. It was her father all over again. Neither had touched her. Neither had laid a hand on her. But the women they hurt had laid claim on Mara’s heart. She gave all of herself to those she loved. There was no guilt. Just the sour taste of vindication in her gut.
Cutting into human flesh was uncomfortable. She had briefly considered a pre-med track for college, but the thought was gone as soon as it appeared. Mara was not made to put people back together after cutting them open. She was not a healer. She dug the knife into Jason’s chest and, as the blade cut him open and blood spilled out, thought that she would be a vegetarian after this. The smell of his blood was rank. Mara held her breath when she made three cuts in a way she hoped was precise.
First to the side of his pectoral muscle to sever the cephalic vein.
Second down his abdomen.
“Give my regards to your scummy ancestors for me.”
Third across his carotid.
There was a lot of blood. Mara thought she might be sick. When she left, she took the beer with her and left nothing but a decaying body behind.
✞
Mara went back to Vermont that day. She wanted to see Skylar first, but she needed to be as far from Boston as possible.
The next morning, news of Jason Christopher Miller’s death was everywhere. Mara woke up to email notifications from Boston University and more texts than she cared for. Only one caught her eye.
7:36 AM: do you know?
Mara FaceTimed her. It didn’t go through and Mara stared at the ceiling of her childhood bedroom as she called Skylar again. Green plastic stars stared back at her. Her father had put them there years ago and once upon a time she had enjoyed looking at them. When the room was dark, they blinked at her and she pretended she could talk to them. Now, with the morning light filtering through the window, they were dull and silent.
Skylar’s face filled the screen.
“Hi,” he said.
Mara looked her fill. She hadn’t seen Skylar in three days since she went back home to Springfield. She looked like she had already been awake for hours. Her hair had grown out a bit over the last couple of months and was pulled back in a tragic bun that left most of it hanging out. The rainbow had bled out of it a while ago and she hadn’t re-dyed it yet. The marks on her neck were long gone. The golden cross sat in the hollow of her throat and Mara would touch it again if she could.
“Was it you?” The unsaid words were in Skylar’s eyes. They were still so warm. Mara knew what answer she was hoping for and what answer she was expecting, and her eyes were still warm. She hadn’t put in her contacts yet, so she wondered what Skylar saw in hers.
“I’m seeing you,” she had said. Mara wanted to ask what she was seeing now.
“Will you go to the funeral?” she asked.
Skylar put a hand over her mouth. Seconds and minutes ticked by. Mara heard her mother moving about the kitchen. She watched a tear slip down Skylar’s cheek and she hated being the reason for it. She hated that she had to do something that made Skylar look like that, even if it was for Skylar.
“Why?” Skylar asked.
“You told me what he did.”
“Yeah, but you don’t—Jesus, Mara. You weren’t supposed to—”
Mara thought it funny that Skylar couldn’t even utter the words when she had easily admitted to being raped. Had basically spoken the words into Mara’s mouth.
“But I did,” Mara said. “Will you go to the funeral?”
Skylar blinked. “Yes. I think I... yes. Yeah.”
“Me too. He wouldn’t want me there, so I will.”
“Mara—”
“I miss you.”
That wasn’t a confession Mara made lightly to anyone. She didn’t have many people to miss. But she missed Skylar and Theo and the rest of them. She missed Skylar’s Christmas perfume even though she wasn’t a believer. It had been three days and she missed being in Skylar’s bed.
“What if they find out it was you?”
“I don’t care. I was careful.” Mara rolled over in her bed. “I miss you.”
The knives were buried in her backyard. She had poured the beer down several different toilets and the cans were tossed across state lines. The acid had gone down the sink at a rest stop on the highway.
She watched as Skylar’s eyes turned molten. “Come see me,” she said. “I have an extra bed.”
“I don’t want an extra bed.”
“Okay. Just come.”
She hadn’t touched Jason’s blood, but she still felt it on her skin. She focused on Skylar and opened that safe with the words just for them.
