Indebted: A Short Story

Insecurity, Loneliness, Greed – wrapped with a bow and ready to go.

TW: Horror Themes

I

Zarah had moved up in life. No more wrapping gifts laced with negative emotions at the chilly back room of Giftz for u & urs. The room that dotted her skin with goosebumps and turned her teeth into a paper shredding machine. She swore that her feet would never step into that puddle of negativity again. She’d moved up in life. Today, she was a customer.

She moved like ribbon, all light and pretty in expensive clothes. Her heart vibrated like a worn-out machine, begging for refurbishment.

There were other grand gift stores in town, but none had the gift wrappings she required.

Zarah pushed the shopping trolley passed shelves she’d once restocked and dusted. The glint from the marble-eyed stuffed animals stalked her. The alphabet-pendant necklaces, dipped in gold and silver, reminded her of the day she elbowed a box of newly arrived necklaces, and the squeals and rattles of broken pendants and an enraged manager. That incident led to her new role in the room behind the curtain.

Each turn of her head indicated former colleagues with sagging eyes and mouths, envious and miserable.

“Hate being here, love their misery,” she whispered. “I might need to come back here every month, their shock is nurturing.”

She paused, turned to her left and said, “I have enough chocolates in my house.” To her right, she hissed then said, “they still haven’t upgraded from these hunger-stricken teddy bears?”

Her heart tumbled when she reached the dolls. Draped in laces, atampa and adire, their smiles feigned the happiness they were created to provide. She shoved her phone into her handbag and slithered so close to the shelf, she could sniff their oud and plastic scent. One of the dolls wore a pink atampa like hers. She picked it. Zarah’s eyes gathered hot liquid. She eyed her trolley and the two items inside it: a scented candle set and an orange mug.

Gifts for her best friend and savior: Ummi. Ummi had given her just enough money for the gifts she’d chosen for herself. Once upon a time, Zarah owned a room of dolls. Once upon a time, Ummi stole three of them and Zarah publicly shamed her in front of their classmates: thirty-two wide-eyed ten-year-olds. An age of innocence, an age of discovering cruelty.

She stared at the end of the hall, at the black curtain that looked incongruous but hid the other wrapping section. She tapped her right foot, strained her neck, her eyes darted from the curtain to the payment till. Ummi, her former minion from primary school, the short thing with only five pairs of school shoes had saved her in adulthood after bumping into each other outside Giftz for u & urs five months ago. Zarah couldn’t pretend her beige uniform with the store’s name written across her chest was a costume worn for fun.

“What happened?” Ummi asked, dangling her silver bejeweled arms and fingers at Zarah.

Zarah’s life’s fortunes reversed without drama. “Married a deadbeat. Parents gone. Divorced the deadbeat. No kids.”

“Heard it,” Ummi snapped her fingers, standing on her toes despite wearing four-inch heels. “You need me.”

Zarah became a doll to Ummi and her perfect family: a dimpled husband, two chubby kids, and a personal secretary that referred to Zarah as, “aww you.”

They gave her a house. They gave her a phone. They stocked the house with food. They gave her enough to tie her to their generosity, but not enough to liberate her from it.

“Take this, buy that,” never, “what do you want?”

It was Ummi’s thirtieth birthday. Her text message and the money she credited into Zarah’s account were strictly for “scented candles, just one set will do okay and a mug.”

Zarah hissed, dropping the doll carelessly. “They’re making me do this” she muttered. She inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, hissed then marched to the curtain.

II

The woman behind the counter belched when Zarah’s head popped in.

“Yes?” she said.

Rude, Zarah thought. The woman didn’t look anything below forty with creases around her ears and grey shadows below her eyes.

“I need to wrap two gifts,” Zarah said.

“Here?”

Zarah marched in with the trolley.

“I used to work here.”

The woman nodded; a strange smile quietly lit her face.

“What?” Zarah asked.

The woman shrugged, and pulled back her black scarf, showing a thumb span of scanty edges.

