Part 2

His eyes rolled. “I had to escape. I couldn’t wait anymore. I couldn’t wait my turn.”

“But it was your turn,” her voice rose fretfully.

“Allegedly,” he sneered. Her brown eyes watered. Her irises turned gold when the sun shone through them.

“Do you really hate us so much?”

“I don’t hate you. I just don’t care anymore.” The words flew out and into the icy air, easily, finally. The words hung in Emile like marionettes on hooks, and he had never let them out, and now they marched with merry good noise.

Once he believed things would move forward, but the gears changed, out of his control. Factory labour shifts caged the mind away from the body, and the mind remained empty, lonely, and incapable of logical thought poisoned by the physical fatigue. The pressure to use his mind while his body screamed in pain, and the inability to achieve simple things tore his mind-machine and his soul apart. The life-engine stuttered, cogs grunted, as the toothless gears refused to shift. He reckoned the delays were not his fault. His impotence blamed something else – bad timing, perhaps.

“I need a change. I need to change. I’ve been chained for so long to this misery-engine, the treadmill built for a trusting idiot. I’m tired. I’m drained of trust, lies, and the hope that one day everything will work out. I have no time left.”

“You are so selfish,” screamed Hellen, and her feet wouldn’t bear the weight of her accusations. With arms wrapped tight around her stomach, she squatted by a concrete pot filled with skulls of frozen, purple cabbages. Snow sat on the skulls; icicles hung from the brittle leaves.

The revolving door behind Hellen spun, and the building disgorged a man in a long green coat carrying a brown leather bag. Not minding them, the man strode to the edge of the road and his gloved hand waved. A cab pulled over, and the man disappeared leaving behind empty, frozen streets.

“I’m sure they will. I’m sure you’ll testify, but I don’t care anymore. I’m shipwrecked, and oceans spread across the horizon, there is infinite space between me and the world. Those people are not a factor. I might not see their long faces ever again, and I don’t care that I won’t. Judas sleeps in my skin, he’s my kin.”

Looking down at her, Emile pulled his coat tighter across his chest.

“What about your mom? What are your parents going to say?” Hellen cried.

“She’s my mother; they are my parents – mine.”

“All our friends back home will say you used me. You used me! You shamed me. I’m so ashamed I couldn’t give what you want.”

“You’ll give it to someone else. I can’t wait for your life to start. You would leave me anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t see it at the beginning, and for that I apologize.”

Hellen wiped her eyes and rose.

They walked, and then she stopped sharp in her tracks. The red granite entrance ran diagonally to the corner of the street, and people in good clothes strode in and out of the cold.

Emile watched a thought roll across Hellen’s face.