Journey of a strong woman

Hakeem

A couple of days passed by like the calendar was on a speed dive and it was Saturday. I spent more time inside than outside because to be honest, I don't love their apartment. Isis had helped me to pack a lot of my stuff into suitcases and i wasn't done but this was a start up for now. Looking at the four suitcases on the floor I realized just how much this was real. I mean I was actually leaving my comfort zone for that wild place where I don't even talk to at least two people.

"Saying goodbyes huh??" Isis said standing by the hallway that leads to my bedroom. She didn't startle me because she and I were literally the only people in the apartment.

"It's not like I'm going forever. I'm still gonna come back here on the weekends. This place holds my sanity completely, I would be nothing without it. Imagine living with four other strangers in the name of being in a music band," I said looking at my suitcases on the floor before turning around to look at her. She had the widest grin on her face which made me grin. She was either about to call me out or tease me but from the look on her face, this woman was going to do both and I didn't mind, I didn't mind at all. I low key know that I would miss popping up in her apartment unannounced because I missed the best home cooked meals and possibly the time I once caught her having sex on the couch with a red as beet wife…Valhalla..that was one of the worst sights engraved in my head currently but it was family.

"I mean, think of it as a college get away…your second college get away and you can have all the fun in the world…only with strangers and you can get to know them better, except the ones you can't tolerate. Please promise me you wouldn't start talking to the guys you can't tolerate okay?? These are popular people, I don't want to hear you call at 2AM asking me how to incinerate bodies again. I think we already have plenty on our hands with the baby coming next month…" She said excitedly. Her eyes glistened over with moisture of joy and I knew she deserved this, she has come this far, she deserved everything she had right now. The happiness, the joy, the work, the home and the comforting love she was feeling for her human companion. I didn't think I would cook this far because I never dreamed this far, I never asked myself what I really wanted for myself. I always said to myself, I was going to lead a blood clan so my sister was very much allowed to dream but I wasn't, my faith was predestined and she was allowed to have the life she always dreamed of.

When we were little kids, when she was only ten and I was an eight year old boy with more unhealed scars than I could count, some in places even unknown to me till I stood in front of a mirror watching it expose all my father's creative and destructive craft all over my being and then I wished the cliche was true, that we didn't see our reflection, maybe then I would have been able to cry like a normal kid over spilled milk than bottle it up and just hate myself because I felt my life was predestined.

As kids, we would always escape far North to the sides of the lakes that surrounded our camp, having an old fashioned father like we did, he decided to build his clan far away from civilization where we didn't have home heaters or comfy beds except his own. He always said he was building us for the worst, comparing us to the hottest and rawest of iron being crafted by a swordsmith and we would sit and listen to him use different metaphors to describe his blood children and when the time came to hot the other two Major families, The Ababa which were foreign native Americans driven from their home land during civilization as far back as the fourteenth century and The Delma from the south American side of the country. They were the top Major bloodline ruling America as a whole with a dominating amount of followers and the curve in their success rate only went ahead to further shame any other family in the continent. As there were four other sub Major families which were almost as unimportant as the minor families, they still had the 13 divisions of minor families scattered all over the continent of North and South America.

He only recognized us as his children when the time came for us to stand tall and show all our exotic traits given to us by the mixture of Caribbean and Egyptian mix, it was the sell out of the century. With deep eyebrows and long dark brown hair and polish olive skin that looked like a permanent tan and pale pink lips, we always stood out. The two children of Horus.

After we pretended to be happy and perfect children of the headliner, we were forced back into our cages where we trained heavily again to make sure that we weren't behind on training. That was when Isis decided she had had enough of the pretense and lies. She wanted to escape, running far away from here to the world beyond dying grass and crying howls in the middle of the night while I, the kid who was slowly nodding and seeking validation, thought it wasn't such a bad place to be.

Till she decided she had had enough and ran off into the night with only a night comforter and some bag of blood. Then we only knew the walls needed to have an end and that night she was willing to be them and go past them. She got caught and was dragged back to the camp.

I watched my father strip her and flog her with the spiky bat skeleton he used for discipline of the soldiers who offended him the most. He used it on his own daughter. The spikes tore through her tender flesh and he did so repeatedly till it was 500 strokes and my so called mother there wrapped around in a blanket to protect her from the cold morning frost while her daughter who was only wrapped in white dirty clothes was degraded to a side road dirt by her own husband. I watched my sister's body collapse to the ground, lifeless of any feeling at all. I would sit and try not to remember that day because there were no tears to ease it. It was too late for me.

I have been told more times than ever that tears were things for the weakness the human flesh held and we would yell our strengths and try to ignore that we were all humans in the other world. I lost my ability to cry and drain out emotions so when they got too much, I drank it away, diluting the violent mix so it doesn't burn me and it doesn't burn because I wasn't fire proof.

She was later thrown in a cell for thirty days without blood but I still fed her every single day. She slowly became even worse than I was and I acknowledged his work on my sister. She lost the only human thing she had but unlike me, she stored it away. After seeing how healthy she still looked, he decided to make her stay six days with blood and I realized he wasn't going to let her out till she looked like dry bones, with a lot of conviction, she begged me to stop bring blood down to her anymore and I did, I stopped doing it hoping it would change somethings but it doesn't. Something never changed.

The only thing she demanded of me was company for the next sixty days. She told me about things she discussed with her human friends who came fishing by the banks and they would tell her about occupations out there that she could do. We were getting home schooled but it was only from restricted knowledge but that wasn't enough for dear Isis, she wanted more. That was when she told me her plan to leave here, leave camp and leave home and go into the human world and sail across the lake. She told me of her dream to get a law degree so she could persecute people like our father in the real world and punish them for the shit people that they were and I couldn't hold back the feeling to be honest.

It took more than just an embrace to help her feel better sometimes but she was drying up, she became fragile to hold and skeletal outline became bold to see, there was no way she was getting to sixty when she was like that on day forty five. I ran to my fathers quarters and begged him so I can do the rest of her fifteen days. it took her fifteen days to heal and took me fifteen days to be like her, by the time she felt better, I had already dried up too.

"You know if thoughts were to be loud, yours would have caused some noise pollution by now. I mean you are thinking so loud yet inside your head," She told me laughing as she started to lace her boots.

"A glass of bad alcohol with ice for your thoughts??," She asked, heading to my fridge.

"A penny would have been fine but I guess that could work too," I smirked and she rolled her eyes knowing fully well That I was almost this close to being a full alcohol addict. Sometimes I didn't even feel the taste, just the burning sensation going down my throat that ends up begging for me which I always give into because who wouldn't.

"It gave everything I ever wanted…" I took the first sip. "Low key we are all addicted but I don't have to worry about livers or whatever," She side clinked her glass with mine and the smell of her alcohol didn't smell right to me, if I didn't miss it smelt like apple juice.

"Wait, is that apple juice?" I asked and she grinned holding the glass in her mouth.

"You are such a betrayer," I hit her hand and she laughed. "I'm becoming a mother soon which means there are some things I would probably have to stop for now," She explained and I nodded proudly. I had no doubts that she would be a super mom because that was kind of her thing after the way we grew up. She always decided we wanted to be better.

"So, thoughts?" She asked and I sighed.

"I was just thinking about the past you and I had and the shit that you went through. You always had this set of dreams and goals, what you wanted to study, the number of children you wanted, the kind of life you generally wanted to live, it was kind of your thing and I always thought okay…being the kind of person I was, I was going to find purpose in my destiny being the dark prince and all but I was wrong. And now I feel lost," I confessed to her.

"You need to start living, surviving day to day is not enough,"...