Story : Vengeful Spirits - On Belonging
We saw a young father enter the bus with his son. We watched as passengers shifted their heads on their arrival. We waited for emotions to shift, for someone to give us an in. Some cooed in awe and we discarded this with annoyance, they did nothing for our hunger. At the very back of the bus, we spot a young man’s hand fold into a fist, and we followed his gaze. There it is, we have found our host. We smell the sweetness that he omits, of sweet envy and umbrage as he stares at the father and son duo. We follow this scent until we are enveloped in the archives of his memories. We rummage through them in delight, pressing on memories we knew will increase the aroma of pain, loss and abandon. We pressed onto a memory of his father slapping him across the face when he was only eleven years old. How his father looked at him with disgust when he caught him watching videos of men pleasing each other. He too wanted such pleasures but he knew what it will cost. We wanted more of this hurt, so we dove deeper into the archives. We saw him entering his house when he overhears his father’s phone call, promising his cousins new bicycles. Instinctively, his eyes lands on his feet, donned are torn tattered shoes. We couldn’t contain our joy at these memories. They were plenty with a potency that will feed our next action.
We see now in his bag pack contains drugs that he deals for one of his friends. This fate we observed in a memory when his father spoke onto his spirit in one of their arguments. Today like the others, he carries supplies to near by high schools filled with malleable minds and long term potential.
The bus arrives at its last stop and everyone makes to the exit. We ever so gently guide his path to the father and son duo. We watch as his contempt does most of the talking, whispering to the father the powers of his supplies. The decay of his sorrows wraps around his hand as he slips a week supply into the father’s pant pocket. We saw as he wished that the drugs will bring the father to a state of ecstasy, one where his son holds little meaning. Where he would squander all his money to buy new supply. Where his actions will become erratic, and will lose control of his hands, to find them striking his son’s face. He desperately wished that after this father has sunk into the whim of his addiction, that his son will grow to hate him like he hates his own. That he would come to understand the resentment and sorrow he felt on their arrival on this bus.
This we laugh to and now, with our hunger satiated, we exit his body and the bus.
