With no time to remember the tips for safe bridge jumping, Roimata’s natural instincts took over. She entered the water almost vertically and slid deep, deep down into the dark green recesses of the river. An odd calmness came over her as she finally reached the bottom; the soft sand was a welcome change from the unyielding concrete she had been standing on for so long. The water was the colour of cloudy old wine bottles, and Roimata struggled to see more than an arm’s length in front of her. ‘How will we ever find her in here?’ she thought. The tightness in her chest reminded her that she needed to breathe, and she pushed gently off the bottom and started the long ascent to the top.
The light grew brighter as Roimata neared the surface, and her lungs emptied in anticipation of their next breath. Suddenly something grabbed her leg and yanked her back down into the deep green. ‘What’s going on?’ she thought in panic, desperately trying to break free of the unwanted grasp. She looked down and saw that the old tree had reached out his long twisted fingers and caught her by the ankle. She kicked and kicked, but he would not let his prize go. Roimata was stuck now too.
Fear gripped her body as the oxygen in her system ran out. She thrashed as hard as she could to try and free herself, but to no avail. It seemed as if the harder she tried to free herself, the tighter the old tree would grasp hold. Scratchy fingers dug into her flesh, scraping her skin and trapping her. There was no escape from the wooden tentacles. She was almost ready to give up and take her first deadly underwater breath when she saw a flash from the corner of her eye. Something darted quickly through the water.
‘Stop struggling, Roimata,’ a still voice said. ‘You have nothing to fear.’ Roimata felt the same odd calmness she had encountered a few moments earlier wash over her once more. The voice was complex yet familiar, like one person speaking with the voices of many. She stopped kicking. She felt the tree’s grip on her leg release, and although she couldn’t see them, she felt what seemed like thousands of hands push her gently upwards. ‘You are a part of this river, Roimata, don’t ever forget that.’ As the mysterious voice fell silent, Roimata popped back out on top of the water, lungs greedily gasping for air.
‘There she is!’ yelled Mihi from a few metres away. A few forceful strokes later, Mihi was quickly escorting her young cousin to the safety of the riverbank. Breathless and exhausted, Roimata collapsed on the shore, surrounded once again by the burgeoning crowd. ‘There you go cuz’ comforted Mihi as she rubbed Roimata’s back. ‘Everything’s alright now. You fullas are heroes.’
Before Roimata could speak, Mihi motioned over to where George was sitting, next to a very shaken Latisha. Each person in the crowd was taking turns patting George on the back. ‘Too much George. You’re the man George,’ the unlikely murmurs went. Latisha sat ashen-faced and silent. George stared quietly at the river. Roimata could tell by the way Latisha clutched tightly to his arm that George had just saved her life. A big smile made its way across Roimata’s face. Maybe turning ten wasn’t so bad after all.
Cutting Truths
Lesley Rain Walker
I stared in abject horror at the scene before me. It wasn’t the fact that I could see my mangled body, twisted and deformed in an ugly heap of blood and excrement, that was sending me into hysteria. After all, I had felt every slice into my skin, every slow drag of the knife that had been used to butcher me. So seeing a visual of everything I had felt as my life slipped away was not surprising. No, it was the man that had me cradled in his arms that was truly frightening.
Despite all the gore, all the mess that was spilling from my stomach, he clutched me hard against his chest. Rocking back and forth, whispering sweet reassurances and kind nothings as tears crawled down his face, continuing on to drop and splash against my forehead. It was clear that I was dead. Nobody could have survived the amount of trauma my body had been put through. But still he denied it, swearing to me and himself that he would get me back safely.
It was a heart-wrenching scene. Here was a man who I had never glimpsed any emotion from, unless he had wanted me to. He was a man who hid behind a poker face of teasing and mischief, and any emotion stronger than that never existed on his face. To see him broken, stripped down to his core, sobs wracking his body, and to be able to see so much emotion, emotion that he had kept so well hidden, strewn plainly across his face, was beyond anything that I had ever wanted to witness.
It was horrible. The raw force of his suffering was literally pressing on me, weighing me down until I collapsed beneath the sheer force of it. Transfixed, I continued to watch as a dark mist started leaking from the pores of his body. Painfully it coiled out from underneath his skin, manifesting itself in waves of contrasting black and grey smoke, so thick that it seemed to engulf everything it touched, and sluggishly, agonisingly sluggishly, it was making its way towards me.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it; I couldn’t move one muscle. Its entire presence captivated my whole being and I was left defenseless as it plunged and sank into my very core. It was like being possessed by a ghost, which is quite ironic seeing as I am now one myself, but nothing else seems to describe what was happening to me. I was no longer Kararaina, in the sense that I was in control of myself. No, I was a side passenger who was forced to sit back and watch.
And as I watched, I saw the life that I had lived. Whoever said that your life flashed before your eyes as you died lied or simply got it wrong. I never saw my life played back to me as my blood ran away from my body. It was only now that I was dead that I was seeing my life’s events displayed unmistakably before my eyes. However, they were all different.
