Facing Consequences

Author's note: This story contains themes related to or mentions of religion, child marriage, violence against children, and death. These are not explicitly described, though.

An icy breeze glided over me, eliciting a violent shiver in its wake. Goose bumps rose along every bare patch of skin. My scalp prickled uncomfortably, the sensation traveling down the back of my neck to clash with the shiver.

I stood still and stiff, eyes squeezed shut, and reached out with the rest of my senses. I was unsure where I was, unsure how I got here, unsure if I was in danger. The air was so heavy with the scent of acrid ashes that I could taste it. The silence was so all-encompassing that it was nearly audible on its own. Though I had yet to see it, something told me that misnomer was proper in this place.

Head tilted forward just enough to not receive the full brunt of the sun, I cautiously cracked my eyes open. I was not greeted by the sun, but rather cold, lifeless grey. While I had expected the grey of the concrete beneath my bare feet, I had not expected my skin, my clothes, and the very light to be bleached of any other colors.

Frowning, I slowly lifted my head and scanned the horizon. I turned and dragged my eyes along the flat horizon with increasing horror. There was absolutely nothing. Not even a light pole or a pile of rubble or a dandelion.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

“No. Where is everything?” I whispered. As I reached my starting point, I caught sight of something far in the distance.

Before I could take a single step, a gust of wind swept past. I braced, hunching my shoulders and crossing my arms, until the wind calmed again. Several minutes passed before I could unclench my muscles. The sound of rustling paper arrived on the tail end of the gust. I reacted violently as something wrapped around my leg.

Yelping, I leapt away and swung around. Though I found empty space, the sensation didn’t disappear. I clapped a hand to my chest over my racing heart as I breathed rapidly. When neither my breathing nor my heart slowed, I dropped my eyes again. Ripping the newspaper away from my leg, I readied to throw it to the side, but paused.

The letters of the headline were completely jumbled. Some didn’t appear to be part of the English alphabet, and the longer I stared at it, the more the letters physically changed. No matter how much I blinked, the words didn’t resolve themselves. The photo beneath the headline was clear as day. A girl who couldn’t even be called a young woman wore a floor-length wedding dress. Though she wore a veil, the despair creasing her face was far from obscured. Beside her, a meaty hand gripping her shoulder, a man at least a decade her senior wore a black suit and a self-satisfied smile. I recognized both of them.

The girl was a carbon copy of my daughter. The man looked exactly like my husband’s best friend from church. The headline resolved into something legible.

‘CHILD BRIDE MURDERED BY HUSBAND ON WEDDING NIGHT.’

I balked, mouth going dry. Nausea roiled in my stomach. Heat pressed at the back of my eyes. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real,” I chanted, gripping the newspaper so tightly that it tore. I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to slow my breathing.

“But it is. It happened.”

Jerking my head up, I stumbled back and dropped back onto my butt. I stared up at the man who stood several steps away, hands shoved in his trouser pockets. Two giant white wings folded slowly and silently against his back. When his wings had finally gone still, I dropped my eyes to meet his, but his features were fuzzy. His eyes almost appeared to blur, as if they were doubled or tripled over one another.

In the back of my head, my fight-flight-freeze response screamed out a warning, calling for action.

The man reached out a hand.

As soon as my eyes dropped to his hand, the fear went silent. It was just a normal hand.

I accepted his silent offer, and he pulled me to my feet. “It’s fake. It has to be. I… I would never let that happen.”

“But you did let it happen. You were part of how it came to be.” The man turned, striding towards a pillar of smoke that was just beginning to rise into the overcast sky. “You allowed it to happen.”

I hurried after him, always a few steps behind. “No! He would never hurt her. He was going to give her a good life. He’s a good man.”

“Was he?” the man asked coldly. Though he didn’t slow or turn to look at me, the air around him smudged like paint on a canvas. “What makes a good man? Someone who goes to church every week? Someone who provides for their family? Someone who lives by their beliefs? Someone who spreads their beliefs?”

