The Labyrinth of Souls

by Nelson Lowhim

  “No... I’m not.”

  He tilts his head and slowly raises an eyebrow. “Maybe. But you really don’t appreciate what I’ve done, what I’ve risked?”

  Now I place my hand on his shoulder, though he leans back and stares at my hand like he doesn’t appreciate me doing this. “I do appreciate it. I just want to see her face to face.”

  “Hello?”

  I turn to the crack and jump back when my wife’s green-blue eyes meet my face.

  “Baby?” I say, my voice jumping and turning high and threatening to squeak. “It’s me.”

  She pulls back, her hands trembling, and the rest of her gasping, trying to grant he hem of her skirt. “George?”

  “Yes, baby. It’s me.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, George.”

  I pause. Her voice hints at a coldness that drops my heart past my guts. I can feel myself falling. Turing straightens me out, holding me at the hips. Perhaps he was right. “I just came to see you.” I think on what else to say. I forgot, when I came here, that I was really coming here to state my case. I had been blinded with the emotion of love, or memory of the emotion of love, and I missed her, and thought that there would be a mutual missing on her part, and that there would be reunion that wouldn’t even have a hint of coldness, but now I realize that I was being naive, that I was being a romantic fool—always my problem in life—and that she might have meant everything that she had said on TV. Images of her denouncing me strike through my mind. “Mary, I need to be here. We need to talk.”

  “About what? I don’t think we need to talk about anything.” She looks around and steps back again.

  “Are you alone?” I say, my throat tightens. It’s a good thing that Turing is holding me as I’ve lost all sense of reality and balance.

  “Yes... You should turn yourself in.”

  “Can we talk first?” I say. Giving up crosses my mind, but luckily I think on the life we had together. Our life. Hard to think about it as anything but blissful. Sure there were fights, but there were also the laughs that accompanied every single fight. The moments of love, the kissing, the touches, the entering, the bodily mixtures on the sheets, and her smell, God her smell, I almost thrust my nose into the crack.

  “Okay,” she says. “Talk.”

  I look over at Turing. “Can you please get me in there?”

  “Who’s with you?” she asks. There’s absolutely no trust in her voice, her tone, as if she’s talking to a stranger, properly enunciating her vowels and consonants. That proper English is an affront to all that we have had together, for the best thing about us was the shared language, the ability to not speak properly to one another. She steps back again and sits on the coffee table. Glancing up and down the crack.

  “It’s a friend. He got me here. I need to talk to you face to face.”

  “No. You’re too smooth.” She pauses, looking at her hands then smirks, catching herself, she shakes her head.

  I smile. “I promise to just talk. Can’t you give me that much?”

  She stares down, twisting the balls of her feet into the carpet.

  “Can you?” I hiss at Turing.

  He rolls his eyes and, sideways, shuffles off, every now and then his metal hand hits the wall with a thud.

  “Okay,” Mary says.

  “Thank you,” I say. A cool relief hitting me. “Thank you baby.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  So it’s really back to square one, isn’t it? I try to steel myself, but my body kicks back and tremors run through me, weakening any thoughts I may have. “Okay, just let me explain myself.”

  “Here,” Turing yells from out of view.

  “Hold on... Mary. I’m coming to you.” I see her look at her feet and shrug. She’s almost talking to herself. She does that when she’s angry and nervous.

  I sideways shuffle off to where Turing disappeared. I bump into a dead end, I feel a dread, a pain that I won’t get to my wife. “Turing? What the fu—“

  “Here.” He taps my head. His metal hand comes down from above. I grab it, half wanting to yank him down for scaring me, but that’s when I realize that I won’t have the strength to ever fight Turing in an even match. He pulls me up easily and I find myself on a ledge. He lifts up a trap door that leads to the bathroom.

  Half scared still, I pat Turing on the back. “Good job, machine.”

  He looks at me with what seems to be contempt. “You’re welcome, ape.”

  Grinning, I slide myself down, using the edge of the toilet seat to ease my controlled fall into the bathroom. Turing follows.

