"Eric! YOU READY?"
His father yelled as if he were yelling for his life.
"Almost. Give me a minute."
Eric scoured his shelf of new books, the ones he had asked his father to buy for him.
"Found The Song of the Cell. Found the A Song of Ice and Fire series… ah, shit, where's that book about the civil war?"
He searched the bookshelf faster to avoid hearing his father yell again. Finally, he found the inspirational book he had heard so much about from his history teacher.
"Finally found it." He stared at the book with curiosity.
"A Long Walk to Water." The words escaped his mouth as if he had been possessed for just a single second.
"Eric, what's taking you so long?"
His father's yell sent an unexpected, frightened shiver down his spine.
"I'm coming!"
"Hurry up!"
Eric stuffed the books into his book bag along with his laptop, notebook, pens, and pencils, then rushed down the stairs to the garage with his luggage and book bag. His father stood next to the car, drinking a can of Coke.
"What took you so long? If we get there by nighttime, your granny will give me a headache's worth of yelling. You know how she is."
Hearing that, Eric chuckled softly.
"Sorry, sorry. I was searching for those new books you got me."
His father let out a sigh.
"When did you even get into reading?"
"Aaah, about five months ago."
"Is Grandma going to have a feast?"
His father took a moment to finish the Coke before responding.
"Of course. She hasn't seen us in about… four years now. So yeah, the old lady is definitely cooking up a storm."
Eric's father laughed briefly, and his son answered with a light smile.
"Alright, let's go see the old woman," his father said, tossing the Coke can into the trash bin from about twenty feet away with insane accuracy.
Every time he saw his father pull off an impressive feat like that, Eric thought his father could have been a famous basketball player rather than a famous model, if he had pursued it when he was younger.
"Mr. Deng, could you get the gate open?" his father said, addressing his gatekeeper in a very kind, respectful tone, the kind a person uses with their grandparents.
"Sure, sir," Mr. Deng answered.
Old Mr. Deng hurried to the gate with a speed unsuited to his age. Eric and his father told him repeatedly to be careful, but it seemed that old age came with great stubbornness.
Eric and his father got into the BMW and drove off. Before leaving the compound, Eric turned back and waved at the saddened maids. They waved back with smiles that trembled. The staff were like family to him. They had come along on his trips to Nigeria and Egypt, and even to the U.S. to visit his mom. Every time he got in trouble (which rarely happened) or was banned from drinking soda, the maids and Mr. Deng always came to his rescue and defended him. The reason they weren't coming this time was that they were from the Dinka tribe. Eric didn't know why, but his grandmother didn't like them at all. He did know that the protagonist of the book he wanted to read so badly was Dinka too. He also knew the protagonist was the one who had brought water to South Sudan, so he found it hard to see why his grandmother disliked the Dinka. But putting that aside, they would miss each other dearly over the next couple of weeks, even if it was only a couple of weeks.
Suddenly he wondered about something: his father had never really told him how long the trip would take.
"Hey, Paps, how long until we reach South Sudan?"
"Well, uh, from here to there, it should take us about nine hours."
"Nine hours?" Eric said, shocked beyond belief.
"Now you see why I told you to hurry up."
"But I thought it would take about four hours."
"You wish," his father said, eyebrows high, followed by a smirk made of nothing but amusement at the idea of reaching South Sudan in just four hours. That seemed nearly miraculous to him.
Eric let out a sigh to mentally prepare himself for a headache that could only be cured by sleeping.
Hearing his sigh, his father laughed.
"I'ma just kill time by reading."
Eric pulled out the book he had been dying to read, surprisingly even more than A Song of Ice and Fire.
"What book are you going to read this time?" his father said sarcastically.
"A Long Walk to Water."
"Oh, that book. I heard your aunt wouldn't stop talking about it, so when you asked me to buy it for you, I thought it must be good. I listened to the audiobook."
"How was it?" Eric asked.
"Well, it's life-changing. It might even change a person's perspective on the world. I don't wanna go into too much detail because I don't want to spoil it for you."
"Oh, alright," Eric said enthusiastically.
He didn't know what to expect, but he knew there was something special about that book. Since everyone was talking about it and giving it positive reviews, he thought, how could it not be good? Under his skin he could feel the excitement, the hunger, tormenting his body and mind to find out what experience lay inside that book.
As he was about to open the cover, his dad started playing "Not Like Us."
"Okay, Paps, the song is funny, but it isn't even that good."
"You're just hating."
His father turned it up even louder, with a smirk as wide as his taste in music.
Eric mumbled to himself that the song was annoying, then put the book back into his bag.
A few hours later
His dad was now listening to one of Ye's albums. Between the music and being trapped in the car for hours, Eric began to feel a pulsing headache. He swore his brain was beating like a heart. The pain was excruciating, and it forced his body into its own healing process, which was improving and proving more effective with each headache he had to endure.
