As soon as I walk into what Garima, the receptionist of the SFPT, called a waiting room, I feel as if I’ve wandered into a palace. This room is even larger, and two curved staircases lead to an open second floor. Crystal chandeliers embedded into the ceiling, and that look like upside down wedding cakes, radiate golden light that bathe four sets of crystal tables and the surrounding leather chesterfield sofas, which are banana yellow. I’m the only person in the room, and yet it’s hard for me to keep my composure as I walk on the porcelain-like floor, which features a mathematical pattern represented with orange and gold colors, and that reminds me of a sunflower. Eight Corinthian pillars, artfully distributed, are holding the ceiling. I hadn’t had time to notice the walls, but one or more geniuses have frescoed meticulous scenes that depict many different cultures in their dedicated stretches of wall. Peculiar attires, monuments, myths. I recognize some Greek mythological creatures, Hindu gods, Buddhist temples and Japanese shrines. I’m quite sure that I’m looking at some of these cultures for the first time, because I don’t recall having gotten glimpses of them in my thirty one years. These frescoes would feel at home in a Renaissance cathedral, except that they aren’t limited to representing figures of a single religion. This supposed office belongs in a dream.
I approach one of the sofas, although I feel like I have no business being here. Bringing me to this era must have been some cosmic mistake. The closer I get to the crystal table, which has a base made out of a geode filled with pointy, violet crystals, the more it smells like orange and vanilla. The aroma comes from an egg-shaped diffuser on the table. I sink into the sofa, which envelops me as I sit back.
I close my eyes. I must have disconnected for a while, because I only realize that someone has walked towards me when the person is standing next to my table. It’s Garima.
“You’ll be just fine there,” she says, and then she puts on the table a tray with a silver cup and a jar of water, along with a small plate loaded up with a colorful snack that reminds me of fried potato chips.
“T-thanks…”
Her embellished, flared gown, fit for a princess, makes it a joke that she’s the one serving me. Before I know it she has turned around and is walking back into the room from which I came. I fill the cup with water, then drink. I confirm that the same old water I’ve always known exists here, and that its cold fills my stomach as expected. The snack doesn’t have the shape nor the color of potato chips, but its crunch sticks against my palate bringing similar sensations. For a moment I wonder how come they knew I wasn’t allergic to whatever kind of nut this snack contains.
I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. A machine that resembles a robotic vacuum cleaner, but with the shape of a lenticular disk, is gliding down the stairs without touching them. It moves way too fast for a vacuum cleaner, and it’s maneuvering to approach me. I sit straight. I can tell it’s not dangerous, but I doubt I wouldn’t have jumped out of the sofa if Chieko hadn’t come from this reality.
The top of the disk emits a vertical beam of light around a meter and seventy centimeters tall. The light gelatinizes as it expands taking the shape of a person, and in a second I find myself looking up at a man in his forties who has a neat comb over haircut, and who wears a black suit. The image reminds me of a Victorian butler.
“Pardon me,” the person says as he bows elegantly. “I’m the Guide, and I’m at your service for whatever doubt you have about how things work around here. Your information was already in the system, but now we are aware that you live among us. Don’t hesitate to approach any of the Guides for help.”
My skin shivers with electricity.
“You are a machine, right…?”
“That’s right, miss Uriarte. Most of the people in this town are human, yes, but a certain percentage of us are artificial intelligences. Our creator is the famous inventor Konrad Zuse.”
I nod in silence. I’m sure I will lose my mind by the end of the day. Maybe I will faint in front of this seemingly sentient machine.
“I know, miss,” the Guide continues. “Back in your time, artificial intelligence hadn’t advanced much. No worries, just remember that we exist to fulfill our roles, whether to help humans or other artificial intelligences! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”
I close my eyes while I take a deep breath. For a moment I think that whenever I open my eyes again, the man made of opaque light will have disappeared, but he’s still looking down at me.
“Have I truly come to the future, or have I gone insane?” I ask in a thin, weak voice.
“Both are possible,” the Guide says jovially. “Don’t be scared either way. Now seriously, no, you haven’t gone insane. One of the representatives working for the SFPT, with the name of Chieko Sekiguchi, focused on your case and managed to rescue you from a terrible fate. Rescues such as these are why their whole operation exists, I suppose.”
My face grows warm.
“I-I’ll need time to adjust to this…”
The Guide smiles pleasantly.
“You are doing quite well. Now, would you like to listen to the story of Konrad Zuse?”
I nod as I rub my right temple.
“Konrad is someone you have never heard of, I fear,” the Guide continues, “but we consider him a genius who invented new programming techniques that eventually gave birth to the first sentient AIs.”
“Sounds like a competent man.”
“He wasn’t a man, though. He was an artificial intelligence himself!”
“Is that the case…?”
“Now, you might be wondering how come a sentient AI was the one to invent sentient AIs. There’s something called Gödel’s theorem that says that even though it’s impossible to give a formal proof, the conclusion of an algorithm can hold under almost any given circumstance.”
I’m having problems keeping up with the Guide’s speech.
“Gödel’s theorem? Sounds complicated…”
The butler laughs, and then winks while turning his head theatrically.
“I’m afraid I was pulling your leg, miss. No, the creation of sentient intelligences was a gradual process involving transformer-based neural networks with quatrillions of parameters!”
A wave of vertigo ripples through my body.
“Well, at least I’m glad you understand what a joke is,” I mumble. “And that we can hold a conversation, even if it goes over my head.”
The Guide smiles again.
“Oh! Now that you’ve been rescued, miss, you will love visiting any of our Librarians, I’m sure. So much literature to discover! I’m very partial to it myself.”
I’m too dizzy to come up with a proper answer, but I also don’t want to seem like an idiot to a machine who seems more intelligent than me. However, as soon as I start speaking, the butler straightens his back and looks to the side as if listening to something in an earpiece. Then he smiles cordially at me.
“It seems that your representative has arrived. She’s been informed of your whereabouts. Just remember, if you see any of us Guides gliding around and you need information about anything, just call us over. Guiding people is our raison d’être, and we are glad to do so. As you might imagine, I will make myself scarce now. Until next time!”
The Guide makes a bow so elegant that it would fit in a museum.
“Uh… Thank you for your help,” I say.
The figure of the man, made of light, collapses in a split second as if the top of the lenticular disk had absorbed it. The disk then turns around and glides quickly up the left staircase, leaving me alone at the table.
My head is filled with white noise as I fill my silver cup with water and drink it in a single gulp. I doubt this encounter was some sort of practical joke. I’m going to live in a world where artificial intelligences are so advanced that they consider themselves to be people. And it seems that it hasn’t caused significant troubles, at least to the extent that this ostentatious office continues existing. I should just go with the flow, at least for a while, taking everything in. These people know I come from the past, and they will be lenient of my stupidity. But I worry that any of the inhabitants of this strange reality will realize that I don’t deserve to be here. When they do, they will send me back. I doubt I would be able to continue living normally back on the Earth I know after I’ve been here.
“Izar! I knew you’d come,” Chieko says from above.
A warmth grows in my chest as I look up towards the railing of the second floor. Chieko, the same Asian woman whom I thought I would never see again, along with her apple red hair and her kind smile, is leaning on the railing of the second floor, close to the right, curved staircase.
“Come on, get up here,” Chieko says. “We are going for a ride.”
The tone of her voice suggests I have become someone special to her. Despite the deceptive way in which she approached me, she did it because she cares. My whole body feels too light and weird, and I fear I will faint any minute, but I walk carefully to the right staircase and climb up, stepping on stairs that glimmer like gold. The second floor is an imitation of the lower one, except that the sets of tables and sofas are arranged according to the narrower space. On the opposite end of the room, an arched doorway, with an elaborate lintel that displays a rhomboid pattern, leads into a single staircase that goes up and out of view.
As I approach Chieko, who keeps smiling warmly, I can tell that the clothes she had worn to meet me were chosen to fit in. Now she’s wearing a pearl white, puff sleeve blouse with a scoop neckline, along with black pleated shorts with suspenders. She has gathered her red hair in two buns that give her a spacey look.
I’m about to greet her properly when she steps forward and hugs me tightly. I’m not used to people being this nice. I may melt. When she pulls away, she keeps resting her hands on my shoulders.
“What are your first impressions?” she asks. “It seems so wild, right?”
This must be what they call charm. I want to trust Chieko, and I’m sure she told me the truth when she assured me that I would have died in less than a week. She can’t fake the sincerity in her eyes.
“It’s great…” I say carefully, unsure how to continue describing this world. “I met one of your robots, or artificial intelligences.”
“Some towns have more of them than humans.” Chieko chuckles softly. “They are great. I’m sure he helped you kindly.”
“I was too dumbfounded to take advantage of his services, but I’ll come across any of them again. He also mentioned a Librarian…”
Chieko nods.
“Ah, the Guide knew how to entice you. Yeah, we have buildings dedicated to these Librarians, who will recommend you books based on your preferences and previously read titles, and will produce the books for you. You wouldn’t consider them libraries, I don’t think, because they don’t store any books. When you are done with any of them, you throw it into a matter decomposer.”
“Matter… So you people break everything down, and they end up turning into… ashes?”
Chieko pats my shoulder.
“Into their periodic elements. Don’t worry about it for now, Izar! After all, you don’t need to know how a computer works in order to use it, right? And in these parts, computers will ask you what you want! We don’t use mice. Anyway, let’s just go up to the roof, shall we?”
She leads me by the hand up the stairs until we exit through a big door onto the roof. I’m looking down, as I fear getting overwhelmed as if I were staring at majestic paintings in a museum, so first I see that the floor of the roof is flat, and made out of impractically large, buttermilk yellow stone slabs. I feel cool air on my skin. I look up quickly towards the sky. It’s a vast expanse mostly as blue as I expect a sky to be, but it’s blended in parts with a peach pink, and the few wisps of cloud are blurry as if dissolving. I search for the source of the warmth on my skin, and my breath leaves my lungs for the first time since I came. I don’t dare look directly at the sun, but close to the lemon yellow, burning disk, which looks smaller than I expected, hangs a second, larger sun. The sunrays of the second sun seem stronger, and as they hit the clouds floating nearby, they meld in a radiant blend of red-orange.
