Friday 8 April 2016

SHORT STORY - II



                                        HOPE



"We are going to die tomorrow, they will cut our tongue, chop our fingers and burn us alive!.Are you not afraid Jonathan?", I asked.

 He looked at me with his usual calm gaze from across his cell and said " They will save us Albert. King Rand will not let his best spies die so easily. Me, I am at-least replaceable but you are invaluable to him. No one in the whole of kingdom can match your intelligence Albert. He will have us saved, I know".

"Its only a matter of few hours now Jonathan. I don't see it happening. If they had to come they would have by now. We must try to escape or should die by ourselves before the dawn. I don't want to have a painful death."

"We can't escape, the guards are everywhere, the keys are with the chief guard himself. I can't see any way to escape but I know we will be saved Albert. King Rand's men will save us. Don't lose hope. Don't talk of killing yourself. Suicide is for cowards, Albert. Don't be a coward", pleaded Jonathan.

"Suicide is not cowardly my friend. Its just another choice amongst many choices. We humans have unlimited freedom, unlimited choices. To think what we want, to do what we want, but we are so scared to accept our freedom that we have ourselves bonded us to societal, traditional, and spiritual boundaries. To moral and immoral divides. The fear of exercising wrong choice had lead us to build restrictions .We always have a choice to kill ourselves as the ancient stoics believed. Seneca once said "can you no longer see a path to freedom?.Its right there.All you need to do is turnover your wrists!". I refuse to suffer while i die. I am better of killing myself than dying a gruesome death.", I said.
                                                                                     
"Hope runs the world, Albert. I like to see my glass half full. We must never let the fire in us die. Even if there is a small chance, most negligible one, we must hope of it happening. we will survive this my friend. I know we will", said Jonathan in a more hopeful way, but with lesser confidence than earlier.

"You know Jonathan, as a kid I would always attempt to stop my breath for as long as possible to understand how it feels while one dies. I never managed to hold it for long enough, but I at least understood how powerless one would feel when air ceases to reach one's lungs. Over the years i watched executions, and understood that choking and dying is least painful of all other ways and since then I always carry a bottle of hem-lock around my waist."



"Shhhh. Can you hear the footsteps?. Someone's coming upstairs.Pass me your robe quickly!", interrupted Jonathan. I passed my robe and he occupied the edge of his cell standing crossed with the robe held in both his hands.The sound of footsteps approaching grew louder. I looked at Jon and signalled three with my fingers. He ratified my claim and acknowledged with a thumbs up, moving closer the bars of his cell. I walked across to diametrically opposite edge of my cell to be able to see the guards emerging out. They were three of them, the Cheif guard in middle flanked by other two. The narrow path way separating both of our cells was just sufficient for three people to walk together. Jon was waiting with an anticipation of a wiper. I knew my part implicitly the moment he asked for my robe. A drop of cold sweat dropped from my brow on to my own feet.

The guards were close now. Three more steps I said to myself. One.Two.And caught!.Jon pushed the robe onto one of the guard's neck and pulled him towards the bar. Startled, other two moved backwards coming closer to mine. I snatched the keys in that instant from Chief's waist and while they tried to release their man from Jon's grip I opened my cell and tuned their necks to send them to Satan. Jon had taken care of the third guard, We both started running downwards. Birds had started to chirp. It was dawn. Little time left to use my biggest aide, darkness,I thought.

We found a door that lead to a huge pathway. All the windows we went past were closed. There were paintings hung on the wall, I would have spent hours on this pathway admiring them on any other occasion I thought. Within minutes we were at the end of it with  a circular dark pathway leading downwards And another well lit one on the left, leading up. Jon looked at me to know my choice. Before I could nod, We heard the footsteps from the path that went up. We immediately went downwards. Two helical turns later, We hit a wall!. Dead end it said, how ironical! I thought.

"Its over my friend. Its time for hem-lock", I said to Jon with a  smugly smile, emanating out of egoistic satisfaction of being right yet again. I removed the hem-lock attached to my waist band and gulped it as the first face appeared from the stairs of the enemy. 

"It ain't over Albert!. It ain't!", said Jon. He was right, it was King's Rand's soldier who had emerged  out of stairs.Some 9 of them I counted judging by footsteps out of habit. That was the last thing I saw before my death. Jon had tears in his eyes over my contorting body.My eyes shut. "I told you King Rand will save us!", I heard that, imagining Jon wearing my smugly smile this time. I died.

King Rand received a box by afternoon while he awaited anxiously for the triumphant return of his 9 soldiers  with Albert and Jon. He knew what was inside it. He didn't dare to look in and handed it over to his minister. His minister opened it, twenty eyeballs he recalled to his wife that night waking up from a nightmare. Twenty eye-balls.

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