Young Writers Society

A/N - I'm guessing the disguise doesn't hold up well, here XD. This is for ChernoballyInclined's contest. In it, the odd place I guess, is me.

Omar was walking through his grandparent’s flat. It’s small, wallpapered with the memories of his childhood, and layered in the smells of his grandma’s cooking. He can’t help but remember the big family meet-ups here, the only time all was in harmony. But this day, the time is uncertain and his mind is foggy. It seems he’s been in the hallway, a mere three or four metres long, for ages and his skin is crawling, as though the air is alive with icy particles but there are no windows, no air and he is sweating. There is a door to his left leading to the bathroom and inches ahead, on the opposite wall, is a door to the right – a spare bedroom. His shoulders itch to be rolled, to offset the imp sitting there, the demons at his back, staring –

It is completely silent.

His feet sink into the carpet, deeper than they’ve ever gone before and he begins to wonder at what is happening; will he sink through the floor to some other place? Will he wake gasping in his bed? It seems more and more like a dream, now that he thinks of it and this thought brings a wave of terror; there’s only ever been one sort of dream in which he is self-aware, only one sort of cognizance and it’s only ever been of the horrible kind. He recognizes the symptoms now, the heavy dread that coats the air, not grandma’s cooking, no memories here – the walls are stripped of their meaning, the lounge at the end no longer a happy place but one he knows he must get to. To do that he would have to get pass the door on his right and it fairly pulses with menace.

His feet keep going and with the danger recognised, he actually moves forward but in that dreaming fashion, couldn’t grasp why. His heart pumps painfully hard as though a fat hand is trying to squeeze it dry. He comes to the door finally – it seems to shake and quiver; a bad, flickering image on a distorted screen and suddenly everything fast-forwards. The door is open and he is being yanked inside by more force than he’s ever felt in his life, slammed on the side, half in and half out because even as he was seized, he began to fight – turning, every muscle screaming with urgency to get away from this force, this horrible, horribly familiar malevolence and looks into the eyes of evil –

Time freezes as he stares into his own face, the eyes so awfully, awfully black – hair slicked back, mouth twisted in a rictus half-smile, half-snarl. Have you ever looked into a person composed entirely of darkness? Of every black thought and twisted desire? It paralyses. It was this paralysis that Omar feared more than anything else, that complete sense of helplessness, and it was just as his shoulder began to burn with pain that he woke. Not gasping, as it turns out, but breathing and blinking rapidly. He lay still for a moment, frenetically glancing around his room, identifying, processing – he was alone. But not comfortable. He gets up, turns on the light. There would be no more sleeping tonight, this routine is so familiar. He gets a book and tries to read but the words swim before his eyes, recollecting into those terrible black pits, those holes in that face – they could never be called pupils, not even for a minute.

How many times must he face these horrors? He thinks about those other times, always there’s the frenetic rush; intense speeds seem to characterise their motions in his dreams, helplessness and finally, the paralyses. The worst times have been those that occur while he is awake and cannot move or breathe for the sheer helplessness, he can but sweat terror and gasp and pray, oh pray in those moments as he never would in the day. ‘The shai’ton attacks you because you do not believe,’ his aunty told him once but surely they wouldn’t need to, if I didn’t believe he countered at the time. And yet, with each encounter, he prayed more fervently than the last and each time it was weaker, the release was longer and he woke feeling even more the imposter. Omar looks around his small, crap student room and contemplates his family, half a world away. He is alone, more completely than ever before. It’s not a depressing though, merely recognition of his current place. He opens his blinds and sighs. The view never failed to cheer him – the green field, dotted with rabbit holes, the glittering lake so placid and still and beyond it, the sweeping trees leading into the distance, all painted gold by the sun. It literally sucked the emotion out of him, drained into a setting so serene it was unreal.

In this emotional vacuum, this clarity of thought, he thinks for the first time about his mother. About the time she woke him one night, hair in disarray. ‘Amour, Amour (Omar) get up. Didn’t you hear me calling?’

He replied, ‘No, what’s wrong?’

‘I screamed for you. I was screaming for you, fuck, didn’t you hear?’

‘No, no, what’s wrong? What happened?’

She looked around the room, as though searching for an answer or unable to give one. Behind her, the door opened into the yellow light on in the hallway, highlighting her dark hair and dusky face. ‘Never mind…fuck me. That was fucked up.’ She turned and walked out. He can’t remember if she asked him to follow but he did. All the lights were on in the kitchen and the lounge room. She’d been sleeping in there the past few nights – he remembered seeing her there as he’d walked in, earlier that night. His mother, so strong normally, had called for him? The woman who could break mountains on her back, who, with a glance from smoky-dark eyes could freeze people to the spot? She looked dazed.

‘It was a ‘____’,’ she said.

