Ira Ishmael {D4}

There are no heroes in this world. There are people, there are villains, and there are villains who disguise themselves as heroes. Storybooks emphasize the tales of these heroes. They’re benevolent and brave, selfless and kind, and I was taught to be all of those things. Truth is, there is no one person who can be relied upon. Nobody cannot save everyone, and we cannot protect the ones we love without paying a price. History says death surrounds the ones who fight, and history has never failed to repeat itself.

If a hero were to exist, he would be nothing but a tragedy.

Mama called me her little hero, back when I was innocent enough to believe any word spoken to me. She would play the prince/princess in distress every time I was outside playing in my imaginary world, using our golden retriever Mars as my loyal steed. My sword was a stick and our castle the dog house. She fed my growing mind with confidence. Ma was much more stringent about what she wanted to see in me. She taught me manners and empathy, she taught me that the world was not a kind place, yet I had to treat it like gold. Life is precious, she said. Don’t waste it.

I’m selfless and benevolent because of them. I’m brave and kind because I don’t want it any other way. But when I turned eight, Ma started to worry. He’s growing up so fast, she said. Soon he will be eligible for the Reaping.

Their biggest argument was about whether or not I should start career training. Ma wanted me to protect myself, but Mama didn’t want me exposed to the politics. I remember her eyes, how sad they were when she stared down at me while Ma had her fists clenched on the table, so insistent on safeguarding my physical life. Mama was always about the abstract things, but I couldn’t abstain from choosing a side. I looked Mama in the eyes and told her that I would never let anyone change me. I would be her little hero forever and ever.

They split up when I was twelve.

Ma and I stayed in our house, and Mama moved away. I wanted her to take Mars for company, but she said I should keep him. He was my faithful steed, after all.

I visited her every other weekend. She asked me about school and training, about how Ma and Mars were. The first time I asked why they split up, Mama said “We just aren’t as compatible as I thought we were.” I cried about it. They both stroked my hair and apologized over and over, but it only made me wonder why they were so incompatible. I always thought they were perfect.

A year passed, and they never once saw each other. Ma was stubborn and Mama was patient. Whenever I begged them to meet Ma said “I’m just not ready yet,” and Mama said “Your mother will visit me when she’s ready.” It was an endless circle, and I was getting dizzy. Then Mama announced that she would be moving away again because she was struggling with her job and couldn’t pay for rent. She would find a cheaper place and tell me where she moved, she said.

I should’ve made her promise, because when I returned she wasn’t there.

When I tried to track her down, I found nothing.

I’m nothing if not persistent. I kept searching and searching, all while keeping it a secret from Ma because I didn’t want her to worry. I wanted her to heal.

Six months later, I tracked her down. I started asking the right people, the ones hidden in shadows with knowledge of the lost. No-names, they called them. People who belonged nowhere because they had nothing. I found her in a campsite, nestled in the corner of an alleyway. There was a circle of tents, and clothes lines strewn across the space like spider webs. Moonlight and miniature campfires fed light to the evening. I heard clinking pots and shuffling feet and whispering voices, but what overwhelmed me most was the odor. It smelled like an open dumpster yet there were none in sight. Only people and voices, only life.

Hanging by a thread.

I asked a kindly-looking bearded man where a woman named Cecily lived. He pointed to one of the tents, silent yet rigid in his gaze, like he was suspicious of my intentions. Inside I found a creature that was not my mother. It was her empty shell, a face stretched across a skeleton, skin greyed and thin and riddled with purple stains. I lost myself to her eyes because they weren’t sad like I remembered them – they were vacant. Voids trapped within dark irises, no starlight left inside. My knees kissed cement and I sobbed into her bones. Her skin was ice cold and brittle, nothing like it was supposed to be.

No wolf can howl as loud as I did.

My voice stumbled out of the tent shouting ”Why?? Why did nobody help her?!” and a gruff man answered my cries. ”She dead?” he grumbled, ”It’s about time. She was always moanin’ and cryin’”

My inhibitions melted into a puddle at my feet. I’ve never once seen shadows turn red until I pivoted and looked at that man. It was fireworks. Mama said to always be benevolent, to always love and care.

Mama was dead.

I grabbed the handle of the boiling pot at his feet, heated by a fire no bigger than his heart. I splashed every drop of it over his face and bashed his head in with the metal, over and over. Over and over. Over and over and over and over until after he stopped screaming, until everyone was out of their tents crouching with watchful, hesitant eyes. I kicked his tent into a useless heap. I ripped down his clothes line. I hurled all of his belongings at walls, listening to the huffs of my lungs. I stormed away with the color red inked behind my eyes.

The next day I returned to the scene of my crime, but their bodies were missing. Gone, as if I had lived a nightmare, but I knew better than to think of fantasies any longer. I asked one of the residents and he told me the Peacekeepers swept them up. Evidently, they had no interest in tracking down a murderer.

I couldn’t bear to tell Ma. I can sense a broken heart and hers never mended itself. I couldn’t shatter it, I couldn’t do that to her. So I lied. I tell her that I visit Mama every other weekend, but instead I use the money from my part-time job cleaning boats to feed and clothe the homeless. Just like my mama, they need help before it’s too late. I was too late to save her but I won’t be too late to save them. I’m not a hero, but maybe I can protect them just for a little while.

Otherwise, I feel empty. Knowing what happened to mama, I feel concave. Everything has been scooped out and turned upside down. Mama always said to repress my anger so I gradually vent out my frustrations in training, destroying dummies and trying to make friends and kissing people in closets when they’ll actually let me. At home, I have to pretend nothing is wrong. I have to pretend I’m not a liar and a murderer.

I pretend every day.

It doesn’t end.

I have more of a storm inside of me than I ever thought. I’m a match struck against stone, prepared to start a fire. Not long ago I sat a block away from the docks with a beverage in my hand, loitering when I should’ve been cleaning the last boat. It was too late to be out but I’ve never been afraid of shadows, not when there are a million stars above my head to light the way. That night it wasn’t cloudy, so I could see everything. Even the couple that came barreling into the wall, the girl being snatched by the collar of her shirt. “You fucking owe me!” Was all I heard, followed by the crack of her skull against the wall when the boy shoved her forward.

Shadows don’t scare me because they can change colors. Red is the color of injustice, and it paints a pathway to the unstoppable side of me that I’m unsure whether to fear or respect.

I shoved a knife into his neck, like the “hero” in the storybooks would slay his enemy. When I looked at the distressed princess, she was terrified. ”Run,” I told her.

She ran, and I prayed to the stars that she would forget.

Because I won’t.