Total Life

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Total Life Page 7

by Erwin Wensley


  I'm just fishing, I don’t remember anything that was said last night.

  She rolls her eyes, gets up and flushes. The urine causes a sour smell to dance through the air. I think I can add another STD to my list.

  “Okay, maybe I agreed, but you had your tongue on my clit. Making a proposal like that isn’t fair. I just wanted to cum.”

  Now it's me who roll my eyes.

  “All right, it’s your choice.”

  I open the bag and take out my gun. As soon as she sees it in my hand, she begins to slowly walk back to the door with her hands up.

  “Hey, Dani, let's take it easy ... Where did you get that?”

  “I took it from your husband's jacket when I fucked him, too.”

  She opens her mouth to protest, offended, but the gun in my hand is intimidating enough for her to be quiet.

  “But don’t worry, it was no big deal. I just made him suck my tits while he told the story of all the prostitutes he fucked while you were at work. And do you know about your sister? Yeah, he said he fucked her in your little girl's bed while you swam in the pool. When did he tell me that? Oh yes, it was while I was putting a vibrator in his ass.”

  She starts to frown, biting her lips and doing everything to control herself.

  “But it does not end there,” I approach her and she walks backward until she hits her back against the wall of the corridor. “Do you know your son, Matt? That adorable fifteen year old? Do you know why he always asks to live with his grandmother and why he hates to spend time alone with his father?”

  Now what I see on the woman's face is despair.

  “It’s exactly what you're thinking, yeah, ma'am. And I just think it would be a shame if your seven-year-old daughter was—"

  “All right! It’s enough!” The woman is crying and drool runs down her chin. “Is it a promotion you want? Okay, you got your fucking promotion. Are you happy now? Just stay away from my family!”

  I smile at her.

  “I'm glad we have a deal.”

  After that, I kick her out from my apartment still naked. She leaves crying down the hallway, catching the attention of other residents who walk out the door to see what's happening. One is not an NPC, but a player. The arrow above his head tells me that. He looks at me and says, “Holly shit, that was a good one. You really know how to have fun here.”

  I shrug.

  Things follow their common rhythm through the streets as I drive. I see women crawling naked with leashes on the sidewalk and men hitting them with whips. Further ahead, at the entrance of an alley, two men fucking and moaning, their bodies sweating, while an old lady records them with a phone. Further ahead, two men beat up a cop with kicks and punches. The traffic light turns red. The cop starts to crawl down the sidewalk toward my car, holds up a crooked hand and leaves a trail of blood behind. A little aside, a group of prostitutes point at him and laugh loudly. The signal turns green and I hasten, as the two men pull the cop by the feet and continue to beat him.

  I see people using drugs, people being stolen and people being shot. I see women being raped, men in suits pissing on miserable men, and I see my face in the rearview mirror, trying to figure out where Jimmy ends and Dani starts, where my world become her world. I see people walking by themselves on the street, lifting the collar of their coat to protect themselves from the cold. NPC's that could easily be mistaken for real humans in the real world. And all I do is watch. All we do is watch.

  And then I have the sudden feeling that everything will fall apart. The feeling that the pillars that sustain the world will give way and we will all be swallowed by a dark hole, buried in the middle of our own shit, all broken and passing over each order to try to go up, not giving a shit about who’s dying in this process, whether they are children who dream of changing the world or women who dream of building a family or people who just want a helping hand that can save them from that hole — who cares? Fuck all that.

  Dani's phone rings, but I don’t wanna answer because I feel like I'm not Dani anymore. And I try to say to myself that I am James, James Gibson, but I don’t know who he is or if I have ever been him. Maybe James just used me like a shell, and I've never had a clue who I really am. Perhaps I am just a conscience with strings, always being controlled by ventriloquists, all designed by the media, companies and politicians.

  Maybe that's how Steve feels. Maybe that's how crazy people feel. Just wandering, no identity, looking for your true self in a sea of television advertisements and malls. Or maybe that's the way healthy people really feel, but the sea takes that certainty away, making them feel like they're the real crazy heads.

  Yes, maybe everything is that and that’s everything, after all.

  I scream holding the steering wheel and I hear Dani's voice. It's me speaking in my head, a grave voice, but that's not what I hear when I scream. If I find Steve, he’s gonna have the answers. He must have the answers. Someone must have the damn answers.

  The car stops in front of Steve's house.

  And then the front door opens, like an invitation from Steve to get inside.

  XII

  Your first steps are slow, watching the portraits broken around the floor of the house. Photos of Steve's family stained with blood. There are also pieces of broken furniture, shards of glass and water dripping from a pipe hanging in the wall, where Steve probably hit it with a sledgehammer.

  You hold the purse tighter against you, using your other hand to open it and touch the gun. The cold steel causes a shock at the tip of your hot fingers and you let a small noise escape.

  You go through the room, seeing more broken portraits and the television lying on the floor, with the blue screen and still plugged. In the kitchen ahead, you hear the clink of a glass and squeeze the gun harder. All right, you tell yourself, this is just a game. He can’t really hurt you.