‘A what?’ He couldn’t pronounce it, had never heard it before.

She repeated it. ‘It’s a type of shai’ton. Everyone has one that’ll try and get them. Judour (grandpa) caught one once, years ago. He sealed it in a bottle.’ She proceeded to tell him how she was lying on her side at the time, facing the couch, back to the door (as I remembered her). She woke to find a man sitting on her. He asked her questions (‘that’s how they get you, for each answer they get, the stronger they become’) until the blurriness of sleep faded and she realised what was happening. She tried to see his face but could only see he had long dark hair. They were sitting in the kitchen, kettle boiling, bread toasting. ‘He would have killed me,’ she went on, ‘if I’d been lying on my back. He would have crushed the life right out of me. I started reciting the surah’s until he went away.’

Did you feel as much a hypocrite as I did, when you woke? He thought it but didn’t say it. It was not the time or place for it. His uncle had no such inhibitions the next day in dismissing it as ‘Coke psychosis. You see shit,’ he said, overriding her stringent denials and Omar couldn’t help but stare in disgust at the fat man. Had any other member of his overly religious family recounted that same experience, there would have been wails and testimonies in Arabic about God, but with his mum, it had to be drugs.

Omar looks at the beautiful day, the wonderful scenery before him and wonders at the strange dream, the stranger memory and odd times. Why on this beautiful day such bleak thoughts? It seems only on these kinds of days he can think them with any safety, like scurrying shadows released from a cage, they cannot bear the purity of light – but in darkness, at night, when uncertainties abound and reality seems weaker than before, the shadows find form and strength; cracks and footholds in the battlements. He needs a shower, he decides, and goes to clean himself. To be cleansed. The hallway is immense, outside his door, catering to twelve rooms, two showers, a kitchen and three bathrooms in total. Not so much a flat as a militarily efficient barracks-style level. His room number is 10. It’s a long walk out, a longer walk in. After he has woken properly and dressed, he decides to go for a walk. The day is bright and brisk, outside Norfolk Terrace. It’s always different walking in a different country; somehow more liberating. Omar trudges past Block E, and F, heading away from the central campus and toward the lake.

It’s as though with every memory had, with every experience experienced, a place becomes superseded; each encounter is a string we lay in the web of our lives. Here, in this new place, there is no string loaded with tension, with the heaviness of remembrance. Each step is ghost-light, with no evocation beyond the physical. It’s good to breathe fresh air. And yet, with each day here gone, another string is laid and a new web is built – he realises he should enjoy it while he can and his footsteps quicken. He heads over the field, and into the forest. The woods are cool and shaded and lovely. The lake is huge and silent, a silence that is somehow ponderous; giving weight to the otherwise airy thoughts of leaves. Omar’s feet crush sticks and the odd leaf, passing over rocks, impacting on mud and earth.

He’s walked once or twice through here, when it was a novelty. It’s not new, but nor is it old, familiar or dated – his thoughts painted black with recent memory, shade the place in a different colour and it is this difference that makes him falter. Why does it suddenly seem so strange? The trees still whisper infinite secrets to one another on the breath of the wind; the sun still shines through the canopy in a dappled dance of shadow and light – the difference, he grasps suddenly, is in him. His mind races briefly, following this thought on a subliminal level, one without words in a fashion that has become familiar – there’s an idea for a story, here. He walks forward once more and comes to the bridge. Woven of broad black metal plates, it is stout and ugly in a place of beauty, stretching over a small, brown-green river.

In the bridge, or rather under it, is the story and he smiles as he finds it. The day, typical of British weather, is brisk and cold despite the sun. His nose is beginning to get numb but he doesn’t need to stay here any more, he needs to get back and write the story. The timing couldn’t be better given he’s just received an assessment for a short story, due in some weeks. He returns to his flat in good spirits, secludes himself in his room and in the next hour spins out ‘Catch The Troll’ – re-envisioning the bridge in another way, exploring place through fiction. He feels good, but weary. Though the day has been light and breezy, his thoughts have been thick and full. He thinks again of home, of his mother. Should he call? It probably doesn’t matter, he decides. He’ll return to that web soon enough.

Omar’s phone beeps and he checks the message. Same girl. He doesn’t reply. That’s a string that needs to be cut, quick. All webs have spiders, huh. Sometimes we have to bite people and remind them we’re poison; that they need to keep away. Thinking of that, he looks around, suddenly paranoid of another fear: those creepy crawling little bastards. Even though Britain doesn’t have any poisonous spiders, unlike home, just itching with things trying to kill you. He twitches. His flatmates will want to go out tonight but he won’t, no more strands need be added today, no more thoughts thought and though he isn’t afraid of silences and empty places (so he tells himself) he won’t go outside, into that long, seemingly endless hallway with its constant abrasive lighting.

Some things are better left in the dark.