Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Bio:       

Kahlil fell in love with writing when he was eight years old. At the time, he was staying in China for seven months with his mom, and he had no one to talk to except her. He relied on books for company and entertainment, and those books cultivated a passion in him for the use of words to create stories. Kahlil currently attends a weekly writing workshop for teenagers in San Francisco. Besides writing, Kahlil has a few other passions. He is a huge fan of Star Wars. He attended two filmmaking workshops over the summer and created his first short film. He is also an actor. For middle school, he attended Oakland School for the Arts with an emphasis in theater. Kahlil has performed with Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, San Francisco Opera, Alter Theater Ensemble, and most recently, he performed the lead role of Jean Valjean in Berkeley Playhouse’s Teenstage production of Les Miserables.

Artist’s Statement:

I’m constantly growing as an artist, and I haven’t quite figured out what kind of artist I am yet. I have a love for putting together multimedia projects that incorporate writing, music, acting and film. My writing is generally inspired by orchestral and choral music. As I listen to musical works repeatedly, I begin to see scenes, and those scenes form the basis of my various writings. My writing consists of multiple genres, including fiction, memoir, screenwriting, playwriting and comedy sketch writing.

My purpose in my writing is to give to the world various and diverse representations of people of color. Right now, it seems that stereotypes of people of color dominate media, and I want to change that dynamic. I am growing and need to get better at writing the way I want to write, and I appreciate anyone who is willing to join me as I work through this process.

          Long ago, there lived a boy named Atreus and his mother. They lived in a mansion miles away from a nearby village. Each day, the boy’s mother would go out to the village to help the townspeople in times of sickness or famine. No one knew how she did it. No one knew how she was able to heal every soul with a mere touch of her fingers. No one knew how she’d come to them victorious against the cruel tides of nature. But then no one knew that she had magic.

          Night after night, she’d come home with another bucket of riches to help sustain their palace of a home. In return, day after day, Atreus would sink deeper into complacency. From dusk to dawn, he’d be left to himself, his thoughts, and his ever changing ideals. He knew their status in the country, despite his mother’s agonized efforts to keep that fact hidden from him. He knew one day, he’d have to lower himself to be the townspeople’s keeper. And he most certainly knew that both he and his mother had magic.

          One day, his mother returned with a new trophy in hand. She moved through the house before making it to the kitchen. She braced herself on the counter that sat in the middle of the room, planting the box squarely at the center of it. Atreus stepped into the kitchen, peering from behind his mother to catch another look at the box. She must’ve heard him come in because when he reached out to take it, he instead felt his mother’s fingers wrapped around his arm.

          “Mom?” He said in confusion.

          “Not now, Atreus.” She responded, a weary expression bedeviling her eyes. Atreus didn’t understand. The only times she was ever this dismissive of him was when she wasn’t around.

          “What? It’s just a box right? What’s the problem.” He said.

          “Please don’t bother me right now. This is just something you’re not ready to deal with.” At this, a small spark of determination was lit in Atreus. He prepared himself for a campaign that he had to win. Then his mother threw out a proposition.

          “Look. If you listen to me, I’ll give you a single cherry from the tree outside.” She said. Atreus glanced beyond the kitchen window, beholding an old and weathered cherry tree. Its trunk was tall and slender, with bright green leaves and vines that had somehow infused themselves into its branches years ago. Now, they’d even come to wind themselves around its dark brown frame. From each branch, hanged a single bright red cherry that only grew more luminescent in the rays of the evening sun. It wasn’t enough.

          “Mom, that tree is boring and ugly.” He said frankly.

          “Honestly, can’t you see it’s dying?” The boy shouted, pointing an accusing finger towards a subdivision of cold and grey branches as they were grimly strangled by their accompanying vines.

          “Listen, I don’t want some slimy old cherry. Please, I just want to know, what’s in the box?!” He begged, reaching for the box still on top of the kitchen counter. But he was unable to lay even a finger on it as his mother held him back. Seeing that her child’s stubborn nature would not allow him to yield, she opted to constrict her son’s persistence the best way she knew how, with magic.

          She used her wand to lift the box thirty feet into the air with the sole intention of sending it to the tallest cupboard in all of the mansion. The box lingered in the air for a second or two, just one centimeter below the ceiling before she slowly guided it into the cupboard where its door slammed shut. But Atreus was a far more clever and cunning child than he’d led his mother to believe. Not even magic would keep him from knowing the secrets of the box. He would not lose.

