Mark Zuckerberg's Labyrinth

In the derelict depths of Donegal, Callum was tucking into his mother’s coffee liquor. She had left abruptly. So he decided to invite his old friends from university for the weekend. The house was classically falling apart. A bit too empty and a bit too beige. He looked around at these boys, not men, boys. Everyone around this table fell into the same roles as they did 5 years ago. Hector, with a farmers, squalid shirt hanging off him and ripped shorts, still revelling in his own brutish banter. Will, smiling with his nicotine-stained teeth, pouring beer down his gullet, ranting about fish farming. Hector despised what he didn’t understand, and Will still mumbled in agreement. 

10:13pm, Callum surveyed the room in a desperate attempt to make eye contact with someone, but at this point in the night, eyes were glued to phones. His grandfather would be fuming at the sight. He could hear his beastly, booming thoughts breathing down his neck. It felt so degrading, to sit in his living room with their shameless obsession, which they would refuse to label as an addiction. He abhorred it, not because he was a righteous person, but today his nerves were seizing up, for once he actually felt angry. This Anger was empowering him, it forged a shield around his body.

Wilf’s eyebrows narrowed whilst his eyes widened, illuminating from the phone screen, “what the absolute….crikey Aurelia!” he announced, sparking everyone’s attention. Her name made Callum’s throat swell. Curiosity crept through the room. Hector mumbled with his eyes darting, “did she text you or something?” Wilf, suddenly aware that the liquor has loosened his tongue, tried to regain composure, “eeerrr….nothing, I just saw...umm….a photo...I don’t, I don’t know how.” Hector began digging, “Like on Facebook or something?” his words confronted Wilf, he was a deer in headlights. He managed to muster, “yeh...Cal, mate, I’m sorry I never told you…” He drooled on drunkenly about how Aurelia needed some of her clothes from their old house. "Look, mate, we have stayed in touch here and there, I told you she had moved to Athens but I never knew about this...” 

Hector grabbed the phone out of Wilf’s trembling hands, desperate to know about their friend who had vanished. 

“She’s got a child.” Silence cloaked the room. Hector confirmed with more conviction, “yeh, fellas, not a baby, a child,” panting and thrusting his phone screen out. Callum, never at ease with overwhelming attention, felt every beady eye in the room on him. All in unison, like birds on a telephone wire. But he could not conjure up the courage to speak. Hector spoke more assertively, “Lads, I swear she only went out there 5 years ago. That little fella is off to school.”

Callum stared at the picture captioned Diermud off to nursery!  A little boy with blonde wisps, clutching a tiger teddy, squinting his left eye directly into the sun, popping out, almost cheekily, from behind Aurelia’s arm. Aurelia, dishevelled, her eyes narrowing in temper, was drooping her head round to the camera, squeezing his hand. Her bright blonde hair streaming down, her face laminated with maple chestnut. It was five years ago, but Callum could still smell her, that sweet cinnamon. He stared into her eyes, her eyes stared back at him. 

Callum could hear everyone’s thoughts and smell the panic steaming up. It had never crossed his mind that people even knew she had ever been pregnant. When she disappeared, her name was wiped out of the conversation. But of course, Rumour was always blazing. It would gain additional strength as it travelled, fueled by the breezes and it’s own mobility. Callum abhorred the power of Rumour. Had it never occurred to any of them to ask him how he felt about it? Did they all know the truth? What even was the truth?

Will, drunkenly alert, asserted “Callum, it might not be yours, look she could have met some lad out there.” It. Callum’s face grew paler and paler whilst they all started talking louder and louder. “Lads, let’s all just calm….maybe we can figure it out, with the dates and…” They all set to work, welcoming the persona of social media detectives. Wilf, intelligent and fast in the digital world, cottoned on quickly to translating Greek into English.

Will jumped in “Wilf, Whose photo is that? Surely she would have fucking told you, Callum? Surely not….Cal….Cal, when she left that night, what did she say….. this girl who tagged her in the photo is called Lux Paterson, she’s English….and her profession is ‘No workplaces shown, no universities’…she’s clearly … Look at Aurelia’s new friends on Facebook…someone remember the date she left….how far along was she...has she still blocked you on everything? Wilf, is this the first photo you’ve seen of this..err...of this child with Aurelia?” 

They all were repeating the same thing again and again and again.

