by Davi Cao
“I found a door on the wall. You didn’t search there,” she said.
“It takes us to outer space. It’s deadly to enter, so stay away, please,” Colin said.
“Your father is nowhere around. Maybe he went through it.”
“Maybe. If he did, he’s dead already.”
“Well then ... the search is over?”
“In this part of the town, I guess. We have to wait for OOOO. Before we look for it, though, I think we should try to help Mr. Alden, since we are so close to his office.”
“No way! Stop obsessing on that man!”
“He’s the only one who doesn’t accept the world’s end. He works hard to make sure that everything keeps running smoothly even in troublesome times. We have to help him finish his project,” Colin said.
“That’s true, and I know why you love Mr. Alden more than your parents, more than me, more than anything.”
They walked despite their argument, attracted to each other because dialogue distracted their minds from the World Voice's constant cries. Colin struggled to keep his head up. His failures in life weighted upon him, pushed down both by the words of misery pervading that universe, and by his beloved woman's daring attitude. His only comfort came from the fact that her indignation would at least turn her thoughts away from melting down.
“You do, don’t you? Tell me why, show me the truth I can’t see,” Colin said.
“Because you can only have fun with Mr. Alden. You’re really great buddies, aren’t you?” Angeline said.
“That’s nonsense. I have much more fun with you than I do with anybody else. Look, I know that you love me too, ok? So why are you being so harsh on me?”
“I do, I love you, that’s right.” She pressed her lips together to clean the tomato sauce still stuck to her skin. “And yet, you want to help Mr. Alden, instead of running away with me. That’s not flattering, alright? Why is it so hard to abandon that stinking job? It’s a worthless occupation, Colin.”
“That’s not ... no, not for me.” He paused for a few seconds, staring at Angeline to admire her messy frame. “Don’t you see? That’s the only place I can be useful for something. I can’t do things right, I was just not born with any talent. At least with Mr. Alden, I get to work on creative projects without ... without having to be creative anyhow.”
“This world in which you live ... in which you think you live, my love, this is a terrible world. Why don’t you change it? You’re much more important than you believe you are,” Angeline said.
They heard clapping sounds coming their way, the street behind bustling with life. The only noise in the silent town, and as it approached them, they waited for its arrival. OOOO showed up, hopping at a gentle pace, promenading at leisure with its springy legs, even when it saw Colin and Angeline staring at it on the sidewalk. It offered them a big happy smile, funny with its pointed teeth separated widely from one another.
“I found your father! He’s a tall man with no hair, isn’t he? Skin darker than yours?” OOOO said.
“Yes, he is! Where is he? And why are you not there to protect him?” Colin ran towards it.
“You shouldn’t worry, should you? He’s melted down already.”
“Oh, no ...” Colin took the strike of bad news, remembering his parents' disappearance in old Terra at the apocalypse.
“I want to meltdown too,” Angeline said.
“No, not you, please stay with me!” Colin hugged her. “Where did you find him, OOOO?”
“He was on the top of a big house, throwing tiles at the town’s ceiling and then at me, when I showed up. I played with him for a while, didn’t I? Yes, I thought he would be happy to hit me, so I became an easy target and laughed at every tile striking my face. But it didn’t help, did it? No, he jumped down all of a sudden and stopped moving. I got closer to see him better, and he soon began to melt, you see?”
Colin shook his head, looking for angry words. “Whose fault was it?” he managed to say.
“The world’s fault,” Angeline said, walking her own way, turning her back to both.
“That’s not enough. Yes, the world is bad, I agree. There are too many challenges. We can try to resist it, though, if only we focus on what we do best,” Colin said.
“You don’t believe it yourself,” Angeline said. “I want to be free from this world. I’m going to get rid of it right now.”
“Amazing, isn’t it? How are you going to do that?” OOOO said, excited at the human’s imagination.
“I’m going to jump too. It will end then, and I’ll be free.”
