MacLeod - Part 1

Part 2       Part 3       Part 4       Part 5       Part 6

First Era - Depravity

387 years and 42 days old.

MacLeod knew he couldn't die when he was stabbed in the chest aged 20. He was left to fester in his own pig sty, the knife hilt deep in a maceration of lung and heart.

Hours earlier MacLeod had taunted a man about his wife. "She has tried us all" he sneered, his syllables dancing to the tune of whiskey. The man slowly unveiled a rusty blade, his pride replaced by rage. The other men saw this and decided they wanted no part in it, carrying on with their cards and booze as the man placed the knife in MacLeod's chest. No one flinched as the man dragged MacLeod's lifeless body out of the saloon, and no one stopped him as he lugged the corpse down the street to leave him in the MacLeod pig sty.

It was sundown when MacLeod woke. Reality seemed to have changed since he was last alive. The filth he lay in smelt of raw clay, the air feeling thin as he inhaled through his blood-crusted nostrils. Above him, dusk had washed the sky in hues of red and orange, the clouds soaking in the flame as they floated by. There was no pain, no discomfort as he sat himself up. The dagger was still in his chest, rising and falling with every breath. He got up, dusted himself down and walked back to the saloon, leaving boot prints in the trail he had exsanguinated earlier.

The local paper ran a story on what happened next, the headline sounding something like this: "MACLEOD KILLS HIS OWN KILLER -  REMAINS AT LARGE". Rumours spread about how a dead man with a knife in his heart walked into the saloon. He had quietly approached Mr. Gordon Black, politely saying 'Sorry sir, I believe this is yours'. Accounts differed on what happened next, but apparently the dead man then pulled out the knife embedded in his chest, and swiftly stabbed it into Mr. Black's windpipe. Mr. Black fell to the floor, choking on his own blood. The man sat at the bar and sipped Mr. Black's whisky. No one dared interrupt the man. He only stood up when Mr. Black stopped gurgling, his crunching footsteps echoing in the silence he left behind.

Centuries had passed since his death. MacLeod wandered the Earth. His body was a tapestry of scars; a timeline of swords, bullets, claws and fire. His hands were coarse from centuries of manual labour, but the same calloused palms had written, played and painted masterpieces. Time was his only constant, it's unrelenting advance lay teasingly out of reach. There was no suggestion he had aged; there were no wrinkles to contour his wispy beard, or creases in the tanned skin above his vacuous eyes. He had ceased to have a name, his identity worn out by his sheer existence.

Five lifetimes of living and yet he couldn't feel more empty of life. The futility of it all was nauseating. Every person he had known had lived only for Time to archive their short stint into the landfill of history, alongside billions of others. The individual was just so irrelevant, so dispensable.

MacLeod’s initial response to this was to reject society and embrace depravity. He killed thousands in the wars he took part in. He never cared what or who he fought for, and quite often switched sides mid battle on account of being bored. He raped, pillaged, sacked and burned all in his path whilst almost always completely inebriated. There were no more boundaries - dying on a daily basis was the only way he could challenge his existence. His primal urges were all that remained to define him.

It was during the Japanese Boshin War that MacLeod abandoned warmongering. It was 1868 and he was fighting for the Imperialists. They were battling to overthrow a government which was increasingly lenient to Western powers. The contradiction in a Caucasian man fighting against his own roots troubled the Imperialists, but they were too terrified of him to do anything about it. He stood tall in battle; his tattered samurai garb was held together with a fraying cord. Tethered to it was a sheathed katana. His technique was flawless, his approach methodical, earning him the title ‘White Blade’. This wasn’t because of his ethnicity; it was said the last thing his opponents would see before death was the white flash of light reflecting off his katana as he unsheathed it.

He was challenged by a young foot soldier who was clearly in his first battle. He held a sword as opposed to the rifles rationed to those with experience. His eyes were alight with terror, his sword oscillating as his hands trembled. MacLeod didn’t hesitate to cut him down; he was just another kill. Nothing matters when you're immortal, so nobody mattered to MacLeod. In the absence of an expiry date his life was one without consequence, or so he thought.

The man didn’t die immediately. Despite his severed carotid, he reached into his shirt and pulled out a grainy daguerreotype. He touched it, his fingers smearing it with blood as his arm dropped with his last breath. MacLeod was curious. He picked up the stained photograph.

