Located right beside BioHacks, the upgrade shop where I got my eye done, we storm face-first into a living nightclub named Nexus. Upscale type. One of my regular spots.
The absolutely wonderful and highly illegal gorgonite Poth provided hits the moment we step through the holodoor. It rocks me in waves, multiplying faster.
Incessant tech rhythm thrashes the air as if the entire club becomes linked to my heartbeat speeding out of control. The lights rotate and strobe from the walls and ceilings. The floor, a giant LED screen, projects the illusion the entire club is falling endlessly into the center of a black hole. Naked Machina with copper wire for hair dance erotically from fixed metal platforms hanging from the ceiling. Some, with holographic lights for clothing.
The walls of the place are covered in different colored cables. Every few meters a silver arm jack, strategically placed for those who prefer something a little more virtual.
The gorgonite hits harder.
The aether ripples. Cables turn into beautiful snakes, sparkling every shade of every color, slithering in the neon wind the music is secreting. One of them smiles. I smile back.
Reality tilts.
The bass echoes against the hollow walls of my chest.
Laughter. We can’t stop laughing.
Another round. A glowing cyan liquid this time. It doesn’t have a taste.
The room spins.
I feel a warm thigh next to my own. Both grinding into each other. Sophia’s spinning on my other side. More laughing.
They turn the gravity down. Pushed up against the plush ceiling, my tongue swirls in Selene’s mouth.
Speeding.
Another round.
Music blaring.
A virtual woman floats over in front of me bouncing her ass with the rhythm. Perfect ass.
Poth climbs the bar, drink in one hand, swinging his shirt around his head with the other.
More laughing.
Selene’s naked tits in my face.
The drag of a much-needed cigarette.
Pavement.
Chapter 3
Life isn’t life without you, Kalli. It’s just a different death.
Seven days locked in this apartment since they told me you were gone. These pale walls mock me. I’m barely existing off the last of the credits we saved. I can’t eat. Sleep has abandoned me. You are the sole occupant residing in what’s left of my mind. I see you in everything. I still hear your soft whispers. I lie in our fucking bed and smell your sweet aroma. It haunts me. It paralyzes me. It pulls me to places that I don’t know the way back from.
This is all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was going to make you remember. We were going to be happy. Together, the two of us against the world. Please come back to me, Kalli. The days have grown darker since you left.
It’s too hard. Existing is never easy. We all just do it out of habit. What’s the point of living anymore if the only reason I’m aware enough to feel the emptiness, this pain, is because I’m acting out of some habit, some predetermined code that I have no control over? It’s absurd. There is no good reason to live. It’s too much work. It hurts. Content, I clench the inevitability of the noose I tied and embrace a future that I can only long for. Nothing in the world feels truer.
I don’t want to live without you.
I won’t.
The world is nothing, and the fucked-up thing about it is, people actually think they matter - that they somehow make a
difference in this shitty, fucking excuse of an existence. That is the absurd! They cry out for an explanation, a reason things happen the way they do. They are fools. The only clarity that exists is the understanding that it doesn’t.
The nurse said it was complications with the machinery. That it was a rare occurrence. That’s my fucking clarity.
I can’t take it anymore. I know I’m not beating this. There is no way to win. I realize that now. The only way to stop losing is to stop playing their game.
I’m so sorry I didn’t get to tell you goodbye.
I’m sorry for everything.
I love you, Kalli. I always will.
Cold, quivering hands tightly grip the frayed rope hanging from the metal pipe that slithers down the hall and into the bathroom. It easily falls around my neck.
Pausing only to fill my lungs completely one last time, I exhale and confidently step up on a rusted chair borrowed from our bedroom.
My eyes close.
I take in the silence.
This is the only way.
“What are you going to do if I don’t come back?” asks a restless Kalli in the shadow of the infirmary doors, her arms crossed to keep herself from biting her nails.
“Where are you going to go?” I reply sarcastically, looking around and laughing to myself at my own attempt at humor. “Far away from this place. There must be something out there. What if I just ran away... never looked back?”
“Well,” I say, after giving it a bit of thought. “I guess, I’d go with you. Like I’m really going to let you leave me here in this shithole.”
She smiles back at me.
“I will never leave you, Palin.”
I kick the chair from beneath me.
My body falls.
The rope creaks as it quickly tightens around my neck. I feel the weight of gravity dragging me, pulling me down. This is my happily ever after.
My body jerks.
The distinct smell of burnt friction, pulling, and twisting the tattered rope, dances on the cusp of my perception. There is no panic. No chaos. All is calm. Everything is numb. I swing into the dark. I let it take me. Floating down, down, further into the void. I can hear the faintest sound, a warm, inviting rhythm. It reminds me of her heartbeat. Steady. Melodic.
The sensation of weightlessness almost tickles as I feel my arms float up to my sides. Is this nothingness? Why am I still here if I’m not? In the distance,
