The Boys

Adrianna hated it when they referred to her as ‘one of the boys’. She may have taken pride in it when she was younger, but now it irked her that they didn’t recognize that she was a woman and needed to be handled more delicately. They were there to be insensitive when things were rough for her, and they were there to make fun of her when things were good. But they were always there. And in spite of their annoying behavior when it concerned Adrianna, she loved them unconditionally. When she spent time with them individually, their bullying facades dissolved and their rather lovable personalities shone through. They were her boys, her friends, her family.

Earlier that week, Adrianna had stopped by the bank after work to see Darren. Darren was probably the most gentlemanly of the boys. He was thoughtful and considerate and the girls adored him. He had bought Adrianna her first bouquet of flowers on her fifteenth birthday even though he caught flak for it from the rest of the boys later. That day, Darren had looked particularly sharp in his pin-striped suit and pink shirt. He always dressed really well, even when he wasn’t working at the bank. He had been in a particularly great mood that day and had managed to convince Adrianna to join him for dinner at a nearby bar and grill. They had talked for hours over dinner about many things and by the time Adrianna had gotten home, it was past ten o’clock.

On this day, there had been whispers about riots breaking out in the city centre so Adrianna had headed home early. She had contemplated swinging by the bank again to see Darren who had promised to give her a book she had been wanting, but decided against it as she was exhausted from working late two nights in a row.

Adrianna threw her car keys on the mantelpiece and collapsed onto the couch. “Just a little TV before I get something to eat,” she thought as she pointed the remote control at the television and swung her legs up onto the couch. Before long, she had fallen asleep, curled up on the sofa.

She woke up with a start to the sound of her cell phone ringing. She reached out and grabbed it from the coffee table to look at the flashing caller ID on its display. It was Mike. Adrianna groaned and turned the phone ringer on silent. Tonight was movie night and the boys were probably calling to ask if she wanted to join them. She closed her eyes yet again, but just as she was drifting off, her cell phone rang again. “Damn you, Mike,” she muttered angrily as she pressed the ‘accept’ button on the phone. “Hello,” she said in an irritable voice expecting Mike to chide her for not answering the phone before. “Adie?” Mike didn’t sound like his normal self. “What is it, Mike?” Adrianna asked, sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Mike replied in a soft, calm voice, “I don’t want you to freak out, okay? I need you to stay calm but I need you to get to the hospital. Darren’s been shot.” “WHAT!? What happened?” Adrianna yelled. “I’ll tell you when you get here, just come to the hospital.” Mike answered.

Adrianna hung up the phone, grabbed her car keys, slipped on her shoes and bolted out of the house. A million questions were running through her head. Had thugs attacked the bank while Darren was there? Had the doctors already taken him in to surgery? Was he going to be okay? What if they weren’t going to be able to repair the damage from the gunshot wound and he was somehow disabled for the rest of his life?

Adrianna’s cell phone began to ring again. It was Denise. Why was she calling? Adrianna didn’t usually hear from Denise. “Hello?” Adrianna answered as she drove like mad through the dimly lit streets towards the hospital.  “Adrianna, are you okay?” Denise asked uncertainly. “Yeah, but listen, Darren’s been shot. I’m rushing to the hospital now to see him so I can’t talk,” Adrianna answered. “Okay – call me if you need anything,” Denise said. As Adrianna hung up the phone she thought to herself how bizarre that phone call was. Denise did not seem surprised about the news. Maybe she already knew. But why would she be calling Adrianna? With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Adrianna sensed that things were more serious than Mike had let on. She decided to call Kevin and ask him what was going on. As she deftly switched gears with her left hand, she dialed Kevin’s number with her right, leaving the steering wheel unmanned briefly. Kevin answered right away. “Kev, what’s going on? How badly is Darren hurt? Kev? You have to tell me the truth! Kevin?” Kevin remained silent for a few seconds. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “He didn’t make it, Adie. He’s dead.”

The words echoed inside Adrianna’s head as the phone dropped from her hand and she stared blankly into the night ahead of her. Streetlamps whizzed past as she tried to assimilate the news she had just been given. And then she began to wail as the tears came streaming down her face. She was in complete disbelief. Not for a moment did she consider that she was going to the hospital to find him dead. Kevin had to be joking, right?

