AncilDeep into the heart of the market, bodies littered the ground, sprawled out throughout. Hundreds, thousands of bodies as far as our eyes could see in front of us. Some of their faces painted a picture of their last expressions before death. They had drooping open mouths and their lifeless eyes were wide open.
“What the hell!” My father said, his voice full of shock, fear, and many other emotions of the sort sprinkled in.
The blood was fresh, still wet, and covered the sunburned streets like carpets on a house floor. Flies swarmed around the corpses, their loud buzzing noises deafening. There was only death in the town of Arima, not a single sign of life to be found among the deceased. I could barely breathe with the pungent stench of rot engulfing the air. I shuffled antsily in my seat, twisting and turning to survey as much of the scene as possible. My body didn’t know how to react. I had never been presented with something this morbid before in all of my nineteen years. Do I cry? Do I scream? Do I try to help? I looked to my father for more clarity. He stared directly ahead of us, his only reaction to the sight being his red and watery eyes. Breaking down wasn’t the way my father did things. He was a manly man, a soldier who remained strong and steadfast. In anything he does, he would never let you see him sweat, especially in front of his son. But he was very close to sweating now. He seemed to be on the cusp of a breakdown, only separated by thin ice. These weren’t just dead people. They were people that we knew, people we grew up with, who we saw every Sunday, and people that we interacted with regularly. These were our friends, our family. Tanty Mavis, the fruit vendor, Uncle Leroy the Soup Man, the vagrant Mr. Danraj. They were all there, on the city floor.
“Maybe we should go home,” I suggested, my voice shaken
“Hold on,” my father said while in deep thought. He remained silent but I could hear his breaths becoming louder and deeper as he looked on, trying to come to terms with the carnage. “What kind of monster would do something like this?”
My dad was right. Whoever, or whatever did this, had to be a monster.
“Where were those worthless police officers when this happened? They aren’t good for nothing.” My father continued, his voice got louder and more full of rage the more he spoke. “A bunch of lazy jackasses!”
My father pounded the face of his palms on the steering wheel with so much force that it shook the entire van. He then stopped driving.
“Dad, let’s just turn around and go home,” I suggested again.
“Wait, boy!” My father shouted. He then opened the door of the van and stepped outside. As he opened the door, the heightened scent stormed in like a set of pedestrians rushing into a maxi. My father stepped in between and over the bodies to a particular point where his friend Justin lay lifeless. He stood over Justin for a bit, then crouched closer. I couldn’t tell you what was going through my father’s mind but I was certain that he had never seen such a thing like this in all his years living in the Twin Republic, and neither had I. Justin was my father’s longest and most loyal friend from back in his school days. We saw him and chatted with him and his family every Sunday Market. Watching Justin’s cold stone face, my father knew the Sunday conversations with him were never going to happen again. My father’s back was turned to me and I couldn’t see his face, but I could sense his distress just by the way he remained there, surveying Justin as well as the other bodies around.
I was beginning to become anxious by the length of time he remained there and I was tempted to yell out to him to come back. I would have taken the option of fleeing the carnage and going somewhere safe. But my father took the option of bravery. He was the bravest man I know and a man who would never back down from a fight regardless if the opponent outgunned him or outsized him. Running away from this wasn’t in his blood. He was a warrior. His friends and family were slaughtered and he was going to do anything to figure out what happened and bring justice to them, or die trying. I couldn’t help but feel for him. He slowly turned to me, finally revealing his face. Tears gushed out his eyes, his face glistening wet.
It was the first time that I ever saw my father cry.
My father took a deep breath and started towards the car. Then, a sudden loud explosion riveted through the air. I didn’t know where it came from or what caused it, but I did know that a few seconds later, my father was on the ground. Motionless. Lifeless. Dead. I hadn’t said much before, but I belted out a loud cry that seemed to bubble up like a volcano and finally erupt. My first instinct was to run outside the van and try to help my father, but whoever killed him was probably still out there and waiting. My second instinct, which I followed, was to quickly shut the door and crouch down in the van to stay out of sight. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. I curled myself up on the floor with my arms tied around my knees. Every inch of my body trembled and my lungs seemed to be unable to get enough oxygen from the air I was gasping for. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to react. I chose the cowardly option. I chose to retreat. Maybe there was something I could do to help my father and everyone else on the ground. But, I chose to do nothing. To freeze up. I lay huddled on the car floor as my mind raced through every second of what transpired on this bloody Arima morning.
