True Rising: Mark of the Defenders

by Tanishq Sheikh

  My lips part as I gaze into his eyes. I can see only his love for me in them with hopes for our future. I have so many more questions to ask but they can wait for some other day. I reach out to draw his head down so that our lips can meet.

  We pour our love into that kiss. It’s special coming on the heels of confessions. I know then that I’ll love Ajaz forever.

  Part II

  Sleepless nights

  Fourteen

  A new beginning.

  I’m healing. I’ve realised I can finally think of Nik without crying. I’m safe, warm, secure. But my periods are overdue and I’m worried. I haven’t given my relationship with Ajaz much thought. He hasn’t proposed because he knows I’m not ready to re-marry anytime soon. We’re taking this time together to get to know each other, to chalk a direction, to shape our future. My visa is an extended one so we know we have plenty of time to decide before taking the final step.

  I’m unable to share my concern over my periods with Ajaz. I don’t want him to worry about me. I hop into a local shop and get a pregnancy detection kit. The instructions say I need to use it early in the morning and I spend a restless night in Ajaz’s arms.

  Close to dawn, I slip away from under Ajaz’s arm and pad to the washroom dressed in his shirt that falls to my knees.

  I run the test, waiting patiently for the result. It takes more than ten seconds but I see a clear blue line. I’m pregnant! How is it possible? We always took protection. Did we miss sometime?

  Realisation hits me like a bucket of freezing water. That first time after the motor bike ride. We had been too far gone, driven by our emotions and desire for each other to think about it. She hadn’t let us!

  Fog enters my senses. It envelopes me in its icy embrace, numbing me with deathly determination. A familiar chill creeps up my helpless body. The bathroom mirror swirls with the frivolous fingers of unwanted mist. I sense fear, horror, panic, but I can’t move.

  I see her in my reflection. Her pale hair and purple eyes are as familiar as her evil, malicious intent.

  “You did well, my pet,” she croons, her voice raspy. I’m frozen. She is reaching through the mirror, pouring out of it with slow determination so that she can swirl around me like a friendly, purple genie. I know she isn’t my friend.

  “Why? How?” I ask wordlessly. She reads my thoughts.

  “It’s your destiny, my pet,” she answers, straight into my mind, tracing over my belly with her talons. “With this child you will fulfil it. You will give me what I desire. I have waited for this for an eternity. Ask me and I will answer.”

  I’m still mute but my thoughts are not. I find I’m able to play a deadly mind-game with her. I need answers. I’ve waited for too long. “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

  The entity lets out a slow laugh that manages to chill me more than I already am. The sound is unlike one I’ve heard before. It reeks of death, evil, malevolence and unknown sins. I can feel her hugging me, wrapping me with invisible arms, squeezing out the last remnants of heat from my body.

  To my sheer horror, I find my feet leave the floor as I levitate with her. She leads me through a portal that is dark and brimming with stories untold.

  I descend into a never-ending darkness. It’s like that feeling of falling endlessly but at a slower pace. My heart is in my mouth beating a tumultuous beat. She’s still around me. I can feel her essence enter me and exit on a whimsy bombarding me with juxtaposing sensations of lust and fear. Why lust?

  With my mind’s eye, I can suddenly see because she wants me to. We’re floating over a barren landscape that stretches forever. I can feel her presence leaving me as she descends. The landscape changes its hue from a blood red to a deep, sensuous purple. Bright purple gems appear out of nowhere, covering the entire surface with their brilliance.

  For the first time, I see her clearly. Although she looks exactly like me, her skin is like white marble, her eyes a deep purple, almost violet colour. Her lips are ruby red and her hair platinum. She is translucent and remarkably the most bewitching creature I have ever seen. She stirs desire in me, followed by untamed passion and carnal lust.

  She faces me with a coy, wicked smile on her luscious lips. ‘Who am I, my pet? I am the unending. I am the infinite. I am the harbinger of mankind’s doom.’

  She rises with a lazy swirl that allows silvers of silver rays escape from her. She looks dainty, breathtakingly beautiful and dangerous. She’s all around me, her lilting laughter teasing me like little kisses. She’s not touching me but I can feel her in me.

  She’s toying with me. Flicks of desire begin to unfurl deep within. It’s a mindless feeling full of lust and a desperate need for release. She’s igniting me with her cold fire, giving me her passion, letting me rise on the throes of passion. I can’t help but moan. I need release and she gives it to me, making me convulse as sparks of heady pleasure course through me. It’s endless, it’s inhuman.

  “You feel that, my pet? That’s me.”

  The delicious assault on my senses stops leaving me with dissipating bursts of desire. I pant with exhaustion. My eyes open to find her face mere inches from mine.

  “Call me Arian, Myraos, Raati, Phalia, Kiala, Nobia, Milao and hundreds of other names. Whatever you choose, it is I. I am greed, I am desire, I am lust, I am pleasure, I am determination, I am arrogance, I am indestructible.”

