Dark Matter | JJK

Epilogue: CYTOKINESIS

Only on the windiest, warmest days does the beach feel welcoming to Petra.

She likes feeling the air slip under the hem of her sundress, likes seeing the light blown clean by the wind, likes sinking her toes under the grains of sand, the tall palm trees that dot the shoreline swaying with the breeze, blue merging into turquoise into green. On summer afternoons that find her here, she moves between the rock boulders like a sailor through the seas. In the beating yellow light, she likes to sit by and watch families scuttling around in bathing suits and sunglasses, building sand castles at safe distances from the waves; and sometimes gulls soar past, white against the sapphire sky overhead. The small, secure weight of the band encircling her ring finger, the tangy smell of saline, and the crystalline brilliance of clouds at noon: these are some of the only times when Petra feels marginally whole.

But on many days, especially the cold ones, life exhausts her. The worsening traffic due to snow piled up on the street sides and the chimney clogging with creosote, her aching joints resisting the pull of sleep every morning she wakes up early to leave for the workplace. Hers is an institution excelling in pharmaceuticals, bringing together scientists from all over the world to head programmes that aim at providing curative, preventive and social medicine to remote regions torn by centuries of war. A noble job, people around her like to say, but that's because they have never had glimpse into the company politics. More so in the last months of the year, when everyone is tired and grousing about bonuses, benefits, overtime. Sometimes, in the bitter cold of winter, late into the dusk, Petra paces under the harsh dazzle of the billboard lights on her way back home and feels the chill in her heart like a disease. She thinks she sees white helicopters whizzing overhead, hears the muffled screams of a man losing his memory. She sees the darkness of a sky without stars and plumes of green descending like the smoke from a bomb blast.

Neon green on the windows, neon green on the roof.

The unpacking of the past is complicated, she thinks. You either hide it in the closet or display it on the mantlepiece for all to see. But hers is different. It consumes her whole heart and body and mind and soul; it isn't something she can peel off of herself like old clothes. She carries it with herself like a second skin. People around her aren't all that different, either. She sees them, survivors collecting survivor stories to fill the gaping holes left behind by shortened lives, to free themselves of the weight of what they've seen and done. If she thinks too much about it, it almost swallows her whole.

But this morning, the sound of laughter pulls her above.

This morning, there is laughter in the waves as they break onto the shore, as the sun caresses the sea. Petra feels it pull her towards the water that gently laps at the sand, feels it call to her, lead her to safety.

The man and the little girl in his arms wear identical pairs of bright yellow crocs. He holds her by the armpits inches over the water, gently swinging her forward at each wave that approaches. Her squeals grow higher in pitch after each swing, toes just barely skimming the salty sea.

Petra's clenched fists relax atop the picnic blanket. The sight calms her, pulls her above the torrent.

As if sensing her, the man turns and finds her gaze like it is second nature, placing the toddler on the sand a good distance away from the sea. Her floral dress flutters in the wind as she finds her balance, doe eyes blinking out the stray hairs that curl in front of her forehead so innocently that Petra has to resist running to her and pushing them back herself. She waits. She will come to her.

Come to her she does, steps small but resolute. She staggers the slightest bit and her father's hands immediately come to hover behind her, a single finger pointing towards the woman who sits watching at a distance. The girl looks up and the smile that overtakes her face is instantaneous, revealing two barely-formed front teeth. She rushes forward as Petra sits on her heels and opens her arms as invitation, heart soaring when the child embraces her in the same way the sea meets the shore.