The wait was a little more bearable that way. I was one of the first at the check-in desk. I walked through passport control and the airport to my gate without any trouble, positioning myself to the side of everyone else. I used cough drops to combat the fire in my throat, and popped Paracetamol and Zyrtec like candy in the hopes of stopping the runny nose and sneezing. I’d started feeling a lot more chest pains; the plague must have found its way to my lungs. There was nothing I could do about that, though.
I waited for the other passengers to get on before boarding the plane myself.
I got to my seat and realised with horror that I was seated next to a young mother with a little girl, roughly Ruby’s age. They both smiled at me and I felt a jolt in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t do it again: be responsible for the death of these two innocent people, especially when the girl reminded me of my own daughter.
The woman quickly picked up her handbag from the empty seat. “Are you sitting next to us?”
I looked at the ticket clutched in my hand. Even though the seat numbers matched, I told her: “Sorry, I’ve made a mistake.”
I’ve done enough damage already.
I gave them an apologetic smile and went to the far end of the plane, taking a window seat in the last row where the seats around me were empty.
Mark
I would have been happy to postpone my quest until tomorrow if it meant spending time with Connie, but since she’d turned me down, there was no point in changing my plans. It wasn’t a big event, with only a select number of people were involved. I had to go see them. I was pushed by something so intense that I had no hopes of resisting.
Revenge.
How many times in my life had I wished people would put aside their feelings of personal injustice and hate and choose forgiveness and move on from the suffering that someone else inflicted upon them? But no matter how much I understood the logic of striving for peace, somewhere deep in my heart, I understood these people’s motivation only too well. They wanted the people who made them suffer to get a taste of their own medicine.
I wondered if there ever was a person on this planet who could resist this powerful urge to take revenge for one’s hardships. I’d tried to tell myself that I wouldn’t give in to hating my parents for allowing my innocence to be ripped away so that they could get more drugs. I’d spent such a long time lying to myself, but in the end, the hate that exploded within me was all-consuming.
My mother and father were to be my first port of call. After running away from home age twelve, I tried to forget all about them, but as soon as I’d joined the Association and The Collective and new possibilities opened up to me, something made me keep track of where they lived. Have I subconsciously been planning this all these years? That as soon as I’m infected, I’ll come knocking at their door? Probably, I admitted to myself now.
By some miracle, neither of them ended up in prison or rehab. Given that they’d only moved into this broken-down shack about a month ago, the owner probably hasn’t had time to realise to have made a mistake. There was reasonable hope that they’d still be there.
The unwritten rule of my childhood was that if there is someone knocking or ringing the main door bell, do not answer. It was most likely either a postman, an annoying neighbour, or a landlord seeking unpaid rent. We had never ruled out the police or social services either.
Dealers, fellow junkies and clients always used the back door.
That’s where I headed too. I knocked, using the code I remembered from before, the four-note melody burnt into my memory forever. For my parents it meant relief, and for me…
The door opened almost instantly. I thought that the code would have changed, but old habits die hard.
A skeletal woman appeared at the door, her hair oily and her eyes set deep within her skull. She was missing quite a few teeth, and she had acquired a large number of scars and sores on her arms and legs. My mother looked like a walking corpse.
She looked at me quizzically. I probably seemed too put-together to be one of her mates. “What?”
“It’s me…” I managed to say, and wanted to add Mum, but that word has never been easy to voice. It was too cuddly, full of family affection which I never experienced.
She frowned and pursed her lips which made the skin around them wrinkle. “Who’s me?”
“For God’s sake, mother. Mark!” I uttered through clenched teeth. The last time you saw me I was twelve, it has been a while, but my basic features are the same, dammit! “Mark, your son!”
“You’re not my son,” she laughed it off as a joke and waved her hand. She turned around and plodded through the hallway into the house.
She left the door open which I took as an invitation. My curiosity was bordering on morbid. What did she mean that I’m not her son?
“Marky boy is playing in his room,” she said in the kind of voice mothers usually use with their children. Loving.
I stood frozen in my tracks in their stuffy living room. Two dirty mattresses with torn blankets were scattered on the floor, there was no other furniture there. A man was lying on one of the mattresses and was as haggard as my mother. He was chewing on the inside of his cheek while absentmindedly scratching the sores on his forearm.
My father clearly didn’t recognize me either. Mother was lost in the past, perhaps back in the days when her drug addiction
