Things We Never Speak Of

Warrior

My parents chose to bless me with the name Samburu. A Kenyan warrior tribe that roams the dry grasslands, famous for its lion hunting ways. Fierce. Proud. Brave. The name, I must confess is appropriate; each generation of Sivu has produced a beast hunting individual able to defeat their personal demons, always admired by the rest. This name befell me, but it should've been my younger sister's. It should've been Asante's.

You see, I have seen the Samburu traits in her, Fierceness, Pride, Bravery. I see them in myself and everyone else does too including my doting parents but I see that my sister possesses these traits in larger quantities than I ever could under pretense or in truth. She possessed her demons too and not the other way around. Instead, mine caused me to shed silent tears in the early hours of the morning...

The many colours of her skin is a testament to my sister's warrior genes. The overlooked purple, green and yellow tattoos that have been painted all over her. My sister's body is a living and breathing canvas decorated by a violent artist of her choosing; she returns from her late night escapades bright and beautiful. I saw them when we went out for a stroll one day, down by the marinqa stream. Late summer, sweltering and humid winds swept the sweet smelling wind through our hair. The lukewarm water beckoned us into it. She tied her t-shirt into a fashionable knot around her midriff and folded her shorts to rest on her upper thigh. They stood out, glaring at me with their evil beady eyes, daring me to utter a word of their existence. In a way, the made her skin look supple, soft to touch, what a tragic contradiction; only brutal force could have left its mark on my sister's skin and a sickening feeling in the back of my mind told me that my sister's body had grown accustomed to this constant battery.

I worried. Stayed up late with blazing headaches, lighting raging infernos within my skull. I needed to know. Who had done this to her? I wanted, no needed to find this aspiring virtuoso and spill his blood making it my medium for revenge as they had turned Asante's body into a mere canvas. But as time went on, I steamed and seethed within the confinements of my own head, never questioning the origin of her bruises, forgetting each second the painful image until it smeared itself into a messy blob and shrunk, hiding in the forgotten recesses of my memory.

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At four a.m in the morning. A boy, on the cusp of manhood, lay in his toasty bed. Covered form chin to toe, the unusual chilly draught awoke him from his peaceful slumber. The blur of a darkened silhouette climbed through the open window as it took him a while to become aware of his own consiousness and realise that the silhouette was no figment of his imagination. The adolescent's legs swung from his bed and he took a minute to steady himself. By this time, the figure had transformed into a leaned body with a sharp recognisable profile, quite similar to his own. Before he could properly gather his bearings, the teenage girl had grabbed the duffel bag which lay at her feet and exited the bedroom through the door which remained ajar. The boy refrained from tracing the girl's footstep but his curiosity eventually got the better of him.

The dimmed lights in the corridor reflected the crimson trail which he followed to the entrance of the bathroom. The porceilin sink - drenched in blood - reminded him of a puddle in a battlefield. In his sleepy stupor, he hadn't noticed the puffiness of the girl's face until it swallowed his vision. Thick trickles of bloody spit flowed freely from the girl's open lips, a plush black towel held loosely in her hands signified a feeble attempt at staunching the oncoming tide. Her eyes froze on the boy when she felt his presence. Their gazes locked for a fraction of a minute, then he rushed forward to help the girl clean herself up and the stomach churning mess she had left behind.

Once the girl, had been tucked into bed - her body patched with plasters and wrapped in gauzy bandage - did the boy begin to think of retreating back into the comfort of his own bed. However, as he dragged himself through the corridor of the Marigold house,an unexplainable force tugged him into the now spotless bathroom as if he were on a leash. The black and white stripped ADIDAS duffel bag lay sagging on the floor. Precariously, the zip was pulled back slowly by the boy and its contents spilled onto the floor. The pungeant smell of sweat permeated the air from the used gym clothes that lay in a pile close to the empty duffel and near the tip of the shower matt, hardly visible, lay three rolls of green cash bills.

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Years later is when I uncovered the significance of the rolls of cash that had lain at the bottom of my sister's sports bag, its origins could easily be traced back to her 15th birthday; she had decided to let the world melt away beneath her feet as she watched everything she once cared for so dearly get destroyed, that is what would give her the long-covetted freedom to be happy, years worth of memories eagerly flushed down the drain all under the pretentious name of "happiness". 

To her, happiness entailed giving to herself whatever her beating heart desires be it at the cost of bringing upon pain to whoever stood in her path - physical was acceptable but her favoured kind was that of the mental variety - and so she carried on with her life wreaking havoc to those around her, floating through, oblivious of the pain, torture and heartache she left in her wake like a naive tornado if there ever was one. Her first and most frequented victims were her family, myself included. We were worn rubber tyres, held together by the thinnest strands of sanity - compassionate forgiveness was the adhesive - rolling along the same muddy trail with each rotation pushing us closer and closer towards our breaking points. But we never broke down. Each cycle of torture, pain and spiteful hatred was always followed by a period of regret during which the victim would blame themselves for whatever misdead had transpired instead of beating down the fist of justice on the deserving perpetrator. The Sivu family sleepwalked through their Stockholm Syndrome , with their eyes sealed shut. We were not ready to tackle head on the demanding challenge that was our daughter, sister or once best-friend, instead we allowed the problem to run rampant in the middle of the night without any clue of its whereabouts, secretly hoping it would find a way to extinguish its own flames, a way to extinguish its purpose and drive leaving behind a fraction of what it previously was, that fraction only caring about which boy would ask it out to the prom. Instead it ran around aimlessly and why is that you may ask? Because it was the easiest way out. It was the only way out we knew we could take.

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His chest heaved up and down at an alarmingly fast rate. A million thoughts - none of them good or legal for that matter - ran through his brain as to how his younger sister had acquired such large sums of cash. Panic floated through him until his body became a desolate wasteland, void of any emotions. He snuggled up into bed, wrapped himself in his own covers and just when sleep clutched him close in her motherly arms, a single hot tear rolled down his right cheek.

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Autor's note:

Hello my sweets! Hope you are enjoying the story so far. It would mean the world to me if you vote for my story or leave comments (however random they may be)because it motivates me to write even more. The picture of the Samburu man at the top is an accurate representation of what a Samburu would actually look like (Yes they are a real tribe in Kenya and they are pretty badass!). Feel free to ask any questions - anything at all!