Are You There, God?
He was kneeling by his bedside, a cross pendant in his hand,
the room steeped in darkness, only lit by a half-burnt candle on the bedside
drawer that cast long shadows; shadows that crept in from the closet, from the bathroom,
and the ceiling.
His tormentor wasn’t home yet, but he would be at any minute.
Kay looked at the bedroom door and listened. Only darkness streamed in from under
the door. Beyond it, grave silence, the kind before a raging storm.
The room was sparkling clean and well-organized, but there
was something off about it. It was cold and unwelcoming, the darkness brooding
all around, casting its gloomy shadow all over the room that not even the dim
candlelight could disperse.
There was a suitcase beside the bed, open with clothes
neatly packed inside it. Next to the suitcase were a pair of New Balance 530s. It
looked as if someone was preparing to leave. He was preparing to leave.
After that brief call to God, Kay paused and listened.
A strong wind howled outside his creaking window, rustling
the leaves of the mango tree in his backyard. Then, he looked up across the
other side of the bed. Something in the darkness seemed to make his face light
up a little, and a faint smile spread across his face.
“Thank you for that sign, God.” He said, sniffling and
rubbing his hands together.
He closed his eyes as tears welled in them, wetting the
edges of his eyelashes as they glimmered faintly in the warm yellow candlelight.
“So, um…” Kay sniffled again, trying to keep the tears from falling.
“Sorry.” He apologized feebly as he wiped the tears from his eyes. But this
only made him break down completely.
He looked at the door again in fear. His tormentor wasn't
home yet, but he would be soon.
“God, I am tired! I am so over it!” He shouted amidst sobs
as he lowered his head onto the bed and began crying uncontrollably. “I have
tried, God, to push through this battle…to be one of your strongest soldiers. I…I…I
have tried to have the heart to endure this…a…as Jesus did at the cross in
Calvary, but I…I am so, so, so sorry, Father, but I…I can’t.”
He fell on the bed and continued to cry. He spent several
minutes with his head buried in between the sheets as the pain washed out of
his body in an endless stream of tears that soon created a large, wet patch on
the beige bedsheets. He cried uncontrollably for minutes on end. It was about
to end, he could feel it. The pain was about to be gone forever!
Then, he sat up and wiped the tears from his eyes. He cleared
his throat and pulled his shoulder back, trying to keep a posture of defiance. But
his puffy eyes and the sad wrinkles on his face, amplified by the candlelight
shining from the side of his face, betrayed the fear and sorrow in his eyes.
He sniffled again. The bedroom door remained aloof, half-lit
by the feeble candlelight and half-buried by the darkness seeping in from the
ceiling and the bathroom door next to it.
“So…um, he is not here right now, so we have some time to
talk,” He spoke softly, his voice hoarse. “Am…am I doing the right thing, God?
Am…am I being a good person? I…I know it is against the Bible, what I am
thinking of doing, but…but…nimechoka!” His composure let up once again, and the
floodgates opened again. “God, I am tired!”
It had only been, what, four or five years of marriage? What
was meant to be a lifetime of bliss had only lasted about a single lifetime of
a Queen Honeybee. Now here they were, Kay with this pit in his stomach that was swallowing
him from inside, and his tormentor with an ever-growing darkness. Kay had finally
learned to live his truth after a lifetime of hiding, found what he thought was
a rare gem of true love, only for it to end up as another prison. What is life!
“When will it end? God! When will it end?” He cried to the
heavens. “Is joy not for people like me?”
After another brief moment of wallowing in his tears, he cleared his throat and adjusted his shirt. In a much
more composed voice, he spoke on.
“I was thinking, God, that if maybe you want me to push
through with this, let me know. Send me a sign, God, because I need it. I am at
a crossroads, and I am hoping that you will show up before the Crossroad Demon,
because I can’t promise not to take him up on his offer.”
His window creaked again, and the wind blew on the mango
trees with another sombre rustle. This was swiftly followed by a faint sound of
a door creaking. He turned his sight to the bedroom door. Darkness still seeped
from under the door.
