Those lovely blue eyes - Part I

It was that pair of lovely blue eyes, again! Glistening with tears that did not conceal the deep hurt that lay behind them! The eyes that had tormented me in my sleep for many days! The eyes, that I had thought I was free of for many weeks now, had come back to haunt my sleep again.

I tossed and turned in my pallet tormented by guilt that I knew no reason for feeling. Why should a hooker’s eyes pierce my soul with guilt? A hooker who I loved; a hooker who had professed love for me and a hooker who had betrayed me! A hooker who had cared so little for me that she had given me the worst disease mankind has ever known!

Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome! A word she could not even know but a disease that she could acquire and pass on. And I, Bruce Tracy - the erstwhile wunderkind of the world of investments, was now on death row awaiting execution for her murder. But what did imminent death mean but a release to someone who had nothing else to look forward to but a long and painful slide to oblivion?

In the tormented realm of half-sleep I could imagine the wonder and disgust of the people who had known me in my past if they only knew where I was today. Immured within these dark walls, in an atmosphere stinking of urine and feces and surrounded by the dregs of humanity, I would appear a very unlikely candidate for the bright young executive juggling funds for millionaires. But all that was in the long-distant past.

One mistake was all it took when you played brashly with millions! One mistake had brought all my dreams crashing down; had caused friends of yesterday to turn their backs on me; had my dewy-eyed girlfriend spew contempt; had shattered my self-confidence and left my sense of self-worth in tatters. The long spiral down laced with alcohol and drugs had laid me low in the gutter till this whore had taken me in. How I had loved and trusted her then!

My mind shied away from exploring my feelings for her any further. Sleep had completely departed and I swung my feet down and sat up. Why was I feeling all this so strongly now when, for so long, I had been quite content to await my scheduled execution? Was it the conversation that I had overheard in the exercise yard yesterday?

* * *

“The Brawler is pissed with you, you b******!”

 “Ain’t got a choice, have I? Steve called in sick and Iron-Ass put me in here with the walking dead”, said the guard.

“Dontcha know how Billy loves his mother, you mother-f****er? Word has come that she’s sick and Billy gotta go to her. Mess this up, asshole, and your life ain’t worth rat’s piss.”

“Trust me!”

“Tomorrow night is the time! You oughta have let the Brawler know some way”

“It’s all laid on. The getaway car will be on the road near where the tunnel opens.”

“Shh! You got shit for brains, man, shouting it all over the place”, muttered the trusty, looking around with apprehensive eyes.

He saw me leaning against the wall looking incuriously at the soccer game in progress. No one else was in ear-shot.

“It’s only the Scholar – and he ain’t close enough to listen” said the guard ingratiatingly. There must have been something about the acoustics of that area, since even their whispers carried clearly to me.

“Awright! Cannya trust the driver?”

“It’s my son! He will be there before midnight tomorrow”

“He better be!”

The menace in the words was unmistakable. I could see the guard tremble visibly as the trusty walked away.

* * *

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The genesis of this story is the broad plot outline given for Indifictionworkshop by Sandeep Nair. The story is also carried here.