It was a family portrait. Standing was the dead man. He was in an oversized western style suit. Sat on a wicker chair to his left was a young woman. His hand was perched on her right shoulder. She was dressed in an elaborate kimono, its silk lazily encased her tiny frame, the flowers decorating it were fuzzy in monochrome. On her lap was a chubby infant in a white frock.

It had been centuries since he was last moved by anything, and this image had shaken him like no war ever had. He was fixated on the woman. Each facet of her face (whether it was her eyes, brow, mouth or cheeks) when taken on its own, was bland. Put together, MacLeod saw a snapshot of pure bliss. She emanated a happiness he had never experienced, and one he secretly craved in all his years. It unleashed a new terror inside of him, one that he felt rippling through his veins.

He had just murdered a husband and father, and with that the very happiness he didn’t know he was seeking. She would be joyous no more and it was his fault. It had now dawned on him- the thousands of deaths he was responsible for had now extended to grieving relatives. They never mattered before, but now meant it all.

MacLeod dropped his katana and slowly walked away. He took every gunshot, stabbing and cut in his stride. Pain never stimulated him... but this time he relished, welcomed and internalised it. He had made up his mind - it was time for change. He would have to resurrect happiness through atonement.

Spike

Inspired by Cowboy Bebop and Graham Greene's 'The Heart of the Matter'

I had only been a firefighter for two weeks. Getting the old-timers to take a woman 'newbie' seriously was going to be tough at first, but I knew I'd fit in. I cared little for pleasantries and neither did they. This suited me well; I was trying to get away from my life... not trying to humour it.

We would sit in the ‘rec’ room, each to their own. It felt like limbo; there was this stress of continuous anticipation tempered by a fog of silence. I didn’t mind, and would often waste away the day staring at the ceiling. Time lost its way there, and would only resume when the alarm rang. That only happened occasionally and it was never anything interesting.

Spike, the only other female firefighter, always occupied a bean bag in the corner. She would smoke, her brown eyes glazed over as she read her book. Smoking was prohibited in the station yet Spike seemed an exception to the rule. I had yet to speak to Spike and it seemed neither had the old-timers - but enough about her for now.

One afternoon I was on my back admiring the fraying plaster of the room. A deepening crack meandered its way down the wall, ending abruptly above Spike’s empty bean bag. It looked like a bolt of lightning had just given up. I was wondering where Spike was when the alarm suddenly rang and red lights switched on to bathe the room in crimson – the colour of a ‘significant incident’. My training kicked in, the shrill pulsing knell telling me to get ready for my first proper fire. I instinctively looked at the clock, only to remember it was wrong. It must have been the afternoon, maybe the evening I thought – not that it mattered. We piled into Engine 2, wearing our yellow suits. Ben was driving, and as he got into second gear we lurched into the night. Spike was still nowhere to be found. We could see the fire already in the distance; a silent, stuttering orange glow in the other side of town. Smoke rolled into the sky like a floating river of soot, camouflaged against the emptiness of the night sky.

The house on fire was an old-style bungalow. We were too late to save it; its windows and doors were breathing flames. A crowd had gathered outside, silent in awe of the destructive power in front of them. The crew got to work, setting up the firehoses and the hydrant. As the newbie I was supposed to keep the public safe and proceeded to guide the crowd away from the flames. It was then that I saw Spike.

I didn’t notice her at first. I had fogged up my mask already, and was already smothered by smoke and ash. The flames were hungry for air, sucking in a steady, strong gust. As the storm of smoke and ash dissipated for a moment, the unmistakeable figure of Spike emerged.

She was standing boldly in front of the burning bungalow in her suit. Her helmet and mask were tucked underneath her right arm, her left hand tense by her side in a clenched fist. She emanated this brilliant phosphorescence; her uniform reflecting the raging carnage around her. Her silhouette, although bulky from equipment, was crisp against the fiery backdrop. I remember her standing still like this for at least a minute. All that moved was her red hair, dancing in the wind like a flame. It was only after she turned to look at me that I realised, horrified, what was going on. Her eyes glared at me with a fire of their own, piercing through the ash. It was a look I was well acquainted with, one that I had lived myself- one of ultimate loss, failure and despair. This was her house, and in there, that monstrous inferno, she had a child.

Spike slipped on her mask and helmet. I knew what she was going to do, and I didn’t stop her. Who was I to take away the only thing she had left in this world; that one last ounce of hope? I felt it too, stirring up inside me like it did that day years ago. I didn’t care for the others and their shouting at me to come back. I followed Spike into the heart of darkness, through the wall of fire and ash.

