Rashaad and the Soul-Eater

“Mama, I'm going to be home late. I have a lot to do before I can leave.” Rashaad said.

“Baby, they say there’s going to be a blizzard. You need to leave now.” Mama replied, concerned.

“Mom, the weatherman doesn’t have a good track record his week. He said it would be in the 70s, and it’s snowing now. I will be all right. Don’t worry.”

“The work can wait. I don’t want you stuck in that building with the snow coming down as hard as it is.”

“No, mama. I have a deadline. Two hours top, and I will be out the door.”

“Ok, baby,” his mother said hesitantly. “Call me when you leave so I know to look out for you. I love you.”

“I love you too, mama.”

Rashaad hung up the phone. He stretched his arms and began typing his reports. The building's heater shut off an hour later.

“Great. Just what I need.” Rashaad said. He got up from his desk to go to the bathroom before driving home.

On the way, his cellphone buzzed with an alert.

LOCAL WEATHER SERVICE: BLIZZARD WARNING. STAY INDOORS. IF YOU ARE OUTDOORS, SEEK SHELTER NOW.

Guess the weatherman got it right this time. Rashaad thought to himself with a sigh.

After exiting the restroom, he noticed a light in the hallway that he never saw anyone go down. Curious, he thought, I have some time before it gets worse. I’ll just take a peek.

Rashaad walked down the hallway, rubbing his hands to keep warm. He turned the knob on the first door. Locked.

Rashaad continued down the hallway to the second door. He turned the handle, and the door opened. Lights flickered on. He walked inside.

“A room full of file cabinets?!” He said aloud. He looked closer at the first filing cabinet. It was unlabeled, and there were no locks on the drawers. He opened the top drawer to see what was inside. It was empty. He continued until he got to the bottom drawer. A note with the words, "DON'T GO INTO ROOM 3!" scrawled in red marker lay inside.

What could be in room 3? He wondered.

Cautiously, Rashaad closed the drawer and straightened up. He walked out of the room and closed the door. He stared across the hallway at room number 3. There were no warning signs on the door, and the room was unmarked like the others.

"What could be in that room? All we do here is crunch numbers. What could be so bad?" He whispered, more so to soothe himself against the onslaught of fear.

Rashaad checked his watch. Against his better judgment, he decided to take a quick look inside room number 3 before collecting his things and heading home.

Rashaad touched the handle, and immediately the door flung open. He took hold of the door frame just in time to stabilize himself. Looking down, he quickly realized that the floor was missing in this room. Rashaad looked down at the bottomless pit.

Just then, the lights in the hallway went out. Rashaad felt a push from behind. He fell for what seemed an eternity before hitting a hard surface. Dazed, he tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t move. He propped himself up on his arms and put his hand to his throbbing head.

“Where am I?”

Rashaad attempted to stand up. This time he was successful. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket to call for help.

“Ugh. No signal.”

Rashaad turned on his cellphone’s flashlight to look around. All he could see was pitch blackness until he looked behind him.

The flashlight shone upon a large statue of a muscular man with locs sitting crisscrossed with a loincloth.

“What is this? Why is this statue underneath the company?”

Rashaad slowly walked closer to inspect. He moved the flashlight to the sides of the statue. Buried in clay were men who looked like him but frozen in varying degrees of horror. Above them was a sign that read "Unworthy." Puzzled, Rashaad turned his attention back to the statue. The statue's eyes began to glow, and its mouth opened. A sword fell from its tongue, landing at Rashaad’s feet.

“Are you worthy to wield the sword?” The statue queried.

“Am I worthy to wield the sword? I’m not King Arthur. Is this some kind of joke?” Rashaad said as he turned the flashlight above him. He was hoping that someone was playing a prank on him and the lights would come on, illuminating a way out.

“Are you worthy to wield the sword? The statue repeated. “If not, you seal your fate. The Soul-Eater is coming.”

The ground began to rumble.

“The Soul-Eater? What do you mean? Rashaad asked, terrified.

The statue's eyes dimmed; its mouth closed in stony silence. The rumbling grew louder. Rashaad turned to see what was coming but only saw darkness. Yet, he could feel something sinister approach.

“You’re not worthy.” The disembodied voice of the Soul-Eater charged. Its vocalization slithered around Rashaad, eventually building to an echo that whipped him around as he tried to find its source.

He felt the Soul-Eater coming closer and reached for the sword. It was heavier than he expected, so he had to use both hands to lift it.

Rashaad swung the sword aimlessly.

“Go away!”

The Soul-Eater laughed and then said, “Poor fool, you will be mine. No one has been found worthy but try if you must.”

Although the statue was silent, Rashaad could hear it asking him, "Do you believe you are worthy?”

"I want to go home. Just leave me alone, alright. Just let me go!"

Rashaad pleaded in a mixture of fear and anger.

Again, he heard the speechless statue speak to him, “To go home, you must defeat the Soul-Eater.”