Chieko pats my back.
“Good? Isn’t it spectacular?”
“W-we aren’t on Earth.”
“Just take it easy, Izar. I don’t want you to faint. Also, don’t stare directly at the sun, whether the original or our artificial one. It’s a terrible idea no matter what planet you end up standing on.”
I look at Chieko’s pretty face, tinged in the sunlight.
“W-wait,” I say. “W-where are we exactly…?”
“The future, of course!” Chieko exclaims with glee. “As for our current whereabouts…”
Chieko stops talking, because something out of the corner of my eye had startled me. Up to my left, in a forty five degree angle, a metallic vehicle is floating through the air silently. Its slick shape reminds me of a zeppelin, but it has fin-like ridges. The sunlight is whitening the upper part of the vehicle, which reflects the light as in a mirror. There must be people inside.
“That’s a UFO,” I blurt out.
Chieko chuckles.
“It’s perfectly identified. That’s just… a flying bus. I prefer the personal models myself.”
My benefactress tugs on my hand, and I stagger in the direction she’s following. She’s guiding me towards a row of rectangular parking spaces painted in white. Two of the spaces are occupied. Chieko leads me to the closest vehicle. It’s about the size of a van, but if that flying bus reminded me of a UFO, I’m staring at one right now: it’s an upside down plate standing on a landing skid, as if the bottom shouldn’t touch the ground. Its metallic frame seems to have been built without seams, and it’s painted a pineapple yellow except for decorative black stripes. The windshield encircles the frame in a band of glass, but I can’t see the inside, as the reflections of the sunrays are curtaining the interior.
I’m trembling uncontrollably. My knees go weak. Before I know it, Chieko is holding me in her arms. Her neck smells like tea. I want to go limp, but we’d fall to the floor. I swallow, then force myself to stand straight.
“I’m having a hard time…” I start to say, but I shut up.
“No need to worry. Izar, many, many people over the years have reached this present in a similar way than you, and they now live their lives just like any other citizen. Believe me, it will be far easier for you to adapt than it is for people of the Middle Ages, for example. Once you’ve become familiar with computers, your brain can handle the rest. So, don’t you think it’s a splendid vehicle?”
“S-splendid… How…” I stutter while I feel as if my tongue is stuck.
Chieko approaches her vehicle and tells it to open. An opening appears in the side of the frame, and an airstair gets lowered to the ground. I look around. This large, flat roof is enclosed by tall hedges and rimmed with still, decorative pools, but the skyline of a town or a city is peeking out from behind the hedges. It’s more sparse than I would have expected. I make out the treetops of pine-like trees, shaped like spearheads. All the buildings I can glimpse look like ancient monuments, cathedral-like monsters with incongruous designs, as different as those of apartment buildings in a city. I’m surprised that none of the buildings reach the height of a skyscraper. They remind me of how tall the Colosseum must look. Also, I don’t spot any mountain nor hill, which I always expect to see, as I was used to living in Gipuzkoa.
“Here, get inside!” Chieko says.
She pushes me gently so I ascend the airstairs to the interior of her vehicle. I only have to hunch over a little. The interior smells like warm leather and coffee. There are only two seats, which are black with vertical white stripes, and they look as expensive and comfortable as the sofas in the office of the SFPT. The only part of the wall resembling a dashboard with indicators and displays is in front of the left seat, so I sit on the right one. Once I sink in the upholstery, I let out a long sigh. I’d gladly sit here for hours.
Chieko sits down to my left. She says ‘close’, and the opening in the frame closes like a pore. She reaches for a plasticky device attached to the dashboard, which reminds me of the cigarette lighters that many cars have, but when Chieko pulls out this device, it’s tethered to the inside of the frame with a loose cable made out of spiral metal. Chieko presses a surface of the device to her temple, and it latches on to her skin. As soon as she drops her hands to her lap, the indicators and displays come to life. They aren’t screens, but the closest thing I’ve seen to solid, 3D holograms. Two of them clearly display our surroundings with three-dimensional models of buildings and trees.
Chieko leans back. Our vehicle lifts off, but I can only tell because the tops of buildings and trees that I can see through the windshield are sliding down. Soon the view is filled with sky.
“I-I don’t feel any engine,” I say. “I’m not being pushed down against the seat.”
Chieko smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
“Those kinds of engines are long gone. This baby creates its own gravitational field. We are moving through spacetime in a bubble. Far more complicated things have been invented. I wasn’t responsible, though, so I can’t be that proud about them.”
I let out a breath as if something was squeezing my heart. While the view of the sky changes, and the models in the holographic displays turn around like cups in a microwave, Chieko is eyeing me as if she’s about to smirk.
“I get the appeal of impressing someone with a ride in my fancy car.”
I rub my mouth nervously. My heart is pounding on my ribcage.
“Be careful, Chieko. I don’t get attached to people, I sink my claws in them.”
“That’s alright, I think. This world allows all kinds of emotions.”
She sounds like a wise and worldly older person. For the first time I wonder about her age. This society has managed to travel back in time, construct such majestic buildings and move through the skies effortlessly with antigravity vehicles. I’m sure they have managed to solve the riddle of aging.
Although Chieko is just looking down at the displays and hasn’t touched anything, our vehicle tilts, and I find myself staring at a much smaller version of the roof we lifted off from. The building is standing in the middle of a park. I spot a few serpentine footpaths, structures similar to streetlights, and even the small figures of people walking around or sitting on benches. Some are hanging out near a cerulean blue pond. So many statues strewn about, some of them painted in vibrant colors. I shiver. From the outside, the office of the SFPT reminds me of a Roman building, and one side, maybe the main entrance, even features a colonnade.
Chieko slouches in the chair and holds her hands on her lap.
“So yeah, I work for the SFPT. I’m not big on working for others; kind of a lone wolf, do my own thing kind of person. But they’ve done fantastic work for generations. You only need to look around to realize that we wouldn’t have become as great if it wasn’t for the many people they’ve rescued.”
“This SFPT’s role is to bring here people from the past…?” I ask, bewildered.
Chieko facepalms, and then shrugs apologetically.
“Sorry, I should realize that you know close to nothing! SFPT is the acronym for the boringly named Society For the Preservation of Talent.”
I look down to my lap. My hands are trembling, but now I’m mostly excited.
“You told me that you approached me because you wanted to preserve my life and my talent.”
Chieko doesn’t answer, and when I look at her, she’s staring at me with a solemn expression. Her mouth makes a wet sound when it opens.
“Izar, what has been the biggest enemy of humankind for hundreds of thousands of years?”
“Humankind? Well… War and injustice.”
“I don’t think so, no. Those are terrible things we do. Try again. Something much more frightening.”
“More abstract? Darkness and fear?”
“I’m not getting across…” Chieko rubs her chin. “The main evil we have faced has stolen everything from us for hundreds of thousands of years. It has murdered an uncountable number of us. It has stolen parents from their children, and sometimes children from their parents. It has stopped talented people from being able to benefit the world further, not to mention discover of what they would have been capable otherwise. For so many millennia we submitted to it as a tyrant we wouldn’t dare to stand against.”
My throat is closing, and a shiver runs through my spine.
“Y-you are talking about the passage of time.”
Chieko narrows her eyes like a hawk.
“About the effects of time on living beings. It has rendered us incapable, it has killed us. One by one, generation by generation. Well, it can get fucked now. Talent no longer falls through the cracks of reality, hopefully until some other brilliant human being among millions and millions picks up where the previous genius was forced to stop. Not only that, those brilliant people are able to interact with one another. Our translators bridge the gulfs between every language that currently exists or has ever existed.” She points at the small hemispherical device attached to the skin behind her ear. “I wouldn’t have been able to understand any single word coming out of your mouth otherwise. And you can read any text like a native. Don’t need to take it off either, it’s hydrophobic.”
I hide my face in my hands. Chieko thankfully gives me some seconds to calm down.
“I know, it must be pretty overwhelming,” she says.
“Yeah, I feel as if I were hallucinating. So you are telling me that your society is partly made out of artists and inventors from every previous era of humankind’s existence, that have been brought over methodically…?”
“That is right. We figure out when and how they died, if there was any doubt, and we save them. We feel good in the process, it’s like we are gallant knights. I’m mostly an artist myself, though, but I was born here. I make virtual reality experiences. I’m going through a dry spell, though, as I told you.”
I shake my head slowly.
“Ah… So, which brilliant people have been rescued from the past, names that I might know…?”
Chieko shuts one eye as she tilts her head, maybe because she’s trying to come up with artists with whom I may be familiar.
“Well, for example, Isaac Newton was resurrected, although that happened a few generations before I was born. I only saw him once from afar. I recall he always wore the same clothes, kind of an eccentric guy. But he has become good friends with philosophers of old, Greeks and Romans mainly. He doesn’t live around here, though.”
My mind is reeling. I don’t feel capable of understanding all the implications of the SFPT’s work.
“S-so, writers like… Let’s say, Shakespeare. Is he alive too?”
Chieko lets out an appreciative noise, and nods enthusiastically.
“He was one of my main inspirations even as a child! He moved on to virtual reality experiences. So much of his new work is astonishing, and he adapted quite quickly to our modern times. Because I work in the medium, one of my goals is that he gets to experience my movies and enjoys them so much that he writes a recommendation. That would make me famous overnight! I’ve never interacted with him in person, though, but I’ve seen him at festivals.”
“Y-you could become friends with an immortalized genius like the father of the English language… I think I will end up vomiting.”
Chieko laughs, but she shakes her hands as if to dissuade me from throwing up now.
“Not in my car, please! If you seriously need to vomit, we can land.”
I feel so small, even in the presence of Chieko. She might be a thousand years old for all I know, although she looks younger than me.