I’d lost sight of Spike immediately and was surrounded by overwhelming orange, its heat palpable through the suit, its roar unrelenting. Smoke boiled around me, mercilessly toying with its prey. I didn’t have long before I would suffocate or burn. I crouched, peering ahead for Spike, holding onto the last embers of hope.

I am told I was in there only a couple of minutes, but it felt like hours. Time had abandoned me once more. My life had lost meaning, and here I was desperate to find it again. I saw in Spike’s despair my own search for being. I coughed, each successive breath harder to tolerate. ‘C’mon Spike’, I thought, my eyes fixed on the doorway ahead.

The flames ahead were suddenly obscured. It was Spike. She stood tall, defiant. The surrounding smoke and flames yielded to her presence. Her helmet was gone, her hair singed and matted to her forehead with ash. She had removed her mask, her face blackened by soot. Her eyes shone cool in the darkness of her face, and tear tracks had painted their way down her cheeks, now dried. In her arms was a bundle, her gas mask held tightly against it.

Our eyes met, and I felt hope searing through my body once again. Spike stumbled towards me, I got up to catch her, and I supported her out of the house. I looked at the bundle; a small baby carefully wrapped in a towel. I smiled as I saw it crying underneath the mask, hungry for life. 

We stepped out into the cold together, watching silently as the flames died under the hoses, knowing that more than one life was saved that day.

"We burned to the ground, left a view to admire

With buildings inside, church of white.

We burned to the ground, left a grave to admire.

And as we reach for the sky, reach the church of white"

('Sunday Smile' - Beirut)

Cardiac Arrest

Patients and their relatives don't have a clear idea what CPR entails. It rarely succeeds and is brutal... this post is an account of how a typical arrest scenario unfolds.

Anton stood in the doorway of his hospital sideroom. He wasn’t sure how he got there, considering he was in bed seconds ago writhing in pain. He knew he was sick, but for whatever reason he was now pain free.

“Anton?” whispered the voice of a nurse behind him. He tried to turn around, mystified by why everything was all of a sudden so slow. He felt his movements were dictated by an inexplicable inertia. With sluggish effort he managed to face his bed.

“How peculiar”, thought Anton. Lying in the bed was Anton himself. There was no mistake about it, that sallow figure lying motionless and silent was himself. It was tucked tightly in bed, its head tilted back and its mouth gaping open. Anton cringed as he saw that a sliver of drool had meandered down the gaunt, jaundiced face onto the pillow.

Arched over it was Eva, the nurse who took care of him. “Antoooooon!” she cooed, pinching the shoulder. Achieving no response, she pulled the covers back and saw it wasn’t breathing. Anton had seen this scenario enough times to realise what was going to happen next and it terrified him. He wanted to step forward to stop Eva pressing the emergency button, but also to slap some life into the body. His legs wouldn’t shift, as though cast to the linoleum floor with lead. He tried to shout, except his mouth wouldn’t open.

On hearing the alarm, the room was flooded by ward nurses and doctors. They rushed in past him. None seemed to acknowledge he was there. Eva had already started chest compressions. She had torn open the pyjama top. Her interlocked hands pulsed on the sternum, as though on a trampoline. Judging by the way the chest sagged asymmetrically with each blow; Anton could tell Eva had broken some ribs already. He winced as Eva leaned over and was putting more effort into her compressions. Another nurse had brought in the crash trolley. Anton could tell this was her first time; she took a step back and anxiously watched the calamity in front of her unfold, a hand over her mouth.

A burly doctor had taken over chest compressions from Eva. Anton could tell he was pushing all his weight into it; each compression now accompanied by a hoarse, grunting wheeze from the body. At first it all looked a shambles. Beeping machines competed for sound with shouting doctors, their voices shrill with adrenaline. The TV was still on, an episode of “Dinner Date” playing. Blood was dripping down an arm, and the unmistakable smell of urine and excrement shrouded the body. The compressions continued, a pinkish froth foamed and crackled at the mouth. A nurse had connected the defibrillator, but the screen wasn’t working.

