[YD6-57(SHEl) Chapter Code] Shadow of Betrayal: Aetheria's Mirage in New York's Labyrinth

 

This memoir, presented in self-contained chapters, delves into the layers of existence through the lens of Aetheria, a toddler who personifies ‘Consciousness.’ Born from a profound yearning, Aetheria names herself Sunshine, yet her journey is shadowed by dark forces threatening her destiny. Inspired by The Code: Horizon of Infinity, these stories weave together themes of mind travel, destiny, and the shaping of fate.

Rhymes in my mind the music bringing the song’s echoing, ‘Que sera, sera. What will be will be. . .’ In the bittersweet rut of escaping Francine’s overnight absence, her not returning home — neither in the morning — Gnaws at me. I reason, ‘I have no right to dictate her life' Yet betrayal lingers a filthy sour smoke. To cool my heart, I plunged headfirst into thoughts, of my flight to Paris. Retrieve my mind from the information I gathered for a job interview, only to be consumed the idle loneliness during the airport on a strike. 

By mid-afternoon, I roam the midtown Manhattan streets. Out of the smoke of my mind, I emerge in Battery Park, dwarfed by towering memories. A vision materializes — a memory from years ago of the Twin Towers. My ghost ascended the North Tower’s staircases. Whereby, I emerged from the shadows of the core shaft, my figure crossed the vacant floor to the edge of the curtain wall. My ghost stood gazing over the cityscape. At intermediary floors, I came to the forefront to view the cityscape, climbing the stairs until midway to the top. With a fleeting breath, the vision volatilized — leaving me puzzled for years.

As I emerged from the subway. A few portals further, I climb atop a pair of hewn, bluestone stairs. Street traffic shimmers in the glaze of the fourfold wooden entrance. I push the door open against its flimsy, squeaky spring resistance, stepping into a welcoming echo of the 1940s. I rise from a flight of granolithic steps and approach the walk-up built-in desk, no longer staffed. Limp folders spill their riffled, curling yellowed papers, softening the counter sharp edges and staging the vacated reception area — a monument to a bygone bureaucracy, a frayed curtain of the past bulging folders in the surrounds.

Searching my way, to the crack in the wall, I step away to veer right and ascend a dogleg staircase. At the top, the landing wall sprawls into wings of evanescing narrow corridors. I walk right, the tapering distant walls drawing me. Knowing my aim, while passing eerie sentinels of shut doors. An ajar door, reveals a vacated chair, to a desk buried in stacks of folders. Across the passageway, an accountant, bent in concentration, reads columns from top to bottom, diagnosing the financial health of the company. The end wall shines a faint spill of light through the crack of a left doorway. I halt at the threshold, laying sight on the man with an Indian complexion, his tensile mask expressing a web of conflicts. My shadow sufficed in the gaping doorway, respecting the property manager seated behind an executive desk cluttered with folders. His eyes darting, flicking down to papers on his desk pad. 

Rises from his chair, he lets the backrest swing as his eyes, perplexed, remain pegged to a sheet of paper lying on the green blotting desk pad. Walking around the desk’s pointed corner, his gaze sweeps his path, darting. Approaching the door, I step aside, pressing my shoulder against the wall to let him pass unseen. Turning away, he distances himself, crosses the stairwell spill of light, silhouettes in the opposite wing, leaving an air of unresolved tension behind.

Then, with a wave of déjà vu, my mind stretches back into the meeting room I recognize from before — when my case was brought before the Reise brothers. The Hydra of my mind — an eye spying from the corner ceiling of the room — takes in the scene. I now match the attendant in the shadow — the Indian man, he, who had laid out the conditions for winning contracts to outfit fast-food outlets for the Reise Organization. They were meeting with my employer, the Greek contractor, to address my confrontation with Erwin Reise. Asking him to step off my the construction site as he walked on freshly glued floor tiles.

I wait, sensing the Indian’s return is imminent. When his shadow reappears, at a steady pace, his mask discarded. As he swerves toward the doorway of his office, he utters, “Not for now.” Disappointed, I step back, retreating through the corridor, then trot down the stairs. The S-shaped path uncoil through the reception area, leading me back into the street.

Along the avenue, heading uptown and seeking how and where to waste my afternoon away, I gaze in the rounds over the traffic wishy-washy buildings. Until, along a traversing street, a mirage clings to a facade. Aetheria’s finger spurs an enticing pointer into the avenue’s canyon, teasing a thought of discovery. After a zigzag trail through a trickle of traffic, the facade loses, left my gaze on the sidewalk of the sunlight efflorescence. But the sun-shafted avenue, fluting skyward, beckons me to stroll by. On the opposite sidewalk, I approach the familiarity within the city’s differences. A scaffold casts a dark tunnel over the sidewalk, breaking the glaring run to commercial entrances. My pace slows to a creep, as my eyesight digs into the dark depths. 

