Loeka 2022

 ...continued from yesterday

From Loeka's infancy, swearing and abusive language were all she heard from the adults in her household. It was her only mode of communication. Nice words were foreign to her, and to be treated nicely gave her a prickly feeling on her skin. So her introduction to weed at eight years old became the journey to more stimulants to help her get high and lost in a place where responsibilities did not exist. Crime, larceny, and the like became a means to an end. It was money to buy more of what was needed to get high. 

"She's been wide open since she was a child," Neil David thought. "How did I not know her before Tabby? There were so many delicious things we could have done together,"

Neil guided Loeka up the stairs to the back entrance of the office building. Inside, she knew she'd become possessed, and her soul desperately fought for a way out. Any way out. She cried as she had never cried before, begging for mercy from a god she didn't believe in and asking for help from departed family members whose names she could never remember. 

"They all beg," Neil David laughed as he used Loeka's fingertips to brush the stairwell's walls. "It's futility; it's pointless because, in the end, they all belong to me."

~

Opening the office doors, Loeka came upon Ivan, Tiny, Rita, and Tabby gathered around the giant black leather couch where Boy lay on it. Inside Loeka, it hadn't dawned on Neil David right away that Boy was no longer wrapped in various Hawaiian ferns and Ti leaf, nor that the four were no longer chanting and that the monitor was no longer on. Before it all made sense, Boy had already jumped up from the couch and kicked Loeka in the gut. Tabby was right behind him. Loeka gasped, and Tabby stuffed a hand full of Hanapepe salt into the girl's mouth. Boy and Tabby held Loeka's mouth shut, and as Neil David's spirit attempted to escape through the pores of the girl's skin, Ivan, Tiny, and Rita captured it in a large gourd container and immediately sealed it shut. Loeka came around a minute later and, through her thinly veiled consciousness, whispered, "There's a lady in the back parking lot; she doesn't look too good,"

~

Boy found Serah and carried her back up to the office. Ivan, Tiny, and Rita were tending to Loeka in the lobby, helping her decompress and bless and cleanse her while they explained everything. It would take a while for her to comprehend, but when she did, the light of kindness would finally illuminate her life, and she would remain grateful to the three Hawaiian elders who showed her aloha. Then, the gourd with Neil David's spirit in it was given to Kealoha and The Rizal Brothers to take to Kauai, where it would be hidden in a secret cave in Kalalau valley. Afterward, Tabby went with Loeka to the 7-11 next door, where no matter how she tried to explain to her boss why she was gone for more than an hour, she was still fired. "Let me talk to my father," Tabby assured Loeka. "I'm sure he can help find something."

When Serah awoke, she was lying on her couch in her living room. For a second, she wondered if it was all a dream or if she had finally had a mental breakdown. Then, when it all came back to her, the whole experience of being possessed, of watching things happen that she had no control over, and seeing all the horrible things that the spirit of Neil David had done as a living person before he was brutally killed in prison, she began to scream. No, her body was not sexually violated, but her soul was. The screams went on into the deep night until she no longer had a voice to scream with. In the next few days following, she could only come up with one reason for all the madness that now broke her entire being. Boy Napualawa. She had no choice but to kill him; otherwise, she would never regain her sanity.

...join us tomorrow for the conclusion of this story and the conclusion of stories every day for the year 2022.