The Thirteenth Hour

The cheeks drenched in tears, the sweaty, numb palms, and the trembling fingers wrapped around the receiver were the only signs of life left in my stature. The deafening shrieks of my soul were enough to bury the incoherent mumbling of the voice on the other end. The smell of fear and the taste of death seeped deeper and deeper till I could no longer feel my own presence.

My gaze fixated upon the lifeless mass in the dangling mirror on the wall; how I wish the mirror hurled my own reflection at me instead of hers. If this is life, then I welcome the agonizing pangs of death without any further reluctance. Death in itself wasn’t the cause of my misery; her life with out my presence perturbed me. It is all too clear, clear as glass, clear as the water of deep blue ocean, clear like it is present reality and not the past.

My world was limited to the span of her embrace; I knew not what existed outside this boundary and neither did my curiosity ever force me to contemplate questions that would lead to enlightenment. She felt and knew me even before I acknowledged my own being for unlike myself, she had recollections of my conception, birth, and the early years following it. My natural amnesia ended sometime around the age of four when I first started absorbing my venomous ambience.

I remember cuddling up in her lap with my head resting against her bosom, listening to her beating heart and the gush of flowing blood, warmth emanating from her soft arms wrapped around my torso, the puff of air from her nostrils that brushed against my cheek every few seconds, and her luscious lips resting on my widow’s peak. There was nostalgia present in this setting; the only thing missing was the umbilical cord, the placenta, and her persistent pushing accompanied by midwife’s incessant pulling.

Thud! The nostalgia has terminated; I don’t recall being airborne, my skull slamming against the wall, landing face down on the cement floor, with warm, red liquid flowing from this new crevice where once my mark of beauty, widow’s peak, existed. This was reality; a reality that I was doomed to encounter in the next several years of my existence as proof of his infuriated outbursts. I wiped off the blood from my eyes to get a clearer view of his bestiality; he grabbed her hair with his left hand only to hold her face in a stationary position, while slapping her over and over with his right hand.

These bruises and blood were not enough to satisfy his ferocity; by the time he finished kicking her in the abdomen, followed by buttocks, thighs, and shin, this torn piece of flesh seemed more like a soccer ball to me than a human. What seemed like decades may well have been no more than few minutes; by now he had grown exhausted and resolved to the bedroom, leaving mutilated pieces of human flesh behind.

After gathering her debilitated spirit and body, she must have attended to my needs as I discovered a patch (bandaged wounds) on my forehead when I woke up the next morning. I was content to know that my brain hadn’t oozed out of the newly formed crevasse right above my forehead, but where was she? I held onto the wooden bars of the crib and lifted myself up till I could manage to jump over the barricade. Another thud, but this was just a voluntary landing on the floor unlike last night’s coerced slamming.

I ran into the living room and was relieved to see her sitting in the corner. She looked so colorful; I never knew nature had hidden so many colors in her. But this wasn’t the rosy blossom that women take pride in; these were various shades of blue and purple mingled with red/brown that lent a stark contrast on her fair complexion. So last night, his fury and furor had dabbed her with makeup. Even with such grotesque features, the beauty of the whole world was no match for her in my eyes.

His sporadic outbursts of tumult and frenzy were the only reality that composed my memoirs. We cherish blissful memories but in their absence, miseries fill in the void without our consent. Seasons came and went; autumn lingered on for spring was not a part of our destiny. The three of us succumbed to metamorphosis with the lapse of time; the four year old larva had grown into a butterfly snatched off of its luminosity; she had grown frail after years of physical torture; his appetite of blood and bruises had reached its demise only to be reincarnated in his incessant ranting/screaming that frequently shattered our glassy existence.

How much longer would the two of us have to suffer? I often daydreamt of his death; I imagined suffocating, poisoning, shooting, hanging, and even stabbing him with the serrated cleaver that he once had struck her thumb with. I never had the guts to shroud my dreams with the cover of reality so I resorted to the most potent weapon of the cowards, prayer. I prayed for her to die, for the two of us to die, and for him to rot in his death bed in absolute solitude. After years of kneeling and bowing down, a third of my wish was granted.

The blood work done had some abnormalities so the physician followed it with a bone marrow biopsy. It was a routine follow-up; I was told if results are normal then I wouldn’t hear from them. I had matured enough to know that there was no norm in this chaos that I called life.

So they ended up summoning me to the clinic again. He held my chart, looking up only to immediately shy away. After playing stare and shy for a few minutes, he pronounced the death sentence that I had longed for over the past two decades. They won’t electrocute me, nor do they want to hang me, rather they want to schedule chemo and radio therapy sessions in order to kill this streaming bloody monster, i.e. adult acute myeloid leukemia. I could only pray that with the monster they would also kill the host. I realized that someone controlled the strings of my fate; someone whom I had ceased to recognize after the suffering, but also someone whom I was beginning to renew the broken cords with. My prayers were about to be answered.

How selfish of me? How can I rejoice over this; had I grown so callous that I only concerned myself with my own well being and forgot her? She would have killed herself long ago had it not been for me; she lived for me and I must live for her sake. I knew better than to ensure my own longevity regardless of what the physician said. Since when did the puppets control their creation or destruction?

Time was my novel enemy for I had only 18 hours left before the physician’s first encounter with my inner monster. I had daydreamt long enough and now the execution must be carried out, with the slight nuance of change in characters. She could never survive without me; she could not withstand my trials and tribulations, she must leave before I make my final exit. Without me, she cannot bear the savagery of this world. I must free her from this entrapment for I am her only savior.

I adorned a dubious smile on my face while handing her the glass of milk. Our fingers touched and a bolt of guilt and anxiety struck me. But this was for her own good; it is the end and not the means that matters. She imbibed the poison slowly only commenting on the “difference in taste of the milk.” Yes it must have tasted different. Years of love and devotion squeezed into an 8-ounce glass. I tucked her in, pulling up the sheets and comforter to her neck, and sat on the rocking chair with her hand clasped in my palm. With her eyes wide open and mouth sealed, I could tell she had queries, which I tried to evade. I bent forward to kiss her forehead just like I had done millions of times earlier, but this was the kiss of death.

Her eyelids could no longer bear the burden and slowly she went into a deep slumber. Had she died? I placed my head against her bosom; I could still hear the beating heart and the gush of flowing blood. There was nostalgia present in this too; but after this there would no longer be any episodes of reminiscence in my life. I could feel the warmth escaping her, I could hear her heart losing its pace, and could see her chest becoming flat, no longer the rise and fall. There was a unique calmness on her face as she extricated from the chains of imprisonment. Her lips succumbed to a smile; she was satisfied with her demise, she knows I have granted her freedom and her smile was a clear sign of gratitude.

*The clock strikes 9, and the phone rings continuously* The night had passed, my mission had been accomplished. I wanted to lunge towards the ringing phone, afraid she might wake up from the noise, but No how could she wake up, she is no longer capable of hearing any noise whether it’s his belligerent tirade or the phone. She sleeps like there is no tomorrow. But I am still alive, I hear the noise and I must force myself to answer.

“This is the nurse from Dr. ____’s office and I wanted to tell you the good news that your biopsy results are normal, your results had been mixed up with another patient’s yesterday and we apologize for the inconvenience. You don’t have leukemia, you……………………. ” What had just happened, even death is playing tricks on me. How can I live when I have poisoned my own world? Is this the treachery of fate that You call life? No, there must be a mistake, I must have cancer, I am due at the hospital in 5 hours; this is only the thirteenth hour.

The cheeks drenched in tears, the sweaty, numb palms, the trembling fingers wrapped around the receiver ……………………R 30;……………