Divulge

 Maya’s scream was the kind of strangled cry that belongs to those not long for this world. A scream of one in mortal terror, rooted to the spot and too afraid to run. The doctor entered the room in blue scrubs, po-faced, serious; she had the posture of a soldier. Washing her hand by the sink like she was lost entirely to worrying thoughts. Every action she took was precise and purposeful, she smiled in the cold and distant way professionals do.

“I can never relax around such expressions, I need a genuine face, preferably a smile, but if not I’d really rather they didn’t fake it” Maya thought to herself.

Her back ached as she felt water slide down her legs. Disturbing sounds of agony were all she could make as she moved from contraction to contraction like the worse menstrual cramp ever, she could no longer feel her legs each time she had a contraction. It felt like the muscles inside were slowly twisting harder until it became unbearable. And slowly, it subsided unlike what she read in books, this was much more painful than expected, she fought the pain. The middle contraction was hell; she felt her soul leave her body.

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Maya has been married to Paul Steelman for 15years, without a child. She was a woman in her mid forties, her only dream was to have a child for her husband who didn’t seem bothered about her inability to give him a child. Maya gave up hope of ever conceiving, and then a strange thing happened she got pregnant. Maya was so overjoyed, but the doctor warned that her pregnancy was an ectopic pregnancy (high-risk pregnancy). She was advised to abort it, which she bluntly refused. She had waited so long for a baby, now she got the blessed chance only for a crappy looking doctor to ask her to abort her miracle child. She develop a strong mother’s instinct, she’ll fight the whole world if need be to protect her child. Seeing how determined and head strong Maya was, Paul decided to take a leave of absence from work to take care of his pregnant wife.

      Push! Push! The doctor echoed. 

“Is this lady insane?” Maya thought for a while. After nine months that creature had to be brought out, that has been nurtured. In her husband’s eyes, she could see and hear the words “you can do it “as though it was an ordinary speech. Pushing seemed impossible as the whole of her pelvic felt it was made of breakable glass. She gave the first push, like poo she had to let it out.

Like the doctor predicted, Maya’s pregnancy was a very complicated one. As her blood pressure dropped and pulse weakened, the doctor had no other choice but to save the mother or baby. He asked to see Paul outside and explained everything possible to him. Before he could say anything else, Paul said “save my wife please, I can’t afford to lose her”

The doctor asked a nurse to accompany him to her office to sign the necessary documents. When he returned to the delivery room, Maya was already so weak she was at the point of death when she said in a slow but stern voice “save my child please” 

“But your husband asked otherwise” replied the doctor.

“Take it out please” she said in tears

Arrrrh she felt it was going to be over soon as she could feel her angel swimming out, faced down she gave the second time all her strength in a thrust!

“It’s a girl….” The nurse announced…. The labor room was filled with a baby’s welcome cry.

“She’s worth it” was what went through her mind when she looked at her baby…joy illuminated. The pain was there still, but wasn’t felt. Maya had never seen anything as beautiful. 

Aurora! My bundle of …..Those were her last words as she gave up the ghost.

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Aurora steelman was a typical honors kid- large dark eye behind blue rimmed glasses, holding all the bookish knowledge. Her curious eyes asking for more conflicted with the tight smile begging to be left alone. She’d wear her dark straight hair up in a ponytail. Aurora was a strange kid with a rare power. When she was five, she told her dad to take an umbrella to work when he asked why, she said it would rain. Of course he didn’t take the word of a five year old seriously and besides it was sunny. He left the house only to walk few meters and out of the blues heavy downpours of rain poured down the streets of Duke Avenue. To him it was just a child’s prediction. Aurora had the gift of clairvoyance; she could see the future through dreams. Just before it happened there was this vague sense of familiarity that washed over aurora. She could predict her next move or anyone’s, a day before it happened.

Her father Paul Steelman was a very reserved man. After the death of Maya he wasn’t the same again, it was as though a part of him had died when she died. Though he never said it out loud but Paul blamed aurora for the death of Maya. Sometimes aurora could hear him curse a certain doctor whose name she didn’t catch. Paul was a proud man. He was strict; he had just been washed with bad experience and born short-tempered than most. Pain changes people, some become rude, some become silent. But Paul was driven mad by the death of Maya that he lashed all his anger and frustrations on his daughter Aurora. The pain drove him insane, turned him into a drunk. He couldn’t kill Aurora in lieu he hurt her. Just like Aurora, Paul had a secret of his own but in this case aurora knew about it, but she couldn’t utter a word of it to anyone. She couldn’t lose the only relative she had.

