Foreverinink Short Stories

Grass on a Rooftop

  She let out a loud groan and squeezed the A4 on which she was writing into an uneven makeshift ball. She lobbed it towards the orange-colored bin that rested against the wall of her room, painted a different shade of orange. The projectile missed its target by mere inches drawing another groan from Candace Pillay. She stared at the near-full bin with distaste, scorning its perceived betrayal. She turned to her polished teakwood desk and prepared to pull out another sheet of writing paper from her notebook. She stopped a few inches short of the paperback and sighed. She knew she couldn’t put anything together. Not with the way she was feeling. She glanced back briefly at the carrot colored bin that was full of three hours’ worth of mistakes. Candace pressed her palms to her cheeks. They felt warmer than usual, characteristic of her anger or frustration. She’d tried poetry, drama, she’d even drawn stick figures. Nothing had come out right.

     Just the way her life was going. Candace eyeballed a photo on the dresser that stood beside the bin. This was painted blue like half the things in her room. The remaining furniture was in various shades of orange, in accordance to her tastes. The only thing had ever let her do. Choose the colors. A small smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. Her parents would have never approved if they’d understood the symbolism. Orange and blue, opposite colors representing opposite forces. My parents and I, she thought to herself.

     Candace wasn’t very fond of her parents. They made every choice for her. They’d even tried to choose her friends for her. Candace had adamantly refused and thus had never had cellphone or internet access. Even now at the age of seventeen, her mother still picked out her clothes, deeming everything that Candace picked out as unladylike, disgraceful, or too revealing. Oftentimes times using more colorful language than that.

     Through the years Candace, or “Candy” as her parents referred to her (though she hated the name), had put up with all of these grievances with the anticipation of when she turned eighteen and could be free of her taskmasters. But she couldn’t any longer. Her parents had pulled the last straw. They had taken the line she’d drawn, erased it, redrawn it, and had somehow managed to shove it up her ass. They were making her go to university. That was her limit. Nobody should force her to further her education. She was already trying out for the state women’s basketball team. She was hoping to make a career out of it. That and writing of course. The only thing she loved more than basketball.

     Candace pushed off her chair and rose to her full height.  She needed fresh air to calm her down. Her willowy but sturdy frame stretched past the six-foot mark and was supported by equally lean legs that had seen many hours of dedicated gym work. Her deep tan was natural. The kind that was impossible to artificially replicate or attain through sunbathing. The kind that came from having an African-American mother and a Caucasian dad. Candace pulled her matte black hair into a shoulder-length ponytail with great ease, silently thankful that she hadn’t gotten her hair texture from her mother. From what she’d heard from some of her darker skinned friends, Afro-American hair was a burden.

     She knew exactly where she was headed. There was a greenhouse on the roof of the apartment building in which she lived. Her dad had only seen her there once and he forbade her from ever going back up there. But she didn’t care It was a place she went to relax, think and occasionally take a timeout from the endless drama that usually took place between her parents and herself. No-one could deprive her of it. She exited the apartment via the fire escape and took the stairs, two at a time, to the rooftop.

     The greenhouse garden was fairly large, spanning about half of the space on the large rooftop. Inside were dozens of species of plants. Some grown in the U.S, some not. The breeze pressed her clothes against her body and tickled her wide nose. She smiled. She was already starting to feel better.

     She walked up to the greenhouse. Its translucent doors were open as she knew they would be. They always were. She didn’t think anyone came up to the greenhouse anymore. Candace pushed against the door and it slowly gave way and slid open with a loud creaking sound, evidencing that its hinges hadn’t seen oil in a while. The room was a flurry of flamboyantly colored flowers and exotic fruit trees. It was all very beautiful. In addition to this, the conglomerate of the separate scents of the diverse plant species was a killer perfume in its own right. A scent Candace could only identify as heavenly.

     She poised to take a deep pull of this fragrance but it never happened. Candace gagged. A gloved hand had covered her nose and her mouth trying to make sure that her previous breath would be her last. Candace screamed but it was muffled by the hand in her face. Her struggles were useless. The person had his—Candace assumed it was a man, because it was unheard of for a woman to possess such strength—free arm wrapped around her abdomen, pinning her arms to her sides. She could feel the person’s pelvic area press against her backside and it became clear to her. This was a man and he was going to rape her. Though she couldn’t be sure, it wasn’t exactly always man-on-woman these days. Her lungs screamed from Oxygen deprivation and blotches of discoloration distorted her eyesight. She began to feel light-headed as her heart rate spiked. She would soon reach the point, she knew, that even if this person released her she would spend the rest of her days in la-la land from permanent brain damage. Soon enough her heart tired out and began to slow. Her lungs were no longer screaming as loud, as if accepting fate. But her head drummed. Her brain needed oxygen ASAP. But Candace could do nothing to appease it. Her strength was waning with each blink of her eyes.

     Suddenly, she felt a surge of strength. Blood forced its way through her veins, almost tripling her blood pressure. Her heart was beating again. Hard and fast. She instantly recognized this sensation from the times they had explained the reaction in her AP Biology class. An adrenaline rush. She knew it wouldn’t last long. Considering her current condition, her adrenal glands had probably been squeezed dry.

     With her arms pinned to her sides and her legs locked between her assailant’s, Candace did the only thing there was left to do. She bit down. Hard. The ensuing scream was not as loud as she would have liked. The voice was deep, confirming her suspicions of the attacker’s manhood.

     The gloved hand jerked away from her head and instinctively she drew in the longest breath she’d ever taken and coughed. Her head felt like a drill was trying to escape it. She tried moving away but her legs failed and she found herself on the floor. Within seconds the man was back on top of her. His hands didn’t go for her face or neck. He just let them slide past as he enclosed his biceps around her neck. Candace knew she couldn’t struggle anymore. She wanted to beg. Even plead that he rape her and be on his way but she knew that wouldn’t happen. It was over quickly. He corkscrewed her head slowly at first using his right arm, pushing it gently to the left until her chin partially rested on her shoulder. With sickening speed he twisted it in the opposite direction, his right hand now resting in the region of her atlas vertebrae, the first bone in the neck. There was a dull, barely audible crack and her body went limp.

     The man stood slowly. Leaving the body to lie amongst the untamed blades of grass. He looked at the body gingerly, nursing his now ungloved hand. The one that Candace had sunk her teeth into. He hadn’t counted on that. He wiped the blood off on his glove. Afterward he reached into his pocket and produced as silver can of disinfectant. He near emptied it into her mouth, effectively destroying the DNA her teeth might have salvaged from his damaged palm. When he was done he started to walk away, sparing his victim only one final glance. He had taken a lion’s share of insults from this young lady. She hated him, plain and simple. She might have made a fine woman one day maybe. Even though he had known her on a very personal level, his guilt was little. All his years in the marines had taught him one thing besides how to kill. Insubordination could not be tolerated. He had given her a direct order. She had disobeyed and she had died for it. Most people, especially other parents might see this as twisted, maybe evil. But to Rutherford Pillay it was simple. She deserved punishment.

     He had failed her. He shook his head. Well at least she would get to lay at rest in her favorite place on earth. Among the grasses on a rooftop in Harlem.
  
   He shut the door behind him. Together with all memory of her.