          In the middle of the night, while the house was still and his mother had already drifted off into her world visions, Atreus snatched her wand from her bed stand. He then made his way back to the kitchen and proceeded to begin his work. Unsure of his ability to keep the box suspended in mid air long enough for him grasp it, he decided instead to forge a chaotic hill of sloppily stowed clothing and clumsily placed furniture all stacked against the kitchen walls leading to the cupboard.

          With her wand, he called an arsenal of wooden dining chairs. Old and burrowed into by age, the shear force of the wand’s might sent them smashing into the kitchen walls, the result of which left a carnage only describable as the debris of a battlefield. He called the piano to add to the cataclysm, a deafening crash erupting from the collision. The golden tendrils from within the shallow depths of the piano’s body sprang out, wrapping around several severed chairlegs that’d logged themselves into the wall, in a crude attempt to construct a sustainable hold on the emerging calamity.

          Atreus continued to add couches from the living room and family room that crushed each other, then boxes and crates from storage rooms that were smashed against those couches upon impact. Even the kitchens own plates, cups and bowls could not escape the wand’s call, several shards of strayed wood and glass fusing with each other as they came raining back down to the surface.

          With subtle haste, he began climbing the textured wooden hilltop, loose books  clattering and pillows plopping on the floor as he used them as stepping stones. He was almost halfway to the cabinet when he grabbed a weathered old boot that hadn’t been so strongly planted within the pile. Without the strength of the heap to hold it in place, the boot was pulled from the hill. With no hands to call any other surface home, his right hand still clutching the boot and his left sustaining a three fingered grip on his mother’s wand, Atreus fell from the halfway climbed mountain of clutter, sprawling in mid air. The wand flew from his grasp, the air sending it twirling out of his view.

          He screamed out in terror, his body rapidly cutting through the long distance between cupboard and cold stone floor. But before his body could collide with the ground, from far beyond, he heard the sound of a voice chanting an incantation new to his ear.

          When the he landed, Atreus was surprised to find his body had come to rest safely upon a bed of air. Immediately, the boy recognized the true nature of his lost grip on the wand when he saw his mother holding it out before him. She’d guided it from his grasp and into her own. As his mother slowly lowered him back down to the floor, hollow cries echoed out into the halls. They both glanced outside the window, only to see the tree’s cherries glowing with a bright red flame as if it were screaming out in fear of what was to come next.

          While Atreus had never come close enough to lay claim to the box, his fall had sent a shockwave through the mass. Subsequently, the shockwave had loosened the box just enough to rattle it free from the cupboard and send it toppling down the hillside of furnishings and other household appliances. He scurried to where it lay, locked under a hard wooden chair and an ornate light blue rocking cradle.

          “No!” His mother cried out, but by the time the word had even reached his ears, it was already too late. Atreus looked inside, puzzled to behold a small golden crystal coated in multiple small blotches of red. His attention was ripped back to his mother as she collapsed to her knees.

          She’d instantly relinquished her wand to the ground, both of her hands clasped around her temple. Suddenly, one of the inky red spots began to sink into the crystal’s golden surface and a theory began to form in Atreus’ mind. He darted to his mother, crystal still in hand. When he reached her, the boy’s heart was consumed in terror,  his growing hypothesis being granted recognition as he gazed into her eyes. In one last moment of letting clarity, she called her wand to her hand. But even the boy could sense it was too late.

          With each dot that sank into the crystal, she saw another drop of crimson growing in her own brown eyes. With every drop that appeared in her eyes, she saw each spell and she cried out in hope of alleviating the crystal’s power being twisted into a coarse profanity. But then, a new throng of words began to pour out from her lips.

          “You stupid,… worthless-” Even as her words were cut off by the blinding pain, Ateus was awe stricken. His own mother, her eyes consumed in red, now spoke words to him he’d once thought unimaginable of her. He knew it was the crystal. He knew it had somehow latched itself to her mind, wrenched out every piece of her true existence. It seemed to be the most logical conclusion for her switch in character. It had to be. But then, perhaps every insult she continued to spit at him was true. The thought couldn’t help but take to the center of his mind. From the destruction of his mother’s soul to the very day he was born, he’d caused nothing but pain to her. He’d been nothing but a selfish burden to her and now, she would pay the price for it.

