When a submarine fires a torpedo at a target, everything is calm. It is just an object, streaming intently through the water. All is quiet, and nothing seems to change. That is where they were, Jus and Maarja. A gentle chemical serenade commenced and sweetly charged his efforts to court a girl, Jus already had.
They traveled and saw all the sites they had ignored the year before when they were still in survival mode. It never occurred to them that this was just another distraction. Jus could not discern imminent danger, which was at its highest when life became calm and normal.
Because things seemed to be going so well, they brought visitors from their past. Everything except the core was riding high. Fireworks and fanfare would keep them from ever looking too close. It was like being on a merry-go-round that kept increasing in speed. Lies, lies, lies about how they were actually doing. Jus built a city on materials made of assumption. Correction is on the horizon that you just cannot see.
With intensity, Jus and Maarja loaded more weight upon their shoulders, the cornerstone being Jus and his agreements. As the days progressed, aftershocks began from the torpedo that was yet to hit, like a vinyl record being played backward. Again, Jus was hauled into the village square, bound by his wrists, and spit on and ridiculed. He awoke the next day, covered in sweat and dried blood. Something was wrong. It was all too familiar. He was on a train car that had become detached, increasing speed down a long mountain descent. He had no choices except the one about to be made.
Suddenly, the torpedo hit the wall of their foundation. It rocked the land until daylight. This was it—war, betrayal, embarrassment, disrespect at its purest. No more. No more! Jus had opened his heart, and in return, he was tortured and humiliated. He no longer wanted to be a part of this. Somewhere before the sun rose, he decided: It is done.
With stone-like determination, he abruptly fled and could not be swayed to reconsider. By sundown, he closed his eyes in a new room. Outside that room was a different landscape. Jus' emotions scoured recent years and systematically removed segments from his collective consciousness. That would have been enough, appropriate, and even admirable, but what came next showed that he had learned nothing.
This should have been the reset. The second chance to make well-thought-out decisions and to build on other family relationships. An opportunity to breathe, set goals, and set a solid life course. But Jus' lifelong companion, so slick and cunning, had other ideas. All safety protocols were shut off. He was about to discover what happens when one beats the aggressor, only to let it coerce its way back in.
Outside, it was bright and beautiful. Inside Jus' heart, chemical rationalization continued its powerful metamorphoses. There was never a time that he should have stayed silent, like he should have today, but of course, that is not what he did. Feeling like he had gotten off the merry-go-round, he stumbled through the fairgrounds as enticing vendors whispered in his ear. Honey dripped off their lips as they smiled and begged for his attention. It was a gauntlet he could not survive. Somewhere deep, he had to know that this was a slide into darkness, but he was not strong enough to see it.
To stand back from this moment and zoom out of his timeline, the following year from this point on would play out like a whole decade. Right now, there was a long way to go. Everywhere Jus went, he was the eye of the storm. Previously silent women took hold of him and demanded that he turn his attention to them. Turbulence followed him everywhere as he worked through his day. Logic and reason were not present. He moved through the days in a ninja-like dance so that in the darkness, he could soak in stolen waters with a stranger that he convinced himself would become like fine wine someday.
The dark hours were surreal. They contrasted so much from the daylight that it became clear that merging daylight and dark hours was becoming increasingly impossible. As all of this played out, Maarja called out from her balcony, inviting Jus to a gathering, who was so immersed in his runaway life, pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped it on the ground. It was extreme since he had only recently fought to keep her. This was war for her, and not a word could now be spoken without fire, as Jus slipped further into his chemical darkness.
As the war intensified, Jus knew the life he so naively dreamed of could never exist here. He was still a fool for ever thinking it could happen anyway. He knew what had to happen next. The escape was planned. A house of cards had to be constructed to plan out everything that would need to be done. Cleverly placed materials, facade, misdirection, stealth, camouflage, and not changing the flow of everyday life. During all of this, there was a scent that he could not break free of; it was everywhere, and he had no idea why.
The days became like the last hours before a carefully planned escape from a POW camp. Every word spoken had to be carefully scrutinized before it was spoken. The hours wound down. Jus had no idea who his stranger was. The great illusion he had spun kept anything real from penetrating the room's walls. The last days and nights passed in the arms of a time bomb of infatuation named Annika. The mightiest of reckonings were coming, and Jus could not see it through the chemical lens that engulfed him like an alien parasite. The darkest hours were coming, and there was no way to avoid them.
As the minutes ticked away from his last hour there, Jus did the one thing he would regret forever every day. He opened the boxes of his life and poured his innocence into a dumpster. Thousands of days, chances to revisit those times, love, tears, and an emotional storm—all of it—were discarded, disrespected, and brought to nothing. It was like he was cutting pieces of his own flesh and leaving them behind. He was somehow proud of this rogue decisiveness, but it was just a lie he told himself to justify selling himself to the stranger beside him now. Annika was along for the ride, no matter what happened. She had told the boy that she was running from danger. She did not tell him that she was the danger she was fleeing from.
So fittingly, as the headlights showed on Stella Manor one last time, a cat jumped up on top of the dumpster. It pleaded with Jus with haunting certainty: "You are not abandoning your oppressors; you are abandoning yourself." The parasite won. Jus would soon know what it is like to be dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment