Short Story Writing Competition
The hot stream of urine hitting the dark, cavernous bottom of the pit latrine is music to my ears. I take a deep, satisfying breath as my body releases the tension of trying to keep a full bladder for ages.
Ah! Sweet relief.
Then I hear a loud knock on the door, startling me awake.
My sweet dream is shattered to pieces. The door shakes on its hinges, begging to be saved from the banging. The pungent stench of urine hits my nose and shoots up to the back of my head. The pain is instant, like a long needle sinking deep into my skull.
I look around.
Where am I?
The room is dark and humid and cool. Streaks of light come through cracks in the mud and wattle walls. A yellow jerry can and blue basin are at the foot of the bed I am sitting on. It isn’t really a bed. Just a mattress on the floor with a plastic covering.
The knocking grows more urgent.
“Sarah, are you in there?”
It is Sister Maria Goretti, the only angel in this god-forsaken hell.
Reality starts dawning on me. I lay back on the mattress, resigned.
I came here to die.
I don’t know how to die, but for the first time in my sixteen years of existence, the thought of death feels welcome. Here I am, in a dingy, dusty hut, getting intoxicated with the smell of my urine. All because of two beasts who had torn me.
“Sarah, please open up,” Sister Maria Goretti begs.
She bangs the door again, creating plumes of dust around its frame. I’m almost sure if I don’t open for her in the next minute, she’s going to break it down.
I look down at the soaked bed sheets between my legs. The dreams have been coming almost every day from the day the second beast tore me. Most days I dream I am in the latrine. Other times, I look around for the nearest place to relieve myself and find a bush or alley. Twice, I’ve dreamt I had woken up and used the small Nomi pail I kept in the corner of my room at home—my real room which I shared with my twin sister before I moved to this end-of-the-world hell hole—but I had eventually woken up to a wetness around my pelvis. A wetness that is becoming all too familiar. It had started when the second beast ripped me up.
The second beast, just like the first one, had promised to help me. He said I should calm down, and that it would all be over soon. And for the second time in my life, I had lain back and opened my legs for a man.
“Sarah?” Sister Maria Goretti’s insistent knocking won’t let me relive my hell.
“I’m coming,” I say and gather up the energy to get up.
I stand up, then double over, gripping my lower abdomen. The sharp, throbbing pain in my lower abdomen reminds me of the second beast’s brutality.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” he had reassured me. The lines that formed at the corners of his eyes told me he was smiling beneath that green surgical mask. “Now open your legs a little wider. This is going to sting a little bit, but it will all be over soon.”
I opened my legs a little wider, and felt the cold stainless steel of I don’t know what prying me open. I closed my eyes tightly and told myself that I didn’t have to be afraid, that it would sting a little, but that it would be over soon.
I wasn’t afraid. I was so scared my heart beat so hard it wanted to break out of my ribcage.
And whatever the second beast was doing to me, it didn’t sting a little. It hurt like my belly had been torn open, stuffed with red-hot charcoal, and sewn shut.
I screamed. A blood-curdling, glass-shattering scream.
I shrieked so loudly that the first beast came running into the room.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Help me shut her up!” the second beast shouted over my noise.
The first beast came to the head of the table. I could see his wicked grin through the tears running down my temple from my eyes. He covered my mouth with his calloused hands. He pushed his hands hard over my mouth like he was willing my now muffled screams to go back where they came from.
This reminded me of the first time he had covered my mouth with his hands. It was the day he had torn me.
He lay on top of me, grunting. One of his hands gripped my throat, choking me, and the other covered my mouth. He kept moving in short, painful, jerky spurts.
The pain wasn’t as much as that of the second beast, but it felt like I was being torn into two.
With one more loud grunt and thrust, he stopped and fell on top of me, his weight crushing me. I can still smell his sweat that dripped on my face, mixing with my tears.
No one had prepared me for the cocktail of emotions that followed. No one told me how painful it would be. Every part of my body ached. But nothing ached as much as my heart. The first beast hadn’t taken me forcefully. He had lied to me for a few weeks, and in my foolishness, I had fallen for his lies.