Yet within seconds, it all changed. Anton could see that this was an organising entropy, chaos on a leash. The medical registrar tinkered with the defibrillator and it worked. She took a step back, her arms folded and her eyes surveying the scene in front of her like an army general. A doctor had pulled down the body’s pyjama trousers, exposing the groin and feeling for a pulse. At the same time, on the other side, a doctor was crouched on the floor inserting a cannula into the hand. Anton was shocked by the size of both syringe and cannula, but could do nothing to stop the doctors simultaneously stabbing with the needles; the syringe filling with crimson and the cannula sliding under the skin. The syringe was quickly handed to another doctor, who ran out of the room to process it.   With the cannula in, the other doctor immediately pushed a syringe full of adrenaline through.

At the head of the bed, the anaesthetist was negotiating the body’s airway. It was only 27 years old, and the anaesthetist knew that he would need to put a breathing tube down. It was difficult; the head was bobbing up and down with each compression and there were plenty of secretions in the mouth. With one hand he tilted the head back, his other hand slid an L-shaped device down the throat. Once wedged in, he tugged upwards, at the same time crouching behind the head and looking into the mouth for a clear view. The airway was barely visible, and he had to tug harder. The metal scraped against the front teeth, and they chipped as they knocked against it. “There it is!” he shouted, a nurse handing him the breathing tube. He slid it in and secured it, connecting it to a green bag and oxygen tubing.

“Pulse and rhythm check!” announced the medical registrar. The compressions stopped. The burly doctor was visibly exhausted, his scrub top a darker shade of blue with sweat. His colleague volunteered to take the next set and put his fingers on the carotid pulse. The anaesthetist squeezed the green bag, the chest rising in response. For the first time, there were seconds of near silence as all eyes were on the defibrillator screen.

“We’re in VF, get back on the chest” announced the medical registrar, her stance unchanged, her voice cool. She turned towards the doctor who had put the cannula in. “Alice, you ok to shock?”, She nods in response and stands by the defibrillator and changes the settings. Compressions started again, the anaesthetist pumping the green bag.

Alice faced the team, her thumb on an orange button. “Charging!” she says, followed shortly by “Off the chest, oxygen off!”. The compressions stopped again, the anaesthetist disconnected the oxygen and stepped away. All was silent except for Dinner Date. Alice looked around and then firmly pressed the orange button.

Anton’s eyes widened as he saw the body pulse, the chest violently wrench forward and drop of its own accord. His own hope for success, for some sort of positive resolution of this barbarity was mirrored in the eyes of the doctors and nurses as they looked at the defibrillator.

“PEA. Back on the chest, adrenaline!” said the medical registrar, her hands now at her hips. Compressions started again, another syringe of adrenaline given. “When was this going to end?” thought Anton, the body in front of him pale and deformed, living only through the efforts of the men and women around it. He was shocked at an almost infinite resolve, their efforts not waning despite the circumstances.

The doctor who had rushed off with the blood test had now returned, running in with a sheet of paper. He gasped for air as he handed the result to the medical registrar who devoured it with her eyes. She read out the results, with particular emphasis on the pH and lactate. It must have been bad, as one of the doctors groaned. “This is it”, thought Anton. “This is when they give up”.

“We carry on” said the medical registrar. “We haven’t identified a reversible cause yet, but it looks like he was under the surgeons with abdominal pain. Let’s give him some fluid stat and get them down here. Sounds like they were worried he had ‘perfed’ and was septic. He’s awaiting a scan”

With that announcement, everything suddenly stopped. It was like a game of musical statues, everything and everyone was static. Even Dinner Date was paused. “What now?!” wondered Anton. 

He stared at the scene in front of him like it was a wax-work display. It was all so intense. This indefinable, grey area between life and death was a human invention. Which side of the line was he falling towards? These tireless men and women seemed intent on pulling him back. For what? Was he worth it?

His life was pretty unremarkable. He struggled to find his place in the world and this haunted him incessantly. He couldn’t justify his existence. It’s not like he ever wished he was dead... it’s just he always thought if death came to him he wouldn’t have minded so much. Life was persistent, never ending and unrelenting and here was a way out on a plate.

Anton looked at the frozen medics in front of him. He liked the medical registrar, her posture oozing in confidence. The doctor doing compressions was leaning over the body, his face contorted with effort. Eva was holding up a bag of fluid, she had managed to put it up even before the registrar had suggested it.  This scenario was more than ‘just another day at the job’ for these people. There was nothing enjoyable about any of this, yet they obviously put in all they could. It didn’t make sense beyond a sense of duty towards the patient, towards saving a life.

Maybe that’s what life was all about; it didn’t necessarily make sense but you did what you could to preserve it. These people literally waded through bodily fluid to try and save his. They obviously valued his life more than he did. This was enough to make him realise what he wanted.

