(a short story)

“Mum, Dad, meet Junior,” I said. Their eyes searched mine for answers. “He’s my son.”

I did not tell my family that I had been seeing someone. It was not something we spoke about. I would be lying if I said it was a simple mistake. Dating someone for three months without the knowledge of your family could be normal, you see. But having your lady go through nine months of pregnancy and deliver a beautiful baby boy, going on to call him Junior because he had your sunken eyes, all the while, keeping your family in the dark, that was no mere mistake. It was no omission nor negligence. It had to take a lot of planning, strategy, and a sh*tload of lies. A deliberate attempt to switch off the sun.

Junior was one year old now. Lisa had to defer her admission into college to take care of him for a while. Her family was disappointed when she got pregnant, but she was determined to fight to save what was left of her image and the trust they had for her. That began with getting her degree. She cried her eyes out that morning as she handed Junior to me. Her bags were packed but she would not leave. I figured, from the way she packed and the guilt that drowned her whenever she attempted to turn her back on us, that she had no intentions of coming back.

“Hey! You ace every test and come out tops, just like you’ve always planned to,” I said, before finally leaving and saving her from having to walk away from her son, literally.

My parents hardly said anything that had to be said. Our conversations were ceremonious; just random things parents would say to their kids in the morning. “How was your night?” “Will you be home for dinner?” They passed this on to my sister and me. We knew very little about each other, except for basic stuff like birthdays. For instance, Ada, my sister, still thought my favorite movie was Home Alone. That was 10 freakin’ years ago, ma’am! Who watches Home Alone at 17?
When she returned later that day and I introduced Junior to her, she stared at me for a minute, just like mum and dad had, touched the boy’s cheeks in an attempt to get him to smile, and went on into her room.
……..

“It’s the special service for infants at the temple today. Can I take Boy there?” I said to Mrs. Dorothy, Rick’s mother.

Rick was my best friend. He was the only one I spoke to about what was going on in my life. When Lisa and I shared our first kiss, Rick was the first to know. And our trust went both ways. When his immediate elder brother, Alexander, broke the news that he was expecting a child, all the ruffles and reactions that followed, I was also kept in the loop. The child was soon brought to the family house. I had met him a few times before eventually moving in to live with them. He was a merry child, and no one understood why his father insisted on naming him Job. It felt strange in our mouths. We chose to call him Boy instead, and this continued for so long that it sounded quite unusual to refer to him as anything else.

I told my parents I was moving out because I needed to be closer to the supermarket where I had just been employed. It was sort of what we did– choosing obvious lies over hard truths. The tension at home had grown so thick since that very morning three months ago. Mother had taken Junior from me and had gone on to care for him ever since. It soon became obvious that, not only did they decide the child would be their responsibility, but they also kept him away from me as much as possible. I would not be the son who refused to go to college but preferred to sit around, nursing his kid in his own father’s house. So I moved out because it felt like torment, being that close to my kid and still not being able to hold him when that was clearly what I wanted to do all day, every day.

“Of course, you can,” Mrs. Dorothy said with her graceful smile. “Bring him back in time for lunch.”

Rick’s family was as welcoming as ever. Not once did they make me feel like I was in their hair, like I wasn’t one of them. I felt more at home with them than I ever did with my family. And Boy was everything I needed to get along. Whenever I wasn’t at work, I was home, feeding him, playing with him, putting him to sleep. He made me feel alive.

……..

“I know what this is! I know that this is!” I screamed as I ran through the chamber in search of my boy.

The temple was an open field, thick with brown sand, with an old, tall building standing in the center of the field. A place was prepared for the kids. They had toys to play with and people to watch them while the service was on. The guardians sat on the chairs lined on one side.

The speakers hanging out of the old building were blasting with a song or procession, as it always was during special services. There was no way we could have expected things to go so wrong, so fast.

A minibus that had “Wohrld Temple” inscribed on it was heard roaring in a distance. We assumed someone wanted to drive off, but it continued and got so loud that it was impossible to ignore. Then, it sprang off. It was headed for the old building. The engine roared louder and louder. We all moved to the edge of our seats. We hoped it would catch its brakes, that it would hit a swerve, or possibly push out wings and fly. It was a rude awakening when the bus plunged head-on into the walls of the building. Chaos erupted. We knew what was happening.

There was some struggle inside the building. It felt like people were fighting. We could see a bunch of men from the window of the topmost floor, pulling on each other’s clothes. It only lasted about a minute, and there was calm.

The first man climbed out the window. He wore a green t-shirt and dark blue trousers. People screamed for him to stop. It seemed like he was neither listening nor thinking, the way he dropped down at once, landing on the concrete floor in what sounded like a repressed thud. It was as though the air around the temple would not let us hear the sound of two hundred and six bones cracking at once. Our voices rose into a deafening uproar. People were crying, screaming, praying, losing their minds. The second man climbed and dropped out the window immediately, in the same manner that made it look like they were afraid to stop for a second, because that would give them time to process what it meant that they were just one step away from death. The third man’s head was making its way out when I suddenly snapped out and ran off.

I found him, seated there, staring into the crowd, and I wondered how much he had seen.

“My boy,” I mumbled as I picked him up and buried his face in my shoulder. I hurried towards the gates. I did not stop nor look back till we were back home.

Mrs. Dorothy had been blowing up my phone. They heard what had happened. I could not bring myself to speak to her. They returned to find us in the sitting room, wearing new faces, looking distraught. I had shaved off all of the boy’s hair.

“He had blood all over him, stuck in his hair,” I said, without raising my face to meet their stare. “I don’t think he’s ever going to be the same again.”
…………

“I told father there was no need to call the electronicist while we have you here.” It was Rick’s eldest brother. He was smiling at me.

It had been over a decade, and a lot had happened in that time. In truth, things had not been the same since the infamous religious self-purge of the century. Many families never recovered from it, and it was a privilege that we could still manage to force smiles, despite all the pain, hurt, lies, and betrayal that followed.

“This isn’t quite like monitoring surveillance at the supermarket, but we’ll try.” I was smiling back.
Rick was there. Alexander, Boy’s father, had also come home for Thanksgiving. We all joined hands to lift the machine out of the box and set it up, talking and laughing all the while. It was some brothers’ bonding moment for us. After we set up, I settled in to read the values.

The light poured directly into my eyes, and it was like a thousand suns in front of me. It did not make sense. I had personally regulated the lighting. Rick watched me do it. He must have messed with it when I left to get a pen and paper. I looked to find that Rick still had his hands on the regulator. He wasn’t turning it down. It took me a second, but I eventually figured out what was happening.

It went off and came on again, just as strong. No one said a word. Blinding as the light was, I could not take my eyes off, because then I would have to face Rick, my best friend, his eldest brother, who was as much a brother to me, and Alexander, Boy’s father.

It went off and came on again, just as strong. No one said a word, still. I was certain that my eyes were damaged at this point, but I still stared blindly into the light. Because, how would I look them in the eyes and affirm that their suspicions were true; that the boy in the other room, the boy with sunken eyes, the boy I brought back from the temple years ago, was not Job. It was Junior. My Junior.

By Di MadWriter

If you woke up one morning to find that you had a dream, the very story you just read, what would be your reaction to it? How would you interpret this dream? Leave a comment here.