As he got up and zipped his trousers, he grinned at me.
Was I supposed to smile back?
But how could I smile back yet I felt like he had ripped out my heart and was dangling it in front of me like a prize from a hunt.
He had promised that if I let him do this to me, then I’d be able to go back to school. But the more times he defiled me, the further away my dream of going back to school felt.
And now here I am, as far away from school as any girl can get, swimming in my own incontinence.
I still hope no one knows where I am. Except Sister Maria Goretti.
And even she doesn’t know my real name.
“Sarah?” Sister Maria Goretti calls, “are you okay?”
I straighten up, gritting my teeth to steel in the pain. I open the door and the afternoon sunlight blinds me for a moment. Then I look into the smiling face of Sister Maria Goretti.
I don’t smile back.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” she says as she walks past me. Her huge bosom leads her into my hut. She smells of incense. Her blue habit looks like an angel’s robe compared to my flimsy night dress.
She heads straight to my bed and removes the dirty sheets. She pours some water into the basin, dips one of the clean ends of the urine-sodden sheets into it and wipes the plastic covering the mattress with it.
As she works, she keeps humming a hymn i’ve never heard. But I know it’s a hymn because what else would a nun be humming?
She gets a fresh pair of bed sheets from her large brown shoulder bag and lays my bed. The dirty sheets go into a kaveera. After she is through, she looks around the little hut and smiles, happy with her work.
Then she turns to me. I know what she wants, so I put my hands up, touching the thatched roof. She holds my night dress at the hem and pulls it over my head. It also goes into the kaveera. She knots the kaveera tightly and drops it into her bag. She then scrubs my whole body with a lathered hand towel. Afterwards, she rinses it and wipes all the lather from my body.
She stands back and looks at me from head to toe. She nods her head and says, “Now you are clean enough for the Lord.”
She dresses me in a clean, yellow dress that looks like her habit. Give me a veil and I’ll be a nun too.
“Would you like to take a walk, child?” she says. She’s still smiling, like she doesn’t know how not to smile.
I shake my head. I don’t say a word. I’ve never said a single word since I screamed in the second beast’s clinic and the first beast covered my mouth with his filthy hands.
Sister Maria Goretti says, “You know you can tell me anything, don’t you?”
I nod.
“But take your time,” She says, her plump, Vaselined face radiant with the joy of the Lord. “Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here for you. I’ll always be here for you if you need anything. Now, let’s pray.”
She gets her rosary from around her neck and kneels down on my bed. I also fetch my rosary from under the pillow.
As I kneel down beside her, I can’t help but wonder how the same God who created Sister Maria Goretti also created those two beasts that tore me.
I wonder which beast I should hate more: the one who put a baby inside me or the one who took it out. If the first beast hadn’t put the baby there in the first place, he wouldn’t have introduced me to the second beast. And I wouldn’t have ended up on that cold, stainless steel table, screaming my guts out as the second beast pried my inside with his sterilised instruments and gloved hands.
But the second beast’s tearing was more painful. Maybe I should hate him more.
When he was done and was removing bloodied gloves from his hands, the first beast stood in a corner, counting crisp bank notes.
The first beast said to the second beast, his eyes glued to the money, “You should get her some maxi pads to soak up all that bleeding. If the bleeding doesn’t stop in a week, bring her back to me.” Then he wrote some prescription for me on a page in a notebook. He tore out the page and gave it to the first beast.
The first beast just grunted and handed over the cash. The transaction was complete.
The bleeding stopped in three days. The pain never stopped.
And the urine also never stopped.
As I kneel here next to Sister Maria Goretti, listening to her recite the rosary in the hope that her prayers will make God forgive me for killing a baby, I feel a drop of urine flowing down my thigh. And I can’t stop it.
Sister Maria Goretti says, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
Both of us make the sign of the cross.
Now she can go, take her heaven with her, and leave me in my hell.
“Be well, my child,” Sister Maria Goretti says, then she goes back to the convent.
Unknown to her, even before she closes the door after herself, a demon creeps into my hut.
It’s time to tear my heart up once again.