  The door opens and Mary stares at us both, anger highlighting her face. I get up and take a step towards her. She steps back. “So what did you want to say?” Her eyes dart about, never on my eyes, but always with a level of hatred and judgment gleaming off them.

  “Baby,” I say taking a step towards her. She steps back, then stops and firmly raises her hands, and looks even angrier.

  “I said not to call me that. Not to play any games.”

  “I won’t,” I say, feeling scolded, feeling like the distance between us was growing. Her eyes still don’t rest on mine, and I could see dark lines around her eyes, on her neck. She had aged. Because of me. My heart seizes, and it almost implodes when I realize her eyes have finally settled on something—Turing’s metal hand. Her whole body tenses up for a second. I hold myself from taking a step forward. But her shock doesn’t stay long, she’s soon looking at it with disdain. I suppose that few people know that Turing’s brain is not human. That’s the impressive part. Humans with bionic arms are not, even if they’re not exactly socially acceptable.

  “This is your friend?” she asks in a stomach based-voice.

  “Yes, Turing. Turing this is Mary, my... ex-wife,” I say. It hurts to say that out loud.

  Turing puts out his hand, the metal one, the bastard. He must know what that does. She shirks back, but reaches out and, holding all of two of those metal fingers, shakes his hand. Turing steps away from the both of us, his eyes going back and forth.

  “You one of George’s military friends?” she asks.

  This is why I need her. I need to convince her. “No,” I say in my kindest voice possible. “He’s a friend I’ve recently met. He’s been helping me through this situation... he helped me find you.”

  “Well, that makes sense. All your old military friends—if you can call them that—are on TV saying how much of a bad apple you were. That you were kicked out.”

  She believes them. At least she’s being honest. It hurts, though, thinking of all my friends saying that. “Were they on TV?”

  “Oh, yeah. They said you never carried your own weight...”

  “Mary,” I say, my voice terse.

  Mary glances over at Turing, whose eyes have drifted to the ceiling.

  “You always hung out with the odd ones,” she says, jerking her head at Turing.

  Turing grins at this, and Mary can’t help but gasp. Her eyes zoom in on Turing. “Sorry,” Turing says.

  “What happened to your teeth?” she asks, sounding the most concerned I’ve heard her since this meeting started.

  “Nothing, ma’am.”

  She must sense something is off about him, but she can’t see what, and so she merely shakes her head. “Christ, George. You surround yourself with people like this and what do you expect?” Her harsh demeanor cracks a little and she slumps over for a split second, before that harshness returns and her spine regains that S-stiffness.

  “Turing has his ways,” I say. Turing seems content to merely absorb.

  Mary raises her eyebrows.

  The whirring of Turing’s eyes, and the shine of his teeth gets to me. “Turing, can you make sure that no one gets inside?” I turn to Mary, my eyes jerking so that she’ll get the hint. “There are people watching this apartment, aren’t there?”

  Mary nods. Turing, smiling, walks past her, as she gives him a wide berth, and I hear his footsteps as th
ey peter out.

  “George?”

  “He’s helping me.”

  “Do what? Kill more people? If people like that are helping you, you need to think about what you’re doing.”

  “Why?” I say louder than I mean to because there’s an injustice in what she speaks, some sort of love for the perfection in humanity that leaves the imperfect in the lurch, and that is something I cannot, in my current station, abide by. Then I remember all my friends, or former friends in the military and what they had said, or what Mary implied that they said. Suddenly the gulf between us, the one I wanted to bridge can’t be wide enough. “I’m innocent,” I say. “I didn’t bomb that place.”

  “How can I take that seriously?”

  Or perhaps she’s tired from simply reliving every single wrong decision she made, starting with taking a second date with me and never seeing the signs about my evil. “I didn’t bomb that place, all right? I would never...” I stop. Would I never? That’s something I can’t admit to. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so nuanced, but I don’t want to lie to my ex-wife, now do I?

  “See, you always had it in you, didn’t you? This anger that was going to be your end. I knew it. I always knew it. I saw the signs. All the signs they’ve been talking about. What you wrote. Your hatred for...” She stops, gasps, and starts a sob, but she holds it, or I think she’ll hold back, but a tear trickles down.

