Abdul breathed a sigh of relief as his presentation ended. He had never been one to enjoy public speaking, but judging from the impressed face of his professor who sat in one of the empty seats in the front row, he had done a good job. There was a round of enthusiastic applause; most of the other students were evidently captivated by what he’d said, barring a few uninterested expressions scattered around the room. He took note of that—he must have really aced this if he had managed to immerse most of his 20-something year old peers in his retelling of a three hundred year old massacre for this boring history class which ran too late into the night. After unplugging his laptop from the black cord that connected it to the digitized whiteboard, which illuminated him from behind amid the darkened room, he returned to his seat with a grin. The anxiety which had weighed itself upon his shoulders only minutes ago had vanished, leaving him feeling as if he’d just taken off a backpack stuffed full of textbooks.

“Hey,” he heard a voice whisper from his left, “good job man.”

Abdul turned and smiled—it was some other freshman like himself, a White guy with curly brown hair named Jake.

“Thanks,” he responded, trying to be meek.

“That Adriansen guy was a really twisted dude,” Jake commented, his eyes widening a little while mentioning that name.

Abdul nodded. It gratified him to hear that someone else was now intrigued by this obscure mass murderer, this rogue Dutchman. White guys like Jake, he reasoned to himself, needed all the more to know about this figure, because they were unrepentantly benefiting from the massacres of men like Adriansen. In fact, was not the wisdom of his teachers true, that America was built on the genocide and slavery of the Other?

As he thought this, he noticed a blond guy behind Jake meet his eyes with a frown; the same guy who, after one particularly heated class discussion, had told Abdul afterwards that while America was “allegedly” built upon those unforgivable sins, he should be willing to admit that his native country, Turkey, could accurately be described that way! The nerve of him! That guy—Ignaas, yes, that was his name—was probably a Nazi anyways.

He thought of continuing this discussion with Jake a little further, not discouraged by the ill feelings of the distant challenger. However, he did not want to disrupt the professor, a gray-haired woman in a blazer who returned to the podium to announce something to the class.

“Well, that was certainly fascinating, Abdul,” she remarked, facing his direction. “The Corlear’s Hook massacre is sadly unknown, as you made sure to mention, even though it practically happened in our backyard,” and here she swiveled her eyes and turned her head this way and that to engage the others present, “—but on that note, I think that is all the time we have for presentations tonight.”

He could sense the palpable tension in the room fall aside; those who had gone up were gratified they had gotten this scary midterm assignment over with, and those who had not were discernibly happy to put off the inevitable for the next class. Abdul, of course, fell into that first category, and marched out of the lecture hall triumphantly, embracing the cool October air which met him outside the hall as if it were his prize. But the celebrating had only just begun; he set his course for his dorm building—there he really could languish in his success, and in the company of his roommates too, who would surely be grateful for any excuse to have a wild time.

Ten minutes, he thought to himself.

Due to the distance of the hall to his dorm, it would take him about that amount of time to get there.

As he walked downhill, Abdul took out his phone and updated his roommates; a refreshing breeze, as if a nudge from nature, seemed to invite him to enjoy the serenity the night offered, but he brushed it off. The path was illuminated by several lamp posts, and the forest to his left sung with the swaying of branches. He was thankful for having brought his coat, and did not hesitate to text his friends that he was on his way after informing of them of how the midterm went. They, after all, had volunteered to be his mock audience that very afternoon for his last minute rehearsal.

He stuffed his phone into his pocket, and kept walking his way down the path. No one else was here; not particularly odd, he thought, considering that on a Friday night like this even the students who did live in the same dorm often wished to spend their time elsewhere before returning to their rooms to crash. But he was different….but surely, like them, he would get to enjoy…

A loud pop stopped Abdul in his tracks; and a whizz of something flew by him. He could sense it, this something which was flung out of the woods, something which he intuitively knew was being flung at him. His hairs stood up as he froze momentarily; he could not think anymore, but only could run.

He ran, and ran, and ran. The darkness of the night and the light of the lamp posts whirled around his eyes, as if he was getting sucked into a vortex of black and white. Despite this, he could hear popping sounds like the first, coming towards him. And they were getting closer.

This unreal chase of something, he knew not what, reached a new height when one of the whizzling things struck out a lamp post. The glass shattered; pieces fell down, and forced Abdul to shield himself. But this attempt was in vain, as he felt his neck pierced by sharp shards.

He gasped; he could not go any further.

Then Abdul felt a fierce hand grab him by the arm, and turned him to face its owner, a tall blond-haired White man who looked as if he’d jumped out of a portal from New Amsterdam. The clothing, the hair, it was…flawless.

This can’t be real, he thought.

But then the impossible happened. The mirage—was it even that?—spoke as he felt the force of sharp blue eyes gaze into his soul with fury, and shouted in a strange accent he had never heard before:

“What devilish lies are these you’ve been telling about me?”

Abdul wanted to say something, but he could not find the power to do so. All that came out was a pathetic stammer, which did nothing to allay the irate figure before him. Time seemed to stop as he was stared into by those eyes, within which he saw something—no, many things all at once.

He saw faces. Faces of men, women, and children—all Dutch settlers. He could recognize them from the paintings and illustrations he’d seen in his history teacher’s presentations about New Netherland. He could see these souls, some quietly somber and others crying out in agony, with houses in flames behind them.

That was the moment he realized he was looking into the eyes of Maryn Adriansen; but that realization did not last long, as he soon felt a searing pain in his chest. Impelled by his anguish to find its source, he looked down and saw a cutlass soaked in his own blood—and then Abdul lost himself and fell dead.