Within the Sins

١٦ White Excessive

لما بشوفك بشعل نار.

Shoving his apartment door open, Yazid runs his thumb over his palm, eyes glued on the wound at hand. With blood gushing out the cut, he rushes to his bed, falling right beside it and landing on the wooden-colored tiles. He sits up and rests his head against the mattress, still on the tiles. He grunts at the pain of the deep, red slit.

It was an accident. It was a total accident, and the worst part of it was that it was a game of dominos.

He does not have any alcohol or bandage that he can wrap his wound with, so he opts for a small cloth from the kitchen drawer. Still breathing heavily, he rushes to his bedroom bathroom, pushing the door open with his shoulder. A sudden contraction passes through his leg muscles, causing him to grunt in pain. He had been clean for several weeks now, but that had come with a significant cost, so he treated himself just a few days ago.

He is not quite sure if these current symptoms, especially the sudden leg pain, are ones of withdrawal or anxiety. Sometimes, he experiences muscle spasms, nausea, and abdominal pain. Other times, it is heart palpitations, sweaty temples, and fidgets, though he falls paralyzed every here and there for an hour or two. The paralysis is the worst: it is random, uncontrollable, and spreads through the mind too. He can sit and stare at a wall with a blank mind for a very long time, or his legs can give away, causing him to sit in place and not move for a while.

Although he feels as though he will throw up his lunch, Yazid is not exactly sure if it is because of this panic attack or withdrawal symptoms. Chills run down his spine.

That did not just happen. In fact, what just happened is a lie.

Nader and Majed are not dead, and he is not responsible for their deaths.

It happened so quickly—everything is just a blur right now.

Running his fingers through his hair, he wonders how they even died. What did he do? No, what did they do to die?

It was not his fault, God damn it!

Yazid stares off into the distance, the pain in his palm fading from there. He does not notice his wound dripping blood onto his jeans. He truly does not know how things escalated with Nader and Majed just now; all he knows is that he had to do what he had to do.

And what he had to do was stop them, along with Raneem.

Yazid had been reading a fictional book in which a son kills his father, and the story just randomly came to mind. He liked the story. He liked it a lot, and he did not even know why.

But he was not thinking of killing his father—of course not.

The son kills his father in the name of self-defense, luring his father to the rooftop, where he pushes him off the rails. His father had raped his son. The child gained justice in the best way possible—at least he did in Yazid's eyes.

Again, he was not sure why he came over the boys' apartment in the first place, nor did he know what the end result would be. All he knew is that he somehow managed to have Nader and Majed on the rooftop with Raneem at gunpoint. Best of all, he used Raneem's pistol.

He did not shoot anyone. Of course not; he did not have it in him to kill anyone, but he did have it in him to corner a person on a rooftop railing, leading her to slip and trip and fall off the building. One man reached to help her and accidently fell off, and his lover decided that life would be unbearable with the other half of his soul flying in the air.

Yazid's lunch runs back up his throat, but he is too weak to run to the toilet. He ends up releasing the green matter on the tiles. Coughing, he whimpers at the fire in his palm; why is it burning? He did not even put any alcohol on it!