“I-it’s alright, I was being… Thank you for making this whole situation so clear. I get it. Some of your predecessors made sure to rescue people like William Shakespeare, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and such, huh? No wonder everything looks so amazing. And after so many years there’s only small fries like me to bring over.”
“Don’t refer to yourself like that. So what if you aren’t Shakespeare? Neither am I! We can still be better than the day before. I’m not into competing with other artists, and it’s a suicidal notion anyway, when you might wake up one morning only to find out that any of the greats have released their next big experience, and after you watch it you know you will never be able to come up with anything remotely similar. But you gotta take it as a humbling experience.”
I hang my head low. I feel as vulnerable as a child in the cold. When I start crying silently, Chieko pats me on the thigh.
I only realize that she’s flying this vehicle in some other direction because the view changes. Once I feel strong enough to look up, my gaze falls on a vast plain. We are so high that the panorama must be encompassing dozens if not hundreds of kilometers. Other flying vehicles are cutting through the sky in different directions, and some of those vehicles are so tiny that they have been reduced to specks of dust that glisten in the sun. There are curved ridges in the distance that look like the raised rims of craters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the lakes, some of which are fed by serpentine river systems, are ancient craters filled with water. The landscape is green, probably because grass is growing everywhere, but I make out amorphous expanses of forests. Curiously, I don’t see any farmland. Plenty of human communities are hugging the coastline of lakes and have grown on both sides of wide rivers, but they have also allowed their architects to go wild, because some of the monument-like buildings sitting on the plains are the size of mountains.
I point at a group of those conspicuous monuments.
“T-those are pyramids.”
“Hmm? Ah, yeah, those were made quite a long time ago, a few decades after they invented time travel and started bringing people over,” Chieko says nonchalantly. “They weren’t here before we came!”
“Chieko, where the hell are we…?” I whisper.
“This whole area is called the Hesperia Plains. It’s close to a humongous inland sea called Hellas.”
I rub my temples. I feel a headache coming. Where have I heard those names before?
“Are we in… I mean, this is a different planet.”
“Mars. Just next door. It’s not like I’ve brought you to another solar system.”
I get goosebumps. I’m on Mars.
“H-have you guys colonized other solar systems…?”
Chieko grins happily.
“Hell yeah.”
I can’t face the view any longer, so I hang my head low. I take deep breaths to keep my chest from convulsing.
“Your people have made it, haven’t they…?” I say in a quavering voice. “My era was a nightmare. I was sure we would self-destruct, maybe to the extent that we went extinct. B-but you have survived, and made… all of this.”
“It’s a better world, sure, for new art to come forth!”
I’m feeling calmer and calmer. I’ve never felt this comfortable with any other human being, although she belongs to a different world.
“People don’t wage wars anymore? People don’t kill each other?”
Chieko laughs awkwardly.
“It hasn’t gotten that bad, not like it did in the centuries around your time. But people are people. Some communities are on the verge of war any given day, and for one reason or another, some bastards always want to cause havoc. Our town is as quiet as they come, though.”
“W-well… At least you’ve saved people’s lives.”
Chieko offers me a childish smile, almost closing her eyes.
“You were my first. I told you, this was a personal project. I had little clue about what I was doing, I was following the training. I’ve mostly done other kinds of jobs for the SFPT, related to working with artists brought from the past. We still live and learn through making mistakes! But I might get into it and figure out which other people I should travel back in time to rescue. However, the SFPT is very careful about these assignments. Frankly, if you had been an author of great renown, they wouldn’t have let me take the case.”
I stare out of the windshield. The sky is so beautiful. If a person could fly in those colors every second of the day, they would retain their sanity.
“I’m not…” I mumble. “I only wrote some stupid stuff…”
“Oh, shut it. There’s always enough food. People can print it on the replicators, even from the materials that the freighters bring over from nebulae and gas giants. There are enough jobs for those who want other people to tell them what to do. And you can lounge on the roof of your house and write for as long as you want.”
My mouth is twisting and my shoulders shake as streams of tears run down my cheeks. My throat burns.
“Alright, Izar,” Chieko says jovially. “You’ll live in my house for a while, until you get used to this place. Let’s go. You’ll feel different after a good night’s sleep.”
Tag: short stories
Thirty Euros, Pt. 3 (Fiction)
When I open my eyes, my gaze falls on a crack in the eggshell white ceiling. Dusty strands of cobweb span the crack near one end. For the second night in a row, a sheet and a duvet have kept me warm, and instead of being woken up by the laughter of children and nearby footsteps, it seems that my brain considered that the noisy toilet cistern from the upstairs neighbor was a threat. Or maybe it was time to wake up, because the morning light is filling the bedroom through the glass panes of the door to the tiny balcony.
Chieko, my benefactress from a faraway place, is gone. She fell through reality. And I bet that, as she assured me, whenever I walk into the living room, that opaque white doorway will be waiting for me.
In the kitchen, I prepare myself a coffee and I also grab some slices of salty ham. Chieko, or her employers, had stacked the fridge with groceries, although some of them will expire sooner than when the lease runs out. Also, the first time I entered the bedroom I found the apartment key next to a wad of banknotes, which looked as fresh and crisp as if they had been printed a few days before. A total of two thousand euros in tens and twenties.
Once my stomach starts digesting the slices of ham, I carry the steaming cup of coffee through the hallway into the living room, and I stand near the white doorway. It remains as lifeless as any other door. Nothing moves in this apartment but me and a couple of spiders. Although the impossible doorway doesn’t scare me anymore, it gives me the anxiety of a ticking clock. It would be nice to take advantage of this shelter and be alone for a few months, although I’m sure that I’ll feel as broken a few years from now. I want to lounge around thoughtlessly. Still, the money would run out eventually, and nobody will support me anymore. I’d need to find a job, at some office no doubt, and those nightmares would begin all over again.
For several minutes, while I sip my coffe, I observe the white void through which Chieko left. I barely got to know that odd woman, but now that she’s gone, the silence gets heavy and oppressive at times. She has abandoned me. No, she hasn’t, I barely knew her. And yet that’s how I feel. I miss her smile, those ostentatious dimples, and how much she cared. I finally met someone nice who wanted to help me, but she has disappeared in a more definitive way than the other people in my life had, even those who died. I get the feeling that unless I follow Chieko through the doorway, I won’t be able to find her anywhere even if I spent the rest of my life searching.
“Once I go through this doorway, I will never see this world again,” I mumble, repeating her words.
Why didn’t she stay and help me in person instead of giving me the freedom to choose? I’m tired of making decisions, of pondering what road to take. For years I focused on losing myself, on escaping reality, through fictional stories, and I left the technical details of how to survive in this world to my boyfriend. Maybe to a fault. I’m sure I wasn’t mentally present for plenty of it. I let Víctor worry about everything but cooking, and I would have gladly allowed cobwebs to grow in the corners of the ceilings. Maybe if I hadn’t lost myself into fantasy, if my living heart still beat properly, maybe he wouldn’t have stopped caring about me. I shake my head. No, nothing justified him cheating repeatedly on me. To break the covenant is unforgivable.
After three quarters of an hour standing there like a zombie, my brain gets tired of thinking about it and decides to wake up. I take a shower. I clean my skin with the amount of liquid soap that any other person would have spent in four showers, but during this past week I became self-conscious about my stink as if I was constantly trailing around a noxious cloud.
The first night I spent here, finding my clothes in the wardrobe of the bedroom should have astonished me. They are the clothes that I left behind in Victor’s apartment after I decided to become homeless, without any thought about how I would survive the following days. The only way I imagined that anyone would have retrieved my clothes involved Víctor agreeing to let those strangers in, but I stopped myself from trying to figure it out. Chieko, or Chieko’s employers, had produced a two-dimensional door that led to another world. I’m sure they had their peculiar ways of transferring my clothes to this apartment.
I put on some jeans, a short-sleeve V-neck blouse, and on top my favorite hooded knit cardigan. I don’t feel that it suits me well anymore, but it reminds me of sitting next to a window to write.
I test the key in the apartment’s door a couple of times, just in case I’m suffering a psychotic break and I’m still living in the streets. I can lock and unlock the door, so I should be able to return here after a walk. At this hour on a Thursday, beyond the regular traffic on this one-lane road, I spot delivery vans supplying shops, along with housewives and retirees walking around. The same old anonymous, monotonous parade. I saunter towards the parts of the Kursaal that show up at the end of the street. The slanted, translucent glass cubes stand against a porcelain white sky. Once I reach the intersection, I stop and take in the view. The line of flags that promote some event that the Kursaal is hosting are fluttering in the breeze. To my right, although the outside sitting area of some restaurants block most of the view, a wall-like, foresty hill blocks the horizon. Cars are passing in front of me in both directions. A couple of surfers are driving electric scooters, heading likely to Zurriola beach, which is located behind the Kursaal.
I feel unreal. Everything seems fake, as if I’m staring at a painting. These past two nights have granted me enough rest, and my mind must be detaching itself from this world that it had already relinquished when I became homeless a week ago.
I cross the street and I keep walking in front of the Kursaal until a flat view opens up, that shows the beachfront promenade and beyond it a band of steel blue water. I’m seeing myself from above as I approach the low wall that borders the beach. Tanned men and women, either barefoot or wearing sandals, are standing or walking on the sand. A muscled man wearing orange trunks is climbing the safeguard tower.
I won’t see this view, or any that I have stored in my brain, ever again. Whatever awaits me on the other side of that white doorway will become my new reality. I will follow the only person who cared enough to save me. I refuse to continue in this world that has thrown me aside so carelessly, and if it turns out that crossing that impossible doorway will kill me, then so be it.
As I rest my back against the low wall, I focus on whether I’ll miss anything or anyone of this world I was born in. As I got older, fewer and fewer people cared for my books, which were my only contribution. All these strangers walking around don’t glance my way; I looked my best in my mid twenties, too long ago already.
The breeze is cooling my face. It smells like salty water and crustaceans. My ex-boyfriend’s face pops up in my mind. All that’s left of those five years with him is bitterness and pain. I’m sure any of his other women will take his calls. Although I threw my cell phone in the garbage, I doubt he would have insisted on calling beyond the first couple of days otherwise. In any case, I no longer feel capable of loving people. It’s not worth the trouble.
