Normal With You

Chapter 7

*This chapter contains sensitive material*

Edited 17/12/15

He felt as if he was consumed by fire yet he had consumed the fire itself.

There was not a cell in his body that did not cry out in pain as it was ignited by the poison entering his system. He paid it no mind.

It was his love for her that compelled him to carry on. And it was that love that compelled him to hurt himself, that caused him to hate her.

He didn't know when it was that he had fallen to the ground. He would never recall the seizures that overtook his body nor taste the bile and froth that left his mouth as his body rejected what it was forced to intake. He would never even know the exact second that his heart had stopped nor would he know how long it took for it to start beating again.

All he knew was that his father had killed him.

And he was never sorry about it.

"Miss Phillips, Please recite the poem on page 63 out loud."

Where had I heard this wind before

Change like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding upon a restive door,

Looking downhill to a frothy shore?

Summer was past and the day was past.

Sombre clouds in the west were massed.

Out on the porch's sagging floor,

Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.

Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known...

He hated the ocean.

His father had taken him for his first and last holiday a few months before Farhana was born and he would never forget it for as long as he would live. The memories of that week would play as a film reel in his mind that was never ending; that was infinite. It would haunt him in the form of those dreams that overtook his nights and those dreams that invaded his days.

His father was very fair and was often mistaken as a white man. It was the only reason they allowed them to stay at one of the more upper-classed hotels overlooking the most pristine waters there was to offer. His mother had dyed her hair back to her normal blond and was donned in the most beautiful blue swimsuit. She looked like a mermaid as she laid back to watch the water curl in towards the shore to gently play with all the little toddlers' feet as their mothers held them protectively to their sides.

There was laughter and delightful screams yet he was confounded and awed at the sight before him.

He had never seen something as vast and as endless as the blue waters in front of him. The ocean had dwarfed even Zaheer. He looked small in front of the gentle body before him and that was a feat Riaz never thought would occur. His feet burnt as he plodded through the sand, trying to navigate his way over the little dunes that never seemed to disappear. He hated the way the sand brushed up against his legs as the wind started to hum around him. It stung him as if they were thousands of tiny mosquitoes attacking him all at once.

He remembered lying down next to his mother as his father went into the water. The sun was hot and heavy on his stomach and he knew it would be a shiny red by the time he would reach home. But he didn't mind. His mother looked peaceful, more peaceful than she had ever been. She was humming a gentle tune and he sidled up closer to her in order to hear it. It was beautiful. He had never heard his mother singing before and he didn't understand why she had never done it more often. It calmed him and it made his heart feel as if it were as light as a feather and with one gust of wind, it might go soaring up to the heavens.