Noodle's Fiction

Noodle's fiction?

2011-04-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

Every now and again my mind coughs up a bit of fiction, which my fingers then translate onto the screen; little stories that are at times interesting, at times strange, and often downright awkward. Because this is an ever-growing hobby of mine I will need a place to collect these fabricated fables, other than my primary weblog, which is where they initially will be published.

You're looking at that place.

This place will, from now on, function as a make-shift archive for the fiction I've written and will write.

Here's a list of titles for you to peruse, should you be so inclined.

○ ○ ○

Forever endeavour.
A matter of time.
Two for one euro.
The item.
Triptych.
Must see tv.
The oneironaut, part one.
From then and there to here and now.
Will I ever find you again?
Free will vs. predestination.
Recollections one, two, three, four, five and final.
Black & white.
The Resort Manager's Tale.
The Nickel.
Black & White.
Cul-de-sac.
Back to Earth.
Awakening.
Solitary ponderings.
Those who are about to die, salute you.
The boy who saw the end.

Forever Endeavour.

2010-01-03T19:28:00.000-08:00

The bath was running. A couple more minutes and it'd be fine. Just enough time for one more drink before the big event. The grande finale. The show stopper, so to speak.
Fnord He'd always been good at holding his liqour, a skill as dubious as it was useful. He tried to remember the first time he'd had a drink but it was ages ago, a memory submerged in the murky depths of his mind; it was certainly a drink older than the oldest wine in existence now. What he did know was that he'd always been appreciative of the effect alcohol had on him; with his lifestyle and background and what he’d gone through, the horrors he’d seen, the atrocities he’d committed, some dulling of the edges was never a bad idea. This day, however, patiently waiting for the bathtub to fill, he made sure he didn't drink too much. He wanted to remain sharp and alert. As sharp as you could be after that many glasses of Johnny Walker Red. But hey, alcohol thins the blood, so bottom's up.
Fnord Turning off the tap filled the room with an oppressive silence, a silence that pressed down on his shoulders and which seemed to compact the few cubic feet of reality he inhabited; a pressure that seemed to increase even further when he dropped his tattered robe to the floor. He instantly felt the steam, rising from the bathtub and filling the small, dingy bathroom, doing things to the skin of his soft spots; muscles relaxing, scar tissue tightening, the tiny hairs on his inner thighs and lower abdomen quivering, a pleasant warmth enveloping his genitals. Despite his age and reputation nudity had never felt comfortable to him, not even when he was alone; he didn’t need an audience to feel awkward. He supposed nudity wasn’t strictly necessary today but he couldn’t bring himself to stepping into the tub fully clothed.
Fnord His toe broke the surface and the serene glass lake under him rippled as he lowered himself into the water. It was slightly too hot for comfort, but comfort wasn’t a priority anymore; any illusions of comfort, in his life, in this world, he’d abandoned long ago along with his innocence, long lost in all the wars and violence he’d seen in his too many years. With his hands on the edge of the tub he kept lowering himself, the outlines of his body distorting as he looked down, the water refracting the contours of his waist and torso this way and that. When the water reached his chin, drenching his full, grey beard, his knees arose from the water in front of him like two reverse Atlantises; bald, bony islands, a castaway’s worst nightmare. He shifted his feet, crossed his ankles and the two small islands submerged again. Involuntarily, he thought of his brother.
Fnord He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Another one. He searched his mind for doubt, contemplation, hope, anything that he coud grab, hold onto for dear life, something that would allow him to climb out of this tub, shrug it off and get on with his life. He didn’t find any, which, he thought, must mean he’s at peace with this. Every shred of redemption had abandoned him long ago. He gave his mind the final chance to speak now, or forever hold its peace, and silence was the result. That settled it. This was happening. Right now.
Fnord A razor. Such an innocuous little sliver of steel alloy so thin that you’d hardly expect to feel a thing as it breaks the skin; like a hot knife through butter. It felt so flimsy and filmy between his thumb and forefinger that he thought he was holding nothing but air; it seemed almost unsubstantial, non-existent. An ethereal killer. Perhaps, he thought, if I imagine to be clenching nothing at all between my fingers it will be easier. A pantomime instead of the real thing.
Fnord However frail and diaphanous the razor may have appeared, he díd feel it as it cut through his skin. He was surprised at the amount of pressure it needed before the skin was pierced and opened up and how easily the razor’s edge dug its way into the underlying tissue after that. He was acutely aware of the sensations; as if it was happening in extreme slow motion, at 2500 fps. He felt the tendons and muscles snapping and jerking as the razor sliced through them, almost directly followed by a sickening popping sensation as the razor pierced the ulnar artery; the pressure of the blood pumping through it, duly diluted by the booze, making the pop seem almost audible. It nauseated him but he carried on, quickly slicing along the length of the artery.
Fnord The intensity of the colour struck him even before the realisation that his wrist was literally gushing blood; such a vibrant, electrifying explosion of red, full of life and promise. Immediately the water around him clouded, blood and water not really mixing but dancing and swirling around each other, creating tiny weather systems in the bathtub. He stared at his wrist —no longer experiencing the pain as pain, but as something numb and senseless— and regarded it as if it no longer belonged to him. The wrist laid open before him, the blood gushing out in unison with his heartbeat, which he felt reverberating through his body like a lazy drumbeat. He stretched his fingers outwards, then balled them together in a tight fist. The blood kept coming.
Fnord The smell of something metallic and musky entered his nose.
Fnord The opposite wrist went surprisingly easy. He’d expected to have trouble using the other hand since its wrist was already cut and bleeding heavily, but the hand remained astonishingly operational considering the muscular damage. In less than a second he’d doubled his injuries and both wrists were bleeding profusely, the coffee creamer whirls of red in the water giving way to a uniform diluted redness, like summer lemonade.
Fnord Now he’d wait.
Fnord And hope.
Fnord The room swayed, his limbs felt heavy, even in the water, and his eyes closed.

His eyes opened. Realisation washed over him as he stared at the ceiling above the tub.
Fnord He tilted his head forward, looked at the clouded, tinged water, and his eyes immediately found the razor blade, floating at the end of the bath tub, near his shins. He lifted his arms out of the murky water, the wounds virtually gone, no more than a thin red brown-ish line on both wrists, and even that was fading before his eyes.
Fnord He sighed wearily.
Fnord “God damnit,” Zeus said, his voice booming through the little space, before he clamboured out of the bathtub and picked up his robe.

A matter of time.

2010-01-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

“Wait. So… what? You’re going to steal a time machine?” Lily asked, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge the cobwebs of Felix’ twisted logic from the nooks and crannies of her mind.
Indent“No no,” Felix said. “Geez, Lil. You’re being so linear!”
Indent“Explain it to me again, then.”

The sky looked mildly depressed –the colour of freshly laid tarmac, an ominous shade of grey– and was gently pelting the earth with lazy, heavy snowflakes, dusting the city in a downy layer of white. The coffee house, crowded but not unpleasantly so, smelled of overpriced coffee beans and fresh, crisp winter and radiated the kind of manufactured cosiness that seemed to be de rigeur these days. Lily and Felix had managed to secure two large, comfortable chairs with between them a table so tiny it only barely offered enough space for the absurdly large, steaming mug that stood precariously atop it. Lily held hers in both hands, the steam pleasantly wafting into her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled the cinnamon-y smell of her beverage-with-a-ludicrously-unpronounceable-name; machi-something. London was happening on the other side of the large window behind her back.
Indent“The thing is,” Felix said, bringing Lily back to reality, “it’s only a matter of time before time travel will be possible. With advances in technology increasing exponentially I’m convinced we’re almost there. We’re ready for it, you know, as a species. And just think, as soon as someone takes up time travel, the linear nature of his life, his existence, becomes void.” Felix started gesticulating in his obvious enthusiasm. “The trajectory of his life through time will be untethered, zooming forward, folding back in on itself; it will be anything but, you know...”
Indent“Linear?”
Indent“Yes! A time traveller’s life bends and twists all over the place like... like a deflating balloon flying through the room.”
Indent“Your metaphors stink.”
Indent“I know. But it’d be great, right?”
Indent“I think so, yeah,” Lily said, taking an infinitesimal sip of her coffee, breaking eye contact and looking away. A snow-covered double-decker bus thundered past outside the window in a blur of red and white, strawberries and cream. “You know,” Lily then said, her eyes mischievous and large above her mug, staring into the middle distance, “you could argue that we’re all time travellers already, travelling forward through time one minute per minute, every minute of every day.”
Indent“Exactly!” Felix exclaimed, slapping the tiny table, almost knocking his coffee to the floor. “You got it! The trick to becoming a bonafide time traveller, though, is to be able to control the speed of that forward motion and even reverse it. When you’ve managed that, well, the sky is the limit.” As he said this his gaze rose to the ceiling and he made a sweeping gesture with his hand. Lily giggled discretely into her mug. His sense of drama was charming.
Indent“Okay, okay,” Lily said. “So you think this’ll happen in your lifetime? You think you’ll be a time traveller, one day? Is that it?”
Indent“Spot on. I’m convinced that it’ll be sooner rather than later that it will be possible and I’ll be the first in line!”
IndentLilly giggled and looked at her watch. “That seems as good a moment as any to nip into the bathroom for a second. Hold that thought, though, I want to know more,” she said as she got up and placed her over-sized mug delicately on her chair. Felix watched her snake her way to the bathroom.

He couldn’t believe his luck. One moment he was scouting the place that rents out safety deposit boxes to tourists at Waterloo station, and the next this girl seemed to appear out of nowhere and almost literally stumbled into his arms. He wasn’t exactly sure what happened in the following moments –a frenzy of apologies and smiles and charm from her and a collection of vowels and awkwardness from him– but before he knew it they were strolling out of Waterloo station and he was telling her about the fabric of space and time and she actually appeared to be interested.
IndentHe’d been endeared when she was as happy as a child when they exited the station and stepped into the snow; she actually shrieked and started skipping around, catching flakes in mid-air, tracing out figures in the snow on the ground and on cars; so happy, in fact, that he was swept along in her giddiness, even though he generally hates the snow.
IndentWhen they approached the coffee house she insisted they go in there and order the largest cup of coffee they had and even though Felix was appropriately trend-savvy to feel a aversion towards the consumerist nature of these kinds of places he felt compelled to give in to her wishes; when a pretty girl asks you to have a cup of coffee with her, other urges come into play that instantly override any impulse to be trendily contrary. They went in and here they were.

“I consider myself an enterprising individual,” Felix continued before Lily was even sitting down properly. “A risk-taker. A forward-thinker. So really, I want to treat this time-travel malarkey as a business opportunity. There has to be money in there somewhere. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Indent“I’m going to go out on a limb and say yes to that,” Lily replied, not wanting to interrupt Felix’ flow with unnecessary debate. The warmth of the mug in her hands held close to her face and the intoxicatingly unfamiliar smell of the beverage was making her pleasantly woozy.
Indent“I mean,” Felix said, unfazed by Lily’s complacency, “the fact that we’re talking about it now, and that I’ve been thinking about it all this time already proves that I’ve taken my first steps towards exploiting these developments. But here’s the kicker, you see? I’ve come up with a plan. I’ve decided that time travelling is not something I’m going to exploit, or even do, it’s something I’m going to invent.”
IndentThis got Lily’s attention. She lowered her mug into her lap and cocked her head to the side like an inquisitive puppy. “How do you reckon that? What are you, a scientist, one of those quantum mechanics?”
Indent“No no, none of the sort!” Felix snorted. “I drive a FedEx van, for cryin’ out loud. No, I’m going to steal it. I’m going to steal the designs of a time machine.”
Indent“You... wait?” Lily paused, looked away, blinked twice. She bit her lip in a way that made Felix’ heart melt a little. She looked back at him. “How does stealing the designs of a time machine make you the inventor? That just doesn’t follow. I could steal, I don’t know--” she waved her hands around, struggling (and failing) to come up with something appropriately contemporary “--the designs of the T-Model Ford but that would not make me the inventor, would it? The thing exists, it’s here, it’s probably patented like you wouldn’t believe.”
IndentFelix just grinned nefariously. “Yeah. But a T-Model Ford can’t travel back in time.” He paused for effect. Lilly narrowed her eyes and looked at him, the implications of his intentions falling into place in her mind’s eye. “You chew on that for a while,” Felix said. “I have a gallon of coffee in my bladder right now, gotta go, hold my seat, will you?” An instant later he was pushing himself past the other patrons, rushing towards the bathroom.