I stare at the distant view of the hill, and how it slopes down until it ends in cliffs a couple of kilometers into the sea. I can make out the silhouettes of distinct treetops on top. What about my father? I haven’t seen him for years, since he started his new family. Even though I was older when he abandoned us, I always remember him as he looked when I turned my head towards him while I lay on the sofa of his office, back when I was a child. He wore his glasses when he went over papers related to his work in the publishing industry. He always printed them out, he hated reading them on a computer screen. Sometimes when I would ask him to tell me more about what he was looking at, he would just laugh and give me an offbeat smile. He has been dead, as far as I’m concerned, for a long time.
I never cared much about my mother. That day at the hotel, when she announced that she was going to move out with her boyfriend and her kids, she made it clear enough that I would become a secondary concern from then on. Still, she called me regularly, and I was the one who refused to meet her in person as much as she wished. I didn’t attend her wedding, and I’ve only met my half-brother a few times. Once I cross that opaque white doorway, I will disappear as if the earth had swallowed me up. My mother might have tried to contact me in the last week, but she never met my ex-boyfriend, so she wouldn’t know how to locate me. I picture her realizing that I’ve gone missing, that she will never see me again, nor will she ever find out what happened to me. I suppose that she’ll assume that I killed myself so proficiently that nobody would find my body.
My chest gets tight, and I’m having trouble swallowing. I close my eyes and breathe slowly. A black cloud is enveloping my heart. My mother will grieve for years. I won’t stick around just to spare her the pain of not seeing me again, but at least I want to let her know that it was of my own volition, and that maybe I moved out far away, somewhere I could be happy.
As I walk back towards my current apartment, I realize that I haven’t seen a phone booth in years, and I don’t want to ask a random stranger for his or her cell phone, mainly because I don’t want them to stand nearby as I have a difficult conversation. There’s a pub in the corner of the street that leads to my apartment. Its front is made of wood, and painted cobalt blue. I look in through the window. It reminds me of Irish pubs. The interior is dim, and at this hour there are only two customers, both retirees. One of them sips a beverage in a large pint glass.
I enter the pub nervously. I approach the bartender, who is a woman in her forties. Her hair has plenty of greys already, and she’s wearing a striped, black and white T-shirt. I get on a bar stool.
“Give me one of those potato omelette sandwiches, please. And… would it be possible to use your landline? I have to make an important call, but I’ve forgotten my cell phone at home. I’ll pay if necessary.”
The bartender grabs one of the plates with those sandwiches and slides it towards me.
“No problem. It’s in the kitchen. Do you want to call now or after you eat your sandwich?”
She’s looking at me as if she can tell I’m troubled. I’ve spoken too fast and loud, as I always do when I’m speaking with someone for the first time.
“Yeah… I’d rather get the call out of the way first.”
The bartender gestures towards a door between shelves stocked with alcoholic drinks. As I walk behind the bar, she shoots me a look of concern.
“Are you ok? Your face seems very pale.”
“I’ll be alright soon enough, I hope.”
The kitchen is empty. I guess that they don’t open it for orders until closer to midday. The landline is mounted on the wall, close to a sink. My heart is beating fast. I hope I remember my mother’s cell phone number correctly. My hands are sweating.
I start counting backward in my head to give myself some time. Then, while holding the receiver with a sweaty palm, I dial the number. To my surprise, a kid answers. I can’t tell at first whether it’s male or female.
“H-hello? Who is this?” I ask impertinently.
“Uh… Iker. This is my mom’s phone, though.”
It’s my half-brother.
“I’m… Is your… mom around?”
“No, she left an hour ago. I guess she forgot the phone.” The kid coughs. I wonder if he’s at home because he’s sick. “Who are you anyway? Your voice sounds familiar.”
“Uh… I’m… Izar Uriarte.”
My mouth gets dry when I say my father’s last name.
The kid doesn’t speak for a few seconds, and I don’t hear his breath either. I have no idea what this kid thinks about me. If our mother has insisted that we are half-siblings, maybe he wonders why we have barely seen each other. I wouldn’t know what to tell him.
“Hi, sis,” Iker says.
I swallow. I’m nobody’s sister.
“Yeah, hi.”
“Did you want to tell mom something? You can leave a message.”
The kid is old enough to realize that I only called in the past because I had something to say, not because I enjoyed small talk nor wanted to catch up. And I’m sure that all of them remember the bitterness in my voice.
“Yes, I want you to tell her something. Listen… I’m going away. For a long time, maybe forever. So she should… You both should know that I do it of my own volition.”
My last words are lodged in my throat. I feel tears building up behind my eyes.
“Where are you going?” Iker asks, concerned.
“I can’t tell. Far away, that’s all. I wanted to tell her that I’m sorry… for the way things turned out.”
“You aren’t going to call again,” Iker says as if he just realized.
“No, I won’t. I don’t think I will ever hear your voices again, nor will you hear mine.”
Tears come into my eyes slowly. I wonder what this kid is thinking, but he’s a stranger. Will he remember this conversation years from now? Will he blame himself for having been unable to say the right thing?
“You can call back whenever you want,” Iker says nervously.
I wipe my eyes.
“By the way… how old are you? Twelve, thirteen…?”
“Twelve.”
My lips twitch as I try to figure out what to say.
“None of this was your fault. It’s me. I’ve never known what to do with people.”
Iker remains silent. I hear something playing in the background, but I can’t tell if it’s a movie or music.
“Are you going to be okay?” Iker asks in a low voice.
“Yeah… I’m going to try something new. Neither of you need to worry.” I force myself to smile at nobody, but instead my mouth quivers. “Anyway, that’s all. Don’t forget to tell mom.”
“Sure, I will. Take care.”
I hang up. As I turn around, I want to walk directly back to the potato omelette sandwich I ordered, but I end up leaning against one of the kitchen counters, and my gaze falls on the dirty, stagnant water pooled in one of the sinks.
I thought of packing a backpack, but there isn’t one in this apartment, which doesn’t contain anything except for groceries, food-related objects and clothes. I wonder who is going to find my remaining possessions in the wardrobe of the bedroom, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I have no doubt that Chieko was telling the truth: I won’t return to this world. Everybody who knows me here will forget me soon enough.
I didn’t bother changing my clothes. I would hate to leave this cardigan behind anyway. I stand a few steps away from the featureless, white doorway in the living room. The front half of the soles of my shoes are resting on the edge of the carpet. I keep shivering every few seconds, and I fear that I’ll end up pissing myself, even though I made sure to empty my bladder. My heart beats wildly. Something awaits me on the other side of this hole in reality, and I can’t begin to imagine what it might be. But it contains someone like Chieko, so it should be fine. Still, I’m sure that this doorway will lead to more disappointment and pain. No other world can be that different.
I step forward and reach with my right hand slowly. I follow how the white light brightens the fabric of my cardigan. Once my fingertips touch the white surface, I expect them to find some resistance, but they disappear into a void that lacks any sensations. I draw my right hand back. The ends of those fingers haven’t been cut off. After I probe them with the fingertips of my other hand, they seem undamaged.
Alright, this is it. I close my eyes, but the powerful bright light shines through my eyelids. I take a deep breath and walk through the doorway.
An electric current runs in my body from end to end, but only for a second. I’m receiving muffled sounds. Although they seem familiar, my brain can’t make out what they are, as if I had started playing a song midway through and it would take a couple of seconds for me to recognize which one it was. I panic; even a moment of disorientation feels fatal. However, when I open my eyes I find myself inside a glass bell the size of four phone booths, and beyond the clear glass I see that this bell has been installed in a large room, one similar to the lobby of a luxurious hotel. The floor is marble-like, as smooth and reflective as a pool, and it features circular designs in shades of brown, from tortilla to hickory. Soft orchestral music is playing somewhere, a mix of string and wind instruments.
My mind freaks out by itself. I take a step forward and turn around as if to make sure that the doorway I came through remains there, but as Chieko said, it’s gone. I might as well have popped up inside the glass bell as if I materialized.
When I turn back, a rounded hole the size of a door has opened in the glass bell as if it was cut out with surgical precision. My mind is reeling as I step out of the glass bell. There are three others to my right, set up in an arc. They are closed and empty. The ceilings and the walls are engraved and embossed with labyrinthine motifs, some of which seem to depict animals. I realize that the building was constructed with stone, not bricks, as if it were a surviving monument from a long-dead civilization. An arched doorway stands tall on one side of the room, and around it hang green and purple wreaths that remind me of peacock tails.
As I was listening to my footsteps echoing in the large room, I feel someone’s gaze upon me. I look in that direction. There is a large recess in the wall where they have installed a reception desk of sorts, but it’s also made of stone, and bedecked with gilded motifs of flowers and vines. A curved wall of screens is obscuring partially the sight of the person standing behind them. When I realize that the screens, which are too slim, paper-like, are floating in the air as if mounted on invisible displays, I face that nothing like that would have been possible in my previous world. I’m either in another dimension, or in the future. Either way, I’ve reached a whole new reality.
The person behind the wall of screens, a woman, says something, and it takes me a moment to realize that I just heard my name but pronounced with a strange accent. My legs are trembling as I approach the desk. The woman stands on the other side of the desk in a way that the back of the screens don’t hide her. It’s a human being. I had feared she wouldn’t be. Her skin is peanut brown, but her eyes are much darker. She’s pretty, beautiful even, the kind of attractive woman they would want to greet the clients at a hotel lobby. She’s wearing two round earrings that remind me of the sun, and she’s also wearing a long-sleeve, crimson dress made of a velvety fabric. The torso of the dress is covered in intricate, gilded motifs of blossoming flowers. I feel as if I entered the most expensive hotel in the world.
