Devour | on hold

Chapter 14 (Rupture)

- Chapter Fourteen -

R U P T U R E

We are on the Cannibal’s Land, and are about to be seated in our usual places. Lenno lets go of my hand and gives me a reassuring smile and a gentle push in my family’s direction. I wave at him and go. I take my seat on the ground next to Orenda and she gives me the dirtiest glare a person could imagine. I know immediately that I’m having a long long night to go through. This is not going to be okay.

Akando is sitting with the Pallantons and Nara is sitting with the Sinopas. Period.

This Celebration is different. More painful. More dreadful. More disgusting than most of the other Celebrations we attend. Today we’ll have to watch tens and tens of our people getting devoured.

Today I’ll hear more and more ‘devour!’

Today I’ll hear more and more of the heart-shredding shrieks of children and girls at the sight of exposed flesh and dirty teeth.

Today more and more families will say an awful goodbye to their beloved goners.

Today I’ll have my soul tortured hundreds of times.

I look at Lenno from a distance and he gives me the saddest smile ever; he has the same thoughts and images floating in his mind. We are tired of having our heart and soul and pride and strength all spilled on the floor every once in a while. We are done being weak and obedient to the cannibals. We are done putting rules that satisfy and work for the cannibals and having to follow them.

Akando avoids me the whole time, and I try my best to ignore him in return, but my eyes can’t stop side-glancing at him every few minutes. Pain is doubled today without Akando by my side, and I’m making an enormous effort not to cry in front of everyone and beg Akando to talk to me.

Nara is having the happiest expression on her face, and I can’t believe how some people’s pain could be others’ pleasure. And for a split second, I hate Nara. I hate her for the friendly face she’s worn all along, for the fake hugs she’s given me, for the times she pretended to be listening to me while she’s collecting information to use them against me later. I think I’m over-reacting. I’m judging her without listening to her. But I can’t stop thinking that she’s stolen my best friend, that she knew Akando was my everything, yet took him from me, and she’s happy and content with that. She’s building a love story over the debris of my friendship. And I can’t bear it anymore. If I was any weaker, I would have went and screamed at her until I’m satisfied, until I take Akando back. But I’m stronger than that. If Akando chooses her over our friendship – and that’s pretty clear; he doesn’t talk to me now that he has her – then he’s all hers. I don’t care about any of them. I have my own life and people to be worrying about.

The leader Quidel’s men bring the forty-three bodies of the Internal War. They put them in lines, arranged one next to another, row after row, all of them wrapped in brown cloth. I want to throw up. I close my eyes and take a deep, shaky breath, keep rocking back and forth slightly and try to listen to the flute’s music in my ears.

Quidel gets on his stand and gives out the usual speech, and I close my eyes even harder, block my ears and brain, try to shake away his words, deafen my ears to not let his voice in. It makes me sick, that croaky husky voice of his scares the little kid inside of me. Saying the same words he said when they devoured my own mother. Those hands he waves in the air as he speaks are the same hands that threw a knife in the center of my mother’s chest.

My tears are in a bloody fight with my eyelids to fall, and my brain is on fire. I feel stinging lumps forming in my throat one after one and they’re too painful I can’t take it anymore. It feels like my throat and lungs are swelling and are about to rupture.