          “Look at me! I tried to protect you, to spare you from the darkness and now…” The boy could feel his heart crumbling under the weight of her words.

          The last spot submerged itself into the crystal. He dropped his head to her knee, the crystal still in his lap, one spot remaining. He tried to find a word effective enough to express his regret, his desire to repay her, to show his true place as a worthless animal only worthy of begging for everything she’d granted him. But not one word could even reach his vocal cords as he watched the last spot coldly dig itself into the crystal. Whatever small space of greenish-brown that might’ve existed within her eyes had all simply vanished, converted to the twisted cold shadow of her blood. The tree was blaring with screams the boy could only surmise were the songs of spirits long before his time. Then, as if shut off, the voices went silent, just as his mother had gone.

          A chilling dead-eyed stare was all that remained of her. Then another bitter realization struck his heart. If the crystal was truly taking her over, why had she suddenly stopped raging at him? It was because none of what she’d said had come from the crystal. Everything he’d been told had come from the empty vessel that remained before him, her last words revealing her true thought of him. But now, the being that sat in front of him was nothing more than a husk.

          The boy glanced outside the kitchen window. The tree still stood in its exact place, its cherries glowing like condemning eyes in the night’s gloom. But Atreus noted how the tree had begun singing its moaning tune once again. A new glow began to swell from inside the mount of furniture that still stood tall in the middle of all this madness. Somehow, the glow also rang out with the same low cry that still resounded from the tree.

          Slowly, he lifted himself from his mother’s kneeling body and made his way to the pile. With hesitant mourning in his heart, Atreus reach out to grasp whatever might’ve been waiting on the other side, only to recognize that its texture resembled the dry feeling of parchment paper. He pulled it out from the hillside, now seeing that the piece of paper in his hand was a scroll. He unrolled the old and yellow paper and began to read.

          Cracked with age, the scroll mused of the vines that choked the small clump of the cherries, granting Atreus information he could never have known till now. It spoke of the trees fabled psychic abilities, how one drop of its vine-endowed cherry juice could allow one to peer into another’s mind. It was why his mother had offered one to him as tribute in exchange for his compliance. She was offering him a small taste of omniscience. But now, his mother was gone and what did it matter the cherries abilities. They couldn’t bring her back. But maybe he could. Perhaps, if he used one of the cherries to reach into her mind, he could rip out the infestation the crystal had bled into her.

          Triumph raced back into Atreus’ heart as he darted outside through the backdoor to the tree, one golden red cherry dangling from underneath one of its branches. He plucked the cherry from the tree and then raced back to his mother, still suspended in her same position. He knelt beside her, plopped the shining red cherry into his mouth, closed his eyes and everything turned black.

          In her mind, Atreus found a swirl of conflicting voices screaming, billowing out from his ears. Every noise barreled over the other. He heard a frightened voice call out to him, carried on a frigid breeze, a voice that almost sounded like a little girl. The air tasted dry, as if every semblance of life had been drained from the earth. He placed a now trembling hand to the ground, finding sand, then water, then concrete, and just about every material that told him he was no longer in his mother’s mansion.

          Atreus opened his eyes to discover himself in a room, laid to rest on a silken carpet, patterns engraved into every stitch. At the very far end of the room, there was women seated in an old wooden rocking chair and humming a single silver-tongued tune as she rocked back and forth, her hair rich with grey and white. Leaning against the chair, she held a shining gold and black cane, characterized by two emerald horns protruding from its head.

          Peripheral vision stealing his mind back to the world around him, a clear scope of the room he was in came into view again. The room was coated in a cascade of dark red and gold patterns not too far in appearance of the doorway outside. Even the ceiling carried the same streaking coloration. At the rooms end, there sat a fireplace, burning with an amber flame so strong, and yet appeared to be where the woman had focused her eyes.

          They were in a study, embroidered with impossible creatures in cylindrical glass prisons, recipes for dishes utilising ingredients thought unthinkable in books much too old to hold them. There were even the locations to several undiscovered relics and treasures lost to time. It all existed here, within this study. Suddenly, it all made sense.

          The woman’s rocking had stopped, her song along with it, fading away in the eve of his discovery. She pushed herself up from her chair to face him. Getting a clear view of her front, Atreus was astonished by the several scars that racked her face.

          “You’re that thing, aren’t you? Those…red spots in her eyes, that’s what you are right?” A minute of silence hung tempestuous in the air as the two glared at one another from each end of the room.