Instead of experiencing it as I had experienced it, I was watching it from a spectator’s view, and that spectator just so happened to be the man who still held my monstrosity of a body in his arms.
All of the things that had made me me were gone. They had been replaced with everything that had made him him. In every sense of the word, I had become Jean Matthews. So as I was taken back to my fourteenth year, I didn’t even realise that the girl sitting across from me in art class was me. No, she was just a hot chick who I didn’t know.
So I kept watching her. I had been here for about half a year already and thought that I knew everyone worth knowing, so how come I didn’t know her? A week later I started to understand: she was a loner. It wasn’t like she was stuck-up or snobby, she was just a little … awkward, and so she was never really able to get along with people. The thing I found interesting, though, was how shy she really was. Not being able to resist, I got up and sat down by her. I could tell that she was surprised but I didn’t let it bother me, and breezed through like I had known her for years. After a while, she opened up to me, and in no time I had her laughing.
Sixteen years now, and Kararaina Ogawa is a lot different from the girl who I met in art class. I guess that’s my fault. After I met her I found out how child-like and innocent she was, and couldn’t help teasing her for it. Well, I guess to say I was teasing her is too nice, because really, I grilled her – threw blows that I knew would hurt – and knowing that she wanted me only made it easier. Though I must say that I never saw her smile break; she just laughed everything off, taking it like a joke, which only made me want to crack her even more.
It didn’t take long for it to become a game to me, and because I was teasing her, she was noticed. People started to crowd her, wanting to know what all the fuss was about. But no matter what kind of friends she made, they would always join me in trashing her; always gang up on her with me. Yet still she just smiled. So I became dirtier. I started flirting with all her girls, flaunting it in front of her, trying to get a rise, but always it would be the same. She would just smile, laugh it off and look at me with those gooey eyes as though I was the best thing in the world. It was really starting to make me sick. At first I had thought that she liked me because I was the only guy to have taken notice of her, but that wasn’t the case now. So why did she still follow me around like an idiot? At this point I really got dirt
y. Forget the flirting; I started hooking up with them in front of her, and when one would ask ‘What about Kara?’ I would mockingly laugh, ‘Get off, who wants an ugly chick like that?’
Even with the smile that never seemed to disappear, I could tell that all my shit was getting to her. She started to wear make-up; started to take notice of what she was wearing and how her hair looked. No longer would she be in the library studying; now she was hanging out with the other girls, gossiping, talking loud and basically just trying to get attention. It was sad; she had started to lose the innocence that I had liked about her; but I had finally started to win, and that’s all that mattered.
Eighteen now, and the quiet girl I met in that art classroom is long gone. She is now as popular as any girl I’ve ever seen, but she has lost that glow that separated her from the rest, and by the looks of it, it all started from when I asked her out. Tell you the truth I had never seen her happier; her smile beamed up at me so brightly that it gave me quite a shock, and even creeped me out a bit. Come on, I had been nothing but an arsehole to this girl, and just a couple of words from me and she looks like she could fly off to the moon. I don’t understand her. How could she want to be with me? It seems like a whole lot of bullshit to me.
The next day I drop her when she comes to find me at lunch, scoffing at her and telling everyone that I can’t believe she thought I was serious. It’s a rule of mine not to date, so what makes her think she’s so special? You’ve got to be kidding me! This time, I thought I really had her. I could see her breaking down before all those judging faces, but like always, she just laughed, smiled and handed me the lunch that she had planned to share. You don’t know how much I’ve come to hate that laugh.
Next month, she’s dating a bro of mine who I had always known to have a thing for her. It surprised me, but just proved what I’ve been saying all along; that she’d never really liked me. This time, I’m not so harsh to her; really I can’t be bothered. She’s already broken and now another man’s toy, so I couldn’t care less. She’s just one of the many girls out there who happen to have a nice ass.
The following fortnight, I find that she’s been dumped. Turned out that she was too frigid to do anything, and the guy just didn’t want to waste his time on a virgin who wouldn’t put out. This is where I see her starting to fall apart. It isn’t anything major, but soon she starts showing up late to classes, stops going to her sport practices and quits hanging out with her friends. The next three weeks she doesn’t turn up to school at all, but when she does, I’m almost blown off my feet. The image that she’s been slowly putting together is now perfect. She can only be described as beautiful, but it seems hollow and cheap. The vitality that seemed to attract me to her is gone, and she truly is just another one of those many pretty girls. Still, I’ve got to hand it to her: she has kept that smile.
Nineteen’s just around the corner, and now I can say I finally saw her smile crumble before my eyes, but honestly it didn’t make me feel good at all. Actually it’s the thing that I regret the most. After she returned to school, I got to know her a lot more, because she started to hang out in the circles that I moved between. It wasn’t long before we became inseparable. Everyone knew that if you wanted to find Kara, all you had to do was find Jean, because she would always be close by.