Zarah whistled and focused on the boxes behind the counter. Five white shelves, holding black cardboard boxes, labeled: insecurity, resentment, guilt, frustration, anxiety, despair, rage, disgust, fear, stress, shame, disappointment.

Zarah pointed at one she’d never seen before: murderous.

“That one?” the woman asked.

Zarah dropped her hand but kept her gaze on the box. She bit her tongue, released it, then whistled. Her eyes still on the murderous box, she said, “insecurity for the scented candles, loneliness for the mug.”

The woman removed a roll of purple wrapping sheet, sparkling with stars, set it on the counter and asked for the candles.

Zarah watched her placing the candles at the center, folding, unfolding, cutting edges.

The woman sighed. “Don’t stare.”

“I hated that too!” Zarah said. She banged her right palm on the counter, and grumbled about an experience with a creepy customer who couldn’t take his eyes off her hands.

“Life improves,” Zarah said. “I promise.”

The woman pulled away from her job, folded her arms and sniggered.

“You’re not better than me. You’re here.”

Zarah scratched her cheeks and rambled apologies. She excused herself, saying, “I’ll be outside, looking around.”

She massaged her arms and said, “still so chilly here.”

Before the curtains smacked her out, she heard the woman saying, “what a mumu.”

Zarah dismissed the comment as jealousy.

She considered a change of wrapping for one of the gifts. It’s been a long time since I saw Ummi’s grape eyes swollen with envy.

III

“What did you get?” Ummi squealed, shifting her brown “so expensive, the waiting list is like 100-years,” tote bag from the floor to the sofa. She wore a silk green dress with a high cowl neck.

Zarah looked down on her clothes, a red fabric, smattered with red palm prints. I’m wearing dirt.

“Do you need me to send the cleaners again?” Ummi asked, sniffing loudly and tearing the living room with condescension.

Zarah strangled her inner voice and its urgings: “slap her.” She lifted the flask and refilled two white teacups inside the tray with hibiscus tea. Not even the sight of green walls could damage her mood. Ummi said it was her favorite color, and changing the paint would mean that Zarah was ungrateful.

They were finally in peace, away from Ummi’s monsters.

“They’re really asleep?” Ummi asked, tapping the gifts.

“Tucked the angels myself. They’re so deep in, maybe keep them here overnight?”

“We spent a fortune on their beds at home,” Ummi said, lifting the blue wrapped gift.

“Wonderful parents you and Fahad are,” Zarah said. She passed a teacup to Ummi who waved it away, eager to unwrap her gifts, as though genuinely puzzled.

She probably doesn’t trust that I followed her instructions.

Ummi unwrapped the mug first. She shivered and said, “are the windows open?”

“Chills from the gift.”

Ummi rolled her eyes and murmured, “you speak like a seventeen-year-old sometimes.” She placed the mug beside the wrapping sheet and pressed her palms on the sheet. “Soft.”

“Mhm,” Zarah said.

Ummi raised the mug and stared at its bottom. She read the small black writing: Made in Nigeria. She nodded, and said, “good to support the country.” She clasped the mug, pressed it to her forehead.

Zarah giggled, covered it with a cough and a yawn for extra protection.

Ummi placed the mug back on the wrapping sheet, then traced shapes with her fingers around the mug.

“I got married to have words around me. Fahad is too consumed by his work and his imported rugs…”

Zarah said, “Huh?”

“He collects rugs with dragon faces.”

“Mhm,” Zarah said.

“I hate him,” Ummi said, “I need him to love me, to obsess over me, to be afraid that I’ll break something without his presence. Can’t I have that?” She pointed at the guest room where her monsters slept, “them too, sometimes. They don’t like me, not as much as they like each other. No one wants me. Even my housemaids can’t stand to watch TV with me. I’m awful?”

The worst, scum, scum, Zarah thought. But she said, “you’ve done so much for me, how can I think that?”

She offered the teacup again to Ummi, who waved it away for the second time.

Zarah pushed the second gift. “Open this!”

Ummi marveled at the striking purple. “I’ve never seen such pretty wrapping sheets before.”

“Former employee secrets,” Zarah said.

