I trailed the scar right on my heart. The mark didn’t make me flinch but the dead pain tortured my brain.
There are many mistakes that a man makes in his life. They face the consequences eventually. It’s not when you’re committing a crime that it matters but it’s when the result is slapped at your face.
She had wanted me to leave the business.
I couldn’t.
Sometimes a girl in your life blinds the real reason you were meant to work for. This analogy of love somehow always destroys your way of thinking, takes you out of your path.
They say a woman is behind a man’s success.
What they don’t say is that she is the reason for his downfall as well.
“Correy, let’s go and live in the mountains. I just want to be free you know . . . like a butterfly.”
“Hurmph!”
“God Correy, you never smile.”
“Hmm...”
“Stop grunting. I gave you a dictionary last week. Use the words baby.”
“Shut up.”
“Well, that’s a start.”
“Sir, the car is waiting.”
I jumped and turned around to stare at Henley. It had been two years of his loyal service to me. There had been a time he had saved my sanity. I owed too much to him.
“I’ll leave in a few Henley. While I’m gone make sure that you have all the arrangements done. I don’t want anything amiss.”
“Indeed sir.”
I buttoned up my shirt, tied up the tie and picked up my coat. Once upon a time these suits had been nothing but epitomes of egoism and useless power but now they were my best friends.
At 21 I was a business tycoon. The trading company I owned was blooming. I had enough money to last for a couple of decades. I could buy anything I desired. Woman threw themselves at me for the money, the luxury. Every single day in these two years I’d slaved for her. They wouldn’t let me have her because I was considered invalid. She was the matchstick, they were the fuel and I was the fire.
Finally, I had her.
She wouldn’t have liked the method but now I was too powerful to make them stop me.
I would terminate each member of their family in front of their eyes if they even tried to stop me. I looked at the mirror in the corridor as I passed to get outside. The rugged looks would make anyone mistake me as a gangster. I wouldn’t deny that though.
“You know you look so handsome.”
“Uh huh”
“Those chocolaty brown eyes, that hot mouth, the dirty stubble you love to keep, the jet black hair that falls in your eyes and that scar cutting up you left eyebrow. Oh that’s the hottest!”
“You’re annoying.”
“Yet you love me.”
“Who said I love you?”
“You just did.”
I held the handle of the door. I couldn’t do this. I hadn’t seen her once in so long. How would she be? Would those gentle olive green eyes try to rip my soul again? Will her slender hand trail the contours of my face? Could those soft pink lips trace the same hot kisses they did sealing up my cold wounds? What about the chestnut brown hair that I loved letting my fingers slip through?
“Mr. Greenfield, would you please fill up this form and then we can proceed further.”
I nodded at the matron. Hatred boiled in my stomach. They had no right to keep her here but they never listened to me until now. Oh it was all respect that brewed.
Five minutes later I had the form on the counter. I scowled at her and she shifted her gaze below, paling at the intensity.
Zirka had thought me how to smile. The moment she went away so did my smile. I tried to, believe me I did. I’d sit through mindless comic sitcoms or even go to a bar to listen to drunken people but nothing ever worked. If it hadn’t been for the determination in my heart to get her back, I’d probably be back on the streets trying to be a mobster.
The matron beckoned me to follow her.
The whole place was depressing. The walls were white. The floors were dirty with rubbish strewn and the stench of puke or piss. There were occasional mumblings which seemed as if the walls were talking. There were tiny empty cubicles which were dark with almost no light entering. We were on the fifth floor of the building. A bony dog was lying in a corner barely alive. I was afraid to look on my sides not for I feared them but I was scared of myself. If the temper I was caging was let out then I’d probably be trying to rip the matron to shreds.
“We’ll build a cottage. It would be so clean that you’d be able to smell the tulips in our garden. The walls of every room will be a different colour. We’ll have seven rooms and then a rainbow will form in our place. Then we will have our kid. The nursery would be full of toys and its laughter. There’ll be Popo, our dog and no I was inspired by Alice’s Toto from Wonderland story. I just like saying Popo aloud, it’s so cool . . . oh stop looking like someone died. Gosh how much anger do you have inside you?”
“I hate you.”
“Like I love you?”
The matron stopped and I almost banged into her.
“I’m sorry Mr Greenfield. Please walk inside. She’s in there.”
I ignored the board of ‘extreme’ on the top and twisted the knob. A stench of rotting decay entered my head instantly. I gagged and brought out my handkerchief to curtail the odour.
There was too much of darkness. I tried to feel something but my eyes were watering from the pungent smell.
“Here.”
The matron switched on some over head bulb making the surrounding clearer. I looked at the sorry excuse of a bed in the corner and a sort of weird furniture piece next to it. A steel plate with what looked like slime was in it. A few mosquitoes flew past me as I tried to search for her.
“Where is she?” I growled.
“Th-there-e sir-r . . .”
I followed the direction of her finger and froze. The whole world seemed to have hit my head then.
That weird piece of furniture was actually a human tied up in a strait jacket. The arms were around the knees due to the jacket being tied that way and the head was white or I should say bald. I walked towards her slowly, disbelief lining my face. I crouched down and touched the dirty fingers I could see popping out. The skin on them was scratched and bloody as if someone had been biting it. The nails were dirty and I think the index finger was missing one.
“Zirka,” I whispered.
She didn’t respond. I didn’t even feel her fingers move. They were so cold.
“Baby . . .”
It was probably minutes later that I received any movement from her. Her head slowly looked up at me and I stared at her as if I’d seen a nightmare.
Her green eyes were dead. They looked like a murky bog. There were too many scars on the once beautiful face. There was one just like me on her eyebrow that looked quite fresh. Her beautiful brown hair was all gone. Her lips were chapped and bleeding in places. There was a haunted look on her face, a blank expression of death.
“Zirka, what have they done to you?” I broke down. Tears that hadn’t been shed since that day she’d shot me spilled out. That day I had almost died and this day I saw the same in her. I shuddered. She never stretched her hands out like before. She never smiled.
“What happened?”
“I killed a woman.”
“You did what?”
“I’m sorry Zirka. I was mad.”
“That’s okay baby. I love you so much. We will get through that. I can take out the human in you not the devil. That only you can work against Coy. I will hold your hand forever baby. Stop crying, here take my hand and feel how warm it is. That is because of the blood you make my heart pump out of love baby. Stop crying or else you’ll make me cry too.”
“Zirka honey . . .”
“Yes darling?”
“Your smile is my medicine.”
The eyes stared at the wall behind me, paralyzed. The mouth didn’t move an inch. It seemed so robotic, so lifeless.
“Get her out,” I said darkly without looking back.
“I’m sorry sir but the social protocol . . .”
I banged her against the wall as she whimpered in my hands. I pulled my face close to hers and stared at her with raging eyes. I saw her close her eyes.
“Get . . . her . . . out . . . now” I spit every word on her face.
She nodded vigorously and ran towards her.
It's funny how tables turn. The one who was once alive became nothing but a pile of dead dust while the one who was walking death had become the reason to feel alive. My long lost love had forgotten me.
However, Correy Greenfield was known to never give up. Sooner or later Zirka would be mine again.
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