Volcano.

I was just turning eight. Eight years old but I aged about ten years more on that day, the 14th of December, 2000. 14th of December, 2000, the day I held Miriam's head as she splurged and gorged on the blood rushing from her mouth. I had never seen so much blood. 14th of December, 2000, the day I had pressed my little palms as firmly as my muscles would allow on my sweater which was poured on Miriam's stomach. 14th of December, 2000, the day that even on the brink of death, I had watched Miriam struggle to reassure me like she always did. But it wasn't at all like she always did.

Her perfectly set milk coloured teeth was not camouflaged by the deep red liquid rushing out of her mouth on the other days. She did not sputter blood on my face whenever she spoke on the other days. She did not have to close her mouth on the other days for fear of blood dripping down to my shirt. No. Miriam did not keep her mouth shut for anything nor anyone. Miriam was bold. Miriam was strong.

I had just turned nineteen. Nineteen years old and just like the normalcy of every 14th day in the month of November since the year 2000, I was sitting on my bed staring at the spot on the floor Miriam had sat as she watched me struggle to put on my sweater. After wishing me a happy birthday with a sloppy kiss on the cheek which I hated but would give anything to feel in this moment, she had said we should take a quick stroll to buy several packets of chocolate cookies and two large buckets of chocolate ice cream from the store just further down our street. The both of us had something close to an obsession for chocolates and going together to the store to buy them was one of our favorite things to do together. I remember jumping up from my bed with excitement and clumsily put on my shoes.

"Saqeeb." Mom's voice through the door had interrupted my thoughts. "Happy birthday my love." She stepped into the room. "Have you been awake long?" She walked towards my bed. "Are you okay?" She placed a hand on my shoulders. "You're fine my love. You're fine. You're fine. It's going to be okay. Do you hear me? It is going to be okay." She murmured as she gathered my frame of 6'1 into her smaller one of 5'6. She knew, just like she always did. With everyone else including dad, I without attempt was unreadable. With mom, I just couldn't. Just her voice melted me. Her kind brown eyes made my emotions rush to the surface. Her smile which had turned sadder and smaller over the years told me I wasn't alone. Her tall figure which I towered over always made me feel smaller and safer whenever she hugged me. Her words words. Her words tugged at my heartstrings; told me she understood, told me I could always count on her, told me I was normal, told me I wasn't damaged, told me it would be fine. And I believed her.

Just like every other 14th day in the month of November since the year 2000, mom held me while I wept. I wept because it was my birthday. I wept because even though I knew it was false, she wouldn't have died if she didn't want to go out with me to buy chocolates on that day. I wept because Miriam was gone and never coming back. I wept because life was cruel. I wept because nothing was done. I wept because I had lost my one and only sibling. I wept because I was only eight years old.

Dad knew not to interrupt whenever mom was in my room on my birthdays but on that day, he had walked in and put his arms around us. We stayed like that for about five minutes before all the love began to choke me up and then I wiggled free from mom's hand.

"I'm fine." I said, shamelessly wiping tears from my face.

"Are you sure?" Mom looked at my face.

"Yeah."

"You could just remain in your room and we'll bring whatever you need to you." Dad offered.

"No. Really I'm fine."

"Okay. Come taste the pepper soup I made." Mom smiled and happily dragged my hand as we walked downstairs with Dad behind us.

The first contact of the hot spoon with my tongue had brought sudden tears to my eyes. It was hot and spicy, just the way we liked it. But the tears in my eyes were not summoned solely by the hotness of the soup. I remembered Miriam. It was a tiny memory, tucked back away in the depths of my mind. A memory I didn't even know was there, one I never remembered living. It was of Miriam feeding me something from a bowl, probably a cereal. As soon as she put the spoon in my mouth, I cried out and began to throw my arms around in my crib. She dropped the plate and began to pet me. Why that memory suddenly surged forward I did not know. Where and when it happened was a mystery to me. But it was a mystery I didn't intend to solve because that would involve me asking mum and dad and I knew I would cry. I sniffed. Two pairs of eyes immediately moved up to mine.

"What's wrong?" Dad immediately asked.

"Not..." I cleared my throat so my words could come out smoothly. "Nothing. It's just the spice, that's all." I laughed a little and dabbed at my eyes.

Mom looked a little doubtful but she didn't say anything other than gently asking if I wanted more pepper soup to which I refused.