  I step forward.

  “No. Stay away,” she says clenching her teeth and then her hands, and she holds back the tears. “No more.”

  “You must know that they’re lying. You must know that. Somewhere deep in your heart you have to know,” I say. “It’s propaganda. That’s all it is.”

  “Yes, but in your view all terrorists are subject to propaganda. Isn’t that right?”

  “It’s complex,” I say.

  “Yes. And in that complexity what do you think of that bomb?” She’s cold and harsh again, but I’d rather have her like this, cold to me if need be, because it will be what keeps her together through this whole ordeal.

  “It wasn’t nice,” I say because there’s not much else I can say. Can’t people look at the bigger picture?

  “It was horrid, and you can’t even bring yourself to say that much. You need to turn yourself in and get help.”

  “Help?”

  “Help. Are you listening? You can’t admit a bomb is bad. Evil. They had the pictures of the children who died in that bomb.”

  I swallow, my head burns with hate. Again I push away from her. “Children are killed everyday.” I pause, this scree, this weight on my head, doesn’t need to be voiced; I need to fall to my knees and beg forgiveness. I need to tell her that I’m sorry. That I never wanted her to go through all this. I would never want anything but the best for her. But words come out of my mouth, and there’s really no stopping them. Perhaps I am mad and need help. “I love you, baby. I love you with all my heart. Every cell in my being aches for you. But you need to open your fucking eyes. Propaganda is what it—”

  “You betrayed me. You betrayed your country.”

  “I did no such thing,” I say, my voice rising. “You betrayed me.”

  Silence falls and muffles everything. My last words hit her hard, and I see her swallow a few times, her throat moving up and down. “So that’s what you came to do. Tell me off?”

  God, I’m a fool. “No, that’s not true... I...”

  “You knew what you were doing would. So you didn’t come to say sorry. Just I told you so?”

  “No,” I say, but I whisper it. I step forward and she doesn’t stop me. I hug her, and move forward. I can smell her breath, horrid like she didn’t brush her teeth, but it still smells good. “I love you.” I brush her lips and she moves forward. I kiss her, finding her tongue.

  “No,” she says, pulling away, closing her eyes. She slaps me and opens her eyes. I can see that she’s not sure.

  Dropping to my knees, I grab her hands, gently bringing them down to my lips. They’re dry, wrinkles seem to have formed since the last time I saw these smooth beautiful appendages. “I’m sorry,” I say again, looking up. Her head’s turned away from me, she’s looking at the mirror. Perhaps she sees how foolish this scene is. Life’s like that, any scene, no matter how serious, no matter how horrid can be looked upon as foolish in some way, some play of apes that needs to be silenced, but no matter what, if you’re in the scene, you know through your gut, through the way the rest of your non-thinking self reacts, that this is indeed some very serious shit. “I’m sorry,” I say again, kissing her fingers. I want them to be soft again, I want her to at least be happy. If it’s over my dead body, then so be it.

  She pulls a hand away and pulls back,a s if to slap me. I brace for it. The hand slows and caresses my cheek. “Get up,” she says, though she’s still not looking at me. I tug on her hands. She falls to her knees, her eyes still closed. “Goddamn you.”

  We kiss again. She tastes salty. I can feel us melding together.

  “Goddamn you, George. Why?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The sound of something moving quick jerks me from the warm glow taking over my body.

  “All right, they’re coming. A troop.”

  It’s Turing. He’s already in the trap door, and he leaps up.

  I look at Mary. “I’m sorry.”

  She smirks with half her mouth. “Go George. Don’t come back.” I still see hate on her face. I’ve let her down. And even though my heart’s beating fast, my legs moving even faster, I suddenly think that I should not have been spending most of my life on playing chess, but rather I should have been learning how to play poker. Maybe then I wouldn’t have made so many wrong bets. Or helped my ex-wife not make wrong bets either.