Lily took a deep breath and glanced at her watch, a cumbersome thing, large and heavy on her wrist. It was hard work, pretending to be unfamiliar of a story she’d heard dozens of times during her training. Felix had taken his time coming to the brunt of the matter, but she had him close, she felt it. He had basically already told her all she needed to know but she needed him to clearly articulate it for intent and motive to be established.
IndentShe loved his unpredictable mind; she had to admit that this first-person account was much more engrossing than her textbooks back at the academy, mainly because Felix had turned out to be exactly as eccentric and singular as her instructors had told her he’d be, and then some. Regardless, she was here to do a job and she planned on doing it right.
IndentShe was enjoying this time frame, too. She’d read about coffee and coffee houses, she’d seen pictures in books, and now here she was, sitting in one and actually drinking the stuff. And snow! She’d actually walked in snow, touched the stuff wth her bare skin! A story she would be telling at every birthday party for the rest of her life. It was those kinds of perks that got her to sign up at the academy in the first place.
IndentShe felt like she had all the time in the world in this pleasant bubble of reality they were inhabiting, but fact of the matter was she’d have to leave soon. She sipped her coffee again in an attempt to ignore the irony of her situation and marvelled at the taste.

“I’ve been mulling it over,” Lily said after Felix had returned. She tapped her watch; it bleeped quietly. “Break it down for me, how do you intend to do this?”
IndentFelix grinned. “Sure. Sometime soon time travel will be invented, I’m sure of it. We’re ready for it. We’re on the brink. And at some point in my life, whether it’s when I am 40 years old or 80, the underlying technology that makes time travel possible will become public knowledge, just like everyone now can find out how a car works. At that point I’ll travel back in time and give myself the designs, and hey presto, I’ll be the genius who introduces the world to time travel. Bob’s your uncle.”
Indent“Bob’s your... never mind,” Lily said, recognising the 20th century idiom. She took a deep breath, tapped her phone again and got up from her chair. She stood in front of Felix, still seated; she loomed over him, straightened her jacket and looked intently at her watch.
Indent“Whuh? Is it time to--” Felix said but Lily cut him off.
Indent“Felix Edward Hinman,” Lily said, her voice as stern as her face, “you are under suspicion of unrightfully appropriating the original designs of the flux capacitor and thereby of chrono-fraud of the highest order under statute law 1142α, articles 471-c through g of the year 2112,” Felix shifted uncomfortably in his chair, “and in light of today’s developments you have been found...”
IndentShe looked at her watch, hesitated a beat or two.
Indent“Yes, you have hereby been found guilty of this crime which is punishable by non-existence.” She looked up, into his eyes. Felix looked back, incredulous but unsettled, and saw sadness in her face.
IndentLily blinked, looked away, looked back into his eyes and mouthed ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she tapped her phone twice and vanished into thin air, like a television set being turned off.
IndentFelix gasped, eyes wide, heart pounding. He looked around but no one seemed to have noticed this girl just disappearing. He felt his blood rushing and his skin crawling, like the air in the room was closing in on him, squeezing him like an invisible vice. Then a clap, as loud and unexpected as a thousand people snapping their fingers simultaneously, and Felix too blinked out of existence, erased from the annals of history.

Two for one euro.

2010-01-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

We were already nervous and on edge due to the serendipitous nature of our rendezvous here and now we also felt tiny and insignificant, gawking at this behemoth of a structure hulking over us. The thing was lit up brightly, illuminating the Parisian night; it shone a reassuring shade of old-fashioned yellow, the hue of decades-old newspapers, like it was adorned from top to bottom with the fragile carbon-filament light bulbs of yesteryear. I strained my ears trying to detect the frizzle and crackle of the filaments burning but if it was there it was drowned out by the hustle and bustle befitting France’s greatest tourist trap. As we were standing under it, within the square delineated by its base, it struck me how the tower resembles an enormous incandescent alien hand reaching down from the sky, its four fingers plunged violently into the earth, trying to snatch us up and steal us away. This flight of fancy was interrupted by a street vendor attempting to push a rose into your hands. You expertly waved him away.
Indent“Well done,” I said, struggling to find something, anything to say.
Indent“Thank you,” you said, turning to me and smiling. There was a respectful (or nervous) two or three feet between us but still it was quite clear that you had the bluest eyes I had ever seen. Several elevated heartbeats of silence followed before I spoke again.
Indent“They’re a hassle, aren’t they?” I nodded towards the street hawkers which seemed to permeate the area. The hawker/tourist ratio seemed skewed; that there was at least one hawker for every two tourists can’t be good for business, surely?
IndentYou just nodded, smiled, lifted your camera to your left eye and snapped a few shots.

We’d met, physically that is, only a few hours earlier outside the arrivals lounge of Charles De Gaulle airport but we’d been talking online for months before that. ‘I met someone on the internet’ always sounded hopelessly hip when someone else said it but now that it was true for me it felt awkward and silly, but awkwardness and silliness never stopped me before and certainly wouldn’t now. We were always going to meet and when the notion of Paris appeared on the horizon, we jumped at it.
IndentActually meeting you turned out to be less awkward than I’d expected but more awkward than I’d hoped. I’d been on the road for close to seven hours and standing there outside the arrivals lounge waiting for you was the first moment of non-movement I’d had all day. As a result of that I didn’t see you exit the arrivals lounge, giving the impression that you didn’t so much arrive as appear out of thin air. It seemed befitting, somehow.
IndentWe shook hands, kissed politely on the cheeks, said our hellos, stared at each other, grinned. Touching you, if only your hand in mine or my lips on your cheeks, felt exactly as surreal as I expected it would.
IndentThis was it. The hardest part was over and done with. Physical, as opposed to digital, communications had been established. Now all that was left was to find our hotel in this traffic jam of a city, the city of lo-- of light.

“Two for one euro? Two for one euro?”
IndentI just shook my head at him and you dismissed him with a curt “No thank you”. The place was emptying out; it was late and damp and cold on a nondescript Thursday evening and tourists were gradually going back to their hotels, skewing the hawker/tourist ratio at the base of the tower ever more and more.
IndentWe were standing in the centre of the square of the base of the tower and you were eagerly snapping shots left and right, the big camera pressed to your eye, giving you the allure of an adventurous, rogue photographer; flashes of you boating down the Amazon river with that same camera, in search of some undiscovered tree frog or river snake flashed through my head. You craned your neck and pointed the lens straight up into the belly of the beast, like a greasy paparazza shooting an up-skirt shot of the latest teenage starlet gone astray.
IndentBut there was no click.
IndentYou lowered the camera and kept looking straight up.
Indent“Huh,” you said. “Would you look at that?”
Indent“What is it?” I asked, looking at you looking up. I hadn’t really been able to pry my eyes away from you since I first laid them on you at CDG.
Indent“It kind of... kind of looks like a spaceship when you look at it from here. Look.”
Indent“I’m sorry, it looks like a what?”
Indent“A spaceship!” you exclaimed. “Come here and look already”. You reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me closer. I craned my neck and looked straight up into the yawning mouth above us. A slight sense of vertigo came over me, either because of the intimidating size of the structure directly above us or because of my proximity to you and your hand on my arm; probably both. “See? A spaceship.”
Indent“Wow, you’re right!” I said and marvelled at a view that reminded me of every ‘80s science-fiction film I’d ever seen.
IndentStanding there looking up we didn’t notice that a hushed silence had come over the place; sounds had become muted as soon as you mentioned the word ‘spaceship’, as if a thick fire blanket had been draped over, not only the tower, but the entire city. We also failed to notice that every street hawker had stopped moving and turned their faces towards us.
IndentOne of them slowly started walking towards us.

It was a cheeseburger that finally broke the ice between us.
IndentThe hotel turned out to be much less untraceable and decrepit than we’d both expected and after flopping down on the beds for half an hour or so to rest our feet and let the bizzaro situation dawn on us we decided that we’d need to locate some form of sustenance; we needed food, asap!
IndentThe deluxe cheeseburger --yours medium; mine well done-- with fries and a recently deceased salad which they served at the bistro just around the corner from the hotel suited our needs perfectly: big, greasy and reasonably cheap but served in a place that looked posh enough for what would be our first real dinner together to not go down in history as a cheapskate date.
IndentThis was after all Paris.
IndentThe garçon was appropriately flirtatious with you as he flung the steaming plates on our table and after we’d stared at our meals for a good 45 seconds with knife and fork in hand our eyes met and in that moment there was a shared understanding of the fact that this would not, nay could not be handled delicately. The cutlery, along with our manners, was promptly dismissed as we simultaneously grabbed our burgers in our hands and murdered it with our teeth.
Indent“Hey, listen,” you said ten mirth-filled minutes later, a speck of burger sauce glistening proudly on your chin, like the sole survivor of a shipwreck desperately clinging to a piece of driftwood. “The Eiffel Tower is close by, right? You think we could pop by for a quick visit before we go back to the hotel and call it a day?”
Indent“Absolutely,” I replied. “Garçon, check please!”

“Qu'est-ce que tu viens de dire?”
IndentI looked over my shoulder to the lanky, deeply black man who’d approached and addressed us. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Not interested.”
Indent“Anglais?” he then said as he kept approaching us. As I waved him away I still failed to notice that the eyes of every street hawker in the area were on us. You were looking straight up, still captivated by that exercise in retro-futurism directly above us.
Indent“No thank you,” I tried again.
Indent“Non, non, qu'est-ce que la dame viens de dire?”, the man said before he shook his head and switched to faultless English. “What did the kind lady say, sir?”
IndentHe was standing no more than three feet away from us at that point, the whites of his eyes contrasting starkly with the shiny blackness of his face. His dark grey turtleneck sweater and black jeans looked years, if not decades, old but there was a certain crispness to him, like he had stepped out of a century-old photograph only moments ago.
IndentHis voice was oily and fluid, a low and pleasant timbre that managed to snap you out of your reverie. You turned around and looked at him.
Indent“What I said?” you asked him.
Indent“Yes, m’lady,” he replied. “What was it you said not two heartbeats ago, please?”
IndentYou narrowed your eyes and shook your head. “I’m not sure, why?”
Indent“About the tower, please?” he said, glancing up reverently at the structure above us.
Indent“Oh, that?” you said, chuckling at the silly nature of your remarks about the tower earlier. “It just struck me how the thing, you know, kind of looks like a spaceship when you see it from here. Wouldn’t you agree?” You looked up again and my eyes followed yours, but the black man kept staring straight at you, his smile ever widening as tears ran freely down his cheeks.
Indent“Merci. Merci beaucoup,” he said, his voice breaking. Then he, and every other street hawker in Paris, vanished into thin air with a slight popping sound.

We noticed the rumbling before we noticed that virtually everyone around us had vanished. As the ground shook violently we saw the few remaining tourists run for safety. I grabbed you and you me and we both blurted out ‘earthquake?’, more a question in search of conformation than a statement of fact.
IndentAn instant later, before we’d come to the conclusion that following the other tourists’ example would be wise, the massive concrete slab beneath our feet started cracking and breaking as easily and effortlessly as a pane of glass dropped to the floor. We were rooted to the spot and with my arms around you I pulled you to the ground; running away to relative safety was no longer an option with the ground undulating around us like it was. Big wedges of solid concrete were rising and falling all around us like we were stuck in the middle of level 4 of some ‘80s arcade video game. Only the patch of ground beneath our feet seemed to still be anchored to the earth while around us an ocean of concrete was heaving as if caught in a perfect storm.
IndentIn a crescendo of earth-shattering noise the small buildings at the very base of the tower’s four slanted legs simultaneously seemed to both disintegrate and explode and showered us in debris. As I attempted to shelter you from the worst of it your arm shot out, your finger outstretched towards the sloped leg of the tower that was in your line of sight. You shouted something.
Indent“What!?” I shouted in your ear, attempting to make myself heard over the din of the madness happening around us.
Indent“The tower! Look! It’s... it’s rising!” you shouted back into my ear. I looked to where you were pointing, to the base of the south leg of the tower and where a moment ago there was a small structure there was now nothing but air, as if the tower had pulled itself free from the earth itself. I quickly glanced over my shoulder and saw that all four legs had somehow detached itself from the ground.
IndentThe Eiffel Tower, 7.000 tons of steel latticework and rivets and paint and light projectors, was hovering a good 40 feet above where for the past century or so it had been anchored to the earth and was, as we were looking at it in sheer astonishment, still slowly rising.
IndentThe ground around us had settled down as the tower had detached itself, allowing us to slowly rise to our feet from our huddled position, and as we rose we witnessed the unbelievable: the tower gliding soundlessly through the air, slowly but steadily moving away from us, rising ever higher straight up into the night sky. With my arms still around you we stood where the tower once stood, amid a sea of broken concrete and snapped cables.
IndentSuddenly the place was lit up when a blinding yellow light lit up directly above us, exactly between the four now air-born legs of the tower. Simultaneously we lifted our hands to shield our eyes from the light but before we’d completed the movement the tower omitted a fierce shriek, the light flashed brighter still, and the tower shot away at a speed almost too fast to see.
IndentWe stood there, staring up at the now empty night sky, sirens blaring in the distance and coming ever closer. You turned towards me, looked at me, blinked twice, swallowed hard and spoke.
Indent“Can we go back to the hotel now?”