She turned into the hospital gate and immediately saw the shadows of people standing in the dark of the night, heads drooped. She parked the car and calmed herself down. She got out of the car and walked towards the group. She could hear silent sobs coming from a few people. “Adie!” someone called out to her. It was Jeremy. He walked towards her, crying as he put his arms around her. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry,” he whispered as Adrianna buried her face in his jacket and wept. With one arm still around Adrianna’s shoulders, Jeremy began to lead her away from the group and into the building. Adrianna didn’t realize what was happening until she looked up from Jeremy’s chest and realized that Darren’s body was lying right in front of them. There was a white sheet pulled over the top half of Darren’s body, covering his face. She gasped and began to howl as Jeremy tightened his grip on her.

As she trembled in Jeremy’s arms, Adrianna stared at the black, dress shoes that lay on the feet of the dead body in front of her, thinking that she could have seen those shoes anywhere, and known that they belonged to Darren. It was then that it hit her. She had known this man for most of her life… and now he was gone. There were other people walking into the room now. Adrianna was so glad that the body was covered up – she would not want to remember Darren in any other way than as happy as he looked the last time she saw him. It was at that moment, without any warning, a man in a white lab coat had pulled back the white sheet and Adrianna had shrieked with terror, shutting her eyes tight as the image of what she glimpsed was etched in her memory forever…

Coming Home

I stood there, watching the conveyor belt as all kinds of suitcases appeared on it from behind the vinyl flaps. Occasionally, a guitar-case or an oddly-shaped boxed package would break the monotony of the mostly rectangular-shaped bags on the belt. Every few minutes, someone would hastily lurch forward and awkwardly struggle to pull a bag or two onto their waiting trolleys. All around me, people chattered away as they waited for their luggage. I looked around me, taking in the myriad of faces that surrounded me, at the mercy of the jerking, groaning device that dictated how soon they could leave the busy airport. I watched as one young woman looked over to the crowd of people waiting just outside the airport customs area and began to wave excitedly, a big smile on her face. Sure enough, three hands from the throng of people behind the large window waved furiously back at her. I looked back down at the conveyor belt as the knuckles on my fists that gripped the trolley handle went white. I was usually ecstatic to come home to my family but this time, things were different.

Finally, I caught sight of my trusty navy-blue suitcase and moved closer, ready to pull it out. Once it was securely on my trolley, I took a deep breath and pushed the wobbly cart towards the exit. I looked at the expectant faces of the people that stood behind the barrier, hoping to see a familiar one. At last, I saw Adam waving at me, beckoning me over to the side exit. I breathed a sigh of relief and wheeled my cart over to the right. As I moved toward him, I fought back the urge to tear up. I gave him a quick hug and we began walking towards the arrivals’ parking lot.

“You okay?” he asked as he unlocked the trunk of the car and lifted my suitcase off the cart. “Yeah”, I mumbled as I leaned against the car. “Have you been to see him?” I asked. Adam turned to me and squeezed my shoulder. “Yes, I was with him yesterday. Everything’s going to be ok. It could be much worse”, he said. The tears welled up in my eyes as I nodded feebly.

As we drove down the brightly lit highway away from the airport, Adam chatted away about this and that, trying to keep the mood light. His voice faded into the background as I gazed out of my window and thought back to that fateful phone call I had made home just two weeks ago. I had bought an international calling card so that I could call to wish my father a happy birthday. I always got a tad emotional on his birthday and would speak to anybody who was willing to listen, about what a pillar of strength he was for me.

My father, the typical alpha male was always a little intimidating to most people. I think he managed to discipline me effortlessly as I was always too terrified of him to do any wrong as a child. Because my mother had a softer demeanour and was rather docile, it was my father who took care of everything for us. From attending parent-teacher meetings at school when I was younger, to fixing things around the house for my mother and even building things from scratch – like the beautiful tree-house in the garden of our first home. My father was a proud man and always loved to be the centre of attention. He would be the life of every party, telling jokes and having people hang on his every word. I only ever saw him cry once – when he received the news of his mother’s passing. I vividly remember thinking to myself how strange it felt to see him display that kind of emotion. He was this rock-solid man. It perturbed me that he was capable of sorrow.

That day, I had called on my mother’s cell phone as there was no answer on my father’s line. I had been poised to sing the birthday song in my best voice.  My mother had answered. Her voice had sounded weary and hoarse. I remember the smile fading from my face as she told me my father had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital. I remember the tears streaming down my face. I remember hearing the panic in my mother’s voice as she told me she didn’t understand the doctors when they spoke to her about what had happened. I remember hearing the silent plea in her voice that said, “I can’t do this alone”.