“I love you,” she said. “He was wrong. About everything. You’re mine.”
She saw Skylar hold the cross between her thumb and forefinger. It looked right in her hand. A connection to the divine, whatever that may be. In her Skylar’s hand, it felt right.
“Hurry up,” Skylar said.
Mara knew she would do it again. Mortal sin or not, Mara would kill again for Skylar. Damnation was acceptable when golden salvation rested in her hand.
written: @malinaa | wc: 5300 | genre: fantasy | cw: death
summary: a human who seems too much like a myth and a myth who seems all too human.
══════════════════
Death’s touch is almost as intimate as a lover’s.
For twenty years, Khalida has shared a home with Death. He ages like her, lulling her to think his human form is real. There are more marks around his eyes, streaks of gray peppered amongst his black hair. She goes along with it sometimes, pretending that he’s human just to make her duty as his jailer, as his commander, less daunting. A man is much more manageable than an entity.
Khalida brushes her hand against Death’s, their silent goodbye, as she leaves their home to make her rounds around the village. Just as she checks in on the healers, Brennan approaches her, his body trembling and flushed as if he ran. He almost stumbles into her, but she catches him by the shoulders.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, quickly running a cursory gaze along the boy’s body. He has barely entered puberty and he’s growing like a beanstalk.
Das is his little brother. A tiny slip of a thing. Their parents are both in the hunting party for the season, so the boys are on their own. The clan takes care of them in their parents’ absence.
“Have you not asked the healer about his condition?” Khalida frowns, already walking to their home. It’s not far off from the healers’ tents, so it only takes them a minute or so.
Brennan doesn’t answer. He just brings her to Das’ bedside. The primary healer, Altha, sits at the end of the bed, her pale fingers wringing bruises around her own wrist. Das whimpers, sweating profusely through his clothes. His eyes are sunken in. Khalida has seen a few too many dead bodies in her lifetime. She’ll never forget the sight of them, waxen and still. The stench was enough to make her gag. If Das hadn’t been moving, she might’ve thought he was a corpse. But Death cannot touch him, for Khalida commands him.
“I couldn’t find out what was wrong,” Altha says, dabbing a clean cloth across his head. “I’ve never seen this disease before. Not even before the War. I think… I think Death has come for him.”
“Altha,” Khalida snaps. “Know your place.”
“Commander,” Altha pleads. “You must tell Death to let Das go. He’s just a child.”
“Do you doubt me?” Khalida’s eyes leave hers to focus on Brennan who has been fidgeting like a mad man. “You know full well of the first covenant I made as the Commander of Death. He is still in chains. Das will get better, just tend to him for now.”
Altha hesitates for a moment. “Of course, Commander.”
“I will speak to him anyway,” Khalida says, softer now as she places a hand on Brennan’s shoulder. “To ease your mind.”
The boy nods and she squeezes him gently before she leaves.
Khalida walks back to her home—to Death. She opens the door and lets it lock behind her. She says simply, “Hello, Death.”
❖
Khalida felt her stomach rumble and she frowned. She wasn’t supposed to leave her parents’ sight since she was only seven years old, apparently too young to walk into the woods by herself. But she knew there were red berries a little way off from the freshly dug hole which held her aunt. She didn’t know why Aunt was sleeping in the ground, but she’d ask later. For now, it was time to eat. She tiptoed around the site and tried to keep her footsteps soft, so her parents wouldn’t be alarmed. The red fruits caught her attention and she grinned. She took a handful and shoved them in her mouth, not minding the leaves or the bits of juice that smeared over her hands and face. She ate and ate until she stripped the bush from its berries and her stomach felt queasy. Maybe it was time to go back.
She wiped her hands on her pants and wandered back to the site. As she got closer, she could hear her parents’ voices and her ears perked up when she heard her own name.
Her mother said, “No, Khalida… to know…”
Khalida furrowed her eyebrows. She couldn’t hear, so she stepped closer.