“I won’t let you do that, Angeline! Stay here with me, talk to me. We can live, even under the worst circumstances, if we work together.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Yes, we can! If even a stupid, boring, useless person like me can have a salary and people to love, just think of what someone like you, who’s so creative and nice, can do,” Colin said.
“I don’t want to work, damn it! I want to run away.” Angeline fled towards a house.
“You’re losing yourself.” Colin went after her.
She punched the front door, racing through the living room faster than Colin, jumping over half melted furniture. Jason, from work, lay on the stairs to the second floor, unconscious, his body starved. Angeline ignored him to reach new heights, going to the first window she found. She opened it wide and stepped out, ready to fly, when Colin grabbed her by the waist and interrupted her jump.
“You’ll only hurt yourself. Even if you want to disappear, it’s not high enough in here,” he said.
“It’s good enough to meltdown. Let me go!” She struggled against his embrace.
“Not until you calm down and think about your madness. This is not who you are, Angeline.”
“Who are you to tell me who I am?” She stopped her fight, turning around to face him with a stern look.
“I am the one who can’t afford to lose you.” He spoke with difficulty, bewildered at her dirty skin, the awful smell of her breath, the creepiness of her destroyed hair.
Angeline subsided, although thunder still haunted her thoughts. She was worthless, so alone in that miserable world, and all she wanted was a way out of that hell. The World Voice spoke the faintest whisper of truth, a source of such omnipresent torment that one trusted its sayings wholeheartedly. She got out of the house between Colin’s arms, rejoining an amused OOOO who watched their play on the front yard, an exclusive view to the window of her attempted suicide.
“She’s incredible, isn’t she?” it said to Colin.
“Yes, the most incredible one,” he said, hoping to smooth her madness.
As soon as he released her from his embrace, she ran away again, and because of her mortality, and because she could get tired eventually, she ran faster than Colin, for the termination of her life depended on her speed. She looked for the end, and the end would forgive all pain and misery.
Colin shouted to convince her to get back, at the same time allowing her to go ahead, unwilling to constrain her to his intentions. She became a lost case, another World Voice's victim, and he prepared himself to watch her imminent disappearance.
Angeline went straight to the forbidden door, the one leading to outer space. She grabbed its handle with rage, spinning it down with one hard push, frowning, a girl taking shelter in her bedroom after a fight with her parents.
Colin and OOOO zipped past the door after her, climbing the stairs. Up ahead, beyond the passage to the upper world, Angeline moaned in agony. She stopped her ascent, kneeling down on the steps, suffocating. Her skin swelled, reddened to the point of exploding. With goggled eyes, she stared at Colin’s incoming presence and banged her head on the ground as many times as she needed to hurt herself and give the definite sign to her body's atoms: she had given up of existence, and so should they. She melted down after spasms of pain and exploding rashes, becoming fluid flesh that flowed downstairs.
Opening the hatch to the upper world, Colin d
idn’t care about closing it back. The first strong step out of the haven got him stuck in the surface's mud, from which he tried to release himself with another harsh one.
OOOO walked in a graceful multi-legged ballerina routine, slapping Colin's face with a sight of delicate efficiency. Calming himself down, he made an effort to lighten his feet and move again, freeing himself.
“Lovely creation, isn’t it? That small town of yours, that is very interesting! I want to go back there and see what will happen with all the others. You want that too, don’t you?” it said.
“I already know what will be their fate,” Colin said.
“Tell me!”
“They’ll melt. Everything dies in the end, right? Even us.”
“Us? You mean, us Creators? Oh, no, we don’t die in the end, do we?”
“If I want to, I do, isn’t that what you said to me?”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? But ... but that’s not something we want to do ... is it? To die?” OOOO lost its smile.