I came to value her as a really good friend, and just as the year was coming to an end, she confessed to me; seriously confessed. She had been acting off all night, and when I finally asked her what was up, it all kind of poured out of her. I didn’t say anything for a while; in fact I didn’t do anything at all for a while. I just sat there stupidly looking at this girl who was wringing her hands together and looking up uncertainly at me from beneath hooded lashes. In that moment, she was every bit the girl I had first seen in that art room. All shy, naive and … innocent. Quietly I told her that I was sorry and that I didn’t like her that way. Chuckling to herself, she replied that she already knew but still, she had to try. With that, she got up, gave me a big smile and walked out the door. But it was the most horrible smile I had ever seen. For the little time that it took for her to finish speaking to me, it quivered and twitched, and I could see the effort she was putting up to stop herself from crying.
I haven’t seen her since then and, well, I’m starting to think I never will. It’s steadily becoming two years since the incident occurred. At first I was pissed: how could she leave without saying goodbye? I was her friend for crying out loud: the same friend who had encouraged her to take the damn foreign exchange in the first place! The same one who reassured her fears about being a half-caste and not fitting in. The very least she could do was say goodbye! Sure I had rejected her, but we were still friends, weren’t we? I stayed stuck in a rage for a long time, snapping at anything and everything and just being a downright ass. But then I just started to miss her, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.
I began to see all the things she had done for me that I had taken for granted. I never really realised it, but she had never said no to me. Sure she would grumble, but in the end she always let me have my way, even if it meant she suffered from it. I just didn’t see it, didn’t see it at all; and that wasn’t the only thing that I hadn’t seen. Why is it we appreciate the importance of something only when it’s gone?
Twenty-six, and I’m only getting older. I finally meet Kara again. She’s become some kind of big actress over in Japan. She’s just home for a break. From what her parents have been saying, she’s had some rather frightening stalker incidents, and her manager thought it best that she left the country for awhile. Though by the way it seems to not bother her, it can’t be that severe. Then again she could just be putting on a brave face for her mother. With her I can never really tell.
Slowly, we have started to regain the friendship we once had. When she first came back and I happened to run into her at the supermarket, I didn’t know what to say, and I’m pretty sure I just stood there gawking at her for a good ten seconds. This made her smile, and, awkwardly, a conversation was born. She’s more beautiful than I remember; cliché I know but it’s the truth. She seems a lot surer of herself than she ever did before, although I have to admit that the timidness she always had about her is still there.
It’s been four months since she returned, and the awkwardness that once surrounded us is now gone. She’s started staying over at my place again, just hanging out like we always used to. It’s fun, and it’s often what I look forward to most during the day, but call me greedy: it just isn’t enough. I want her – all of her – and I can’t seem to wait. She hasn’t noticed, and I’m sure she doesn’t love me any more, but I can’t not try; I don’t want to regret anything any longer.
I’ve bought the ring and I’m going to tell her tonight. Win or lose, I’m going to give it everything I have. Even so, I’ve noticed that she’s been behaving a little weird; I can’t seem to shake the feeling that she’s keeping something from me. She assures me that I’m thinking too much but still, I know something’s off. I knock off work early and head to her apartment with the ring box firmly clutched in my hand. A feeling of dread starts to set into my skin and I know it is more than just nerves. Speeding up my footsteps, I come to the alley her apartment opens out onto. My blood runs cold. She may be the only one that lives down here but it’s usually always lit up, with music coming from her window and light spilling from her security lamps. Tonight, however, it’s deathly still. I break into a sprint, eyes fixed so heavily on her front door that I end up tripping over something. When I turn around to see what it is, my heart stops.
I jolt back into reality, and as fast as Jean’s consciousness had overcome me, it’s gone. I feel tears streaming down my face, and somewhere in my mind it registers that I shouldn’t be able to – I no longer have tear ducts – but I guess everything has a spirit. I feel so cheated. How come I find out now, when everything is over? Why couldn’t I have at least had just one more day, so I could have basked in the happiness of finally being wi
th him? Whoever said life isn’t fair was being too kind: she’s incredibly cruel.
But then the anger and frustration turns into regret, as I realise I could have had my life with Jean: I could have had that beautiful happily ever after, with the white picket fence and the ugly dog that never stops barking. Only I was too scared. I never came home: not for holidays, birthdays, even funerals or weddings. Somehow I always had an excuse, whether it be work or, well, work. Because really, who am I kidding? I had nothing else. If that didn’t sit well with my mother then I just flew her over. I never came home and I never would have unless it was for that crazy stalker. So I guess I am thankful: at least I was able to come back and see him. But I wish, oh I wish that it could have been different; that I could have been different, braver, stronger … better.
Gathering my wits about me, I look back at that horror scene and see that Jean is still there. He seems to have calmed down and the cold acceptance that is on his face tears at me. I watch as he pulls the ring from the box that he is still clutching and slips it onto my finger. Bringing my head up to his, he kisses my lips tenderly, as if he’s afraid that I’ll turn to dust in his hands. Tears are still slipping down his face as he whispers ‘I was too late, too late.’
‘No, we were both too late.’ With that last choked reply, I start to disappear.
Huia Short Stories 9 Page 28
