What We Carry

Out the window, you would see kids playing soccer or chatting with friends. They were happy, gossiping away in the breeze.

But there was always someone only a few people knew. They were quiet, always to themselves, and just did their schoolwork.

“Adrian Vale,”

The teacher would call out at the start of class.

“Here” he’d reply.

That was all that we would hear from him.

He just sat in the back, observing. He never trusted anyone, but he wanted to. No one knew what was going on in his head. In his head, people were demons out to get him, laughing at him. He knew that the world wasn’t a good place. Everywhere he went, it was dark with no escape.

Back home was like Alice in Wonderland, but he was always too big for the door. His parents were always working, but when they were home, they were arguing. If not arguing, they were scolding him for his grades and chores, telling him to grow up and comparing him to others, never once giving him the approval he wanted.

Through every yell, he never cried. He thought that if he did, it would show defeat. Weakness. He counted down the days until he could leave this rotten place.

One night after school, Adrian delayed going home.

Ding!

His phone buzzed. He glanced down at the screen.

“WHERE ARE YOU? YOU KNOW HOW LATE IT IS.”

“COME HOME NOW.”

He sighed, wishing he had never been born into a family like this.

Going down an alley, he stopped in his tracks.

A man dressed in black, his face hidden beneath a cap, stood over someone lying motionless on the ground. In his hand was a knife, raised high, blood dripping from the blade.

He froze; he had never seen anything like this before.

“Help,” the person on the ground whispered, using all their strength just to stay alive.

The masked man turned to face Adrian with his head down, as the blood from the steel blade dripped into the puddle of deep red gore.

Was Adrian next?

Should Adrian scream for help or call police himself?

Adrian turned and ran, his mind racing, trying to figure out what he should do.

He ended up running all the way home, locking himself in his room.

Still processing everything that had just happened, he sat down, hands clasping his face.

“Someone else would have called. It will be okay; they will be okay.” He told himself.

But when he finally laid down, the guilt clung to him like sweat.

As he drifted off to sleep, Adrian slipped into a dream.

He stood alone in a grassy field at night. The only sound was the leaves whistling in the wind. When he looked around, the emptiness made it feel almost like a desert.

Then, all of a sudden, he saw someone in the distance.

He couldn’t make the figure out clearly, but he noticed a few things: tall, tan skin, dark hair. A man. There was something mysterious about him.

Why was he in Adrian’s dream?

“It wasn’t your fault.” the man said, reaching a handout toward him.

Adrian jolted awake, panting and trying to catch his breath. He glanced at the clock.

5:00 a.m.

Who was that?

“Maybe it was just a dumb dream,” he thought.

7am he woke up smelling fresh eggs and sausages. It looked delicious, but seeing that his parents had already eaten without him, Adrian lost his appetite.

“18 year old stabbed 3 times in his neck and torso at around 10pm last night and left in alley, if you have seen or heard anything, please let us know.”

Adrians eyes flew wide open. That’s the guy.

“Left? Do they mean me? Do they mean I left him?” He thought.

Running to his parents room, his heart was pounding, his breathe was racing. The hallway felt like a maze with no end.

Looking at the picture on the TV, something looked familiar. Tall, tan skin, dark hair. It couldn’t be the guy from the dream right?

Adrian suddenly felt dizzy. The room seemed to shrink around him. The paintings on the walls began to twist into something ugly, dark, and grim, with red smiling faces staring back at him. Panic clawed at his chest.

He went off to school in a daze, an hour late as he missed the bus. Staring out the window, he couldn’t hear anything. Not his teacher, the flipping of books or laughter of classmates. He couldn’t focus on any his schoolwork, just a pen in hand leaning on the page. He kept replaying the picture, his dream, the knife with blood over and over again.

It was recess when suddenly his phone buzzed.

Staring at the screen, he was in horror. Sweat dripping, breathe hardly in reach. Phone in hand, trembling to the thought of someone knowing.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Reading it again and again and again.

Rage, guilt and fear swarming his body.

“Who’s texting me!” He screamed.

The whole class shocked, looking at each other.

“No one,” they said quietly.

Adrian could sense the judgement filling the room. The hallucinated laughter grows as the seconds linger.

Feeling as if he made a scene, he stormed out ashamed he let his feelings get the best of him.

He sat in the hallway, knees to chest trying to ground himself.

Staring at this text from an unknown, a cold sweat went down his spine.

“Who sent this? How do they know my number? Did they see me run away and leave that man to die?”

Adrian felt as if he was always being watched. At home, at school, on the streets.

Where will he be free?

He suddenly had the urge to run. To run from the place that handcuffed him to the ground. To run from the demons following him, laughing at every move he takes. Like a chess match, he will never win. This dark place that only judged him for who he was.

He ran for miles, never looking back. The darkness trying to catch up behind him as he goes through the fog of his past.

“If I run far and fast enough, I can escape, have a new identity and have a life I deserve.”

But as days went on he never got that accomplished feeling, that feeling to be able to relax and do what he wanted. The demons were always on his back. Staring at him. The man, the dream and the knife, always haunting.

Sometimes when he looked at the trail he once walked, he would see a rift waiting for him to step into. The rift sending him into an abyss of darkness and anguish that would replay the most haunting moments imaginable.

He realised from then on, he will never be able to forget or just bury these traumas away.

The peace that he lingered for would never arrive with the regret tormenting his everyday life.

’I should have called for an ambulance.’

’I should have talked to my parents.’

’Who texted me?’

’Who was in my dream?’

They will always come to haunt like a ghost trapped in a place it once called home.