          “Have you come here to destroy me? You can try, but now this vessel is for nothing other than blood.” She said, small crimson embers flaring out from her eyes. For a moment, the boy thought not to speak back.

          “I implore you to answer.” She said imposingly.

          “I’ve come to save my mom.” He reluctantly replied, reading the situation all too well.

          “I’m sorry, but what have you come to save? There is nothing left of your mother. She is gone.”

          “No, I know she’s still in here. I can feel it!”

          “What you feel is the hopeless longing of a boy who failed his mother. Even now, her last words split your spirits to the bone. Do you see these, child?” She asked as she made her way to the creatures and relics strewn about the study walls.

          “These are what she could have unearthed, solved, achieved had you not opened that box oh so many weeks ago.”

          “Weeks? I’ve only been here for a few hours. Surely you…”

          “Time works differently here, boy. An hour spent here is a day spent there.” She said, tossing her right arm over her head. An enormous clear crystal ball crashed down through the ceiling, sending scores of splintered red and gold wood raining downward, vanishing as they reached the surface of the floorboards, the boy and the woman’s skin. Through the crystal ball, Atreus could just barely make out the outline of himself resting safely in an old cottage bed, then several storage manikins tending to his every need.

          “What are those? Where did they come from?” He asked, almost mesmerized by the manikins and each graceful movement made. The manikins bared no facial featuring. Small metaline spheres were used to join their heads to their bodies as well as their shoulders, arms and fingers. However, they did not possess legs, only four wheels and a straightened stem that traced its way back to the torso. Their heads, bodies, arms, stems, even the cages that held their wheels in place were all made of a bright polished wood.

          “They were a precautionary measure for situations exactly like this. Just because we’re trapped inside this…hell doesn’t mean we don’t still need food and water.” The woman explained, keeping her eyes trained on the picture above them. The image began to flicker and fade as another one came into view. It was of a woman, chained down to her bed, but otherwise, visibly experiencing as much of the same treatment as he was in the last image.

          “Is that mom? What are they doing?”

          “What they’d been constructed to do. They’ve recognized that she is the one housing me and so, they’ve done exactly as she would have. They’re quarantining the contaminated subject the best way they know how. They don’t know she’s already gone.”

          “You know what I think? I think the mere fact that they’re doing it at all proves that she’s still in here somewhere. I just need to get her out!” The boy cried. Only then did the woman focus her head in his direction once again.

          “I hope you know I can’t let you do that. If you’re truly so bold as to save her, then let’s say you and me play a game.”

          “Fine then. And when, I beat it, you’d better be gone.” The woman’s eyes beamed as her body convulsed with laughter.

          “Oh, you are funny. When.” The woman said. Then she snapped her fingers and the floor beneath him collapsed under his weight, sending him falling once again. He connected with the ground in a spectacular thud, stunning him for a moment. The room he was in was dark, seemingly constructed from within a black and blue cave. But it didn’t take long for him to discover the cage that sat right before him, or the voice that came from it.

          “Atreus!” The boy’s mother called out.

          “Mom! Are you ok?” He responded. A moment passed before the question really reached her.

          “Oh yes, honey, I’m completely fine. That’s why I’m stuck in a cage!” She annoyedly retorted.

          “Wait no- I mean-” He began frantically chirping when she cut him off.

          “I know what you mean. Yes, physically, if you can even call it that here,…” She said under her breath.

          “I’m fine.”

          “Who’s that lady, how do I get you out?” He said quickly.

          “Well I don’t know who she is, so sorry about your first question. But she locked me in her with a key, so something tells me you’d better get looking for that.” Before he began his search, he took a mental photo of the lock in front of him.

          “Right you are my dear!” The woman said, materializing from behind Atreus.

          “I think we’ve had enough family bonding by now, don’t you? Time to play a little game.” She said, outstretching her arm. Atreus began flying backwards, his shoulder landing in her palm.

          “Wait! Wai-” But before he could even finish the last word, he was stolen away to yet another reality. She sent him stumbling forward into the middle of this brightly lit gold and brown room with a powerful shove. He only managed to stop himself from tumbling to the floor once he recognized the wall of keys lined in front of his eyes. Hundreds, maybe even a thousand keys, constructed in different shapes and sizes sat waiting for him to choose one of them.

