The Opening Salvo

Agnes didn’t want to fight back because she and her cousin were outnumbered. But they were closing in on them, getting ready for the kill and there was nowhere to run. They were like vicious predators bent on tearing their prey into minute pieces of useless flesh. There was a dozen of them, and they were only two. Agnes felt a raging anger in her that she never felt before. This was totally unacceptable and unfair! When she heard her cousin crying, Agnes was infuriated.

“Don’t cry Tasha,” she hissed into her cousin’s ears. “Let’s show them we’re stronger in spirit than all their physical strengths combined.”

The melee that happened next was a blur to Agnes. Numerous hands clawed at her face; someone was ripping her dress apart; several hands were haphazardly pulling her hair out of her skull.

The excruciating pain was all over her body but eventually, she felt numbed from it all. She threw punches everywhere, scratched anything that she met and kicked as hard as she could. She felt her wild kicks come in contact with soft and solid matter, but she didn’t care what they were. Even her sharp canines came into play when both her hands and feet were restrained. She would rather die fighting, than give up.

Suddenly, she felt hands easing their hold on her. She heard shouts from older voices. Then she was teetering on her toes. Someone was shaking her face: “Are you okay, child?” She blinked to see the face of her grandpa and she almost cried with relief, but she didn’t want to give in and eventually hear the whole village talk about her “weakness” - a story to gossip about in their evening bonfires.

She gave her “appo” (grandpa) a fierce look and nodded. Tasha! She brushed aside her appo’s gentle hand and shouted: “Tasha, where are you?”

Tasha was slumped in one corner of the plaza crying. There were bruises all over her body. Her face bore fingernail scratches and her dress was shredded to pieces. Her heart went out to her. It took a herculean effort not to wail too. She was aching all over but she dared not show it.

The school plaza was almost empty now, the children who have ganged up on them had disappeared like cloud dust into thin air.

“Have you seen what happened?” her appo was asking the few teenagers hanging out in the plaza, but no one wanted to answer.

“What happened? Let’s go home and treat your bruises. What have you been up to?” Her grandpa was worriedly scrutinizing them.

At home, Agnes cried her heart out. Her mother, Melinda, had been outraged and had forced her to name their attackers, and she did. She was thinking of Tasha, who had been an accidental victim of that malicious prank. She just came for a two-week stay and this was what she got.

When would they stop taunting and bullying her? When would they accept her as one of them? She bit her lip as more tears came and she stifled her sobs in the stillness of the night.

And she remembered how she first came to what she had imagined as a paradise then. ..

Photo by Pink Sherbet