  She glides away gracefully. My treacherous body misses her. She continues her monologue. I’m aware she will answer all my unasked questions. “I always was. Mankind came later. Once there was nothing and suddenly there was. You have risen from an unnamed complexity. In the millions of years since the birth of mankind, I have fed on lost souls.”

  A purple pool appears before her. She’s suddenly naked. My eyes widen as she teases me with her luscious body. I’m not gay or bisexual but with her I’ve already made an exception or has she made it for me? She dives into its depths before surfacing to float around it aimlessly.

  “I harbour millions of souls, my pet. But I will not harbour them forever. They will leave into nothingness and I will begin anew. This time, I will begin as one of you.”

  She’s suddenly in front of me as I continue to float helplessly. Drops of water run down her succulent curves like orgasmic rivers. I reach out to touch her and she immediately engulfs me with her carnal cravings. She’s toying with me, bribing me with desire, with passion, with lust. I’m willing as long as she gives me release. I come again with an intensity that is unmatched.

  “Ah, you see my pet. I can give you exactly what you need. What any human needs.” She licks my feverish skin with her icy tongue sending me into a fit of shivers. “You are creature of a need more ancient than you will ever know. You were never meant to be more than that. With my new beginning, I will give mankind a way to acknowledge and release their basest of needs. Mankind will thrive. There will be no need for your mindless inventions.”

  “Have you ever stopped to consider, why do you need all that you have invented? What use will it be once you have given up your mortal state? Nothing will remain. Only me.”

  “Are you saying we will all go to hell?” I manage to finally ask a question that begs an answer.

  The entity throws her head back to emit a hearty laugh. Her electric eyes pity me. “There is no hell, my pet. Nor is there heaven. It is just this. An existence. A realm for souls, entities and unknown creatures. We all have a realm of our own.”

  I let that information sink in. “So you’re not the only one of your kind?”

  Strangely my question catches her off-guard. It surprises me. I thought she was unmatched.

  “There are others,” she states without elaborating.

  I am suddenly determined and curious. “You told me to ask you. So I need to know. Who are the others?”

  She dives back into her purple pool, swimming around aimlessly while I wait suspended in time. My mind seems to snap back in place. She has consciously uncoupled from me. The rea
lisation takes me by surprise. My connection to her is not permanent. I can find a way to keep her at bay, to keep her from ruling me. What made her distance herself? My questions or my persistence? Does she have a level of discomfort? A weakness? A chink in her armour?

  The landscape changes before my eyes. Suspended as I am, I can see an ocean replace the purple paradise. It churns furiously below me sending gigantic waves lapping at my feet to intimidate me. Howling winds snap at my loose hair whipping it across my face with merciless perfection.

  It’s an illusion but I’m terrified enough to let out my own sorrowful wail. An errant wave leaps up and crashes against me, snapping me out of my horror. Noooo! I scream! Nooooo!

  At first I’m screaming for it to stop and show mercy on me. Then I realise I’m screaming for her to stop the theatrics and answer my questions.

  It works. The dangerous illusion disappears replaced by nothing but deep, black space.

  She appears in front of me. She is annoyed but impressed. “Well done, pet! You’ve learnt to master your fear.”

  Her hand reaches out to touch my belly drawing an immediate shocked gasp from me. Her touch is icy and painful. It holds no pleasure. She has chosen to punish me. Keeping me suspended, she leans towards my ear. “I will have this child and you can do nothing to stop me.”

  I can’t breathe, I’m gasping for air but I want answers. “Why? Why this one? Why not any other?”

  Her evil laughter booms in my ear. She pushes me away and I tumble helplessly in a realm that has no gravity. “This one is my pet project. There will be others but none like her.”

  Her! I touch my belly in fascination. My unborn child is a girl! A sense of wonder courses through me accompanied with determination. Her acknowledgment has made it so real! I’m going to be a mother! I’m going to have Ajaz’s baby! And she wants her! No!

  She senses the change in me and I in her. She’s disconcerted. I must be doing something right. What is it? What’s affecting her? I try my luck. “Who are the others like you?” She ignores me, indulging in aimless floating with deliberate bumps into me to keep me spinning around.

  “Raati!” I shout with new found courage. “Answer me!”

  Her perfect, sculpted eyebrows raise in surprise. She takes her time to consider me. Then she speaks. “I like your choice. Out of all my names, Raati is my favourite with the exception of Nobia.”

  The landscape changes back into the purple paradise. I stop spinning and tumbling but she still doesn’t let my feet touch solid ground.

  “The others. They are around you in clear sight, my pet. We entities surround your every thought, we determine your decisions, we take your risks. And yet you don’t acknowledge us as us.”

  She attempt to confuse me is deliberate..

  “Love. Hate. Compassion. Courage. Empathy. Conscience. Will. Envy. Greed. Desire. Lust, Evil. We are all entities that make up the core structure of a human’s brain. All your decisions are the result of these entities.”

