Illusion - Chapter Three

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
-Mark Twain

Strong light filtered through my eyelids and pierced into my eyes. I frowned and twisted my head, but the light seemed to come in all directions, jabbing at me. Summoning up the courage to open my eyes, I prised open my eyelids a crack only to be met with the harsh light. I hated strong sunlight or powerful light.

“Ow. Jesus…”

I lifted my arm to shield my eyes against the light, squinting to minimise the pain. There seemed to be no sound save for my ragged breathing and the thudding of my heart. For some reason, I was not afraid but calm instead. It was almost as if this light had brought a wave of tranquillity over my body. Although it was harsh and bright, it had an essence of warmth and a slight golden colour to it.

Where am I?

The sounds of muffled and distant voices began to fill my ears. At first, they were barely audible and sounded as if my ears were blocked with water. Then slowly and gradually, they grew louder, increasing in volume until they became clearer. As the voices increased in volume, the light slowly dimmed, becoming less sharp to my eyes until it was soft enough for me to lower my arm.

I opened my eyes and a gasp escaped my lips before I could suppress it.

I was in a large room with tall walls that were painted in a dark grey colour, and beneath my trainers were dusky oak floorboards riddled with lines and pores. A few metres in front of me was a large rectangular table with seven seats, five of them already taken. There were three chairs on each side of the table and one at the top, obviously for the head of the family gathering. I immediately recognised the five people as being my mother and father who sat next to each other with smiles upon their faces. Beside them, Auntie Natasha had already seated herself, her face glowing with what seemed to be joy and pride. Opposite them sat Avery and Jay, deep in the conversation that everyone around the table was involved in. The only empty chairs were the one for the head of the gathering and another next to Jay.

In the middle of the table sat bowls and dishes of all kinds of foods: fish, gammon, boiled potatoes, lasagne, pasta smothered in pesto sauce, salad and chicken. They still steamed with the heat from being cooked and I found my mouth to be watering as I realised how hungry I was. In front of each family member and the empty seats was a clean white plate, untouched by the food and clean silver cutlery that winked in the light that came from a strong overhanging lamp above.

It had been months since the last family gathering.

Then Jay caught sight of me. His smile grew wider and he patted the seat next to him.

“Aria, we’ve been waiting for you! Sit here!”

Grinning, I walked over and pulled the chair back and slumped into it, smiling and nodding with each greeting I received. My stomach seemed to howl and gnaw at the inside with the hunger it felt. I hadn’t realised how ravenous I was up until now.

“So, let’s start shall we?” Auntie Natasha beamed across the table at us all.

There was scuffling as everyone reached for their plates and the serving spoons that sat in the dishes of each food. Everyone resumed their chattering as they began to serve themselves. Before I could pick up my own plate to serve myself, Jay grabbed it and grinned at me.

“What do you want to eat? There’s chicken and beef…”

I grimaced at the sight of chicken and beef. Jay laughed at my reaction.

“Veggie twat…”

I frowned.

“I eat fish too. So how can I be a ‘veggie twat’?”

Jay burst into wild laughter again, thumping the table with his free fist and drawing stares from the other family members around the table. I felt a smile lifting the corners of my mouth. Jay was much happier than the last time I saw him; the way his eyes glinted with joy and laughter, the lifting tones in his voice and how extroverted he seemed to be at this time.

“Hey, Jay, how’s university going?” I shoved a forkful of tuna into my mouth. I watched him pull a disgusted face at seeing me eat tuna. Jay despised tuna with a passion.

“Eh…” Jay’s concentration was focused on serving himself the best of the foods. “All right I suppose. Easier than I thought it would be. How's school?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"A bit shit I guess..."

I decided that it would be better to just tell Jay the truth than to lie to him. At hearing my words, he paused in his tracks and stared at me with a slight frown upon my face.

"What is it?" I could hear the concern and anger in his voice. He hated the thought of me being harmed by other people. "Are you getting bullied again?"

I sighed.

"Look, Jay, just leave it," I mumbled, "There's no point in getting angry over it. In a few months' time, I'll be out of that school and I'll never have to see any of the arseholes again."

A voice suddenly interrupted the flow of the constant chatter and conversations.

"I hope I'm not too late,"

I froze where I was. That voice, I recognised that voice. My breath came in small ragged gasps, the air hissing through my teeth.

"This looks fantastic, Natasha. Thank you for cooking all of this..."

No, it couldn't be. Uncle Soren?

I slowly turned my head, refusing to believe my ears. How could it be possible that he was here today? But my eyes did not deceive me as they landed upon the man sitting in the once empty chair that was placed at the head of the table.

"U-Uncle S-Soren?" I gasped.

Uncle Soren looked towards me and smiled, his eyes full of laughter as they always had been...

I felt a grin breaking across my face as I observed his features: light brown skin, salt and pepper grey hair and the laugh lines around his mouth and embedded into his cheeks.

"Uncle Soren, it's good to see you again. Really good..."

I jerked awake and my eyes flew open as I was yet again torn from my dreams and left to suffer in the real world. I lay where I was, clutching the bed sheets between my fingers.

