By Radia Jamee
It was as if my anger would devour me alive if I didn’t let it out. So desperately I wanted to be freed, that I was willing to lose myself. My voice broke through the suffocating silence—a scream that didn’t come from my throat but from deep within my soul, a scream so raw it tore me into pieces—and that’s when the nightmare broke. I woke up with my heart thrashing, and my ears burning.
These nightmares would shake me to the core, as if I had slipped into another dimension. I would feel even more out of place than my usual, and somewhat incoherent. The cry wasn’t only to be free from that closet, but from my anger. An anger I didn’t recognize when I was awake, one I refused to believe belonged to me at all. For the longest time I wandered through these thoughts, trying to win my own battles—dissociated, detached—falling deeper and deeper into this rabbit hole of questioning my own identity. But it all changed when Nick came to my school, or perhaps, my life. I’d see Nick in his pastel blue shirt, always something striking about the way he turned to me and smiled from across the room. In the vast labyrinth of pain, fear, and uncertainty, I found something in these fleeting moments, something to look forward to, a reason to smile. Nonetheless, it was way more than just that. It was the way he made me feel like I could belong. That even when things felt hopeless, there could still be something good. Even on the worst of days, catching him smile when his eyes met mine would bring me right back to the present moment, where suddenly nothing else mattered.
Nick’s family is from Japan, and the way he holds onto his culture and values always inspired me. He’s polite, even with people he doesn’t necessarily get along with. He didn’t worry if others liked him or not. He didn’t care what they thought when he acknowledged me. Me, who everyone else treated like a plague. Even though I lacked any qualities that would make me “acceptable” to those around him, I had this feeling that he liked me—or at the very least, saw me as a real person.
Sometimes I find myself wondering: what if? What if I had spoken to him more? What if the future could hold something different for us? But I missed that train. Even now, when I’m not lost in what-ifs, one thing lingers—the wish that I had told him what he had done for me. What it meant to be valued like a person in a place that saw me as a vermin. I wish I told him he mattered to me for simply being human when no one else was, affection playing only the smallest part in that truth. Because I would always have loved him as a person, even without the butterflies.
I must’ve fallen asleep. My head’s heavy, and I can’t tell where I am. My stomach’s twisting like I haven’t eaten in days, and it feels like I will die if I don’t find food fast. I am walking directly to the fridge, but I feel so dizzy. Something’s off. I feel sad, too, although I have no recollection of the reason. I have the fridge open, and I see a… what is that? A colander. It’s dripping blood—red, dark. But I don’t find that odd at all. Is that…meat? Looks like freshly cut beef. I am not wasting another minute. I take the colander out. I take a chunk of meat, raw, soaking in fresh blood. Could it still be warm from the animal? Because my hand certainly feels warm. I take a big bite.
I jerk awake in panic, with no voice leaving my mouth. I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. Oh my god! My hand still feels warm and the taste… I still feel the strong metallic taste in my mouth. It is so sharp, feels sticky and wet. I keep wiping my mouth violently in panic and disgust, but there’s nothing—because it wasn’t real. But it felt very real, it still does. I look around me.
What the fuck! Where am I?!
I’m sprawled on a concrete floor, in what looks like a long and narrow corridor stretching infinitely. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a darkness clinging to everything, like an all-consuming shadow making living and dead alike. In fact, I can’t see a source of light. Only a thin, sickly gleam, just enough to outline the passage. That’s when the banging starts. Loud. Violent. It feels too close, like it’s not coming from the walls around me, but from inside my skull. It is like one of my nightmares, but real.
I remember now. Ayla. Kai.
They must have slipped something into my food or my drink, like they did back in ninth grade to get me in trouble.
No, no, they didn’t. They’re not the same reckless kids anymore. Ayla… she was helping me. Salel. All of them. Nick!
I think I ran away from them. I need to find them.
The banging is getting louder, and I think it’s getting closer. I see shadows. They’re coming towards me. I think I am about to pass out!
I never liked uncle Jaim. Not because he was rich and arrogant, but because of how he claimed ownership of things that weren’t his. For instance, my life. I vaguely remember the death of my parents, my father, leaving behind nothing but a massive debt for his mother to pay off. What could she have done? She relied on the one person who could afford to help her. He didn’t hand us money or pay our debts, which he could have, but my grandma’s dignity was too high for that. He helped her sell things. Got me into the fancy school. And if grandma ever got stuck in a situation with no money, he’d let her borrow some. In return, he bought our voice.
Dida, that’s what I called my grandma, would tell me to never express how displeased I was with his behavior. After all, however disrespect he treated her with, however aggressive and violent he got, he was helping us. Dida looked on the brighter side of things. She had hope, because she had a child to raise. As much as I despised this man, I knew I couldn’t provide her with whatever it is we needed from him. So I listened, and at some point it became an autopilot response—like I didn’t have a voice. He would come by sometimes, to our teeny house with rough concrete floor and uneven paint on the walls, when he needed to take his money back or when he wanted to lecture us on life. But he never ate anything at our house. He didn’t utter the words, but I could hear it. I could hear it through the voices of my classmates, I could hear it through the disgust in his eyes, I could see it in the little things, like how he would never take his shoes off before stepping into our bedroom, or how he would wash his hands five times during the 10 minutes of his visit time.
