Redemption

Friday #3

From the place where I lost the girl for the first time, a fateful nudge led me to the place where burdens could and would keep me sane.

With the steps I took onwards to that definite resolution – or another part of the predestined process – I reached the only barbershop East End has ever seen.

The store had a name too until a Molotov cocktail gifted from an anonymous protester destroyed the tags about a year ago. The shop stood proudly alongside the central avenue, covered in dust and pointless screams. A great place to attract prospective clients, nevertheless the door was usually left locked. The only means of communication through the outside world was through a limited sector of a disk-shaped window. This was because of many reasons, of course, primarily to keep the dwellers of it out of any forthcoming misfortunes, often brought in by the prospective clients themselves.

It was abandoned but with almost everything preserved as it was; the barbershop almost seemed ready to be back on business whenever necessary. If someone ever wanted a haircut, they would not have to contemplate their choices.

But I was not necessarily into perfecting my hairstyle at the moment – my interest lied elsewhere.

Through the windows, I was able to spot a giant cardboard box placed over the doorsill. As practical and empty as it seemed, it seemed movable and not much effort-inducing.

Usually, such boxes contained useful means of survival, that many sought value in.

As far as I remember, it had two accessible entrances noticeable through the window frame. There were three doors in total but the third door had been welded long before my arrival. One of the remaining two led directly to the center of the town and amidst a crowd of lunatic looters, one circular window attached to it. But three wooden planks hammered to its surface hindered its movement. I noticed that the plank was falling off from decay and corrosion. They were easily removed. Another entrance was attached to the left end of the room, leading to a more secretive alleyway that connects the chamber with the west end of East End Harbor.

A familiar scent.

The shop consisted of nothing else worth mentioning besides the entrances and the box – half of a wooden counter, protective shelves and drawers (compromised long before), a horribly pain-invoking plate of wood with four legs attached to its bottom.

I went for the pair of scissors lying on the shelf. It was small and weary, a bit rusty, and I could still see some hair clinging to its blades.

I dug the scissor blade deep through the box's opening, which the secondhand Scotch tape couldn't cover. I pulled it toward my chest with a single attempt to concentrate my power.

In a split second, the box and its seal became abruptly torn apart.

I peeked an eye through the immense gap I just created: I spotted some juice bottles expired by eight and a half days, supposedly edible bread bags, and unsealed half-empty orange jam jars. I concluded that this box was what the smugglers have abandoned, though I undeniably knew that they never leave their merchandise behind like this. But to be perfectly honest, I was starving, and my interest lied elsewhere.

Food. Fortune and life that could keep me physically alive for a bit longer.

I grasped a bag of powdered carbohydrates and pushed it into the back of my tongue.

I relished upon my indisputable gluttony and heaved a long-reserved sigh. Nonetheless, I knew too well that this alone could never leave me satisfied.

I realized there wasn't much that I could see from here. But at the same time, I could see everything that was happening beyond the fragile glass windows on the doors.

People were out there, and I was here. Out there, specks of levitating dust and stinging scent, inconceivable disorder, and manifest desperation were fusing into an amalgamation.

The too-familiar view windows showed me through the pair of sooty doors was always the selfsame prospect I served my eyes with every morning.

Within such calamity they brought themselves into, survival and its meaning became a laughably cruel joke.

Trouble found its way here, considerably less than a minute after.