INTRODUCTION CONTRIBUTORS ABOUT

We are not the same

Ruby Grant

A wailing woman stared at me through lashes of black ink. I blinked, and she disappeared into the smoky waters, lurking behind the silhouettes of two men.

I was early, too early. There was little point in standing still and I have never been one to waste time. Every minute of stagnant behaviour was another minute lost to the abyss of procrastination. I wandered halls, crowded by camera lenses and words I wished I understood, the noise slowly growing into a shriek that vibrated the bony structures that sat around my eyes. I branched off from the main room and ended up in isolation, my eyes fixed on a singular piece of art. The painting itself was a complex work of ink and pigment—two lost souls travelling across water, their eyes pits, confined to a single piece of paper. The sound of whispers and distant footsteps came and went. I was alone with these two ghouls. A sense of doom leeched out towards my feet. I twisted my body to remain at the edges of their long, dark fingers. Their nails digging into the wooden floorboards beneath. 

At the time, I didn’t know another one of my coworkers was about to die. A man who had given everything to the healthcare system. That was the untold truth of medicine: to save a life, you must pay an endless price. Every word you put on paper, every decision you made on behalf of another would cost you, no matter if you were right or wrong. Instead of helping each other, we, like crocodiles, wait patiently for one another to make a mistake, only to deathroll them under the water. It’s a hostile environment, always close enough to smell the blood, see the corpse floating on the surface of the muddy water—the culprit long gone. Survival requires adaptation, adrenaline becomes an addiction. Death is just another old friend.

Maybe that is why, when I saw the wailing woman, I did not look away.

The mellow museum lights snap off, only to be replaced by clinical white beams. I watch the piece liquidise slowly down the wall, forming one solid object. A hospital bed takes form in the centre of the large room. A body lies underneath the white sheets. His lopsided breathing only punctuated by the sound of the nearby diffuser, spurting out an overwhelming lavender scent. There is no machinery in sight. The nurses sit in the other room, there is no need for them in here—soon they will hand over to someone else. This is a different man, an older man, facing the same problem. He stares down the last of his days stuck in a warped mind. I could see his ribs through the sheet, he only ate ice cubes from a paper cup.  I look out a frosty window and spot the wailing woman looking back at me, her hair tangled, her flesh scarred. I move my body up the two-seater couch and the woman mirrors me, her face hiding behind a curtain of her own hair. 

The man shifts in the bed slightly, but I know he has not gone far—his muscles have already wasted away. My attention drifts back to the man. Shadows pass the back of my chair but leave the room as quickly as they came. The man takes another laboured breath and then shudders. My coworker and this man shared a single link: they never spoke of death. They were both driven by the idea of immortality—to outlive all else simply due to their competitive natures. I saw things differently. Every day, in mirrors of glass and water, I would look upon death, so immune to her gaze I no longer flinch. I was both numb and trapped, as if I was floating just under a thick sheet of ice. 

The sun sets behind me. I sleep on the floor, my pillow a brown couch cushion. I eat bland food and sip soft drink from the local vending machine. I fear every second away from him. Time becomes a strange companion—one you want to cherish but also kill. His breathing stops for…

One …

Two …

Three …

I count to twenty to calm a torrent of noisy thoughts. Bad memories always have a way of multiplying, growing into carnivorous beasts that consume entire people. Every number takes the place of another image until the finite storage space in my head is filled with words, my words. The calf muscles in my legs begin to cramp and I take a seat in the middle of the park. I am distracted by puffy white clouds and black birds which hop from tree branch to tree branch. Soon both the memories and the numbers evaporate under the sunlight, and I am left with clear blue skies. My shoulders drop as a heavy shadow shrinks away. She doesn’t like the warm light, the sound of the wind combing through the trees. I let my eyelids open and take in what is happening around me. Little kids whiz past my bench on baby scooters, an old lady stretches out in the sun. It is easy to forget that sometimes you just need to stop. 

My coworker struggles in the muddy water just like the rest of us. While we rest on the banks of this great river, he continues to work. Every passerby jumps on his shoulders, and he carries them across the water without asking for anything in return. As the sun begins to die on the horizon, my coworker struggles to tread water. Another crocodile floats down the river and takes a large bite. That is the way of the river. Soon his scales, grown over many years, wear stains of pink and red, his organs fall out into the water. I sit on the riverbank and look at his face, the last words he speaks, and that I speak, will forever be immortalised. As his body begins to sink, he whispers…

I am tired.

The lights grew warm again, the air hugged my cold shoulders. I feel abandoned. I focused on the painting once again and wonder if what I saw is what they see. I looked at the exposed bones carved out of black ink and pictured my own insides, my hands pulling out eight metres of intestines, letting them fall to the art gallery floor. I wondered how long it will take for my own scales to turn bloody in the river. I smiled—even when reflecting, I find violent metaphors. I left my seat, still alone in this colossal room, and moved closer to the painting, facing the duo head-on. I finally looked down at the words found on the plaque next to the piece and broke the silence with a bitter laugh, a sound only created when faced with an ugly discovery. 

Two lohans.

Such a term is used to describe an individual who holds the ability or has already reached enlightenment. They reside in a state of nirvana, free of worldly cravings and desires. My idle thoughts moved back to the wailing woman, she stood in front of me, just close enough that I can feel her breath on my face. She had no place in such a painting—a woman driven entirely by grief could never find peace or fulfilment. In the warm light I realised that the two men saw a different river, one that flowed into serenity under puffy white clouds and unimpeded sunlight. How naïve had it been to assume that we experienced life in the same water.  

Churned up by these dark thoughts, an old fact rose to the surface. In the Greek underworld, the ferryman, Kharon, would transport the dead over the Acheron and Styx rivers for a few coins, leaving those who had no money or had not been buried properly behind on the riverbank to walk the shores for a hundred years. I had no coins, not ones he would accept. All I could do was struggle through mud and look upon water so black that there was no bottom.

I wait.