Last Train From Sodom

 ommy! Mommy! Hi,” Suzette called to her mother as Marina came through the door three hours later than usual.  “I’m glad you’re home.  I missed you.”

            It was amazing to Marina how, after the dejection and emotional exhaustion that had claimed her day, two seconds after hearing her daughter’s voice, with its innocence and hope, she was transformed.  The pall cast by her problems was still there but looking into Suzette’s face and hearing her voice was cathartic.  For a few moments anyway.  But Marina's pain was always sure to return and never took long to make the trip.  Lying in bed later with Suzette asleep and curled up in her arms, Marina thought about the coming morning which she saw rushing sadistically to her like a bloodthirsty executioner.  She would have to go back to work.  Back to those same happysad faces, smiling faces so lost in the maze of everyday madness that they no longer knew if they were happy or sad because they had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between them.  Telephone conversations with mindless, heartless, personless voices.  The same cold, neat desk and cold, neat clerks and cold, neat files cataloguing a cold, neat world.  Doyle. Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollars a week.  Doyle!  Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollars a week!  Doyle!!  Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollars a week!!  Doyle!!!  Two-hundred-and-fifty-dollars a week!!!  The walls were closing in.