I snapped back to reality as Adam called my name. I didn’t realize I had been crying. “I’m okay”, I said shakily as I wiped away the tears. I looked out the window once again. We were driving through the familiar neighbourhood where I grew up. As we turned the corner onto the street that led to my house, I thought about the conversation that I had had with an old Indian man who sat next to me on the flight. I had told him that I had a friend whose father had just suffered a stroke and that I wondered what his life expectancy was now. He had said to me in a strong accent, “The ironic thing about people who have had strokes not severe enough to completely debilitate them, is that they probably live longer in their degenerated state than they would have if they hadn’t suffered the stroke. So not only have would they probably have lost motor function or their emotional state severely altered, but they have to endure it for so much longer!” This notion troubled me greatly but I was not certain of the old man’s authority on the subject and dismissed his words in my mind.

We pulled up to the house and I slowly stepped out of the car. Adam gestured for me to go ahead as he popped the trunk open to get my bag. I walked up to the front door of the house and took a deep breath. Just as I raised my hand to knock on it, it swung wide open. There stood my mother, looking tired and aged. Her once perfectly-styled hair framed her face in loose, grey wisps and her skin looked more lined than I remembered. Her eyes drooped sadly and welled up with tears as she leaned forward and held me in a tight embrace. I felt the lump in my throat but fought back the tears.

I pulled back and smiled at my mother. She moved aside and I walked in through the door, directly into the living room. It looked different than I remembered. The couches had been pushed to the wall and there were large gaps between all the furniture. As I looked around slowly, half expecting to see my father walking towards me, I caught my breath as I saw him slumped in a wheelchair in between the loveseat and the recliner. He had his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin resting on his open palm. His eyes were closed. My heart was beating furiously and I stood rooted to the ground, still by the open front door. “Daddy?” He looked up and took a while as his eyes focused on me. He looked older than I remembered. The skin on his gaunt face was wrinkled underneath the stubble and it drooped loosely at the sides. The little hair that remained on his head was all a silvery-white. “Daddy, I’m home”, I said as I slowly walked towards him. Then, without warning, he burst into tears, arms outstretched towards me. As I bent down to hug him, feeling immeasurable pain to think that this man who once exuded strength and pride had been reduced to this. I felt the cold numbness set in as I remembered the old Indian man’s words, “...they have to endure it for so much longer...” as my father clutched on to me, sobbing uncontrollably, almost like a little child.

Tangible Pain

The door buzzer sounded again for what seemed like the umpteenth time. Carrie grunted and rolled over, and buried her face in the lumpy couch’s cushion. She could hear the muffled sound of her name being called out from somewhere outside her apartment but she knew that they’d give up and leave soon enough. It was a Sunday afternoon and they’d be hard pressed to find someone to let them into the apartment building if she didn’t buzz them in. Sure enough, the yelling subsided and she heard car doors slam shut and a car ignition start.

Carrie turned over and reached down for the clicker that had fallen onto the rug. It was a little after 3pm on a warm summer day, but there was no way  for her to tell what it was like outside, as the inside of her one-bedroom apartment had only diffused light coming in through the closed drapes. The living room where she lay looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Across the room, hanging on the cream textured wall, hung a series of framed photographs in matte black frames, each of which exuded happiness from the people captured in them. On the wall, just to the right of the frames, was a dark brown stain of a liquid that dripped down to the beige carpet where the broken pieces of a coffee mug lay scattered. The beautiful ebony coffee tabletop in front of the couch was covered in dirty coffee mugs, empty cigarette packets and an ashtray so full of cigarette butts sticking out of it that it resembled a balled up hedgehog. There were sheets of crumpled paper with angry scribbling strewn all over and around the coffee table. From the kitchen wafted a nauseating scent of food remains that had been decaying for weeks.

Carrie pointed the clicker at the TV and settled on a crime-scene investigation programme. She picked up the cigarette pack which lay beside the couch and pulled out a cigarette. Without sitting up, she lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply, shutting her eyes as she did. As the clouds of smoke gently wafted up and filled the room, Carrie grudgingly pulled herself off the couch and picked up the foul-smelling ashtray that lay on the coffee table. As she dragged herself to the kitchen to empty the ashtray, she caught sight of the ironing board that stood in the hallway. She stopped and leaned against the wall, staring at the pearly-white clothes iron that sat atop the ironing board, as she slowly took another long drag of her cigarette.

