Savage Wait

• Katie Cookson, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2011

It’s not the first time I’ve come here. Nor, I suppose, will it be the last. However, one thing will become the standard, and the exception, during this particular visit.
The heat. It swelters and dampens, forcing the banal task of drawing breath to become impregnated with a ponderous quality, inflated with self-importance.
Around where I sit, there are people rejoicing at reunion, people sobbing with what can only be described as a primal grief at having something intrinsic to their selfhood taken away.
Outside of this hullaballoo, a woman stands. She is waiting. Although she does not face me, from the sagging in her shoulders, the droop of her head, she has been there for too long, a flower wilting without the promised water.
Finally, she turns. Her eyes glint with steely resolve, despite the redness, the drooping lidded gaze that has been inflicted upon her. As she steps into a waiting taxi, I feel this ordeal only proved something she had suspected all along.
A time later, a man appears. Initially, he blends in with the crowd, merely another face looking for a familiar person. However, after many minutes, he seems to understand that the one who he’s waiting for is not here. Although he asks around, avoiding me, of course, after he realises I can’t understand, it is merely a procedure. He knows that he has been left behind.
Yes, this visit has been an experience which will never be repeated, and I know that it is the finishing line of a race begun so long ago, where the first to reach it will receive a prize promised so long ago that it has been forgotten. The runner had begun to believe the race was never-ending. Flawed, careless thinking. Thinking of a nature so irrational, naive, pure, a kind that I once possessed. Foolish runner, every race has an end, because only then can a new race begin.
A hesitant touch on the back of an exposed neck. Stiffening, I turn around. A sheepish daughter stands there. Moving her hands with the fluidity of practice, she signs. "Sorry, I forgot."