Redemption

Saturday #2

Anything can go wrong when you choose to take a morning stroll through the deserted townscape during an era robbed of rational sentiments and desires.

We were untouched for the first 30 minutes of the walk. In the dark, we went past two buildings erected prominent among all other fallen concrete lumps. The silhouettes were reminiscent of a pair of ascending angels above the horizon, doomed as a shattered image of a mirage. One was the Heart of the Labyrinth; the other was a place of human incompetence I abandoned a day before. The center of the village was on its approach.

The 'center' lay more toward the island's west end, closer to where the port resided. It was designed as the only means of intercourse with the outside world. Eastward beyond the unclear district borders established within the isle, there lay a gargantuan construction of prime uniqueness. Despite its apparent lack of titles deemed official, inhabitants of East End often called it the Labyrinth.

Nobody ever dared to lay a foot beyond its boundaries, though nobody could specify an exact reason behind such a phenomenon. Yet there was a tale unknown of its origin, whispered among the laypeople – whoever pays even a short visit to its very heart, where the tallest structure in the entire island stood as it surely deteriorated, is doomed to stay there until the end of time. I was unable to testify the authenticity of this statement at the time, because I myself could barely remember the last time I paid much interest to the Labyrinth.

Regardless of its inexplicable infamy, many of the tallest buildings ever constructed here on East End were clustered around those very borders that separated the walls of the Labyrinth from the roads that stretched to the other end of the island. The old and new powers took advantage of these remnants of past glory and achievement, for their inability to create confined them to their predicament caused by their very inclination to destroy. The concentration camp, which I was headed toward, was one of such manipulated structures -- its past benevolent intent exploited or misused during future days by the very beings that swore to 'restore peace and order in the island' though only for a temporary moment. Tools of salvation were being utilized as weapons of mass destruction and subtle processes of killing on the island of East End.

The militias, the criminals, and the vigilantes have forsaken their long-held oaths in an attempt to exorcise a specter they summoned against their will: a phantom hovering over rigid brick walls, named after the utter determination to dominate and survive, spawned by equally desperate reasons, haunting innumerable souls, forcing them to embrace the wild sensations stimulated at the bosom of their hearts. Namely, the desire to live, the resolve to persist, the questions of death, and trust betrayed.

Despite the apparent lack of fillers, the desolation that we roamed upon appeared overwhelming. Street folk were asleep and trapped in their illusionary fantasies, never left a thing behind, populating the atmosphere with filth and loathsomeness scattered across darkened blankets.

In the middle of such barrens, I found myself beholding an inharmoniously wholesome figure, a balloon. Bright pink in its color, its figure seemed even surreal, levitating on top of wretched beings disavowed by wretched fate. The balloon's observed texture seemed as unfitting as its presence in the middle of a long-dead village.

I caressed its rubber surface, still making oddly familiar squeaks whenever my hand was run through. The wind howled loud around its plastic surface, and the balloon screamed through my fingers. It was an answer to the hollow inquiries whispered by the air – I was left robbed of comprehensible answers.

The wreckage embraced my being, and I was alone amidst unheard noises persevering. It created an absolute emptiness – just me, and the rustle – that befits my character.

Lying right next to where the string was tied, I witnessed a child. She was a girl, in such peace and raw as she could be.

Despite being asleep, her unripe smile seemed ever impractical. Down below the bottom levels of the earth where foul recollections flashed before, she was in safety under her mother's arms that have been reduced to mere skin and bones. I left the pink balloon aside from her warm smile. It was something that bestowed me a twisted impression.

Hypocrites, hypocrites, hypocrites, uttered my friend disdainfully. They hide behind their manifest impulse to survive and perpetuate; they will be nothing more than a pathetic assemblage of hypocrites, who deceive, for their own selfish sakes, that the world was still alterable both for the better and the worse – in the end, they shall see how volatile their visions were all along.

They wore masks made out of jade over rusty silver plates. They find pleasure in masquerades and deem the truth filthy. A repulsive interaction, it was – a smile gilded with fabricated innocence. The sin of ignorance, evasion, and irresponsibility was something people normally misjudged as a possibly defendable mistake.

I do not know what else she was able to extract from the absurdity prominent.

Lies are everywhere. Promises are untrustworthy.

I watched the girl disappear over the clouds of darkness, while the balloon still lingered, generating an unfittingly colored mirage or an afterimage that perpetually warned against the rise of an instinctive transgression – a mere tint dropped in the middle of an achromatic ocean, and the truth henceforth arises, amidst such cruel contrast: that the world I inhabit did not deserve such ethereal hues.

More would begin to gather around a single point, as a gigantic flow of meat and flesh without a clear origin. The streams would converge in the end – but tonight, as of the precise moment, chaos and its wrath were asleep.

People's misguided attention always made things easier for everybody. The natural boundaries established along the shoreline were akin to the custodial iron bars of the brothel. Within it, just a little misdirection could change a lot of things. Just a little misdirection -- that was what we encountered.