Fractured Reality

"You can’t do this," Isaac said. "That would be completely inhumane. You’re Christians, aren’t you? Haven’t you ever heard of compassion? It’s supposed to be inside all of us."

Ben and the big guard held him by the arms while the third one returned, but not alone. When Isaac saw the poorly dressed pregnant woman being dragged out of the tunnel by the guard and dumped like a sack of garbage onto the rain-soaked street, a chill ran through his body. Suddenly, the weight of what he’d done hit him.

It was his desperation that was costing someone else their place in the Lincoln Tunnel.

She and her unborn child were being thrown out because of him.

What had he just been thinking about the ruthless people who fought their way to success with persistence and shamelessness?

"I’ve changed my mind," Isaac said. "I’d rather sleep on the street. I’d rather get kidnapped by some gang and have my organs harvested than be responsible for this woman living with that fear tonight."

"Pope Zodiac has decided," Ben said, his boyish voice high and cold.

Isaac wanted to help the woman, who knelt in a puddle, her head bowed as she wept quietly. Her sobs were drowned out by the roar of the storm and the chatter of people bathing and talking in the rain. She clutched her swollen belly tightly.

"She’s pregnant," Isaac muttered under his breath, now fully committed to walking away from the so-called PROMISED LAND. If he left, maybe they’d bring the woman back into the tunnel, where it was at least warm and dry, and she wouldn’t have to worry about getting attacked by the gangs that prowled the abandoned boroughs at night. But Isaac couldn’t break free from the big guard’s iron grip. He tried with all the strength he had left after his fifth fifteen-hour shift in a row.

"Why won’t you let me go, damn it?"

"Pope Zodiac needs you."

"The woman is pregnant, you sick bastards."

"That’s all the more reason to send her to the streets," Ben said, his voice cold and detached. "We don’t have any room left. When she has that baby, that’s just another mouth to feed." He helped the woman to her feet, though she didn’t understand a word of what was being said. She was one of the climate refugees from another continent. One so devastated that she had ended up here. She didn’t beg or plead. She knew better. Isaac watched her. The rain weighed down her hair, making it fall in thick strands. The rain drummed on the gray asphalt as she slowly, hunched over, disappeared into the mist of rain. Into an uncertain future. A future Isaac knew all too well wouldn’t be a good one.

Isaac made one last attempt to break free and help her. He wrenched himself out of the guard’s grip, but the big guy next to him grabbed his jacket, yanked him back, and shook him violently. Before Isaac knew it, he was flat on his back in a puddle. The other two guards pounced on him like vultures on their prey.

Except vultures preferred their prey dead—and Isaac was still alive. For now.

As the adrenaline in his body faded, the pain began to surface in his mind. Isaac had definitely gotten a few bruises in his attempt to escape those psychos. His chest throbbed like there were knife blades wedged between his ribs, so he avoided taking deep breaths. The blood from the gash above his right eyebrow had finally stopped flowing. His hands and jacket were smeared with his own blood, and he didn’t even want to know what his face looked like. He wandered like a ghost down the tunnel. Was he a prisoner? No one spared him a glance. The guards’ voices echoed in his memory, occupying his thoughts. "You’ll go straight to Pope Zodiac," one had said. "The leader of the PROMISED LAND already has a first job for you," said another. "Don’t even think about staying here without checking in," the third had warned.

A devout Christian with a large cross around his neck scrubbed a dirt- and rust-stained metal sign hanging crookedly on the tiled tunnel wall. The embossed letters read: Route 66. One of the Stranded, who’d clearly lost his faith, had exposed the lie of the so-called PROMISED LAND by adding another 6 with black spray paint, turning the tunnel into the Highway to Hell.

The tube-shaped walls loomed over him, amplifying his urge to flee. Burned-out cars littered the lanes, repurposed as makeshift beds. Kids played hide-and-seek among the wrecks, disturbing the adults who were trying to build some kind of future for them. Isaac saw some of the Stranded clutching worn English textbooks. They were diligently studying the language, determined, despite the impossible circumstances, to learn by candlelight amid the noise and stench. But was it worth it? Or was it all just a wasted effort? After all, it wasn’t just their lives that were broken and doomed—it was the whole world.

