《Tartaros》Chapter 21 - Andy
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As I walked outside the hospital, I saw the ship I was on just an hour before fly away from Sonia, who was just staring at the ship. After you couldn't see the ship, Sonia started to walk forward towards a playground on the opposite of the hospital. She sat on the edge of a sandbox and looked at the ground. I felt stuck. I couldn't reach her. We had a wall between us that we couldn't cross.
I sat down next to her. I wanted to talk to her. I really wanted to talk to her. When Sonia looked at me, i smiled a little. "Do you believe he's coming back?"
Sonia laughed. She raised her hands to say something but realized she couldn't say anything to me. She shrugged her shoulders and started to draw shapes in the sand. That gave me an idea.
“Can you teach me a few words of…your language?” Sonia was startled by my suggestion. However, she nodded at me after thinking for a moment. She turned to me so that our faces were facing each other. Just so that I could see Sonia's every move.
First she put her hand in front of me, bottom side up. She then slapped her other hand on top of that hand sideways, thumb up. His hands formed a cross. I copied her movements exactly. I had to redo it a couple of times because I accidentally did it a couple of times quite carelessly. Finally, when I got it done well, Sonia pointed to the sand below us. She slowly wrote the word stop. It will surely be useful. We can move now without Sonia or someone else frantically waving her arms.
Next, she stayed on the same path. She gave me a thumbs up with both hands. Before I could embarrassingly do it back to her, she put both thumbs together, and twirled her hands around in that position a couple of times. I was really confused about the whole thing, but I mimicked the same move back to her. Sonia wrote the word continue in the sand below us. Another useful word for us.
Next she put her hand into some kind of fist. However, her fingers were not on top of each other, but his thumb was more next to the other fingers. When I got the hand position right, Sonia pointed at me. Before I started to accuse her of anything, she put that weird fist in front of his head with the thumb facing the head, and then he put his hand who was in a wrist in a little arc towards the pointing hand. After practicing for a while, she wrote Edan's name in the sand. I smiled a little.
The last move was the easiest of all of them. Sonia first crossed her arms over her chest, both hands in fists. At least I was able to do that easily. After that, she opened her hands and raised the index and middle fingers of both hands, and put them half down. Both of her hands made a small s-shape in the same position. That one took much longer.
However, when I finally finished it, Sonia smiled wider, and wrote Gorgos in the sand. "I didn't even know that the Gorgos had their own word in your language." Sonia laughed. She put her head down and started to write something much longer than what was written before. After a moment she stood up and pointed to her text. It read snakes + beloved = Gorgos.
"if that's love, what about I love you?"
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A bit of red appeared on Sonia's cheek. She wrote two on the sand so that might meant it had two versions. She first showed me the hand where Sonia's thumb, little finger and index finger were up. I copied her easily. I tried to hold back that I didn't have the same blush on my face as she did. After a while she showed another version. She first pointed at me, then she made the same cross as in Grogo, then she pointed at himself. I did the same back to her.
Our teaching session ended there. Loud voice was heard all around us that I told Sonia. It was Serena's voice.
"Dear people of Tartaros. The votes are in. Tomas Henriksson will go to the shame room in five minutes." Rush of people were flooding in all around us. I wrote about Sonia's dad on the sand. We both stood up.
"Everyone is talking about this room. I have never seen this in person", A man said that walked past us.
"This is my first shame room. I can't wait", said a woman who almost jumped forward. I walked into the crowd. Everyone around me looked excited.
After a little while, we arrived at a a small house, where a giant screen showed an week looking Henriksson. Under the screen was Gorgos, who looked a bit beat up. When the crowd of people seemed to calm down, Evalyn walked forward. "Tomas Henriksson has done damage to us more we can imagine, but he still can't talk. He still deems himself innocent. Let's see what happens when his mistakes come to haunt him."
When the crowd started screaming, Sonia grabbed my hand and lead me away from the crowd. We sneaked around the house, to a door no one else seemed to notice. When Sonia opened the door, It had a small hallway where the other wall was pure glass where you could see inside the building.
I only noticed it because I saw Tomas alone in a dimly light room, on his knees. As we walked in, he started wailing. "I'm not scared to be alone. You can leave me here however long you want. I'm not scared of anything."
"Who said you were alone?" There was a woman's voice that came from one corner of a room. Tomas jumped and ran to the door as quickly as he could. It was locked.
“You're not real! This is some trick. You- You're dead!” One light in the middle of the room flashed on. That young woman who spoke stepped forward, right into the middle of the beam of light. Even though the light was weak, she looked really beautiful, so beautiful that she didn't look like a real person. Her silk colored hair was tied in a simple bun with a couple of hair curlers sticking out of it. Her dress was similar to the women in those hundred-year-old movies where the women stayed home to take care of her seventh child. That dress was black and white striped, which made the woman disappear into the darkness for a moment. I knew it was Anna Henriksson.
"Of course you would say that. You can call me your ghost of regrets. I am just your memory, made to react to your current pathetic form." A small knife appeared on the hand of Anna's figure.
"You can't copy Anna because- Because I will never be afraid of you." I looked at Sonia. She looked like she wasn't breathing.
"I don't have to. I know all of your worst memories. I am Anna's old memories. Like this version here is the one you spent years with playing cops and robbers, until you started to get bored of not having any power so you... Well, yo udrugged me a brought me here, where you can be a big boss." Anna grabbed Tomas's face. She was smiling. Tomas walked away from the woman. At the same moment, two other figure appeared around Tomas.