  A short explosion signifies that a troop is here. I reach for Turing’s hand and he yanks me up. Through the crawlspace and into the spiraled staircase. I can still hear men yelling, flash bangs going off. I stop. “Mary.”

  “No time. She’s fine,” Turing says. “It’s you they’re after.”

  “How did they know? They might take her for aiding and abetting,” I say.

  “They won’t.”

  I look at Turing. Is he programmed to lie? He sounds so confident. “How—“

  “Trust me.”

  I’m not sure if I trusted him, or I wanted to. After all, what could I do for Mary? And besides, she was on their side now. She’s to have nothing more to do with me. That’s fine. But does that really mean that she’s not going to be touched? Turing tugs me and I run along, the sound of footsteps in the crawlspace. But we’re out of the stairway and into the hallway again. Turing heaves at the stone door and it slams shut. My clothes cling to my body from the sweat. I take shallower breaths and calm down, feeling a chill run over me.

  But Turing is moving on, I follow him because I don’t want to be left in the dark.

  When we get back to the room, Mathews is still staring at the frogs.

  “Still the top of the food pyramid?” I say, trying to joke to break the tension that still exists around him.

  He nods. “We can learn so much from them.” He looks up. His face seems kinder. Like when I first met him. “You talk to your wife?”

  “Ex-wife,” I say, not sure why he’s being so nice all of a sudden.

  He waves it off. “Through external circumstances larger than the love you had.” He forms a fist with one hand and thumps his chest.

  I smile and tilt my head slightly. What is his deal? Did he find some weed to still the disquiet inside him? Or did he get a talking to? This is, after all, how an agent of some intelligence force out to get me would act. “Thank you, though I’m not certain it’s anything but stronger outside forces that tears people apart. And yes, I did meet up with her.”

  Mathews waves his hand, though if he’s dismissing me or my statement or his statement, I’m not sure. “This is different. You have a an entire propaganda force against you.”

  “Is a mother-in-l
aw so much more different?” I say still trying to test him out rather than confronting him for any specific reason.

  Mathews smiles. It’s the kind smile given to recalcitrant teens. I feel small again, and I think on all the risks I’ve taken.

  “What did she say?” he asks.

  “That I shouldn’t have.”

  He grimaces with his lower mouth. “Sorry bud.”

  I nod. It hasn’t really settled in that she rejected me. That she hated me. My mind is still hanging on to the kisses. The moments of fragility—towards me. But I dare not dwell on the matter that she may have loved me, may still love me, but doesn’t want to ever see me again. Or that love may not, may never have been enough in this world. That I was a fool. Wrong bets and all. That I am a fool still. What does one do once they’ve seen all their work crushed? Not that there aren’t many examples in history. I feel my legs tremble. Imagine that. Imagine that all that you feel and sense about the world is wrong. What does one do then? What can one do. My legs send up distress signals and I grow dizzy. Turing grabs me by my armpits.

  “Easy little one,” he says. I’m led to the couch. “He needs some sleep.”

  “Of course,” Mathews says as he places a blanket on me.

  I’m cold. Numb. “Mary,” I whisper, but my world is growing dark. I can smell metal, taste blood. This is it. It feels like this is absolutely it. I’m alone. Finally and truly, I’m alone. A hard thing to contemplate, being alone. Too tired to think it through, I have a sifting feeling under my feet and everything and everyone seems different. Perhaps more sinister. Perhaps on more solid ground than I.

  Above ground, the power of those that would hunt humans increases and the earth grows parched and sends its children to be picked clean by the sun under deep blue skies. The refugees pile on top of the other wretched of the earth, forgotten, unwanted. But they stay not silent, the hardened survivors among them. These ones, who know civilization on its penumbra is once and always barbaric, have learned. They stitch together a reaction to what has been done and they grab banners and they fight. Evil they are—with demands and scripts and actions that are not clean and pure like our own—to us. And so we react with gleaming sorties of a beauty that one can only love and when the bombs fly we close our eyes and ears: no screams, no melted flesh, no smashed bones, no children crying stain our actions. Only our pure love comes through the speakers.