An old woman in an even older van was selling dried food and greasy, well-worn Bibles. Her little storefront was cobbled together from old tires and a rotting tabletop that sagged under the weight of the holy books. Above her, a cardboard sign dangled, scrawled with SUPERMAGED in big letters written with green neon crayons.

The oppressive atmosphere of poverty and despair was palpable, like a thick, woven net of human tragedy. The past of each individual was the unfolding tragedy of the world. Too painful, too depressing to be written down. The foreign languages that drifted past him. He didn’t need to know the words to understand the suffering in them. A constant echo bounced off the tunnel walls, a stream of incomprehensible voices flowing through the tube. People from all corners of the world had gathered here, united in their struggle to endure.

A dark-skinned Stranded, as midnight-black as Isaac, rose from his dirty, urine-stinking corner, brushed the caked dirt off his bomber jacket, and approached him with a look of skepticism, as if it were impossible to find him here.

"Arrête-toi, s’il te plaît," he said.

"Je n’ai pas le temps," Isaac replied, only glancing at the boy out of the corner of his eye. A teenager. Maybe seventeen, eighteen, no older than twenty. Even though Isaac quickened his pace, the boy caught up and walked alongside him.

"I know who you are," the boy said, his thick accent cutting through. A sudden glint appeared in his tired eyes, like a thin film of light. "I recognize you, mon ami. C’est pas inouï? It’s really you. Le guépard. What are you doing here? In this… dump? This place isn’t for you."

"This place isn’t for anyone," Isaac muttered.

"How did you get out of Brazzaville?" the boy asked in French. "How did you make it here without getting your throat slit along the way?"

"Tu vas te taire," Isaac hissed. "No one here knows who I am, and that’s how it’s staying. I left that old life behind. But if Ochacha’s men find out where I am... You know what happens then. Is that what you want?"

The boy shook his head frantically. "Non, non et non," he whispered.

It felt strangely good, finding someone so far from Congo who still remembered him, but attention was the last thing Isaac needed right now, about as welcome as herpes or scabies, which nearly everyone down here would catch eventually.

"Are you staying here?" the young Congolese whispered.

"For now," Isaac replied.

"Will you save us again?"

Isaac looked into the boy’s hope-filled eyes.

Le guépard, he thought.

That’s still how some people see me.

They see me as their savior.

But I’m not that anymore.

Isaac laughed, but without any joy. His mind flashed back to the pregnant woman he had just thrown into a far worse situation—onto the streets, where the storm, the cold, and the violence of people awaited her. Maybe she wouldn’t survive the night, he thought, and that would be on him. Some hero he was.

"I’m not going to save you. I’m not who you think I am. Not anymore," he said. The boy suddenly stopped, staring at him with a look that merged disappointment and horror into one single, crushing emotion. As Isaac left him standing there, he took all the boy’s hope with him, and the light in his eyes faded away.

Many years ago (had it been seven or eight?), New Yorkers could still drive through the Lincoln Tunnel. Back then, a system of ceiling and side lights provided the tunnels with enough light. But now, those, along with the air filtration systems, were things of the past. The only working light sources were few and far between: the road markers in the middle of the lanes glowed dimly on the ground, once used to separate oncoming traffic, now serving as playgrounds for children or makeshift dividers between personal spaces and latrines.

At intervals between the green-tinted emergency lights, figures of Christ hung on the walls. Jesus on the cross gazed sadly down at the misery below. The rest of the light came from ancient bulbs in old brass lamps, all connected to generators, which was why the beautiful PROMISED LAND was filled with the constant deafening hum of machinery, day and night. Isaac was at the deepest point of the tunnel, thirty meters below the polluted East River, when a cargo ship rumbled overhead. The tunnel shook. He could feel the force of a thousand tons of steel beneath his feet. The vibrations made a piece of chalk dance on the spot.

A little girl was lost in her imagination, drawing on the ground, and she didn’t seem to like being disturbed.

"Do you know where I can find Pope Zodiac, young lady?"

She didn’t answer.

A landscape emerged from her childlike imagination, hinting at forests and mountains, showing a glimpse of what the girl missed. Where had she seen untouched nature? Where had she come from before desperation brought her here?

"Zodiac. Do you know him?"

"Everyone knows him," the girl whispered, continuing to draw, undisturbed.

Isaac was just getting up from his crouch when someone bumped into him from behind. He barely managed to stay on his feet.

