Why Women Burn

Chapter 2

Hearing her voice made me nauseous. I had trouble keeping myself in the present. I started praying. The door slammed shut. I could feel her move backwards, towards the couch.

"Are you still Aiya or do you have a new name you prefer?"

Of course I had a new name. At that moment though I felt more like Aiya than anyone else. She was so cold, so matter of factly. Somehow this indifference ripped me out of my panic.

"Have you forgotten the rule, Iso?"

It was Aiyas voice that spoke. Arrogant and royal, expecting people to follow her orders without hesitation. Iso shook her head, I could see a hint of the rage she was so well known for.

"Trust me, in all these years it's one of the things I will never forget. And yeah I guess you can call me Iso thanks for asking."

This had a very familiar feel to it. An anchor dragging me back into a long forgotten body. I stood straight, pulled my shoulders back, chin in the air.

"Then I am not sure why you thought it was a good idea to come here. If you need therapy I have some great colleagues that love a challenge."

She rolled her eyes at me and I felt a pang of irritation. Iso had always had a problem with people telling her what to do. I remember the fights we had gotten into in the few moments that we had shared together.

"I am not here for your stupid mind-games. Gods, I came here because..."

She paused. Swallowed. I waited. She started pacing back and forth.

"You know that your...husband is back right?"

I calmly looked at her and briefly wondered if she had gone insane.

"Iso that is not possible. It has only been fifty years. I still have time."

I liked using her name. It brought me back to a safe place. A place where I still thought I was better than her. Now she started gnashing her teeth. She was easily frustrated. Easily brought to the point of exploding. I remembered now. There were ways to deal with a beast, no matter how untameable it was.

"Do you think I would have come here on a whim? Because I have nothing better to do in my miserable life?"

I didn't answer. Just kept looking at her. She took a step closer to me, I could feel her breath on my face and I was suddenly alive. The danger of the situation made adrenaline pump through my veins. My heart started beating like crazy. Iso got into my face.

"Don't talk to me like I am your servant. Your time as queen is long over. So now you will listen to me and I don't care if I have to tie you to the stupid vending machine."

I didn't dare move. Images flooded my brain. Iso's wide, dilated eyes after a fight. Her body looking like she had been strolling through hell. This woman before me had violence living in her, like a devil ready to set her off at any time.

"I created a software that warns me anytime...the cycle resets."

I blinked.

"What?"

"You know...anytime someone shows up matching the fascial descriptions of..."

"You did what?"

Gone was the furious being in front of me. Now she was nothing more than the stupid, arrogant lowlife that she had been born to be. 

"How dare you? There is an order to things..."

"Oh spare me the fucking speach yeah? The world has moved on, we have new tools to our disposal it would be stupid not to use them."

Anger surged through me. Who did she think she was, playing God? There was a plan to all of this, we were nothing put pawns in this. Disrupting all this was just plain stupid.

"You can not try to solve...predict any of this with that technology crap!"

She pushed her lower lip forward, which ended up in a facial expression that made me want to slap her.  

"Well, if I had not done it, we wouldn't have known about the shitstorm coming straight for us."

"What are you talking about?"

"The cycle is broken."