Keeping Secrets

“Can you keep a secret?”

No. I know you’re meant to say yes when somebody asks you that but what’s the point. I know I can’t. No one can, we all cave eventually. Yet still, the insubordinate idiots that are my peer insist on divulging their every fear to me, their every embarrassing moment, their lies their regrets. Everything that makes them themselves they pour into my unwanting ears. Drowning me in a sea of guilt and fearful loyalty. Until I pull the plug, then the anger and seething rage bear down on me as their words tumble out of my mouth into the hands of others. 

“It’s not my fault,” I plea. “I said I couldn’t keep it to myself,” but still heads shake. Still, people mutter how I was supposed to be the loyal one. But that’s not true, and I know it. So I’ve stopped trying to keep others secrets under lock and key. I spill them to the world. Then maybe they’ll finally see that I don’t want to be their safe locked away in a dungeon of forced loyalty. But then he came. The one with the secret so terrible even I knew no one else could know, until I let that loose too. 

The boy tapped on my shoulder with a moth-like touch. His mouth grazed my ear softly, as he whispered in a voice wise beyond years. 

“Can you keep a secret?” I was a young boy; I knew I couldn’t. But I was so curious. What mysteries could this tall, dark-haired young man be hiding in the sleeves of his faded leather jacket? I nodded, and the young man slapped me appreciatively on the shoulder of my grey uniform top.  

“Thanks kid,” he muttered as he swung my school bag over his shoulder. “Been standing for ages outside of that school gate. All the other kids just want to run home to their mommies and daddies,” I gulped as I nodded slowly. Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea, but there was no backing out now. 

The dark-haired boy dragged me protectively down a maze of alleyways by the collar of my shirt. I stammered soft groans of pain as my exposed knees knocked against the pavement with each stumble. The sky began to darken as we moved into the darker regions of the city. The boy’s breath became laboured and panicked and his footsteps soft but quick. I remained silent. We were approaching a part of town the kids at school would have nightmares about. 

“Don’t go down the hell alleyways!” they would whisper. “Last kid down there never came back. I hear the beggars will slit your throat with a rusty beer can. They’ll jump you and cut you and hang you on their walls.” All the violent visions of childhood lived down those alleyways and now I Bengimin Louis was going to be the next in a history of kids gone missing. 

The boy finally released my collar as we came to a halt by a rusty dumpster. He glanced around at the empty street and opened with lid with a practised caution. Inside was a sight so ghastly it made me want to scream. A young man, about the same age as the boy who had brought me here lay lifeless in the dumpster. Long tendrils of blood lacerated his gaunt face, streaming into his unblinking blue eyes. His white shirt was ripped and stained, ridding up over a rib cage of exposed rib bones that looked as though they were fighting to escape his chest. I gulped as I looked at the cause of his death. 

A menacing knife with a black hilt stuck out of his chest at an obscene angle. I looked up at the boy who had brought me here. He looked almost identical to the boy in the dumpster—same black hair and blue eyes on a gaunt face with a forever miserable expression. 

The boy reached over the dumpster and yanked out the knife. He gripped my shirt and wiped off the thick blood. 

“It’s my brother. We got into a fight. No one can know okay kid. I need you to hide this knife so the cops can't use it for DNA samples, okay. You get me. You don’t tell anyone or your dead.” He held the knife close to my throat as he punctuated his sentences with a firm finger. I didn’t know what to do; this was crazy. But I couldn’t say no. I took the knife with a deep breath and ran off at the boy’s command. I hid the knife under my shirt as I rushed through the impossible maze of alleyways. That’s when I ran into the cop. 

“What you got their young man.” The cop asked me firmly as he glared at the blood on my shirt. I gulped as I revealed the knife, the cop gasped and yanked it from my hold. 

“Where on earth did you get this?” 

I broke down into tears and told him everything, he guided me to his car, and as we drove, I explained why I had been there. At the police station, he called my parents on an old landline, and I sat shaking as I listened to their conversation. 

“A knife!” my mother gasped.

“Yes, ma’am I found him with it concealed under his shirt. I doubt he had any part in the crime, but the procedure meant we had to bring him here first. You may come and pick him up now.” The policeman hung up the phone and glanced at me with a pitying look. 

“Wait here kid. It could be a while, Cassandra, the receptionist, will keep an eye on you,” He gestured to a kindly woman in police uniform behind the desk. She nodded at me and went back to her work. 

 Later that afternoon as I sat in the reception room of the police station waiting for my mother the boy came in. He was flanked by two police officers and had clearly put up a fight. He glared at me as he walked past, his eyes were like the depths of hell themselves. 

“I’m going to kill you kid,” He whispered. I gulped knowing he was all too serious.