Free Will

When he was younger, my wings carried me to wherever the wind pointed. He was too young to understand me then: he struggled with the concept of choices.

I was always perched high above the floor, dumb and unknowing as he was. There was a day when I watched children play in the living room. The clutter of plates and drifting scents excited me. I shouted, but no one bothers me. I’m merely another sound they would hear when the house is unbearably quiet or when they’re trying to focus.

The boy of the house turns around. He looks beyond me, to where a girl peeks from the neighbouring fence. His mouth parted like the morning curtain and he opened the patio doors to let her in. She was welcomed by laughter, and sweetness donned my tongue.

Amusement overwhelms my usually sedate thoughts; my head tilts wistfully on my wrist.

In my mind, I kept watching them, but they’re blurring. The orange lights turn ashen, then wintry, blueing the seams of my vision. I evoke the memory of the time a wall of lightning marked my newfound self-awareness. My beak had softened to full lips and my wings shrunk into the cave of my back, melted into skin, just as the feathers on my arms.

I’m still in the living room, now empty and unlit. Behind the patio doors, the pale dawn and the petrichor makes me shiver. I clutch a dusk hood over my head.

Voices still echo in my ears as I walk out onto the patio. For a moment, I see the ghost of a thriving garden filled with hanging ornaments, but the past fades like their voices, leaving only charred, sickly plants. On my right, the neighbour’s garden is as vivacious as it had been- all of them are. All except this one. I sit cross-legged on the moist patio, a knife lazily in hand. Dressed in mudded jeans in a water-less apartment, the TV sparks behind me, its guts pleading for my forgiveness.

I hear distant laughter again. Then years of news reports replay in my mind like a glitch. Their laughter glitches with it, distorting into a sorrowful wail.

He didn’t do it. I hear myself say.

Then I hear his voice, the sweet, yet frightened voice that pled not guilty. And indeed he didn’t slay them. It was his left hand, the cursed blade the lusts for blood. No one listens to him except me. Only he knows what I am, that the same curse that gave life to his left hand is the same that gave me a body.

I shut my ears when I hear his screams again. He was so terrified to hear “death” when they cuffed him away. My hands are shaking. No matter how much I tried to cover for him, I couldn’t hide that much blood.

But he didn’t do it.

Not even prison can contain the curse; he escapes somehow, never visiting home- only scours the streets to let the sword drink. In my hand, the blood around the knife turns cold and gel-like. Disgusted, I flick it into the house, smearing the floor. Everything within me is awry and my stomach tightens to the verge of gagging.

He didn’t do it.

Dark, half-opened eyes look at my hands. I pound the patio with vehement acrimony, bruising my knuckles. No one can console him in the penitentiary. I shut my eyes, teaching myself to breathe.

The ache subsides a little when I remind myself that nothing can contain the curse. It’s as if any massive blow to the authorities will soon be wiped from everyone’s memories. Except ours. His sentence will pass somehow, and he will return home. He would vanish again, then I would sometimes find and dispose of the bodies, but I don’t catch them all. People will see them on the streets and the city will vibrate from the serial murders, and guilt-ridden, I’ll watch you get taken away again. Fatigue makes my world spin.

He didn’t do it.

I return to the townhouse under metallic blue skies, jostling a plastic bag with my knees. As I walk to the shadowed door, I catch neighbours whispering.

Poor girl, living with him.

She’s taking care of his apartment while he’s gone.

Did he force her?

I slam the door with my back. Their questions flare across my mind as I set to work, dressing in black and sneaking out through the back. In my anger, I find myself next to the penitentiary after a few strides. I stand before a barred fence with a cap pulled halfway over my eyes. I glance at my phone. I wait until the cameras wink, before waltzing unnerved through the fence and through the halls. A door opens for me.

My eyes shatter when I see him by his bed, triple strapped to a wheelchair. He stares at the ground, or maybe his purposely broken legs.

I don’t cry. I saw him only a few days ago and I certainly didn’t need to visit. He would’ve come out eventually. But as I approach, I remember that this has been the longest time he’s been detained. I hesitate. I wonder if he has fallen too far to be consoled. Gingerly, I embrace his side and his arms jolt around me. He was strapped to the wheelchair, but somehow his arms now desperately knot over my back. Was strapped- it’s how he goes around.

He finally realizes I’m here, so he wails, screaming his agony in my ear and tightening around me. I am the only one who knows his mind; the one who always cleans the clutter so he can make earnest choices. I squeeze until I can hear his brittle bones crack, until I can feel his heaving breaths like there’s a cavern inside him. My lip twitches and for the first time, I cry too.

We cry over the invisible blood beneath us, bending beneath the weight of the balance scale that everyone carries. Sometimes I’m rejected and sometimes I’m embraced; follow the wind or make your own wind. It’s his choice.

Aside from that, in the little corners of my purpose, I’m part of him. I would hate to see him descend in remorse forever. I push away impulsively. With a bitter grunt, I flash out a knife from my pocket, forcing him to decide. I pierce his cursed hand, which boils with anger against my intentions. The anger reaches him, and he swings the sword that is his hand. But he cares too much and he would never let the world hurt me, I thought. He swivels the wheelchair, knocking me off my legs and onto his lap. His hand crushes my heart, and like the countless times the world has slaughtered his free will, he wails in horror.

*

Sitting again on a cold, wooden fence, I watch as darkness melts over the ghostly townhouse. I remember the time you didn’t need to make difficult choices. I simply opened my wings and your life fell in place. Sometimes you smiled and other times you cried, but nothing was remotely scarring. Decisions weren’t so important then.

I swing my legs over the fence, itching to jump off and fly again. A clotted knife dangles wistfully on my hand. I know it hurts, but it’s for your own good; to remind you that I’m here. It’s easy to blame ‘nature’ for the actions you’ve clearly chosen, but you can’t deny that every decision is made with me.

Beneath the downpour, distant voices, and the echoing police sirens, I pull a hood over my head. I watch the door expectantly, waiting for him to acknowledge me, his free will.