I remembered you with my soul clenched

In that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?

Who else was there?

Saying what?

Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly

When I am sad and feel you are far away.

His footsteps echoed one last time down the hospital corridor.

After today, he would never come back. He poked his head in the doorway, expecting her to still be fast asleep but his silent movements caught her eye before she turned away once again. "What do you want here?"

"I came to say goodbye."

"Oh." She turned her head towards the small television above her bed but it didn't really capture her attention. They had never really had time to watch tv at home and she had gotten used to the prospect of simply not bothering with it. "I figured you wouldn't stay."

"Why would I stay?" He asked, sitting down cautiously beside her. It was odd. Riaz had never really spoken to his sister. They had just never really known what it was that they could have said to each other so they resorted to silence instead.

"For me." Farhana laughed, shaking her head at the thought of it. "Why would you stay for me though?" She looked at him, goading him. Hoping he would try to deny it.

"Why would I?"

"You wouldn't. I know you wouldn't." She answered resolutely. She had accepted the truth long ago- it was easier that way. Why fight something you could never win against. "I know you wish I was never born sometimes."

Her soft whisper seemed foreign to his ears. He couldn't deny what was the absolute truth. He did wish she had never been born. Zaheer would have never used her against him. Zaheer would never have hurt her just to force him to do something and he would never have hated her knowing he had willingly allowed himself to be hurt because of her. He loved her and hated her and he would never truly convince himself otherwise.

"Don't worry Riaz." She looked at him once again, her stare penetrating the deepest recesses of his soul. "I wish I was never born too."

"Did you get into a university?"

"Ya." She barely even blinked at the obvious subject change. She had expected nothing less from her brother. "I got into Rau."

"Don't go back home. If you go back home, he'll destroy you."

"That's the funny thing." She sounded almost sad as she spoke. "He's already destroyed me."

Something was wrong with him. Why did it seem as if he had expected it? He had expected it and he felt nothing about it. Why couldn't he feel something? "What did he do to you?"

"He's turned me into him Riaz." She smiled at him, knowing he didn't particularly care. It was the way things worked in their house. He only cared for their mother and no one cared for her- It was a truth she had gotten used to much too long ago.

"Is that why you tried to kill yourself?"

"I tried to kill myself because I'm scared of myself."

"What did he make you do?" He asked, hating the change in their conversation.

"I wasn't like you." She turned her face towards the window. "I couldn't punch him when he asked me to hit her."

And then he felt his heart splinter into a million different pieces.

...

She stared down at herself as she held the telephone in her hand, waiting for a reply from the other side. She was alone in the house- with only her thoughts and her bruises for company. She had expected nothing less but what he had done- He had surpassed the darkest of her imagination.

He had finished her.

She stared down at the bruises on her chest, standing out in dark contrast against the beige bra that held her heavy breasts within them. She ran her hand lightly over the teeth shaped marks set into her skin as the ringing continued in her ears. She looked down at her toes, barely even surprised by their paleness as she curled them into her feet before pressing her legs even closer to her chest.

"St Jerome's High School. How may I help you?"He sounded young and bright but as he spoke she had barely even realised that she had begun to answer until he had asked her to repeat herself.

"Could I please speak to Ibrahim Domingo?"

"What grade is he in?"

"Grade 12D."

"Unfortunately classes have already begun for the day. Do you think you could phone back a little later?" He said politely.

"No please. It's an emergency."

He considered her answer for only a moment before he spoke again. "Okay, if you'll just hold please."

Please come to the phone.

Please, please come to the phone.

"Hello?"

She didn't want to hear his voice. She wanted to hear her brother's voice- not his.

"Yes?"

"Unfortunately Miss, the grade 12's have gone out today. Would you like to leave him a message?"

"Yes. Tell him Goodbye."

"Uhm," He sounded unsure as he heard her message. "Who may I ask is calling?"

But she had already hung up the phone and walked away.

Nobody.

...

"What did you just say?"

He wanted to have heard wrong. He wanted to have imagined that he had heard her voice in the first place. He wanted it to have never been true and he wanted it to have never happened.

"At first, I refused to hit her. How could I hit her?" She sounded as if she was speaking from a place other than besides her own self. "He would threaten me and he would burn me and sometimes he would hit me too."

She looked at him again, knowing only he would ever truly understand what it was she had felt. "Then one day, she nodded at me and told me that it was okay and so I took the belt in my hand and I hit her with it."

She could still feel it. She could feel the leather as it bit into her skin and the cold buckle as it pressed against her palm when she tightened her fist around it. She could feel the tightening of her muscles as she lifted her arm and she could feel the ripples that shot through her fingers as the thick leather belt began to leave welts in her mother's skin from the force of all her blows.

"He did it again. He asked me to hit her the day I got a 60 for English and then he asked me to hit her the day I lied about going out and eventually he barely had to threaten me to get me to hit her. He didn't need to hit me or burn me or flick his lighter at her shirt. All he had to do was tell me to hit her and I did."

