There is nothing more deceptive, than a sensation of our own safety
"Good morning"
He looks up. Just looks, looks steadfastly, but indifferent. It doesn't matter for him if you are here, or you aren't.
If you'll consider seconds quite long, if you'll be trying to put them in minutes and hours, sooner or later you'll get off. Sooner or later all will merge together, in one abstract concept called "time". Sooner or later time will start to be stretched, contrary to all physical laws, to be extended, to be deformed and to be confused. And your head will start to hurt, hurt from the infinite account, from infinite "one, two, three, four, five …"
Someday this world will be lost. Someday the bright dazzling sun will blow up, will be scattered in one thousand splinters and then all light in this world will die.
"Good morning, Jack"
When we'll all die, this soft female voice will die to. And there will be no affected, impossible friendliness; there will be no thin partition, no the thin matte glass, dividing them. When the world will die, all of us will die too.
But you must be alive till that moment.
…
"Hello, Jack"
And then she's silent.
Silent for a long time, while she's standing near the thin glass, standing behind thin, behind almost illusory side. She's silent and she's waiting for… probably, for the answer. Or probably for the reactions. Or maybe she's waiting for nothing.
She's simply silent.
"I'll bring you some water. Can I bring you some water? All you need is just to sit here, where you're sitting now. I'll come in… and then I'll leave."
He's silent.
She wants to ask if he heard her. She wants to know what Ben has said to him, what could broke him. She wants to know what could turn his obstinacy in other party and want could transform his shouts into constant, oppressing silence.
She wants to ask "Why are you silent, Jack?"
But Juliet never asks that.
…
Long, so long, very long corridor. The moisture shines on a floor, wet rubber covering champs under her legs. In the end of the corridor there's a door, and behind it there's water. So much of salty, bitter water.
If to open the door, the water will rush here. And it will be filling this long, long, long corridor, with dense water-proof door. And they'll be looking, they'll be observing, but they won't help. They wouldn't be able to help.
If they'll open just one of the doors leading in a corridor they too will be dead. It's logical, it's rational, it's clear.
But why, why is it so complex to accept? Why does indifference, affected indifference hurt her so much? Why can't she accept this fact, this reasonable explanation, accept it and believe him again? Why is it so painfully sick, as if she is betrayed?
She stumbles at the lagged behind rubber. She's stumbles, and the tray falls on a wet floor. A plastic bottle is elastic flops, and a plate overturns. And the vegetable slices gleam on grey floor. Red, green, yellow, white. And black.
It is insulting. So insulting especially if to recollect how she strived. How she was cutting these vegetables, these accurate cubes. As she has never strived for herself.
As she used to do once.
…
There are table wares and two glasses and the bottle with white wine on the table. She's sitting on a small sofa near the window, and she's continuously looking on the darkening sky. Still waiting, but not hoping anymore.
"If you came, I'll be crying for forgiveness. If you came, I'll be confessing in everything, I'll repent and I'll accept any punishment. If you only came. If you opened this door" she whispers to condescending darkness. "I know, I'm guilty"
And there're also three more words, but she says them silently as if she's afraid, that someone will hear and learn it.
…
She slowly opens a heavy door and enters in the room.
Danger? What can be dangerous in the grown weak captive?
And she doesn't think about danger. Maybe for some reason, maybe not, but she doesn't think about danger.
Sometimes she ceases to be Juliet and she becomes just the woman. And she knows that Ben despises her for these "sometimes".
"I'll put a bottle on the table and then I'll leave, Jack" what for she repeats his name all the time? Perhaps to remember?
Deceptive safety. Indifference. The open door. And no one besides them two.
Just one moment and he's up close to her. Just one moment and she's pressed to a cold table again, and again the tray overturns, just now on it was only one bottle. Just one moment and his fingers squeeze on her throat.
Surprise. This is first feeling.
And the second is fear. Then she starts to choke.
When she understands that she can't breathe.
He's shouting something, asking something. She can't hear his voice. All she can hear are the head noises. She chokes.
She's breathless.
And the third feeling is indifference. What she has done? What she should be shamed for? A lot of things, too much to be judged be their concepts. And in her nearest future there is only one road, only one way and it's straight and narrow.
She's breathless.
And she wants to see the first stars in the dark sky. Those first stars she looked once.
Then she was breathless too. But breathless because of tears.
…
"Forgive me" she whispers "Please, forgive me"
…
And he kisses her, kisses here and now, greedy and wildly. His hand no more squeezing her throat, and if only he allows her, if he doesn't kiss her like that, right now, she'll be able to breathe again.
She hears only the noise in her head, the echoing blood, but she understands that she's alive. And no matter how, and no matter why, she's just alive.
She feels the taste of blood on her lips. Whose blood is it? Hers or his?
And she kisses, kisses and kisses him back. And right now she's not Juliet, not scientist, not psychologist, not one of them. She's just a woman, and she's like a millions of the other women in our world.
And the door is still opened.
…
Tomorrow they'll be divided with thin glass again. Tomorrow she'll be sitting on an inconvenient chair with a rigid back, tomorrow she'll speak, persuade and ask.
Tomorrow he'll be silent again.
Tomorrow she'll be Juliet, and he'll be Jack.
And now they are who they are. Not the persons they want to appear and not the persons were. They are who they are.
…
Light of a white lamp in a corridor is like far starlight. And you just need to imagine it.
…
"How it passed?" asks Ben
He's looking on her and Juliet smiles. She'll never know if he was in observatories then, she'll never know if he saw them in an aquarium. And she'll never know if that was just a part of his plan. And she doesn't know if she'll ever want to know that.
And now she's standing on the grass near his house, and now she can smile. Now she can breathe. Now she's not breathless.
Only bruises on her throat will remain about all that happens. If it hasn't appeared yet.
"As it should be… Ben"
Fin.