Slowly and determinately, Carrie walked over to the ironing board and set the ashtray down on it, all the while fixated on the iron. She wrapped her fingers around the iron handle and with one deft movement of her thumb, flicked the switch. She then adjusted the dial underneath the handle to the maximum and took another drag of her cigarette. The drooping cylinder of ash that had built up at the end of the cigarette fell onto the carpet but Carrie didn’t flinch. Instead she crouched beside the ironing board, with her elbows leaning on top of it, and stared at the red light on the iron beside the switch, her eyes glazed over.

About thirty seconds later, the light suddenly went off. Carrie stood up and slowly lifted the iron off its rack with her right hand and turned it over so that she was looking at the underside of the iron. She felt on her face, the intense heat emanating from the shiny metal. She raised her other hand to waist-level, her left palm facing downwards, burning cigarette still between her fingers. With one deliberate move, she swiftly thrust the iron onto her left forearm and yelled as the hot metal seared right through her flesh.

Carrie dropped the iron onto its rack and gripped the underside of her left arm. There was a wide gash on her forearm where the skin had parted to reveal a layer of burnt flesh. Trembling, Carrie picked up the cigarette which had fallen onto the ironing board and stuck it amongst all the other cigarette butts in the ashtray. She walked back to the couch and sank into it, still holding her arm. As she rocked herself back and forth on the couch, she felt the pain in her arm escalate. She did not cry. The pain gave her something definite to think about. It was tangible. Emotions were not. She pulled out another cigarette and lit it as she inhaled deeply. She leaned back on the couch feeling much calmer and stretched out her left arm, examining her wound again, thinking to herself how much more impressive it looked in comparison to the dozens of partially healed abscesses that surrounded it. She looked down the hallway where she could just about make out the iron, precisely as its little red light came back on...

Best Friends

Sarah and I clutched our towels around our bathing suits, squealing as Danny chased us around the pool. From her sun bed, my mother lifted her head, shading her eyes from the bright sun with her book, and called out sternly to us to be careful. Sarah and I collapsed onto a sun bed, giggling while Danny pulled one of the thin cushions from another sun bed to the edge of the pool and lay down with his right hand dipped in the pool, mischievously threatening every so often to splash the cold water onto us.  

It had been a glorious three days. We had hardly spent any time inside the hotel. I was so glad that Sarah’s parents had agreed for her to come away with my family on a beach holiday. And I was secretly even happier that Danny just happened to be there with his parents too. I had had an enormous crush on him since the sixth grade and although it had been an entire year of turning bright red each time he so much as looked at me, neither he nor Sarah knew how I felt. Although she was my best friend, Sarah had a way of making me feel like most things I said or did were laughable. It was better that she didn’t know about my crush on Danny.

As the azure pool glistened in the sun’s golden rays, we took turns at jumping into the pool to see who could make the biggest splash. We would start off a distance away from the pool’s edge, running towards it and finally take the biggest leap we could, hugging our knees mid-air, just before we hit the water. Sarah managed to capture everyone’s attention (as was the case most of the time) with her immaculate underwater hand-stands. I could tell that Danny, in particular, was impressed and that this seemed to please Sarah greatly.

Before long, my mother was beckoning us to get cleaned up and changed for lunch. We promised Danny that we would meet him the following day for a game of water polo and then ran barefoot back to our hotel room. “I don’t want this holiday to end!” Sarah moaned as she stood at the balcony window, looking out onto the beach. “We still have another whole day left before we have to go back”, I replied optimistically but I too felt the sinking feeling that our holiday was coming to an end too quickly. For me, it meant fewer opportunities to see Danny, once we were back at home.

Sarah and I washed up, donned our shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, and made our way down to the hotel’s dining room. My parents were already seated at a table, waiting for us. As we approached them, my mother looked at me and exclaimed disapprovingly, “Look at how dark your skin has gotten! Didn’t you use any sunscreen?” I looked down at my arms and legs and realized that I was really tanned. I never understood why that was a bad thing. I thought my skin looked so beautifully dark and flawless. I looked over at Sarah whose skin had a light bronze glow all over, except for her nose which was a reddish brown. She gave me a look of triumph as though to say, “I managed not to mess up like you did!”