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One sunny morning, a day to her birthday aurora had a promotion. She saw her dad beating her after he came home drunk, she shock herself back to reality feeling scared. Every year on her birthday, Aurora felt she died a little more. Every year was a reminder that her mother had died while giving birth to her. Her father made sure the guilt engulfed her. This year was no different. She hoped it would not be the same as she was turning ten. She waited like an expectant puppy for her dad to return from wherever he went, then the doorbell rang, it had a weariness to it, as if it had rung one too many. It started in an understated way and disappeared as soon as the finger was lifted. Aurora walked unusually slowly towards the door almost robotically as if her brain was struggling to tell each foot to take the next step. It was as if she were in a stupor; like someone under hypnosis. She got to the door and let her father in, he reek so much of alcohol. His eyes were red, he look unstable. She knew what was coming, for the briefest moment she knew precisely what was to occur. Her birthday was like a tradition he never missed, he would beat her to a pulp and lock her in the attic. Paul started mumbling words that sounded like curses which she couldn’t comprehend. Before she could utter words of greetings, she heard the sound of a shattered bottle which Paul was holding. She rushed to clear the pieces; the next thing that followed was punches from different angles, the speed at which each punch descended on her didn’t give her the time to protect herself. The world turned into a blur and so did all the sound, taste, the smell. Everything was just gone. She paused trying to hold back the strange feeling rumbling inside her but couldn’t. A lone tear traced down her cheek, and just like that the floodgates opened, so many tears burst forth like water from a dam, spilling down her face. Her chin trembled, she breathed heavier than ever before. She was gasping for air that simply wasn’t there. Her throat burned forming a silent scream. Just then like a flash, she felt a sharp pain on her chest, like a boulder was dropped. Paul had swung a hard punch on her. She couldn’t hold it anymore, aurora let out a loud scream, which sent echoes through the four corners of Duke Street. The scream that rent the air was as a siren. Nobody screams like that unless it is terror beyond endurance. It was unmistakably a child and a young one. The door bell rang once again, and the voice of a lady followed.

“I know you can hear me, I’ll call the police if you don’t let me in”

Paul knew if the police got involved it will be bad for him, so he reached for the door and let the lady in. in the twinkle of an eye, he vanished to the basement to get drunk as usual. Aurora lay on the floor her face closed in a grimace, her skin pale and bruised. She was crying in pain. The lady bent down to pick her up. While trying to console aurora, she introduced herself as Mrs. Shelley Woods. Shelly ushered her out of the house and took her to her house to tend to her wounds. There she introduced her daughter whose name was Madison also the same age as aurora. Whenever Aurora felt threatened and scared, she would seek solace with Shelley and Madison. Shelley became the mother she never had and Madison the sister she always longed for.

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On the eve of Aurora’s fifteenth birthday she had a dream, but it looked so real.

She saw Paul reaching out to a baseball bat, grasped it and with a perfect circular motion hurled it towards the head of the unsuspecting man. The tip of the bat hit the man’s face with such violence. Paul was feeling elated as he looked at the face of the man, blood oozing out of his poor victim’s crushed skull. Paul completed his deed and crushed the man’s skull with his deadly weapon.

Immediately she jumped up scared from the couch. Other dreams she had always came to reality, she wished in this case this didn’t come true.

The next day was Aurora’s birthday, like every other birthday in the past. Aurora could feel the barrier of impending doomed coming. As she sat waiting for her torturer, she noticed he was taking longer than usual. When it came to her birthday, he was never late. By 9pm she put on the television, and there and behold the headline read 

‘Dr Josh Gilbert has been murdered in his apartment….the said doctor was killed with a baseball bat’

 Then it struck aurora, everything was fresh in her eyes , in that fleeting moment of familiarity all that might have been lived before deemed itself brand new. The name sounded vaguely familiar, turns out he was the doctor that delivered her. She burst into tears; she knew the murderer but couldn’t dare to speak of it to anyone. She couldn’t risk losing the only relative she had, no matter how monstrous he was, Paul was still her father. 