  But he can hurt Dani. And Dani can be real. Maybe everything is real, somehow, but you. Yeah, maybe you're the big lie here. A mere simulation controlled by some sadistic player somewhere or maybe you are just a figure in someone's dream, a figure who thinks he has consciousness and free will. All this is possible, isn’t it? And maybe you're nothing. A bunch of nothing.

  “I thought it was me who made the visits,” Steve says, putting the glass of cognac in the kitchen sink. He has his back to you, no shirt, his skin marked by the things you've put him on. “I didn’t know you cared so much about my company, Jimmy ... Or should I say Dani? Who are you, after all?”

  I take the gun out of my purse and point it at him.

  “Shooting me won’t bring you answers, Jimmy, Dani or whoever you think you are.”

  I'm Nobody.

  “Everyone must be something. A winner, a failure, an ignorant person who passes the entire life thinking that he’s gonna have time to enjoy everything after death in a heaven full of angels and a protective god. We are all something. What you are?”

  I’m Nothing.

  “No, you are something. Good or bad, but you are something.” He takes another shot of cognac. “Who are you?”

  I am you.

  “No, you're not me. And that's your big problem. You wear your glasses and live lives that aren’t yours, pretending to be someone you are not. You watch movies where lonely characters find love, get a good life, friends, and you pretend that character is you. You just watch and read the adventures of other people, people who don’t even exist, but you forget to live your own. You open magazines with perfect models who make millions and you imagine what it would be like to be them. You are too busy living other people's lives, while your own runs out every second. And that's why I'm going to ask one more time: who are you?”

  Steve begins to fill another glass of cognac, but you shoot him on the back. He doesn’t seem to feel pain, even though the blood starts to flow. Then, slowly, Steve turns to you and shows you the glass he filled.

  “You made me drop my cognac.”

  You shoot three times, one on his chest, one on his
stomach and one last on his appendix. Steve sighs, looks at the glass in his hands and shakes his head. Blood flows down his body.

  “That shit was pretty good, until you made me drop it.”

  You shoot him on the forehead.

  “Do you know what's the good thing about being part of a virtual world? Infinite resources, which means infinite drinks. Here I can drink as much as I want and—"

  You shoot him on the shoulder.

  “Okay, that's pissing me off.”

  You shoot his cock.

  Steve closes his eyes and squeezes his lips.

  You shoot his neck.

  “You asked for it.”

  Steve walks toward you and you pull the trigger as hard as you can until the bullets run out. He rises above you and there’s nothing else you can do except accept your destiny. Time to go. Game over.

  Steve grabs you by the shoulders and the world around you fades.

  A biting wind comes against you. You are down, watching the concrete from the ground and the mist forming in the air, in front of your mouth.

  “How many times has Laura stepped on you?” Steve asks. He stands on the top of the building, staring at the horizon, at the dozens of other buildings with colored lights that light up the night. “You spend your time in a pathetic job you don’t even like, wasting every second of your life, just to make money and buy a bunch of useless shit that advertisements tell you to buy. Of course, because you really need to have a bigger and better house than your acquaintances, don’t you? You really need to sacrifice yourself in a monotonous job just to have a better car than others, a bigger television or a more expensive phone, all of that to be able to feel complete with things that don’t really tell who you are.”

  Steve turns and opens his arms, smiling.

  “Don’t you understand that things can be much bigger when you're free of all this, without worrying about competing, winning or showing off? If you understood, Elise wouldn’t have abandoned you. She wouldn’t have told you everything she said and even Peter would love you. If you had spent more time with your child and less time looking for money and social status, everything could be different. You know, sometimes I wonder why we have to be this generation of men who use their arms to carry suitcases instead of using them to hug their children. Why do we have to be like this? But of course you don’t have the answer, do you? You never have the answers, just the questions. All you have is a huge void inside you that consumes you day after day and that you hope to fill by wearing a fucking VR glass and living the life of another person. Meanwhile, Elise is happy with her new boyfriend, June lives her new life and everyone goes ahead, trying to forget that they once knew you. And do you know who is guilty?”

  Steve comes to you and kicks your stomach. You roll to the side looking for air, wanting more than anything to breathe, and watching the world spin around you.

  “You are guilty and only you,” Steve says. “It's your fault for bowing your head every time they humiliate you when they say you're nothing. You are guilty for giving up on everything, accepting your condition and bothering people with your stupid problems, as if the world were revolving around you and you were a poor protagonist, a misunderstood hero. And it turns out you're nothing like that. Are you listening to me? You're nothing like that.”

  Steve grabs you by the collar of your shirt and spits in your face. You try to tell him to stop, but Steve punches you in the mouth and takes off a tooth, splashing red blood into the air.

  The lights of the buildings make you dizzy. You feel Steve's gaze on you and you feel your mouth burning, the blood flowing down your chin and your stomach twisting. But somehow you can still find enough strength to ask, “Who am I?”

  Steve sighs and then bangs your head against the ground. The darkness embraces you, the pain rises again and again, and suddenly you're no longer on top of a building.

  “So you wanna know who you are?” Steve asks. “Get up.”

  I can’t.

  “Yes you can. You can always get up.”

