Preface
This past November I was invited to submit a piece to a short story contest. I decided to finish “The Value of One Life” the first page of which I wrote years ago. But I procrastinated too long, and the end didn’t come out as well as I had hoped. Nonetheless, I won the contest - a $30 gift card to Amazon. I used it to buy a turtleneck sweater.
Without further delay I present the contest-winning story, “The Value of One Life.” Enjoy!
Contained within the finite space of an opium nugget is all the immensity of the universe; it expands the body and mind that both may touch at once every part of existence. I used this as my escape in substitution for ball and pistol believing to suspend the galling limitations of reality a fair compromise to the drastic measure of self-annihilation.
I once woke from a stupor to find myself in the seediest of opium dens. The atmosphere was heavy; acrid smoke choked the room. In the recesses of the walls on shoddily constructed bunks reposed a number of emaciated bodies. More sprawled over the floor. Rising from my own place upon a wool blanket, I saw a gothic arch in the far wall whose portal was curtained with purple silks and flanked by flickering torches.
Drawing back the curtain revealed a dark, drafty, dungeon-like room built with large stones terminating in a rib-vaulted roof. A single, narrow slit answered for a window. Through it, a gray light filtered and sat upon the lower darkness like oil on water. A number of torches circumscribed the room, yet their strangely deep blue and red flames cast no real light. I saw a few shelves in neat rows, empty and collecting dust and cobwebs.
At the center stood a man wearing funereal robes and sandals upon his feet. His skin was corpse-like: pallid, dry and pulled tight about the bones. A closely drawn hood prevented a full view of his features, but the warty nose and thin, liver-lipped mouth were sufficiently repulsive.
“Welcome to my bazaar,” he croaked.
“But there’s nothing here,” I protested.
“On the contrary. Everything you could possibly want is here.”
In better years I strolled the avenues of my native city in the morning. The sunlight played off the church steeples and high-pointed roofs, casting strange shadows down the broad thoroughfares and on the walls of closely constructed mansions. In that moment, I nearly woke from the nightmare that is existence. And there came over me a feeling of adventurous half-expectancy, that if I only wanted it enough, I could step out of this world and into the next - not death but a transcendence. The words of the old man awakened these ancient feelings.
“I want to be rid of this filling emptiness,” I said. “Can you do that?”
“It is a simple thing,” he replied, “but not cheap.”
I thumbed the last coin in my pocket, feeling the ridges etched into its edge. The floor stones chilled my bare feet. I shuffled in place. It occurred to me then that I did not know where I’d obtain my next opium nugget.
“Prove to me it is as simple as you suggest,” I said.
The man did not answer. A moment passed in silence. Behind me the torches sizzled.
Then something drained from me. The fear, anxiety, loneliness and nihilism poured out of my body like a tilted pitcher. All the objects in the room became inert matter, naked and meaningless but in a neutral sense. And I saw myself as another person might: a stranger standing in a room. I didn’t love this man clothed in rags and unshaven, yet I did not find him disagreeable. I desired to be introduced. Before I could, however, gravity returned to the room, and I fell back into the false world.
“Do it again,” I demanded.
He made no move.
I threw myself prostrate before him and wrung the hem of his robes between my hands. I begged until tears grooved my face.
“Here!” I said on my knees and trusted my last coin toward him. “Take it.” I forced it into his fist, but he would not clench.
“Coin is not accepted here, mister. I deal in lives. There is no more precious mineral dug out of the Earth than human life.”
“You’d have me kill someone?”
I stood up. A block of ice formed in my intestines.
“I suppose it could be done,” I said. “A miserly old codger riddled with cancer. The world wouldn’t miss him much. Would it?” But the old man shook his ugly head.
“Not all lives are equal. If you want this thing done, you’ll need to take a significant life. A child. Female. Preferably blonde.” His purple lips peeled back to reveal yellow teeth.
“How can you determine the value of a life?” I asked.
“It is both an art and a science, a complex equation of love, potential, valor, ambition, morality and so on. I spent decades developing it. Children are worth more than the old. Women more than men. The beautiful more than the hideous. the well more than the sick. And so on.”
“You're disgusting.”
The old man laughed. My skin prickled.
“It is your society that places the value, a world-wide marketplace with a variable rate of exchange. Purely economic. I merely take it in trade. Speaking of which … do we have a deal?”
“No. Not an innocent babe.”
“Do not let your petty sentimentality deceive you. No one is innocent.”
“I said, no! I won’t. I can’t. Not for all the opium in the world.”
I stormed from the bazaar and the opium den next. Then I skulked the tenebrous streets. As I walked down a narrow alley to a broad thoroughfare, I heard the sharp clip-clop of high heels shoes from around the corner. I stopped. My warm breath clouded. I held it fast; fearful its smoke would give me away.
What was I doing? Was I considering it? Would I race back to the bazaar and implore the shopkeeper to take this woman’s life in apology? Give me another chance. Murderer? No. Not me. It was absurd. It was absurd, wasn’t it? I’ll kill the girl next time, honor. The footfalls came nearer. I raised a heavy stick that I had picked up for some purpose. Here she is, master, brainless but in good shape. Now, where are those dreams?