Redemption

Saturday #4

It belonged to a man. Most likely middle-aged, it didn't have much hair left on his top – the few remaining ones were overlaid by a flow of congealed blood. There was a giant chink on the back; blood was still coming out from the ruins. The liquid felt oddly fresh.

He was almost as old as my father when he bid farewell – and he also looked oddly familiar.

In time, I realized the truth that my friend shouldn't have. The man who stood atop the mountain's mighty face had discolored skin and awfully distorted lips. He, now, was at his most enervated appearance, to say the least; the head, or the man it used to be, was the one who gave me the knife the day before. The one who made me promise.

My friend lifted the head up to see how cleanly the cut has been made.

I don't bury heads, my friend commented. It seemed almost hideous how truthful and genuine she sounded.

She considered cherishing its presence for a little longer, but I told her that even if we ensured the head is kept out of people's sight, the scent would eventually become unstoppable.

People were obtuse and ignorant – especially when the nightly eyes were prominent. They were often busy being trapped, haunted by deceased nightmares, amidst the moon beaming from the pinnacle. But certainly, such horrendous stench would at least begin to disrupt the wrinkles of their dreams – they'd be conscious again, freed from the slumber, stained by unfavorable curiosity.

I told her to leave the head, but she was reluctant.

A head buried under frozen mounds of putrid sand. One who digs it up to let it see the light once again, will in one way or another, inevitably encounter unnecessary misjudgments. And my bet is, that is the last thing you ever want to happen.

Her attention was directed elsewhere – she behaved needlessly stubborn as a result.

These people wouldn't care. She tried to protest, and I tried to persuade.

If anything goes wrong, we could be accused of something that I've never done, the tolls for our discrete mistakes justly paid off... And I do not want that to happen. Neither do you.

She lingered around the small pit we've just created. But eventually, she'd have to make a decision. She let the head go of her hands, and I uttered a silent word of condolence.

But questions soon arose that seemed bothersome enough to make me feel sick. Only if I had the time to ask.

Sand consumed the head halfway, and I heard a voice – the voice I've seen, experienced, understood, anticipated before I was given a chance to hear it. It was a calling from behind the cell door, soft and blunt echoes ominously drawing closer into a single point.

"Is somebody out there?"

I ignored the call – I was frozen.

"I heard it. Did you lose something?" An oddly uplifted tone.

I believed people would choose to remain a stranger, grounded upon groundless beliefs and the concurrent overflow of a barbaric nature. Perhaps I had mistaken since there clearly was a counterexample.

"I don't know if you're really there, but...." The voice tenderly quivered. "is someone – anyone – out there...? Can you hear me?"

The speaker, judging by the volume in which I perceived, was inside the door, half-opened, a few good meters apart from where the box was.

The pit was not yet fully covered. If they somehow choose to open or simply catch a quick glimpse through that chink in the door, they would notice an unsightly secret and without much effort relate my friend's horrifyingly but also very conveniently filthy hands with what they see. Even if I managed to conceal the head before it gets too late, its reek wasn't negligible, and neither was the presence of a suspicious cardboard box lying arbi.0trarily next to a cell at a brothel. My futile attempt to make sense of this absurd situation would only prove itself to be miserably laughable.