Semicolon

‘Coward, coward, coward,’ he hissed, the noise harmonious with the sizzling of burning flesh. They weren’t in this village yet, but it was only a matter of hours. He’d seen already his friend, his Chloe, the video streamed live from someone at the cafe opposite her tattoo shop. The very place he’d received his own mark. The chains, the unnecessary brute force they used to take her. She must have done a cover-up for an undercover — surely she wasn’t reckless enough to still be drawing new ones? How they took her. It was only a matter of time. Were they identifying us by our sudden, unexplained burns, he thought, or our fresh, cover-up tattoos? The kippah even without the Star?

The heat of his wrist drew his attention to the present, to his little kitchen and the red light glaring next to the electric hob. It would fade, he knew, as the heat reduced. Would the pain ease that way, too? A bandage would be too obvious, draw too much attention. Were you meant to cover a burn, anyway? Science had never been his strong point. It must look natural, accidental. He should lay some half-prepared, half-cooked food out, he thought. Stage the scene for when they knocked on the door. Or would they just burst through? The reports had been varied.

How did we get here? When was it, he wondered, that we became a burden on society once again? The Movement appeared quickly, it didn’t take much — the coalition, the National Corporate Fund and the New Political Party, controlled everything. Unions outlawed, businesses under central control, the stories of those who spoke out losing their jobs filled some of the earliest news reports. The NCF, of course, saw a drain on their resources — all those sick days, the meditation coaches, the therapy dogs. ‘What happened to an honest day’s work?’ they asked the nation on television. And the NPP, well, the health services had never recovered after the twenty-first century pandemics: ‘how can we spend time treating an invisible illness when there are people struggling to breathe?’ they asked the nation on television.

‘Coward,’ he sobbed through his haggard breath, staring at his wrist, hoping nobody heard. He couldn’t think through the pain, through the shame. How could he hide it? This symbol, this sign — the difficult conversation starter, allowing a sobering world to understand. Were we foolish, he thought, to believe we could heal together?

And he sat there, back against the small kitchen cabinet, breathing loudly whilst not breathing at all. His other hand, burn free, fingered the cold, smooth locket hanging from his neck, absent minded until its cold surface was suddenly a warm contrast against the current, searing pain. And he scrambled, bottle openers and chopsticks flying left and right as he rifled through the drawer behind his head. There: a red-handled paring knife.

The locket pulled away from his neck as if in the movies; one swift, dexterous yank and it was open in his hand. She shone back at him, his loving mother, the locket a gift for his tenth birthday. The locket and the letter, explaining why she wouldn’t be there any longer. How she’d tried. How she’d longed to stay, to see him grow and become. But the shadows, she said, had found a way to fight the dark. Swimming an eternal wave, carried in the arms of the ocean, she’d gone. And he hadn’t understood until, one day, he did. And the waves raged before him, not peaceful, as he’d believed hers to be in the end; they thrashed and wailed against the bank. And still he wanted to leap, to find her. But it wasn’t right. The salt spray smashed against his face and he felt every drop, every grain. He felt it, and he felt everything else at the same time — no numbness prevailed to lead his hand over the edge. So he sat, and he wept, the saltiness of his tears hidden in the moment. He would continue. For now he would continue, the wretched pain a life force in its torture. I feel, therefore I am.

And so he’d gone, clothes still damp from the breeze, to Chloe’s parlour. The burning on his wrist not dissimilar from that he felt now; his sentence would not end that day, he decided, nor this. With a kiss, the heart-shaped picture of his mother, holding him as an almost-one-year-old, was laid aside, and the knife put to work, etching first the shape of a dot, then the comma below. Messy, of course. His hand shook, the metal was hard, unyielding. The photo tore slightly as he placed it back in front of the symbol, fraying the edge, guarding its keep. Would anyone notice? Would they look behind? It would be a death sentence if they did. Full stop.