Cul-de-sac.

2006-10-27T16:22:00.000-07:00

IndentDr. Peter Willard, renowned evolutionary linguist at UCLA, has finished the project he has been working on for nearly two decades: a computer program which simulates the social evolution of truck drivers. His simulation, based on earlier scientific work done in this and similar fields as well as a wide spectrum of observations Willard and his team have been making since the late eighties, has come up with a startling conclusion, which Willard published in last month's edition of Nature Magazine: truckers will be virtually extinct by the end of this century.
IndentAccording to Willard, "[t]his isn't startling at all. In fact, the simulation merely confirms my suspicions, which were at the basis of this project." Willard maintains that he foresaw this imminent extinction of truck drivers as early as two decades ago, and it is because of these suspicions that he scouted the brightest young minds in social psychology and evolutionary linguistics to create this simulation.
IndentWillard states that "[t]he downfall of the trucker ... will not be technological advancement [but] rapidly and progressively deteriorating language- and social skills." At the very root of this, Willard says, is the "solitary nature of their profession." He also states that the process that will eventually lead to the truckers' extinction has already been set in motion, and "[t]he symptoms of this process ... are already visible on every highway the world over."
IndentThis process Willard refers to is the creation of a language not based on the production and interpretation of sounds, but on the production and interpretation of light. Truckers, already a socially rather isolated section of society, already exhibit this behaviour, by communicating with fellow truckers not by means of speech, but by means of flashing their indicator-, hazard- and headlights. Already truckers employ a single flash of their indicator light to let the trucker behind them know it is safe to overtake; already truckers flash their headlights to inform an overtaking trucker that it is safe to cut back to the slow lane; already truckers use a double flash of the indicator lights, left and right, to thank the trucker they've just overtaken for their assistance. The list goes on.
IndentIf the simulation is correct in its assumptions, and Willard has every reason to believe it is, this list of gestures, words and phrases expressed by visual stimuli will grow explosively over the next half century, when truckers will cease to employ this medium for occupational reasons only and use it for more informal purposes. At first these informal exchanges will revolve around their work, with questions such as "What are you carrying?", and "Whereto today?", all of this expressed by an increasingly complex series of light flashes.
IndentHowever, eventually, and, Willard claims, inevitably, the vocabulary of this language existing parallel to our own will increase to such an extent that the truckers will be forced to add lights to their vehicles to be able to continue communicating with their colleagues. Willard, in his article, claims that this will continue until trucks will have vast banks of lights on both their front- and back ends and their drivers, whose social skills, as a result of this, will already have been deteriorating, will eventually stop communicating with non-truckers altogether.
IndentEvolution dictates that skills which are no longer useful to an animal will, over time, diminish and eventually disappear completely, and so it will be with truckers and their ability to speak. Willard states that "[t]heir larynx will drop, their voice box will shrink considerably, and their necks will disappear almost completely." Willard remains unable to explain why this last symptom is already evident in so many truckers today. "Mother Nature occasionally prophecies, it would seem," he's been alleged to say.
IndentAn inevitable result of this process is a complete social isolation, says Willard. Due to their inability to speak, at first psychologically but eventually also physically, the world around them will become inhospitable and eventually fatal. Due to the newly evolved language, new truckers will be hard to find, simply because "no one desires an occupation in which one cannot communicate with one's colleagues." Also, finding a life partner when you cannot communicate with the rest of the world is a daunting task, adding to the truckers' isolation. All these elements combined, Willard's simulations shows, will leave truckers a dying breed. To make his point unambiguously clear, Willard adds that "99% of the time a dying breed will end up a dead breed."
IndentIn a final note Willard, ever the humanitarian, pleads "[i]f you stay on this course, you will enter a dead-end street you cannot back out of. Act now."
IndentIn a reaction, Perry Snovnyk, spokesperson of Truckers Union North America, said "[s]o we should not stay on this course? How could we not? Staying on the course is what we get paid to do!"
IndentDr. Willard has not yet commented on this.

Back to Earth.

2006-10-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

A human being and an alien walk into an intergalactic bar.

Indent"Hello there, I'm a human being."
Indent"I know."
Indent"From Earth, that small blue 'n green piece of rock tucked away in the top left corner of the Alpha Quadrant."
Indent"I know."
Indent"A tough nut, huh? Not a big fan of humankind?"
Indent"Not really. An infantile race marred not only by the fragility of their bodies, with bones that break under little to no stress and skin that can be pierced by a rogue twig, but also by their frivolous minds, capable neither of holding a coherent thought for any length of time nor of thinking of the long-term consequences of their current actions. A race that can only be described as a fluke of evolution which grew up to be a parasite, stripping dry of every natural resource the very planet that spawned them, using it up like an aggressive cancer uses up a body or a nest of ants uses up a discarded apple. No offense."
Indent"Huh. Wow, look at the time, I really should be--"
Indent"Besides, fandom is such a ... human affair."
Indent"Oh, really? I didn't realise. So, you, and your kind with you, are not a fan of anything? Athletes, film stars, the such?"
Indent"No. On our world we have no need for mass entertainment such as sports and films simply because the masses need not be entertained. We are a worker race, we cannot afford such frivolous wastes of time. Besides, we do not share your obsessive desire to deify the individual."
Indent"I'd object if I knew what that meant. Please elaborate."
Indent"I shall. Human beings seem to have this urge to glorify individuals who excel at what they do, such as the film stars and athletes you mentioned. You put them on a pedestal, put them in a class of their own, treat them as your superiors, and as a result they treat you as their inferiors and exist outside of society and even above the law. While their achievements, at close scrutiny, are not particularly perplexing."
Indent"Oh, be real. There have been some amazing athletes in our history, you can't deny that!"
Indent"Pit ten people against eachother and one will always emerge victorious; faster, stronger, etcetera. Why glorify this particular person on such arbitrary grounds? Besides, it should all be regarded in the proper context, which is something you seem incapable of doing."
Indent"Context? What context?"
Indent"I can run at speeds exceeding 90 k/h. My hind legs enable me to jump close to 20 meters into the air. I would destroy your Muhammed Ali in a single round. But do you glorify me? No, you do not. In the infinitely limited context of humanity, these people are the best at what they do, if only barely. In any context other than purely Earth-bound, it is not special in any shape or form. Decidedly not."
Indent"Well, okay, I'll give you that. But you'll have to admit that there have been some great thinkers. Einstein, Darwin, Newton, etcetera."
Indent"You call it great thinking. We call it stating the obvious. These people you mention, they were not by any means brilliant, they were merely correct. They observed the world as it was, and translated what they saw into comprehensible language."
Indent"Right, right. So, tell me, anything else we suck at?"
Indent"Oh, quite. Peace is the obvious answer. But also language, infrastructure, waste management. And do not get me started on relig--"
Indent"That'll do. Anything we're good at? Anything at all?"
Indent"Hmm. Tough one. Ah yes, you are good at critiquing other people and pointing out their shortcomings. Very good at that, in fact. You are a pretty sour, negative race."
Indent"You now what, I've had enough of this. Of you. I'm out of here."
Indent...
Indent"See?"

Awakening.

2006-10-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

Little Will is what my grandfather always used to call me. He started it when I was four or five and still actually quite little, but he kept doing it til he disappeared three years ago - I was 28 at the time, and hardly little. but Little Will it was. "Little Will," he'd say. "Little Will, listen to me. The secret to life, the secret to everything, you know what it is? Do you?" Of course I didn't; who does?
IndentTurns out he did.
Indent"Sleep," he'd say. "Sleep is the secret to every single thing out there." As you can imagine, I always thought my grandfather was ever so slightly loony. But he'd insist. "Master the secret of sleep, and you will become a God, Little Will," he'd say. Of course, at six or seven years old, what did I know about being a God? All I knew was that my buddies at school would laugh at me if I showed up in a robe and with a beard.
IndentIt wasn't til I was 15 that he started telling me more about this strange philosophy of his. "Technically, it's not sleep that's the key, it's those seconds before you sleep," he'd tell me. "Those precious few moments, when you're hovering between worlds, not awake nor asleep, conscious but not, it is in that place where all knowledge is stored." You'll understand that, at that stage in my life, I didn't really enjoy sitting next to my grandfather at family meals.
IndentChristmas, almost a decade ago. I was 21. My grandfather and I ended up in the corner of a family-packed living room. He put his bony hand on my knee, and looked at me intensely. It was awkward. "Every answer to every question, Little Will," he said, like he continued a conversation we never actually had. "Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here? All answered." His eyes were shining. I decided it was time to get everyone a drink.
IndentA few months before he disappeared I decided to humour him when he started rambling about his discovery again. I asked him to explain it to me. And he did. "Can you ever remember that last second before you dose off. What you were thinking, what position you were in? I'll bet you you can't." I had to give him that, he was right. "You know why?" he asked. I didn't. "Because, Little Will, that is the moment your body surrenders itself to your mind, and your mind's eye opens wide, if only for a fraction of a second." I told him to carry on.
Indent"In that instant, you know everything. Every thing." I nodded. "You're not listening, Little Will. In that instant, you are omniscient, omnipotent even. You are, in effect, a God. A supreme being." I was getting uncomfortable, but I wanted to sit this through, if only for him to get it out of his system. "Problem is, you forget," he then said. "A deep understanding of every aspect of the universe, a perception of every dimension, and an awareness of every single possibility ..." He paused. Perhaps he was truly overwhelmed, but I think he did it for effect. "... and you forget." He gave me a penetrating look. "The secret, Will, is remembering. Remember, and you can be anything. Remember, and you are everything. Remember, and you shall walk among Gods."
IndentSeveral weeks later he was gone. I'd put him to bed myself, the night before, but the following morning his bed was empty. His dentures were still there, as were his glasses. His walking stick hanging from the head board of his bed, and his slippers untouched. No one ever saw him again.
IndentI realise that he was an insane old man. I realise that he could have just woken up, all confused, and stumbled off into the night, as the elderly tend to do every now and again. I realise he may simply be dead. But I don't believe that. I refuse to. I think I'm the grandchild of a newborn God. But I need to know for sure.
IndentSo, off to bed I go.

Black & White.

2006-10-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

An orb of the purest white hoovers in the air, rotating, undulating, like a virgin planet caught in the nothingness of eternity. As it floats, the orb quivers and subtle ripples move across its surface; the orb isn't solid, it is liquid, a ball of fluid held together by nothing more than its own surface tension. Suddenly, movement in the context of its surroudings suggests that the orb is falling through empty space, hurdling towards an invisible zenith at incalculable speeds.
IndentAsudden, a horizon appears all around it, a 360° vista of an ominous brim, the outer rim of the orb's universe or an impact crater left behind after a vast meteorite mercilessly smashed into the desolate surface of reality. The orb, tiny in comparison, falls and falls, no longer through nothingness and towards eternity, but through a crater, massive and primal, and towards its deathly centre, a ghastly maw filled with a boiling, steaming, oil-like substance. This lake of black liquid fills the crater almost entirely, and it gently sways, as if alive, as if patiently awaiting the virgin white orb, as if knowing it will be there, soon. Soon.
IndentFinally, after eons, the pure white of the orb and the deep black of the lake collide in a cataclysmic explosion, the orb bravely tunneling its way through the hot, dense liquid, using all its force to not fall apart under the pressure. The black liquid pulls at the orb, trying to break its surface tension so that the white will merge with the black. The orb goes, digs, tunnels, but knows it is fighting a lost battle. The black liquid closes the tunnel behind the orb, capturing it in an inky darkness.
IndentThe orb loses a battle it was never meant to win. The surface tension breaks, and the orb explodes into a bloom of uncorrupted white, a bright cloud, swirling through the all-enveloping blackness. Then slowly, slowly, it dissipates.
IndentThen I added two lumps of sugar, stirred for a bit, and had myself a lovely cup of coffee.
IndentYum.

The Nickel.

2006-10-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

I am a woman now, but I was once a girl. And when I was a girl, a young girl, six, maybe seven, definitely not eight years old, an uncle I can now hardly remember gave me a nickel. And when he gave me this nickel, he told me something silly. You should never tell a young child something silly, because often they are unable to distinguish between the silly and the true. He told me that if I made a wish, swallowed the nickel, and passed it, the wish would come true. Predictably, I was spellbound. The endless possibilities astounded me.