I blinked rapidly, trying to resolve the smudges, but they only spread. The sensation of being observed washed over me in tandem with the fear that speared me. Once again, I dropped my eyes and stared at his bare feet instead. The bottoms were coated in grey. “Yes, of course, those are all parts of it,” I said, but doubt grew in the empty space left behind by the fear. The man’s tone made me think he disagreed.

In the distance, the column of smoke was getting closer. The cloud was spreading quickly. Soon enough, it would cover the entire sky.

“What makes a bad man, then?”

“Well, I would say…” I trailed off and considered what I wanted to say. This person wasn’t a man, but a being. One I would describe as an angel. But I didn’t truly know what he was, why he was here, or even what ‘here’ was. “I would say a bad man is someone who doesn’t live by the word of God.”

The acridness of the ash scent had thickened. A haze swirled around us. Breathing was becoming harder.

“By that logic, he wasn’t a good man. And I believe you knew that. You are complicit in what happened.”

I opened my mouth to retort, but my words failed me as we arrived at the source of the smoke.

A towering pillar of flame engulfed an equally massive pile of books. The fire was the first spot of color I had seen in this place. It was blinding. How had I not seen it sooner? My eyes ached as I stared at the orange, but I couldn’t look away. The longer I stared, the more I realized that books were not the only thing burning. Bodies of all shapes and sizes burned between the books.

Reeling away, I looked around wildly for the man. He hadn’t stopped, picking his way through piles of rubble and debris, now far ahead. I left the fire behind and raced after him. Eyes wide, I couldn’t cover them from the destruction around us.

No building remained standing. Entire blocks worth of buildings had been reduced to piles of concrete. The further we walked, the more bodies I caught sight of. I wanted to look away, wanted to retreat into myself, but no place was safe to look. The image of my daughter beneath that awful headline resurfaced, and I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep my lips from trembling.

The man finally stopped. Before him was a dark lacquered coffin that was too small for me to fit in. One side of the lid was open. He turned sideways, creating space for me to observe the occupant as well.

I stopped before I could catch a glimpse. The occupant was my daughter; I was positive about that. I couldn’t see her like that. We stood in silence for several long moments. “What happened here?” I finally asked, voice muffled by my hand, “Why are all those people dead? Why are those books burning?”

The sensation of being watched returned, coming from every direction. The weight of those stares was physical. Slowly, I curled in on myself.

“You’re well aware of what happened,” the man said, but continued with the answer anyway, “Intolerance. Hate. Pride. Greed. Utilizing a corrupted image of our Lord to justify violence. That’s what happened. And you were part of it.”

I shook my head. “No. I wasn’t. I didn’t support violence. I wanted to protect the children. I didn’t do any of this.”

A hand settled on the back of my head. Though he was gentle, he maintained enough pressure to keep my head bowed. “You were a part of it. Silence is complicity. Even when your blindfold was removed, you didn’t speak out. Even when you saw violence happening to people who didn’t look like you, you didn’t speak out. Even when your husband sold your daughter to your friend, you didn’t speak out. In a time when your voice can be heard in so many ways, silence doesn’t absolve you.”

“I was just following what I was taught,” I whispered, sinking to my knees, “I was scared.”

“Yet you still believed it was wrong. That’s the only reason we’re here.” The man remained silent for a heartbeat. The pressure eased. “If you were given a second chance, would you do things differently?”

I trembled and truthfully admitted, “I don’t know. I was so afraid. Would I remember what happened here? Would I remember all the destruction?” The man stayed silent, and I knew I had to answer. “If I remembered something of this, even just the feeling, I think I would try. I want my daughter to have a long, happy life.”

Finally, the pressure of observation eased, but I didn’t lift my head. Starting at the crown of my head, freezing cold spread all the way don’t to my toes.

“Don’t waste this chance.” The man shoved me down.

Instead of impacting the concrete, I fell through vanta black. I fell for years, decades, millenia, but when I finally landed, it was far from gentle. I rocketed into a wall of darkness like a comet. There was noise all around me, voices upon voices.

My eyes shot open, and I gasped in a ragged breath.