The Soul-Eater swirled around Rashaad. He raised the sword and prayed through tears, “I just want to go home. I don’t know what’s going on. I just want to go home. Please.”

The Soul-Eater shot out its phantom tentacle to choke Rashaad, causing his eyes to bulge.

The statue's called out to Rashaad. "Things are not what they seem."

The Soul-Eater threw Rashaad against one of the clay carvings of "unworthy men." The throw caused the sword to hit the figure with such force that it broke. The Soul-Eater shrieked in terrible pain.

Regaining his breath, Rashaad wondered if there was a correlation between the broken figure and the Soul-Eater's pain. Testing his theory, Rashaad picked up the sword and struck another clay man.

The Soul-Eater cried out in pain once more. Then, it retaliated by swirling around the room. Dust and stones encircled Rashaad, temporarily blinding him.

Fighting his way through the dust storm, Rashaad went to the next clay man and beat it with the sword. This time, the room fell still and quiet.

He heard the sound of footsteps. A spotlight shone on the figure walking towards him.

Rashaad gripped the sword tighter. As the figure became clear, Rashaad called out.

“Alina? Is that you?"

Alina walked closer, silently, and touched his face.

Rashaad’s muscles began to relax. He looked into her eyes, the deep brown eyes of the woman he had loved since 9^th grade. She had walked into homeroom one day. The teacher introduced her as the new kid. She wore her hair in an afro, and the other girls in the class snickered and then quickly became annoyed when they saw how the boys looked at Alina.

Rashaad was captivated that day and offered to show her around the school. They remained friends through college, although he always wanted to break out of the friend zone. He thought about finally signing up for open mic night at the café, fixing his eyes on her, and reciting a poem to tell her how he felt. He just was never brave enough.

“Rashaad,” Alina said softly, “You know we will never be together. You never take risks.”

His heart shattered. He tried telling Alina that she was wrong, but instead, tears rolled down his face like a river. Then, she was gone. The darkness punctuated his loneliness.

As he was weeping, he heard his father behind him. He turned around. He saw his father and his mother sitting next to each other at the home they lived in before his father died.

"Evaleen, that boy needs to get his head out the clouds! He wants to be a writer. Who do you know that has made a living from writing?! He needs to go to school for something practical like Business, or Medicine, or Law. It’s time he woke up!”

"Dear —" his mother uttered before the image of his parents disappeared.

“Dad,” Rashaad said wistfully. "I think you would be proud of me now. I have a job in an office. Writing is an afterthought.”

Rashaad hung his head and sobbed anew at the memory of his father.

Dejected, Rashaad crumpled to the ground.

The statue entered his head again, “To go home, you must defeat the Soul-Eater.”

“No, I give up.” Rashaad dropped his sword and raised his hands in surrender.

The Soul-Eater returned at the smell of defeat. It coiled itself around Rashaad and whispered into his ear. “You were never worthy.”

Yet, Rashaad's will to live betrayed his desire to succumb. His fists punched the air in a futile attempt to connect with the shadowy creature. Rashaad fell hard to the ground and hit his head on the hilt of the sword. As he lay unconscious, his mind flashed to his older brother, Andre.

Andre was sitting on the porch of the home his family lived in after his father died. It was the last time he would ever see or hear him.

Rashaad had walked onto the porch that day and sat on the swing opposite his brother.

Andre looked at Rashaad and said, “Don’t let anyone stop you from being you. If you want to write, do it. If you want to be an astronaut, reach for the stars. Don’t let people keep you small.”

Rashaad side-eyed his brother quizzically. He had never heard his brother talk like this before.

Noticing the side-eye, Andre chuckled. "To thine own self be true, right?”

“You know Shakespeare?”

"Yeah, I paid attention in English class, believe it or not," Andre replied. How about this one? "You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all."

Rashaad was stumped.

"That's Baldwin," Andre answered. "Just do you, kid, and everything else will fall into place, ok?”

The next morning, Rashaad would find a box of books by his bedroom door with a note from Andre that read, “Be you.”

Rashaad pored through every book in the box in the months that would follow, looking for clues to where his brother might have gone. Though he never heard found any.

Sasha, the eldest child, appeared next. She was in the kitchen with mama chopping vegetables for dinner. Sasha had become a hotshot D.A. and was looking to run for senate in the upcoming year. She was the golden child.

“Mama, you know I got Rashaad a connection with Voice Magazine. The editor loved the samples of his old work and even wanted to hire him on the spot. But Rashaad didn’t follow through. That boy is so frustrating! He's wanted to be a writer since he was young, and then when he gets the opportunity of a lifetime to interview with THE Voice magazine, he blows it! Voice magazine would’ve changed his life, you know. Some so many people have worked for Voice and have gone big time. Mama, if Rashaad had the confidence, he could be something great too. I just wish he would stop holding himself back.”

A tear rolled down Sasha’s face, and when mama looked at her, Sasha blamed it on the onions.

