Contest Entries

Fatality

Liriko 2's Playoffs Round Entry.

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Fatality

by superjelly

            Mama just killed a man.

            Veredictum. Latin, literally means "to say the truth". Ver; "true" of the Latin word vērus and diet, which means speech, from the Latin dictum. From the Middle-English verdit, from Anglo-Norman Language, also known as Anglo-French, a dialect continuum that includes standard French. Autochthonous. It was used in England in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period. British Isles... islands of Great Britain, Ireland, and over six thousand... No, seven? Eight thousand... No, six... Six thousand smaller isles.

            "Case number 0609730218, Republic of the Philippines versus Frederick Rodriguez, murdering second-degree..."

            Murder. The word's trace ancestry from Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken at about 3500 B.C., "mrtró", meaning "to die". Murder. Killing another person. Taking away someone's life. Just like what Mama has done.

            Mama killed a man. Mama murdered a man.

            "... With the jury finds this as follows as the defendant in this case, the defendant is guilty of murder in the second-degree as charged, as stated by Michael Reantaso with a personal set of jury on the 15th of March 2015..."

            Idus Martiae— The Ides of March have come. Julius Caesar was assassinated on that date in 44 BC. The 15th of March. On the night of the 15th of March, I've seen my mother kill a man. She put a gun against his head. She was crying. She was a mess. And bang, bang, bang, bang— How many times has she fired the gunshot? Bang. Bang. Bang.

            "I hereby pronounce you as guilty of murder."

            "Guilty."

            "Guilty."

            "Yes, guilty."

            They looked at me in my eyes with their judging looks as they uttered the word. Guilty. One man took me by my arm, another grabbed my other arm, pulling me up with such brute force. What are they doing? I did nothing wrong. I did not kill anyone.

            It is Mama. She's the one who has killed someone. Not me. Mama killed the man. I've witnessed it with my own eyes. She put a gun against his head and pulled its trigger. The blood splattered all over the room and the man lay on the floor with no signs of life on his face.

            It is Mama who killed him, and it is me who mourned for his death.

            I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. This isn't real. Everything around me is merely a creation of fantasy. The wind blows and I feel the cold air breathe against my cheeks. I hear fluttering sounds. As I open my eyes, hundreds, or maybe thousands of black ravens dangle their wings above my head and surround me in their whirl of darkness.

            Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham developed a technique called the Johari Window that is used to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and with others. I have always wondered if the mind if filled with so many Johari windows, that's why we each have our own versions of our stories for ourselves. I wonder if memories are contained in a window, and for each window we reserve different fragments for the consciousness. For some people, they may remember the same circumstance differently. For some people, they may have varied feelings and thoughts regarding the same memory.