I had offered to help with the dishes after our lunch but my cousin Kamila, said she could handle them alone and I walked upstairs to my room. Everything was still the same. I still had the same pale blue duvet with its bedsheet and pillow cases to match. The same little desk still stood against the window. The tiny grey wardrobe still contained all my favourite clothes, and all my favourite toys still sat on it. The frame of six year old me and twenty year old Miriam grinning at each other remained hung above my bed. Everything was still the same, except me.

For several days, days which slowly and torturously turned to months, months which unsteadily and painfully turned to two years after the incident, I was unresponsive. I kept staring blankly at everything, I couldn't speak. I remember always waking up in the dead of the night from long, torturous dreams. I remember screaming, screams that left my throat raw and my room door jerked open. I remember always feeling hot tears falling in short, rapid strokes on my back but I couldn't say anything to stop them. I remember the daily prodding to speak. I remember mom trying to coax me every minute to open my mouth, so she could shove the spoon of whatever liquid down my throat. I remember when I began to speak again. 

I had been lying facedown on my bed, replaying the image of Miriam's bloody, chocking face. Her yellow blouse which continued to turn orange as her blood wrapped around it. Her grasp on my hand which rapidly got weaker. The tears gathering in her eyes and running down her face, only to be captured in a pool of its owner's blood. Her simultaneous attempts to close her mouth and also to speak. I had turned to the door as I heard it creak open. Of course it was Mom. She didn't say anything. She simply made me sit up, then she wrapped a shawl around my shoulders and guided me outside. The concrete grounds of our compound was freezing, the chill running up and around every single bone in my body but I refused my slippers whilst refusing mom's hand and walked by myself. I wanted to feel something else. Something other than the blankness, darkness, sadness, numbness. Then I stepped on a large piece of glass.

If I had been looking at the floor and I had seen that glass before I stepped on it, I wouldn't have avoided it. But then I wouldn't have felt all the pain I needed to stumble out of my mute state. I let out a howl. The pain which was doubled by the fierce dance of the wind swept straight into my heart and I began to cry. I began to cry because as much as it hurt, I felt something different from everything I had been feeling for the past two years. I felt a different kind of pain. Dad had rushed out of the house with the first aid box and gently pushed mom aside so he could inspect the wound. Apparently my feet had broken the glass and I had pieces of glass in both soles. As dad tried to pull the pieces out of my soles, I looked down and I saw red.

A deep red substance. The realization slowly came to me. Blood? There was so much of it. Was it my blood? I couldn't remember in that moment. I faintly heard dad saying I needed to be taken to the hospital. Faintly because just as he ended his statement, I began to scream. Everything became jumbled. Memories. Flashbacks. Screams. Cries. The sound of guns going off. My name being called repeatedly. Blood everywhere. Me and Miriam leaving the house. Me and Miriam swinging our hands and laughing. Me and Miriam playing. A gunshot going off. Miriam covering me. Miriam on the floor. Her face in my head. Blood. A scream. Blood. A tug. Blood. People running. Blood. A child's cry. Blood. Blood. Blood. More screams, my name being shouted. Blood. Miriam choking. Blood. My shirt. Blood. BlOod. BlOOd. BLOOd. BLOOD. The word kept ringing in my ears. I fell to my knees, screaming and holding my ears. I dropped my head to the floor and unknowingly on a glass. Blood. The blood began to flow down and into my eyes. I started to run. I was screaming, running, thrashing. I don't know how long it went on for, but then I passed out.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Mom and dad were beside my bed, sleeping. I looked at them, looked at the restraints around my hands and legs, looked at the face of who I had become on the large glass window beside my bed. My hair which was an afro mom painstakingly took care of, was dirty and had things I couldn't recognise in it. My face was swollen. Little red marks here and there, my forehead hidden behind a bandage. I couldn't see my eyes, they were probably red. My whole body felt heavy, tired and deprived. I sighed and slowly shook mom.

She woke with a jolt and broke into a series of prayers at once which woke dad up. The words were tumbling out of her mouth so fast I couldn't catch any of them.

"How do you feel?" Dad had asked me with tears in his eyes. 

I jiggled my Adam's apple in a feeble attempt to clear my throat and said slowly, "He- he-av-y."

Mom rang for the doctor and began to openly cry, her voice lowered to a harsh whisper as she continued to pray with her hands up. I insisted on not knowing what the doctor diagnosed me with but I heard that I had fallen into a coma. For a month. A month after I was discharged, my parents knew exactly what had happened.

