Taken from http://nigelk.org

“Push, twist, pull through. Push, twist, pull through.” 

That was all that went through Cedi’s mind as she frantically knitted. Her dirty blonde, uneven hair was untied and falling over her pale face. Her eyes were sunken deep into her head, her lips chapped, and she didn’t care about the beads of sweat rolling down her face. All she had in her mind was knitting. 

“Push, twist, pull through. Push, twist, pull through.” 

She gripped the knitting needles and yarn so hard that her nails had turned white. Pain throbbed in her lower back from sitting slouched for so long on the stool. There was a small, round table right beside her but she never took notice of it. The pain hardly made her budge. 

So engrossed in knitting was she, that she didn’t hear the door crack open behind her, or her daughter Heidi walking in.

A splitting image of her mother, Heidi was tall, fair and had a pretty, oval face. Hidden under heavy makeup and messy hair, she too, had signs of sleep depravation. She had just returned from school, and as usual, ignored the hunched figure sitting in the living room. 

A hormonal teenager, she was growing more irritated with her mother each day. By night, she wished her mother dead. 

Heidi banged the door shut. 

No response from her knitting mother. 

She threw her bag across the room and walked into the kitchen shaking her head and cursing under her breath. She dreaded the time she had to come home. 

There was no food in the fridge or on the stove. “Of course,” she thought, “when was the last time there was any home-cooked food in this house?”

She found an old packet of milk, almost near expiry and poured some into a saucepan. She lit up the stove and put the pan on. Then she went to rummage for the bottle among the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink. By the time she had found it and washed it, the milk was ready and she poured it into the bottle. 

The bottle in one hand, she strolled out of the kitchen, noticing her paranoid mother from the corner of her eye. She sulked and quickly walked away so as not to get any more infuriated by the sight of her mother. 

Heidi walked into her mother’s bedroom, her room, and then checked all three bathrooms, but she didn’t find what she was searching for. She retraced her steps once more, but what she was looking for was still missing. She went outside. Not there either. 

She came back in and didn’t hesitate to show her anger and impatience, throwing things on the floor in her search. 

Cedi hardly noticed what was going on. “Push, twist, pull through.” That was all that concerned her. 

Heidi checked every nook and corner, and finally decided to try the storage room. Swearing under her breath about how stupid it was of her to search here, she pulled the heavy door open and stood there in the dim light. Her eyes didn’t adjust to the darkness of the air-tight room.

Switching on the lights, she was taken aback by what she saw. There was blood all over the room. The bottom part of walls were filled with small hand prints, and she saw her baby brother’s mangled body sprawled on the floor. He had just started crawling the week before, and now, here he was dead. Murdered! Stabbed to death and disfigured. A waste of young life. 

Without realising, she broke into a panic attack. She stood rooted at the door and couldn’t take her eyes away from her little brother’s body. Yes, she’s thought he was an unnecessary addition to the family. Yes, she thought he only took away her freedom. But she had loved him. He was still her younger brother; her flesh and blood. 

She leaned onto the wall for support, tears of fear and confusion rolling down her cheeks. She knew who had done this. There was only one person who could have done it. 

“This is it,” Heidi said to herself. “I’ve had enough of this. I cannot live with this any longer.”

She walked slowly to the living room, holding a baseball bat. When she could finally get a control on her thoughts, she’d quickly grabbed hold of the first thing that came to her mind. 

Walking up behind her mother, she said, “For better or for worse, Mom, I wouldn’t have this any other way.”

Cedi stopped knitting. A cold chill ran up her spine, and before she knew it, something had struck the back of her head. 

Cedi was thrown off the stool and before she hit the floor, came the next strike. 

Heidi hit her mother with all the force she could muster. Even when Cedi fell on the floor and didn’t move, Heidi couldn’t bring herself to stop. She cried and yelled at the body that used to be her depressed, demented mother. 