He tilted his head and listened keenly. At first, an uneasy
silence, like a held breath in anticipation of a violent crash.
Then came the faint sound of a door latching, followed by footsteps,
faint but perceptibly intimidating, as though whoever was making them was
trying to sound dominant.
Kay got up from his knees and made his way to the bedroom
door, from which the profound darkness just lapped underneath like smoke in an
enclosed room. He listened on and heard the sound of the keys carelessly thrown
into the key bowl by the door.
Then, the intimidating footsteps began growing louder. Kay closed
the door behind him and latched it, his previously sad but calm face now
fraught with nerves and wrinkles of dread, his eyes fraught with confusion and
fright. He scampered madly back to the bed. He stopped and wanted to turn to the door. But
then he decided against it and made for the bed. But then he stopped and, for a few seconds, frantically shifted between wanting to retreat to bed or head back to the door.
After a brief moment of indecision, he decided to retreat to the bed. He walked to the bed and sat on the edge, facing the door. He cleared
his throat, adjusted his shirt, and sat up straight, trying to look confident and intimidating. It was today or never.
As he sat there, twiddling his fingers and trying to keep
his heavy breathing under control, an eerie silence fell across the house. Why
had he stopped? What was he doing? Did - did he know what was about to
happen and was preparing for it?
Kay drew in a large breath and tried to keep his composure,
but he was fraught with nerves, his heavy breathing sounding across the room.
The footsteps resumed again. Faster. Heavier. Louder. More
urgent. More threatening. Like the sound of a drum growing louder and louder
and louder, getting struck harder and harder and harder –
Kay whimpered, closed his eyes, and cowered as those footsteps
landed with a violent stomp right outside the door. Kay kept his eyes closed, expecting
him to barge in through the door at any moment now.
But he never did.
Kay tentatively opened his eyes and looked at the door. A feeble
light, probably from the bulb further down the corridor, seeped in from underneath
the door. But that was not what caught his attention. A shadow stood on the
other side of the door, blocking some of the light, shifting this way and that,
seeming restless.
Kay’s heart was beating hard and fast, and he was breathing
heavily as his body tensed up, fright taking hold of him and making his chest
compress and harder to breathe. His heart thumped against his chest, and his
whole body felt like it had a thousand large Maragoli drums getting struck within.
Kay watched the restless shadow behind the door. His
ears rang loudly, and all he could really feel was his body trembling from his heartbeat
violently thumping throughout his body.
A gentle familiar voice called
him from the other side.
“Kay?” The tormentor called, his voice muffled by the door
but just its sound was enough to send shivers down Kay’s spine.
Kay tried to stay silent, whimpering softly as he shook all
over, trying to keep his aching body still, but his sobs only got louder the
more he tried to hem them in.
Then, the figure stepped away from the door. The light outside
the door went out, and the previous darkness under the door took its rightful
place.
Kay stayed put for a few more minutes before walking up to
the door and opening it up just a crack. The corridor was dark again, but he could
see light from the living room downstairs. He also heard a muffled voice, his tormentor’s
muffled voice.
Was this one of his many pranks? If so, what would prompt
him to go back to them, considering their relationship spark had been killed
precisely by these pranks?
The breaking point had been on March 16th, 2023. In one of his many pranks that knew no boundaries, the tormentor had once mixed Kay’s facial powder with wheat flour, leading to Kay developing a debilitating allergic reaction on his face that went on for months as his eczema blew up, forcing him to stay indoors since his face was so swollen he could barely see.
What
made this situation even worse was that his tormentor had known about his eczema,
yet had pulled the prank anyway. The previous ones had been annoying, maybe
even angering, but this one had been heartbreaking.
It was on this day that Kay began taking stock. It was the
day when Kay started looking at him with a keen eye and had come to realize
that he, Kay, had ignored all these red flags before they even married, just
because he had found someone who had accepted him openly and loudly.