They reached the huge Lower Manhattan mound's base, a big hill made of melted compounds from the old engineering marvels of Terra. Colin climbed it and that path seemed natural even to OOOO, who would reunite with its new friend Bibi, the telepath, at the top. Curious to learn of Colin’s intentions, it gave him time to do as he pleased, only a tiny bit concerned about his talk of Creators dying in the end.
“You’re not going to do it, human,” Bibi said, finding Colin with its far-reaching mind.
“I am, and you know it. And you also know that I have nothing else to do,” Colin said.
“What? What is he going to do? Tell me, Bibi, I want to know too, don’t I?” OOOO said.
“He’s going to share it at his own will,” Bibi said.
At the top, the great World Voice's pillar owned the horizon. Far from the Creator’s mound, it swept the planet and dissuaded all worldly things from any worthy activity. Colin clenched his fists, bathing in the bluish glow of the creature’s light.
“Come take me! I dare you making me more miserable than I already am. Come, hammer me down with your distress! I doubt you can do worse than I already have. I’m not afraid of you, not anymore! It’s a challenge, come and bring me your rage” Colin shouted out loud, punching the vacuum at every sentence, his eyes intent on the great pillar far away.
“You can’t talk to the World Voice ... Can you? It won’t listen to—” OOOO tried to say.
But Colin ignored OOOO and raised both hands to the World Voice: “Come melt me down!”
∙ 19 ∙ Failed therapy
The World Voice roamed the land unabated, immune to any creature’s cry. The loneliest of beings, designed from birth to suffer that terrible fate, it moved on the world without notions of distance nor direction. No other voice could hope to compete against it. Still, Colin tried, shouting out until forced to change attitude. He could listen to it in his mind's dim chamber.
Considering all his actions in both current and past lives, he had plenty to wail about. His thoughts fueled the fire that melted down an entire universe. Looking down, shutting up, he focused on the voice that never abandoned his brain's depths, the constant companionship that reminded him of his existence's poor state.
“I can’t do anything right ... Nothing good can come out of me, or of this world ... I am so alone ... I’ll forever be this worthless thing ...” he murmured.
Self-deprecation became prayer, sadness his state of mind, closed eyes his mourning ritual. He repeated sentences in sequence, calling for old regrets to resurface and help him give up of all his energies.
“Stop that, Colin. You are a Creator now, you have no reason to fall into this trap,” Bibi said, reading his thoughts.
“If I didn’t have any reason, I wouldn’t fall into this,” Colin said.
“I can distract you from the Voice when it’s far from us, like I’m doing now. You’re not thinking of loneliness now, are you?”
“I ... I am ... Not in thoughts, but I feel it. You can’t stop me.”
“And you can’t lie to me, so enough of this silliness.”
“We can’t afford to lose Creators, can we? Stay with us,” OOOO said, joining the verbal exchange.
“You have one easy way of saving me, and you know what you have to do. Yet, you refuse to do it,” Colin said.
“What? Giving up my world? That’s not fair, is it?” OOOO said.
“Neither was destroying Terra.”
“You are wrong. OOOO did nothing unfair. That’s the way of the Creators,” Bibi said.
“We have to create new worlds, don’t we? To try new things! It’s either that or eternal boredom and the end of everything, you see?” OOOO said.
“I already saw the end of everything. For me, you can all disappear just as well.”
“Foolish talk. I know quite well how you regard us, don’t lie,” Bibi said.
“Then what do you want from me? Huh? Why do you think I’m willing to face the World Voice and let it melt me down, if it gets to me?”
“I understand your reasons. You just lack maturity, and that’s why OOOO can’t let go of its world only to save you. You are the one who has to learn that other worlds are possible, and that you can appreciate them too.”
“You like interesting things too, don’t you? See?” OOOO said.
“If I disappear, it will be due to the World Voice’s acting. And you will be the one responsible for it. You’ll have to live with the death of a Creator, because I’m not backing down on my decision, not right now. If this miserable creature wants to compete for sadness, let it come and take me. We’ll see who’s worse off.”
