Termino.
Elysium
--
After a brief awkward silence, Hiro nervously remarked, “You know, I’ve never handled a gun before”. He picked up the gun as he nervously laughed, cold steel against his trembling hands.
Do it. Kill him. He deserves it. He heard voices in his head, egging him on.
He stared at the grooves embedded into the barrel of the gun; D-66, they said. Such a simple name for something that could kill hundreds. Just a gentle pull of a trigger and the door is closed. Yes, it was true that the policeman was a bad person, maybe even an irredeemable one, for doing the things he did. In Hiro’s eyes, he deserved to pay for his actions. But death? Is it right for a mortal man, one with his own share of sins, to pass “righteous judgement” on other mortal men?
He looked up right into the leader’s eyes. “I’ve been a lot of things in my life — a lousy father, a horrible husband, a drug dealer and an addict, but a cold-blooded killer isn’t one of them.”
The leader looked visibly agitated. “If you don’t kill him, I’ll kill him anyway, and one of my men will deal with you for being a key witness. You kill him now, it’s a win-win situation, what say?”
Hiro contemplated for a second and replied, with what could’ve been a smirk, if the situation wasn’t so grim. “If there’s anyone who should kill this monster, it’s cold-blooded scum like you. You have no sense of morality or honour. But killing is wrong nevertheless.”
The leader started to grin, then smile, then laugh hysterically. His thugs joined in and for a moment, the air lightened. The leader then looked at Hiro and said, “So be it.” Before he could even comprehend what he meant, the leader quickly disarmed him and held the pistol to his head. “Arrivederci.” Those were the last words Hiro heard before he was concussed by a loud bang and a flash of light.
He closed his eyes, awaiting death.
Hiro was still conscious. Am I really dead? he thought to himself. He slowly opened his eyes to find himself in pitch darkness…
And then he was sitting on a chair outside a café. The place looked oddly familiar. The mountains in the distance radiated an odd sense of familiarity. The place was completely desolate, with just five or six people in sight, among whom was a couple sitting two tables away from him.
“Where am I right now? What is this place?” Hiro asked.
The man laughed and replied, “We are in a café.” He paused for a bit. “How hard is the hangover hitting you?”
Hiro blinked. “Was I really drunk last night? How in the name of heavens did I end up in my own hometown?” He started looking around for more clues and noticed something odd. The man’s right arm had needle marks. Was he an addict?
Hiro mustered up the courage to approach the couple. “Did you have a drug problem?”
The man, quite startled at this sudden and rather invasive question, replied, “Yeah… my wife and I got into a problem a few years ago. It was initially just weed, but when its high wasn’t satisfying us anymore, we met a dealer who gave us heroin for a very affordable price.” He paused. “And then, I lost my home, my property and essentially my life.”
Hiro felt like he was swallowing an iron ball. He had been a dealer… Yes, I do recognize the mistakes that I have made in my life, but can I redeem myself?
Hiro gulped. “Do you… do you think that the drug dealer is irredeemable and should burn in hell for what he has done to you?”
The woman gave a faint smile. “What the dealer did to us is irrefutably disgusting and wrong in every sense of that word, but irredeemable? I don’t think any action is irredeemable, Hiro.”
Hiro started to feel less guilty, right before he realized something odd.
“How do you know my name?”
She smiled back at him, “You were our dealer, Hiro. In fact, everyone here died in one way or another because of you.”
Hiro started to panic and looked around. He saw the faces of all those he had ended up killing — young bachelors, teenagers, old people. There seemed to be no limit to the blood he had on his hands. He felt miserable. These people must hate him for what he’d done. He took their lives from them, ruined them. Their souls must have wanted revenge all this while.
And then, out of nowhere, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
“We don’t harbour hatred towards you anymore. You have shown us how much you’ve grown as a person, how much you care about the well being of other people and how much pain you’d endure for the greater good, without giving in to the temptation of revenge. You aren’t irredeemable, Hiro. We all forgive you.”
Hiro broke down crying as he heard those words coming out of her mouth. He started muttering to himself, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Amidst this, he asked them where exactly he was, to which a familiar voice replied, “The place you were meant to be, my love.”
It was his wife in front of him. He moved forward and hugged her, smiling for the first time in a very long time. This was it. This was the end of the journey. He had been through his worst trials and he had endured them. Throughout his journey, he had kept asking himself, is all this pain really worth enduring?
What a silly question it had been.
This piece of work was concocted, experimented and realized by Akshaya Subramanian, Rohinee Phatak, Ashwin Shekhar, D Rohit, K Shreyas Mahesh, Naman Karn, isha jha, Yin Rav, G.s. AviNash, Akash Mani, Daniel Sujay R, Vedanjali Polaki, Antony Terence and Abhishek Ramachandran.
Stay tuned for more intriguing pieces of work from Team Content for Festember!