“I wish the wrappings could become human and stay with me all the time,” Ummi said.

Ummi took her time with the second gift, using her fingertips to slowly unravel the scented candles. “Two sheets?”

Zarah sat up. Another sheet, reddish orange was inside the purple one. Her heart tossed. What’s that? What emotion? She closed her eyes, trying to retrieve her memories of the colors and their emotions. Nothing.

“How do you feel?”

“Ugly. Disgusting. I’m the last useless person left on earth.”

Zarah relaxed, stretching her legs. Everything is fine. She grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa behind her and propped it under her thighs.

“Fahad hates that I’m so short, I just know it. The twins wish I was taller too. I see the way they look at you, all “oh we wish the tall friend was our mother.””

“They’re six,” Zarah said. “Did you go out today?”

“I stay indoors from 12 to 4pm, I can’t get any darker.”

“You’re lighter than me,” Zarah said.

“Yes. But I’m the ugly dark, the greyish type, you’re the good kind, shiny.”

Zarah cackled. “You’re hilarious.”

Ummi buried her face in her palms and shook with frantic tears. She struggled to talk, as though her lungs were bloated.

“I’m alone and ugly.”

Zarah patted her friend on her back and excused herself. She darted to her bedroom, delirious with happiness. Exhilaration nourished her, she was back in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by toys and soft cushions. She knelt and cried.

“I’m so happy. I don’t remember happiness. I’m so happy.”

She spied the magazine cover she’d hurled last week, clinging to the green wall. Ummi was on the cover, looking like a gorgeous super model with minimal makeup and a tagline that announced: ‘She has it all.’

Zarah heard the bang of the front door and sprang downstairs. She ran outside, just as Ummi’s car screeched out of the compound. The twins were gone too.

IV

Reddish orange? What emotion is that? Zarah thought as she drove to Giftz for u & urs. It was closed. She punched in the code she knew, and it worked.

She zoomed to the curtain and jumped behind the counter. She opened the murderous box, careful not to touch the reddish orange roll inside it. She gasped, dropped the box and scampered out of the store.

She drove to Ummi’s house, blaring the car horn until the security guard with the pointy hat opened the gate. He knew her car gifted to her by Ummi and Fahad. He’d been there, clapping when they handed the keys to her in front of all their household employees, Ummi’s personal assistant, the twins’ private tutor and their post-a-pic social media manager, clicking Zarah’s forced smiles and waving at her to increase the tone of her voice, “darling, gratitude needs to be loud and clear.”

The car Ummi drove rested in the garage, alongside nine others. She dialed her. No one picked up.

The family’s dogs, Daisy and Tom, growled from their opulent green cages behind the house.

She dialed Fahad. He picked up, sounding exhausted.

“OPEN THE DOOR! NOW!” Zarah said.

“Zarah?”

Zarah screamed, her phone crashed on the ground and broke.

They gave me a used phone, didn’t they? she thought for a second.

Zarah looked at the person that called her name, angelic Ummi in a violet abaya.

“Did I forget something?”

“You left without informing me.”

“How kind of you to follow me. Come in.”

“I’ll go home,” Zarah said. An alarm rang in her mind.

“Come. In.”

Ummi switched on the lights of the grand foyer. Zarah squinted. The evil eye paintings whispered horror soundtracks and shoved the metal scent of blood up her nose.

She tiptoed behind Ummi, until they got to one of the living rooms.

Zarah shrieked. Ummi floated to the sofa in front of the empty bookshelf.

Two corpses laid on the floor, covered in wrinkled white cloths, dotted and lined with blood.

Fahad stood over them, not looking scared at all. In fact, he looked at ease in a white kaftan.

“Sannu Zarah,” he said, grabbing a mug from the center table beside the corpses.

“Love this tea,” he said.

Zarah pointed at the bodies. “Who? How?”

“I’m horrendous, all alone, I’ll never be happy again,” Ummi said, stretching her back on the arm rest.

Fahad sighed. To Zarah, he said, “she had an accident,” as though the corpses were new paintings unaligned with his taste. “Tea?” he offered.

