Fighter

By Jahnavi Amara

The little boy’s plastic ball tattered away towards the metal wires lining the house’s backyard once again. But this time his father joined the little boy gravitating towards the ball, just a step or two behind him, eyes on a building that rose tall enough for half their yard to be in the shadows even at noon.

The prison, to everyone’s surprise, had windows. Tinted little boxes floating orderly in a sea of still darker paint. If you squint your eyes enough, you could see the paint on a few of the windows, holding criminals on the other side, those too dangerous for the outer world even to see. Thinking with practicality, no one would have ever constructed an asylum in the middle of a town, no one should. But if we retraced the steps and brought down the history books from the shelves enclosing them from the minds of children and adults alike to never explore, we will come across the very reason why these books were kept locked away. The asylum wasn’t built at the heart of the town. The town built itself around it.

* * *

“No!” the scream echoed even though the room was draped in curtains. When the silent whisper morphed into a deafening scream, no one knew. The guards moved with such synchrony that it was a terrible beauty. They did not move forward to cover their so-called boss, no, Angelo was far too dangerous than any of the criminals they kept locked away in the St.Gabriel State Asylum, they moved to stand behind Angelo, giving her more room to throw her vicious stare around. Angelo stood in a bored stance, hands in her pockets, eyes taking in everything in the room but the scene in front of her. In not less than a minute she made up her mind that the burgundy curtains and the framed art pieces on the walls were boring. She got bored easily. And she preferred her art Caravaggio.

She at last decided the little girl to be the prey of her eyes. The little girl shivered, and by the time the shiver ended at the bottom of her abdomen, Angelo was only a breath away from her. When Angelo put down her mask and put on her cold sly grin, no one knew. The little girl did not have to look up to meet her new guardian’s eyes, Angelo was a short girl herself. But she seemed to take up more room than both her guards combined. This close, Angelo could see that the little girl wasn’t so little as she deduced.

“You aren’t coming?” Angelo asked, faking an innocent face that fooled no one, it was not intended to. She turned on her heels and went to look at the art on the walls surrounding them. Maybe she ought to consider other artists’ work sometimes.

The not-so-little girl closed her eyes, letting her not-so-little life flash past through them. She knew that Angelo had not asked a question, it had no hint of genuine doubt in it. Rather, it was a rhetorical question. A question with an answer that was painted in the air, an answer so obvious the reason for the question to be asked, would surely have to be hysterical. She had to go. She had no choice. She heard her dog whimper from her mother’s lap. As she looked at her family; her mother with her head in hands, always perfect hair not so perfect anymore, her father with his hand on her mother’s shoulder, silent tears rolling down his eyes as they bore a stare into Angelo; she thought maybe, maybe, there was hope.

“No. I am not coming. I am going to stay here, with my family. I am not going to your stupid asylum because I am not mad,” she said the last four syllables with extra stress, a pause between each one of them. She wasn’t looking at Angelo, she was looking back at her dad, whose eyes now bore a stare into her, it was as if she could almost hear him say, what have you done?

Angelo, unsurprisingly, was happy for a distraction from the boring art. She looked at the not-so-little girl and smiled. It was terrifying. It took her short legs only less than 4 steps to be standing in front of the girl, and it was terrifying. “Hm?” She asked, this time faking a tone of doubt, and it was terrifying.

Her father’s stare was nothing compared to Angelo’s. Her father’s were butter knives and Angelo’s, butcher’s. Her father’s were gunshots, Angelo’s, dynamite. Her father’s were scary, Angelo’s, terrifying.

“I’m sorry,” Angelo continued, “what?”

Her guards exchanged a look and chuckled, they seemed to know that their boss wasn’t so bored anymore, she always liked a fighter. Someone who fought and fought back. They were the hardest to catch and the hardest to keep locked up. They always seemed to come up with the best plans for escape, none of which would actually work, of course, but their ideas were commendable. They always thought they made Angelo’s work harder, but in reality it made no difference. They were always the tastiest prey of them all. The not-so-little girl felt Angelo’s hunger radiate towards her.

“Honey, this is no game, this is life. Some of us are normal,” Angelo said, jerking her chin in the direction of the girl’s parents, “and some of us are not, you think you are not mad and not normal because you can’t see yourself from our eyes. You are not ordinary, of course you know that, but you are not extraordinary either. You are just different. And you are not going to some ‘stupid asylum’, you are going to a healing centre, a place you will learn to call home.” The rehearsed speech was not much, but the way she recited it was. It was enough to convince even the not-so-little girl that she was, indeed, mad.