That night was one of many when he was out of control. I never knew what started these things. I don’t remember why he would get so uncontrollably mad, if there were any reasons at all. But it got physical, and it wasn’t the first time. Nevertheless, it was the first time that I disobeyed Dida and I chose to have a voice. I was tiny. My forearms looked like they’d snap if I leaned on them. My big forehead somehow made me look even smaller. No surprise, I wasn’t quite intimidating. He grabbed me by my neck and lifted me like I weighed nothing, pushed me against the wall, and let go so I’d fall. He said, “So I see, you want attention.”
I didn’t sleep that night. Maybe only a few minutes at a time when my tiny body couldn’t hold it anymore. What shocks me is that getting shoved didn’t feel much worse than seeing Dida getting hurt. Strangely, the worst part of it was laying in bed knowing that this wasn’t going to be the last time, or the last place. Somehow even after all this, the harder part was knowing that I have to go to school in the morning, to an endless mirror of the same cruelty.
The walk to school always felt daunting, like preparing for a storm I couldn’t escape. I remember I had to apologize to them multiple times. The time my sweater was on fire, for instance. They got punished… but so did I. Every time they got caught, which wasn’t quite often, they would spin it as a mutual “fight.” As bewildered as I would be, there was a voice in my head: who is going to believe you? I attempted to prove my innocence—I can’t recall how many times, but I did. Instead of justice, all I got from the adults was that I needed to own up to my mistakes, and the voice said, told you so. I became quieter and quieter, as if I were growing acquiescent to the brutality of the universe, and of these people. It wasn’t approval, by any means, it was rather a defeated acceptance. Acceptance that this was going to be my life.
But that morning, in the middle of all the dejection, there he was. Nick Kuroda. He knew, somehow, that something was wrong. He came to me and asked, “Your eyes look different, are you doing okay?” I could see the concern all over his face. I had never felt so relieved from something so little. I just needed somebody to see me—my cry for help, even when I wasn’t crying. Me, when I was that 14-year-old kid showing up to school every day like nothing was wrong. Me, a 24-year-old still carrying the weight of the life I never chose to live. I just needed a witness, even if he couldn’t know what was truly going on. I knew he wasn’t a savior that was going to change the things in my life, I knew he wasn’t my friend I confided in, but I knew that he was the acknowledgement that made life a little less miserable, the smile that brought some solace. I wish we had more time. I wish a lot of things.
The shadows have started to murmur. Too weak to walk, I start to crawl. I’d almost forgotten how hard it is to crawl across concrete. I gather up the last bit of strength in me to stand on my feet and to start running. As I get up, I can feel my heavily pounding heart weighing down my entire body. I feel like the shadows are grasping me, like I was going to be possessed. But I hear something—maybe some hope of rescue. As I run for my life toward the sound—stumbling over the uneven floor, scraping my skin against narrowing walls, pain hammering behind my eyes—I see the faint glow of a staircase ahead. I don’t know whether I’m escaping or sinking deeper into this place. But it’s my only shot.
The stairs only go up, and so do I. The staircase is almost as dark as the corridor, except I can see some dim lighting on the walls; it almost looks like a Victorian house. I catch a painting out of the corner of my eye—it’s a portrait of a woman in green. I keep moving, faster and faster. I know that if I stop, it will catch me—whatever has been following me since this morning. I can feel how close I am to collapsing, but I know how desperately I can’t slow down. Soon I pass another painting—the lady in green. The same portrait! What I thought were multiple paintings are all the same, placed in the exact same spot. As the realization sinks in, every last drop of hope drains from my body—I’m stuck in an infinite loop! Still, I keep running upward. Three… six… seven… nine… twelve… thirteen… I count each time I pass the exact same painting.
Before I can get to fourteen, there it is. Not a painting. Not an illusion. The woman in green stands where the portrait used to be. She’s real. She’s very still. I’m pushing my body past its limits—I can feel it tearing, begging me to stop—but I don’t have a choice. She appears at every turn of the staircase, where time splits and the loop begins. Suddenly, I can tell she’s moving. My legs don’t give up yet, but something in me does. I am so scared. At last, I start crying, and perhaps for the first time in over 10 years, praying to the universe. I can hear myself wailing, struggling to catch air. Time starts to feel irrelevant. The next thing I know, she descends toward me—not just her; spilling from the staircase is an endless stream of herself, echoes made flesh. I see her face. She has no eyes. She’s reaching for me.
I open my eyes, I’m in a garage. A humbly-sized parking garage, without any cars parked. Every part of my body hurts, but something about my left foot is killing me. I look at it only to see the skin on my toes peeled off, drenched in blood. I get up slowly, I can still feel my heart slamming against my ribs.
How did I end up here? Where is the staircase?