Her father said, “…young… not of age yet, Nella. I don’t think…”
“…aunt just died, Lyle… don’t tell me we have to… the clan…”
“You grew up with… don’t see the problem… only child who’d be too grown…”
She couldn’t hear behind the tree where she hid, so she walked up to them and they stopped talking, looking at her with an odd expression on their face. She tugged on the edge of her mother’s shirt and finally asked, “Mama, can Aunt come up now. I wanna go home.”
Her father inhaled shakily and turned his head to the ground.
“Khalida…” her mother said, then shot her father a sharp gaze before she knelt down and wiped the dried juice around her lips with a spare cloth. She clucked her tongue and Khalida squirmed underneath her attention. “Your Aunt is gone.”
“But she’s right there.” Khalida pointed at the ground.
“Aunt was taken by Death. Not her body, but her life,” her mother continued. “She is buried in the ground, so Death can’t take any more of her.”
“Why did Death take her?” She scrunched her nose up at the name. Aunt was her favorite. She gave her treats every time Khalida helped with housework, but she didn’t have anything really nice for Death to take. Aunt was pale and coughing all the time. Khalida didn’t think Death would want her like that.
Her mother sighed and sat down, pulling Khalida into her lap. She went easily and wrapped her arms around her mother. After a moment, her father joined them on the ground, sitting besides her mother and resting his head on her shoulder. Her father said, “Death is a demon, Khalida. He is scary and mean and he comes for everyone. Some say he has claws instead of nails and his teeth are so rotten, they’re black.”
Khalida buried herself in her mother’s arms, frightened by the image of this beast who took her aunt. But in a second, her father poked her side, making her smile a little.
“Some even say that his eyes burned like flames, but he doesn’t have to look like that. He can hide anywhere, so you have to be very, very careful.”
Khalida just nodded her head and fell asleep wrapped tight in her parents’ cocoon, dreaming of Death and his greedy hands outreached towards her.
❖
Before she was the Commander, back when she had a name and the only blood she spilled was her own, Khalida was only twenty years old when she went to war against Death. He killed off the adults one by one, her parents being one of the first, until all that was left were mere children, her included. Her people had voted her leader just for the sole fact that she was the eldest, the second eldest only being sixteen. The youngest of her people was a girl, Nova, who barely went past her shoulders, and even she had to train to fight. But once Death took all the adults, they yelled a rallying cry for retribution. For war. And what they wished for, they received.
“Remember: Death could look like anything, anyone,” she said, staring into the young faces of children she used to play with in the woods for hours. They were her people now, her duty to care for, to lead. “But I think he took charge of another clan by disguising himself like us. He will probably be the eldest of them, but do not worry about him. He is my job to handle. I will capture him and command him to stop. Just worry about keeping yourself alive. Nova spied on the other clans and they have taken refuge in one of the abandoned villages next to ours. We attack at dawn.”
By the next morning, they went to war.
It was a furious battle and she could hear the blood pumping through her body as she sliced a knife through someone’s chest. She couldn’t bear to look at any of them, just strode towards the heat of the battle where she could feel Death, the tingle on her skin making her itch in his presence. Nausea rolled through her when a soldier knocked Nova down and her body laid still in the ground, eyes staring blankly at the clear sky. Khalida tamped down the urge to buckle and take her corpse away from this violence. Instead she spotted Death just as he was about to go for a boy’s throat with a knife. With speed she didn’t know she possessed, she ran and wrangled a gleaming silver, heavy chain around his body which brought the surrounding battle to a standstill.
Death looked oddly human in the hushed light: a young man, not much older than her, with a solemn glint in his brown eyes. He wore simple battle armor, like the rest of his people, but the strength of his posture made it clear who he was. Even the metal chain she wrapped around his chest and arms didn’t seem to bother him. He was not the nightmare of her dreams. He did not have claws or blackened teeth, nor did he have fire for eyes like the demons her parents always warned her about. He was none of those things, but the way he looked at her, unafraid and calm—he felt like all of them.
