Battered, With Love

Chapter 6 -- Who Da Creep?

Hi everyone! New part. The explanation of the creep...remember to guess in the comments below :)

"In this world we assume that those without words are without voice." -- Ash

           The Creep first started texting me on March twenty-third of this year. Ok, that sounds freaky—me remembering like that. I only remember because it was my birthday. My seventeenth birthday, to be exact. Well, mine and Harun’s.

            It was a lazy, languid Saturday morning. I woke up early, warmth and gold stroking my face, Mother Nature’s alarm clock.

            I always remember the first thing I set my eyes on when I open my eyes. Every year, on my birthday, it’s like a mental tradition. I always pray to God that it’s something He created. Today, it is.

            Who opened my blinds, I don’t know. But when I open them (my eyes), the first thing I see is green grass, the color of childhood summer memories and stains on fresh white cotton dresses, green grass being kissed by the Sun.

            Marigolds, fighting to be noticed, spring out of the ground in merry groups, little schoolgirls giggling on the playground. God, this is so beautiful, I think. My heart stirs, filling with appreciation at the aesthetic beauty of nature, fresh with the fingerprints of God, proof to me that He exists.

            Sometime in the middle of the night, my phone fell on the ground. The touchscreen reflects light from the Sun, catching my notice. I pick it up. Ten new messages. Damn.

            I scroll through all of them, my smile growing as I see all my cousins’ names on the screen, texting to wish me and Harun in a happy birthday.

            There’s one number that I don’t recognize. I open the message.

            Ok, I wasn’t expecting anything when I opened the message. It’s quite possible that one of my friends or family got a new number. But this message stood out because it wasn’t a birthday message.

Hey Eiliyah(:

That’s all it said. The thing is, nobody knows how to spell my name correctly unless they know me well. For some reason, people usually forget about one of the i’s or the y become an extra i or they forget the h.

‘Who is this?’ I text back. While I’m replying to my cousin Fahad’s birthday message (he started lecturing me about high school boys and why not to get distracted by them), my phone buzzes again. After I hit send for Fahad’s message and after it’s sent, I check the newest message. ‘You looked beautiful on Friday’ the message reads. It’s from the same number.

            ‘Fool, don’t waste my time’, I shoot back. Springing up out of bed, I throw my phone on my bed and skip—yes, skip—to Harun’s room to wish him a happy birthday.

            I forgot out The Creep all day. Why would I remember? At the time he was like a blip on my radar, insignificant to the overarching plans and lists of things to do. Harun and I both chose we wanted to be go to Four Cabreras, an elegant restaurant two cities over. It was in Burnsmont, where Sayeeda lives.

            It was my parents, Harun and I, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two older brothers, along with all my nieces and nephews (four of them), and Sayeeda’s family that went out to dinner. Seriously. I’m still trying to understand why Indian people are always reproducing. No wonder we’re overpopulated inIndia