The bus reached the gate, and the toll booth did not take money
It did not take guilt, shame, regret, or pain. The woman behind the glass said regret had no exchange value. Pain was not payment. Pain was a receipt. Then she asked for the return ticket.
He found it folded inside his shoe, damp and ridiculous, printed with the words that explained too much: Return: available. It was not a ticket back to a place. It was the permission to go back to the lie. Back to calling the whole journey a bad night, a metaphor, a crisis, a story. Back to understanding just enough to sound changed, but not enough to answer the next knock.
“What happens if I keep it?” he asked. “You keep doing what you have done,” she said. “That’s it?” “That is never it. That is the horror.”
The woman asked one more question before opening the gate: “Who pays when you do not?” He thought of Nadine, Claire, Maya, Lily, Aaron, Emily, all the people who had paid for his fear while he kept calling it private. “The people who trusted me to answer,” he said. “The people who needed me to be in the room. The people I made responsible for my fear because I wanted to stay safe.”
The gate opened without thunder. Just wet metal moving aside. The notebook opened on his lap after he returned to the bus. No return. Now arrival begins.
Full chapter on Substack: https://substack.com/@alexkorneliuk