"Watch where you’re…" he began out of reflex. Then he turned around and saw a raggedy kid running off in dirty rags—with Isaac’s wallet in hand.

"Hey, that’s mine! Get back here!" he yelled. Just then, a preacher with an open Bible pushed him from his spot. Several men shoved him a few meters across the filthy ground, pinning him against the tunnel wall in a tight semicircle. They began to pull at him, yanking his backpack off his shoulders and rifling through it. Isaac felt hands reaching into all his pockets, and he lashed out wildly.

"Get your filthy hands off me, you hypocrites!" he shouted.

But no one listened.

"Help!" he called out.

But no one came.

Isaac swatted away a strange hand, swung his fist, and hit nothing but air. His heart raced. He forgot about his aching ribs, forgot where he was, who he was. One held him down, another punched him. At first, he only felt a brutal jolt, like an earthquake with its epicenter right between his ears. The gash above his eye split open again. He scrambled to his feet, fought to break free. Standing like a boxer, he wiped the blood from his face with his jacket sleeve. There was no escape from the PROMISED LAND, he realized.

He’d have to fight and die down here.

But just as he braced himself, the attacks stopped. The men huddled together in a circle, like a group plotting something in secret.

What had just happened?

Why were they suddenly acting like Isaac didn’t exist anymore?

He pushed his way into the circle, cutting through the huddled group, and saw in the center of the commotion the preacher holding Tabitha’s photo up for everyone to see.

"Where’d you get that picture?"

"None of your damn business," Isaac snapped. "Give it back."

"I asked you where you got the photo," the preacher said, his expression darkening. The whole group had fallen into a tense silence, almost as if every other sound—the noise, the conversations—had all vanished at once.

"That’s my wife in the picture," Isaac finally said.

The men exchanged confused glances.

"What’s your name?"

"That’s none of your damn business either," Isaac retorted.

The preacher studied Isaac for a while. Then he lowered his gaze and brought the photo closer to his eyes. "She looks familiar."

"You know her?"

The others laughed.

Isaac looked around. "I don’t get what’s so funny," he said angrily, wiping the blood from his face again. "First you beat me half to death, and now you’re making a joke out of me?"

"Do you have any idea," the preacher began, suddenly holding the photo out to him, "who Mother Teresa was?"

Isaac froze.

He snatched the picture of his wife back and shoved it into his pocket, hiding it from the others. What kind of question was that?

"She won the Nobel Peace Prize," he said.

"And why did she win it?"

"Because…" Isaac had to think for a moment, which wasn’t easy after someone had just used his head like a soccer ball. "Because Mother Teresa dedicated her life to helping the poor, the sick, and the dying."

"Exactly," the preacher said thoughtfully. "To the church, she’s a saint. They say she performed miracles, healed the terminally ill just by laying her hands on them. Do you believe in stories like that?"

"I…" Isaac hesitated. "I don’t know. How could I believe in that? Look around. How could I believe in miracles?"

"By seeing them with your own eyes," the preacher said. "Just as we have. Down here, we don’t believe in reincarnation. The thought of being born into this misery again is our greatest fear. But we do believe in incarnation, and that some people are chosen to bring light into this dark world. The woman in that photo you carry… She was chosen to work miracles, miracles we’ve witnessed ourselves. If she were your wife, you’d know she’s a saint. She’s saved many of us, healed us, brought hope back to us. Without her, we’d have all died down here long ago, victims of some disease. Damian, our brother"—the preacher pointed to a toothless vagrant—"wouldn’t have survived his illness last summer without her prayers. She took care of us all."

"My… wife?" Isaac’s voice shook. "She was down here this whole time?"

That’s… impossible.

We swore we’d stay far away from this place.

But she came back to help the poor?

All those years I searched for her, and she was right here.

We were so close… this whole time.

"Until a few months ago, she guided us through the darkest chapter of our lives. But now we’re alone. You can see what we’ve become without her. Without her, there’s no hope."

"No hope," Isaac said, agreeing with them. He was starting to calm down, but his heart still pounded in his chest. She was here. Tabitha had been here. All those years he’d been desperately searching for her.

Suddenly, his face went pale.

"Is she…?" He hesitated. "Oh my God, is she…?"

The preacher looked deep into his eyes.

"We believe God has led her to a better place."

"Or somewhere even worse than this," someone else added quietly.