Rashaad awakened, groggily, to reality. The Soul-Eater hovered over him.

"You're tougher than I thought, but make no mistake, your soul I will take.”

Rashaad determined to prove to himself that he wasn’t a coward. He got on his feet. Slightly disoriented and stumbling, he reached for the sword and saw his reflection on the blade. He was worn, bruised, and tired.

“I am worthy to wield the sword, and I will defeat you and go home.” Rashaad cried.

The ground began to rumble, and Rashaad thought another Soul-Eater was coming to help finish him off.

Instead, it was the statue. The stone man had risen from its seated position. Eyes glowing yet again, it thunderously declared, “Mighty is the man who wields the sword and knows his worth!”

Rashaad looked up at the gigantic stone man astonished. The Soul-Eater loudly repeated the phrase, "you're worthless," over and over in an attempt to distract Rashaad from the statue's pronouncement.

As Rashaad looked up at the statue, he thought of his brother and the quote from Baldwin.

Summoning courage, Rashaad strengthened his grip on the sword. Rashaad ran over to the “unworthy men” while the Soul-Eater followed furiously in pursuit. Rashaad began to strike the statutes, inflicting pain on the creature with every stroke, and keeping it at bay. When he got to the last statue, it was noticeably different from the others. While the others were clay molds of men, this one was a coffin. Rashaad used the sword to pry the coffin open. The lid did not budge.

As Rashaad struggled to open the coffin, the Soul-Eater called out, “Don’t open that coffin. Let’s make a deal. I will let you live if you keep that coffin closed.”

Rashaad stopped working on opening the coffin. For a moment, the Soul-Eater thought he had won and began to advance.

Rashaad, knowing that the creature created wind gusts with its movements, used this to his advantage. As the Soul-Eater moved closer, Rashaad worked on lifting the seal of the coffin. The creature's gust helped move the coffin’s lid. A man started to cough, and Rashaad jumped back into the shadowy path of the Soul-Eater.

“You fool. You should not have opened that coffin!” the Soul Eater raged.

The Soul-Eater pierced Rashaad’s heart with its tentacle. Rashaad gasped.

The Coughing Man sat up and climbed out of the coffin. Rashaad, barely alive, watched as the Coughing Man drew near.

The Coughing Man walked as if he was on an afternoon stroll in the park.

The Coughing Man became visible. Rashaad’s eyes grew wide.

“You’re, you’re…Rashaad stammered. “You’re me. How is this possible?”

“Don’t worry about how it’s possible. Think about the life you want to live.” The Coughing Man said as he put his hand over Rashaad’s heart and stepped back. "If you're ready to become who you are meant to be, take my hand. But if you're afraid, you will stay here forever."

Rashaad stretched out his hand to grab hold of the Coughing Man, but the Soul-Eater retracted its tentacle, pulling Rashaad away. Rashaad struggled to keep his feet grounded. Ripping himself away from the Soul-Eater’s clutch, Rashaad reached out his hand towards the Coughing Man.

“I’m not afraid anymore.” He gurgled before he faded away.

***

 Rashaad awoke and found himself in the office break room. Bewildered, Rashaad looked around and clung to the wall.

Rob walked in. “Hey man, you all right?”

“How—How are you here? There’s a blizzard.”

“Umm… the blizzard was a week ago.  Are you sure you’re alright? You look like you’ve been through hell.  Maybe you should go home and get some rest.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right," Rashaad said as he pinched himself.

Rashaad walked back to his desk, passing by the hallway with the secret rooms. The hallway was now closed off with caution tape. A poster hung on the wall nearby. CLOSED FOR REMODELING.

Reflexively, Rashaad reached for his heart and stood still. Then, he went to his cubicle and sat down at his computer.

A message appeared on the screen, “Is this the life you want to live?”

Rashaad turned the computer off and back on. Still, the message was there. Taking a deep breath, Rashaad took out a piece of paper and a pen from his desk. After he finished writing, he walked to his boss's office and knocked on the door.

“Come in.” His boss answered.

Rashaad walked in and handed his boss the letter he wrote.

“I would have typed it, sir, but my computer is not working.”

Taken aback, his boss replied, "If this is about the promotion, I'm sorry. In another five years, you'll get that management position. I promise."

“It’s not about that. I want to step out of my comfort zone and try something new.”

The boss finally looked up to really see Rashaad.

“Geez, what happened to you?”

“I, uh, I was mugged on my way in.” Rashaad lied.

"I get it now. You're rattled. Take some time off. Your job will still be here waiting for you."

Rashaad forced a smile and walked out of his boss’s office. He collected his coat and keys from his desk and left the building.

In the car, Rashaad pulled out his cellphone. It was banged up from the battle with the Soul-Eater, but he still managed to make a call.

“Hello, Voice magazine, how may I direct your call?”

“Hi, this is Rashaad Johnson. I’m calling to speak with Ms. Butler regarding an interview.”

“One moment. I will patch you through.”