Farewell to Past

By Alex Markman

After spending 10 years in a high-security prison, Chris now a free man. Twenty-eight years old, he admires the wonderful, unfamiliar world around him. His dilemma: should he square accounts with his enemy – what the criminal code of ethics dictates – or say farewell to past and begin a new life?
What does it take to be a free man after 10 years in a high-security prison?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asteroid Publishing
• Release date: Jan 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463464717

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FAREWELL TO PAST

FAREWELL TO PAST

BY ALEX MARKMAN

Farewell to Past

Alex Markman

Copyright © by Alex Markman

All rights reserved.

eISBN: 978-1-926720-20-3

Farewell to Past is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are the products of author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, organizations or events is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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It took just a fleeting moment to cross the threshold of the prison gate and become a free man again. The flood of contradicting emotions almost drowned me. I stood a few feet away from the barbed wire fence not looking back at the place where I had spent almost ten years of hatred and grief: a high security prison, one day in which can make someone, not grown in the brutality of criminal world, mentally and physically ill.

I looked around in disbelief: no guards close by watching my steps; no restriction of any kind; a huge space around me, beautiful and impassive. Stunning! I could do anything, even commit a crime, and no one would stop me. Nobody actually cared what I intended to. Don’t worry people, I said in whisper. I have no intention to get back to this zoo.

At the age of twenty-seven I knew nothing about day-to-day life, which I was supposed to now live. I did not know how to buy a ticket for a bus or train, how to ask people for directions to places, how to buy things, how to find out the price of goods in a store, or host of other things, to which even kids won’t give a second thought.

Slowly walking along the street, I turned my head left and right, admiring the late summer day, young women wearing light and provoking outfits, sleek cars, and huge blue sky, which I used to see in a frame of small windows or metal bars. The most weird though were pedestrians’ faces; not grim, not hostile, not suspicious or inquiring. Some of them even smiled in response to my stare. This was almost absurd: who in his right mind could be so nice to someone who less than an hour ago was released from a con’s madhouse?

Anyway, I needed help from one of them for getting to the nearest bus stop on the way to the railway station. My eye caught a middle-aged woman crossing toward me. She was very fat. Her gait was swaying and slow, mimicking a lazy, domesticated duck. She wore a red blouse and black stretching pants; the garments jointly emphasised major imperfections of her figure. When the distance between us shrunk to a few feet I blocked her way.

Where is a bus … I began, but stopped abruptly. The woman darted a quick glance at me and shook, fear flashing in her wide open eyes. Not a surprise for me. I’m sure the expression on my face was not the best to strike up a conversation with a stranger. I stretched my lips in a forced smile.

Sorry, ma’am, I said. I am looking for a bus going to the railway station. Do you know where the closest stop is?

O-oh, she breathed out in embarrassment. Surely, at the first moment she took me for who I really was – a violent brute. Apparently life leaves its imprints not only on a soul, but also on a face of a human being. After another suspicious, inquisitive glance she became all kindness.

Two blocks that way. She pointed her finger down the street. Turn right at the corner. Take number five, it goes there.

During my short walk to where she pointed out, I quickly got used to unrestricted freedom of movement. No one cared for me. I was just a pedestrian with no distinguishing marks.

May be I will become one of them, I thought. If I can break with the past. Can anyone break with the past? Isn’t it the foundation of the future, as my father used to say?

The approaching bus interrupted my thoughts. I followed the crowd entering the front door. Everyone paid to the driver and got a ticket. I produced a five-dollar bill and asked: Is this enough?

Exact change please, the driver barked. I took his manner of speaking as an insult. Hatred, accumulated during the last ten years, pushed my guts to my throat and stuck there as a choking lump.

I don’t have change, I said as quiet as I could manage.

Get out and change the bill in the store, the driver shouted. Don’t stand in the way of other people.

I did not move. The driver looked at me; something clicked in his mind and made him blink. I knew too well what it meant: a zoological instinct of immediate and serious danger. I got used to that kind of