From the hollow shadows of stripped naked rawness of structural concrete columns, a leading wheel waxing to light onto a rubble heaped wheelbarrow tray, emerging a laborer. He drives the wheelbarrow egressing from the gateway, amidst the reflective, bleached boarded construction site into the sun-flooded street. His round face, narrowed eyes, and city clothes caked in white dust click into my mind. ‘How could I compete with Chinese exploited labor?’ I tell myself. In plain view, a labor-intensive industry. ‘I’m no longer in South Africa!’ Dawns obvious, my shortfall running a construction company. 

I sink into these thoughts as I watch him push the wheelbarrow into the tailgate of a large industrial container. He lifts its handles, dumps the rubble, turning around, tugging the wheelbarrow into the entrails of the site. Gleaming outlining of a concrete mixer, stacked air-conditioning duct, and heaps of rubble, as the gateway frame, nearby, three energetic youths bustle.

A punch in my chest by the Riese organization, at sight of the Pizza Hut restaurant logo, “opening soon” splashed as I walk on. ‘I was good at pulling them out of trouble when builders let them down.’ After a stroke of envy, falling within the promise of a contract. ‘The construction site should have been mine!’ 

I stroll onward, along a Friday bustling street of delivery vans upholding traffic here and there, before I enter Central Park. Walking among midday joggers, crisscrossing and weaving among pen-pushers at desks in suits on their lunch breaks. Finding myself in their midst. My mind sulks in the shadow of the barrel-vaulting foliage. The trees’ language doesn’t suffice to lighten Francine's absence, her lingering chatting with the barman last night in the dim bar before closing for the night. The scene, though I stifle it from my thoughts, consumes the oxygen from my body. Fatigue creeps into my body. Her not returning home, looms heavy over the upcoming weekend. 

My path leads to walking along yellow taxis bustling through scattered traffic, to an inadvertent subway railing opening the sidewalk hatchway to descend underground. Heavy-hearted, I worm underground through fluorescent-lit tunnels, weaving through a flock of passengers spilling from a train that just arrived. I walk toward the outbound platform, where the driver, flashing past in his cabin, leaves me with the flicker of windows, revealing an afternoon crowd of commuters packing the coaches. Pulling up to a halt, doors open before me, then close behind. The floor tugs under my feet as I grip the pole, standing while windows plunge into the dark tunnel. The coach punctuates its rhythm at stations, each with a brief egress of passengers. Until, the load speaker cracks, “Rego-Park - 63rd Road.” Coming to a halt at the station, I step off and emerge from the subway to Queens Boulevard. 

I walk the mile-stretch along 63rd Road into Forest Hills, approaching the Chinese woman’s house. Rising before the stairs, jingling Francine’s keys on my keyring, leaving the summer heat behind, for a creeping chill. I pick the lock, reliving yesterday’s dread — wishing to shake off the intrusive unease. But Francine's absence prevents me from asking, ‘Can you put me up, until my flight?’ the door cracks open to a somber, soulless hollow. I bypass my luggage, waiting like pets around the corner. 

In the passageway by the foot of the bed, through a corkscrew sweep, plonking myself down, eager yet uneasy, doubtful over her return, at that from Gaetano Pesce’s art studio. My mind goes numb as I’m prolonging sitting. Then I sprawl on my back, with fingers interlocked beneath my head, staring at the ceiling, fearing, the evening, and Saturday confine to spend hours stretching twiddling time away before my flight. My heart, tangled in conflicts, spurs occasional doubt. ‘Would Francine return? If at all?’

I wiggle free from the grip of idleness, pulling my shoulders up to sit. Dawdling as the temperature falls, the street-front window, the night smokes into sunlight, I drift, lost in an ocean of waiting, fearing the stillness that holds me captive. 

Until, a woodpecker, peckish outside, half-expected for the past few days, leads to the lock picking beside me. I listen to the unlatching deadbolt in the door, the relay of the latchbolt. In the corner of my eye, the door seam cracks open. Francine’s swampy eyes meet mine, flush with surprise, hiccuping. ‘What…’ She stifles her breath, chocks on her words, lapsing to take a breath, her mind chuckles herself caught in her act, by surprise, naked. 

She steps in, turning her eyes with the door lever, fixating the click shut, tweak the key, before returning her eyes to sweep the through-floor passageway. Catching her composure and stepping forward. She abandons her mental shield of her promiscuity. ‘Take me for who I am,’ her demeanor says. In a defiant voice, she says. “Tout ce qu’ils veulent, c’est du cul — All they Want Is Ass!” 

