ruins
by Mileva Anastasiadou
She drove fast like someone was after us. I looked out of the window, the hot summer wind hitting my face, and said, “I haven’t felt this carefree since I was four.” The woman laughed and said, “I haven’t felt this carefree in hundreds of years.” She kept staring at me, and I’d normally have asked her to keep her eyes on the road, but I didn’t.
It’s not that I didn’t mind dying, but she looked determined…fearless, and she dragged me along into fearlessness. The other woman in the back looked kind of frightened, to say the least. She didn’t seem to enjoy her friend’s recklessness. It felt like I was trapped in a car with Thelma and Louise just before they jumped off the cliff. I would have normally asked them to stop, stepped out of the car, because I can’t play the part of the aspiring robber, and I’m not Brad Pitt handsome, either, but we were in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t want to miss the festival.
My only hope was that they wouldn’t do anything too stupid. They were headed to the music festival, too, they told me, when we met a few hours earlier. Thelma, the shy one, said Rage Against the Machine was her favorite band and that she wouldn’t miss them for the world. “Too noisy,” I told her, and she shrugged. Louise said she preferred Metallica, but she couldn’t stand the “Unforgiven” song, and I suspected it reminded her of something, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask, and she didn’t say more. “Who’s your favorite,” asked Louise, taking a sip from her soda. I joked around, saying that I’m just a wanderer searching for meaning, but she didn’t laugh along. She said, “You don’t search for meaning, meaning finds you,” and Thelma nodded and said, “Meaning leaves ruins behind.” I may have commented to myself, like wow, because I thought they were so philosophical, or I may have talked aloud, although I don’t remember, but I don’t think it possible they read my mind because they both replied as if in one voice, “No, we’re not.”
“So, where are you guys from,” I asked when things got a bit quiet in the truck. They told me they came from Greece. I said I’d been to Athens, but they didn’t seem too excited, like they didn’t like the place much. I told them how my Greek friend Giorgos had asked me to meet in front of Hadrian’s library, and I searched for a library, but there was no library in sight, only ruins. “That place is full of ruins,” I said. Louise pressed her foot on the petal, and we went faster and faster, like she was offended, like I’d said she was the ruins. I stopped talking. Perhaps, quiet wasn’t that bad.
They had those long, strange Greek names I couldn’t pronounce properly. Louise told me her name was Iphigenia, and Thelma’s name was Antigone, but in my mind, I kept calling them Thelma and Louise because it came easy, and also because I liked the idea of being the Brad Pitt of the company. I recognized the names, of course. I’m pretty young to be familiar with tragedies of any kind, but Giorgos, who’s into this kind of thing, had talked to me about Iphigenia’s sacrifice and Antigone’s opposition to unjust human laws.
Time passed fast, and we were close, and I wouldn’t be telling this story if Thelma hadn’t thrown her arms around my neck from the backseat, minutes before we reached our destination. I wasn’t sure if she fancied me or if she wanted to kill me. I played cool, but Louise stopped the car and asked her to step outside. I could have run, but I didn’t. I stayed in the car and watched them fight. Thelma made a gesture as if asking, What? Louise made circles around herself and the car, whispering at first, but then raised her voice. “He’s thirty at best, and you’re thousands of years old,” I heard her say to her friend, which I thought weird since they both looked only a couple years older than me.
Bowing her head for a couple seconds, Thelma argued, “I just want a normal life this time,” but Louise insisted that this wasn’t normal, that they should just stick to the plan and only enjoy a music festival for once, and that she wouldn’t sacrifice her time for her, or anyone, or any stupid cause, not again. I didn’t take their words literally. I thought they had some kind of troubled past, like most people, that they needed therapy, too, like most people, and I got out of the car to beg them to stop fighting, or else we’d miss the festival. Thelma ran to the car and closed the door. She screamed a loud scream, so loud that I covered my ears. Louise locked the car, and Thelma screamed again with so much panic that she ran out of air. “Don’t mind her. She’s claustrophobic because she once died in a cave,” she told me. I shrugged because I didn’t know what else to do.
I sighed with relief when we parted ways at the entrance. I still can’t tell if they were high or characters from ancient plays, eternal figures who got tired of being symbols and carrying the burdens of tragedy and heavy fates, and I’m thinking about how hard it must be to sacrifice life for meaning, given I’m not a cat with lives to spare, about how people can’t live with or without meaning, and I wonder what Jesus would do upon a second coming, if he’d go for rapture, or if he’d rather just live.
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