The eyes that looked ready to swallow mine were insistent and had this air of urgency in them. As it came closer and closer to my face, I found myself more and more powerless against its hypnotizing power. I was pinned down on the bed, motionless down to my throat, and I did not even notice that the face which contained those blazing eyes had a pert nose and nice mouth until much later when it had made an end of its attempt to pass its message, or so it seemed. It looked so human, yet scaringly forceful, like a mix between a horror movie character and someone I knew. All the same, the what he had to say was direct, clear and emotion-laden.
‘Don’t!’



The sun that came up that morning looked like it was battle ready to exact revenge on whoever lived on the earth today, our part of the earth, for some wrong done to it sometime in the past that it was not willing to forgive. This was not the kind of sun that 7 a.m brings even in the summer bays of Tampa. For some nondescript reason I felt very insecure and uptight. It was much later that evening I was able to connect the uneasy feeling to some sense of foreboding which had something to do with something that happened the night before regarding some people I knew….
A plastic cup hit me by the side of my head. Three more followed, followed by five voices which spoke all at once, and said the same thing.
‘What are you still doing in bed?’
I knew the whys and whens of the question, the hows and wheres and everything that followed it; I was just not in the mood to give anyone any answer. I raised my hand in depiction of what I wanted more than anything else at that moment-a complete stop to all of that. Maria, not done yet, flew at me from nowhere in that thong of hers that would have had my blood racing on any other day, and twerked her load before my face for a few seconds, and gave up when she found my mood irredeemable. If Maria could not get me, no one else could, the look on their faces said. They concluded I was truly not up to anything.
‘Hey, keep being a wussy around the house…this weather is too much of an allure to be cramped up indoors….I will be with you shortly…..’
They tramped out without another word.
I watched all five of them give me that look you give a stray cat in the cold in your front porch- Brandon, the six-foot ball player who felt he was God’s gift to the ladies, Hagin who had a bad word for everyone at every point, Kyle, my friend whose strength gave him all he needed at all times, one way or another, Barth, the wavy-haired negro who was already a four pointer so early in our sojourn at Creams, despite his substance abuse issues, and Maria who had the hots for me but always received a gentle brick wall. Maria was the last to leave the room, but not before giving me that motherly look that could extract the deepest of secrets, while sitting on my lap. Her anger and disappointment at not getting at any explanation for not wanting to go out at such an opportune time of the day, was thinly veiled, as the thought of today not being a day for cozy talk dawned on her slowly but surely.
I knew I had woken up with a slight bang on my temple, but it was nowhere near the reason anything outdoors repelled me this morning with so much gusto. I just could not explain it to myself, talk more of Maria or anyone.
The whirr of an ambulance reminded me.
In a flurry, activity had ensued in the otherwise quiet bar beach morning. Four boys had been in a very bad accident, and there was no telling if they would make it. I raced to the venue, shielding my face with the shades I had seen on Maria’s table, and got there just in time to see my friends, all four of them being wheeled behind the ambulance, blood oozing out of their heads at the same spot, all four of them. The effort of the first aid they had received was fast failing them, and even at that point I could see that their breathing was loud and laborious. They had been skiing or something, according to the confusing accounts I had heard, and the wave had gone up so bad it flung the four of them at the same time so far and so bad, they had smashed their heads against a yacht. Looking up and as far as I could see, the sea was as clear and calm as when Jesus spoke to it in the Bible, with nothing in sight.
When my sensibilities asked me where Maria could be, I looked involuntarily to the right, and saw a group of men around her, with people shrieking in horror and men shielding their little children’s eyes from the gory sight. A part of her femur on the right leg was sticking out from the skin in a mesh of blood and whitish tissue, and it was defeating every labour the men were applying to stabilize her.
Just then, I heard the loud bang of the ambulance door, and the driver looked round, shouting orders to get Maria in. I recognized the voice; he removed his shades, and I almost fainted. Those eyes, I had seen before.
Twice.
That night my friends had called me a wimp and had gone ahead to rob that jewellery shop.
It all came back now, like a tsunami, sweeping every memory barrier away. Last night.
The voice which accompanied those insistent eyes was the same. Yesterday was the second time I heard it, and I remembered every detail clearly now.
‘Don’t!’