It took me several days of rigourous investigation to figure out what it meant to 'pass' a swallowed nickel. I wasn't quite sure how you'd be able to give away a nickel you recently swallowed, but luckily I had to my disposal Timmy from down the street; Timmy was two classes up from me, and he knew everything. He told me what it meant. What he told me was gross, but not impossible. Endless possibilities.

So I started thinking about wishes. The weather had been bad all week, and that weekend mum, dad and I we were going to the zoo, so I wished for good, sunny weather on saturday and swallowed the nickel. It tasted metallic, which makes sense. The following day I took a pencil from dad's study, a long one, and went looking for the nickel. I didn't find it that day, but the next day I did. Saturday was a lovely day.

It went on like that for a while. Small-time wishes, nothing huge or life changing. I wished for the cat to stop throwing up, for dad to be home more often, for my tooth to stop hurting, for someone to find Emmy, my lost doll. And you know what? Everything happened. Every single thing. Which is when I started thinking big.

It was working, I was convinced of that. Enough wishes, however small, had come true for me to be convinced of the nickel's magic. So I gave it some long and hard thought; what would be really useful in the long run? I was too young to contemplate fortune, or fame, or love, so what it boiled down to was health. I wished for a long and healthy life, and swallowed the nickel. It no longer tasted metallic, it tastes kinda musky. Which makes sense also.

I was young, then. Six, maybe seven, definitely not eight. I am 37 now, and I will not live to see 40. I might not even make it to 38, which is only five months away. I looked for the nickel for a week, before I gave it up. I just thought I must've missed it, somehow. I was young, what did I care. Life went on. Turns out I never passed the nickel. It got stuck in one of the folds of my stomach, where the copper started corroding because of the gastric acids, slowly eroding away the lining of my stomach. I have gastric cancer now, which has spread to my bowels, my colon; the cancer is end-stage.

I've been giving it some thought, and I still cannot figure out whether somewhere buried in all of this is a life lesson about greed, or a warning concerning youthful innocence and corruptibilty, but I do know this: if someone ever offers me a nickel again, for whatever reason, I'll shoot them a dirty look and tell them to keep their goddamn nickel.

Black & white.

2006-10-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

The Resort Manager's Tale.

2006-10-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

In a dank smelling, cheap hotel room, somewhere in Western Australia, an unpleasant looking young man hangs up the phone. Next to the phone on the bedside table, which is covered with an array of adult magazines, most of which featuring farm animals, lies the hotel's complimentary notepad, on which he's scribbled a few notes, the last of which during the phone conversation he just had with Matt, the caretaker/in-house chef of the resort he manages in Queensland. He attemps to pick up the notepad, but the cheap whiskey he had for breakfast has killed his hand-eye coordination, and he knocks onto the floor a plastic replica of a woman's genitalia, bought not 24 hours ago at the sleazy shop two streets over and already worn and torn. He tries again, and this time succeeds in picking up the notepad. He struggles with the words, not because of the handwriting, which is bad, but because he was never properly taught how to read; he was home-schooled by his mother, a chimpansee.
IndentThe note reads:

- See local doctor -> renew prescription syphilis.
- Buy razors to shave back.
- Buy puppy in window -> drown it.
- E-mail Martin about arranging a wedding at resort, July 20th.

He throws the notepad on the bed, its sheets crusty and stained, and limps over to the bathroom, for his daily session of pimple-squeezing, something he, over the years, has learned to take pleasure in. For several years now he has had a Rainbow Jar, a simple glass jar, it's label inexpertly torn off, in which he collects all the pus he extracts from his face - the name of the already half full jar pertaining to the change in colour brought on by the passage of time; from white and yellow to an autumnal orange, all the way to the brownish green chunks at the bottom, of which he is most proud.
IndentOnce in the bathroom he avoids looking at the toilet bowl for fear of remembering yesterday's epic bout of constipation, and he shuffles over to the mirror on the far wall. Looking at himself, devising a battle plan about the order in which he'll attack the pustules on his face (the almost green one throbbing on his upper lip will make a fine grande finale), the Rainbow Jar waiting expectantly for the day's spoils, a thought enters his mind.
Indent"July 20th," he says to his reflection with a lisp brought on by his two missing front teeth. Several instants pass before he realises why that date rings a bell.
Indent"The double birthday!" he exclaims, and in the excitement he leaks a few drops of urine. He hardly notices it anymore.
Indent"No room for a wedding," he then ponders. "Oh, I know, I'll keep that Martin guy on a leash for a couple of weeks, throwing him the occasional bone in the shape of an e-mail in which I will appear more than willing to help him, taking his reservations, etcetera, so that I can use him as a back-up, should this birthday business fall through. Then, once the double birthday is booked, and the money in my pocket, I will simply ignore him!" He smiles a gap-toothed smile at his own deviousness.
Indent"And then, if he gets impatient and calls me, I'll just tel him he never made a reservation, and oh dear, look at that, we're fully booked for that day!" At the thought of having this conversation his smile widens to the point that his upper lip bursts open and an instant later a fat gob of pus is dripping down the reflection of his face.
Indent"Aaaaw," he moans, and tripples off in search of a spoon.

Solitary ponderings.

2006-10-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

The rain is beating down on me. My umbrella manages to keep me dry from the knees up. I stand here every day, on one of the busiest roads, right smack in the middle of London; I don't even let the shitty weather deter me. I stand here on the look out, looking for anyone, anything, but no one ever comes. I'm all alone.
IndentIt's been seven years now since I woke up into a lifeless world, a world devoid of living and thinking beings. The first weeks were tough; I was engrossed in an incredulous panic and denial was the only thing that kept me going. I kept wondering what happened, where'd everybody go? Did everyone die? Did I die? But at some point a switch is flicked in your brain, and the unbelievable becomes believable, the unlikely becomes likely, and fiction becomes fact. Asking questions when no one is around to answer them is futile, so I stopped.
IndentSeven years I've been wandering the streets of the city I was born and raised in. Going to and fro, sleeping here and there, eating this and that. The city is filled to the brim with canned food and luxurious apartments, so there's been no shortage of food and living space.
IndentYet virtually every day I end up here, on Charing Cross road, waiting for someone, anyone, to break this waking dream I am in. Sometimes I think I see something, someone, a fleeting glance moving in my peripheral vision, but I know now that it is merely my mind trying to cope. The human mind wasn't built for complete solitude; they didn't make solitary confinement a form of punishment without good reason. The mind needs another mind, to bounce ideas off of, to interact and connect with. Yet here I am, as alone as anyone could ever be, and my mind, even after seven years, still plays its subconscious tricks to make me feel less alone.
IndentI sometimes ponder that age-old adage: if a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? I feel like that tree, screaming out, wanting to be heard, but reaching no one. I wonder, do I exist, if no one is around to see me existing. Do I need company, another sentient being, to validate my existence, or is it enough to live for living's sake. Just being; nothing else. Perhaps I am Schrodinger's cat, and this lifeless world is my box. Trapped in some kind of limbo, neither living nor dead, and waiting for someone to observe me so that I can finally be one or the other. I'd settle for either.
IndentIt stopped raining.

Must see tv.

2006-10-26T15:04:00.000-07:00

A small, impossibly well dressed young lady was still adding the final touches to his make-up -he'd told them he didn't need any, but they'd insisted- and another bouncy little thing was standing behind him, rolling her little lint roller across his back in long, soothing strokes, when out of the darkness in front of him he heard someone say his name - or rather, one of his many names. An instant later the two girls had vanished and in front of him appeared a rectangle of blinding light, ever growing as the two sliding doors slid open. It took him a moment to adjust to the glare before he could make out a corridor of sorts, lined by rows and rows of people, leading directly to a centre stage on which he could vaguely make out the shapes of two big chairs and a person.
IndentWhat struck him as funny, as he casually sauntered down this corridor of people towards the stage, was the lack of sound apart from a low murmuring, especially compared to the standing ovation the host received not ten minutes ago; a true cacophony if he ever heard one, and he'd heard his share of sounds and noises. Then again, he thought to himself, I'm dealing with Oprah here, virtually a demi-god in this silly country. Besides, he was expecting to be lynched on the spot any second now in this, the most puritanical of nations. And hypocritical.
IndentAs he approached the centre stage, which was raised a foot or so above the main studio floor, he took a moment to take a closer look at those chairs in which his host and himself would spend the next hour. The chairs were exceedingly luxurious armchairs, the upholstering tinted a subtle and rich beige, the arm rests large enough for a small child to comfortably sleep on. The chairs looked comfortable enough to spend days in, if not weeks.
IndentAs he stepped onto the stage Oprah, dressed in a sober, black pantsuit, took a small step toward him and spread her arms. Now why, he thought to himself, would she adopt such a blatantly Christ-like pose? That's favouratism, right there. She's the host of this charade, she should at least pretend to be neutral. Large, soft and neutral, like the armchairs. When, a heartbeat later, he realised that she was merely offering a hug he dismissed the thought of unjust favouratism, but when, yet another heartbeat later, he noticed the small gleaming crucifix lying on her impressive bosom, in plain sight, instead of under her clothes, between those large brown breasts, he felt compelled to conclude that, yes, she's biased. But honestly, who isn't?
IndentThe hug was short but seemed sincere enough and after disengaging from it she gestured towards the chair on the left and told him to please sit down. Not thirty seconds had passed since the opening doors had drenched him in light and here he was, in this modern colloseum, entirely bloodless but all the more effective.

"Please, please, sit down," Oprah said, seconds after the both of them sat down in their respective chairs. The chair was divine, like snatching a cumulus cloud from the sky and sitting on it; an all-enveloping softness that was so deep and intense that it was almost disturbing. Almost, but not quite.
Indent"Thank you so much for coming on the show--"
Indent"My pl--"
Indent"--and giving us your side of the story."
Indent"Entirely my pleasure, Miss Winfrey. Entirely my pleasure. Thank you and your lovely audience.." no reaction from the crowd whatsoever "..for having me."
IndentOprah bent forward and placed her hand on his left wrist. It looked small, brown and fragile. The fingers wrinkled and bent, her nails polished and buffed to hide the imperfections. A thin veneer covering her fragility. "Stories always have two sides," she said. "And all I can do is keep my audience well informed. Oh, and call me Oprah, it's my name."
IndentAt this she laughed uproariously and the crowd went berserk.
Indent"Speaking of names," Oprah continued after the audience settled down almost a full minute later, "what do I call you?"
Indent"Ah yes," he said as Oprah removed her hand and settled back into her chair. "The name issue. People think I have many names, but really, I don't. In fact, where I come from we didn't have names. We didn't have language, and for names to exist, language must exist. Language, and with it my many names, were all invented by you."
IndentOprah blinked, cocked her head. "And which do you prefer? Of the names we invented, I mean."
Indent"Well, the thing is," he said as he pressed his fingertips together and splayed his fingers, "the bulk of them shed a rather unpleasant light on me. Satan means the Adversary, which I can live with, but Beëlzebub means Lord of the Flies, which is downright unfair to William Golding and myself. If anything, the big guy himself is Beëlzebub, he created the little critters." He crossed his legs and looked at Oprah expectantly.
Indent"Lucifer, then?" Oprah suggested, turning in her chair, the bulk of her body pressing down on the delicate fabric, her face caught in an eternal smile, perfectly pleasant through practice but entirely insincere.
Indent"Oh, how I'd love to be the bearer of light, the bringer of dawn," he said, beaming as if to emphasize his point, "but alas, I am not. Lucifer was a Babylonian king who ruthlessly oppressed his people. I've met him, not a nice fellow. Anyway, common mistake, really. I blame Milton, with his Paradise Lost. Good man, Milton; had a way with words but should have checked his facts. The devil's in the details, as they say." He, and no one else, grinned at that.
IndentOprah, wriggling in her chair and getting visibly impatient, then asked "What then?"
Indent"I've always been partial to Mephistopheles. Goethe and Marlowe were decent men, and delivered good, if slightly inaccurate, work with their versions of the story of Faust, but really, it's not a very inconspicious name, is it? Pity, because it has style. Flair. Panache."
IndentOprah now flashed him a look and from the corner of his eye he could see the producer wildly gesturing at him to wrap it up. He wondered what kind of commercials would play in the breaks of this show; what kind of products do you attempt to sell in those seconds when the devil is getting his make-up touched up?
Indent"I digress," he said, smiling gently. "Call me Nic."
IndentWith this, Oprah, clearly relieved, turned to face the camera. "We'll be right back."

