Tell Me a Story

Decisions

The phone was ringing again and neither Martin nor Jake could say for how long. Martin was still trapped in a memory he had long ago buried. How often he had wished he had never been fished out of that well. How often he wished they had found him too late. He had wished for so long to have died with Mary. He had never had anyone else to care about or who cared about him.

Now he grabbed the phone and held it tightly in his hands, looking down to Jake with pleading eyes. He had been with this boy only a couple of hours and now suddenly he found that he cared – and cared deeply – about what happened to this boy. He did not want to trade him, for money or anything else, he did not want to send him back to the parents who had never bothered to raise him. He hung up the phone and passed it back to Jake.

“I have no money,” he said quietly, “I was a smart kid but after they found me in that hole – by the time I was well again I had no interest in making anything of myself. I fell away from my friends, my family, everything I had ever dreamed of. I the my life away and now I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get it back.

“But,” he said, after a pause, “but I won’t trade you for a couple of hundred grand, because it isn’t worth it. I can’t live with something else resting on my conscious; if I try I may as well crawl into a ball and die right here. The phone is yours, as is the choice. Call your parents and go home or….” He tailed off suddenly, wondering if he was being selfish even thinking what he was thinking. Jake looked up at him expectantly and suddenly he wasn’t sure if he could take the kid from a life of luxury to one where he would have nothing. It wasn’t fair.

“I wanna come with you,” Jake said.

They both knew it was ridiculous. Stockholm syndrome at work no doubt, but they had both come from such terrible things, and they were both haunted by such horrific memories. Maybe they were the best thing for each other.

“I can offer you nothing,” Martin said, slowly, quietly.

The boy merely shrugged and Martin felt a big smile spread across his face. One that was quickly mimicked by Jake. Neither of them could help it. They were both smart enough to know it was not a bright decision, and yet they would walk into it anyway. At the end of the day, to them, it was the only choice.

So they departed, off to try and carve a life out of absolutely nothing, against all possible odds, and the only things that were left in the flat was Jake’s old mobile phone – and the bulk of two people’s very bad memories.