Forgotten Memories (Shoey)

Ch 15- Zulu

Too tired and stressed to proof-read so politely fuck off, grammar nazis 

"Kimiko?" I ask, gently knocking on her door. It's not black like it was yesterday. It's a dark purple with little sprinkles of glitter on it.

"Come in." I slowly open the door and smile at how pretty and delicate the room looks. The windows have thin see purple transparent curtains on them with sunshine seeping through the glass. The ceiling has ropes of dangling lanterns, replacing the candles that used to be the light source. The floor is made of smooth gray stone stacked like bricks on a road. The wallpaper is alive. Literally. The black silhouettes of the buildings stand tall on the walls as the black rain pours down on them. I cast my attention towards Kimiko and find her sitting on her bed with her head buried in her hands, silently crying. She lifts her head, staring at nothing with a calm, blank expression on her face as silent tears drip off her chin onto her purple and black bed sheets. Her eyes lead to an empty void of an absence of cessation. "I'm sorry." She says without looking at me. "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry for what?" I ask, slowly lowering myself down to sit on the edge of her bed. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yes I did." Her voice cracks as she tries to talk louder. She's still not making eye contact. "I'm the one who set that fire. I don't know how, but I did. I just...I get so angry so easily and I don't know why. I can't help. I've been like this my whole life. That's why I'm very competitive. I feel like if I lose at anything, I'll be burning with so much anger that I wouldn't be able to control myself. And that's exactly what happened; I lost at living and I took it out on you guys. I shouldn't have hurt you. I shouldn't have hurt Hayley."

"You didn't hurt Hayley."

"Yes I did." She says, finally looking at me with watery eyes. "She didn't tell you what happened to her, did she?"

"No." I say, shaking my head. "She didn't even tell me what happened to me."

"Well Hayley started up a low-scale tornado to help put out the fire but I guess a rock got caught it in and swung at your head, which caused you to pass out. After you were down. She tried to make the storm bigger because the fire was getting bigger, but it was no use. I was so angry. I felt like her trying to kill the fire, she was trying to kill me so I did what I could to save myself. I attacked her. I dragged her into the fire and let her suffer in the heat that gave me warmth and love. I don't know what came over me. I would never ever do that in my right mind, but that wasn't me. I felt like something was taking over my mind and I couldn't control what I did. She tried to fight me off to get out the fire, but I'm much stronger than her. Eventually, I came back to my senses and let her go. She had quite few burns and scratches on her, but they healed like in an hour. The fire died out after a while when the rain and wind started taking its toll."

"And that's when the two of you brought me here while I was still unconscious?"

"What are you talking abou.t?" she asks me. "We didn't bring you back here."

"Um, yeah you did. That's why I woke up in Hayley room. It was yesterday when I came to check up on you in your room."

"You never came to my room yesterday." She shakes her head like I'm telling her a story about a unicorn fighting a potato.

"Yes I did. That was when like everything in your room was black and your bed was floating—"

"Whoa, dude. What kind of narcotics are you on?" she says, out up her hands for emphasis. "Floating beds? Really, Shane?"

"I witnessed it with my own eyes yesterday. You started talking about how you always came in second place in life and then you got angry and your eyes turned black and then you got some really where telekinetic powers and pushed me out the door." She stares at me with a slight glint of terror in her eyes as her jaw partially drops. "What?"

"I don't even remember coming home yesterday. I just remember apologizing to Hayley as the fire died and then I woke up this morning in my room. It might have to do with this not I found in my drawer a few nights ago." She hops off the bed and opens the top drawer of her nightstand, pulling out a white card with letters written in gold covering it. She hands it to me and watches me as I quickly skim over it.

Musa sokwethuka uma inkumbulo yakho buphela njengoba intukuthelo yakho escalades.

Amandla umphefumulo wakho possesses is kakhulu ngaphezu kakhulu yakho okungaphezu kwalokho umzimba wakho uzwakalisa.

"What does this mean?" She asks me, leaning over my shoulder to read it again.

"It's Zulu." I say immediately. "I can roughly translate it: don't be frightened if your memory fades as your anger escalades. The power your soul possesses is much more than your much more than what your body expresses."

"What...? How...? You speak speak Zulu? Have you ever even bee to South Africa?"

"No. I can barely speak Spanish. I don't know how I knew that." I say, shrugging my shoulders.

"Well maybe you can understand it because you're the special one. That translation says a lot about the both of us."

"But this still doesn't make any sense." I rub my hands on my face, trying to shake the confusion from my head. "I still have a lot of questions I need answers to. What does this mean? Are you the special one? Is that why you got the note? Who sent the note? I they on our side or against us? W–"

"Stop. I don't want to think about this right now. I can't think about this right now. This is too much. Just take the note and go. You can keep it."

"But–"

"Shane," She says, staring at me with big brown, exhausted eyes. "Please."

"Fine." I sigh. "I'll come back later." I hop off her bed and slowly make my way towards the door.

"Wait." She stops me. I freeze in the doorway and wait for her to continue. "Don't tell Hayley about this. Please. If she finds out, she's going to flip out. She's already a little shaken by the changes I'm going through; I don't know what she'd do if she found out everything."

"I'll try, but I can't make any promises." And that's the last thing I say before closing her door and heading back to my own room filled with mysteries and unsolved puzzles. Kimiko might be too afraid to know the truth, but that's not gonna stop me from finding answers myself.