"So Nic, let's get right to it," Oprah said as if the commercial break never happened. "You've been a bad boy." The audience roared with laughter. "What happened?"
IndentAt the sound of this question Nic flashed an enigmatic smile. Here we go, he thought to himself. Playing the devil's advocate on prime time television. "The business with the Fall, you mean? Big question, small answer: we saved your lives." This got a reaction from the crowd. Incredulous grins, people shaking their heads, snorts, gasps, even a few people crossing themselves. "You're quite welcome, by the way," he added, still grinning his distinctive, strangely alluring grin.
IndentOprah neglected to conceal the incredulity in her voice. "So we should thank you for ... for saving our lives?"
Indent"Thank me or don't thank me, it matters very little. But yes, we did."
Indent"And do you think you can explain to our audience exactly why it is we should thank you?"
Indent"Love to," he said, sitting up in his chair and giving his host a penetrating look. She flinched, almost imperceptibly, but he saw it. He always saw people's fears, their insecurities, their demons and secrets, their imperfections, their pasts and even hints of their futures. It was tiring, at times. "You see, at some point in time before time even existed, God created us, the angels. And not just a few of us, no, in the blink of his divine eye he created millions upon millions of us. Some four hundred million angels, roaming through eternity, basking in the presence of our creator."
IndentOprah just nodded, her hand supporting her head, and gave him her famous 'go on, we're listening'-look. He had to give her credit for at least hearing him out.
Indent"And then, an infinity later, he started a new project: humanity. He introduced this fascinating new concept, called matter, and out of it he created planets and creatures and water and air and whatnot. And one species of this creation was the centre of his attention: you lot. These crude, pinkish beings, running around in their utopian garden. And then what, Oprah?"
IndentShe blinked twice, glanced quickly to the left, and said "A number of angels thought they were too good for us humans, and they ... they revolted. God, in his wisdom, cast them out." The audience nodded in unison like a sold out bobblehead convention on the dashboard of life.
Indent"And there we have the crux of the matter, I suppose," Nic replied. "In part that's true. In God's grand scheme of things we, the angels, were supposed to bow down to these humans, be their invisible servants, protectors, and we did just that. Each and every one of us, half a billion angels were subservient to this handful of lumpy, awkward creatures. And yes, quite a few of us ended up revolting, not against the humans, but against God. But it wasn't pride that drove us to mutiny against everything we believed in. It was compassion."
Indent"Compassion?" Oprah echoed. "For whom, us?"
Indent"Yes. We could no longer turn a blind eye to your situation. We felt sorry for you."
Indent"So there we were," Oprah said, her face opening up like a spring flower at the prospect of talking Nic into a corner. "The pinnacle of God's wisdom and creativity, of God's love and compassion, living in the Garden of Eden, entirely free of sin, pain, disease, suffering, every day basking in the glorious presence of our creator, the lord God--" she said all this directly facing the camera, but then turned to Nic, "--and you felt sorry for us?"
IndentThe audience erupted in applause, cheers and all-round jubilation, and Oprah positively beamed, feeling she'd won, if not the war, than at least this battle.
Indent"Let me ask you this," Nic said after the audience had settled down. "Abraham Lincoln. Hero? Or a bit of a schmuck?"
IndentOprah smiled the patronising smile of a school teacher being asked on a date by a 9 year old pupil. "He's a hero. One of our greatest."
Indent"Why?"
Indent"Why? He was one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had. He was a visionary, a truly brave and great man. He abolished slavery. He--"
Indent"Ah!" Nic interrupted with such fierceness that Oprah stopped in her tracks. "You're against slavery, then?"
IndentShe just scowled at him.
IndentNic igored her icy stare and continued. "Interesting, because that's exactly what you were, all of you, slaves. Less than slaves: you were toys, playthings, a hobby, a minor diversion at best. And we, risking every right we'd ever been granted, every shred of credibility for all eternity, attempted to liberate you from it. We alone saw your potential and decided that you, as much as us and even as God, had the right to develop, to learn and grow and make mistakes." He just stared at a wide eyed Oprah for a few seconds before filling the silence with the quip: "The fact that you reinvented slavery several millenia later is nothing more than a fitting irony." He grinned at his own joke.
Indent"God had great plans for us," Oprah finally whispered. "If only you had not interfered and tricked us into eating that apple."
IndentNic guffawed, a loud and full bark of a laugh. "Listen to yourself. The apple? That, more than anything, proves my point. The mere presence of that apple, so delicious but outspokenly forbidden, the very key to unlocking that hidden potential inside all of you right in your midst but strictly off limits, should tell you that your God is a cruel God, taunting you, playing with you. Keeping you ignorant, keeping you on a short leesh, no more than a dog."
IndentThis got a reaction. Oprah's face visibly cleared up. Nic seized the moment.
Indent"You have dogs, no?" Oprah nodded cheerily and opened her mouth to speak, but Nic beat her to it. "Tell me, hypothetically speaking, if you had the power, would you make your dogs as intelligent and capable as you, as humans?"
Indent"Yes, of course I--"
Indent"No, you would not. And why not? Because then they'd slap you upside the head for treating them like dogs all these years. Then they'd go their own way and lead their own lives. And here is the clincher: they would not need you anymore." Nic clearly articulated every word in that last sentence.
IndentIn the ensuing silence Nic could hear the audience members blink.
Indent"We'll be right back," Oprah finally uttered.
IndentAfter the break, they reran an episode of Happy Days.

From then and there to here and now.

2006-10-26T13:04:00.000-07:00

She baffled the scientific community. A 74 year old woman clawing and digging her way from a makeshift grave was surprising enough, but what was even more bizarre was that no one, not even Sarah herself, knew how she got there, in that hole in the ground, covered by five feet of dirt.
IndentIt took the scientists 21 years to figure out what was going on with Sarah; after regained eyesight, sharpened hearing, and an ever improving physical condition, tests pointed out that this woman, who was supposed to be 95 years old, was, in fact, 53 years old.
IndentSarah was getting younger.
IndentDespite the astouding nature of her condition, Sarah lived a relatively anonymous life. Her situation was so fantastical, so implausible, that, despite scientific proof, the news of her condition was relegated to that part of the newspapers everybody skims over without really reading it. There was a brief surge of interest, which waned over time. Sarah was soon forgotten, which was fine by her.
IndentOver the following decades, Sarah felt her body improving. Her dentures made way for a full set of healthy teeth, her bones gradually stopped hurting, she stopped needing her glasses at all and her skin became smoother and smoother as time went by.
IndentMore than half a century after she clawed her way from the earth, when she was 20 years old, she met someone. Not a man, but a woman. And not even a woman, but a girl. When sitting on a park bench, a little six year old girl sat next to her, and started talking to her. This repeated and repeated, until Sarah and the Maria, the little girl, became very close friends, the only friend she had ever had.
IndentAnd as Sarah grew younger, Maria grew older. They calculated the day when the both of them would be exactly the same age and on that day, they were both 13 years of age, they had a lavish, though entirely private, party.
IndentAs Sarah grew younger and younger, leaving adolescence behind and moving past school age and into play age, she noticed that she was starting to forget. Her mind ceased being able to fully recall the rich and peculiar life she had led, but she knew this was meant to be. There was always Maria.
IndentMaria, well into her twenties, became more and more important to Sarah as she approached infancy, when the memory of the life she had led was almost entirely faded from her young brain. The last months of her life were pure bliss; no worries, no responsibilities, not even a real notion of the world around her, just herself, contained in her own bubble.
IndentUntil, at last, there was this uncontrolable and undefinable desire to seek out Maria, to get Maria's attention and get as close as possible to Maria. In those last moments Maria was Sarah's life; she thought Maria, she breathed Maria, she felt a part of Maria, and wanted very much to be inside of Maria.
IndentAnd so she was.

Will I ever find you again?

2006-10-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

They met among books.
IndentIt was in a library. But no ordinary library. It was a library bustling with activity, thriving with knowledge and pulsating with joy. A library in which everyone was welcome and in which you were allowed to be who you wanted to be, instead, perhaps, of who you are. A library which he had been visiting, frequently, for years. And then she walked in.
IndentIt wasn't love at first sight. Her presence went by unnoticed, and so did his. They went here and there, talked to him and her, did this and that. And then they met.
IndentThey talked. And talked. And talked. About lives, about pasts and futures, but mostly about dreams, which, eventually, revolved around eachother. Dreams of crooked houses, of hidden lakes, of being together and of unbridled passion.
IndentBut the dreams proved to be just that: dreams. And their lives, their real lives, as they are want to do, interrupted. Their lives interrupted their dreams to the point that they had to part ways. She left to live her life, and he left to live his. They lost touch.
IndentThe library still remains, the same but different. New people moving in and out, filling the place with wisdom and laughter, sometimes simultaneously. But their love, their short but passionate fling, has become less than a memory between the walls of this extraordinary library. The only place where their love still thrives is in his mind, and perhaps hers, too.
IndentAnd all he thinks is, will I ever find her again?

The oneironaut, part one.

2006-10-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

The thing I remember most clearly about that day is the police officer at my door; the sun was directly behind him when I opened the door, making his awkward buzzcut light up like a halo and giving him something angelic. However, I'd soon find out an angel he was not. A young kid, not yet 25, obviously a rookie on the force, a plump face with reddish cheeks, a thin veneer of sympathy masking his face but his nerves, or perhaps his apathy, shining through like the sun through a fogged up window.
Indent"Mr. Frears? Jacob Frears?"
Indent"Yes."
Indent"Husband of ..." he checked a note in his hand "... Catherine Frears?"
IndentI swallowed. A million things occurring to me at once: she took the car; what was that on the news about a storm front coming in; she never wears a seat belt; how will I tell her mum; she'll be fine, we have a dinner date this friday. I swallowed again and spoke.
Indent"Yes. Kate. Kate Frears is my wife."
IndentHe hesitated and looked away before regaining his composure. A glean of sweat on his forehead. I knew there and then that my life was about to change dramatically. All the officer could do was fill me in on the details, but really, in cases like this, aren't they irrelevant?
Indent"Sir, there's been an accident."

She'd taken the car, like she did every day to go to work, a law firm in the city where she worked 80-hour weeks as a personal assistant to a grossly overpaid lawyer who made twice as much in half the hours and where she harboured silent dreams of one day being an ace lawyer herself, only without the delusions of grandeur. She hadn't put on her seat belt -she never did- but it would not have saved her anyway; if anything, it'd have kept her alive for a few more moments of screaming agony.
IndentShe was driving down the I7 towards the city when she first heard and then saw an ambulance tearing down the road from her left.
IndentShe braked, and the guy behind her, who didn't, rear-ended her at a fair pace. A severe whiplash and some serious damage to the car would have quite enough, but the force of the impact pushed her right into the path of the 5 ton ambulance doing well over sixty. It slammed right into her side of the car before she could even so much as inhale. The bones in the right side of her body were broken; the ones in the left side smashed to a pulp. Parts of the car door had impaled her.
IndentShe was dead on impact, which, people keep telling me, is some kind of morbid consolation. Even the patient in the ambulance was fine; a little shook up, but fine otherwise.
IndentAn ambulance. People often call this ironic. I don't.

The dreams started not long after. I'd always been a vivid dreamer; I'd often drive Kate crazy with my mumblings and antics at night. I'd be fresh as a daisy come morning, unaware of the long hours of sleep I'd denied her. Either that or I'd wake up with sore ribs from the pokings she deservedly gave me. Sometimes, when I'd start babbling, she'd talk back to me, drawing me into a surreal conversation about things too Dali to even mention, just to occupy her time while I kept her awake. No end of fun the following day when she'd taunt me with the silly things I'd imparted about my adventures and encounters. But the dreams I started having a few weeks after the accident were so vivid they scared me.
IndentThey were about her, of course, and about the accident. In the dream I'd be there, several moments after the actual collision. Everything was happening at once -debris still flying, the ambulance skidding to a halt down the road, the guy who rammed Kate opening his car door, Kate's car, with Kate still in it, wrapping itself around a telephone pole- but in extreme slow motion, like a DVD watched at its slowest speed, frame by horrific frame. Everything moving gently and sluggishly around me, belying the destruction being wrought; everything except for me, I am moving real time, like I am standing in the eye of a huge man eating hurricane made up of car bits and mayhem and distorted sounds and misery and a future lost.
IndentThen things would settle down. Sounds would fade away, debris would stop flying, and everything around me would slowly disappear into blackness until only the car, a lump of twisted metal completely surrounding the telephone pole like a hungry cat wrapping itself around your ankle, remained. And there she would be, inside this unrecognisable carcass of a car, unscathed but stuck, reaching out to me, begging me to help her, to grab her hand and pull her free, pull her from this nightmare and back into my life, our life. And I'd run and reach with all my might, reaching for her hand, but it would never be enough, I'd never reach it. There would always be an inch, an infernal inch separating us, separating her from me, me from her, life from death, her delicate fingers from my straining hand. One inch. Reach! Half an inch. Reach harder! Closer. Closer. Almost.
IndentAnd I'd wake. Sweating and my hand cramping. So close.

