Brooklyn Chronicles: Save our Sons and Daughters

Chapter Nine

A non-sterile needle injected with the deadly liquid of heroin met the flick of two fingers. The clear liquid shook and danced in the small frame. He pumped the needle and watched the liquid squirt out. This wasn’t his first time, he had stopped his addiction and he had been recovering, alone. But all of that was about to go to waste and he was about to be back to square one.

The scars of needle marks were obvious on his pale and thin hands. It was the only thing that took away the pain, the pain of life and some of the things he couldn’t change. He just wanted to be loved.

The needle pierced his skin and the liquid drug ran through his bloodstream entwining with every blood cell. His system was intoxicated with the drug and his body fell back.

His eyes were red and his body shook. The heroin high created changes to his thoughts, sensations and state of emotion as it took control of his brain and nervous system. He was stuck in a phase of euphoria and his pain was numb. His unhappy circumstances were forgotten and all aftermaths of the life he had been living. This was the only time he recalled feeling pleasure.

His dark sight was dazzling with different abstract colours, shapes and patterns, he couldn’t explain it but it made him feel good.

But once the drug was done the darkness faded in, the pain was back the same way it hadn’t left him. He wanted to die.

His weak dark eyes met the bright white skies of the early morning, they were all he could see. It felt as if the clouds were closing in on him as his eyes shut, every emotion and sensation faded and he could only hear one voice speaking to him.

I was thinking how much we speak about our differences. My personal experience.. your individual identity. But we aren’t so different.. you and I. 

Human. Mortal. Fragile. 

The sun rises, the sun sets. Repeat. It's this arcadian rhythm of things. Time and chance unfolding as the second hand counts. 

57, 58, 59... 

At some point this humanity slaps us all in the face. And you find yourself flat on your back reeling from whatever it is that life has thrown at you. Time passes and the thing is sometimes you're sitting there still reeling years later.

The sun has set on your life without you having realised that the light was even fading. Life all comes with chorus of what if’s and what could've beens roaming inside your brain. 

You see, this life is a vapour and grasping the air to preserve it only accelerates it's dissolving, then everything you thought you knew is gone.

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After two weeks, Santanna had decided to move in with her family at Malaika’s home. It was now four of them, her, Zipporah, Izrahiah and Theophilus. The other two, Tank and Blue hadn’t been seen or heard around the streets of Brooklyn. 

And in particular, Blue was someone they were worried about the most. Blue was someone the family felt responsible to look after the most, he was fragile and vulnerable. He had been addicted to drugs for a while and they had all tried to help him, but nothing was working.

The only person who knew Blue’s deepest and darkest secrets was his family of six but they couldn’t tell Malaika, some things were kept a secret and it was starting to show that hiding the truth hadn’t worked out in anyone’s favour, especially Blue’s.

The family had spent days looking for Blue and when Santanna realised something was not right, the first place they went to was the hospital and Santanna’s gut instincts were right. Blue had escaped death, again and this was her last time, next time would be her last.

The nurses were concerned and Malaika stepped forward as the person responsible for him. Unfortunately, the doctor took no notice of her as they informed Blue about his parents’ soon arrival.

The family watched Blue and blamed themselves for letting him do this to himself for so long. Blue’s caramel clear face was now blotched in red patches and spots. He kept itching his body covered in scars and red bruises. His thin jet black hair was greasy and stuck to his sweaty face.

He continuously bit his swollen pink red lips while itching his thin body. His eyes were red and the bags underneath his eyes were unreal, he looked nothing like the Blue they used to know before the drugs, he was a different person, a different character and he had lost his identity, who he was.

He had lost what made him a person but he hadn’t stopped learning to understand who he was, the drugs and something more than drugs were slowing it down.

“His parents will be here shortly and visiting hours are almost over so could I please ask you all to kindly leave, it’s been a heck of a day.” The doctor said in annoyance looking at them all crowding Blue.

The moment Blue had the mention of his parents, he shot up from the bed and began pulling out the tubes connected to him. His muscular jawline stretched as he screamed and refused, the doctor watched him with fear and the nurses held him down. Malaika struggled to understand why he was reacting in such a way and secrets were about to be revealed.

Hard footsteps stopped at the door and at the door stood Blue’s parents. His black African American father and Filipino mother had turned up after years of searching for their sixteen year old child who they had last saw eight years ago. 

Blue sat back and hid behind Malaika with fear in his eyes. He held Malaika’s hand for protection and Malaika held his. She looked down to see his arm covered in cuts from self-harming, he sobbed behind her begging for his parents not to come close.

“Get out of my way!” His father pushed Malaika aside and left her body to flop onto the hospital bed. The doctor and nurses watched him with fear and didn’t do anything. The boys from the family fought their way to hold him back but his strength was too great for them all, he possessed the strength equivalent to three grown men’s from the size and structure of his body.

He dragged Blue by his white t-shirt and pulled him under his nose. Blue’s tears fell and his body shook under his father’s control. 

“You make me sick.” His father spat as he tore Blue’s t-shirt apart. The whole family gasped as Blue’s father ripped apart the t-shirt. Blue stood with shame clinging onto his upper naked body.

A thick and tight material was wrapped around his chest and it flattened what seemed to be the developing features of a woman, a woman’s breasts. Blue’s father pushed his hands out of the way and unraveled the material until he was stripped naked with his chest revealed.

“You see that, she’s a girl trying to be a man. I will beat her blue until she realises and becomes the daughter I once had.”

Blue cried with her body on show for everyone to see.