The woman smiles with perfect teeth, and pushes a hemispherical device over the counter towards me. It’s about the size of a fingertip. The woman gestures for me to pick it up and press it against the skin behind my ear. I saw Chieko wearing an identical device behind her ear, which I had confused with a wart. I obey the woman. As soon as I press the device against my skin, it latches on painlessly, and then something alien flows throughout my brain. I stagger, and I step back until my legs hold me properly. I feel as if my mind were larger, as if it suddenly held more content, but the experience is painless and unobtrusive.
“Do you understand me?” the woman asks, now lacking any accent.
I snap my head back. Only a couple of seconds later I realize that I’m standing there with my mouth agape. I feel tears coming.
“Y-yes! I understand perfectly!”
The woman offers me a kind smile.
“Welcome to our present. You are now in one of the offices of the SFPT. Can you confirm for me, just in case, that you are Izar Uriarte?”
“Yeah,” I say as I wipe a tear from my right eye. I want to sob. “W-what’s your name?”
“Why, I’m Garima.”
“Garima… I’m so pleased that we can understand each other. For a moment I thought I would be trapped in a strange world without being able to make myself understood.”
The woman chuckles softly, and then points at the identical device latched on to the skin behind her ear.
“We aren’t born knowing every other language, Izar. That’s why we have technology. In case you lose your translator, just come here or to any of our other offices and we’ll give you a new one. I’m sure that random people would also help you in that case, maybe lend you one.”
I’m overwhelmed. My legs are weakening, my throat closing.
“This is a miracle,” I mumble.
“You will get used to it, dear. I already notified your representative, Chieko Sekiguchi. Very nice girl, I’m sure she’ll be eager to show you our town. You can just walk around for a while if you want. We have a beautiful waiting room beyond that doorway.”
“Y-you have welcomed many others, right?”
“Dear, I don’t know how many. I hope I’m being cordial enough, even though I’ve had the same conversations over and over.”
My mind is going numb. The animal part of my brain is having trouble integrating what’s happening, or maybe it’s trying to push me out of it, as if it has assumed that I’m hallucinating. Garima keeps staring at me calmly. She must have seen it before and it’s nothing to worry about.
“Sit somewhere. Do you have to go to the bathroom?”
“N-no, I’m fine.”
I teeter away towards the arched doorway, and I pass under the hanging wreaths of green and purple flowers. I avoid looking over my shoulder, because I fear that I’m about to break into uncontrollable sobbing.
Thirty Euros, Pt. 2 (Fiction)
I don’t want to imagine what I must look like, a thirty one years old homeless woman who hasn’t showered in a week and who has been sleeping on benches, walking next to a chipper Asian woman with a Japanese name, whose hair is apple red and whose gait suggests she has never known any anxiety. The sun is high in the sky, and despite the time of the year, I’m getting sweaty inside my coat.
“Here we are,” Chieko says as she points at the front door of an apartment building across the one-lane road.
“What? It’s only been three minutes!”
“Well, I don’t know why you’re complaining.” Chieko smiles. “Come on.”
I stand behind my odd benefactress as she fishes for her key chain inside her small backpack. I look down the street in the direction of the sea, and at the end of the passageway between two alabaster white buildings, the fancy kinds with embossed ornaments on the walls, I spot part of the translucent cubes that they call the Kursaal around these parts.
Chieko opens the door into the building’s hall, but as she stands aside, I feel uneasy.
“Are you telling me that you just happen to live in an apartment three minutes away from where I was sleeping recently?” I ask her.
Chieko offers me a calming smile.
“I chose this place for that reason, yes.”
I shake my head as I try to understand.
“H-how did you manage that…?”
“I have connections.”
“What kind?”
“You’ll see. Come on! What do you think I intend to do to you?”
I don’t doubt that Chieko’s intention is to get me out the streets, but this woman is an enigma, and I have learned to be wary of even those whose lives were open books. I sigh. Still, I follow her as she walks towards the elevator.
Her apartment is on the third floor. I enter behind her, and when she closes the door, which looks old and painted over, I find myself in a narrow hallway with eggshell white walls, which instead of a deliberate choice seem as if they were originally whiter but had gotten dirtier over the years. The hardwood floor has a weird design in peanut and walnut browns that looks like a power-up in a racing game, those that would make you go faster. Chieko gestures for me to follow her into a small kitchen that I can see from the front door. The walls are made of white ceramic tiles. Both the stove and the cabinets seem to have been made in the eighties. My benefactress leaves her backpack on the dining table, which would only accommodate four people because one side has been pushed against the wall. The apartment smells as if it has been sanitized in the last couple of days.
“What’s the matter, Izar?” Chieko asks casually while she rests her back against the table. “Do you find this place unpleasant?”
“I wouldn’t have any right to complain about the shoddiest of apartments, given that I sleep in the streets, but I find this one a bit too old for… Well, for you. I had taken you for a rich jetsetter.”
Chieko rubs her chin as if considering it.
“And now?”
“I have no clue.”
Chieko pushes herself off the table and walks up to the window that occupies almost all the space on the wall between the sink and the doorway out of the kitchen. She moves the curtain aside and looks towards the street below.
“We need to have a conversation, an important one,” Chieko says. “But first you need to relax, and do something about that stink. Go take a shower. I’ll wait here.”
I wouldn’t have expected this woman, who remains mostly a stranger although she has read some of my books, to offer me to take a shower. Will she allow me to live here? I’m getting anxious, but I can’t tell whether it’s out of worry or because I feel the wind changing.
“The lock in the bathroom doesn’t work that well,” Chieko adds. “I wouldn’t lock myself in there just in case. Don’t worry, I’m not going to interrupt you. It’s the first door to your left as you exit the kitchen.”
“Alright…”
I’m too confused to think coherently. I try to rub my temples as I walk out of the kitchen, but the bathroom is so close to the kitchen that I could hold the handles of both doors simultaneously. After I find myself alone in the bathroom and I switch the light on, it bathes the cramped space in a pleasant electric blue. I avoid looking at myself in the mirror, and I sit down to pee next to the standing shower.
As soon as I feel the warm water of the shower flowing down my bare skin, I feel relieved. There’s a single sponge, and I wonder if Chieko forgot that I’m a guest and that she apparently lives alone, but the sponge has never been used before. I shake the questions away. I scrub my skin with the sponge, in which I pour an excess of honey-scented liquid soap. I close my eyes and let the water wash over my body.
When I exit the shower, I’m a new person. I take a breath and dare look at myself in the mirror. My cheeks are pink from the heat of the water, my cinnamon brown hair is shiny. Although I feel better now than at any point of the last month, my reflection in the mirror looks as old and worn as it has for years, like a tool that needs to be replaced. I discard the thought, and I open the cabinet to find a set of towels. The one I grab feels as soft as a cotton handkerchief. I dry myself off. Unfortunately I don’t have any other clothes than my smelly T-shirt and my denim jeans, both of which have absorbed stale sweat for days. It’s too late to ask Chieko whether she can lend me some clothes, as I don’t want to walk up to her wrapped in a towel.
When I return to the kitchen, I see that Chieko has changed her clothes. She’s wearing a grey, long-sleeved T-shirt with the black and white drawing of a woman’s face sticking her tongue out, along with beige pleated shorts that barely cover half of her toned thighs. She looks even younger, more vibrant. I’m jealous.
“Oh, that’s right. I should have offered you some fresh clothes,” Chieko says apologetically.
I sit down wearily at the head of the table.
“That’s alright, unless the sweaty smell bothers you.”
Chieko shakes her head, and then she wrings her hands as she looks at the hanging cabinets.
“Before we begin, do you want a coffee? I need one myself.”
“Do you have any whisky?”
Chieko stops midway, and shoots me a look of pity over her shoulder.
“I don’t think so.”
“I was kidding anyway. Coffee sounds good.”
Chieko smiles. She opens the first cabinet next to the fridge, then stands on her tiptoes to look inside, but she doesn’t find what she’s searching for. After she fails to find it as well in the second cabinet, she mumbles something to herself. She takes out a container of powdered coffee from the third one, and then she grabs two cups from a cabinet she had opened before. She’s showing me her slender back, along with her long, shiny red hair, as she empties two spoonfuls of coffee in each cup. I give her a break while she opens a new carton of milk from the fridge, pours cold milk in each cup, and then she puts them in the microwave.
“Who does this apartment belong to?” I ask carefully.
Chieko freezes, but then she presses a couple of buttons on the microwave’s panel and starts it up. As the appliance makes its noise and the cups turn slowly, Chieko turns towards me herself, and offers me an apologetic look.
“Because I didn’t know where the coffee was, huh? I’m not that experienced with this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing? Approaching homeless writers?”
She doesn’t reply. The microwave dings, and she takes the cups out. She places mine in front of me. As I take a sip of the coffee, which is warm enough but tastes too bitter and artificial, I watch how my benefactress puts the milk back into the fridge.
Chieko finally sits down across from me. She leans back and rests her right ankle on her left knee. For a few seconds she avoids holding my gaze.
“If you mean who’s paying the rent, that would be my employer,” Chieko says. “I haven’t spent a single night here.”
I narrow my eyes at her, more confused than anxious. I don’t understand this situation.
“Alright… What did you want to talk to me about, or propose…?”
Chieko smiles again, now that I’ve given her the opportunity to get back on track. She takes a big gulp of her coffee. She reaches for her backpack, which she had rested against a leg of the table, but she only holds it as if she’s about to open it.
“You’re a talented person, Izar Uriarte. You have a lot of potential, but your talent has never been fully exploited.”
“That’s too much praise. I don’t feel that way at all, and in addition, that’s absurd. I’m thirty one years old, I have published seven books, and those were the ones I convinced strangers to publish. I abandoned plenty of stories along the way because I couldn’t make them good enough. What else do you expect me to do?”
“It’s not about what you have been able or not to do. It’s about the future.”
I shift my weight in the chair.
“About me not rotting in the streets, you mean?”
Chieko lifts her backpack onto the table, and pulls out a book. A glimpse of the cover reveals that it’s my first one, which I wrote when I was twelve years old and that got published, thanks to my father’s connections, when I was thirteen. I don’t want to bother with it, but Chieko places it on the table and pushes it towards me.
I shake my head.