She gulped. And with that she buried all her memories with her family and her dog, her sister who was currently on a plane to college, her brother somewhere deep in the military bases in Afghanistan, her friends with whom she promised to meet up with tomorrow, her teachers who we’re still waiting on those assignments, she buried them all with the girl she was, and would never be again. And with that, she buried her hope.

Because with Angelo, there was no such thing as hope.

“And trust me, sociopaths make the greatest friends you’ll ever have,” Angelo said, smiling again.

* * *

The not-so-little girl was not-so-foolish either, because when she was told to wait in the ‘reception’ of the ‘healing centre’, she knew it was just a pretty, furnished room with a few couches around a circular marble coffee table with no source of coffee. The only thing that made the room scrape to the title of ‘reception’ was the desk, behind which sat a man in a suit not unlike the ones the guards at the door wore. He was typing away on his fancy computer like his life depended on it, and knowing Angelo, maybe it did. He stopped abruptly and looked around, when nothing attracted his eye, he returned to his previous task.

In about an hour, the not-so-little girl had her own room with the window painted over from the outside, was introduced to her fellow floormates and potential friends, and given a pair of clean white pyjamas. The not-so-foolish part of her wasn’t surprised that she didn’t see Angelo until dinner that day. Their cafeteria only resounded the clinks and clanks of spoons and forks being placed down beside their plates on the metal benches. No one talked, no whispers, no hushed words exchanged, not even glances. But they all seemed normal, she thought. ‘Am I really mad?’, she thought next. And she didn’t want to think anymore. Maybe this place made you mad, she thought despite fighting her brain, but she appreciated this particular thought. But until after dinner, she did not think.

* * *

Now, the not-so-little girl was surprised. She came to a conclusion that no one here was really mad, just truly really smart. Their minds painted ideas the others could never think of. Their mouths crafted words no one could resist hearing. Their mere presence made everything seem possible and impossible at the same time. But somehow that seemed to give her another reason to believe she was mad and was indeed in an asylum.

She was even more surprised when she found that Angelo lived in this very building, but as she pondered over it, she thought maybe it was obvious. She was even more surprised– she did not know that one was capable of being astonished so many times in such a small duration– when the secrets that waltzed around the darkest corners of the halls finally reached her. It dawned on her now, that she was undoubtedly not mad, just as everyone else who resided here was not. She couldn’t make any ‘sociopath friends’ Angelo promised, because there were no sociopaths here. This was a secret that didn’t not cross the wire fences of the facility, it was only from the mouths and for the ears of the ones who resided in those boundaries.

The secret was like a bite of a snake, but as it poured out it’s venom through its fangs, it was death rather than life that was extinguished.

There were no sociopaths here, that was a lie, there was one.

Just like there was only one reason that Angelo’s preferred artist was Caravaggio.

All the rooms in the so-called asylum had windows, but only one room did not.

The only sociopath in the St.Gabriel State Asylum was Angelo, the one who ran it.

* * *

Angelo did not have a window not because she knew she was dangerous, it was simply because she despised curtains.

* * *

The little boy was not-so-little anymore. But he found that the wisps of nostalgia while playing baseball with his father brought him happiness like nothing ever could. Just like the old times, he let the ball tatter away to the wire fences, and his father smiled at him before following him. Just as he bent down to pick up the ball, and a sound of a crash resounded loud enough to send vibrations through his brain, a girl picked up the ball and handed it to him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the neighbours’ kids sneaked into the backyard, but the girl who handed him the ball was on the other side of the wire fence.

She had her hair pulled into a tight bun with strands coming out and sticking to her face with sweat, suggesting the doing of some hard work. But it wasn’t the fact that there was someone on the other side of the wire fence that astonished the boy, it was because behind this someone, there were several someones, running in all directions, but they all seemed like they knew what they were doing. What he was seeing was the unfolding of the aftermath of hours of tedious and meticulous planning.

The not-so-little girl was definitely not-so-little anymore. She handed the boy the ball and turned on her heel to face the systematic chaos she helped execute. She took her post alongside two others, ready to fight.

Years, it had taken years to bury all the memories of her old life that she would be able to relive at last. And when she was able to bury them, she buried them deep, it was hard to bring them back.

There was only one thing that sprung right up, from the moment she saw the cloudless blue sky, she knew there will always be one thing she won’t ever lose. No matter how many knives cut through her wrists, no matter how many whips slashed her back, no matter how many burns bruised her forearms. These scars were only a reminder of the number of times she recollected the sweet taste of hope. Hope was a song her heart longed to sing, and now the stage is hers.

Between all the ruckus, she found her, Angelo. They smiled at each other. One of their smiles was laced with pride , and the others’ with stoic jealousy.

She knew now why Angelo admired fighters. It was because she was never taught how to be one.

* * *

By Jahnavi Amara