Lost In Translation

For a man with no time, Andrei was doing well. It had been years since he had seen the sunlight. The golden stream of light, shining down on the rock floor, seen through bars, was the only sight he could see. The odd dove cooing, the guards walking by, sounds of their footsteps echoing through the walls. The shriek of the plates sliding and water dripping kept him company. His hair, blinding his eyes for in the dark one couldn’t see much anyways. His dreams are full of open fields and streams, of animals and birds, of the sun and the moon and of his freedom. Not a day goes by without him reminiscing about the good days. The deafening sounds of gunshots and the gruesome sights of blood and violence, now replaced with the blaring of silence and the depth of darkness. He resigned to his fate, and was ready for anything.

In a change, the footsteps sounded louder and closer. In the dim Sodium-Vapour light, he saw two shadows approach him. Tall and empowering, they stood outside the door and contemplated. The shriek of the metal gate being opened was a sound he thought he’d never hear. Carried by the two men on their shoulders for he could not walk, they reached another dark room. As the door opened, the greenish glow of the Fluorescent tubes hit his eyes. It seemed strange. In the dim light he saw streaks of blood along the walls and a chair in the middle of the empty room.

He could make out the silhouette of a man standing in a corner.

“Andrei! I thought you’d never see the light of day. Guess who was right?”

His heart sank.

The guards, now visibly struggling to move him, dragged him onto the chair, as the man from the shadows emerged into the view of the light.

Even to the badly groomed Andrei, the man seemed crude. Scars lined his cheeks and mouth, his skin wrinkled. He held a revolver in his hand, and seeing the light hit the metal of the gun, Andrei knew what awaited him.

“Any last desires?”, asked the man.

“Just give me a minute of silence.”

Visibly confused, the man shook his head and walked away.

In that one minute, Andrei was lucky. He had the privilege to experience the joy, the private and secret pleasure of extending one minute to infinity, his life happens again in that minute, and yet no one knows.