  She brings up a translucent screen. It flashes experiences of hundreds of people. It feels like being part of a gigantic movie. I see what I need to see. Families, friends, celebrations, diseases, wars, the rich, the poor, the hungry. I see lovers. I see my first kiss with Ajaz. I see us making love. I look further into a forgotten past. I see my family. I see birthday celebrations. I see a group of women seated in a circle, holding hands in the dark, whispering incomprehensive words. I take a closer look and see my mother in the group, head bowed, eyes closed as if praying or chanting. I see a board with meaningless inscriptions and a metal coin that moves across it with slow determination. I see a candle blow out suddenly. Then I see Raati. She’s part of the group. She looks up directly at me with a cold smile that is pure evil.

  It knocks the breath out of me. I can’t comprehend the meaning but I know it’s important. Raati, my mother and me? How are we connected? An internal voice tells me, she’s distracting me with this revelation. She’s avoiding my questions.

  “Raati,” I call out to her with a bravado I don’t feel. “What about God? Aren’t you afraid of Him?”

  The electric eyes glow and she throws her stunning head back to let out a throated, mirthless laugh. When she looks at me, she’s amused. She almost looks trustworthy.

  “Do you believe in God, pet?”

  I’m confused. Why does she ask me? I grew up in a Hindu household amid prayers, incense sticks, garlands, temple bells and offerings. I fell in love with a Muslim man and heard him talk about the One and only. I believe good exists and so does evil. But strangely I don’t believe in the actual existence of God.

  “You don’t. You never did and you never will.” Raati floats around me creating a churning swirl of images that whizz past me. I see images of Gods and Goddesses from almost every religion known to mankind. “These are the Gods and Goddesses created out of a human mind. They are what you see and what you want them to be. They are glorious, they are beautiful, they are rigid, they are stern, they are kind, they are loving, they are one, they are Triad.”

  The information is threatening to overwhelm me. So God is real?

  In a first show of kindness, Raati kisses my eye lids. “God is real only if you want it to be, my pet. Don’t you see God is a reflection of the entities that live within mankind? God is an idea of perfection. A keeper of morality and all that is virtuous. God is the result of a need for authority. God is the culmination of all that is, all that can be and can’t be. You all have God in you, you’re just too blind to see.”

  My mind swirls as the poetic discourse sinks into my depths. God is what we made when we had no answers. Raati says God is in us because of all that we feel as humans; love, courage, kindness, virtue, they are exactly what God is made up of. She’s right, God is the result of our need.

  How true then is the saying that God is present in each of us?

  There is yet a puzzle to be solved. Who is this entity that resides in all but has chosen me for her nefarious intentions?

  Raati giggles shocking me because she sounds almost human. “Yes, my pet, I reside in all mankind but that is just my essence. Mankind has evolved from a stage of hapless innocence to reach an unprecedented level of greed and cruelty. If left unchecked, jointly they will devour all the other entities.”

  “We have risen to the need of the hour. This pathetic world of yours is on its death bed. Soon you will no longer need the materialistic elements you think you can’t do without. Soon it will only be a matter of survival. Food and water are the only things you will seek. And thus we will rise to the forefront. We will give you a world where nothing matters but what’s within.”

  She touches my belly again but this time her touch is almost kind. “Your child is conceived of pure love. I may have played a part in enhancing your desires but I had nothing to do with what you feel for each other. I almost placed my entire essence in her but,” she stops and glares at me, “your paramour sensed me. He couldn’t throw off my power and stop himself but with his religious mumblings he cast a protection spell around you both. You’re lucky, my pet, the unborn was conceived in a protected womb.”

  I gasp remembering Ajaz muttering something under his breath that night. He had known something wasn’t right! He had tried to save us both!

  Raati laughs into my face. “That boy is keeper, pet. I must say he did a good job of casting that protection shield. It worked for him because he’s a believer. But you. You have no faith. Besides, you are the chosen one, my pet. Loaned to me long ago.”

  “What?” This new information shocks me. “Who loaned me?”

  Raati giggles like a small child, floating past me with a nonchalance that makes me want to punch her. She shines me a broad smile. “As much as you hate me, pet, your anger is not a developed entity. It isn’t going to get you anywhere. You are yet to know more about yourself.”

  In a split second she is floating face to face with me. “Accept me and I can give you more than you can ever imagine!”
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br />   My eyes widen as she gazes into my soul. I’m drawn into her bright violet orbs. I see Ajaz. I see me. I see a child. It’s a girl! She’s around five or six years old. We’re at a golden beach with a bright, blue ocean dispelling frothy, white waves. We’re so happy together. We’re so much in love.

  A screech makes me slam my palms over my ears. The scene is shifting! I see Ajaz with another woman. They’re naked and he’s making love to her! It’s Nadira! My heart burns with a deep ache. The girl child is nowhere.

  STOP!

  Raati laughs sending streaks of icicles towards me. They pierce my skin and join my blood stream, sending sensations of cold, wanton lust into every never ending. “That’s what you can get, my pet. Give me your child and you will get the life you have always dreamed of with him.”