  And then you get up, vomiting blood and staggering sideways. You look at the reddish liquid that came out of your mouth, scattered around the train tracks. You look to the sides, to the buildings and railway that goes through them. And, bit by bit, the sound of the approaching train is growing louder.

  “I can show you who you are,” Steve says. “Do you really wanna know?”

  Who am I?

  Now you can see the train. The sound grows louder and you stare at it, trying not to fall to the side because of the dizziness and the strong light of the headlights.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  The image of the train becomes larger. Your stomach takes another turn and you throw up again.

  Who am I?

  Maybe you're just garbage. Maybe you are the rotten remnants of the world, a person built of inferior quality material.

  “Do you wanna know who you are?" Steve asks. Now the noise of the train is so loud that he needs to scream.

  And then your voice rises above the world, “Yes I want!”

  Steve comes to you and pulls you aside. His arms hold you tightly, you couldn’t let go even if you wanted to. And when the train finally passes you by, Steve pushes you and presses the right side of your face against the bodywork.

  You feel your face on fire and scream with all your strength as your skin is ripped and blood leaves a trail through the train. You try to let go, cry, moan, beg to leave, but Steve keeps pressing your fucking face against the fucking moving train. Your teeth are plucked, the eye pops out, bumps into the bodywork and turns into gelatin immediately. Your ear is fucked, your hair was pulled out by the root and half of your nose is broken.

  As the train leaves, Steve pulls you behind and pushes you down the railway, launching you down until you fall backwards on a dumpster, sliding to the ground with the destroyed side of your face.

  You moan.

  You scream.

  You want this pain to go away, even if you need to die for it. The pain is so intense that this is the first time in all of your damn life that the outside pain is bigger than the inside. And you think of Peter, think of Laura and think of Elise. You think of June and think how all those people wouldn’t even care if you died. When did things get so fucked up like that, for God's sake? How did you end up like this? What did you do to deserve this shitty life?

  With the only remaining eye, you see Steve walking down the stepladder. When he reaches the ground, he comes to you with quick steps. You roll to the side, trying to protect yourself, drooling, bleeding, crying, moaning, shitting in your pants. No, stop, please, you need to stop. For God, please don’t hurt me anymore, don’t—

  “So you want to know who you are?" Steve asks, grabbing you by the neck and lifting you.

  And he hits the good side of your face against the gratings next to the dumpsters and says, “Here's what you are.” And he hits your face once more, breaking the rest of your teeth, breaking your nose and tearing the rest of your lips. “You are the blood, the wounds and especially the scars that come after the wounds. You are the emptiness left over from all this and that wonderful sense of loss. You're the freedom of losing everything and not feel tied to the shit they say you need. You are the total absence of the modern soul in its filters and apps. You are the loss, the failure and the defeat. And that's why you should feel grateful.”

  Steve turns you around, hits your back against the grating and holds your deformed face with both hands.

  He gasps. Blood flows down his arms like the springs of a river.

  And he asks, “So who are you?”

  You look into Steve's black eyes and his determination seems to come through you and run through your body. And suddenly you understand everything. You understand what’s the problem with the world, with people and with yourself. Now you know why things turned out so fucked up. And you know what to do ...

  You say, “I am the doom.”

  XIII

&nb
sp; “Oh my God, did you see that?”

  Peter is sitting on the counter, staring wide-eyed at the Notebook. The evening light that enters through the window illuminates his face and highlights the dark circles under his eyes. He straightens his hair, turns the Notebook to me and Laura and says, “Someone blew up a reverend's mansion! Can you believe that?”

  Laura stops chewing, points with the fork to the Notebook and says with her mouth still full of pancake, “It know that guy. It was this guy who made a celebration, or whatever the fuck those believers make, out there in front of the main square. Robert went to it with his family and invited me to go with him.

  “I didn’t know Robert was a believer,” I say, sipping my juice. I tightened the sleeve of my shirt so there was no risk of my wounds showing again.

  “He's not,” Laura says, wiping the corner of her mouth with the sleeve of her blouse. “But it turns out he already defended this Polasky guy in court.”

  “What was he accused of?”

  “Child harassment. A mother denounced him, saying that he had taken her seven-year-old daughter to church when there was no one there and then started fingering in the middle of the child's legs. After that the little girl became more introverted, never smiling or talking to her parents. The mother only found out what had happened because she heard the little girl talking about all this shit while she slept. She went to Polasky the other day, in his office, jumped on the table and gave some good slaps on his face. She said she would take him to court, and she did it. But in the end there was no evidence of anything and the little girl also didn’t open her mouth, so nothing actually happened.”

  I eat my pancake.

  “How did this story get out of the media?”

  Laura laughs with irony.

  “Have you ever heard of bribery? Polasky was rich as fuck, owner of stocks in billionaire companies that sponsor television channels and newspapers. Such people never end up with the dirty ass under the sun.”

  Peter turns the notebook back to us and says, “It seems like things have turned out differently now. Look at this, the most commented subject in the world is the death of Polasky and the abuses he committed. Several women are appearing and reporting sexual harassment. And it seems that his methods of harassment were rather exotic.”

 

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