Death’s chin jutted out, angry and defiant. Two of her people behind her stepped back and gasped, but Khalida just bared her teeth and watched with steady eyes as he fell silent. She was not afraid. Could not be afraid. To show fear in the face of Death was to lose her people and her own life. They had lost too much already: their families, their homes, their livelihoods. The burden of it all rest solely on her shoulders.
“Kneel,” she said. The chain in her hand struggled for a moment, then laid weakly in the air as Death moved to rest on the ground. “Your time is over now. Call your troops back.”
A resonant whistle left Death’s lips and the rest of his remaining troops fell silent. The forest was quiet without the clash of the battle around them. Even the trees stopped their rustling to witness them. His army, all loyalty, let themselves be handled by her own people. Something like relief swept through her. Her people were not fighters. They were budding healers and scholars and farmers and just… children with no parents. She had saved them and she would do so for the rest of her life, Death be damned. Khalida would hold this chain until the metal rusted and her hands were weathered and shaking if it meant that the youngest child amongst her people grew up safe.
“Hail, Khalida, the Commander of Death,” one of her people shouted in the silence. The rest followed suit, but their words fell deaf on her ears. She was bloody, the dark red staining her hands like the red berries she used to eat herself sick in the summer. She would not celebrate with them. Doing so would just worsen the emptiness in her chest. She had saved her people, but her hands were tainted with war.
Death watched her with curious eyes and followed her as they marched back to her home.
There was a celebration later in the evening. Death’s people were de-weaponed, tied up, and placed in a nearby cave for the time being. She passed by them, just to see who these cruel killers were, but all she saw were tired, young faces, much like her own people. She couldn’t see a single older face besides Death. Khalida resolved to keep Death in her own tent and walked by the revelry with him trailing in front of her. She had a duty and no amount of dancing could sway her away from it.
“You don’t wish to join your people?” Death asked, voice low and smooth. She stripped him of every weapon, hidden or otherwise. The chain was long enough to span her cramped tent and he sat down near her bed of fur skins. He made no move to break free and slit her throat, so the chain in her hand loosened minutely. “You have won against me. It is in your right to celebrate the lives of your people you have saved.”
Khalida tightened her grip around the metal. “I cannot celebrate when I also have taken lives.”
“They were my people you killed. I should kill you where you stand,” he bit back, head tilted to the side as he watched her flinch at his words. She was transparent in Death’s gaze, as though he could pluck her off the shelf and read her with a scholar’s eye. “The Commander of Death, but you despise it, do you not? The title, what it entails.”
“The rest of your people will not die,” she said instead, not bothering to comment. “I will house them here. Use them as I wish.”
Death gritted his teeth and she could see the way his jaw clenched. After a moment, he said, “I am Death because I have to be, Khalida. The ground, its resources—it will not last. I do what I must to keep my people alive. But even I will die.”
“Your name has lived on for millennia and will live on for millennia more. You cannot die. I won’t allow it.” She hoped he couldn’t hear the raw desperation in her voice. She was the oldest of her people, their chosen leader, but she still felt like the child that ate berries until she was sick to her stomach.
“You keep my people alive and I will keep yours alive. Is that a deal?”
Khalida swallowed her own doubts and hardened her voice. Making a pact with Death, even when he was under her control, was like losing. “Deal.”
❖
A week after Death’s capture, just as she was settling into her responsibility as her clan’s leader, she got ready to patrol their area for potential dangers. With Death chained, she didn’t need to, but it kept her busy. She vaguely remembered her previous leader doing so in the early mornings. Her knowledge on her previous clan leader’s duties were hazy at best, so she kept any memory of her close to her. She wanted to keep everyone safe, but with no clan leader to depart their wisdom onto the upcoming leader, she was grasping at straws. So she patrolled.
But right as she was about to leave, Death gently jostled her arm with his body. She flinched and brought the knife that was sheathed on her hip up to rest against his throat. He backed away, his hands that were tied up with chains on his stomach were open to show his lack of weapon.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Death said and she gave him a rather dry look. “I just wanted to ask… can I join you on your patrol? I have no bad intentions, Khalida. I am used to a life of action. Staying in here makes me restless.”