Within the two years in which I was out of tune with the world, mom and dad had been struggling to get justice for Miriam. There were people around who had witnessed the event and their testimonies had been taken down but still, nothing was done. I had always felt like mom was always around me, I never would have thought that such a thing was happening. The police had come to our house. I remember them asking me questions and I remember them going out of my room when they got no answers but I was out of it, I didn't think an investigation was supposed to be going on. Mom and dad had gone to the police station, called some friends, spent a lot of money, yet nothing was done. We weren't a poor family but we were average. Average enough to not have been ignored but we were ignored. Beginning with being sent from office to office of pot bellied men on uniform and getting false concerns, false reassurances, false acknowledgments and false support, to being asked to pay money for the investigation, to being asked to come back, to being thrown out of the police station like rabid dogs, mom and dad ended up having no justice for their eldest child.

Today marks my fifth year of being confined in a prison room. Yes, this story is being penned down from the other universe of prison. Aren't you curious? What happened to the pathetic 19 year old boy who lived his whole life crying and feeling sorry for himself? What happened to his weak and helpless self? How could he have possibly gotten into prison?

Two years after the incident a helpless, insecure, depressed, unfriendly, unsmiling, and broken child was produced. Once upon seven years, as warm as sunshine; three years after, as hot as a kettle of water at boiling point.

We lived in a neighborhood where all of us were blacks and all of us were Muslims. Coupled with the discrimination against us for being blacks, we were hated more for being Muslims. We were tagged terrorists. How unfortunate for us then that the police in that town were whites and non-Muslims. I assume with that fact you can imagine why Miriam got no justice. At least the police officers weren't shameless enough to immediately show their hatred for us.

Mom had insisted I accompany her to the same store I and Miriam had been headed for before she was shot. For eleven years I had avoided that road because I didn't want to feel like I was reliving the flashbacks. Dad, Mom, and I had headed towards the store on the evening of my nineteenth birthday. I walked in the middle with both dad and mum holding my hands and squeezing at intervals. For every step I took I remembered the one I took years back. We crossed the spot where I had knelt down with Miriam's head on my laps and I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. There was no sigh that the incident in my head once happened, I was beginning to calm down. Too soon because just before we stepped into the store there was a gunshot, and time froze.

Miriam teasing me about being a big boy now. Miriam shouting profanities and walking up to a man trying to rape one of our neighbors on the street. A struggle for the gun. A gunshot going off. Miriam falling back directly on me. Miriam slowly instructing me to pull my sweater and press it to her stomach. The gunman sighting me. Gunman aiming for me. Miriam sitting up. A gurgling sound. Blood pouring through the hole in Miriam's throat, more blood sliding out of her mouth. Footsteps approaching, footsteps receding. Miriam being lifted up from me. A call for an ambulance...

Looking down, nobody was at my feet. Nobody fell on me. I looked right. Mom. Mom. Mom, my mother. The bullet had gone right through her forehead. She was still standing, but she was swaying. Swaying as if she was dancing. I looked left. Dad. Dad had caught up with the gunman. There was another gunshot. Dad pulling back as if punched in the stomach. No. I heard a thud, mom had fallen down. I heard the syllables of my name being recited by two different voices. I went mad, and then I jumped on the gunman.

For years, I had lived with guilt. I became a shadow of my younger self, I couldn't even go to school. My parents tried homeschooling me but I just couldn't keep up. I struggled through nightmares, panic attacks, depressing thoughts, cruel voices. Mom and dad were the only ones left and now...

I wasn't thinking anymore. I released punch after blow after curse after shouts, my emotions kept pouring through. I knew when he stopped breathing. Somebody pulled me off of him but I wasn't done, my anger couldn't be tamed. If the police wouldn't give us justice, I would give us justice. By the time the effect of the sedative one of the doctors managed to inject me with wore out and I woke up, I was told I had killed ten men. There were twelve bodies. You know who the other two belonged to.

For endless years, long before I was born our neighborhood had been a plaything. They raped the females, killed whoever was in their way, stole from us, beat us up. I heard that the cases were always reported and yet no move was made to stop it. Apparently, we deserved it.

With rage coursing through me like lava, I erupted just like a volcano and I didn't recognize one of our neighbors who also tried to stop me. I hope he forgives me.

I'm being held in a special cell. I'm getting treatment and therapy for whatever it is they said is wrong with me, I still don't care to know. They say I have two years more but there's nothing for me on the outside, they should have killed me.