A Sip of Infinity

The Truth Unveiled

‘Mr. Jared Bane your next meeting with Mr. Danick Mervin is scheduled for tomorrow at sharp 11 am.’ texted Mervin’s diligently loyal secretary who had appeared more like his guard dog the last time Harold and I had encountered them. Since our last meeting with the egoistically unconventional business tycoon, the entire monetary aspect of the sponsorship had been carried out solely by means of mail. The funding was provided on a three-month basis according to the contract that I had so readily signed through the mail. It seemed that I should’ve considered myself fortunate that Mervin himself showed up to meet me in the first meeting, as it appeared so likely that majority of his business was taken care of by his secretary while he relaxed luxuriously in his home or behind a massive desk in his office, as I visualized him doing so. Anyhow, I suited myself handsomely for the rare occasion, putting on a denim blue check striped Armani suit with a milky white shirt inside and a silk tie with a little sheen. I looked way too older in the suit which provided me with the look of a modern English Prince.

                        My limousine was expecting me at the entrance of my office as always, with wide-open classy doors to take me wherever I desired. The journey to Radisson Hotel located in the cultural and glamorous city of Sharjah was a smooth one, not much traffic and breath-taking greenery refreshed my senses in an exotic manner. The city was the centre of Emirati culture and traditions with magnificent mosques and lush green areas all over it.

                        The resplendent hotel approached, and the instant I placed my foot out of the car….an absolutely unforeseen phenomenon occurred…. the pupils of my eyes began contracting, my brain felt numb as though it had no strength left. The world around me began shrinking, transforming back into its normal visual. And the discernible reality struck me like a cannonball, knocking the air out of me. The effects of hemlock had faded, leaving me anxious with an unbearably relentless headache. My head began spinning as though I hadn’t slept for days, making me completely nauseous as I bent down and puked on the ground pathetically. 

My body began shivering overpoweringly, leaving me with no control over myself. My chauffeur caught me empathetically before I lost my balance completely and fell onto the floor, and he seated me in the car. I hadn’t really realised how the last forty eight had hours passed, and hemlock was out of my bloodstream. I desperately searched in my shirt’s breast pocket for the tiny bottle I usually carried in case I ran out of my dose, but found nothing. Frantically, I budged my chauffeur to take me back to my apartment which was about an hour’s drive from Radisson. He stepped on the car and drove me to the Dubai-Sharjah highway, at which point, I could no longer bear horrifying nausea and with a substantial effort rang up Emily while stopping at a Petrol Station.

                       “Emily!” I nearly yelled, sliding down my seat, going insanely sick. “I need you to do something for me, something that could save me a hell lot of pain,” I explained to her about getting hemlock from my apartment and bringing it to me at my office, but didn’t give her any details about hemlock or anything else. We drove again, to reach my office before Emily could. My nausea was intensifying as the time ticked. I received a call from Emily who sounded unusually fearful and frantic.

                       “I have collected your pack of bottles from your apartment. But Jared, someone’s been following me since I left your house. The man’s a middle-aged thug, he looks murderous. Moreover, I am stuck in an apparently endless traffic jam at International City,” she informed. “Jared, he is moving towards my car, I don’t know what to do, I am damn scared?’ she demanded, with gritted teeth.

                      “Listen Emily. Get outta the car and run to Dragon Mart, he won’t be able to spot you there,” I instructed, with a sort of frenzied timidity, with everything that my hemlock-less feeble brain could think of. Emily stepped out of the car before that guy could confront her, and ran as briskly as her swift feet could take her towards the main entrance of Dragon Mart, the longest Chinese mall in the entire UAE. She entered the vast mall and took the first elevator that she set her eyes on. 

