5 Minute Reads | Anthology

Masked by ThatOneWariorCatFan

by ThatOneWarriorCatFan

Title: Masked

Description:

There I was. A brown girl in a brown crowd surrounding by white. A brown girl, aged 12 years old, with so much life, but nothing to to live for.

Story:

    Hello. I am Saraswati. As my name suggests, I am an Indian. But no one really cares what my name is anymore. Just what the colour of my skin is.

    I am currently standing next to my father and my cousin. My sweet, 9 year old cousin is now a silent, stone faced boy as we face reality.

    As I said earlier, I am brown, and so is my whole family. This means that they will kill us. They means the Brotherhood. Ironically, they are not all men, just mostly men. They are a group of what you would call White Supremacists, and they seek to kill the other 'unclean' races. The only way to get out of this is to give yourself to them, where they will brainwash you into killing more people. I would know. My best friend, Caroline, who, even though she was white, was targeted for being my best friend, essentially. Her parents turned themselves in, and they were all brainwash. Now, if I see her again, she will kill me. I know she will. After all, she killed my mother and my other cousins.

    The way the killing works is that they will take you to a town, most likely a small, small town with a population of around 50. They give you one minute to hide, but there really isn't any point. They will find you, no matter how hard you try. Say you did hide well enough, and you escape their clutches, you can live, but it's never happened.

   So I am standing here, with my father and remaining cousin, waiting for death. We are surrounded by the White inhabitants of the village, and also some of the Brotherhood. The gunshot sounds, and we run. My father and cousin run one way, and I stay with the small children. I gaze after them, committing this moment to memory. This is the last time I'll aver see them, and I know that. There is a gently white lady who is herding all of us down into the basement of one of the buildings. She tells us kids to sit in rows, because most of the kids are 5 years and younger. I leave that particular room and go to the next room to look for hiding places. There are two rooms other than the one the kids are in. I go in the last one. What I forgot was that the top part of the staircase is seen in the last room. I'm still looking for a place to hide when a man walks down the staircase and sees me. I freeze.

    He walked up to me, his deep blue eyes glinting evilly. He would be the kind of person to be in a gang. I knew this was the end, and nothing would get me out of it, but still I begged to see my father one last time before I go. That's all I want. I knew it wouldn't happen, but I wanted so much to see the kind face of my father, and the smiling face of my cousins. I wanted to see my mother, killed by my best friend, and my aunts and uncles who were killed as well. My eyes well up with tears, and I remember one New Year's Eve at my cousins' house. We sang a song together, one that we had been singing for our whole lives. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I could here my wonderful cousins' voices filling my ears, and tears slipped down my face as the man attached the mask to my face. I visualised my mother's perfect face lighting up with a smile. I could hear them so nicely, I could see them all so clearly. I took a deep breath through the poisoned, fabric mask, and it does it's job. I start to feel light-headed. As I breath, my eyes still closed, I feel the fabric get wetter as I just cry. All the tears of my dead parents, my dead cousins, my dead aunts. They all pour out from my eyes. As my lungs filled up with the poisoned air, I used my last bit of breath to sing. To sing the song that was echoing in my ears. To sing the song that my cousins and I sang that one New Year's Eve.

"Mama, I just killed a man. Put the gun against his head, pulled the trigger, now he's dead."

~

Thanks,

ThatOneWarriorCatFan