It had only gotten worse from there. Forgotten anniversaries, threats of physical violence, gifts, and holidays to cover up months of neglect, psychological torture.
But now, it would be no more. This ends today!
Kay slipped out of the room, down the corridor, and crept to
the stairs landing. The voice of his tormentor sounded clearer now from downstairs, though Kay
could not hear exactly what he was saying. He crept down the steps and got to
the bottom landing, which was adjacent to the wide open front door and looked
directly into the living room.
Kay had expected to see his tormentor sitting in his
favorite chair as he spoke. But he wasn’t in the living room. Kay closed the
front door as he chafed, the June chill biting into his irritated skin like
sharp pins. He couldn’t even be arsed to close the door!
The voice came from the kitchen.
Kay walked down the short corridor next to the stairs to the
kitchen, which was located just behind the stairs. A strong feeling of déjà vu struck him as he walked through the kitchen door, one so striking and real
that it felt as though he had slipped into a wormhole and was reliving an event
that had already happened.
Kay stood at the door and watched his tormentor pace next to
the kitchen island, speaking in soft tones on the phone, the kind of voice he
often used when whispering sweet nothings to Kay. Then, he saw Kay and stopped,
a stunned look on his face, catatonic like a deer caught in headlights.
“I’ll call you back, James," He said to the person on the
other side.
James. Of course, James. His best friend, James. His childhood
‘straight’ friend, James. His best man, James. Of course, it had to be him.
He walked over and kissed Kay on the cheeks.
“Hey, what happened to the kitchen bulb?” He said, pointing
at the empty bulb socket overhead. Kay only stared back.
“Did you have a good day?” The tormentor asked, after his question about the ligt bulb went unacknowledged. He broke into a broad
smile as he asked that.
Kay remained expressionless, showing no reaction to that
kiss. In fact, he showed no emotion at all. Hmm, that fake broad smile of his. Kay
could see through that plastic smile. He had seen it many times before. It was
just – weird, and scary, that smile, like staring into the face of a corpse that had died
smiling. His eyes would become unnaturally small, and the crows ' feet around
them would fold unnaturally as he tried to make that smile seem as genuine as
possible. Yet the eyes sold him out; they told everything, because his eyes
would retain his trademark steely, dead gaze.
“What have you made? I am hungry.”
Kay looked down at the cutlery rack across the room, and
somehow, he knew precisely what he, Kay, was about to do. He knew exactly where
he was about to go next. It was as if he could see future versions of Kay
walking ahead of him, guiding him across the kitchen. And he followed these hazy
versions of himself across the kitchen, walking toward the cutlery rack.
He saw the future version of him pick up a knife from the cutlery rack and
turn to look at him, a knowing smile on his face. Present Kay then also walked over to the rack and reached
for the knife. He looked back at where he had been standing and gave the
darkness in front of him that knowing smile. Then he reached for an onion and
looked at his tormentor, who was standing across from him at the kitchen door.
“Go freshen up, Love,” Kay said, smiling. “Let me fix you
something – ravishing!”
“Oh, I like the sound of that.”
“Something - heart-stopping.”
“Oh! You know the way to my cold heart, Kay. Love you.”
“Mmhm,” Kay replied tersely.
The tormentor quickly turned and dashed out of the kitchen
and up the stairs. Kay looked up at the ceiling, listening to those heavy footsteps
stamp up those stairs. For years, those were the sounds of torment, the sounds of
impending danger, the sounds of a brewing storm of psychological torture.
No more!
Kay smiled.
No more! It was time to put an end to this. A brutal end!
Kay looked down at the kitchen door. There, he saw Future
Kay standing there, knife in hand, a peaceful smile on his face. Present Kay walked up
to the kitchen door and looked back at where he had been standing, and gave the
darkness behind him that peaceful smile. It would be a heart-stopping meal indeed.
When he turned and looked down at the stairs landing, he saw
Future Kay stand for a moment, look up the stairs, then down in contemplation,
muttering something quietly. Then Future Kay stared back at Present Kay. Then he began climbing
the steps with determination. Present Kay walked to the stairs and looked up. Nothing
but darkness stared glumly back at him.