He felt his eyelids growing heavier with each passing second. Turning to the window, he saw two copies of each car passing by. Eric wondered, is this what people who take drugs and smoke weed feel like? He didn't fight it. He gave in and allowed his eyelids to slowly collapse. His head knocked against the car window with a thud, but he didn't feel anything. Eric was knocked out, fast asleep. His father glanced at him, smiling, eyes lit with love.
* * *
The screams, the crying, the yelling for aid, all of it mixed and rang in Eric's ears. It was all he could hear: the music of death. The entire city was out, and the only source of light was the fire that ravaged it. All around him, men, women, and children were burning alive. Women cried in front of their husbands' bodies, which had been crushed under the rubble. Men screamed as limbs were amputated, or perhaps blown off by grenades and bombs. Children screamed and cried as they dug through the rubble where their parents' squashed bodies were buried. Their screams gave off the scent of their emotions, devastating and saddening. Their screams were tragic. They traveled from his ears to his heart, squeezing it, their suffering grabbing his ankles, arms, and shoulders. The saddening, terrifying voice of suffering screamed at him: "Please save me, sir. Please help me, sir. Please, someone help me get the rubble off my parents. I know they're alive. They promised."
The grip on his heart was tight. His heart pumped rapidly, his breathing was unstable, and his mind was cracking, but just as always, he put himself together and breathed in and out, trying with all his might not to reach for his waist and put a gun to his head.
He was calm now, and he walked forward with the weight of hundreds of thousands of souls, if not millions. With each step he felt like falling down and going into a deep slumber for all of eternity, but he wouldn't allow himself to give in to his mind and body's plea to just stop. He refused. Not now, not until he had made a world she could be happy in.
As he walked down the road, he saw women and children in ripped clothes, exposing their bodies, but they didn't seem to notice, and if they did, they didn't care. How could they? They had lost everything: their belongings, the food they had been saving, and the new families they had been cultivating since the war started. It was all gone. Their hair was a mess, some of it burned and covered in dirt. Their eyes were dull, as if they were using different lenses to see the world. They had awakened it. They had his eyes. They had the eyes of the abyss of human nature. Their eyes leaked tears that glided continuously down their faces like a cascade. Eric noticed that their faces wore a stark expression, like make-up. He knew the aftermath had forcibly held them down and put it on them, just as many aftermaths had done to him.
He kept walking, then stopped abruptly. There was a girl who looked to be in her mid-teens. She was completely naked, her body covered in cuts and bruises. Her wounds were caked in dirt but still oozed sparkling blood. Eric couldn't have described what he was seeing if somebody had asked him to. There was just something about her that seemed divine. Her blood was like water, transparent but not at the same time. It was like gold, beautiful and shiny, and therefore seductive. Most initiates and priestesses were beautiful, but none were nearly as divine as her, he thought. But he quickly realized that the girl was neither. Every priestess had a brand somewhere: on her arm, her legs, her forehead, her chest, or her back. She had none. Then who was she? What faction was she a part of? She couldn't just be a refugee. With her beauty, high-ranking generals would take her as an Aureate Celestial consort, or even as a wife, he thought.
As she got closer, he could fully make out her appearance. Her curly blond hair perfectly framed her face, and it was blond enough that people could be deceived into thinking it was white. Her skin was as white as snow. She was albino. And her face was… horrible, disgusting, tragic, and… terrifying. It was lit with the brightest, most beautiful of smiles, a smile Eric had not seen in a very long time. People's smiles were always tainted by the things they had seen and done. But hers looked as real as a smile could get. She looked happy… or was she insane? Turned insane, just as many people had when they lost their reason for living. She was giggling now, and that giggle turned into a smile, that smile turned into laughter, and that laughter turned into a sickening laughter, a laughter that made him reminisce about all the times he had lost himself, about all the times he had to make difficult decisions. No, that wasn't the right way to say it. About all the decisions he was forced to make, the ones that haunted him every night he rested. It was a laugh that was familiar to him, a laugh that had haunted him every night he laid next to her.
She began pulling her hair, crying, laughing like a madwoman. She went over to a half-collapsed building and began banging her head against the wall, again and again, until a stream of blood ran down her face. Eric, like the selfish young monster he was, rushed to her, tackling her to the ground and hugging her tightly, the way he would have hugged her if she were here. Her gut-wrenching laughter was replaced by weeping, the weeping of a pathetic, weak little girl in need of a hero. But did she ever think her hero would be a monster? So why did the murderer Eric save a girl from the edge of insanity, just by giving her a mere hug, just by a brief, minor action of sympathy and intimacy? He saved her because… he was a terrible person.