Lilian_Nkunga

"Kelvin... If I leave, Zula will kill everyone," I said in a shaky voice, before breaking down into sobs. I closed my eyes and allowed the tears to flow freely. If I were to leave, then my previous experiences would come to pass.

"What are you saying? You don't have to be a hero! Someone else can do that!" His voice was already rising. "I don't need a hero... I-I need my sister," he pleaded in a small broken voice. 

Hearing his pained voice shattered my bruising heart into a thousand pieces.

"I love you all," I managed to say.

"What? NO!" he screamed but I cut the connection.



***



A ritual has governed Aromes since its existence.

Every fifty years, the first born child of a family has to face Zula and die.

This year, Xena is chosen.

The morning after her eighteenth birthday, she wakes up to meet her home island devoid of all its inhabitants; including her family. She searches everywhere for all the people but she is unable to find them anywhere. The situation is hard for her to comprehend. At first, she thinks its a joke. She hopes its a prank. She refuses to believe that she has been abandoned. Until she finds the first dead body. The dead mutilated body of her father.

Then she starts hearing and seeing things that aren't meant to be. Horrifying screams, a manic creature, a cloaked figure that only comes when she takes off her glasses.

Only then, does she realize that there is no escape and her inevitable death patiently awaits her.

ALONE: Retold

It was like a joke. I felt weird maybe because I thought the struggle would be stronger yet it wasn't. Zula just let me go like that.

I fell to the ground and hugged myself. As I remembered how much pain I had gone through. How I had struggled trying to find out what was going on. At first I thought it was a joke or a prank. I thiught everyone was somewhere safe watching and laughing at me. And then I had thought they were being kidnapped. What was it I didn't think?

I even hurt myslef hoping to wake up from the dream. It was a never ending loop of pain and now —just like that, it was over.

I wanted to cry but no tears left my eyes. I just sat there on the floor in front of my house and I kept rocking myself back and forth. The evil was gun. I could feel it in the air.

Xena: My Mother