OOOO spun its head in full circles, nonstop, its eyes spiraling. It had no eye lids, it couldn’t blink, and to signal its sadness, it had to rotate its body parts. The weight of a lost friend would be too much for it to take.
“Play a game with me, will you? Yes, you see? You are in a place that has no sky.” OOOO fixed its goggled eyes on Colin. “It’s a place that has no surface, no water level. It knows no liquid or gas, only solid and intrasolid, doesn't it? You are alone in a chamber of void, surrounded by rock that is not rock. It is a reactive being, the compound of what the entire world is made of, isn't it? You are in there, aren’t you? You see another one like you through a hole in the rock, one who’s also alone like you, who looks just like you. What do you do?”
“I have no idea. What are you trying to get from me?” Colin said.
“It’s only playing a game. Play it,” Bibi said.
“I won’t, I’m not in the mood for that,” Colin said.
“Yes, you are. Play it. Answer it.”
“What if I don’t?”
“The World Voice isn’t coming your way. Play it while you wait for your big confrontation.”
“Just answering it? Saying what I would do? Well, I’d try to talk to the other person, of course.” Colin shook his head, speaking in a disgusted tone.
“The other one answers you. What do you want to tell him?” OOOO said.
“Ask him how we can get out of that chamber.”
“He says you can try to enlarge the hole.”
“How? What tools do we have at hand?”
“Nine bendable, cylindrical, slender legs.”
“I see ...” Colin looked for inspiration in OOOO’s body capacity. “I insert all my feet in the hole and then push them apart.”
“The hole gets wider. You can cross to the other chamber. You and the other one are together. He becomes attached to you, fitting in between your legs.”
“What else is there in the chamber?”
“The rock surrounding you moves around, leaving small holes here and there. As it moves, a new small chamber shows up, and it’s got an eater in it.”
“An eater? What, is it a creature?”
“It’s something that makes things disappear.”
“Can I manipulate it? Because if I can, then I grab it with care and push it against the rock to dig us a tun
nel.”
“You and your friend take it with care, but it eats one of your legs. Your friend laughs, and you feel a good tingling.”
“OK, keep digging in a straight line.”
“There are no straight lines in the world. You do your best to go ahead. You find another chamber, with three others just like you.”
“Are they smiling?”
“Yes, they are smiling and laughing at your missing leg. They are coming at you.”
“I try to fit in with them.”
“They fit in with you. You are now five of a kind, in a big chamber with many small caves,” OOOO said.
“I get away from them and use the eater to dig through one of these caves,” Colin said.
“You dig a hole, but the rock moves over you and crushes your body. You die.”
Colin flinched, picturing his death in that strange world. Transported to a whole new place by the mere power of words, he lamented once again when called back to his reality's hell.
“Your friends widen the holes towards your digging and find your body. They watch as you regain consistence and get back to life. They all laugh at you and fit in.”
“What? That makes no sense. They’re laughing at my death!”
“And fitting in with you. What do you do now?”
“I don’t care. Is it so hard to understand that my world is the only place that made sense to me? This world of yours, this ... Creation, or whatever, is interesting, yes. But it’s not Terra. It has nothing in here for me.”
Colin turned his face to find the great pillar of glowing light. He gave his first step downhill, sliding on the mud to walk towards the World Voice. It seemed closer than before, the large column wider than when he got to the mound’s top earlier, which gave him the impression of it approaching his way.
The game played with OOOO distracted him too much, making him forget about the new pain of losing his parents and Angeline, of giving up, of his whole plan of making noise in that world to call Mae’s attention to him. The prospect of ever finding her became now so bleak that the weight of eternity disabled him and destroyed his motivation.
OOOO hopped behind him, not willing to let him walk to his possible doom unaided. Bibi went along, invading his mind to try to fight the World Voice’s power. While it did that, the Voice itself went further from them, diminishing in size on the horizon as its pillar swept over immeasurable distances.