My great-Uncle Soren…

Tears leaked from my eyes but I kept my face taut and straight. I neither moved nor made a sound as the tears soaked into my pillow.

“Aria, it’s your Uncle Soren,”

It had been almost three years since his passing, yet the wound that was ripped open by his death was still raw and painful.

Mum’s eyes were puffy and red from crying.

The man had been like a grandfather to me whilst my real grandfather had taken off somewhere, never to be seen or heard of again. My biological grandfather never kept in contact with us, never bothering to call us or to send us letters. The last time I had seen him was when I was a baby, too young to remember his face.

“He’s dead. He died this morning.”

My Uncle Soren was my grandfather. He was the one who I had loved and adored so much. Not my real grandfather. I felt no love towards him. Instead, I felt a burning hatred for what he had done to the many families that he had created and destroyed by suddenly leaving them. My real grandfather was a coward, afraid of responsibility. Not that he cared much. He cared only about himself and himself only.

I hear laughter. My laughter.

When I was younger, if I stayed at my cousins’ house all of us would gather around the dining table for supper, cooked by my Auntie Natasha. Jay and I would always sit next to each other, him ruffling my unkempt hair between his fingers; me playfully punching him and laughing whenever he teased me. Sitting on the other side of me would be Jay’s solemn older sister, Avery who disapproved of our play-fighting and mischief, often crinkling her nose at the sight of us.

“No, Mum. That can’t be true. Not Uncle Soren, not Uncle Soren. It’s just some sick joke Jay made up, right..?”

I always ate fast as a kid, often finishing my meals before anyone else. Since Uncle Soren was always in the living room watching football on the television, I would join him in cheering Arsenal on as they played against Manchester United or Tottenham Hotspurs. (“Come on, Arsenal!”)

A numbing sensation spread through my body as the realisation of my mum’s words hit me. I felt nothing, as if my emotions had been paralysed, unable to move.

I remembered the first chess match I’d ever played with him. I decided to go in, full on attack with guns blazing; only to be met with a checkmate four moves later. He’d pulled off the four move checkmate on me. I sat there, astonished as he uttered "checkmate" and wondering how he'd managed to pull off a move like that. I regretted not asking him later and soon forgot about it.

No tears came as I slowly nodded once at my mother and took that single step back into my room before promptly shutting the door in her face. I sat heavily on my bed, listening to the bed springs as they creaked. Uncle Soren couldn’t be dead, he couldn’t be dead…

I wept as I remembered all those times that I’d wasted playing computer games or delving myself into writing whenever I’d visited Uncle Soren and Auntie Natasha. All those times that I’d wasted could have been spent on keeping Uncle Soren company and the rest of the family. But now there was nothing that I could do. Uncle Soren had died and nothing would bring him back.

***

I tugged at my school shirt and sighed as I gazed at myself in the mirror. My shirt was horrifically massive on me and only made me look even smaller than I already was. At the age of fifteen compared to my classmates, I was undoubtedly the smallest in my class. Most of my other classmates were a full head taller than me which they seemed to find hilarious. Some would find it amusing to stand next to me and rise onto their tiptoes to make me look smaller next to them in front of their friends. My hair was even worse. It stuck up in all directions. In truth, I hated it. I had a love-hate relationship with my hair. I loved it because it could cover my face from curious classmates and teachers; and hated it for its uncontrollable elements.

"You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or girl..."

Shaking my head and letting my hair fall into my face once more, I turned away from the mirror and focused on packing my school bag instead to block out the thoughts. I took a few glances at my school timetable between grabbing the books I needed and taking out the ones from the day before.

Double physics and IT in one day. How fucking awesome!

Sighing, I shoved my physics folder into my backpack. It would be two hours of mindless torture. My physics teacher tended to drone on during the lessons which made the subject even worse. Astonishingly, he had even bored the hell out of me whilst teaching astronomy which, at the time, I didn't think would be possible. I couldn't help but smile when I saw that I had history and English for fifth and third period. English was one of the only subjects that I truly loved and excelled in, often receiving compliments on my hard work and the pieces that I wrote in my spare time. And since this was a new school term, we would be moving onto studying Nazi Germany in history, a topic which I was fascinated and entranced by. How and why the minds of the people worked the way they did at the time was the part I was most intrigued by. How easily their minds were twisted by the works of propaganda, and just how dangerous it was just to have a unique intellect which could have cost you your life at the time.

After packing my backpack, I slid into my desk seat and pushed the power button on my computer and waited for it to boot up. I knew that it would die soon any day and so was starting to transfer all my files onto my USB. After that, I would read the news and log onto my school's website to read the notices.

Glancing at the top of the monitor, I felt my heart sink and a lump form in my throat. A webcam sat atop the monitor, its lenses closed to protect them from dust and dirt. It had been more than two years since the webcam was used. (Now is not the time, Aria!) Just seeing it brought back painful memories that I once considered to be happy and joyful.

Lily...

