short story: leena

 Written by 19 year old Karina. December 2021. 

I feel a gentle nudge on my arm as I am lying down, sleeping. 

Leena

I slowly sit up as she cups her soft hands around my face. Although I cannot see or hear her,

I know it’s her. She rests her forehead on mine and I understand. We have to go.

We walk on metal floors, passing walls of iron to our assigned jobs.

Hundreds of our people surround us as we all hurry to our positions.

Although we don’t have genders, the ones humans call “males”, collect stars in space while the “females” maintain

the spacecraft we live in. That’s what we were meant to do.

Our people were mechanically engineered to be blind, deaf, and mute.

We have the ability to see by sensing. We can sense where someone or something is.

We can’t communicate with one another as we don’t have a language. 

Day by day, we work our assigned job until it’s time to rest. We work, we rest, we gain energy and repeat. 

We weren’t meant to live.

Our bodies are shaped like humans, but we produce no hair, no facial features and no reproductive systems.

We were specifically designed to be incapable of love, forbidden to love another. 

We were bred to work, not reproduce.

But Leena. My sweet Leena. I couldn’t help loving her.

The moment she stood by my side, I knew they messed up with designing me.

Her touch, her love, her embrace. It's something I can’t live without.

She doesn’t even know I named her Leena, because she will always be Leena to me.

As Leena and I are about to separate, she holds my hand.

Her gentle hands curl around mine as we stand facing each other.

There is only a few minutes left before a guard sees us and executes us for our prohibited behavior.

If anyone was seen doing what we were doing, they were executed on the spot. But I don’t care.

This is always the hardest part. Saying goodbye to Leena each day. 

One day, they will exterminate us. We will never know when.

One day, the beings who created us to work for them won’t need us anymore and they will annihilate us all.

There is no escaping, we are all injected with trackers and anyone caught trying to escape will be executed

right at the spot. 

She brings our enlaced hands to her cheek and I feel her take a deep breath. I can feel her  worries about me.

I pull her into an embrace and rest my chin on her head.

 “I’ll be okay,” I say in my head, “We should go.”

I never want to leave. 

---

I finished pulling in the last star. I’ve been in space for a while but now with a loaded pod,

I can head back to the spacecraft.

I get into the craft and suddenly feel the grounds shake violently.

I smell smoke and feel everyone beside me start to run. Terror spikes up my spine. 

Leena 

I run as fast as I can.

My heart is pounding in my ears, my legs shaking with fear, my mouth dry from the smoke as I race down the

iron walls.

I sense her. She’s near. 

I turn a corner and she’s on the ground, arms curled around her stomach as the whole ship malfunctions.

She looks up at me.

“Leena!” I scream in my head, running towards her. The ceiling crashes down, the ship flips over and

the ground cracks between us. Smoke surrounds us as I realize the ship is on fire. I feel extreme heat everywhere,

flames separating me from her. 

“Leena!” I try screaming. The ceiling crashes down on me. 

The world fades black. 

---

Memories of her flashback.

Me caressing her until she falls asleep. 

The feeling of her touch as she tells me everything will be okay. 

The warm feeling in my heart when she smiles at me.

Her shoulders shake with laughter when I do something funny.

Leena

I love you.