She sheathed her knife back into her side and mulled over his honest admission. It would help to have someone who knew how to handle outside forces. She might have captured Death, but it was partially due to determination and mostly due to reckless luck. And the thought of an agitated Death made her insides lurch.
“Fine.” She grabbed his chain and set off into the woods, his steps aligning with hers.
It became something of an easy routine for them, leaving for patrol as the sun peaked out of the corner of the world. Once the word spread that she had Death under her command, other clans were too afraid to come near her. The patrol was just a formality to make their people feel safe and it gave her hours free from being the Commander.
Eventually, as the months passed, she wrapped the chain around Death’s waist instead of binding his hands. It took her a year or more until she moved the slightly rusted chain from a tight grip to a loose loop around her own waist. Death had been rambling about the logistics of multiple hunts per week when she fasted the chain on herself and his voice had trailed off in the middle of a sentence, hands frozen in mid-air. She couldn’t hide the smile on her face at his surprise. She knocked her shoulder against his as a cue to keep speaking. He closed his mouth for a second and tugged lightly on the chain before he continued, a new bounce to his step. It was endearing, to say the least, to see Death act so… human.
And it was ultimately a good decision on her part. It kept her hands free and made her feel less like she was carrying around a prisoner. She knew deep in her mind he always was a prisoner if she was around. If she ever took off the chain, her people would riot and demand for his recapture. They talked for hours—well, mostly her—about her family, their people more often than not.
Death offered no information about himself, but took note of every name she supplied him and gave solid advice about how to deal with certain issues within their village. He never tried to speak to their people, just content with his walks, the solitariness of their home when she wasn’t there, and her company when she was. She didn’t ask if he wanted more. He would tell her. It was a good thing between them.
❖
Years passed since those early patrol days. She had a few new lines on her face and the only name she was called by was Commander. The only time she heard her real name was when she walked back home and Death whispered Khalida like it was the only name he knew.
He told her once that he didn’t want her to feel alone as she grayed, so he aged alongside her. He smiled and winked at her playfully and she shoved him out of his chair and told him she’d look better than him even as an old woman. He just picked himself up, laughing, then pushed back a strand of her hair softly. His skin felt so warm, so very human. He said, “You will always look beautiful.”
Heat flooded her cheeks and she just changed the subject.
She had long since held the chain as tightly as she did those first few months. She realized early on that he really would not go against her as long as she cared for his people.
His people. It was odd, thinking of them that way. She couldn’t use them as slaves, like she hinted at to Death. The thought made her physically recoil. They were just children, so she allowed them to integrate with her own people mere weeks after the war. Now, she couldn’t remember when they were ever separated in her mind. His people and her people became theirs. Granted, Death was always chained, but they came at an understanding that their people respected. He was a co-leader of sorts, or at least an advisor. It made the rest of the dissenters content and all loyalty transferred over to her.
There was one day in the beginning of her leadership, after she patrolled their village, she had taken some of his people aside and asked them about Death, curious about his past, but they all shrugged.
One girl, Altha, said, “Death came when he killed off our parents. But he took us in like we were his own, so we went with him. Besides, we had no where else to go, Commander. With Death as our leader, we were safe.”
She didn’t ask for more. She understood their reasoning for following him. In a sense, she had done the same as they did, but she took him instead of the other way around.
They lived in peace. The only deaths that occurred were on hunts when they killed their game. Their people, the original clan members, were still cautious, never one to tempt Death even while he was chained, but their children weren’t bound by their parents’ intuitions. They lived wildly and freely and none of them ever sustained serious injuries, let alone death. They felt immortal. And in their eyes, they were.