I sulked through most of the lunch, perking up only when my father said that Sarah and I could have some money to go and get our hair braided on the beach. We hastened through our meal and excused ourselves from the table, dashing out into the sunshine again. We scampered past the pool and through the little gate that led onto the beach, whipping off our flip-flops and letting our feet sink into the powder-soft sand. The great big leaves of the palm trees swayed in the wind as the ocean drew closer with each wave. The almost-translucent crabs darted across the white sand, seemingly daring us to step on them. Some distance ahead of us, a man with a stick led a camel down the shoreline, a little boy nestled between its humps, his little legs dangling high off the sand. Beach vendors dotted the hotel’s periphery, their beautiful paintings and carvings laid out on a background of sand, and their exquisitely colourful sarongs flapping in the wind. As Sarah stopped to pick up a shell, I spotted two ladies sitting under the shade of a palm tree. A piece of cardboard stuck in the sand with the words “RASTAS DONE HERE. WELLCOM” written untidily across it told me we had found our hair-braiders. I called out to Sarah and we walked over to the women to get our hair makeovers.

Almost three hours later, we were finally done. We stood up, shaking off the pins and needles in our legs, and looked around. The tide was out and the beach had emptied out considerably. Sarah and I took a little walk along the strip of sand that had been under the tidal waves earlier that day, digging our toes into the wet sand, trying to unearth pretty little shells. Once we got closer to our hotel, we sat down on the soft sand and watched the waves breaking against the reef in the distance. I absent-mindedly picked up a handful of sand and let it pour through my fingers as I daydreamed about Danny.

A man’s voice behind us startled me back to reality. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man, wearing a cap, holding a bunch of leather bracelets and wooden key-chains in different shapes. Sarah began to engage him in conversation about the price of the key chains and so he moved in front of us and crouched down to face us. There was something about this man that unnerved me. I pretended to be disinterested in the conversation, looking out to the ocean, but from the corner of my eye, I could see that he kept turning to look at me.  I drew my knees in and hugged them. He was making me decidedly uncomfortable. Sarah, completely oblivious to my discomfort, asked me if I wanted to get a personalized key-chain. “No!” I snapped in response. I wanted the man to go away. Couldn’t she see that I was uncomfortable? As he stood up to dig into his pockets for some paper on which to write Sarah’s key-chain order, I took a good look at the man. He had protruding veins that ran over his smooth ebony skin, from his wrists, over the bulging muscles in his forearms and disappeared under the sleeves of his loose, button-up shirt. Hanging from underneath his cap, were short braids, not unlike those we had just gotten. His eyelids were droopy, as though he was sleepy and in his mouth, he chewed on what looked like the end of a twig.

He looked up at me suddenly, catching my stare and I felt a surge of panic shoot through my body. His eyes… they looked like dark beads set against a thick yellowish backdrop, taking me in, bit by bit, through their droopy eyelids. I looked away quickly. I wanted to get up and run back into the hotel compound but my body wasn’t listening. Sarah chatted away, answering the man’s questions, each of which he asked in a drawling voice, slowly averting his gaze every so often to look at me. I stared directly ahead of me at the ocean, praying that my fear was not apparent to him as I grew increasingly nervous.

He asked Sarah where we were staying and she pointed to the hotel behind us. I wanted to scream out and shake her and tell her to stop giving this stranger all this information but I could not seem to get my voice or my body to obey my mind. I began to tremble. The beach was now practically void of any people, save the man with the camel. All sorts of thoughts raced through my mind. I began to have flashbacks of an incident that occurred when I was nine years old, and a drunken man had accosted me outside a restaurant’s restroom. I shuddered as I closed my eyes and saw those eerie translucent-green bloodshot eyes boring into mine.

“You, you look like a tourist because you have a white skin,” the key-chain vending man said to Sarah, “but your friend – she look more like me.” I could feel his stare burning into me. “Me, I prefer this colour…” He reached over and slowly but deliberately stroked my thigh upwards.

That was it! My body finally kicked into defence-mode as I shoved his hand away, got to my feet and with all my might, kicked the fine sand into his eyes. I didn’t even stop to look at Sarah as I then whirled around and bolted for the hotel entrance. Just as I approached the incline to the open hotel gate, I felt my left foot hit something hard and before I knew it, I was laying face-down in the sand, my ankle resting atop a piece of driftwood. I hoisted myself back up again, and as the tears came hot and furiously down the sides of my sand-covered face, I heard the distinct sound of Sarah’s laughter behind me...

