Photo by Ioana Cristiana on Unsplash
“That’s the kid?”
Cowering in the farthest corner, the skeletal thing raised her gazelle eyes and stared at me. She cocked her head, perhaps confused to see an unfamiliar face in the bustling orphanage full of kids her age.
Her intelligent eyes were a mix of curiosity and fear. The trauma inflicted on her soul sent a pang of ache through my body, stirring something innate, something motherly, right through me.
I averted my eyes and shifted my focus to the director, a middle-aged woman donning formal attire that reached to her knees.
“You sure you want to do this, Ms Lewis?”
I muttered more for myself than for her to hear. “Don’t have any other option, do I…”
“She’s well-behaved, a tad shy for reasons we both know, but she’s… she’s a good kid at heart.”
“And the ones who did this to her? They’re just getting away with it?”
“I’m- I’m sorry?”
I heaved a deep sigh. “Never mind. When can I leave with her?”
“Oh, the paperwork will take something ‘bout two weeks and then—”
“Two weeks?” I repeated. “I thought everything was settled already?”
“As we both know, Ms Lewis, the bruises—”
“The bruises?” I interrupted her. A grin escaped from my lips. “Do you mean the evidence, Mrs Langdon?”
She cast a look around us, visibly on her toes as she uttered the following: “These are matters we should keep between the two of us, don’t you think? Remember, you agreed to the terms.”
“Terms?” I said, briefly pausing. “Ah, those papers I signed? What was it now again, something about—”
“Ms Lewis, what are you trying to do?”
“What? Can’t disclose even that much? Too many curious eyes and ears on us? Who are we kidding, Mrs Langdon? Even if the whole world knows, those bastards will still get away with this – as they always have, as they always will.”
“If you know, then why do this? Why provoke the sleeping lion? Let this girl satisfy your search for justice and let things be. For your own good. You can’t save them all.”
“You’re threatening me.”
“I’m obliged to follow orders. I’m just doing my job.”
“Does your job involve aiding those monsters who—”
“That’s enough! You either leave now or never return. This is your last shot! Everything you say or do from now on, I must relay to the board. Do you understand?”
I let my eyes wander to the poor soul in the corner, eagerly watching my every move, perhaps wishing for a miracle – an escape from the hell forever tattooed on her weak, scarred soul and abused body.
She was right. I hated to admit it, but she was right. I couldn’t save them all. In this wicked world, I was a nobody. Just a writer with no real power or financial means to make ends meet each month. Still, I loathed the idea of being over a barrel, especially at the hands of those wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Somewhere, some place far from here, a remote island was a prison to the most vulnerable – to the most helpless – and monsters in disguise abused them and then discarded them as if they were nothing but objects to satisfy their perverse needs.
If I turned a blind eye, just because I was a nobody, could I even call myself a human being and sleep soundly at night? Even if most people could, I for one couldn’t. It wasn’t in my genes to do such a cruel thing.
I left. I… left that poor thing to fend for herself. Why hadn’t I seen it coming? Why was I such a fool? So naïve…
When I returned the next day, she had perished – disappeared with the whistling wind, swallowed by the depths of the bottomless ocean and forever etched in my soul as an open wound. A scar I swore to never forget even if I bid farewell to this wicked world and was put to rest before my time ran out.
Typing the last sentence on the computer a decade later, I knew things could only get better or worse from this point on. Every word that slipped through my fingers was a witness to the growing trepidation in my gut.
I paused in the middle of the last sentence and shut my eyes, deliberately shunning off all sounds from my bleak mind weighted down by thousands of thoughts.
I was nineteen years old when I decided to become an author. It wasn’t passion that drove me to this profession, it was desperation. I sought a purpose to live.
When the world continued to spin around its axis, only I was stagnant and rooted in one place, frozen indefinitely. Writing gave me a purpose to carry on despite all odds, albeit it was short-lived.
By the time my career took off, I was in my early thirties and too sensitive for my own good. I found myself in yet another stagnant period where even the rise of the sun failed to excite me.
It was during one of these moments of my wretched existence that I climbed to the rooftop of one of the hotels I was staying at for a conference and decided enough was enough. But my time hadn’t run out yet. I was still here, alive and kicking.
I opened my eyes and let the dimness envelop me in a suffocating embrace. The monitor showed the words that could either alter the course of my life as is forever or end my career and everything I worked towards with a single push of a button.
Voice.
A voice.
My voice.
The voice.
I looked down at the pavement from the rooftop and breathed in the crisp air. I thought it would be the last time I’d ever do that. The busy city moved along to the cadence of the ticking, unforgiven time. I took a step forwards, ready to take the plunge. But I never did.
I found my voice. At first, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, fiddling with my imagination to stop me from ending it for good. But then I heard it. It was as clear as day.
Like a buzzing bee on the verge of dying, the voice repeated in a loop in my mind’s ear time and again. It told me to be the voice. This was my life’s purpose – its only purpose.
In a time when the wicked got away with the most heinous acts, it told me to become the voice no one could stop – no one could censor. This was my purpose.
I didn’t exist to endure hell on Earth or live for the sake of living, but to be the voice of the vulnerable. The voice of the censored. The voice of the forgotten. The voice of the murdered. The voice of the neglected. The voice of the abused. The voice of the…
I finished the sentence, sinking back in my seat for a short while before pressing publish. If putting my life on the line meant saving them all, I was willing to offer my soul without batting an eye – without regrets.
Now there was only one thing left to do: depart on a flight to my own death and crash into the mountains shrouded in patches of fog, deliberately, accepting that this was the price I would pay for being a human with the voice.
The End.
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