I hadn't always been the lonely person who sat in their bedroom and wrote all day long in a notebook, bathed in darkness. I once had had a close friend. Her name was Lily. We were close friends and I had loved her like a sister. Our friendship had begun in primary school: a simple hello and a wave of the hand along with a smile when I had first moved to her school. From there, it developed into the close friendship it became. I would race home and immediately switch on the computer to video call Lily as soon as I could. We would video call for hours on end almost every day with me doing stupid stuff just to hear her laughter through the computer. I grew to trust her more than anyone else I knew, even more than my own parents. I was able to speak to her fluently, as if she were another family member and not just a classmate who I saw every day in school. I could remember the draughts matches that we'd play together. At one point in the game, I would always manage to successfully move one of my pieces to the opposite side of the chessboard and convert it to a king. Then, I would yell "KIIIIIIIIING!" and laugh at Lily's annoyed pouts. Lily and I were different: I was quiet and preferred to spend most of my time by myself reading a book or writing stories; Lily was more into music and fashion, and was sociable and seemed to make new friends at ease, something which I could never quite achieve due to my shyness and social awkwardness.

Then it all changed when we moved to secondary school.

We remained close friends but that seemed to drift apart. Lily found a new group of friends, a group that she fitted into and shared similar interests with. However, I never quite slotted in with the others as smoothly as Lily had done. I didn't have the socialising skills that she'd had and my ways of expressing myself were considered to be strange. I was unable to socialise with my new classmates and so was left out, cast aside from the crowds. Nevertheless, Lily was happy and seeing her smile made me smile.

The last time that I'd spoken to Lily face to face was near the end of Year Nine outside an art classroom. We had not spoken in months. I was surprised to see her as I exited the classroom. I hadn't been expecting to see her at all. Instead, I bowed my head, believing that Lily had been waiting for someone else in my class, and walked on. Until she called my name.

I had frozen in my tracks, numb with disbelief. I thought that she had forgotten all about me and was happier off without me. She seemed to be much happier than she had been in primary school. Lily's Facebook page always had had photos of her and her friends on nights out. In every single photo, her eyes were bright with joy with a smile spread across her face. Lily caught up with me and held her arms open for a hug. The hug had caught me by surprise as I stood there, not quite sure how to respond.

She was so pretty. Her dark eyes sparkled and her wavy hair swished down past her shoulders, shining brilliantly in the golden sunlight. The shy smile upon her lips completed it. I was lost for words. For the first few minutes, my voice struggled to support the words that my mind spun; but that changed and once more it retained the fluency it had had from when I spoke to her from when we were younger. We spoke about our lives and what had changed; the options that we had selected for our GCSEs (I had chosen triple sciences, IT, French and history. Lily had picked drama, textiles, music and media) and how our families were. After that, we hugged goodbye once more. I had no idea that moment would be the last moment that I would be spending with Lily.

She left without a single word, her departure from the school unknown to me. It was only when I noticed her absence that I'd realised that she had moved to another secondary school. Afterwards, I felt nothing but guilt for not saying goodbye to her, often dwelling on the memories of our friendship and thinking of everything that she'd done for me. I was still friends with Lily on Facebook but was apprehensive about contacting her once more. She looked happy enough with her friends and I didn't want to ruin that for her.

The bullying began in the second year of secondary school. At first it was light teasing but it soon morphed into racial slurs and insults ("Fuck off back to Japan!") that pierced through what I had presumed to be thick skin. I often hid from my classmates and would study alone at break and lunch time to cover up the pain of loneliness and the knowledge that I was a target for the bullies. If I wasn't studying, I was working on a novel that I'd soon give up on or writing dark poetry that involved the subject of pain, torment or revenge on those who had hurt me.

I also tried to cover up my pain by doing stupid stuff in class to make everyone laugh and to feel appreciated instead of rejected. I became the class clown. I told myself that it was better than nothing, a nobody, an outcast, a reject. There was a time in one of my physics classes when I was a Year Ten student. We were studying the effects of gravity and the teacher decided to perform a demonstration that involved swinging a bucket full of water. Since no one else volunteered, I saw it as a chance to make everyone laugh. ("No, Sir, no! Not Aria!") I swung the bucket but I couldn't get it to stop since I didn't know how. It ended up smashing against my back leg and sending most of the water flying everywhere and soaking a few of my classmates in the process. However, I was dry. I stood there surrounded by laughter (the walking disaster has struck again!) with a stupid grin on my face.

On the outside to my family, classmates and teachers, I looked happy and content - as if I couldn't be any more joyful. I was getting the good grades I wanted and always seemed to be up for a laugh with my classmates. But it was all a trick of the light, nothing more than a mere deception to minimise suspicion. The inside was a different story, a completely different matter. I was torn by loneliness and the darkness that was caused from the depression, the constant bullying from Connie and the inability to socialise and make new friends. I used cutting as a way to express the frustrating thoughts and feelings that couldn't be identified or written on paper or expressed through words. In a way, cutting offered a temporary escape route from everything that was happening around me. I covered up my arms to hide the cuts that I'd inflicted upon myself by wearing hoodies and jumpers, and wore a mask upon my face to hide the pain that I truly felt.