          “I am hated and loved by those who can’t use me. There are songs of me. There are books of me. I am real here, not so much in other places. In other worlds, I do not exist, yet give life to fantasy in my absence. What am I?” She said, reciting a piece of paper resting safely on an old wooden table to his left.

          “What?” Atreus said in confusion.

          “Here you go boy. You wanted a chance to save your mother, here it is. Choose wisely though. You have only five minutes and you only get one shot. So you better not miss. Timer starts now.” Immediately, the boy began inspecting keys, tossing aside any that couldn’t possibly have been the key. But still, despite his scrutiny, he was simply unable to find a single solitary shape that would fit the lock in his memory.

          “Would you like a picture of the lock so you don’t forget what it looks like?” The woman said in possibly her most sarcastic tone.

          “No!” He shouted, doing his best to insist her absence while also not insulting her. No matter how irritating she was, he didn’t exactly feel like igniting her anger.

          “What’s the answer to the riddle, hon? I promise you you’ll have a much easier time finding the key that way.”

          “The riddle?” He said, holding himself in silence for a moment. He then stepped to the table to read its paper for himself.

          “I am hated and loved by those who can’t use me. There are songs of me. There are books of me. I am real here, not so much in other places. In other worlds, I do not exist, yet give life to fantasy in my absence. What am I?” He paused.

          “Use what your mother would use when all hope was lost.” A voice in the back of his mind told him.

          “I am… I am… Magic!… A wand, I need a wand! That’s the key!” He shouted at the top of his lungs in revelation.

          “So where is it?” The woman yelled in return, an invisible hand throwing him to the right-side wall of the room by raising her arms. Atreus cried out in anguish as he landed back-first against the wall with enough force to leave a boy-shaped dent in its golden surface. But still, his brain leaped in defiance for a sign of some sort of decorated dowel. But he couldn’t find it.

          “There’s nothing here, nothing except for that wall of key, the riddle, and… THE TABLE!” He screamed again, the volume of his declaration seemingly being enough to disrupt her hold over him as he focused his sights on a chair leg that stood out from all others. The invisible hand pressing him against the wall vanished and he was brought to rest on his knees. The woman screamed in anger, the invisible hand trying to return, trying to dominate his will.

          “So this it, really? You honestly think that after all you’ve done, that what? You’ll be forgiven? You are the exact reason why any of this is happening!” The woman chastised him.

          “I know. I know the reason why my mom is in here. That’s why I’m trying to make it right.”

          “Trying and failing obviously!” She continued to berate him. But for as much abuse as she threw at him, the unmistakable sense of fear seemed to lace itself in every word she spoke. She was afraid. He turned off his voice, turned off his desire to defend himself, and dedicated himself to making his way to the table. Every blow of force she made against him only gave more weight to each step he took. It was only when he was inches away that the pushes became pulls. With his last ounce of strength, he threw himself to the table, his hand somehow finding a hold over the wand’s handle.

          “Thruma!” He ripped it from the chair and sent a blast of yellow lighting barreling towards the woman. The lightning forced the woman’s knees to buckle and she collapsed to the floor. He pushed himself to his feet, flung his wand-arm to the air, and shut his eyes. When he came to, he was back in that same, black and blue cave of a room.

          “Well that was quick.” His mother said. He caught glance of her cage’s lock just fast enough to raise the wand to snap it in half. The door opened and he embraced her.

          “I knew you could do it.” She said.

          “I knew too.” He jokingly answered.

          “Oh jeez! You love each other, we get it already!” A voice said from behind the both of them. But there wasn’t an ounce of fun left in Atreus.

          “I beat your game. Now let us out!” He demanded.

          “Well you beat my game. So you can go.” She remarked, a ball of light appearing in her hand. Within the span of maybe a millisecond or less, the light struck Atreus in his midsection. He lingered for a moment, still, unable to speak. Then his body disintegrated into ashes.

          “You on the other hand…”

          “What have you done?” His mother screamed.

          “Calm down, he’s not dead, I just woke him up. Honestly, you call yourself The Mother. As if that means anything here. No. Here, you are Sela Darvin.” The woman told her.

          “He defeated my trials, you haven’t.” Sela recoiled from her moment of torture to find in herself a composition she’d previously lost.

          “So… Shall we begin?” The woman said, presenting an arm for Sela to grasp.

          “Yes.” She said, clasping the woman’s hand with her own and they were gone.