"No, no, no, no." She screamed on top of her lungs.
"Nyangdeng, wait, stop."
She didn't even look back at her. She was too scared to see that awful vile sight again. The image was still seared into her mind. Even as she closed her eyes the image was all too clear for her. Nyangdeng didn't understand it. What exactly did she witness? They were people, at least they looked like people, but why were they covered in blood? Why were their faces so twisted in pain? Why did they die? How did they die? What exactly killed them. Was it some kind of monster? All these thoughts flooded her mind. Every time she tried to find an answer the same bloody image appeared in her mind. Tears began flowing wildly down her eyes, as she screamed in distress.
"Nyangdeng just stopped for a second."
"No. No, I'm not going back. I'm going back to my mother." She screamed, her breathing turning erratic and uneasy, as if that scene had its hands around her neck, draining the very life out of her.
"Just wait."
Akeer managed to get close enough to tackle Nyangdeng into an alleyway.
"Get off me." She said, struggling to free herself.
"Will you just calm down for a second?"
Akeer had enough. She seized both of Nyangdeng's wrists and slammed them down on the ground. Nyangdeng may have been shaken by this sudden burst of force, because as Akeer pinned her down, she stopped squirming. Instead she began calming down, taking gasps of air, as she stared up at Akeer with innocent eyes, coated with tears that reflected the light of the sunset. Seeing this sight of such innocence coming from her friend's eyes, tears began appearing in hers, until a single drop slid down her face and dropped on Nyangdeng's.
"Listen, Nyangdeng, …I." She paused before continuing.
"I'm sorry that we dragged you into this. We were the closest people to you and we should have known that this wouldn't be easy for you."
"What. Did you already know they were going to be dead people there."
"No. No, of course not. But we have to be strong. We have to be strong if we want to live." Akeer said in a soft trembling voice.
For a moment, Nyangdeng stared up at Akeer with her teary eyes, until she asked this question.
"Akeer, please tell me. How are you so strong."
A few minutes passed and they were now walking back to the building where they have been staying. They walked in complete silence. None of them wanted to talk any further about what they had seen. As Akeer walked, she could hear the sniffling of Nyangdeng. Then she was reminded of her question. Akeer, please tell me. How are you so strong? She remembered her response was, I don't know, but she knew deep down that was a lie. In truth, she is not strong at all. She just knows how to tuck her fears deep down in her soul and vomit it all up later. She began to reminisce about a memory she had made a long time ago, an unforgettable memory, and also a very dark one. The memory was so vivid it was as if she was there at that moment. The sky was overcast, and it was windy, signs of an approaching storm. She was in her room, when all of a sudden she heard an unusual sound, she knew that it was coming from a living thing but she didn't know what that living thing was. As she peaked through the curtains of her window in curiosity, her eyes immediately widened and her heart seemed like it was stopped for a second, before it began beating relentlessly. In front of her were 3 men, one stood behind another, as he stabbed another man repeatedly. Then she realised what she had heard, that noise she was hearing, it was the man vomiting his own blood repeatedly. He attempted to push his attackers away from him. But with each one of his efforts his strength leaves him until he was no longer moving. The men then kicked the lifeless body into a gully and then threw the knife along with it. Akeer was frozen, she didn't know what to do or how to react. The only thing she could do was witness the act in fright. All of a sudden, the partner of the murderer, hurriedly tapped him on the shoulder then pointed towards a spot where she couldn't see. Then from that same blind spot, a boy came running out, immediately the men began to chase after him. For a brief moment she saw the boy's face. Immediately she knew who he was. The face she had seen belonged to a boy in her class, extremely extroverted and always somehow had the right answers for everything in class. Over time Akeer began to have a crush on him. He was always surrounded by his friends, boys and girls alike, and even her friends at the time couldn't stop teasing and talking about him. But for some reason, she just couldn't remember his name.