With that thought the present resumed. The chaos of CPR continued. The medical registrar was looking at the defibrillator, “Pulse check! I think we’ve got a change in rhythm”. She was right. The fluid seemed to have done the trick along with the adrenaline; he was now in sinus rhythm. A wave of relief rippled across the room, and manifested in all the faces there. It warmed Anton to see them all relax, the medical registrar putting them at ease by saying “Well done team”. You could tell it didn't usually end like this.

Although compressions had stopped, the team carried on working. The surgical registrar arrived and furnished a plan. The ITU consultant had also arrived and was in conversation with the anaesthetist at the head of the bed. He was still pumping the green bag. Another doctor was putting another cannula in, whilst another anaesthetist had started putting a line into the radial artery. The medical registrar had left and was seated at the nurses’ station documenting. She was talking to a medical student at the same time, explaining that Anton was lucky. He was young and had a reversible cause for his cardiac arrest. The four other cardiac arrests that week had ended differently. Her conversation was interrupted when her bleep went off and she went to answer it.

That was the last thing Anton remembered before waking up in ITU. They had taken the breathing tube out and were cautiously waiting to see how he was going to do. He had been there for one week; a perforated ulcer confirmed on CT Scan was operated on the day after his arrest. 

He didn't care. He was alive and relieved that was the case.

Tahir

Tahir couldn’t blame his unit for leaving him behind. He was injured; the bullet had burrowed deep into his spine. The blood had stopped oozing, but he had now lost all control or feeling of his legs. He winced as he propped himself up, his back against an abandoned car.

It had all gone wrong. They didn’t stand a chance; their morale as low as their ammunition... their exhaustion mirrored in spirit and numbers. The few of them that had escaped the lost battle took Tahir with them, only to leave him when he was slowing them down. They pooled whatever ammunition they had left between them. It amounted to two clips and they left it along with their best AK-47. No words were exchanged, no forgiveness sought and no bitterness expressed. A mutual understanding pervaded the silence as they shook hands. He didn’t dare blink and neither did his comrades, knowing that it was the last time their eyes would meet.

He had grown up in this neighbourhood. It used to host a symphony of security; the birdsong early morning waned into the hustle and bustle of normality. With the area repeatedly torched by suicide bombs, the birds had fled and the people killed. All that remained was an overwhelming, palpable silence. Tahir felt like he was suffocating in it, his ears humming with every heartbeat. The air, in its stillness, had desiccated under the scorching sun. He could taste the death as he gasped in the heat.

The AK-47 felt heavy in his arms. Its sight suddenly evoked an intense jealousy... but also admiration. It was born to do one thing and it had done it well. It knew its place in the world, and its role in it was as straightforward as its barrel. Tahir winced with the pain in his back. He looked around him and couldn’t help but feel irrelevant. His non-descript upbringing, uneventful adolescence was now coming to an end. Some irrelevant person somewhere on an irrelevant TV station would say, “An estimated 30 fighters died today”. He wouldn’t even warrant an accurate number. It saddened him that this was the case, that the world had always ploughed on, relentless. It almost felt like his life was never really his own, his timeline too fast to catch up with, his choices not his to make.

He knew he didn’t have long, the enemy was fast approaching and he hoped that they would end things quickly. They would drag out the inevitable, using false hope as torture. His enemies on death row had the luxury of knowing exactly when and how they were going to die; no doubts or delusions to corrupt a scheduled end.

He was staring into the distance, and realised in his absent mindedness that he was beaming. Maybe it was the thought of his wife that traced his cracked, blood crusted lips into a smile. Layla was pregnant and had refused to tell him the sex of the baby. He knew anyway; she was hoarding all that was pink in the weeks before he volunteered for service. The prospect of having a daughter brought him so much pride; the thought filled him with warmth. He wondered how Layla was coping without him.

It all reminded him of when he first saw her. It was a blazing hot afternoon. The sun sat unobstructed in an empty sky and bleached the earth into phosphorescence. The electricity was out, and so was everyone. Their homes had converted to ovens and the scattered shade outside provided a chance to complain to all the neighbours. Tahir had joined the crowds, a piece of cardboard in his hand to fan himself and those around him.

