Friday 8 April 2016

SHORT STORY - II



                                        HOPE



"We are going to die tomorrow, they will cut our tongue, chop our fingers and burn us alive!.Are you not afraid Jonathan?", I asked.

 He looked at me with his usual calm gaze from across his cell and said " They will save us Albert. King Rand will not let his best spies die so easily. Me, I am at-least replaceable but you are invaluable to him. No one in the whole of kingdom can match your intelligence Albert. He will have us saved, I know".

"Its only a matter of few hours now Jonathan. I don't see it happening. If they had to come they would have by now. We must try to escape or should die by ourselves before the dawn. I don't want to have a painful death."

"We can't escape, the guards are everywhere, the keys are with the chief guard himself. I can't see any way to escape but I know we will be saved Albert. King Rand's men will save us. Don't lose hope. Don't talk of killing yourself. Suicide is for cowards, Albert. Don't be a coward", pleaded Jonathan.

"Suicide is not cowardly my friend. Its just another choice amongst many choices. We humans have unlimited freedom, unlimited choices. To think what we want, to do what we want, but we are so scared to accept our freedom that we have ourselves bonded us to societal, traditional, and spiritual boundaries. To moral and immoral divides. The fear of exercising wrong choice had lead us to build restrictions .We always have a choice to kill ourselves as the ancient stoics believed. Seneca once said "can you no longer see a path to freedom?.Its right there.All you need to do is turnover your wrists!". I refuse to suffer while i die. I am better of killing myself than dying a gruesome death.", I said.
                                                                                     
"Hope runs the world, Albert. I like to see my glass half full. We must never let the fire in us die. Even if there is a small chance, most negligible one, we must hope of it happening. we will survive this my friend. I know we will", said Jonathan in a more hopeful way, but with lesser confidence than earlier.

"You know Jonathan, as a kid I would always attempt to stop my breath for as long as possible to understand how it feels while one dies. I never managed to hold it for long enough, but I at least understood how powerless one would feel when air ceases to reach one's lungs. Over the years i watched executions, and understood that choking and dying is least painful of all other ways and since then I always carry a bottle of hem-lock around my waist."