His Eyes

Katie ran across the grass and up to her mother, her ponytail flapping about like the tail of a horse swatting flies. “Mummy, did you see? Did you see how high I can swing now?” Her mother smiled tiredly down at her. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and the playground area of the family restaurant was teeming with screaming little children. “Can I go on the merry-go-round now?” the little girl asked her mother expectantly. “Not now honey. We have to get home soon.” Katie reluctantly waited as her father took out his wallet and pulled out some money to pay the bill for the lunch they had just had. She looked forlornly at the other children gleefully whooshing around on the merry-go-round and wished that she could stay on.

Katie’s mother took her hand and followed her father across the garden towards the parking lot of the restaurant. They reached the car and Katie clambered into the back seat, pouting slightly. As the car pulled out of the parking spot, she suddenly felt the urge to use the bathroom. One glance at the stern look on her father’s face as he drove out onto the main road told Katie that she was better off holding it until they were home.

As they drove down the road, Katie tried to distract herself by reciting the poem they had learnt a few weeks ago in school over and over again:

Solomon Grundy
Born on a Monday
Christened on Tuesday
Married on Wednesday
Took ill on Thursday
Worse on Friday
Died on Saturday
Buried on Sunday
And that was the end of Solomon Grundy

After she had recited the poem for the fourth time, she leaned forward and tugged on her mother’s sleeve, “Mummy”, she said in a soft voice. “Are we almost home? I need to pee!” Katie’s father looked at her through the car’s rear-view mirror exasperatedly and asked, “Why didn’t you go at the restaurant?” Katie slumped back in her seat and didn’t answer. She was all too familiar with her father’s temper and was too scared to say anything else to aggravate him.

They must’ve still been a while from home, because Katie’s father pulled into a gas station that had a small restaurant. Katie’s mother got out of the car and opened Katie’s door. “Hurry up, now!” she said, as Katie scrambled to get out of the car. They walked towards the restaurant which had dark windows and the smell of roasted meat coming from it.

Katie’s mother stopped a man who was standing just inside the door of the restaurant and asked him where the bathroom was. The man looked disapprovingly at Katie and then nodded towards a corridor past a few tables. There was a man sitting at the bar with a glass of a yellow frothy liquid. A couple of tables with a few more people seated, using their hands to pick up pieces of meat and bite into them. Katie’s mother led her down the narrow corridor and then left towards the door with the silhouette of a woman on it. The door opened into a tiny single stall with a wash-basin. Katie’s mother tugged on a toilet-seat cover from behind the toilet and placed it on the seat. “I’m waiting for you outside – hurry up!” she said to Katie as she slipped out of the stall and Katie went in and shut the door.

Thankful to finally have relieved herself, Katie stood up and yanked the flush handle and then turned around to wash her hands in the wash-basin. The hand-drier was too high for her to activate so she wiped her hands on the back of her dress and opened the door of the stall.

As Katie stepped out into the corridor, about to make her way back into the restaurant, a raspy voice behind her said, “Hello, there!” Startled, Katie whirled around and found herself staring up at a man. His legs didn’t seem to be able to support him very well because he had his hand on the wall of the narrow corridor. He wore an old jacket over a t-shirt and a pair of stonewash jeans. His yellow-tinged skin was covered in stubble and his lips were dry and cracked. His curly hair looked tangled and unkempt. But his bloodshot eyes were what frightened Katie the most. His eyes were of an almost translucent quality. His pupils were like two tiny black dots in a sea of semi-transparent green with bright red veins running haphazardly towards the pupils. He stared at her hauntingly, as his lips curled eerily. Katie froze. She felt her heart thumping against her chest but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

From somewhere behind her, another man’s voice sounded, “Hey, Maurice! What’s taking you so long, man?” With his creepy eyes still boring into Katie’s, the man replied, “I’m enjoying the view from here!” He spoke with difficulty, slurring on every second word. As though it had been given permission, Katie’s body began to respond. She spun around but she felt the man grab her arm and whirl her back around as she saw those eyes fixedly staring at her again. They seemed to pierce right through her and she felt her vocal chords let out a blood-curdling scream.

Her mother must have been right at the end of the corridor because it seemed as though she had appeared in seconds. She grabbed Katie’s other arm and pulled her from the man’s grip. As she dragged Katie through the narrow passageway, she turned her head to yell obscenities at the man. Once they were outside the restaurant, Katie’s mother knelt down and stroked her daughter’s face. “I’m so sorry, honey... I’m so sorry”, she whispered, pulling Katie into an embrace. Katie shut her eyes tight but all she saw was the terrifying man’s eyes staring menacingly at her…