first time’s the charm || a self-para
By the time other people began landing down below on their own feet, Kahente was even more confused. People were not meant to be able to stand on clouds, right? Or maybe everyone lived on clouds, slept on clouds. Maybe jumping was the wrong choice. It was too late now, it seemed as if she as stuck on the ground with these other people who seemed as if they were just as confused as she was.
That didn’t stop her from looking up at the sky, from seeing the colors that were surrounding them. It made her smile, she didn’t know why the colors appealed to her, but they did. The sound that filled her ears now was that of rushing water, something else that was made her feel overly peaceful, until she heard the sound of someone screaming in the distance.
There was someone who wasn’t confused. A man, older, running at her as if his life depended on it. Maybe his reaction to this confusion was violence, was fighting, was figuring out how he could survive.
Why her, though? Why was he targeting her? And then she looked behind her and saw the only three objects in this entire place were right there, she was standing in his way.
As the man continued to charge closer to her, she turned back around, this feeling in the pit of her stomach warning her that him approaching her meant danger, it meant a bad situation for her. But she froze, unsure of what to do, of how to react to this.
Lucky for her, the man paused and grabbed his head as some sort of memory must have come back to him, and a searing pain was sent through Kahente’s head at the same time. A memory, as vivid as if she was reliving the moment all over again.
The second grade, there was this girl in class sitting in front of her. She had long brown hair, freckles, the nicest smile she had ever seen in her entire short life. And there was a mean kid sitting next to her, a mean kid who looked the younger version of the man standing in front of her. He whispered something to his friend behind him about the pretty girl, about how often she cried, about how hard she tried all the time.
Kahente didn’t like that. This girl was kind, caring, smart. This kid saying mean things about her made her mad.
At recess that day, Kahente walked up to the kid and yelled at him for making fun of her friend, told him that he was being mean and that meanness was not nice. The boy laughed at her, told her that she was just a girl, he wasn’t scared of her.
And then she punched him. Hard. In the face.
She could see the blood on her hands now, as if she was back to that moment.
But wait, there was blood on her hands, and a man in front of her grabbing his now bloody nose. And suddenly, she wasn’t in the memory anymore. Suddenly, she was back to real life, and winding up to punch the man again.
Once she started, she couldn’t stop, as if this mean man was the same kid from years ago and she was making sure that he really learned his lesson.
“Stop being mean,” she said, as climbed on top of the man who was now completely laying on the ground. “No one will like you if you’re mean,” she said, before slamming the man’s head into the ground, watching as the blood began to spill out around him.
“Satine is far better than you ever will be.”
And with that, she stood up again, leaving the now unmoving man on the ground, now on guard for her next attacker.