“Yeah, ‘The Flowers of the Forest’. Even the title is stupid, isn’t it? But what did I know about life or about anything at all back then?”
Chieko shakes her head sadly.
“Even as a child you invented complex imaginary worlds because you intended to escape the broken reality that the adults had put together, with its greed, cruelty and violence. Isn’t that right? You wanted to be free.”
I’m silent for a few seconds.
“And yet, I have been discarded by everyone.”
Chieko drinks some more coffee, then taps on the cover of my book as if intending for me to focus on it.
“Back then you dreamed about a nation ravaged by war and destruction, that had barely avoided collapsing into an Apocalypse, and about the girl who escaped that world to live wild, to talk to the animals of the forest as well as to the magical beings that inhabit it. That was the kind of life you wanted to lead, wasn’t it? Your protagonist’s parents looked for her insistently, but the couple of times they caught her, she just escaped again.”
I rest my elbows on the table and rub my eyes. The thin steam of my cup of coffee, placed between my elbows, goes up my nostrils. I hear the muffled sounds of the traffic behind the window.
“I suppose that you intend to remind me of how magical and necessary the act of writing used to be for me, but that’s not going to work. Don’t tell me about the contents of this stupid novel. I was a child, and I thought that writing this story could change everything for me.”
“You turned out to be a much better writer than what that twelve years old version of you could produce.”
I sigh, and as I shake my head I hold the book in my hands. It’s a new copy, as if Chieko had bought it a few days ago. I didn’t know it was still in print, but I hadn’t looked at my sales for a long time. They only depressed me.
“I recall lying on the sofa in my father’s office as he worked at his desk. That’s where I wrote most of this book. I guess that there were complicated reasons for why I thought I needed to write. Certainly, I wanted to impress him. He worked in the industry, so for someone as detached as him to pay enough attention to me, I should have stood out, become a writer. But you know how that turned out.”
“No,” Chieko says, “I don’t know.”
I narrow my eyes. She does know, and yet she wants me to keep talking. But she has fed me breakfast, she has invited me home, and there’s the chance that I might get to sleep indoors.
“Why would anyone write, Chieko?”
She looks away, and then back at me.
“The same reasons for which anyone would produce any kind of art, right? To be understood, to belong?”
“All those readers you believe you are connecting with are ghosts in your head. You don’t have access to how other people are experiencing your stories, scene by scene, word by word. The only tangible effect is the money you receive for your effort, which never rewards you enough.” I push the book towards my benefactress. “In the end, it’s just words on a page. None of our creative efforts have amounted to anything, have they? Am I wiser for having written all those books? Has my life improved? Have they allowed me to understand people better?”
Chieko props her chin with her hands, and her expression turns almost condescending.
“You aren’t the same girl who wrote about magic all those years ago.”
I roll my eyes. I take a big gulp of coffee to handle my irritation.
“How many millions of people have been killed practically yesterday, from the perspective of how long human life has existed?”
Chieko is taken aback.
“None of that is your problem.”
“If millions of earnest human beings creating art didn’t stop millions of deaths, didn’t end greed nor injustice, then what are we playing at?”
“It’s not your fault. The world is broken.”
I hang my head low and grit my teeth.
“What?” Chieko insists. “You’re mad because you feel responsible for the misery of humankind? Because your books didn’t save them?”
“It’s not that simple. I hate the delusion of it, believing that all these intellectual exercises, or even the genuine attempt to explore one’s inner worlds, will make us significantly wiser. It’s just a past-time, a way to ease the decline into illness and death.”
“Just a pretentious equivalent of watching television, then?”
“When I die, Chieko, my books will be forgotten. Barely anyone cares already. I will have passed through this world without changing anything. What I hate the most is that when I was younger I convinced myself, or allowed others to convince me, that it would be different. That I would be different. I nurtured that hope. I trusted people.”
“And now you are ashamed of it?”
“The biggest fools are those who think they have something vital to offer. This world is a terrible place with people that will hurt you if you give them the opportunity, and every effort will only lead to disappointment and pain. It’s foolish to hope for anything in a world built to break your heart. It’s also exhausting.”
Chieko raises her eyebrows as she tilts her coffee cup towards her mouth.
“You know the world could be much better. That’s why you have always been disappointed.”
“Yeah, but that’s not enough reason to write books.”
“But it is a reason to keep living.”
I look at Chieko, the self-assured expression in her youthful, pretty face, and I sigh. I lift the book back up towards me.
“So you’re telling me to return home, whichever one of my previous homes, and try to be a normal person?”
Chieko shrugs.
“I could tell you that you shouldn’t write any books for a while, nor try to fix anything. Just live. But there’s no time left for that.”
“You mean because I’m in my thirties already and completely broke, so I can’t play around any longer?”
Chieko holds my gaze meaningfully, as if wanting to tell me more but being unable to.
“I mean that your allotted time in this world is ending.”
“How do you know?”
“I will ignore answering that directly, and instead I will bring up my final, most meaningful topic. Go back in time to when you were eighteen years old, a few years after your beloved father abandoned you to start a new family. You are being forced to share a hotel room with your mother, who just told you that she was marrying into a built-in family.”
I put the book down again. I take a deep breath and hide my face in my hands. I don’t know who I am speaking with, I don’t understand anything that has happened to me in the last few years, and I have lost the strength to go on. I wonder if this is a taste of how my grandmother felt in her seventies, once that personality-stealing illness was rotting her brain.
“I am grateful to you, Chieko,” I say, pained, “particularly if meeting you will lead to me sleeping in a warm bed tonight, but I hope you understand that you are pushing a knife into my heart.”
“I don’t care. You need to find yourself again. So tell me, once you understood that your mother would discard you so she could continue on her own, and you attempted to lower yourself through the window with that improvised rope made out of sheets, where would you have gone, if they hadn’t stopped you?”
Nobody but my mother and her new boyfriend at the time should have known this information. My own mother never even brought it up again, and I kept it hidden deep inside me. I wasn’t strong enough to continue living a normal life with the knowledge that she wanted a new family, that the last person who should have cared for my well-being intended to get rid of me.
“I don’t know,” I say in a dry voice.
“You don’t know? You weren’t that far from the ground. You could have landed, could have run away. Where would you have gone?”
I lift my head and look at Chieko. She’s staring at me with a maturity beyond her years. I feel like a child again, looking up at my father.
“I don’t want to know,” I mutter weakly.
“Were you going on an adventure? Back to the woods, hoping to join the magical kingdom?”
My hands are trembling. I want to hide them, but this strange woman has already noticed it.
“You are truly bothering me now, Chieko.”
“Were you going to kill yourself? Did you want to die in some remote place, where nobody would find your body?”
“I wanted to leave this prison. Not die, I don’t think. I wanted to escape from the cell I hadn’t chosen to exist in, where I was only able to daydream about the half-imagined world I glimpsed through small holes in the walls. And I remain trapped there.”
Chieko smiles widely, somehow pleased with the result of her prodding. She takes my first novel from my hands and puts it inside her backpack. Chieko then pushes her empty cup aside and leans on her elbows while staring at me.
“I work for the SFPT,” she says.
I blink a few times, wondering whether I should know what that implies or if my brain is getting as liquified as it has felt since I met this person.
“Is that supposed to mean anything?”
“It means that I have a mission. To rescue you from this world and its limitations.”
She gets up from her chair. She shoulders her backpack as if we are leaving the apartment. I snap my head back, and I can’t help but massage one of my temples in confusion as I get up wearily myself.
“Where are we going?”
“To the living room. Follow me.”
Chieko passes by me as she enters the hallway. I hurry up behind her. The eggshell white corridor is so narrow that I wouldn’t be able to walk side by side with Chieko. She passes by two closed doors, that I guess belong to the bedrooms, and she opens the door at the end of the hallway. First I notice a berry blue sofa pushed against the wall, resting on a hardwood floor with a rhombus pattern that looks as it would fit the disco era. Both are bathed in a frost white light as if coming from a lamp with a powerful light bulb.
Chieko enters the living room and stands next to the sofa, waiting for me to come in. Then I see that instead of a coffee table, on the carpet is standing a white, vertical rectangle with the dimensions of a door, and made of opaque white light. I stop, then stare dumbfounded at the vision. I twist my head towards Chieko as if to confirm that I should be alarmed, but my odd benefactress looks back at me calmly.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she says. “It always draws people’s attention.”
I’m stupefied. I can’t even mutter a response. I approach the side of the door with caution, hoping to find out that it has volume, that it’s some monolith-like artifact covered in ultra reflective paint. However, as I stand a few steps to the side of the vertical rectangle, I stop seeing it, although its white light keeps illuminating its surroundings. It’s a two dimensional object.
“What… What the hell is this?” I ask in a dry voice.
Chieko holds her hands behind her back, pushing her backpack. She offers me a playful smile.
“What does it look like to you?”
“A door. It’s the only way I can describe this thing.”
“Alright. Doors lead somewhere. What awaits on the other side, Izar?”
I swallow. I have retreated closer to the exit of the room, if only because I feel safer near the odd stranger that led me to this impossible sheet of white light. I’m getting dizzier. I’ll need to sit down soon.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to, though? What would crossing over be like, and what would you see the moment you stepped through it? It sounds like an adventure.”
My body feels weak. I have eaten so poorly in the last week, and my nerves are frayed after having stood guard against anyone who might have wanted to attack me in the night. I shudder.
“I’m not into adventures.”
Chieko chuckles. She walks until she stands next to me, facing the opaque doorway.
“You aren’t, huh? What was that book of yours, ‘The Mountain Cracks’, about? A group of anthropologists who were the last to live among and relate to natives of a beautiful island that was used as a testing ground for atomic bombs. Or your ‘The Interval of Shadows’, about a young soldier who enters a time machine in the middle of the first World War, so he can travel to the past and save a woman. Or ‘A Serpent of the Desert’, about a woman who has ventured into a strange land and finds herself between two warring tribes. Or ‘The Frozen Seas’, about another woman who travels to a forbidden island in the Arctic Circle in search of a mystical artifact. Or ‘The River of Dreams’, about a third young woman who searches for her lost boyfriend in the jungle. This life is sad enough. Don’t make it even worse by lying to yourself.”