The guy followed her observantly, and reached the second floor where he spotted her running across the various alphabetical sections of the mall. Emily attempted to get camouflaged in the massive crowd, however, he spotted her instantaneously and chased her swiftly. She moved quickly through the crowd and decided to move into ‘Auchan’, the Chinese Supermarket. She ran between the enormous aisles full of grocery and reached the far end of the supermarket and concealed herself behind the final aisle containing bottles of soft drinks. The thug, who had followed her flawlessly even across Auchan, stood nearby, expecting any suspicious movement or trace of noise from somewhere around. He exposed a switchblade and alarmingly searched the nearby aisles.

                      “Jared,” whispered Emily, her voice quivering horribly with immense trepidation. “He’s got a knife, that murderer’s got a knife,”

                       “Emily, don’t take any hasty step, think of something. Try escaping from the other side,” I suggested her desperately, clutching my hammering head insanely as the unendurable pain amplified across my skull.

                        “I can’t think my way out of a knife Jared,” she exclaimed in an undertone, panting profusely. Abruptly, a marvelous idea flashed across my bursting mind.

                        “Emily wait, take one of my bottles and bottoms up,” I commanded her desperately, my face regaining a tiny bit of the color it had lost due to the brilliant idea.

                         “What?!” Are you serious?”

                          “Trust me, just gulp it down. It strikes you within a twenty-second span, and then you’ll automatically know what to do after that,”

With the limit of desperation and distress reached, she had no other option but to listen to me. She reached out into her left jeans pocket and removed the tiny bottle of hemlock, and gulped it down. For a moment, she kept staring at the bottle held in her hand, totally perplexed, and then it struck her. Her pupils dilated, causing her vision to expand such that she could hear every noise being made across the entire supermarket, she could even hear the buzzing of a bee somewhere close.

 She could view the drop of sweat trickling across a European man’s forehead standing three hundred meters away. The next moment, she started sprinting right. The man perceived her and then resumed his chase, she crossed the aisles as speedily as a marathon runner, flawlessly swerving people as though they were mere obstacles. Emily then leaped over a trolley being pushed by a middle-aged lady, and grabbed one trolley for herself from near the cashier point and then lifting it in the air she swung it and smashed it on the thug’s face who went flying away and landed on the ground, knocked out cold.

It was nearly midnight by the time Emily reached my office, and reunited my brain with its booster. Finally, hemlock hit my throat and advanced Jared was back, the nausea and the excruciating headache vanished within seconds. As I emptied the tiny bottle, I vowed to myself that I would never separate myself from the elixir. I looked at Emily, as though I had never noticed a woman before. The intensity in my gaze made her quite awkward as she avoided making eye contact and lowered her eyes to the ground.

                      “I owe you my life Emily,” I exclaimed, continuing to stare at her tenderly, and then I moved forward to embrace, her expecting a sizeable amount of warmth and affection in return. But most shockingly received just coldness, as she raised her hand to prevent me from hugging her.

                      “You just keep your distance from me, I’m sorry but I don’t think I even recognize you,” she alleged, looking at me with distaste.

                      “Emily…..it’s me your Jared, what do you-,” I was cut off as she turned her back on me and began walking away. I dashed after her calling her and asking her what the matter was.

“Just look at yourself, whoever you are and whatever you have earned, this grand house, that multi-million dollar company, and everything are solely due to that drink or alcohol or whatever that liquid is supposed to be. You are a fake Jared Bane!” she accused, sternly pointing her finger at me.

                      “No Emily. I’m the same person, Hemlock just improves my brainpower a bit, that’s all,”

                          “A bit,” she said, deeply emphasizing the words as though they stung her harshly, and looking at me as though I was insane. “I have been there, I know, this liquid lead me to do stuff I couldn’t have ever done in my entire life, it just wasn’t me. I know exactly how it feels Jared, you feel invincible after a sip. Like there are endless outcomes and infinity possibilities at the tip of your finger,”

                          “Emily, you realize where it could lead us. The things that we’ll achieve, where can be a few years now. The life that we’d be able to live,” I explained it to her soberly, holding her hand.

                           “Well, guess you’ll have to get accustomed to living that life without me,” Emily snapped, yanking her hand away and walked off, leaving me alone in my office. The