Snapping out of her paralysis, she quickly drew the curtain, and covered herself with her blanket. Her mind was without thought, all she could think about was the expression on that man's face as he was getting stabbed repeatedly. The image haunted her for the rest of the night, until she eventually fell asleep, gripping her bible. The next day she went to school. She tried to act normal, but she didn't do a very good job at it, because multiple classmates and teachers approached and asked if everything's alright. She reassured them that she was fine and that there wasn't anything wrong.They didn't look too convinced, but they all eventually left her alone. A couple days passed and the class noticed that she wasn't the only one acting strange. The class star was too. He was once attentive and social, but now he was oddly quiet and gloomy. He wasn't answering questions as swiftly as he did before, and he wasn't seen with a large crowd of children, smiling as he did before. Whenever Akeer would take glances at him, he would always have this fake smile plastered on his face. As if there was something behind it that prevented it from being real. After a couple of months passed, the crowd of children eventually grew smaller in numbers, until there was no one surrounding him entirely. He was completely eaten and forgotten by the loud ever changing noise around them, a product of his silence. But Akeer never once forgot about him. Even when her friends and classmates talked about other boys they liked, she always had him in her sight. Akeer couldn't possibly just forget about him, because in her mind they were friends. She felt as though they had this bond together, because they both witnessed something horrifying. And that's why one day, after school, she went over to him. He was sitting on the ground, underneath the shade of a large tree as he stared at the field of soccer players playing a match. She could tell he was lost in thought, because no matter how close she got, he never once looked her way. For a while she just stood next to him, nervous and unsure of what to really say to him. Should she start with, hay, how are you, did you see a murder by any chance, or with hay I could tell that you're really lonely so let's be friends. Sighing in her mind, she mustered up the courage to ask what he was doing there after school. Hearing her voice, he was a bit startled, but he told her the obvious answer to her question. There was a brief awkward silence for a moment, but she managed to save the conversation by asking what he liked about the sport and by introducing herself. He was a bit hesitant at first, but with each one of her questions he eventually managed to open up to her. They talked about more things outside of sports, like their friends, their favorite toys, and their favorite TV shows. But now that Akeer was thinking about it, he was mentioning some weird things to her. For instance, he mentioned dreaming of dying over and over again, fighting by this brave friend of his side, and with each time he died he would reincarnate in the past, with bits and pieces of memories he had in his past lives. She also remembered him muttering the words, I need to carry the burden. It's the only way to save him. She was of course weirded out by this, but she just passed it off as just nightmares created by his imagination to cope with what they had seen. Their conversation ended up lasting for a whole hour, until it was time for them to separate. And from day on they had been inseparable. They even met new people and formed their very own friend group, and that's basically how she met Nyangdeng and the others. In the couple of years she had known her friends, her smile began to grow bigger and bigger until she was a near perfect version of the person she wished she could've been. It didn't matter how many times she laughed and smiled, she could never forget what she had seen. Same for him as well. Over the years he began speaking more, but Akeer has the feeling he is hiding something from her and everybody else, she knows that there is something he is not telling her. She knows for a fact it's not about the revolution, so she's sure it must be something else. But the thing is, she has no clue. She got so close to him that she basically learned all of his likes and dislikes, to the point that they might as well have been blood related siblings. So she has no idea why he is even bothering hiding anything from her at this point. An image of Eric appeared in her mind. Does it have something to do with him, she wondered. No, even though they had gotten close, they have only known each other for a day or 2. There's no way, it's because of him.
"Arop. What exactly are you hiding from all of us." She said, wiping the remaining tears from her eyes.
I have to protect everyone, otherwise there's no way we can survive in this world, full of monsters of all nature, she thought when suddenly Nyangdeng turned at an alleyway and froze in her tracks.
"Nyangdeng. Why did you stop."
She didn't respond. She just stood there, mouth agaped, as if trying to scream, but it just won't come out. The closer Akeer got, the more her heart raced, and the more she heard this bashing sound that made her tense. As she reached Nyangdeng, Akeer turned her sights to what she was staring at. Her throat immediately clenched, as her heart beat rapidly accelerated. At the end of the alley there were 2 men, covered in blood, smiling, as they both swung a metal pipe that was stained with blood. With each swing of their pipes, blood sprayed on the walls. As one of them slightly moved to the side to take another swing, it gave Akeer and Nyangdeng the perfect view of what the 2 men were swinging at. They were swinging at a corpse. Its skull was completely smashed, leaving its face unrecognisable. Its jaw was barely holding on to the head, by just a couple strands of muscle. And like a fountain of horror, blood flowed down from where its mouth once was, like a river, and from its forehead blood sprayed out, making the air further stink with the horrid scent of blood. Eventually Akeer snapped out of her daise. And with trembling hands she grabbed Nyangdeng by the arm. But instead of moving, Nyangdeng's head slowly turned to her, staring Akeer deep in her eyes as tears glistened her own eyes. For some reason, seeing the sight of her friend in such a scared state, also made her vulnerable. Akeer's hands began to tremble more violently. When she tried to pull her friend away from the alley, it was futile, it was as if her muscles had turned into Jelly. Soon, she wasn't able to even control her arm. Akeer tried to whisper to her to slowly walk back and run, but her throat was so tightly clenched not even a single sound escaped her mouth. At the back of her mind she knew that if they didn't leave at that moment, they would both die. Mustering all of her strength, she took a step back. And as if the heavens were against her, Akeer's foot accidentally knocked over a glass bottle. The sound of it smashing, immediately paused all the noises around her, then she knew, if she and Nyangdeng didn't run in that moment, they would share the same fate, just like that corpse. Gathering every ounce of strength she had left in her, she pulled Nyangdeng's arm, and said in a low strained but urgent voice, run. Akeer pulled Nyangdeng's arm more violently, forcefully pulling her along. Before they could even get out of sight a gray object flew past Akeer's face, barely missing her. At that moment, Akeer had a vision of blood bursting from her head, and her unconscious body tumbling to the ground. If. If we don't escape right now, we're really going to die, she thought, as she tightened her grip on Nyangdeng's arm and began running even faster. Behind her, she could hear the loud growls of the men chasing her, but the strange thing was, it didn't sound like growls from men, it sounded like growls coming from beasts. She looked behind her, past Nyangdeng, she saw the 2 men running towards them at full speed, carrying the same bloody pipes and the foul odor of blood. The closer they got, the more Akeer could smell it. As she continued to stare back, for some reason she couldn't take her eyes off those monsters, there wasn't anything beautiful about them in the slightest, but the way they looked at her with those drooling mouths and red eyes of theirs, it was similar to that of a predator, but it wasn't the same, a predator chases their prey in order to survive, but those men did not need their lives to live. They genuinely, with all their being, just want to kill them. They are binge eaters, that's what they are. Beasts who eat for joy and pleasure, and nothing else, nothing in the whole world matters to them except that purpose. They are slaves to it.