Free will vs. predestination.

2006-10-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Is our every heartbeat part of a greater plan or are we free to roam the landscape of our existence? Are we cogs in an engine or dust in the wind? Were you meant to read this article or did you choose to? This is the biggest question ever asked, the question that has creationists and scientists lined up opposite each other in a never-ending game of dodge ball. But fret no more, because Doctor Markus Phlimm, professor of chemical science at the Technical University of Dresden and prolific amateur philosopher knows the answer: free will does exist, but the chances that our actions are not predestined are infinitely small; everything we do now is entirely predestined and non-voluntary. Dr. Phlimm stresses, however, that this does not prove the existence of a god of any kind. On the contrary.
IndentDr. Phlimm, simultaneously Europe's greatest intellectual and its most notorious eccentric, is a demure, quiet man; well into his sixties, bearded, bespectacled, shy. His strikingly small stature is off-set only by the greatness of his mind and the idiosyncrasy of his ideas. Noam Chomsky, a great friend of Dr. Phlimm, once famously described him as "[t]hinking so far outside of the box that he needs a map to find his way back." As if to prove this statement Dr. Phlimm once claimed, in one of his more famous quotes, that Schrödinger most famous theory, his Cat theory, is “[a] bunch of hoopla […] because honestly, have you ever tried getting a cat into a box?”
IndentIn a press conference Dr. Phlimm announced that in his latest article, to be published in next months issue of Nature Magazine and already creating quite a buzz in the scientific community, he has found the answer to the mother of all questions: free will vs. predestination. Dr. Phlimm concludes that everything we do is predestined, but it’s how he gets to this conclusion that is, in traditional Phlimm-fashion, entirely left-field. The idea that Dr. Phlimm posits is that of the proto-life.
IndentDr. Phlimm’s theory is based on an off-beat variant of reincarnation; the moment you die you are also reborn. In Dr. Phlimm’s construct, however, you aren’t reborn as an 18th century monarch, or even as some random future John Doe; he states that you are reborn as yourself. Every time you die, your life, in a sense, rewinds to the moment of your birth, and everything, your entire life, plays out in exactly the same way as it did before. According to Dr. Phlimm, “[t]his theory […] explains two of the biggest mysteries: that of widely popular notion of ‘your life flashing in front of your eyes’ at the moment of death, and that of deja-vu.”
Indent “It is a cliché that the moment you die you see your entire life in your mind’s eye. It is a cliché because it is true,” Dr. Phlimm stated in the much-televised press conference he gave on April 29th. He continued: “It is true because in that moment, your life is restarted, rebooted if you like, and you start over. The fact that in this moment of death your entire life seems to be compressed to a fraction of a second only underlines Einstein’s already widely accepted Theory of Relativity, in which he, among many other things, states that the notion of time is relative and entirely fluid.” He went on to say that “[d]eja-vu is nothing more than a memory of that same moment in time during one of your previous lives, which are perfectly identical to the one you are currently living. You feel like you have experienced a certain moment before, because in actual fact you have.”
IndentBecause everything has to start somewhere, Dr. Phlimm posits that everyone has, or had, a proto-life, a first life. It is in this first life that you were subject to no restraints whatsoever; no previous life existed so your entire life was unwritten, a blank page ready to be written on with the pencil of free will. Every subsequent life, however, is an identical copy of that proto-life. Every life lived after that all-important proto-life is devoid of free will and follows the blueprint of the proto-life to a tee. “Since the amount of lives a person could live is infinite,” Dr. Dr. Phlimm said at the press conference, “the odds that anyone of us present here is living his or her proto-life is infinitely small and therefore negligible.”
IndentIn reaction to the question from Dr. Johnson from MIT whether this theory proved or disproved the existence of a god or anything similar, Dr. Phlimm could not suppress a grin and a scratch of the head. “In the article I make some educated guesses regarding religion seen in the context of my construct, but I must stress that a guess, however educated it may be, is still a guess. I am not convinced I will solve the riddle of religion anytime soon, Dr. Johnson, but I promise to try harder in my next life.”
IndentAt the very least, Dr. Phlimm's theory, still spelled with a lowercase 't' until it has proven its merit and conquered its spot in the Scientific Canon, will undoubtedly rustle some leaves in the community and gain its author some extra notoriety. At best, it will thoroughly alter the way humankind thinks and operates in ways we cannot foresee. The article will be published in the next issue of Nature Magazine, which will hit the stands at the end of the month.

Recollections four.

2006-10-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

We're sitting opposite each other, cross-legged, on the ledge of the Neptunbrunnen just off the Alexanderplatz. To my right, your left, stands the Red City Hall, its clock pointing to just before noon, and on our opposite side mighty Neptune sits, surrounded by adoring cherubs, water gushing forth from his throne. Behind you, in the distance, the TV tower looms over us and behind me a voluptuous female figure lies, her copper body long since turned green but for her breasts, which have gone bare from tourist hands. Between us stand two Venti Starbucks cups; my latté empty, your hot chocolate half full. It is january 1st, just above freezing point, but we have swaddled ourselves in enough layers of fabric to not notice the cold mist coming from the fountain.
IndentYou peel the thin black gloves from your hands and grab hold of your styrofoam cup. You close your eyes and smile as the warmth creeps into your hands and crawls up your wrists and forearms like an army of fire ants. You open your eyes and look at me, your large brown eyes radiating the warmth your hands are soaking up. You lift the cup and take a sip. Your throat bobbles as you swallow, your eyes still on me.
Indent"Okay, let me have it," I say.
Indent"What?" you ask, after you've put the cup back down on the concrete between our knees. You avoid eye contact and avert your attention to putting the gloves back on, but your smile betrays you.
IndentI roll my eyes in mock-weariness, lift my gloved hands to my face and rub some warmth back into my cheeks. "Spill it," I say. "You've got something on your mind. Probably one of those left-field questions you're always asking." A smile escapes my lips.
IndentYou bat your eyelids coyly, tiny droplets of water flying from them. I can tell you're considering denying it, opposing me, but you decide against it.
Indent"Okay," you suddenly blurt out. You straighten your back and scoot a tiny bit closer to me, then lean forward. I do, too, and our noses are almost touching. You start whispering conspiratorially, as if sharing matters of national security.
Indent"Listen," you say. "I think you're perfect, you know that." I blink twice, look away, smile. "But you can't always have been perfect," you add. "Tell me something about you that's imperfect. Astound me with your perfect imperfections."
IndentI smile an insecure smile and lean back. "You know me better than anyone. You know all my imperfections. What do you want me to tell you?"
Indent"I don't know!" you say. "Something ... something silly, something embarrassing. Tell me a childhood memory you're ashamed of." You contemplate this for a second before you add: "Yeah, a silly memory. Tell me a silly memory."
IndentI take a deep breath and look up at the TV tower behind you. "Sheesh!" I pick up my cup, shake it, put it back down. Several seconds later I look at you. "Nope. I got nothing. Sorry."
IndentYou laught out loud. "You big fat liar! I know that smile. You got something, don't you? I'll share my hot chocolate with you if you tell, how's that?"
IndentI look at you, your eyes unwavering, your hands clasping your cup, steam still rising from the drink hole in the plastic lid. "You can keep your hot chocolate. I tell a silly memory, you tell a silly memory. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
IndentYou contemplate it for a second before you shrug and lift your eyebrows, giving me your 'sure, whatever'-face. "You start."
IndentI lean forward, our noses almost touching again, the fog from my breath enveloping your face. "Back when I was, I don't know, seven or eight years old, one of my best friends was .. well, my pillow." You frown and from this close up I can see the small water droplets in your eyebrows quivering from the sudden movement. You shake your head quizically.
Indent"His name was Arnold. He was like an animal, only without any external features or something. I don't know, I was seven, it made sense back then." You nod, your eyes egging me on. "Its sole purpose was keeping me safe at night, while I slept. I often imagined Arnold waging epic battles with demons of all sorts while I was snugly napping the night away. I talked to him, despite him never responding. And do you know why I thought all this? Why I made up this elaborate fantasy?"
IndentYou shake your head silently, slowly. "I do not," you whisper.
Indent"For years I was convinced my pillow had a heart. Whenever I was lying in bed, my head on the pillow, I could hear his little heart beating eagerly, close to my face, my ear. I could feel his heartbeat, I really could. A slow double-thump, every second or so."
IndentI pause for dramatic effect, looking at a mangy pigeon pecking away at cigarette buds and chewing gum. People milling around us, the hard G's and heavy U's of the German language surrounding us. I look you in the eye before I continue.
Indent"It was years before I figured out I was listening to my own pulse, from my wrist and hand which I always snugly slid under my pillow. Years."
IndentThe pigeon flies off at the sound of your laughter, a loud, uproarious belly laugh. You arch your back and place your hands behind you on the ledge. "Okay," you say. "That is kind of silly."
Indent"I know," I say. "You asked for silly, and I got you silly." I lean back as well, the cold having made my joints stiff. "Your turn."
IndentYour hand suddenly lunges out and you splash freezing cold water in my face. "Are you crazy?" you shriek, laughing. "I'm not going to tell you any embarrassing memories!" You swivel your legs out from under you, turn away and lift yourself off the ledge before I can respond. I watch you walking away as I feel drops of cold water seeping down my chest. "Come on!" you shout over your shoulder. "Let's go get lunch somewhere!"
IndentI grab your cup and take a large sip of lukewarm chocolate before I quickly pop the lid off and scoop some fountain water into the cup. I pop the lid back on, crawl off the ledge, and run after you.

Recollections three.

2006-10-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

"Did you know that Leonardo DaVinci didn't invent the helicopter?" he said, a statement so bafflingly singular and out-of-the-blue that it made me look up from the blurb I was reading to see who was sharing this precious nugget of information with us, unsuspecting book-buyers. To my surprise, he was sharing it with you, nodding at the page in the massive coffee table book in front of you depicting Leonardo DaVinci's famous sketch of the corkscrew helicopter. I never saw you looking prettier than you did that day in that big bookstore over on Oxford Street, tentatively leafing through the collected works of the great Italian master, so, in all honesty, I couldn't exactly blame him for talking you up. He could have used a better line, but at least he put some effort into it, and you, well, you were always up for some fun and games. The trap was set before his first sentence even ended.
Indent"It was the Chinese," he continued. He was a plump guy, with a ruddish face and cheerful eyes, blonde, shaggy hair covering his ears, somehow looking both uncomfortable and confident in his button-down shirt and baggy jeans. You looked up from the page and looked him straight in the eye; he blinked twice and looked away, diverting his gaze to the page. You slowly raised your right hand and with your little pinky-finger hooked that wisp of hair out of your face and tucked it behind your ear. You flashed him your famous smile, but he never saw it. "No, I did not know that," you said.
Indent"Yes!" he blurted out, regained courage making him look you in the eye again. "There are records of Chinese children playing with a helicopter-like device a good 1000 years before DaVinci made his sketch." His finger was now on the page, an inch or so from your hand. "You don't say?" you said, the rogue wisp of hair back in your face, giving you a coy, demure look. "Yep," he then said, beaming with confidence, thinking he had you. I was still pretending to read the blurb on the back of some generic piece of fiction a couple of yards away, and I felt kind of sorry for him, like you feel sorry for that baby wilderbeast being chased by a cheetah. "It was made of bamboo."
IndentAdmittedly, he did a commendable job, spending the ensuing three or four minutes keeping you moderately entertained with random tidbits of information about DaVinci, some rooted in factual history more than others, and you were ever the lady, smiling --and, on one occasion, actually shamelessly giggling-- at his jokes. The final blow, though, was when you firmly and unexpectedly grabbed his arm when you pretended to have to scratch a killer itch on your naked ankle, giving me, standing directly behind you, a small thrill as your skirt rose an inch or two. Or three. To this day I wonder if you perhaps played the double whammy there, seducing him with the touch and me with the glimpse.
IndentThe hand on the arm pushed him over the edge. I saw him breathe in deeply, as if pumping himself up, filling himself with courage. He put on a stoic, nonchalant face, and said, as casually as he could manage, "Say, you wouldn't happen to have something to do this afternoon, would you?" His smile was brave and determined, his eyes, for the first time since this brief liaisson began, firmly and unflinchingly on yours, as if hypnotising you into a positive answer. You acted surprised, taken aback; you were always good at that. "Erm, well, no, not really," you said. "I'm in town for a few days, sightseeing and all that. I have all the time in the world." His face erupted in a gleeful smile, and you smiled too, looking away coyly. "In that case," he said, "I'd like to discuss DaVinci some more over a cup of coffee somewhere. My treat, of course."
IndentGame, set and match. The trap, expertly set, had sprung. The chase was over and the wilderbeast found its neck firmly between the cheetah's powerful jaws. Suddenly you turned to me and stretched your hand out towards me. "Oh, honey?" I slowly looked up from the book, eyebrows raised in casual wonder. "Honey, this kind fellow ..." your other hand gesturing towards our hapless victim "... has offered to buy us a cup of coffee. What do you say?"
IndentWe ended up having that coffee together, just the two of us, paid with our own pounds and pences, and having a hearty laugh, too.