The doorbell brought Aurora back to reality, she walked to the door and let her tormentor in. he had a way of walking that made him seem perpetually in a hurry. His steps weren’t long but they were rapid. Aurora could see the satisfaction on his face, she was ready for what was to come next but to her greatest surprise, he walked passed her and retired to the basement to get a drink. 

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As the years went by, Paul became a psychotic killer. He killed people for petty reason. One time he killed a certain man across the street for knocking down his mailbox while try to reverse his car. Animals were no exception, he killed Miss Claire’s dog cause it barked all through the night. Aurora could see that he enjoyed every kill, but what could she do about it, rat him out? No! She had had to keep it a secret. She revered him in a way she couldn’t understand even though he was a miscreant. She lived with this guilt for so long. Her only console was Shelley and Madison Woods, who became the best thing she ever had. Each time she was with them, she would secretly bless the day Paul beat her, because it made her find solace in Shelley’s arms. 

On the eve of her twentieth birthday, Aurora had a dream that sent horrific thrills down her spine. Mrs. Shelley woods life was in danger. 

In her dream, her father got home but Aurora wasn’t home, she was at the Woods house. Shelley had thrown a party for aurora. When Aurora got home, Paul was already so drunk. His face was like the face of death and anger. Aurora saw the dangerous way at which he stared at her and immediately she knew she was a gunner. He ran after her, when he caught her, he gave her the beating of her life. He beat her to the point of death. She saw Shelley barge into the room. Everything happened so fast, the next moment Shelley was on the ground cold, her eyes wide open. He had hit her with a stick from the fire place, aurora looked away she couldn’t bear to watch. He said “how could you be so heartless, to celebrate the day your mother died”

Her blonde hair was stained with blood as a result of the blow on her head; her face was bruised, covered with great blotches. He had broken three of her ribs; her thighs and abdomen were bruised and lacerated. Paul took Shelley’s body and dumped it in the sewers.

Aurora woke up with tears in her eyes; she couldn’t let her father hurt Shelley. She had to make the hardest decision of her life, she had to choose between her murderous father and the mother she never had. 

On her birthday Aurora took a drastic decision to tell Shelley about her powers and also reveal her father’s deadly secrets, the mass murders. And also warn her that she would be the next victim. Shelley advised aurora to take the case to the authorities. Aurora had to divulge her father’s sins, even if it meant unveiling her powers to the world. Shelley accompanied her to the station to make a report about her father’s serial killings. She was ushered to see a detective; she told him everything that had been going on. The serial killings, her father’s brutalities on her, she showed the scars on her body to confirm it. Mrs. Woods attested to it. When asked why she hadn’t come sooner, she said she feared for life. And she was afraid the world would see her as a freak. She had watched so many movies and read a lot of books about children with her kind of rare powers being exploited. The detective took her statements, when she was done he asked her to inform them when Paul would be home so they could come take him for questioning, and then she left.

When Aurora got home, her dad was already home, which was unusual because it was he birthday and his tradition was late coming to torture her. She him in a greeted jittering voice, and then she proceeded towards the dining room to make a call to the police. Paul noticed her strange movement, and asked her what she was up to. Before she could come up with words, he lashed her with the bottle in his hand and she fell. He rushed towards her and started strangling her.

“I hate you, Maya died because of you wretch. I haven’t had to courage to kill you but today I think I should. You have spent twenty wasted years on this earth. I’ll kill you, and then kill your friends too”

Aurora struggled with the last strength she had, to reach out to the broken bottle on the floor which had already injured her body. She picked a piece she could reach with great pain, and stabbed him on the right side of his neck. Blood gushed out and poured on her face, Paul’s lifeless body fell on her. She let out a loud scream that almost deafened her; she pushed him off her body to free herself. When she got up, she stared down on him with this sense of relief, with little or no amount of guilt; she left him to die in his own pool of blood.

She went over to Shelley’s and asked her to call the police; she told her that she had killed Paul out of self defense. When the police arrived, Aurora narrated all that had happened. She was asked to go with them to the station to give her statement. As the medic rolled Paul’s body into the ambulance and drove off, Aurora’s mind was at rest. She was finally free. 

           Written by Umah, Benedette Charlene.