Heritage: A Crown of Thorns

Tom walked down the steep stairs and exited the bus with a small briefcase in tow. He turned around and handed his last crumpled-up tenner to the bus driver. The driver took the money, but before closing the doors and heading off into the foggy road which was stretched for miles into nothingness. He calls out to the stranger barely over his teens snuggling into the roadside bench with only a small briefcase by his side. "Son, you know there is nothing out here cept a few farms a few miles south? And no fellow is coming up here till the morrow." Tom looked at him with a slight grin on his face. He tips his snow-covered hat at the worried old man. "I appreciate your concerns, but I have nowhere else in the world to be.” “Well, take care to light a fire. The October nights around these parts are unforgiving to the uninitiated and God's speed, Son. I pray that you find what yar looking for in this empty nowhere.” The bus driver shrugs his shoulders and pulls on the lever closing the bus doors. The last bus heads northward with a loud horn blaring to call out its departure. Tom sat there watching the red tail lights of the bus fading into the icy white scenery. He looks around but sees only a barren land covered with wet snow and some scattered dead trees. His eyes catch the path of a frosted gust, and like a thousand razors, it slashes and digs into his bare flesh. He buries his face in his fur coat and snuggles up his body to conserve every ounce of his body heat. But the cold winds seep through the thick leather clothing, and they tear away at both his mind and body bit by bit. The hours tick by, and he waits silently on the roadside bench showering in prickling snow. The sun climbs over the jagged hills, and soon after, the last light vanishes onto the horizon, and darkness creeps over the crystal-clear skies. A street light flickers to life over his head. Its warm yellow hue provided some comfort against the icy fog enveloping the world around him. Frustrated from the cold and hunger, Tom emerges from his snow cocoon and reaches for his briefcase. His fingers numbed from the cold, struggled to unhook the frozen lock and pull out a lighter. But his frantic motion trips the case from his lap, and its contents are scattered on the ground. Among the litter were some extra clothes, a plastic lighter, and a torn envelope with a letter inside it. He leaped to grab the envelope just before a strong wind swooped in and almost carried it into the grey abyss. He slides closer to the street light. And in its damp hue, he reads through the worded parchment to confirm its contents once again. The letter is addressed to him by a lady, Lara D Helsing. She introduces herself as his great-grandmother on his mother's side. It was an invitation to her estate in the old English countryside, where she wished to meet and adopt him as her heir. The letter also contained a lengthy apology for not reaching out to him sooner. The old lady, Lara, didn't know of his existence until her agents tracked down his birth records from the old orphanage he grew up in. Of course, Tom was skeptical of the whole situation. He knew that being a part of a wealthy estate was a one-in-billion chance and something that only happened in fiction. Tom figured that at his odds, the letter could be a scam of the century. But the more he read the letter, the more it convinced him to seek out the writer and demand answers. And then there was her last name, Lara D Helsing. The old lady had his mother's maiden name, which she passed onto him through a small note in his crib when she abandoned him at the door of his orphanage, Thomas D Helsing. A name that led him to play many roles in his local school plays and stage dramas. The location in the letter was three days' worth of journey by bus. The odd part of the letter - other than the ground-shaking revelation of their relationship - was that she wanted to meet Tom as soon as possible without giving any explanation as to why. Tom deduced that she was his great-grandmother and might not have long to live. And the curiosity about Tom's origins got the better of his rational mind. So, he dropped everything in the concrete London Jungle to seek answers from his supposed family living lavishly in the countryside. Thinking back on his decision, Tom wondered if he was too hasty coming to such a remote location at such short notice. But for now, the only thing on his mind was surviving the ensnaring frost snatching away at both his body and sanity. So, without hesitation, he stomps on the edges of his empty briefcase. He takes it apart to use the wood to make a small camp and burns his extra leather coats with lighter fluid. He finds some dried beef jerky inside his belongings along with a small pendant with a picture of his old Orphanage sister and the orphans that stayed with him. Tom remembered the faces of all his orphan friends filled with excitement and glee when they were adopted one after the other. Of course, he also wanted to get adopted, but after each meeting with new parents, they would leave, promising to call the orphanage after a few days - which they never did. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months, and he would see new kids come and go in their fancy cars to live in new happy homes. It got to a time when Tom refused any meetings with new parents and adopted the orphanage as his home. The orphanage sister tried her best to get him to meet new couples, but in the end, even she had to give up from his sheer stubbornness and the stressful rejections from the visiting families. But such unpleasant experiences are now a memory of the past. All of Tom's hardships in life led to this point. And even this frost gathering on his lips and eyes was worth the price of meeting his real family. Finally, he would get answers to all the burning questions he had suppressed deep in his heart since the first time he was rejected by his parents. But more than that, Tom loved the idea of finally belonging to a proper family. A warm place which he only saw glimpses of from afar in the faces of all the adopted children that went with their families. **********************************