Amongst the chaos, he heard the sound of children laughing. She was standing in the middle of the street, circled by boys and girls running and jumping. She was stood over them, in her hand a water hose powered by a noisy generator pump. Her thumb dented the outgoing stream and it splayed into a light rain over them. Time slowed, sound ceased and the silence accentuated the beauty that unfolded ahead of him. Her back was to the sun, her silhouette crisp against the blanched, dusty road. It was her hair which he fell in love with first; unruly, jet-black and ample. Under it was an unrestrained smile, her eyes fiery with emotion. As she moved, her plain, modest summer dress swayed nonchalent, her steps graceful and elegant. For a moment she was the only thing that existed...

Tahir's thoughts were interrupted. He could hear the enemy approaching, their foreign mix of dialects recognisable. His finger was on the trigger, his mouth reciting the Shahada and he waited.

It always ends too soon, he thought.

She

Kolya was on his way out when he caught a glimpse of the Man. It wasn’t his lavish attire, bespoke and tailored with taste which caught Kolya’s attention. Nor was it his good looks, bordered by a sharp, angular jaw and topped with an entropic quiff.

What attracted Kolya to this Man in particular was the way he drank. He was sitting next to Bob, whose acrimonious divorce from both wife and job had redefined his life as one of drink and drunkenness. Whilst it was the drink that made Bob drink, cyclically drowning his guilt with glut, the Man drank with purpose. He would stare at the shot in front of him, his expression stern with restrained anger. In one swift, directed motion he would scoop the shot with his fist and pour it down his throat. This ritual would be repeated with each successive drink poured by the bartender, whose pitiful whimpers did nothing to stem the flow of alcohol.

“Hi”, said Kolya, dragging a stool and seating himself by his target. The Man slowly turned to Kolya, the creases along his face accentuated by an expression belying a proud curiosity. Kolya instantly regretted engaging with the Man. The absurdity of the situation had silenced him into ineptitude. He looked anxiously to the bartender, who raised his eyebrows in silent support.

“So you want to know why I’m drinking myself to a stupor?” said the Man, his baritone delivering the words slowly, giving each syllable value. His eyes were fixed on Kolya’s who could see his own reflection swallowed in the empty pupils. Kolya looked away in bewilderment; the intensity of the Man was overwhelming. He hungrily downed another shot before turning to Kolya and began his soliloquy.

“I was sitting by the jukebox over there with my business partners celebrating.” The Man had raised a pointed finger, aiming at a retro-jukebox glowing in the corner. “Our recent success was the reason for our celebration… but it was I who they were toasting. They thought I was a genius, a phenomenon of the business world. With each drink they raised their voices with praise and then indulged their envy with more praise. They satiated their absolute hatred of me with these theatrics, and they revelled in their collective hypocrisy. I absorbed the attention, fuelling an ego I imagined actually existed. We were all guilty of this charade of dishonesty and spite, and our lives defined by it.”     

The Man paused. His staring eyes were now burning with feeling, his emotions volatile with drink. Kolya was taken aback by the Man’s flamboyancy. It was almost like a theatrical performance and it seemed like the alcohol had sharpened it.  He had another swig before continuing.

“I justified a life constructed on lies, apathy and plain boredom. I rejected morality, ethics and even God for this depravity and I flourished in it.” Kolya saw that one corner of the Man’s mouth had twisted into a content nostalgia. His eyes glistened as he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“There comes a moment in every man’s life that defines his existence. The days leading to it are all in preparation... and the days that follow are remnants of its glory. In the midst of our debauchery, ‘She’ walked in. Her awkwardly adorned frame swayed apologetically, as if embarrassed by its own frailty. Her face… although plain… had betrayed a sense of tried and tired innocence, exhausted by the burden of unappreciated purity. There seemed to be an intensity in her eyes… they shone in the depth of her greyscale silhouette as she stood in front of the lights.”

“I don’t know why, but seeing her as I did… it shook me to the core. This façade… this outer shell I had so carefully moulded over the years instantly melted away. I felt exposed and overwhelmed by …shame. I was embarrassed of who I was, what I represented. I was a victim of my own ego’s delusions; I truly believed I was worth something…but underneath the lies…”

His voice trailed off into silence. He was staring ahead into a mirror behind the bar and in a monotone said, “I don’t recognise the man in the mirror. He’s wearing my clothes, but that isn’t me. Why is it that I’ve spent my whole life aspiring to be my own imposter?”

