Balanced Treachery: the alliance of traitors

1. Puerile Flare

Madness comes in waves, I strike like a tsunami.

The duality of water: poisonous in abundance, fatal in paucity, had always fascinated me. If science equates water with life, does the irony of water intoxication turn the phrase into an oxymoron? Would too much life drain or drown a person? I suppose, either way, too much life would dispel a sane woman from the security of her backyard to search for remedies to this vexed paradox in deserts. Perhaps the sun could evaporate whatever life boils on her skin as it crawls out of her opened glands, carrying away the last of her mistakes and memories. They might scream and scratch and plead: Do not sweat us out, we are vital to your essence! But she would hear none of it as she gets lighter beneath the soul-cleansing rays. Her skin would burn and crack while she disappears in the sand; another phoenix waiting for its rebirth, another hydrological cycle.

I collected it all, droplet by droplet, in the well of my hands. I guarded it with secrets and half told truths; I adorned it with the facade of a poise mind and a lifted chin. Every hole was packed with gauze, every broken spine taped securely, and as my winters grew longer, my grip tightened around all these puddles I carried everywhere I went. In some melancholic way, the cycle I was so terribly afraid of chained me. I avoided the misted path, the eerie forest, the blind faith; I walked in the light of what I knew best and what I knew was chiseling its way through my limestone walls and out into the open. My feet didn't bleed, my arms didn't ache, my mouth didn't become parched. I was not a festered wound left for necrosis, or a candle burning slowly. I was burst capillaries patched, so they no longer leak, a cloud that refused to die.

But palms made poor buckets and the puddles inside me turned into rivers and the untamed rivers demanded to flow, so I poured and drowned and flooded. "What am I left with?" I ask myself, defeated. Water? The great infinite life? I am left with a life so lifeless that I too drowned in the same river I cried.

****

Eugene Jones was returning with an extra box of blue pipette tips when I was taking off my latex gloves. His plastered smile never left his face as he made his way to the granite counter top while I was dispersing hand soap into my palm. "We're making excellent progress, Doctor Dolion. The government will surely fund our research after we file the report," he said, reaching for the pipette. Doctor Jones often favored evaluating our progress right before I took my leave. His ratings varied from "declined" to "superb" and on that day it was excellent, so I suppose he wanted me to rejoice for meeting his standards.

"Yes, I'll file it when I'm back from my vacation," I replied as I began lathering the soap. "I need to go over it one more time."

"I have no doubt in my mind that we will submit the report before the deadline, Doctor Dolion." Eugene Jones was also fond of making my individual tasks seem like a team effort. If a certain action was done under the name of that department, any 'mine' or 'yours' automatically became 'ours' - that is of course until that 'ours' harmed Doctor Jones directly, then it would definitely remain a 'mine' and a 'yours'.

"Oh, no Doctor Dolion, these calculations are not mine. God forbid it, no, no, no. I always go through my calculations three times before turning them in. These are Doctor Torkan's, I am sure of it!" he would say, which made me question his integrity and, ultimately, his loyalty even further.

"I thank you for your optimism, Doctor Jones, it is well appreciated." Making him research manager assistant was a mistake ready to strike me down; I wonder if I was running from the truth back then or if I truly was oblivious to the countless silent betrayals.

"I am a firm believer that a happy working environment yields outstanding outcomes," he said with his amiable smile and theatrical voice. I can see from his side profile the white veneers, the freshly shaved jaw, and the perfectly fitted lab coat. It was as if the uniform had been tailored to both his measurements and his punctilious disposition. He worked so expeditiously and accurately that I suppose any criticism aimed at his craft was a direct insult to his character. Perhaps that was why he refused to shoulder his colleagues' mistakes.