“Who? How?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Ummi said. “Zarah, check the pimples on my forehead. Rashes?”

“Ummi! You killed people!” Zarah said. She was still standing, not knowing what else to do.

“Someone will come for them,” Fahad said, sipping his tea. “Life happens.”

Zarah’s tongue swelled, she narrowed her eyes, roving from Ummi’s ‘I’m so ugly and I need love’ posture to Fahad’s ‘this is just another day’ posture.

“Has-this-hap-pened before?” Zarah asked.

“Life happens Zarah,” Fahad said, dropping the mug. “I want more.”

Ummi yawned. “An accident. Oh Fahad, you’re going to marry another wife, aren’t you? I’m so terrible, I don’t blame you. Please, don’t, okay? Please.”

“Where are the kids?” Zarah asked.

“I wish I was a deep sleeper too, but I’m just so useless,” Ummi said.

Fahad eyed his wife, neither comforting her nor affirming her beliefs.

I’m a witness. They’re going to kill me.

Zarah turned and burst out of their sight without her shoes.

V

I did that? No, I didn’t, she mused as she drove back to the house. Just to pick a few things. I don’t need those people or their house. Sick. Sick.

She stumbled into the house with chains wrapped around her legs. In the kitchen – her favorite room because it was green-free, and where she could cook, create and feel ownership – she grabbed the steel kitchen island and screamed.

“Why are you shouting?”

Zarah leapt onto the kitchen island. Its chillness spawned goosebumps as though she was naked.

The owner of the voice switched on the lights, revealing the woman who wrapped Ummi’s gifts. She held a pink uniform, folded and identical to the one on her body.

“Your house was open,” the woman said, squeezing her trousers. “Nice house.”

Zarah cursed under her breath.

The woman tossed the uniform to Zarah. “Wear it, we’re late. Can’t believe they made me your guiding buddy.”

Zarah closed her eyes. “I’m having a nightmare.”

The woman sighed. “Haba? You worked there and had no clue about the rules? At least I was a customer at first, but you WORKED there!”

Zarah stepped down from the kitchen island. I’m dreaming. I’m dying. Where is the angel of death?

“You bought the wrappings. You’re indebted to the store’s factory for life, like all customers – like me.”

“I can’t go back to that store,” Zarah said.

The woman chuckled. “I work in the store for cash. The factory’s where your new life is.”

“Factory?”

“We’ll go with your car. Being late has repercussions.” The woman eyed the kitchen. “Do you need a roommate?”

“This factory, what’s it for?”

Zarah was certain she was in a dream now. She must have dozed off listening to Ummi’s ramblings about how unappealing and lonesome she was.

Did they kill me already? I can’t remember. Did I make them insane? Were they always like that? Did Fahad touch the wrappings too? What will they do about the corpses?

The woman hissed.

“Where do you think the emotions to make the wrappings come from? You and I, and all the messed-up people. We create the wrappings – two tubes, one in each ear, sucking out the blackness in our hearts to create pretty gift wrappings.”

The woman clicked her tongue and tapped her wristwatch.

“You can’t run. They won’t let you.”

The woman rolled her sleeves, revealing grey marks on her skin. “Punishment,” she said.

Zarah believed her. She wore the uniform and drove them back to Giftz for u & urs, where a vibrating black shuttle bus vomiting thick white exhaust gas awaited them.

They sped into the bus. Zarah’s heart burped; her head pounded.

“I didn’t choose the murderous wrapping.”

“You wanted it. Besides, doesn’t matter. I’m here because I wrapped my sister’s gift in panic. Just panic.”

Zarah leaned her head on the window. “Where are we going?”

“The Factory? Underground, below the store’s doll factory.”

Zarah nodded.

“I met my fiancé there. You might get lucky too.”

“How old are you?”

The woman giggled. “Get that all the time. Seventeen, you?”

“I’m moving down in life,” Zarah whispered, closing her eyes and meditating to the sound of all the imprisoned souls around her, breathing, sighing, yawning and sobbing.