Kolya didn’t know how to react. He slowly looked at his own face in the mirror, the Man’s words echoing in his mind. He developed a sudden revulsion for the reflection. He recognised it as his own, and it was this familiarity that terrified him. He wanted to distance himself from himself, and realised the futility of it all. Those hollow eyes, the gaunt face encasing them were his forever. He panicked… why had it only taken till now to gain insight? Who was the face in the mirror?

The Man smiled as he noticed Kolya’s perturbation. He nodded at the bartender, who proceeded to pour Kolya a drink. Kolya glared at the Man, then at his reflection… then proceeded to gulp the shot in front of him...

(Below is a poem I wrote a while ago along a similar theme)

Chimeric in both Mind and Soul
I sit, my head a mess
Another battle, Mind and Soul commence
My eyes are deafened by darkness
And ears are singing total silence

I sit alone and contemplate
As my heart pumps lead
There is no sound left to hate
Except the voices in my head

I sit, a mere prisoner
Of a war without a goal
But I can't escape my masters
The voices of Mind and Soul

I sit, I listen as the war grinds
To a halt, and so does the pain
Soul triumphs over Mind
As one Waxes, the other Wanes

I sit, a sigh of relief
That it ended this way
But I know that Mind
Will kill Soul someday

The Abyss

Meursault opened his eyes. The sky above was hollow, its infinite blue stained only by the sun. His body was numb, the heat of the desert throbbed below him. He closed his right hand into a fist, gripping the hot, fluid sand that made his bed. His mind was fogged; he couldn’t understand why or where he was. As the minutes passed, his sluggish consciousness attempted to make sense of it all.

He could hear the raging fire. The smell of kerosene fumes masked that of charred meat. It annoyed him, how unsurprising this all seemed to him. The acid taste of this inferno laced his mouth, finally forcing him to sit up.

In front of him lay the mangled carcass of the Airbus A330, alight in a triangular inferno. Trailing the fuselage was a long and straight trench, the result of the airplane’s journey as it hit the ground. It was alight throughout, the kerosene trail a blazing scar in the desert landscape. Smoke billowed from the scene, a top-heavy tower of black leaning with the breeze.  

    

Meursault slowly stood up, his bare feet swallowed by the sand. “Where are my shoes?” he asked himself, shifting his feet in and out of the ground. He remembered taking them off before take-off. The man beside him had praised their brand, said they were ‘durable’. He cursed his luck in losing the shoes, his eyes unblinking at the fire ahead.

Then it hit him.

That man! What happened to him? What about the other passengers?! He looked around, his eyes frantically scanning his surroundings. His stiff legs cycled as he tried to run through the sand, circling the fuselage. His heart was racing and continued to do so when he completed a lap and realised, to his horror, that he was alone.

The adrenaline seared through his body. He began to piece together the events leading to this nightmare. He was overwhelmed. Where? How? Why?!

His flight had taken-off. He had placed his shoes under the seat in front of him. He was watching ’Singin’ in the Rain’. The movie had just begun, and was interrupted when the captain’s voice was suddenly broadcast within the cabin; a high pitched, panicked voice instructing everyone to ‘adopt crash positions’. Without warning the airplane plummeted from a height of 30,000 feet. The movie continued to play.

How long did this descent last? Meursault stared into the line of burning kerosene cut through the dunes. It had felt like an hour, like he was in suspended animation. Gravity had ceased to exist. Passengers were planted to their seats by seatbelts, their arms flailing in the air, snatching at the swinging oxygen masks. Screams drowned out the occasional sob and the rattling chassis responded with creaks and groans, the engines roaring. The man next to Meursault was still. His eyes were clamped shut and his hands gripped the armrests, his knuckles white. He was reciting a prayer to himself. The lady behind him shrieked with every rattle, lamenting the premature end to it all.

As for Meursault, he was silent. He couldn’t explain this lackadaisical sense of apathy. It was almost like he didn’t care for his approaching death. The more he tried to search for some form of emotion, or feeling, he was greeted with emptiness. He looked at the horrified faces of the other passengers, hoping to empathise but without success. He felt there was a void, an abyss which he was standing on the edge of. It felt familiar, like he was balancing on this very precipice his whole life. He would have never dreamt of making the leap before. Now it seemed like the most natural thing to do. Why had such a convoluted sense of liberty appeared now? Why had he accepted his potential non-existence with such ease?