Recollections two.

2006-10-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

The hotel room is pitch black, just the way we like it.
IndentThe hotel is kind of noisy around this time of night, muffled voices from above, footsteps from the hallway, slight traffic from outside; it's a little more noisy than we'd prefer, but we're on a budget, and beggars can't be chosers, as they say.
IndentThe last time I saw a clock, on my phone because I unplugged the alarmclock to achieve supreme darkness, was well over an hour ago; it was well past midnight, then.
IndentIt's official, I can't sleep.
IndentAll the impressions of the past days are being thrown around in my head, the things we've seen, the people we talked to, even that monologue you did on surrealism after we went to that small museum on Dali in a back alley of Montmartre.

"We've all seen these paintings a million times," you said while staring at the souvenir postcard depicting a huge gray elephant with absurdly elongated legs and a temple on its back; the one you bought back in the gift shop. I stopped sipping my coffee and looked at you, convinced that there was more to come, that this was only the start of a long train of thought. And it was.
Indent"I mean, I could draw one of these puppies with my eyes closed," you continued, spinning the card in your hands and closing your eyes for emphasis.
Indent"You know, a body here, those weird legs there, a temple on top, horizon in the back." Your right hand slicing through the air as you painted the picture in the space between us.
Indent"But Dali, he'd never seen anything like this before. He ..." you opened your eyes, looked at me, thinking of the right words "... he just made this stuff up from scratch." Your gaze drifted off. "Just ... out of nowhere." You shook your head in wonder.
IndentYou stopped talking, and I didn't dare interrupt the ensuing silence. You stirred your tea and looked at the small sliver of the Sacre Coeur we could see from our spot in front of the little bistro.
Indent"I bet he was mad as a hatter," you suddenly blurted out. I almost, but not quite, spilled my coffee, but you didn't notice. "Completely hoo-hoo." A twirling finger next to your temple.
IndentAfter that you drank your tea in silence, your shifting eyes betraying no longer a single train of thought, but a veritable Gare Du Nord in your head.
Indent"Isn't it odd?" you then said dreamily, your eyes still focused on nothing in particular, more thinking out loud than talking to me. "Todays lunatics we lock up or drug into oblivion. But yesterdays lunatics we revere as geniuses."
Indent"Huh!" you then blurted out, as if again startled by your own observations. And then, while signaling to the garçon for the check, you added, with a mischievous grin, "I think I'll take up painting myself."

I turn around in bed so that I'm facing you. You're fast asleep; every bit of you, your slow, hypnotic breathing, your slightly opened mouth, your twitching eyes, proves this. I lean over, gently place a kiss on the top of your nose, and whisper, "Good night, you lunatic you".

Recollections one.

2006-10-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Liquid fills her straw and changes its colour and her throat bobs as she gulps down a huge sip of coke from the large styrofoam cup. Her eyes twinkle and look straight at me as finally her lips, glistening and moist, disengage from the straw; a tiny hiss of air as the cup equalises the pressure. She puts the cup down and continues to look at me, her eyes betraying something. Something.
Indent"What?"
IndentShe shrugs nonchalantly, but a smile teases her lips apart.
IndentI smile, too. "Jeez, what? What are you--".
IndentA huge belch rolls across the table towards me like a tsunami of sound; a deep, uproarious rumble usually associated with a freight train dopplering past. My mouth snaps shut with an audible click, and after her belch ends it takes me several seconds to recuperate.
Indent"Wow," I finally manage to utter.
Indent"Impressive, no?" she says before she licks her lips with a flick of her tongue. "You know what's next."
IndentI look at her, squint my eyes, tilt my head. "I'm ... no, I do not know what's--" it dawns on me "--oh no! No, no, no. Lily, don't you dare!"
IndentBut of course, she does.
IndentSlowly she gets up, a mischievous glint rippling across the surface of her eyes, puts a knee on the table between us and slowly crawls across it, literally across it, towards me. A delicate hand, finger nails painted a shiny pink, snakes out towards me, and hooks behind the back of my neck; I am in her grasp, and it will happen, whether I like it or not. Before I can so much as blink she is upon me, lips squashed together, teeth clashing, her tongue pressing its way into my mouth, finding my tongue and engaging it in a complex, sultry salsa dance.
IndentThe sourness of the belch enters my mouth along with her tongue, but it is laced with the sweet taste of her lips and the delicate, flower-y scent of her perfume. The tanginess of the belch accentuates the soft, moist feel of her tongue and I can taste her lipgloss. All these sensations together form an overwhelming assault of sensations in my mouth.
IndentShe kisses me passionately, deeply, our tongues dipping and swaying, rolling and gliding, the salsa turning into a wrestling match inside our mouths; her tongue wins hands down, but only because I let it.
IndentFinally, our mouths disengage with an audible smack, she lets go of the back of my neck and swiftly climbs down the table and sits back down in her chair, hands in her lap, head tilted forward so that black wisps of hair obscure her face and eyes. Her lips shiny from our saliva, her eyes hidden but on me none the less.
IndentThe kiss has left me short of breath and I take a few deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She just sits there, demure, sweet, innocent; as if.
Indent"Christ," I finally say. "That was disgusting and glorious at the same time."
Indent"I know," she says confidently. "Come on, we have more to do."
IndentShe gets up, clears the tray off our table, and hand in hand we walk out of the MacDondals restaurant, more than a few pairs of eyes watching us go.

Those who are about to die, salute you.

2006-10-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

It's a crowded club, the music pumping and the people dancing. In such situations you cannot avoid bumping into people, you simply can't. So, when I bump into him and knock his beer out of his hand, it really isn't my fault, it could've happened to anyone.
IndentEven before I can open my mouth to apologise and offer him a replacement beer, I see a flurry of movement. An instant later the side of my face explodes in pain as his fist slams into me. I feel the skin of my cheek and the flesh underneath give way as my head violently twists around, followed immediately by my upper body. It goes dark and silent for a second, but, much to my own surprise, I stay on my feet.
IndentI double over before I realise why. His second punch hits me right in the gut. I instantly feel nauseous, but pain is still the dominant sensation. My entire abdomen seems to be on fire as I double over, crossing my arms across my stomach. My knees buckle, and I almost go down, but still I stay on my feet, by sheer surprise if anything else. All the separate sounds around me join forces to create this roar in my ears, but I can still I hear my girlfriend screaming hysterically.
IndentIt's the third hit that gets me down. As I try to look up and beg this guy to stop this, he hits down on me, full force. I feel his knuckles slamming into the side of my head, at that point where your ear and the absolute back of your jaw meet. Something cracks inside my skull, and as I go down, I taste blood and metal in my mouth.
IndentI hit the ground hard. I immediately try to roll over and assume some kind of fetal position, but only half succeed. As I'm lying there, half on my stomach and half on my side, I see the crowd gathered around me, creating a circle, much like an arena, in which we are the gladiators. There are three people in the circle: me, on the ground bleeding, the guy standing over me and leering down on me, and my girlfriend, screaming, crying, begging for help and not knowing what to do to stop this. The music is still pounding, but I cannot hear it anymore as much as feel it reverberating through my sore body. I cough up some blood.
IndentI look at the people around me, surprised that no one does anything to stop this, and then I look at my girlfriend, who's still screaming and crying. I try a smile, but fail. I roll back onto my stomach, and try to get on my knees, when I look to the side.
IndentThe noise around me crescendoes as I see the steel toe of his boot coming straight at my face. In that instant the sound stops and my muscles tense up and I swallow blood and I squeeze my eyes shut and the hairs on my neck stand on end and I brace myself and I try to turn my head away and ...

The boy who saw the end.

2006-10-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

It started out with silly yet vivid dreams, but soon after the dreams would haunt him even in his waking hours. He tried telling his parents, but his parents were just like all the other parents of little boys; too busy to really listen. They patted him on the head and told him not to worry about it.
IndentThen he decided to skip the middle man, i.e. his parents, and started writing letters to everyone he could think of that had anything to do with defending the country: the police, the army, even the president, but all to no avail - none responded.
IndentThen the worms came.
IndentThree of them. They just popped up, out of the ground, the size of 18-wheelers, and started eating everything in their path: cars, trees, people, even the ground itself. They were literally eating the Earth, like a chipmunk that nibbles at an oversized apple. And they were doing it rapidly, too.
IndentWithin weeks, entire holes had been eaten in the world. Thousands, perhaps millions had already perished, and the rest huddled in the places the worms hadn't reached yet, but everyone knew that it was unavoidable, the worms would reach even those corners of the Earth.
IndentThen word came out that there was a boy who had predicted this, and people en masse went to him, hoping that he would have an answer. He didn't, of course, but that didn't stop people from all over the world from seeking him out. Millions and millions of people came to him as the worms slowly but determindely ate the world around them.
IndentDespite the boy not having an answer, they started seeing him as their leader. They looked up to him, hoping he would turn out to be their hero. Over time they even revered him, made him their king, the king over an ever decreasing world. And in the end, when humanity was being eaten like that last piece of wood surrendering to the relentless flames of a fire, they deified him, and made him their God.
IndentBut only for several days, because that's how long it took the worms to eat what was left of our world, and themselves, and leave not a trace of humanity, just empty space.

Recollections five and final.

2006-01-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

We are driving down the 1 near Eden, in the southern most tip of New South Wales. We pitched our tent in the unoriginally named Garden of Eden earlier this afternoon and we decided to go for a drive, to explore the surroundings and perhaps even find a bite to eat. We failed at the latter; people in this part of New South Wales apparently have no need for sustenance.
IndentDusk is upon us and the sun is slowly setting behind the forested hills that line the road we're on. The sky to our left is painted orange, pink and blue, which off-sets spectacularly against the dark green hills; a last explosion of colour before the world disappears into darkness.
Indent"Look at that sunset," you say. "That would be perfect if that silly hill wasn't in the way."
Indent"I know!" I say, before I add "Hold on," and I suddenly brake hard. A flick of the wrist and we turn into a narrow dirt road, leading off into the forest, towards the sunset. I turn on the headlights because night falls rapidly, especially under the thick canopy of the great forest we're driving into. "Let's go catch ourselves a sunset."
IndentThe radio slowly loses its signal.

Minutes pass.

The road twists and turns deeper into the forest. We lost sight of the sunset a while ago, long enough ago for it to have faded and disappeared, and all remaining daylight with it. The darkness seems to thicken, like a thick cloth has been draped across the trees just an inch outside our sightline. It is becoming oppressive.
IndentThe road has narrowed and worsened to such a degree that I had to slow down considerably. The forest is thicker here and the trees look older and wiser, and more menacing. We have reached the point where we no longer make jokes about this silly adventure we're on; now we just want to find a main road again, and get back to our little tent like none of this happened.

Minutes pass.

"How could this have happened?" Your voice, soft and coarse, breaks the silence of the forest, startling me.
Indent"I wish I knew," I say after a few contemplative seconds, as I glance towards you. Your eyes catch mine for an instant and you place your hand on my thigh. "I wish I knew."
Indent"Can't we just reverse and go back, you know, to before?"
IndentI glance into the rear view mirror and see the dirt road disappearing in absolute darkness behind us, like it's being eaten up by time creeping up on us. We can see only in front of us, and even then only as far as our headlights will reach. "I don't think we can. We can go only forward. This time we took a road we can't back out of, not even with all the goodwill in the world. We'll just have to see where it takes us." I look at you again and see your big brown eyes glistening with fear and sadness. "But give it a few minutes, sweetie, maybe we'll get somewhere with a little bit of time."
Indent"Yeah. A few minutes. Who knows."

Minutes pass.

We come to a sharp corner to the right. I have to slow to a crawl, it's so narrow. Suddenly I brake and all we see are trees. Trees and darkness. Behind us, to our left, our right, even in front of us. There is no more road. We both know what this means. We sit in silence for a few minutes.
IndentI switch off the ignition but leave the headlights on. The soft crackle of the radio dies along with the engine, plunging us into a new level of all-encompassing silence. I turn towards you and take your hands in mine. I move closer and I see your eyes welling up in tears. Mine do, too. As I kiss your forehead tenderly I feel warm tears falling on my hands, still gripping yours. I can not tell whose tears they are, but it no longer matters, they are ours. I hug you, and you hug me back. I whisper in your ear 'I will miss you so much'. Finally we disengage and I sit back into my seat, facing forward, seeing nothing but darkness through the windshield.
IndentI swallow, take one last look at you, and you at me, and I kill the headlights.