Finally, when she stopped, she threw the bat to the side and walked back towards the wall. She needed the support. 

She looked around. The furniture and walls were splattered with her mother’s blood. Her knitting was still in her hands, now red with blood. 

Heidi slowly stood up and walked to the land phone. She punched in some numbers and waited. After three rings, a man answered the phone. 

“Dad, I killed mom.”

I remember the day our village became a national attraction. We had built a bridge - the first in the country - connecting our little picturesque village to the mainland. It was a pleasantly warm February morning. Winter had passed but it wasn’t quite spring yet and it was one of my favourite times of the year. 

I was just ten then. My mom had stopped me from running off with my friends that morning after breakfast, to make me wear my jacket and a hat. “There you go,” she had said, “now you’re ready to go. But wait for us; don’t go running off to the riverbank just yet. Your father will be ready in 5 minutes.”

All the villagers were gathered around a make-shift podium that was erected the day before on the river bank. The bridge was to be grandly opened by the man who undertook most of the funding for the project. He, Uncle Joseph, was the richest man in the village and he was also the first to buy a car two years down the road. People said although he spent a lot of money on the bridge, he made it big and got back all that money and more. 

He was a nice man, always smiling and talking to everyone he sees. Always ready to help anyone in need and more than willing to invest in our village. Everyone liked him. He was even a popular candidate to become the mayor but he rejected the offer saying he didn’t want politics to stain his reputation. I didn’t know what he meant by that back then.

It was like a funfair. There were people handing out free balloons and lollipops to the children gathered there. I was short and couldn’t see much and the waiting was starting to get the better of me. With the lollipop in my mouth, I started looking around and spotted my friends in the crowd. First Johnny, then Henry and William, they were all there. There were even people from the newspapers, wearing their fancy coats and hats, pens and notebooks.

Just when I thought I’ll leave my family to go play with my friends, a man walked onto the podium and announced the opening of the bridge. A sudden doubt crept into my mind. Was there another grand opening being held on the other side of the bridge? Who would be opening it there?

Lost in my thoughts, I couldn’t concentrate on what Uncle Joseph was saying. Something about the construction of the bridge. And before I knew it, the band was playing and Uncle Joseph had cut the ribbon. I couldn’t even see it properly. People started rushing past me to get onto the bridge, just to get a view from the bridge. 

And like that, our village was on the news and our mode of transportation changed overnight. We still loved the boats but the bridge cut down travelling time by 15 minutes. We also didn’t have to wait for the boat to be full anymore. 

As the years went by, I grew up and went off to the city for college. I found a job there after I graduated and then I found the woman of my dreams. She was a city girl, so after our marriage we didn’t come back to my village much. We would only visit during the holidays. The bridge had become part of the village and after Uncle Joseph’s passing, no one was particularly interested to handle the welfare of the bridge. 

When public bus services started, people found out that the bridge had the width to hold only one. As national transportation improved, the villagers started feeling that the bridge we had just wasn’t enough. They wanted a bigger one. But no one was willing to invest in reconstructing it. 

Now, 60 years later, a company which set up it’s office in the village has sponsored a bigger bridge. It won’t be that big a deal now. There are bridges everywhere. There won’t be freebies for the kids or journalists covering the event. The boat business will suffer a huge hit, though. I heard many of them are stopping daily trips and offering their boats up for rental. Recreational activities, they call it now, what used to be a daily task for us back in the day. 

My daughters brought me down to the riverbank today. I’d asked them to, just to see the bridge one last time. It was a mighty exciting day for us in the beginning after all. 

We stood there, watching as the company’s CEO made his speech and cut the ribbon. He was very business-like and didn’t smile like Uncle Joseph did, but the bridge will benefit the people of my village. 

After the opening ceremony, I walked by the old bridge. It was scheduled to be taken down and no one was allowed on it anymore. It was on the verge of collapsing, said the engineers who inspected it. 

I saw a few of my old buddies. We smiled at each other and parted ways.