Ezra Azra--A Sinkhole To The Future

It can never be known just when in their lives Ayby and Aydy came to know that they had similar names. There were other similarities about them that they came to know first, but which, for some time after they met, meant less than nothing to them.

Both were fourteen years old. Both met for the first time in a Government Detention Facility for minors who had been convicted of violent crimes against others.

Ayby had stabbed her elder sister multiple times to the brink of death, in their home. Ayby had had enough of teasing about the birthmark on her face.

It was a light-blue patch that disfigured one side of her face from the time she was born. Children’s first spontaneous reaction had ever been to laugh at Ayby while pointing to her face.

Over the years, that blue stain had triggered countless cruel hurtful nicknames among children.

The situation had become so intolerable that when the time came for Ayby to enroll in school, her parents applied for Government permission to school Ayby at home. That permission had been granted, and all went well until that crime committed at home when Ayby was fourteen.

Aydy was an orphan. He grew up in an orphanage. The children from the orphanage were looked down upon by most of the other children in the nearby Government school the orphanage children attended. That Government school was like all Government schools in that no attempt was made to make the playgrounds free of bullies during recess times.

In that school, the bullies reveled especially in making life ugly and difficult for children from the orphanage.

At a recess two bullies came at Aydy, threw him to the ground, and kicked him viciously, and ordered him to take off his boots. He took off one of his boots, and with it he beat both those bullies to death. Some of the students cheered Aydy on, and kicked the corpses a few times on the ground, and ransacked their pockets.

The Government Detention Facility consisted of two buildings on either side of a two-lane vehicle-traffic road. That road served the Government Detention Facility only. One building accommodated female inmates; the other, male inmates.

In those Detention buildings, all inmates respected one another out of fear. And every inmate kept fiercely to themselves whenever the official rules allowed; and those rules allowed it most of the time.

In addition, for Ayby, none of the inmates paid particular attention to her disfiguring birthmark because there was a rumor among them that that disfigurement was the cause of the violence that doomed her to be there among them.

Once imprisoned inside the Facility, both Ayby and Aydy, for the first time in their lives, felt a deep tranquility. In neither of them was there even the slightest of thoughts to ever leave. Both, along with many others, signed away having visitors from the outside free world.

Once a month in one of the buildings females and males were officially brought together to have a safe co-ed experience without physical contact.

In a hall, on either side of a long table, the inmates sat and chatted, for a few hours. Light refreshments were served by civilian-clothed unarmed prison personnel. It was at one of those group encounters where Ayby and Aydy communicated casually across a table.

Their conversation was the same as everyone else’s at those tables: only brief references; superficial interest in everything; no questions about each other; no attempts to hide or disguise obvious mutual distrust; no intentional attempts at humor; immediate instinctive nonverbal apologies for accidental humor.

By sheer chance, or, perhaps, not, Ayby mentioned to Aydy that she had been granted space and equipment in the Facility for her to run a book publishing service for the inmates.

The service was proving to be successful. Inmates were submitting stories. The publishing was providing employment for inmates. The authorities were considering remuneration for inmates’ volunteer employment.

Ayby said she had been inspired by a successful similar venture initiated by inmates in a Government Detention Facility on Richard Street in the suburb of Nashville, in the City of Melbourne in the State of Victoria in Australia.

The mention of Australia meant nothing to Aydy because up to that moment he did not know that Australia existed, although he was dimly aware that somehow the words kangaroo and Australia were connected.

She observed to him that she had come to know about the existence of Australia ‘only a little while ago’, and that she had heard the word kangaroo for the first time only when he had mentioned it to her.

Ayby sensed Aydy’s awkwardness. She dared a little humor: “I have done the calculations, Aydy. Australia is where you would come out on the other side if you dug a hole straight down here through the Earth.”

Ayby suggested Aydy apply for permission to set up similar publishing services in the male branch of the Detention Facility. When he observed he knew nothing about book publishing, Ayby, mentioned that the authorities might approve of his spending time at her office place in order for her to teach him ‘the ropes.’

With Ayby’s help, Aydy applied. Permission was granted. In the next few weeks Aydy and a few other males spent a few hours a day in the female Detention Facility being taught by and learning from Ayby and her inmate co-workers, about book publishing.

It must have been because of the effects of the many different chemicals involved in book printing that after a few months the birthmark disfigurement on Ayby’s face quite disappeared. The disappearance had been so gradual over the months that not even the Government medical persons could be certain of the date it had completely vanished. Ayby could not care less about when and why that had happened. Celebrating the occasion did not cross her mind.

Those co-ed events in the Detention Facility were always begun at midday. At one of those times, while the event was in progress, a sudden approaching storm was officially announced.

Immediately, the inmates were ordered to return to their cells.

Black clouds hid the sun. Violent winds were heard and felt. Inmates were running, cheering, screaming.

Rain burst down with such violence, black water holes exploded into existence in many parts of the County.

A part of one of the detention buildings was shattered by one such wet spluttering muddy hole. Detention authorities urged inmates to save themselves however they could. The authorities electronically sealed-opened all doors in the buildings.

Ayby and Aydy found themselves next to each other in the rain and thunder and deafening and blinding chaos. They were looking down into an ever widening hole that was deafeningly sucking everything into it, including the building they were in. The terrified screams of hopelessly trapped inmates were louder than the thunder and swirling crashing rain.

Ayby extended her hand to Aydy, and shouted to him: “Wanna try for Australia?”

He took her hand, the first time they intentionally touched, and shouted back, “Why not?”

They jumped into the wet chaos of that sucking black hole; down into eternity.