He realised he was a coward. He had lived his whole life in perpetual despair, unsure of his value in the world. He felt like his life was without purpose; a sequence of irrelevant days at the office, the culmination of poor choices. It was an absurd and meaningless existence, yet he persevered. He always hoped life would adopt him for what he was meant to be. This impending doom had suddenly made the choice for him, and as things stood in his life he didn’t seem to mind.   

Meursault’s thoughts were interrupted by a laugh. In amongst the chaos, he had not paid attention to the lady sitting across the aisle from him. She was middle aged, brown haired and wore a smart grey suit. She held a hand over her face, partially covering a smile. She wore headphones and was concentrating on the screen in front of her. She was also watching ‘Singin in the Rain’, and giggled for a second time. It was a dainty laugh, one that would have been infectious in a different setting.

The man next to her was hysterical but she didn’t flinch. Meursault couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The woman must have felt his eyes on her because she slowly turned around and looked at him, a remnant of her laugh still traced on her face. Their eyes locked, and he saw in the infinite darkness of her pupils that very same abyss. His surroundings dissolved around him. It was just the two of them, floating in silent darkness.

Slowly, her smile expanded, her white teeth showing. To Meursault’s horror, she began to laugh. It was a syllabic laugh, each intonation a note in a tremulous cadence. Her dimples were contoured with wrinkles, her eyes gleaming with fire. Terror gripped his heart, and he wanted nothing more than to get away from it all.

The last thing Meursault remembered was that he had unbuckled his seatbelt. He guessed that this was probably what had saved him from the crash and thrown him safely away from the inferno. Was he grateful that he survived? He couldn’t tell. He felt that fate had pulled him out of the abyss and back onto the precipice again. Will he ever have that freedom from responsibility, humanity and most importantly life itself to face his mortality again?   

Mersault was answered by the distant sound of a helicopter. He looked up and saw its incoming silhouette on the horizon. It looked like a fly, floating on a mirage. He felt a tear roll down his cheek as he realised he was to be saved. His irrelevant past washed away, its absurdity replaced with hope for a justified, fruitful future.  Life in its inevitability would always give him a chance, whilst death was a journey of no return. He shuddered at the thought of the laughing woman who had chosen the latter. He walked towards his future, leaving the precipice behind with the memory of that laughter burning in the fuselage. 

The Duel - Part 3/3

(Part 1 - Part 2)

III

“Pechorin, let me explain” said Grushnitsky as he casually threw the pistol aside. “I am not the man you saw twelve hours ago.”

Pechorin was finding it difficult to grasp any feeling, let alone why Grushnitsky just spared his life. Grushnitsky proceeded to tell Pechorin about his transformation, its stimulus and how he had a new thirst for life. He was gesticulating excitedly as he recounted the events since their last meeting, but Pechorin couldn’t hear anything. He had stopped listening ever since Grushnitsky dropped his pistol.

He was furious that a cretin like his brother had managed to shatter him with such ease. His brother had, without effort, exposed the demon within him. This was an insult he could not endure. The loathing of his brother was now insurmountable. He couldn’t bear the thought that this man had found salvation, whilst he was damned to endure the monster within himself.

He felt betrayed. He thought he was ‘important’, but realised the world kept the reality of his insignificance insignificant. “Is this who I am doomed to be?” thought Pechorin, staring intently at the ancient pistol in his hand. He knew he had a choice, but knew that choice was made for him long before.

Grushnitsky had now reached the end of his plea. “I have gone through much today, and have decided to dedicate the rest of my life to rectifying my mistakes, the first of which will be our brotherhood. Brother, do you forgive me?” Pechorin looked up from the pistol.

“No.”

Grushnitsky’s lip twitched, and his face twisted into genuine bewilderment when Pechorin lifted his arm and pointed the pistol at him.

“My turn.” said Pechorin, already assuming the stance of a professional marksman.

“Sir I must object! We don’t know if this pistol is the faulty one or not! Sir I beg you to forgive your brother and leave this madness behind!” interjected Fyodor.

“No. He wanted a duel. I am a man of my word and shall give him one”

Grushnitsky, paled seeing his brother so bloodthirsty and obliged. He placed his hands by his side, and looked at Pechorin with those eyes which tormented him so much.

“I’m sorry it came to this” said Grushnitsky. Pechorin stared at his brother down the barrel of the pistol. He realised that regardless of which pistol he was holding, faulty or not, it would not have made a difference to the outcome at all. Grushnitsky's forlornly expression showed that he too understood this.

“Sorry? I wish I was too, Grusha” said Pechorin, as he pulled the trigger.