A Boy with a Sword
- Dec 9, 2019
- 3 min read
by Mileva Anastasiadou
This is a story running backwards. Backwards is the way to comprehension. Things happen forwards, yet causality can only be understood in hindsight.
Alex stands there, holding a knife, his hands covered with blood. He put the knife into his father’s stomach and now his father’s lying on the floor. Alex checks his pulse, only he can’t feel anything. He can’t be sure his father is dead; he’s only twelve for god’s sake. It could be an accident. Alex didn’t mean to stab his father in the stomach. He was hungry and only wanted to cut bread. Only Alex deliberately killed his father. Police are coming to take little Alex along. I killed my father, says Alex, the guilt already overwhelming him. They take his picture, his fingerprints, he has already confessed a murder. They clean his hands, but his hands will be covered with blood forever. No matter what happens next, he will always be the person who took the life of another human being.
*
This is a story running backwards. A story about an act of violence. Examined to find causes, or that point in time when innocence could still be saved.
Father kicks his way into the house. He’s too drunk to find his key. Alex wakes up from the noise. He walks out of his room. Nobody notices him as he crawls into the kitchen and grabs the knife from the table. He hides under the kitchen table and waits for all this to end. He hides, waiting for his parents to stop fighting, so he can eat some bread. From under the table, Alex sees his father grab his mother by the neck. He pushes her onto the chair beside the table and slaps her. Alex can’t see the slap but he can hear it. He hears his mother sobbing, asking for help. Alex knows what a knife can do. It can cut bread. It can kill, once forced into a human body. His father’s stomach is very close to his hand now. He barely hears his mother now, like life is violently taken away from her. He hears her grasping for air, while his father’s hand is around her neck. One movement and the grip will get looser, his mother will breathe. He sits there silently, a boy with a sword, about to attack.
Only now the narrative takes an unexpected turn. Alex can’t kill; he knows killing is wrong. He watches his mother fall off the chair, onto the floor, her eyes fixed on her son, only she can’t see him. Alex’s hands are clean, he’s not covered in blood. The sword he holds tightly is still a harmless kitchen knife. He feels powerless and guilty, clean-handed guilty, like he’s trapped in a dead-end story.
*
This story could go backwards forever, all versions ending with Alex trapped in guilt. No matter how this story unfolds violence will appear, unless dead-ends are somehow crashed and dead-end stories vanish.
Alex didn’t kill his father, but his mother has vanished. It’s because of him, thinks Alex. His father is taken away. Little Alex is now with his aunt. Only he now lives in a different town and goes to a different school. Little Tommy is his new best friend. He’s coming to meet him now. He doesn’t have a kitchen knife in his hand this time. Before Tommy crosses the street, an older boy approaches. He’s grabbing Tommy by the neck. He could be joking, or playful, but Tommy doesn’t seem to have fun. Alex now holds a rock in his hand. Not a kitchen knife, not a sword. This time he sees the slap, the terror in Tommy’s eyes. Alex holds the rock tightly. The older boy stares at him grinning, like saying—you wouldn’t dare—and Alex stares right back, holding the rock, and now the story runs forwards again, like proper stories do, but there’s the past, always the past, always the guilt, the trap of dead-end stories that never end.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist. Her work can be found in many journals, such as the Molotov Cocktail, Jellyfish Review, the Sunlight Press (Best Small Fictions 2019 nominee), Ellipsis Zine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Eastern Iowa Review (Best of the Net 2019 nominee), Litro, Moon Park Review and others.
