Absolution - Chapter One
Inside her small windowless room the young student trembled. As she tried taking the phone from his hand, he held on momentarily, reluctant to relinquish his grip. He knew the other's phone would be switched off. At this stage maybe no news was good news.
“You know if you take this, you've gone and got yourself all involved, it'll make you number eight.” Not quite understanding, she took the phone anyway. The two exchanged nervous glances as she waited for the call to connect. Her very brief hopeful smile quickly changed to one of disappointment.
“Well it's not switched off anymore. It went straight through to voice-mail,” she replied looking up at him.
“I can't believe this. Has the whole world ended? It's like everybody's gone, just vanished,” said Morgan.
“Maybe the network's down?” she offered tamely.
“What has happened? Has the world ended? It's like nobody's out there,” he cursed. “How did it come to this?”
Helen was horrified, good manners dictated she should cover her open mouth. An involuntary intake of breath was responsible for her ungainly gasp. She simply couldn't believe it! He'd actually done it. It was all based on a lie but he'd still done it! There had been irrefutable evidence that it was Icelandic terrorists. It wasn't the Russians and he knew it. What else could you expect from an American president? The man was an out and out warmonger, nothing more, like all those trigger happy Americans. She watched in dismay, first, the most brilliant flash of light, followed by a deep rumbling bass. The vibrations shook the whole house right down to its very foundation. An ashtray vibrated in sympathy on the coffee table. Fear caused her to raise both hands to her face. In that moment she held her breath, the blast, inevitable. A blast to tear the skin and flesh from bones as the bodies tried to flee in vain. An all consuming mushroom cloud towered over the distant city of New York. Then it came! Whoosh! Instinctively, Helen ducked.
“Please! God help us!” she heard a terrified mother scream as she scooped up her child into her arms. Buildings were torn down like children's toys, reduced to mere piles rubble in an instant. Cars, tossed through the air by the all consuming, relentless force. The world as we all knew it was over. It was done, finished. “What a load of absolute crap,” she moaned, pressing the button on the remote control. Nuclear Deterrent II was total rubbish, blowing up the world, again, it all seemed rather silly. The DVD no longer playing, the TV went back to the news channel. The real President of the United States calling for a diplomatic resolution to an issue. Helen had no interest in politics, she powered the TV off.
No longer gripped by the vivid images displayed on her mother's fifty inch plasma television. Released from the pseudo realism provided by Dolby digital surround sound. Alone in the ensuing empty silence, Helen, cried. Like the film she'd just watched, she'd had it all going on. Vibrancy, excitement, she had an actual life. Then exactly like the warmonger she'd just cursed, knowing her husband wasn't responsible for her predicament. Helen pressed a button and her whole world just went boom! Everything blown apart. Now there was nothing, nothing on the TV screen. No sound coming from the speakers and nothing in her life. The JBL sub-woofer that had previously rocked her world sat silent, mocking her. As her anger began to rise, she looked to the side table for something with which to express herself. The heavy glass ashtray would cause too much damage. Then there was her glass of vodka, good vodka was not for wasting. The little teddy her husband bought her on Valentine's day, it too laughed at her, triggering the flashpoint. She hurled the teddy at the big screen. The cuddly toy bounced back, colliding with the glass, spilling its contents. The glass in turn bumped the ashtray, the ashtray fell to the floor, smashing. This was Helen Goldstone's lot, the absolute contrast of Midas.
Mrs Goldstone reached for her phone, she called the number again. Her brightly red polished nails slipped as she tried to press the tiny buttons on the handset. Every time she tried, the message was always the same, 'the person you are calling is unavailable at present.' Four weeks had passed since she'd last got through on that number.
“Where the hell is my husband?” she muttered, looking at his name on the phone's display. Rock, wasn't her husband's name, her husband's real name was Strauss. Helen recalled the reason for the nickname, it was the same day she'd been christened with the nickname Dyson. The memories of the mischievousness of youth brought a temporary but brief smile to her face.
Tentatively, Helen scrolled through the numbers in the phone-book until the name Alex appeared. Things had gotten to the stage where she'd called her brother in-law so many times, she knew she was getting on his nerves. Thinking better of it, she clicked her phone closed. The only information his brother Alex would divulge was that Strauss was alive, he would contact her when and if he was ready. Alex's tone offered neither hope, comfort nor guarantee.
Helen cried every day. Her previous obsession with neatness of personal presentation had almost vanished, save for the tidy hair and the neat nails. Right up until the day after her funeral, the hair and the nails would always look good. In the beginning, she'd left him, now he wouldn't take her calls, the audacity of it all. She didn't know where he was, she'd no idea. It may well have been four weeks since she last spoke to him but inside the first four days of separation, she'd realised her own mistake. Now the estranged wife, Helen felt her life was stagnant. If she could just speak to him, let him know her pain. If not her husband, Helen needed to share things with somebody. She wasn't totally crazy, she knew vodka wasn't the answer but in the absence of human comfort, Smirnoff was the best available substitute. Misery loves company. The television or the radio, she couldn't sleep without the aid of one or the other. Most nights she didn't make it into bed, her and the sofa were well acquainted. Tonight her company would be the radio, it was the late show, old songs were playing. What would her world be like without, Strauss? her last thought, before sleep took her.