I counter her words, thinking, ‘She’s no better than the men she blames.’ Her tines scraping, raking the fibers of my heart. ‘Let her be a free woman.’

Francine attempts to stifle the fire of her Aries, to smoke out last night’s image from my mind. The vision of my upcoming flight overwhelms my thoughts, trailing my heart’s dark soak rag into azure skies — a semblance of fluttering in sunlight before fading into a stark indifference. Francine tries to bring back normalcy. Our talks flutter — her welcoming city weighing against home  — as she prepares sandwiches. Breaks of silence carry an edge; her eerie quietness seems to whisper, ‘What will become of me when you’re gone?’

While my mind roams in the depth of our microcosmic zodiacal jungle, thoughtful churns over the path we stray. Her Aries’ wildfire intertwines with her Horse’s free spirit, a wild mustang galloping beneath the veil of her soft, whispering voice. Her enigmatic character my heart cannot not sustain. Echoing in the notes of SHE, I left for her. How her story sparked a smile, the cadence of our usual talks. And with memories, we slip under the covers for the night, the fragile connection hovering between us.

With Saturday’s sun lingering bright outside the windows, Francine flips back the duvet, rising slink. She passes a Chinese garden of pink wallpaper, pursuing the bed to the foot. There, she disappears through the doorway into the shower room. Leaving me a skeptic, with her absence palpable. The faint hiss of water spray, shakes my restless. I rise from bed, pick my clothes off the chair, dressing, to plonk with my heart heavy and miserable, at the foot of the bed. 

When she emerges, in her cowgirl outfit. Her bright eyes wave toward the door, her grin lifting me off the bed. She darts out, leaving her paddock for the open plains. I follow her, closing the door behind us, descending the stairs to sunlight. Together, we walk along the sidewalk to Queen Boulevard, turning the corner. Approaching the railing to the subway hatchway. The skyline stretches before us, a jagged barbed wire fence, slicing across the horizon. 

With sunlight filtering down the stairs, we descend into the fluorescent-lit subway tunnels, leading us to stand by for the trundling of an approaching train. Boarding the coach, we mirror our ride among traveling families, flashing into stations. Until we alight, baffling the mind’s imagination. The skyline faded from memory, emerging within the concrete jungle of downtown in Manhattan, to the city pulse weaving into our steps. 

Crossing peaceful traffic, we find ourselves strolling through Central Park’s gritty paths, sunlight filtering through a labyrinthine embrace of trees. Wandering amid small talks, her gaze falls silent, as though a deep surge rises from within. ‘My open date return ticket.’ — My guarantee of escape should France turn for the worse. While Francine’s wild laughter lingers — her response when I tricked her into revealing my place in her heart, by a subtle reflection of marriage. As we weave paths, by an afternoon sun still high in the sky, exhaustion sets in, a subway railing rises on the sidewalk, descending into the underground, a hum of a train meets us beckons us homeward. Boarding surrounded by mirrored traveling families and commuters. Punctuate flashing stations, to step off at Rego Park — 63rd Road to a mile-stretch ahead, a quiet prelude to home.

Sunday dawns ghostly silent. I glance at my wristwatch; the looming of my flight rounds off the 12:45 departure to 13:00 hours. I count back my departure, calculate by the hours. ‘One for the drive, the two before check-in, and one for the unforeseen. Departure: 10:00 a.m.’ I repeat in my mind, the rhythm of preparation steadying my thoughts.

By 9:00, I kick my feet from under the duvet and rise. Pulling my clothes off the chair, I dress. Francine rises too, propping herself against her pillow, her enigmatic eyes fixing on me. She shields her mind from confronting the looming breach of what’s coming.

“Would you like coffee?” I ask, breaking the silence. Behind me, I sense her gaze lingers, as I place a filter in the percolator’s basket, measure the coffee grounds, and pour water into the cistern. My eyes sweep over her in the midst of the pink Chinese garden. Her gaze teases my heart. A hiss of the percolator crescendos. I step into the doorway as the gurgling begins. My heart steals the oxygen from my breath, a warming throb, driving my mind to folly. Brushing my teeth, whining my Philishave around my face, I return, to the aroma of brewing coffee.

I pour two cups and sidle over to Francine’s bedside. Her shoulders slump, and the duvet rippling the outline of her crossed legs beneath. She inherits my living style, the essence folded into the life I leave behind, coffee in a glass cup on a saucer, before I turn away. I sip my coffee at the foot of the bed, returning cups and saucers to the sink, and glance at my wristwatch — ‘Time.’ 