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"You were violent! We had a little girl! You were danger to your self. You made our daughter deaf."
"Don't lie! Those medications turned me into your slave. I was never a psychopath you diagnosed me with. I just hated you."
"I was just a girl when I met you. I needed someone to help me." One of the other figures was a small girl, probably same age as me. She was wearing a white dress. "You never helped me. You just saw me as a monster you could control. I never had sociopathy, but because of you think of it as a disease of the monsters, you labeled me as such."
"You was the one that made me a monster!" Tomas touched the surgeries on his face. At the same time, the third figure came closer to Tomas. Most of that woman was burned. There was a hole in her stomach where her entrails were about to fly out.
"You left me die alone! Alone! This was the last moment of my life. Look at me!"
when the third figure appeared, Sonia ran towards the door and outside. I had to ran with her. I probably can't never forget what I saw.
Sonia only stopped when she had ran away toward the next house. I wanted to touch her but I couldn't. She wasn't down too long anyways. When she saw what house we were in front of, she stood up and walked towards is.
It was a small cottage looking house that read "Memorial of the Henrikssons" in the front. Sonia waltzed into that place like she owned it. Technically she did I guess. She pulled the door open and ignored all the signs that said we shouldn't go in. Like sister like brother, I guess. At least she didn't destroy the shrine of black and blue roses that was right next to the door.
The house inside was quite normal if you didn't notice the piles of boxes and papers that filled the room. I was trying to get through all that mess without messing up the house more. I quickly realized it was pretty much impossible. Of course, Sonia had quickly made it through the living room without any difficulty. She didn't even glance in my direction. She grabbed one of the drawers and pulled it over to the bench, opening it furiously.
I had somehow managed to end up next to a table where there was no mess. There was just one bordered image on it that looked really familiar. It was exactly the same picture that Sonia had in her study. It had her mother and father, backs against each other. However, the difference between this and the picture on Sonia's desk was that they both had different weapons in their hands. Tomas had a giant knife in his hand. Anna had a rifle.
I looked around and grabbed a box that said "news articles". The first picture was shocking. It was a piece of news that was dated about a year before the start of Tartaros. The image in the article was a surveillance camera image. It was Anna. She was in a bank somewhere. She smiled widely, winking at the camera. She was about to fire his gun to the surveillance camera. Tomas was behind Anna. He stared at Anna worriedly.
The article read in very old letters:
Bonnie and Clyde: the scariest couple in the world.
If you've been living under a rock, Bonnie and Clyde, real names Sonia and Tomas Henriksson, are the world's favorite criminal lovers. For years they have terrified and intrigued people all over the world, creating a small fan club for themselves. Self-proclaimed lovers, fans can go to great lengths for the couple they love. Many big fans have joined the lovers' group, or they're hunting for places the pair can rob next, hoping for the chance that they'll be the only ones the pair keeps alive.
"And not!" My eyes lit up as soon as I read the text. I waved the news in my hand and tried to take into account that this was a place of remembrance. "I didn't even know your parents were Clyde and Bonnie!" After I screamed, I realized Sonia wouldn't notice me.
Clyde and Bonnie was a really popular series a couple of years ago. It told the story of a couple who had lost everything due to climate change. They see the miseries of people in the same situation, so they start robbing the rich and giving it to the poor. The series was really popular, but it only lasted two seasons. Rumor had it that its positive attitude toward rebellion pissed off someone higher up. As soon as the cancellation was announced, Clyde and Bonnie vanished like ashes into thin air. It was said to be based on true events. I never believed it, but I guess it was true then.
I watched at the box. The next article was bone chilling. It read "Bonnie and Clyde's terror attack inside the borders: 16 dead, 35 wounded." Picture of the article was Anna, maybe Sonia's age, with her hands firmly clasped in some sort of gun. Her gaze, on the other hand, was... chilling, really chilling. Anna smiled, but her gaze was completely blank. This was not in the series.
I grabbed on another box, that said was hospital records. Every single file inside was about one person named Anna Elena Eklund. The first paper said:
name: Anna Elena Eklund.
Age: 16.
Progress: The patient has made a lot of progress in feeling empathy in a year. However, the patient is addicted to the drug. After 24 hours without use, the patient begins to show signs of psychosis. The patient's sociopathy shows no progress during the 24 hours the patient is off the drug. The violent nature towards nurses has intensified. The number of dead has risen from eight to twelve.
I gave Sonia the first paper and took another one in my hands:
Name: Anna Elena Eklund
Age: 15
The case: the winner of the youth pageants four years in a row, before the ban on organizing the pageants in 2073. The day after the ban, she murdered her guardian and five former judges of the pageants. It is believed that there are more murders that have not been detected. Spent two years on the street, murders are believed to have doubled in that time. Clear case of sociopathy
Other: The guardian, Krista Eklund, has several assault charges. It is believed that sociopathy arose from childhood abuse
I gave this paper to Sonia too. Her eyes were huge. I wanted to help her, but I couldn't. Instead, I read the final paper. It looked weird:
Name: Anna Elena Eklund.
Age: 18.
Progress: She is so beautiful. So enchanting. Me and her, we're going to change this world, heal this sinful crowd. We will make them our own. Just me and her. That's all I miss. Just me and him.
I wanted to hide this paper from Sonia, but my face made Sonia grab the paper. She looked stunned. I don't know what else she could feel. I didn't know how to help her. I had only one thing on my mind.
"We can only see more memories. This can't get worse." That was a lie, if I remember the show correctly. But shows are always more dramatic than reality, right?
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