It is illegal to have an abortion in Northern and Southern Ireland. Callum grew up in Donegal, where mother used to call a misery pregnant place with a Catholic mind. His ears burned from his grandfather’s words; “Women’s rights defy human rights, Boy, hear me?” Callum would stare right at his chin to avoid eye-contact out of terror. His mother never preached Catholicism to him, and Callum defied it ever since his grandfather died in 1993.

At university, Aurelia was often away with the fairies. She was immersed in Greek Mythology and spoke endlessly of living next to the Parthenon. She loved to indulge in fantasy. Sometimes she sat in meadows picking up flowers as if she was Persephone about to be abducted by Hades. Callum knew she was even insanely serious or seriously insane when she told him she wanted to have the baby. He loved her so much that he overprotected her. He knew this but he could not stop, all the same. The idea of Aurelia in pain was unbearable. She lived her life in the fast lane, running blind and never paying her anguish a visit. So how could he allow a rabbit running on adrenaline, to have a baby? But how, all the same, did he have the right to stop her? Every morning he would write down the pros and cons of not supporting Aurelia’s decision to keep the baby. But the writing, the pen and the paper felt so useless and juvenile for the cost of human life. Aurelia was not stable but it was her body, her choice.

 “Callum mate…do you want to get some air?” Will whispered. But Callum couldn’t hear anything. The memories were haunting him. How he used to lie in bed and pretend she was next to him. How he used to wrap his hands around his body to stop his loneliness being so destructive. How he used to curse the thoughts he had that letting go of Aurelia would allow him to be free and liberated, as now every night trapped and regretful. And now, she had kept this from him. He had been trodden on a thousand times and everyone was watching, an open wound spilling out blood.  “Callum, say something, please.” 

He got up and ran out the front door, a gust of wind slapped him in the face. He started romping through the neighbour's fields. Breathe, he asserted to himself, breathe. But the engines whined and whirred. He felt the plane in his head thundering down the runway, then bang! He was thrown forward as the pilot stamped on the brakes and brought the plane skidding to a sudden standstill. His heart was pounding a hundred miles an hour. His mind was racing with the possibilities of what might have happened - and what might happen next. Callum ultimately knew that his catastrophizing mind wasn't helping matters. The first thing he had to do was calm down, and to get some of the adrenaline out of his system. Breathe.

Drenched in panic. He realised he had traipsed far across the spanning fields, amongst the Castlefinn lowlands plagued in cows, sinking muds, meandering rivers, creaking trees and abandoned forts, in which Druids used to dwell. “Callum, Callum, where are you? C’mon mate,” voices bellowed from afar. They had all gone after him. They shined their phone torches, staggering through shards of grass snaking the terrain, picking out of the darkness clear patches. Their feet getting bogged down, and the rain slapping their faces repeatedly. How far had he fucking run? He shouted to the wind, “I’m here, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Callum kept apologizing, it spilt out his mouth uncontrollably, “I’m so sorry.” They heard through panting breath. 

There he was, wrapping his arms around his legs, rocking up and down, his trousers completely soaking, “It’s okay mate, it’s okay. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” They all tenderly lay their hands gently on his back, soaked in sweat and rain. Will repeated, “Just breathe, mate, just breathe.” Every time Callum attempted to explain what was going on in his head, he could not fathom the fact that he was a father. His whole life has jumped forward into adulthood in one clean sweep. He felt tears on his cheeks.

Minutes later, still breathless. “Once we have reached a certain age, it’s difficult to be reconciled that the fact people will be accepting of us.” He stared out in the darkness. 

“What do you mean, Cal?” Wilf almost smiled. 

“I wake up most mornings and wonder what that child would have looked like, his face, his voice. I say “he” but I actually imagined our child as a girl. I was so fucking….so fucking….”

A gust of damp air that smelled of the earth blew up in their faces. He was still trembling all over, “Cruel. How could I have been so cruel? How could I have not supported her decision?” Will gathered all the authority he could at this moment, “Callum, now you listen to me, you were not cruel, and you are not cruel. You were the one who told Aurelia she might be pregnant, she was drinking herself dry, you offered to pay for her flights to the UK, to go with her, to pay for her accommodation, to hold her hand throughout the whole process, Cal. Do you remember? Because I do, clear as day, Cal. Do you remember what she said to you that night after she broke off all communication?” The gloomy sky hung over them. His shock swept over this body, and finally, he could see clearly. “I think about that night a lot. I repeat it to my pillow, every word I said, my tone, my mannerisms, my gestures, the way I held her. I wish I could extinguish it from my mind. Because I drove her away.”