What time was it? Did it matter anymore? It
could have been yesterday or maybe tomorrow?
It may have been ten years ago or maybe ten
years to come? Maybe it was today? Inside the
maze, nothing is new under the sun. The
grandfather clock struck an hour from its
familiar corner. It startled me. I looked in her
direction.
She flipped her scarlet red made to the side, her
calculating green eyes staring in my direction.
She knew, but she pretended not to because
time had played its own deceptive game with
her and like a desperate mouse trapped in a
corner of a ceaseless maze, this was her last
chance to find its exit. This wasn't who she
used to be, but it's who she had become
because of the harshness of past, because of
him, the first whose conniving ways had burned
out the very last flame she had left within,
because she was tired, no she was exhausted
from running through the maze.
I looked away and over at him. There he sat
hunched back in the middle of willing slaves.
A new generation of slaves ready to learn what
the passing generation had learned already. It
could have been today or yesterday or even
tomorrow? In the maze, nothing is new under
the sun. His tangerine frazzled hair sprouting in
every direction but the right direction as his
hazel eyes darted back and forth from slave to
slave. He was a mess. A disgusting mess.
His heavy frame near bursting out of his
uncomfortable shirt which had, unknowingly to
him, sneakily opened several of its pale plastic
buttons, letting the lard of his burging belly
peek through. I noticed him breathe heavily
while spurting forth tiny droplets of saliva from
his non ceasing and often conniving verbal
banter which spread like a diseased rash over
his willing slaves as he played the experienced
teacher to all the naive. They all knew him by
first name and some even know him in other
ways too. He was a mess. A disgusting mess.
I turned my gaze back to her. I could see the
heartache in her eyes. The tired. The
exhausted. I knew it too. She stared calmly at
the slaves surrounding her husband, but behind
the stare was a look of deep held sorrow. It
wasn't new to her and she knew exactly what
was going on, but she had stopped caring with
the first because it didn't matter any more, in
the maze, nothing is new under the sun. The
first, the second, the third, they were all the
same, so what was the point of keeping score of
even observance? She accidentally caught my
gaze and again I looked away.
I was the nemesis, the rival, the invader and
even though we laid claim to the same prize,
we understood each other because we were
both victims of the first and the second and the
third and the last didn't matter any more. In the
maze, nothing is new under the sun. Nothing is
secret. I averted my gaze back to him. He was a
mess. A disgusting mess. Is this what either of
us had been reduced to? Is this what we
deserved? Is this what we had dreamed? It
didn't matter any more because the second and
the third or the last or even the first, they were
all the same. It was the slave's turn now.