My hands tremble.

I open my eyes.

My hands and feet are tied.

I’m in a room, on a chair.

It’s silent.

It’s dark.

It’s familiar

2

Someone whispers in my ear: ‘You’re dying and you don’t even know it.’

And moments pass in a fragmented hallucination.

3

We weren’t always in need of saving.

Then a man came along and told us that we were.

Many people believed it.

Many people still believe it.

It’s easy to think we’re flawed. It’s easier to think that death is our salvation from these flaws. So what happens when we don’t die?

Why would we need salvation if it can never be reached?

And maybe that’s the key to it all, belief in something we can never reach. It gives us motivation, a reason to keep moving. That or it makes us lazy. Because deep down, in our hearts and our guts, we know that we’ll never be saved and no matter what we do, no matter how despicable we are as human beings, there is nothing that will right our wrongs.

Dylan, that’s the man with the curly hair’s name, he tells me that he wants to die. He wants something bigger than himself. Perhaps salvation. Perhaps the preservation of a natural order.

He speaks to me, but I only hear pieces.

‘Death gives a purpose.’

‘Without out it we are aimless and boring.’

‘Sculpted, tanned and without hope or dreams.’

‘You don’t run a race if you know that it doesn’t matter when you finish.’

Dylan tells me that death is our best friend and our greatest teacher.

And this is what it’s like waking up from a head injury:

First things are foggy. Then the fog lifts and then you’ve got a stranger with curly hair telling you that you’ve wasted your life.

At least this is how things are for me.

Tied up.

Freaked out.

A little dizzy.

And I’m trying to figure out if what I just experienced, the little flashback with Evaline, was it a dream or was it a hallucination?

I can’t tell.

And behind Dylan is Evaline. The Evaline from my head. She’s looking nervous and silent and when I make eye contact with her, she quickly looks away.

I want to tell her to leave. I want to tell her that she doesn’t need to see me like this.

I want to tell her these things, but I also want to preserve some form of dignity in front of Dylan. So I keep my mouth shut and listen to what he’s telling me.

The rope is hurting my wrists.

And so he continues with his diatribe. His little song and dance about death.

I nod my head and act like I’m paying attention.

I act like I’m paying attention, yet I can’t take my eyes off of Evaline.

She smiles.

I smile.

Dylan looks behind his shoulder and then back at me.

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Death is my greatest teacher.’

He shakes his head. He looks behind his shoulder again; thrown off and agitated.

He leaves the room.

My stomach growls.

I’m starving.

I’m still tied up.

I start to pass out.

I dream of Evaline.

In this dream she tells me that she was cheating. I tell her that we’ve been together for centuries, we’re bigger than one single fuck up.

When I wake up, my bones ache and my jaw is numb.

When I wake up, I open my eyes to a fist pulling back.

4

They say that you’re only as good as what you can take.

I must be no good.

I’m ready to cry after the first swing.

And I yell: ‘Fuck off you asshole.’

No one’s listening

And then I feel a tooth go loose as the back of my skull starts to do a shimmy and a shake.

It’s Dylan.

I start thrashing around, wildly.

My body aches and I can feel blood dripping from my smashed-in face. I yell again. Louder. No one listens. Louder. No one responds.

Another fist and my brains are starting to feel like syrup in my skull. And it’s a pause and a breathe and a nervous twisting of nervous fingers as I feel my skull bounce against a wall.

Dylan asks if I’m ready to listen. If I’m ready to change. If I’m ready to acknowledge that everything ends.

I fail to understand.

I look at Evaline.

She’s watching me.

She looks strange. She’s looking distorted.

I’m not ready to listen. I don’t want to listen. I don’t care what this asshole has to say to me.

His diatribes about death, they’re meaningless. All I want is information on Evaline. The real Evaline.

So Dylan stands up and paces around with an obvious frustration.

And I ask: ‘So you’re the one that burns down all the buildings?’

And he looks at me.

Curly hair resting against his sweaty forehead. It’s angry eyes and heavy breathing as his fists begin to ball.

‘What does that matter right now?’

‘Well, I was just curious.’

And he doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, hovering over me, breathing heavily. Clenching his bloody fists. I watch my blood drip from his knuckles. I watch it pool on the floor. The light from above reflects on it and provides a deep red coloring; like a ripe cherry.

‘I guess you don’t have to answer that.’

And it feels like my voice is caught in my throat. It tries to move past the blood that slowly drips down to my gut, but it fails. My voice is rough and hoarse. My voice bubbles and quakes with the sound of a disrupted

Вы читаете Happy Birthday Eternity
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