I step over the phone on the shelf along with my collection of music cassettes, and dial. After speaking Francine’s address to the operator, I hang up. I linger, count down the taxi, Francine severe look meets me. ‘You can’t leave me like this?’

Honk, honk - muffles outside the door. Francine pauses her mid-flight toward the shower doorway. She sidesteps, and in a swirl, her soft lip tender peck mine, her figure fleeting, vanishing behind the shower door. My hand heavy, reluctant to turn the key, then at pulling the door, to clear the canary yellow taxi pulling up in the street. I bend to grab my bag and suitcase, a yearning ache for one last glance at Francine’s eyes. Not forthcoming, I step out, pulling the door close behind me. 

I descend the stairs, crossing the path to the waiting taxi driver, a hand on the raise trunk lid. As he grabs my luggage, I turn away, gazing at the ground-floor window, and searching the seam of the door to crack from the jamb, as I round by the taillight of the fender. Nothing. I grab the door handle, duck into the car - smack - the door shut behind me. 

The driver settles into his seat, gripping the steering wheel. He cast a glance back, frowns in the quest. “Where to?”

“J.F.K International, Please.”

The driver uncoils. The Chinese landlady’s house slips back, twisting in my seat, searching the window for Francine’s eyes, feeling grief devoid of an embracing farewell, and hold me back to make it here. But my eyes tug, my body torquing as the house withdraws to vanish behind the corner of an architectural-warehouse apartment block. I turn to gaze at the leading deserted street, through the panoramic windshield, my thought drifting ahead to the flight.

While riding through the suburbs, my mind shed the feathers of my past, soothing my heart into a new adventure. We merge onto the expressway, amidst a trickle of traffic. Sings for JFK Internation spring up, fleeting past whispering of departures. The taxi glides into the sprawling terminals, pulling up by the mirrored wall that reflects my fleeting image. I step out, leaving the car behind, as I head toward the terminal. 

People mill around, scattered beneath the Air France, luminescent blue, white, red fascia above the check-in counters. I search the least crowded line, trailing behind travelers, shifting up the turquoise-uniformed attendant. I hand over my red carbon ARC ticket and passport. Heave my suitcase along the check-in desk to the conveyor belt. My luggage tagged, my travel documents returned, I walk away, the weight of transition lifted from my shoulders. 

Following the flow of a scattered crowd, I approach the passport control officer. Handing over the boarding pass slotted into my passport. With a nod, he returns it. I pass the glass cubicles, crossing the threshold, with a fledging relief, In my strides, through the endless corridor. My mind fledging new feathers, exciting my heart, as the uniformed hostess at the gates greets me with a polite smile. 

Her hand grips my boarding pass, tearing off the heel, waving me into the telescopic boarding ramp, fleeting a smile of my own, onto meeting a greeting aircrew “Bienvenue à bord — Welcome on board,” their words teasing my heart with echoes of Francine’s tongue. I am ushering into the aisle among bustling and settling passengers, finding my seat. 

Stretching my arms, I place my hand luggage overhead bin and lower into my seat by the window. Upfront, a crew member closes the Jumbo’s door, while the other aircrew disperses. Outside my porthole, I watch the terminal beginning to rotate away, shrinking into the backdrop, as the trust pushes me into the fold of my seat. Feeling airborne, I lose my references in the concrete jungles to an amalgam of bricks and grids beneath the wing of the aircraft.

The flight passes in a haze, the open skies unfolding beyond the cabin. My gaze shift to livening stewards trolling a cart through the aisles. Serving a meal and drink, ducking into rows of passengers’ tufts of hair as they sit tucked deep into their seats. The hustle fades into a quieter aftermath. As I dawdle, my eyes drift to the view beneath the aircraft’s wing — the Atlantic stretches infinite and blue. Suscitating Aetheria’s realm, among lonely fleecy clouds, drift peaceful, apart a gift as if time on a pause. Until, an oddity: the speck of a ship dotting the blues, trailing a white hazy wake. 

Impatience creeps into my body, relieved by the captain’s voice breaking through the loudspeakers to announce the British coastline. Floating in my seat, savoring an imminent landing, until my restlessness gnaws at me again. My mind search the blues’ curvature through the rising the distant shores, to glide over an endless procession of quilted French landscapes. Upon touchdown, I feel an urge to spring from my seat. I beg my body for patience as we’re taxing the runway, to remain tethered as we roll pass Orly Airport terminal, before, curling back, coasting up to the glass curtain walls. Short of the captain’s announcement, a pool of seat belts click lose. I find myself among restless passengers before the cluttered aisle, for a marathon run to freshen up my body.