Chieko places her right hand on my trembling shoulder.
“Who are you really?” I ask her. “What are you? Where do you come from?”
Chieko’s eyes turn kind. She looks at the opaque doorway.
“I told you, I work for the SFPT,” she says quietly as if trying to comfort me. “I’m not their go-to person for this kind of operation, but I took it as a personal project.”
“You know that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
She smiles at me, narrowing her eyes.
“This doorway leads to a far away place, Izar.”
“H-how far away are we talking…?” I ask nervously.
Chieko places her right hand on my cheek and caresses it gently with her fingers.
“If I told you the exact number of kilometers between here and there, you wouldn’t believe me. But I came from the other side, and set up this meeting so we could stand in front of this option I’m offering you.”
“Is it dangerous?”
She winks.
“It could lead to a room full of leeches and spiders if you aren’t careful. That’s a bit unlikely, though.”
I swallow. My legs are getting wobblier. As I stare at the impossible doorway, much brighter than a computer screen, I squint and try to make out details, but I don’t notice any imperfection. It’s like some deity cut a rectangular hole in the universe, and light from the other side was leaking through.
“I’m offering you two options, Izar,” Chieko starts as she shifts the weight of her backpack. “You can live in this apartment until the lease runs out at the end of the month. Naturally, they won’t let you continue living here past that point, but it would have given you time to figure out how to continue existing in this lonely world. Your other option is to venture through that opaque whiteness to find out what awaits you on the other side.”
“Which one are you suggesting?”
Chieko laughs.
“Neither, Izar. Both. I believe in personal choice. But I should clarify that once you go through this doorway, you will never see this world again. So have that in mind.”
I want to say something, but my throat closes up and I can’t even breathe properly. Chieko’s eyes are serious.
“What do you think?” she asks me.
“I-I don’t know…”
“Everyone who should have cared properly for you has abandoned you. In less than a week your lungs will fill with filthy water until your brain shuts off.”
“W-why are you doing this for me?”
“To save you, of course. I want to see how far your talent goes.”
“I’m no good, Chieko. I’m worthless. I did my best work when I was thirteen years old. That’s the truth. I was never as honest, as original, as creative as when I was a girl who still believed in this world.”
Chieko smirks.
“Then maybe you need time to improve.” She takes a couple of steps towards the doorway. When she turns towards me, the white light haloes her as if it were white water splashing against her back. “This door will remain here until the last day of the month. Afterwards, it will never appear again, and neither will I or any of us return. We will assume that you have made your choice.”
She holds her hands in front of her waist and bows slightly towards me.
“In case this is the last time we see each other, Izar,” Chieko adds, ” I hope you manage to live a life of which you are proud.”
My vision is blurring, and I can’t push words through my closed throat. Chieko’s misted figure raises a hand to wave while she steps through the white doorway, which engulfs her as if she fell through the world.
Thirty Euros, Pt. 1 (Fiction)
I’m woken up by the same alarm that has dragged me out from the oblivion of sleep this past week: the blithe voices of children, the footsteps of passersby, the conversations of people who met on the square and wanted to share details about their lives. And I exist at the periphery of all these moments, a speck smaller than all of them.
I sit upright on the bench. The dirty blanket slides down my torso. At least the coat kept me warm enough, because the nights will only get chillier and chillier. And then I’m hit with the same pangs of hunger that I’ve needed to get used to recently. I haven’t eaten anything since yesterday at midday, when I managed to snatch some half-eaten food that a family had left at the outside table of a restaurant. At least the waitress didn’t shout at me.
I rub my eyes, and when I blink the sleep away, I catch an old woman giving me a look of pity as she passes by. Even though it must be around nine and a half in the morning, there are already a good amount of children playing happily in the playground at the center of this square, under the supervision of their relatives. I must be an uncomfortable sight, but at least people pay me as much attention as to the garbage bins. While I like that most people ignore me, it’s unlikely for anyone to throw money my way when they’d prefer I didn’t exist.
I have woken up tired for years, but never as exhausted as when I abandoned my boyfriend’s apartment last Thursday. It’s like my brain never shuts off entirely at night, maybe because some part of myself needs to remain alert in case some marauder realizes that I’m a woman. I don’t want to imagine what some of the night crawlers in this rotten world would do to me, but I can’t help but picture those things anyway.
After I pee in the public bathroom close to the imposing cathedral, one of the main reasons I’ve stuck around this area of Gros, I return to my bench and set up my piece of cardboard. If I’m very lucky, some of the many strangers that walk through this square will throw enough coins my way that I’ll be able to eat some breakfast, far enough from other customers that they won’t smell my stink.
As I wait, my mind insists on torturing me with pointless worries. For example, how many of these mornings I’ll have to endure before I manage to write another word, and whether the words that I write will be published this time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat today, and I haven’t written anything in a year and a half. Still, that’s what my broken brain focuses on. I have no business continuing in this world, and yet I go on. Is it the same for the veterans, the other homeless that barely remember having lived in an apartment? Do they also wish to disappear, to finally be freed from the involuntary effort of being?
Around an hour and a half later I’ve only gotten three coins of twenty cents. My stomach keeps gurgling, my throat is parched, my saliva tastes like cat breath. I hear footsteps much closer than the other passersby dare to come, and when I lift my gaze, it falls on a woman in her mid twenties who is approaching me with determination. Her long, apple red hair is flowing in the breeze, and both her facial features as well as her slanted eyes evidence that she’s Asian. Plenty of Asians have settled in the Basque Country, mostly Chinese, but this one looks fancier, like those Japanese girls that I saw in videos as they walked around the futuristic streets of Tokyo. She’s wearing a striped, red, navy and white scoop neck sweater, as well as a black pleated skirt that covers her knees. She’s holding a book with her right hand, but with the other she’s holding the strap of a small backpack. When she stops a few steps away, making it obvious that she came for me, I want to hang my head low. She looks so young and full of life. Although I want to ask her to leave me be, maybe she’s a tourist and will consider that throwing some coins my way is her good deed of the day.
I can tell she’s about to speak to me, but I’m stunned by the familiarity in her kind eyes and the slightly raised corner of her mouth, which reveals a dimple under a prominent cheek. That’s not the way you look at a stranger.
“Uh… Hello,” I say with a dry, weak voice.
The girl nods as she drops her gaze to my piece of cardboard. Her sympathetic expression makes me uncomfortable, and it’s the first time that anyone has regarded me as a full human being since I stopped living in an apartment last week.
“That doesn’t look like much. Will you be able to eat some breakfast?”
Her voice is lively and achingly young-sounding, but I’m surprised by the lack of accent. She must have been living in this area for a long time, or was even born here. Perhaps her parents are Basque and she was adopted.
“Not yet, no,” I say ashamedly. “But I might get lucky yet.”
She’s shaking her head as she smiles.
“And what if it doesn’t happen today?”
I can’t help but furrow my brow. What’s this woman’s deal?
“It will. I just need a little more time.”
The woman grins, showing perfectly-shaped white teeth with prominent canines. I would have expected teeth like those in a Hollywood movie, but not belonging to someone who would interact with me.
“I love that you retain hope! It’s important to keep your spirits up.”
“Yeah, it is,” I agree while trying to hide my embarrassment. “I don’t think I would be able to speak one word if I had run out of it. So… did you want to make me feel better at this hour of the morning?”
“I do want to make you feel better, for sure, but not as a random stranger would! My name is Chieko.”
For a moment I wonder if I should have a name, living in the streets.
“Ah… I’m Izar.”
“Chieko Sekiguchi. That’s how you call me.”
She holds out her hand. I hesitate, but I shake it, and she squeezes it warmly.
“I like your name,” she says. “It’s so nice to meet a writer.”
I’m shocked. She knows me, or at least what I have done.
“I like your books, too,” Chieko continues. “Your stories are very beautiful.”
Maybe I should feel better, appreciate that someone who knew I existed and who had taken time to read some of my stories bothered to approach me and treat me with such warmth, but I’m ashamed of having fallen this low, of having become a non-entity. My life is over. Nobody should be interested in hearing about me anymore.
Although I feel light-headed, I stand up so I can face this Chieko like a human being. My legs are already tired. I’m slightly taller than her. I don’t want to stand too close, because my breath must stink.
“Thank you, Chieko,” I say as I try to keep my voice steady. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay such attention to me. I suppose it can’t be more obvious that I’m doing poorly, huh…?”
“You don’t look bad at all! I mean it!” she says, and she beams at me like an angel. “Are you hungry?”
I nod.
“Let’s go find someplace where we can eat breakfast together,” Chieko adds.
She’s already turning, but I shake my hands to gesture that she shouldn’t worry. I try to smile, but my lips refuse to obey.
“No, that’s okay. I’m sure I’ll end up getting enough money to grab a bite.”
Chieko’s bright smile falters. She hadn’t expected me to resist her offer.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be glad to treat you!” she says. “I’ll buy us both something to eat.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I sit down dismissively. Chieko tilts her head as if she’s trying to comprehend why I’m refusing.
“Aren’t those coins, less than a euro, all the money you have? Haven’t you slept on this bench?”
I shrug and nod. My stomach grumbles again as if chastising me.
“I don’t need your help, Chieko, or anybody else’s beyond the money some will throw my way. I appreciate that you’ve read the stuff I’ve written, but that doesn’t mean much right now.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I still want to help.”
Chieko’s eyes shine with compassion and understanding. I lower my head.
“I’ll figure something out. Please… leave me alone.”
She doesn’t leave. My gaze remains fixed on the pavement between her legs. She’s wearing garnet red tennis shoes, which don’t match well with her black pleated skirt, but they look expensive. I can tell she will stand there until I address her again, so I sigh and lift my gaze. Chieko is smiling.
“You are a beautiful person, Izar. I wish you the best, and that you will be able to do what you want.”