When one of the first couples had a child, she had been sitting in the chair next to the healers’ tents to be the first to get news on the mother and her child’s condition. When the mother screamed, Khalida gripped her own chair so tightly, she ripped off a piece of the wood. She knew of childbirth, how it killed the mothers and sometimes the children too, but they survived. And the next family did too. And the one after that. Even the pregnant mother who had caught the winter’s sickness during her last months lived. She couldn’t believe it. It was one thing for her to capture Death and have him under her command, but it was another thing for Death to listen to her.
She let out a breathy laugh. She saved them all.
❖
“Khalida,” Death greets warmly. “It’s still too early to patrol, the sun has barely come up.”
She purses her lips and takes in his form. He lays with his arms behind his head, posture free from any tension. This is not someone who will kill a child. It can’t be. Why would he kill one of their own anyway?
Since Death is already dressed for their patrol, she just grabs his rusty chain and wraps the other end around her own waist. She pulls at it and Death grumbles, raising his eyebrows at her lack of response, but complies easily. They walk out, the brisk air hitting their faces with a sharp familiarity. He takes her hand and she lets him even though she wants answers. His touch has become one of the only things she’s treasured over the years. Death is content to let their silence continue and doesn’t make another sound besides his feet hitting the soil underneath them until an hour in.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Death asks, eyes gazing up at the sky.
“Das is ill,” she says, voice intentionally light. “Almost corpse-like, even.”
Death knows every single one of their people and their children. He may not speak to them directly as she does, but they are his people too. He stops walking, forcing her feet to stop too. He comes closer and settles one hand against her cheek. She looks up into his eyes and sighs. His face is pinched with concern and his jaw clenches.
“Death, I—” He flinches when she speaks his name, but continues on, “—don’t understand what’s happening. Neither of us have broken the covenant.”
“Khalida…” he starts, but then a noise rustles in close by. She moves in front of him and her hand hovers over the knife sheathed at her side. It’s too loud to be an animal and no one from another clan would come near them, but that may not be the case today. A few more seconds and Brennan stumbles out. Her stance drops, but her heart does too.
His hands are shaking and his eyes are bloodshot. Oh, no. He comes closer and she tucks her knife back into her sheath and settles her arms around him, sorrow flooding her body when he sobs and buries his face in her neck.
“He’s dead, Commander. My little brother. I can’t—” Brennan’s voice hovers on the edge of panic.
He lifts his head and sways on his own feet. But in a second, he moves fast, grabbing the knife at her side and she yells, frantic as he takes a step towards Death who lingers near them. Brennan doesn’t hesitate when he shoves the weapon into Death’s abdomen, just below the metal on his waist, making him gasp and fall to his knees. Brennan’s eyes are wild and hazy, and she is about to run and grab him when she falls alongside Death when he finally can’t hold himself up anymore. The chain pulls them both down.
He lays on the dirt, eyes locked on the sky and she can’t help but be reminded by little Nova who died on the battlefield. Khalida’s hands wrestle with the chain while Brennan doesn’t say another word. He just runs into the woods, the opposite direction of their village. He is gone.
She lets her hands fall from her waist. It’s a moot point to get rid of the chain now. She doesn’t have time to think about Brennan, about what he did because Death coughs. so harshly, she winces. She tries to move him, to get him back to the village, but he just holds his stomach and groans.
“I’m sorry, Khalida,” Death whispers, his hands slick with blood came up to cup her cheek. A mockery of their private moment just mere minutes ago. His blood smears like paint over her, her skin his own canvas, but she doesn’t care. Her fingers flutter over the gaping wound on his abdomen and she trembles all over. She is no healer and the closest one is an hour away. He won’t make it in time.
What is he apologizing for anyway? She can’t wrap her mind around him.
He continues, “You have to take on the name, my name now.”
“Death why can’t you heal—I don’t—I don’t understand. I don’t—”
“I had a name once too.” His voice, usually smooth and steady, is now gruff and pained. She lets out a little cry as he squirms. “Before I was Death, my parents named me Arius.”
The trembling in her body stops when he says those words. She still doesn’t understand. What does he mean? Why can’t he stop bleeding? Everything feels muffled, slightly off in a way she can’t keep up with. It’s like she is half a step behind Death, an arm’s length away, and she can’t reach him.
