This is where the light must not fall.
AfroSays,
SECRETS
…not again, keep him away…
That sound again, it rings from behind me. It comes.
It mustn’t get to me – I have to make it to the whatever-it-is-called before it reaches me. It’s faster, stronger and would soon be on me.
The sound is getting closer, it’s a chorus now. The other ‘it’ has joined the first. I’m running as fast as I can, so fast that I’m struggling not to fall. The floor thunders behind me, four claps apiece. The chorus is louder and more urgent.
My goal is before me, beyond this place. It is where I must be; this I have been denied, over and over again. I don’t care what it would cost, the whatever-it-is-called is a secret that must be partaken of. It is their secret, but soon, it shan’t be anymore in the exclusive.
Of course, they’re too late. With the last of my desperate spunk, I throw myself at it, with fingers strained to the fingernail.
No! I cry, No!
It grabs me and lifts me effortlessly from the presence of it that which they were to keep me from. Pain is my friend, I know him personally. Their secret was pain.
I scream and tears fall from the sky.
They are gathering now, more of them, making different sounds, low and gloomy. But one sound that they make, it’s the same as the sound that it made, that the other ‘it’ made – the sound that they all seem to agree on whenever they’re not away from me. I know this sound, but I do not know its purpose. But, this sound is a secret that they want to share.
The sun shines.
The secret that they tell me to my face with their big fangs out in a smile; the secret they shout at me in alarm whenever I rush to partake of one of their other secrets, just before they leap over to deny me; the secret that they call loudly whenever I escape from them to enjoy my own privacy. What is this secret?
It seems to be what they call me.
It is, it is my name.
Amarachi.
… soon …
Afrosays to me 