Jus arrived home in the middle of the night. The expensive ride home seemed more directionless than he thought it would feel. He thought his homecoming emotionally might be more like the one in October, but this was different. Whatever energy in that unique October through December void in the household was gone. It was like infatuation when you're very young; like smoke, it's gone.
The daylight brought more uncertainty. There were plans in the works, none of which he made, and none of which could buy a living. Jus thought he would just walk into an opportunity after working so hard for the last half a year. Instead, a future familiar abandonment ensued.
A quiet summer arrived with an incredible contrast to the last three. It was amazing to Jus how his life could be so different from year to year. A year ago, there was no gravity, and momentous chaos was everything. The previous summer, immense change, desolation, and a new life. Three years back, a significant course change. In the background, the whole time, something was happening. It was so far away that it could only be heard in the background. A storm was mounting in the east.
As the days grew hot but more uncertain, Jus formed an alliance with his would-be assassin. It was more of a bond than he had thought possible. It caused him to aim higher than ever before. It got him noticed, and opportunity finally came. It had been almost a whole year since Jus was firmly employed. The nebulous air of his future also seemed prevalent in his balance with Maarja. It did not interlock as he thought it would. The distraction of new work proved beneficial when it came to avoiding close examination.
As the dog days lumbered along, Jus and Maarja traded in their cul-de-sac friends for a down-on-his-luck med student sentenced to indentured servitude in a land where the sun never set in the summer and never rose in the winter. It was a friendship that Jus would hold onto forever. As this happened, a shot rang out from the east. Like thunderclouds building, eventually releasing their anger upon the land, this one had been building for a decade, escalating three years prior. Band-Aids were placed upon the cracks, but the damage was far too deep. Now, fire, gunpowder, lead, and uranium were the only remedies, and of course, blood.
Like an impression of a figure burned into the ground by an atomic flash, an image of Jus' presence is burned into the floor of that colonial house that no longer sits by the toll bridge on the barrier river. He will never be able to escape it; it will either have engraved him permanently or taken something he can never get back.
When Jus heard the news from the east, there was something different about it. He knew on day three, his life was about to change forever, very personally. In some ways, he had seen this coming his whole life. A recurring nightmare that was more of an abduction. It was a million miles away, but in a strange way he was sure that he was already overtaken.