She sounded so normal, so casual as if she were talking about grocery shopping or her homework. But for them- talking about beatings and burns was as normal and casual as grocery shopping and homework. It was just a part of their lives and they had come to live with it as one had come to live with an earache or a sore tooth. Just a dull pain that never truly left but one that they had lived with for as long as they both could remember.

"I started to blame her for it. How could she tell me that it was okay? It was never okay but she told me it was okay. She told me that it was okay to destroy myself at my own hands and she never flinched. Not even once. I just hate her so much sometimes." Her fingers tapped continuously against her thighs- a sure sign that she craved the feeling of a cigarette between her thin, slim hands. "Then I began to enjoy it. I started to like seeing her cowering on the floor, muttering away in her gibberish as she told me she was sorry."

She laughed, unamused. "I felt powerful and for once in my life I felt as if I had control over something." She mused over her situation. She knew what their dad felt as he commanded their attention and their obedience and their respect. He felt powerful. That was why he did it- this unlimited form of control over another human being. Paralysing them in a fear so tight and so gripping that they'd bend to your every wish and he reveled in it. He craved it as she craved the feeling of smoke running deep into her lungs with every deep drag. "Now you really hate me, don't you?" She spat out, bitter at his constant silence. "I beat up Mum for him and not once did she tell me to stop. She's fucking pathetic."

He wanted to cry for her. He wanted to cry for her lost youth and her shredded purity. She had never once been able to look at the world as a child and now- not even at the cusp of adulthood- she had been thrust so heavily into the shoes of an evil man that she didn't know what to do with it. "You sounded just like him."

"He's turned me into him, hasn't he?"

"It's not normal to be like him."

"You don't know anything else besides it."

But he did.

He knew that what Zaheer had done was never normal. He was born and he lived before Claire had ever lost her mind to the devil. He remembered a time when she would hold him to her and swear to him that what his father had done was never normal. It was never a normal thing to be beaten until he could barely walk nor was it normal to see his mother lying on the floor with blood trickling out of her mouth. He knew that it was never normal but Farhana didn't.

"I have a little money." He said softly. "I want you to go home as soon as you're discharged then pack a bag and then you're going to catch a bus to Joburg."

"And what do you expect me to do over there?"

"I want you to live Farhana."

"I'm already living, Riaz." She sounded petulant to her own ears as she muttered out her reply.

"No, you aren't" He scribbled down an address on the edge of the newspaper beside her bed. "Go to this address and ask them to let you stay."

"I don't want to go."

"You have to go. He'll kill you if you stay at home."

"What about Mum?"

"I'll worry about her." He didn't want to tell her the truth. He could try. He could beg her to go with him but the ultimate truth was that without Zaheer, Claire wouldn't know how to exist. He had snatched away every ounce of independence away from her that without him she wouldn't know what to do. She wouldn't know what clothes to wear or what food to cook or when to leave the house. He had controlled every tiniest facet of her life to the extent that she had no life without him. She had forgotten how to be Claire. She had simply forgotten how to be.

And that was the saddest truth of it all...

...

She stared at the bottle of pills in her hand and almost laughed at the irony of using the little white pills to end her life. He loved those pills- he loved taking them before he would step into her room and he loved taking them when he was too exhausted but he wanted to go on.

And on those rare, evil occasions he loved feeding them to her too. She never took it though. She would keep it under her tongue and pretend as if she had swallowed it and when he wasn't looking, she would stow it away beneath her pillow where he would never find it. She had never realised just how bitter it had tasted or how big it really felt as it trudged and easy path down her throat until last night. He had shoved it between her teeth and forced it down her throat with his tongue, never batting an eyelid as she gagged against his mouth. She could feel it lodging itself in the pit of her throat as she tried to hold her breath, attempting to never have to swallow it at all... But she couldn't. Her body had become her own enemy in that moment as she gasped for breath only to have him steal it away from her once again as he pried her lips open with his tongue- sweeping her mouth for any trace of the horrid pill he had fed to her.

No more.

He would never lay one more finger on her.

She looked out at the leaves dangling precariously against their stalks as the harsh summer wind brushed past it without a care pulling along with her the warm grey rains to mourn the death of yet another soul on earth. If that was the last thing she would ever see- she would be happy. She loved that tree and the sunflowers that had once grown beneath its vast shade. It had held memories of opening silent letters and writing words that had been written by her heart and not just her hand. It was her last string connecting her to her once naive hope of happiness...

But happiness was never meant for her and as she looked at the swaying leaves one last time, she smiled.

This was it.

No more.

He would never touch her again...

...

He should have never gone home.

He didn't know why he went but he had to try at least once. But asking her to leave Zaheer was like asking her to leave herself. She couldn't leave because she couldn't be without him and the more he tried to plead with her, the angrier she became and the angrier she became, the more hurtful were her words.

No one lived with a man like that for as long as they did without gaining at least one of his ways and Claire was no different. She was just as susceptible to it as they all were and they could deny it all they want but each of them had a little of Zaheer running through their veins. Riaz had gained his aloofness, Farhana had gained his malice and Claire had gained his ability to hurt with precision and with target knowing just what to say to bring a grown man to his knees...

He looked back at his home one last time, memorising the face brick front and high columns.

He looked back and realised that he still referred to it as home even though he was sure he had never known what a home might truly have felt like. He was leaving home-

And this time, he would never, ever come back.

...

The bus station hummed with afternoon activity. The sounds of the compressed doors could be heard throughout the station as each bus departed for its destination- wherever that may have been. He thought she would come- he was so sure she would have come with him. He didn't know what truly plagued her but his suspicions couldn't have been far off from the truth. But he knew what it felt like to have someone probe him for answers and invade his privacy. He hated it- he hated people thinking it was okay to involve themselves in his business so he had never done it with her. Like him, when she wanted to tell him, she would. He knew that as sure as he knew his own name but demanding answers before she was ready to give them would only hurt her further. Asking her to face up to the truth before she was ready would only destroy her a little more and push her further and further away.

He would wait.

He was so sure she would have wanted to escape just like him. Everything in her face told him that she was tired of the life she was living. She was dying in her home and she needed to be freed. More than anything she needed to be freed but she wasn't coming. Maybe he was too late and she was already past hope. He prayed to God that he wasn't too late. He would have rather been too early and asked that she leave with him before she realised that she needed it more than she needed to breathe. If he was too late, she would have known only too well that she needed to leave but even running would never allow her to escape. She would have become like Claire and she would have lived forgetting who she truly was.

He boarded the bus, praying one last time that she would come. She would realise that there was only one bus leaving for Cape Town at 2 in the afternoon and she would have taken it. He prayed even though he didn't know how to pray. He prayed...

He stepped up to his seat, storing his bag beneath the metal legs beneath him before he sat down. She could still come- there was still time. There were 5 minutes. She still had 5 minutes.

She could go away with him and maybe he didn't have a plan for what they would do and neither would she. And maybe she would leave him to find her own way in Cape Town but she would be away from this life and he would be happy with it.

She had 3 minutes left.

He could make out the driver locking up the luggage compartment on the side of the bus. His grey hat visible through the tinted glass of his window. He had done this for many years- His white face was weathered and old and his black hair had greyed driving that bus to and from and to and from...

She still had 1 minute...

He closed his eyes. He wasn't naive. She wasn't coming.

He was too late. Maybe he was too early but he knew he was just too late...

He prayed one last time- he wasn't sure for what but he prayed for her. He prayed that she would one day find her way back to him and she would find her way back to her happiness but he just prayed that she would be okay.

No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams.

You will go,

We will go together, over the waters of time.

No one else will travel through the shadows with me,

Only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.

He didn't hear it- He didn't hear the silent footsteps coming up beside him or the shuffle of a light back as it was placed neatly beside his. He didn't hear the seat shift beside him nor did he hear her silent breaths as she looked at him. She looked at him and looked at him and willed him to open his eyes and look back at her...

Yet his eyes stayed closed.

But he was there, wasn't he? He was real? He wasn't a dream?

He was real. He had to be. His hair was shining under the glimmer of sunshine and his face was almost aglow with his silent thoughts and prayers. His freckles seemed more prominent and she was sure she would be able to count them all before he opened his eyes to look at her. But he was there.

He was real...

Lovely one, my lovely one,

Your voice, your skin, your nails,

Lovely one, my lovely one,

Your being, your light, your shadow,

Lovely one,

All that is mine, lovely one,

All that is mine, my dear,

When you walk or rest,

When you sing or sleep,

When you suffer or dream,

Always,

When you are near or far,

Always,

You are mine, my lovely one,

Always.

Slowly, ever so slowly... She moved her hand. Released it from the clasp she had on it to run them silently over her lap...

She was shaking. Her fingers were trembling as they moved over the armrest between them and no matter how much she tried, she couldn't stop it. They still trembled and danced and jittered as she moved them shyly towards his hand that was held uselessly beside him.

She touched him lightly... Brushing her fingers lightly over his thumb then the knuckle of his index finger then his middle finger then slowly...

Ever so slowly and gently, she covered his hand with her own and waited for him to open his eyes and look at her.

And only when he felt her palm above his, did he open his eyes. And when he looked at her, flecks of dark green melding into the lighter green of his irises, only then did she truly understand...

He was real. He still saw her... He would always see her.

Always.

When you are near or far,

Always,

You are mine, my lovely one,

Always.

A/N: The poems used in this chapter were:
Clenched Soul
Lovely one
Sonnet Lxxxi

All by Pablo Neruda :)