Why Women Burn

Chapter 4

We didn't even stop at my apartment. We drove out of this life as easily as someone taking a walk. I peeled off the lonely psychologist with the friendly attitude like a wetsuit. I left her laying on the glass covered floor of room 26. Now I was bare and shivering again, my skin raw. Not necessarily a blank canvas, more of a crack in the pavement looking for new things to fill it.

"Do you have a valid ID?"

I nodded.

"Okay, it will do for now. When we get to Amsterdam I will get you a new one. Do you have anything else that has to be erased?"

I blinked at her. Her face was relaxed while she drove. Fully in control. How did this happen? How did she become this...absolutely logical being? I pressed my lips together.

"Only one credit card. The lease to my apartment. And a scented candles subscription. My work has my social security number. Give me a phone and a good internet connection, I will make it disappear in an hour."

I could see Iso nodd out of the corner of my eye.

"Scented candles?"

"Shut up."

She chuckled shortly. Then there was silence. I didn't like it. It was too familiar, too much filled with memories.

"I thought you did not like technology?"

I shrugged, happy that she had started talking again.

"I dont. I think it's a fucking mockery of humanity. But I guess we all had to adapt. So yes, if I need to use the internet I know how to do it."

"I am surprised you stayed in society at all. I had expected you to crawl into a hole somewhere and mourn the disappearance of your Gods."

A small flair of anger sparked inside of me. A long lost rage from a different life, where my beliefs were still strong and thriving.

"I considered it. Though I would have properly lost my mind waiting for him."

"Yeah."

Was the only thing she said to that. I wondered if she had also gotten to that point. Where the questions hadn't been how to continue but rather if. I started fidgeting.

"So, Tamara is in Amsterdam?"

"Yes. Has been there for the past ten years."

"How?"

"I don't know either. But she hasn't changed address or name. She has become careless."

Stupid. I shook my head. She put all of us at risk. But Tamara had always been reckless. Arrogant. I remembered the first time I saw her, clothed in the most beautiful of silks, a face envied by the Gods. I still haven't encountered a more exquisite looking creature than her. Though there had always been a certain sadness surrounding her, a wrongness that made her fight everyone and everything that dared question her. At that time I had not particularly cared when I found out that she was male between her legs. I didn't have the time to do so. But she cared. Oh she had, immensely. The moment anyone dared to call her anything else then what she prefered she became a furie. Once she broke my nose because I suggested that she could pretend to be my husband.

"Do you know a place where we can take her?"

"I have a house in Amsterdam. We will get her sober there."

I didn't say anything to that. Was scared of what would come out of my mouth if I did. Iso had been the leader of an army once. She knew how to think for the easiest and quickest solution. I had been a queen. I had other concerns. Like the fact that our husbands were loose and that staying in the same city where Tamara has been for so long was a risk. A big one at that. My brain started churning, slowly, carefully. Finding long forgotten patterns and following them. Weaving plans on a rusty sewing machine.