“I was like you once. Death had come for my clan mercilessly, but it was not a person. Death was a flu. I had grown up in a small clan and death ravaged them until I was all that was left. I didn’t know how to survive, Khalida. So I killed them. The elderly. I couldn’t touch the children... they were so young. Too young. I was only seventeen years old when they chose me as their leader. They were terrified of me, but they believed I could keep them alive. Khalida, I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to manage hundreds of children.” Death—Arius?—pales with guilt. Or maybe it’s because his blood seeps into her clothing. “I didn’t want to kill all those people, but I was starving. We were starving. There were so many us and there are not that many resources left on this land. I did what I had to do. It was my duty to protect them.”
His words ring eerily in her mind.
She understands.
“Death was a lie,” she says, hands limp on his wound. “The name.”
“It’s a title, much like yours is. I bore the name because of what I did to keep everyone alive. They called me Death and I felt like it too. My people never even knew that I had a name. After the other clans started calling me Death, my people thought I was their savior. They could not die with Death as their leader. But Khalida, the lives I took… I can never take it back, but you have to take my name now. You have to make them feel safe. Death follows everyone, but he is not me, nor am I him. I am the story every clan had whispered to their children at night, so they can put a face to it and make it less scary. Less unknown.”
“Stop it.” Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. Tears spill down her bloodied cheek as she lets out a shaky breath. Everything is a lie. She can’t save them from Death because there is only death. A single-minded, non-entity whom she can’t control. No one can. She thinks back to her parents and the first time she had ever seen death. Illness took her aunt.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. He knew. He knew that the story about Death isn’t real, but he kept her unaware, like a child. He was probably of age to know the truth before his clan died out.
Rage bubbles in the pit of her stomach. She doesn't know that she presses harder against his wound until he grunts and the world feels clear again.
Death isn’t a step ahead of her. Not anymore. Any anger dissipates and she just feels lightheaded and cold. It’s not his fault her parents raised her to believe these stories. It’s just foolish that, for all these years, she is still the child listening to her parents’ imaginary story. For that, she chained a man for decades, thinking he was some kind of tamed demon in human skin, but he was just a man. The thought of doing that to any of their people makes her throat clog up and her stomach queasy.
“Arius,” she says and his eyes close as if he relishes the way it leaves her lips. “I’m sorry too.”
Khalida doesn’t say more, doesn’t have to say more because the look in Arius’ face is all she needs. He has lost much blood and will not recover. Arius will meet death soon and she can’t do anything about it.
But she doesn’t want him to die alone. The only remaining soul on the land who knows his true name should be there for him in his last moments, so she does as she has always done. She carries the duty on her shoulders and watches as the man she has privately called her home die in front of her, quietly with a small smile on his face.
She waits until his blood crusts on the cracks of her skin and his corpse has gone cold before she disentangled the chain from both their bodies and digs a grave for him.
She picks up the rusted metal, so worn and red that it peels at the touch, and holds the brunt of its weight. She breathes in the cold air and holds onto it as she sets off back to her people. It’s been hours until she walks back to her village.
Their eyes hungrily take in her haggard form and the empty chain in her hand. News travels quickly in a village as small as theirs. She clears her throat and tries to find the words that fractures her world. She is not broken by them. Cannot be broken by them. But she can’t find it in herself to keep up this façade of a title, even if it was Arius’ last request. She is not Arius and it is her responsibility as their leader to protect them, even from their own lies.
Khalida drops the chain to the ground. It clangs noisily on the dirt, but she doesn’t mind it. She finally says, “Death is dead, but death will not stop.”
Confused mutterings surround her, but she holds up her hand and they fall silent yet again.
“Death went by another name—Arius, and he was just a boy. Every story, even the ones I have told about Death, the ones your parents and your parents’ parents have told you is a lie. I will tell you everything I have learned, but I will begin this story by starting with my own. Before I was the Commander of Death, my parents named me Khalida…”
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