This is the end of the road for us.

The item.

2006-01-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

The doors snap shut behind me with a hiss and a clunk, and moments later the bus pulls back onto the road, nudging its way back into traffic like a fat man pushing through a crowd, leaving me behind. There's a light drizzle and the fading sunlight, filtered by the clouds, gives all the cars on the road that same anonymous, silvery sheen. I zip my coat all the way up and pull my cap lower to protect myself from the weather and I press my hands deep into my pockets, my left hand immediately finding the precious item I found earlier today, the item that will change my life.
FnordLying several dozens of yards away on the other side of the road, the river snakes itself through the landscape. In this light and at this distance, too far away to see the frenzy of dancing ripples caused by the fine rain and the sharp wind, the river resembles a mirror, duplicating the hazy, overcast sky just above the horizon. In fact, it quite resembles the way it looked a few months ago when the river was frozen solid due to the coldest winter in decades. The village council, bunch of old cronies, had even declared it safe for ice skating, a first in the 13 years of my life. I vividly remember one especially cold thursday afternoon when, after school, my best mate Spud and I, hiding in that small crop of bushes there, ambushed Lauren and her circle of Stepford daughters, pelting them with an impressive arsenal of snowballs. They clearly weren't amused, but we were all the more so; Lauren's mum even called my mum which led all kinds of drama at home, but boy was it worth it, because we laughed ourselves sick when Spud managed to hit rich-kid Patricia smack in the face. We did good, that day, Spud and I, because they had it coming, bunch of snobs. Good times. A smile breaks across my face at the memory of it.
FnordThe wind is Easterly today, so the line of trees to my left, stripped naked by winter, offers no protection from the rain whatsoever. The rain is of such a nature that the droplets settle themselves on the surface of your coat and jeans, the tiny pearls of water caught in the hairs and fibers of the fabric, incapable of drenching your clothes yet unable to free themselves. I cut to my left, into an opening in the trees, and enter Ellison park; its single footpath, lined by lamp posts and the occasional park bench, snaking itself between the crops of trees and past the pond. That's when I spot him.
FnordA man, tall, with a long coat and a broadrimmed hat enters the park from the other end and heads towards me at a leisurely though determined pace. I hesitate, clutching the item firmly in my left hand, and for a second I contemplate turning on my heel and taking the long way home, but I dismiss the thought. If he is really after the item, as I suspect, then he'd easily outrun me, so I decide to risk it, all or nothing, knowing I'll defend it with my life should he lunge for it.I keep walking towards him, and he towards me, the distance between us getting ever smaller. I pull my cap lower still and hunch forward, my left hand closing around the item tightly but carefully so as not to damage it. As we approach each other my heartrate soars, and I keep my eyes on him like a hawk; I can't make out his face but he probably can't see mine either. A few more steps. I swallow hard and hold my breath, bracing myself to fend off a possible attack. He steps towards me and I towards him, and he walks past me with a slight, almost imperceptible nod of the head. I pick up the pace, breathe out sharply and after several tense moments I glance behind me, seeing him exit the park where I entered it seconds ago. My heart rate settles but my mind still races: that nod when he passed me? Is he an ally, a friendly, someone who knows about the item and its importance and who is looking out for me? Whatever, it's irrelevant now, the danger's past.
FnordAs I exit the park and cut onto Pall street, three streets from where I live, my mind wanders and I cannot help thinking of the item and its implications, its unavoidable consequences. I still have trouble believing it all, despite feeling the item in my left hand; I cannot wait until I am safely home, in my room, where I can take it out and look at it, touch it, examine it, dissect it like a wondrous frog, just to verfy its existence to my sceptical mind. This item will change the order of everything, for me and the people around me, regardless of age and social standing. The entire high school hierarchy will be upended, both for geeks, like Amy and Spud and myself, people most likely to end up computer programmers, housewives and car salesmen, and the rich and beautiful and disgusting like Lauren and Scott and Patricia, people destined to become prom queens, rookies of the year or the next big thing. This will change everything.
FnordI fumble for my key in my other pockets before I realise I won't need it; mum picked today of all days to come home from work early. I walk in the front door and push it shut behind me. Almost immediately i hear mum calling from the kitchen, followed by footsteps, but I am leaping up the stairs, three at a time, before she even reaches the hallway. I catch her yelling something about dinner but I don't reply; I wont risk it, not now. I burst in through my bedroom door, slamming it shut and locking it. My heart's racing, both from all the excitement and at the prospect of finally beholding the item again. I slump down in my desk chair, its wheels digging into my shaggy carpet, and after a moment's hesitation I take the item out of my pocket. A small, nondescript, seemingly irrelevant piece of paper, torn from a simple notebook, folded twice over. I take it in both hands and contemplate the moment for an instant before taking a deep breath, swallowing twice, and unfolding it carefully. The crackling whisper of the unfolding of the small note drowns out all other sound and the blue-lined paper fills my vision. Once unfolded, I place it on my desk in front of me; the text written upon it, so few letters, containing such power, staring me defiantly in the face. Written with a green pen in a neat, attractive handwriting, the i's dotted with small circles:

This will change everything.

Triptych.

2006-01-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

One.

She's into me, I think to myself an instant after catching her stealing a glance in my direction inbetween grabbing my large fries and hollering the specifics of my custom burger (no tomato, never tomato) to the kitchen behind her. There she goes again, glancing at me coyly as the beverage machine fills my cup with watered down coke. "Your burger will be a minute, sir," she all but whispers at me in a voice either apologetic or shy, or both, while intently staring at my tie. "No problem ..." I pause, preteding to read her nametag "... Julia. I have time." At the sound of her name her eyes jump up to mine and a careful smile breaks across her face. I return the favour by flashing her with my own winning smile. She's so into me.
FnordI step aside to allow her to help the people in line behind me, but I keep my eyes firmly on her. She clearly feels my gaze; her cheeks redden in a cute blush and she smiles a dazzling smile at the next customer in line, an older Asian lady. As she takes the lady's order, her adolescent beauty strikes me; her clear skin, so pure and fresh, her ponytail eagerly spilling from beneath her cap. Her slender face and delicate build remind me of Jamie, a girl I was involved with not too long ago. We had a thing for a short while but, despite my best efforts, her heart just wasn't in it. We never stood a chance and it ended in tears, with a messy and painful break-up. I miss Jamie, I had fun with her.
FnordStill waiting for my grease burger I notice that the next customer in line -a short, stubby man with ginger hair and an unpleasant face who, considering his ample girth, already spends far too much time in places like this- is giving Julia grief about his coke being flat, but she handles it deftly, immediately offering him a replacement drink in a frenzy of smiles and apologies. A quick glance in my direction arouses in me the suspicion that my presence, my gaze upon her, is bringing out her best. I tend to have that effect on women.
Fnord"Here you go, sir," she says as she slides the small cardboard box across the counter. The shyness is a thing of the past and she beams a big smile at me, her big, brown eyes defiantly locked on mine while a single strand of hair, having escaped the confines of the unflattering cap, bounces across her forehead. Our fingers touch as I take the burger, and while skin-on-skin contact always caused some level of discomfort in the other girls, Julia's blinding smile and unblinking gaze don't falter. Impressive.
Fnord"Have a nice day, sir," she adds, still beaming. I reply with a quick nod and a wry smile. I will.

Two.

Say what you want about working at a place like this -the pay is shit, your colleagues suck and they make you wear these ridiculously unattractive uniforms- but every once in a while a customer shows up who makes it all worth it. Today is a good day. What a gorgeous man, his suit tailored to perfection, those piercing blue eyes, and lord, that smile. Not the type to eat at a place like this, but boy am I glad he went against type today. I glance over at him and he is looking back at me unabashedly, his gaze holding mine for several long moments. I give him his fries and coke but his burger will be a minute; he requested is sans tomato, how very eccentric. I'd love to pick his mind, among a few other things, I think to myself, and the thought surprises me to such an extent that I dare not look at him as I tell him his burger isn't done yet. I concentrate on his tie instead.
Fnord"No problem ..." he says, and pauses, his head dipping slighly, his gaze dropping "... Julia. I have time." Oh, he knows my name, he read my nametag. Or perhaps he didn't, perhaps he was just checking me out, I catch myself thinking, and I smile as his eyes take hold of mine again. Then, that luminous smile. Good god. He moves aside and a wrinkly old Asian lady steps forward, saying something completely indistinguishable; I think I caught the word 'milkshake' in there somewhere. It's hard to focus on what she's saying because I realise that he is looking straight at me, I can feel his eyes on me like greedy little hands, but I don't have it in me to reply his gaze. I bet he's checking me out again. A big smile breaks across my face as the Asian lady keeps babbling at me.
FnordI get rid of the Asian lady and glance behind me to see if his burger is ready yet. It isn't, and I find myself giving a mental cheer for our utterly inept kitchen personnel. Next up is this nasty redheaded creep nagging about his coke being flat. Of course it's flat, you've been sitting at that table not drinking your coke and leering at girls far too young for you for well over an hour now, I want to say to him, but I feel mystery man's gaze on me so I flash the redhead my 'employee-of-the-month'-smile, offering him a fresh coke and my sincerest apologies. As he trudges off I catch him glancing over at my mystery man, obviously wishing he looked that good in a suit. Or at all.
FnordOur fingers touch when I hand him his custom burger and my thighs tingle as he looks straight at me but I don't look away. Any other day I would have, but not today, not with him. After I push a loose strand of hair out of my face and tuck it back under my cap I tell him to have a nice day. He just gives me a small nod and a sexy smile, and walks out of my life. After I watch him depart the restaurant I allow myself several moments to ponder a few highly inappropriate thoughts before I resume work.

Three.

I've been reading the same page of this newspaper for 45 minutes now. All the evidence we've gathered in the past few weeks points to him being here today, this afternoon, but he hasn't showed yet, and I'm afraid he won't, at all. I'm just about to call it quits when he enters. I'm sure it's him, there's no question; he fits the description to a tee, and he has this aura about him, this air. This is our guy. And sure enough, he gets in the line of the prettiest of the three girls. I signal to my partner three tables to my left before I get up, grab my half empty coke cup and hurry over to the line, but an elderly Asian woman cuts in line in front of me. I curse under my breath and get in line behind her.
FnordFrom this position I cannot get a clear visual of his without arousing suspicion and exposing myself, but my gut tells me this must be him. I can tell that the girl, Julia I think her name is, is making eyes at him, and why wouldn't she, he's cuts a striking figure. After all, she doesn't yet know who he is and what he does. What he has done. None of the girls knew. Jamie certainly didn't know, which is why I still have the image of her mamed body, washed up on shore not four days ago, burned into my retina. I know, though. This man's a monster.
FnordHe moves over because he has to wait for whatever he ordered -a burger, no tomato, if I've got my facts straight- but he keeps his eyes firmly on her. The Asian woman in front of me edges forward so I can take a closer look at him. Oh, it's definitely him, the expensive suit, the expressive eyes, the trademark smile, right down to the small mole just under his left earlobe, just as Linda described him. Looking like that, the girls never stood a chance. The Asian lady finally shuffles away, cluching her milkshake, and I approach the counter; I have to improvise so I tell her my coke's flat. Her smile is captivating and she immediately fetches me a new one. She's obviously trying to impress him by being as good as she can be at what she does. As she hands me my new coke she glances at him, smile widening, eyes shining, and my suspicions, that she is completely under his spell, are confirmed.
FnordHe's standing only inches to my right and without looking at him I can feel his presence; it's oppressive. Finally, after all those months of investigation, the corpses, the devastated parents, and here we are. Inches away. I desperately want to grab him by the throat, press my gun to his eye and pull the trigger, but I know I can't. I can only trust that my partner, after receiving my signal earlier, went to the van to alert Linda, the only girl who ever managed to escape, so she can identify him. That's all we need to take him down.
FnordI walk away from the counter towards to door and I glace at him one last time. What possesses a man to walk into a restaurant, pick a pretty girl at random, devote his time and attention to her, to exploit her insecurities and adolescent inclinations to gain her affections and eventually her trust, only to betray it in the worst possible way? My stomach knots up and I feel nauseous at the thought of it. I reach the door and spot the van; through the windscreen I see my partner sitting there, his arm around Linda, small, hurt, but brave also. As I turn I see him heading straight for me, burger in hand, and for a split second I fear he's on to us, but he pushes past me through the door. Once more I look at the van and I see Linda's eyes tearing up as she nods frantically, her face distorted from fear.
FnordI reach under my jacket and grab my gun. This ends today.