With shallow breaths I drag my legs to every corner looking for an escape. But there is no escape, just like in my dreams—it’s a dead end. I start screaming, shrieking until my throat burns, until every sound I make feels too small against the emptiness. My tears sting, running down my face, and I can’t stop them. I drag myself forward again, scraping my hands and knees along the floor, each movement agony, each breath a jagged gasp. The shadows press in from every angle, and I am trapped, like the walls themselves are closing in. It feels just like my nightmares, except I wasn’t waking up. My sobs echo against the concrete, mocking me, while my mind screams that I’m running out of time.
I find a pillar to rest against. Hopeless. I scream again. My voice is a weapon against the void, but the void doesn’t answer.
Then I see it. I see her, the woman. She’s standing at the farthest end of the garage from where I sit. Before I could move I see more of her, like a ripple. Four, to be exact. I feel the panic rising again. This is the end. This is where my nightmares lead me. This will be the end of me, unless I let the anger out.
I see her approaching me from all four directions, trapping me. I warn her, don’t you dare!
She doesn’t care, she laughs. They laugh.
She takes out a gun, looks at me without eyes. With that evil smile on her face, she slides the gun across the floor toward me and says, “Do it.”
My head’s killing me.
I pick up the gun from the floor, four immediate gunshots. I shot her, all four of her.
Oh god…
I am perhaps clinging onto the last bit of hope, the downright disbelief- this cannot be happening. No.
I can feel my heart shrink in a twist, like my shoulders are about to crumple, a loud and cold beating in my ears such that my world is about to come to an end…
Ayla, Kai, Salel, Nick!
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, Nick, Nick, please, no, no, no… no.
I run to Nick’s lifeless body with the gunshot wound right in his chest. I look at his face, his dark brown hair, he’s still very much the boy he was back in school. Whatever I thought was a void moments before was nothing compared to the desolation crippling my entire being right now. I can feel the raw, open wound in me as I hold his corpse with both my arms. I let out a broken cry, just as helpless as I am.
Ayla. No. No, please.
I run to her. I see them all. I killed them all. What do I do?
I couldn’t have done it, I didn’t have a gun!
In a flashback I remember sitting in the backseat of Salel’s car. As I looked around, the first thing I noticed was a gun in the seat back pocket. I had thought to myself, “what an odd thing!”
I hold Ayla in my arms. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. There was no response. She is gone. Long gone.
But when I looked over, Nick’s body wasn’t there anymore!
I slowly stand up to look around me. My limbs run cold as I start to recognize the place—that’s the grocery store entrance upstairs through the parking. In denial, I stagger towards it. I can hear thunder, and the pouring rain. I freeze just outside the sliding doors, my eyes catching the cart in the distance. It’s still full. Everything I needed, everything I didn’t—and from the bottom peeks out a jar of nattō.
I am shivering, my heart is fragmented, my brain stony, my blood curdled. All that anguish can only turn into one thing—the loudest, most excruciating scream. The helpless cry that slits my heart open, that makes my lung detonate like a dirty bomb, puts me in the wrecks of a burning lava- feeling like it is peeling the flesh off of me. I curl up like a fetus as I feel the aftertaste of the poison I never meant to feed inside of me.
The world I had built inside myself—careful and controlled—pretending I could survive everything, crumbled in an instant. In every moment of agony for my entire life, I believed I was unmoved. But my nightmares clawed at me, begging me to face my reality, dragging the chaos I had bottled up to the surface. My memories, my pain, the terrors of my past, my loneliness, every small wound I had ever buried—they have always been right here with me, decaying my soul in silence. All it took to let it out of the vault was losing the one good thing I cherished forever. The fragile string holding me together all this long, which otherwise could immediately turn into this massive chaos, an explosion that would take down my entire world with me, had vanished.
Was this my fate all along— to burn with all my misery and rise only into more anguish, a place I can never come back from? Fate. A funny word, fate. All I know is that it has a cruel way of punishing the good.
6:53 AM, Sunday
Mar was woken up by the sharp scream of a firetruck. It didn’t feel like the best start to the day, especially since today is the day that, after nearly a decade, she would be seeing Nick again. They hadn’t kept in touch after Nick moved to Japan. Which made sense to her—because in her mind, they did always belong to different worlds, colliding only for a little while to show her what she hadn’t known. That’s why it was so shocking that he remembered her! A part of her had always carried the regret of never telling him what he meant to her, and maybe this was her chance, after all these years. Out of the blue, a message from him two days ago brought back that same rare smile on her face from her childhood, saying he was going to be back in her city for a couple of weeks and would love to meet a childhood friend! Sometimes you meet people you never forget, people who bring a ray of kindness in your otherwise wretched life, who give you the same butterflies ten years apart.
Moments later the news murmurs, “Authorities continue the process of identifying the victims of the fire. Several have been confirmed deceased, including….. Evelyn Ramirez, 29; Ronan Hayes, 43; Nick Kuroda, 25, Amina Patel, 32;…. Fire officials urge anyone with missing loved ones to come forward as the investigation continues”…