Akeer snapped out of her brief trans and managed to avert her eyes away from them and continued running, still holding on tightly to Nyangdeng.
As they continued to run, Akeer's lungs began to burn, and her abdomen and legs began to ace with each stride for her life. She looked behind her at Nyangdeng and realized that she was also running out of stamina. But those 2 men behind chasing them didn't, look tired at all, in fact to Akeer it appears as if they were getting faster. The more seconds pass, the closer they got towards them. So she dragged Nyangdeng along with her and ran across streets, and in familiar alleyways she had been in. But she could not lose them. Her lungs were on fire, her abdomen aced, and her legs began to stiffen. Now in her mind she is in full panic mode. She couldn't tell if the rapid beating of her heart was caused by the adrenaline or the fear of dying, maybe both. But that didn't matter at that moment, what mattered was keeping herself and Nyangdeng alive. Suddenly, a idea came to her mind. In front of them, there were 2 alleyways, one going straight and another going right. She also remembers that right corner has a gate. If they can climb over it and get out of eye view they can escape. A smile of relief appeared on her face, before it wavered. She admit that it was a good shot, but there was one problem. Those beast were so eager to kill them, their was no way they won't follow. But what if…
"Nyangdeng. I have a idea."
She looked at her, eyes swollen with tears.
"I need you to sprint like your life depends on it, all the way to that corner. Then I want you to climb the fence then run back to were we're staying at."
Nyangdeng paused and looked at her, as if to say you are really letting me do this all by myself. she was about to say something before Akeer interrupted her.
"Please Nyangdeng. I need you to do this. I need you to be brave."
She wiped her teary eyes and nodded, then with all of her courage and strength, she sprinted past Akeer and disappeared behind the corner. As Akeer eventually reached the corner she saw the back of Nyangdeng, before she disappeared in another corner. Seeing her escape Akeer sighed in relief. As she ran across she looked back and saw that those beasts were still chasing her. Good. That means my intuition was right. Now it's my turn to escape, she thought as she continued to play the cat and mouse game with them, when eventually it was getting too much for her. Her toes began to hurt, her abdomen aced with a pulse, and her head felt light, she felt as if with a smack to the head she will easily be left unconscious. It also didn't help that she was slowly losing her vision. The world around seemed to be slowly collapsing into darkness. She knew she had to escape, fast. Akeer decided to take another route leading to where they were original going, the town rally. She gambled witht he idea that she would be able to lose them in the huge crowd crowd. And plus, even if they found her, they won't dare do anything in front of thousands of people. Following this new intuition of her's she began running to the rally, hoping she won't just faint on her way there. As she continued running she looked behind her and noticed something off. There is only one of the monsters. Where is the second 1? As soon as she turned her head infront of her, she could see a bluish zooming frame approaching her face, before she could even react, it hit her on the side of her left cheek, immediately knocking her and her teeth to the ground. And before she could even make a effort to get up, the monster and the other monster that quickly catched up, swiftly swung down there metal pipe over and over again, primarily targeting her legs and ribs so she will have a difficult time getting up. Akeer tried to get up, but her body failed her, instead she balled up, but that didn't help much much. Feeling the urge to regurgitate, she put her hand to her mouth, but what came out was not vomit, but a pool of broken teeth floating in a pond of her own blood. The strange thing was that she didn't even cry. She continued to remain in the form of human ball, as her eyes leaked with tears, but not a single sound escaped her lips not even a slight cry of pain, just… silence.
"Wait. Hold on."
One of the men knelt down and grabbed Akeer by the face to look into her eyes. What he saw was eyes devoided of light, it had completely gone limp, as if she was no longer in this world anymore.
"I think she is dead."
"What. We need the girl alive. Check her pulse."
As the man checked it, he felt her pulse, but it was faint, if they left her like this, she would certainly die.
"Sigh. The girls alive. But we can't enjoy ourselves with her anymore."
"What."
"Anymore and she will definitely die."
The other man looked at his partner angrily before saying.
"I'm going to try to find the other one. She couldn't have gotten far. You take that girl to the president."
As the man began to walk away, the other called out to him."
"Hey. You better not beat her too badly, I also want my turn."
The two men smiled at each other before one of them says, I will make no promise on that.
"Fucking greedy bastard." The man muttered as his partner ran to find Nyangdeng.
Then he looked down at Akeer and smiled.
"Well little lady, let's get going." He said, before licking the blood off the corners of her lips, then lifting her by her hair and putting her over his shoulder.
As he carried her away, a single tear fell from Akeer's eyes and dropped down unto the concrete ground, signifying in her somewhat conscious mind, her grand failure.