Was this the right thing? Could this have ended any other
way? Indeed, it could have. But it was too late now. The goose was cooked. Kay
looked down and made a silent prayer. Then, he looked down the corridor to the
kitchen door before taking on those stairs with unrestrained single-mindedness.
He switched off the corridor light and slowly made his way
to the bedroom door. Future Kay was at the bedroom door, holding the knife in
front of his face and staring at it intently. Then, he went in.
Present Kay got to the bedroom door and once again started
contemplating. He swung this way and that way, shifting his weight uneasily as
the knife felt very real in his hand for the first time since he picked it up. He
lifted it to his face. It gave off a slight glint of malice in the dark, like the
menacing fangs of a growling wolf right before
it pounced.
He twisted the doorknob and opened the bedroom door. In front
of him, he saw Future Kay lunge and plunge the knife into the future version of
his tormentor. Presently, Kay looked at his tormentor sitting calmly on the bed
in the dark bedroom lit only by a candle. He was seated on the edge of the bed,
a towel wrapped around his waist, ready to jump into the shower.
He was giggling like a child, appearing like putty in someone's
arms with the way he squirmed ticklishly on the bed as he typed on his phone.
Kay exploded inside at that sight. His body was engulfed in
this overwhelming furnace of rage. His eyes flashed over, and all he could see
was a blurry version of the reality in front of him. The room was nothing but
hazy outlines and shadows. His tormentor was nothing but a human-shaped outline
on the bed, just a blurry silhouette of a person. Kay’s head was hot, burning
hot, so hot that he could feel it burn into his eyes and bring hot tears
rolling down his cheeks.
Kay lunged.
His tormentor turned.
“Kay, unafanyaaa?” He screamed.
But he had no time to finish his scream. Kay plunged the
knife into his chest with so much force that the blade twisted at the handle.
The two fell over the edge of the bed, on the opposite side of where Kay had
been kneeling in prayer.
“K…K…K…Kay?” His dying tormentor stammered, clutching at his
chest and staring in disbelief at the blood in his hands as life seeped out of
him, every feeble beat of his heart sending blood pulsing out of his chest. “W…w…why?”
Without thinking, Kay turned the knife on himself, plunging
it into his own heart.
An explosion of colors filled his eyes as soon as he plunged
the knife in. He raised his eyes, burning a fiery orange, to the heavens, arms
stretched out. His body began shaking intensely, but not from the convulsions
of death, but from strange, intense, and powerful orgasms. Not even anal
orgasms could rival the powerful convulsions that coursed through Kay’s body as
he was engulfed in red, pink, and white flames. It was euphoric, heavenly. He
lost control of his body and gave himself mind, body and soul to the convulsions that
pulsed a steady stream of profound pleasure previously unknown to man through
him.
Kay laughed, and for the first time in years, his face showed
peace, a calmness beyond human understanding. He looked across the room, on the
other side of the bed, and saw another version of him kneeling on the bedside.
“Are you there, God?” The new, kneeling Kay was praying. “It’s
me, Kay. I know we haven’t…
Present Kay listened to the familiar drone of that prayer,
which he had said and listened to many times before, and it still sounded
beautiful, a rallying cry to battle.
A strong wind howled outside the creaking window, rustling
the leaves of the mango tree in the backyard. Present Kay looked to the kneeling Kay
just as the kneeling Kay looked into his eyes.
“It's about to end!” Present Kay told the kneeling Kay. “The
peace you seek, it’s on the other side of that door. Go! Go on! Go on and claim
it!”
Kneeling Kay’s face lit up a little, and a faint smile
spread across his face, as though he could see the present Kay as he was
surrounded by a blaze of glory. Perhaps he couldn’t see present Kay, but he
certainly felt that wind of peace.
With this, Present Kay closed his eyes as he was fully engulfed
by the colorful flames, his chariots to a land of eternal peace and bliss.
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