“You are a stranger. I’m not sure how you’ve ended up reading my books, as they didn’t reach that many people, but I’m not the person you believe me to be. And if you truly want me to be able to do what I wish, you need to leave me alone.”
“So you can rot by your lonesome, is that it?”
I couldn’t have looked more bitter. Chieko laughs affectionately as if trying to make me smile, but I refuse. She then shows me the cover of the book she was holding. It’s one of mine.
“You wrote this!”
I avert my gaze. I couldn’t feel more distanced from the version of me who struggled the whole way through, until a publishing company printed my stories and delivered them to bookstores.
“Yes,” I mutter. “I did.”
“Come on! You are still the person who wrote it. You are not as bad as you think.”
I take a deep breath, then rub my eyes. I don’t want to face her cheerful expression.
“Chieko… You are annoying me. I beg you, please let me rot in peace.”
“Nope! You shouldn’t be here, Izar. A prodigy like you shouldn’t be sleeping in the streets.”
I’m getting dizzy, both from the hunger and the anger that’s building up.
“You’re right. I should not be here. I’m going home.”
I stand up and start walking away from her, abandoning the few coins I’ve gotten so far, hoping that I’ll be able to come back for them, but Chieko steps forward and grabs my hand. I’m too stunned to speak.
“I know you won’t return to your boyfriend’s place. You expect me to walk away, and in a while you’ll come back and you’ll either continue to sit here, hoping that kind strangers will give you enough money so you can eat, or you’ll move to some other square in case I choose to come by again.”
“How do you…?”
This Chieko appeared out of nowhere holding one of my books, and she knows that I lived with my boyfriend. She hasn’t come across me by coincidence. But how would she know about those private details of my life? I never became famous enough that people would pry into my life like that.
“You are right,” I say somberly. “I can’t go home. I have nothing left.”
Chieko offers me an understanding smile.
“Because that boyfriend of yours cheated, didn’t he?”
My eyes widen. Chieko’s expression manifests that she’s aware that she shouldn’t know that information, but that she’ll open up if I give her the opportunity.
“Yes,” I confirm. “He did. He’s a bastard. He fucked several women, and I had enough. Who the hell are you, Chieko?”
“I’m your friend, Izar. You’re not alone anymore.”
My nostrils dilate. I feel as if she’s pressing the tip of a knife against my belly.
“Hey, let me buy you some breakfast, alright?” Chieko insists. “You’ll need all the strength you can get.”
We don’t have to walk far. At the end of the large square, passing by the side of the cathedral, we cross the stone-paved, one-lane road. Chieko points at the outside seating area set up in a roundabout. It’s separated from the adjoined road by glass panels, and the tables are covered by patio umbrellas. The morning light is bathing the glass panels in gold.
“I think this is where we should eat,” Chieko says, smiling. “It looks very inviting.”
“It does, for sure. Not only too expensive for what I could afford in my circumstances: they also wouldn’t like me as a customer.”
Chieko pats me on the back of my coat. I narrow my shoulders.
“But you are with me, so that’s okay! I look quite fancy, don’t I?” she says. “And it will be much cheaper than a regular restaurant. Come, sit down, and let’s have breakfast together.”
I choose a table distanced from the two couples that are enjoying their coffees. I worry about them smelling my stink, as well as glancing at me. Once a chair supports my weight, I realize that Chieko, who has sat down in front of me, is looking up at the nearby cathedral. As she has her head turned, I notice a wart-like protuberance behind her ear, but I had just realized that it was made of a plastic-like material when Chieko turns her head towards me again.
“You aren’t from here, are you?” I ask her.
“Because I’m Asian?”
“Because you keep looking around as if you haven’t seen this part of the city before.”
Chieko smiles mischievously.
“You’re right. You are good at noticing things. That’s your nature as a writer, I’m sure.”
“Any regular person would have been able to figure that out.”
I was about to ask her about her lack of accent, but a waiter approaches us. I can barely look at him in the face, because anyone can tell that I’m homeless. Chieko assures me that I can order whatever I want, and this being a restaurant as well as a bar, I take advantage of my mysterious new friend and I order a coffee with milk, as well as a plate of Iberian ham and two eggs. Chieko giggles, and orders a cappuccino for herself. Once the waiter leaves, I keep my mouth closed for a few seconds. I’m salivating too much and I might end up drooling.
“Anyway, Chieko, I want to clarify something,” I say. “I’m not a prodigy. I never was.”
“Maybe you think too little of yourself.”
“That’s not true. I was a precocious child, sure, and I wrote almost every day, but it had little to do with talent and more with my wish to escape into my daydreams. It just happens that when my father sent that manuscript, the idea of a thirteen years old girl who managed to publish a book was a notion that they could sell to the newspapers. And he worked in the industry anyway.”
“Yes, I remember. It was quite popular, and even got some awards.”
I squint towards the sun, letting it warm my weary face. Its warmth feels so different now that I can anticipate a proper, even excessive breakfast.
“Isn’t it true that all the cells in a human body get replaced in around seven years? I haven’t been that young girl for a long time.”
Chieko smiles as if humoring me, highlighting her dimples.
“You’re right. In fact, you don’t look like someone of twenty seven. You look younger than me, I have to admit.”
“Very funny. I look very aged for my thirty one, and it’s going to worsen now that I live in the streets.”
I smell my plate of Iberian ham and eggs before it arrives. Once the waiter places it in front of me, its aroma makes me want to cry. I hurry to dip bread into the runny egg. The taste explodes in my mouth. I’ve never eaten something so delicious. I close my eyes and let the taste linger. I had almost forgotten who granted me this breakfast, and when I open my eyes, Chieko is sipping her cappuccino. Her expression has turned serious.
“I’m sorry for what happened with your boyfriend.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Chieko. Nobody forced him to cheat on me. And it wasn’t the first time, either. I forgave him last year because… I couldn’t afford not to, I suppose. I hoped to write again, and I can’t go back to working in an office. I couldn’t stand it. But this time, I had enough. Of him, of my parents, of struggling… So that’s that. I left his place, and I will never go back.”
Chieko puts her cappuccino down. I don’t know how much time passes before she speaks again, but I’ve kept busy savoring the salty ham.
“But you mustn’t give up on writing,” she says. “I have faith in you. You’ll be fine.”
“Let me ask you something: do you write, Chieko? Are you a creative person?”
Chieko licks some coffee foam from her upper lip, and looks at the building front to our left as if trying to remember.
“I suppose anyone would consider me a creative person, although I’m going through a dry spell at the moment. I’ve never technically written anything, in that sense at least.”
I gulp down some of my warm coffee. I was feeling like crap this morning, but I can hardly be more grateful towards this rich-looking stranger who has bought me a tasty breakfast.
“Then let me tell you something: people who romanticize writers might as well romanticize peeing in bottles and keeping a collection of them. That was a compulsion. I did it because my father was too busy with his job as a publisher to care for me, and when my parents’ marriage fell apart and the both of them abandoned me, I needed to escape to those fantasies. That was all it was: my inability to deal with reality in a healthy manner.”
Chieko looks down at the table as if saddened, but then she holds my gaze and narrows her slanted eyes.
“You said was. Was a compulsion. Do you intend to never write again?”
I was prepared to confirm it, but I stutter instead. I feel as if I was about to give up on breathing. But I hadn’t lied nor exaggerated about the role that writing played for me.
“Chieko… I have been writing since I was a girl. They published that silly book when I was thirteen. Even that story was about me escaping from my troubled parents and living in the woods among magical creatures. I’ve published maybe six or seven books afterwards, I can’t quite remember now, and each of them sold fewer copies the older I got. I have a single story to tell: that of wanting to escape from a life in which I am unhappy. There are only so many ways you can portray the same brokenness. And… are you aware of my issues with my parents once I grew up? You knew about me living with my boyfriend, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Yes, I knew. Your father betrayed your mother and left her for another woman. Then both of them betrayed you, as they focused on their new families. You were pushed to the sidelines. They shouldn’t have treated you like that.”
My throat feels dry, but I can drink some more coffee.
“You must be my number one fan, Chieko.”
She giggles. This girl looks so carefree that along with her clothes and perfect teeth, I wouldn’t be surprised if either she or her family are millionaires. I better hold on to this one.
“No, that’s an honor reserved to someone else I got to know to some extent. But I’ve gone over your stuff, learned about your background, and… came to care about you. Which is why I couldn’t let you rot in the streets, could I?”
“I appreciate that, Chieko. I really do. But if you care for me as a writer, you’ve met me at the worst time of my life, because the notion of pushing myself to delve into creating fiction again makes me nauseous. Producing those books involved me delving into a personal hell, only to come out scarred further by the experience. You could say that at least other people got some enjoyment out of reading the result, but what does it matter at the end of the day? I never sold enough copies that I could write for a living, and my experience working in offices solidified that I was too broken to survive in the real world. I needed someone to pay for my expenses. That first time he cheated on me… I suppose that although I had expected people to betray me like my parents did, I had held on to the hope that this one person wouldn’t. Afterwards, even though I stayed with him, I did it because I didn’t want to struggle on my own. I couldn’t love someone like that anymore. But what I can’t take are the constant betrayals over and over, knowing that the person who is supposed to care for you, love you even, goes out to screw other women only to come back home and smile at you as if he wasn’t stabbing you in the gut. Everybody has their breaking point, and last Thursday I discovered mine. I stopped caring, not only about that cheating son of a bitch but about myself, about the future, and whatever could happen to me. And I tell you all this because you seem to believe that it was a great thing that I wrote those books. After so many years of pain, of squeezing so many tears out of these weary eyes, I found myself on the streets with only thirty euros to my name. I wasn’t worth anything else.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Izar Uriarte.”
I sigh, but I appreciate her support, as well as the egg that my stomach is digesting.
“Of course you don’t, you are the image of hope. I can’t imagine anything bad happening to you. Anyway, those thirty euros are gone. I didn’t even get to spend them all, because someone stole my last ten euros note, or I lost it.”
Although I laugh nervously, Chieko stares at me as if she’s about to ask me something important.
“So then,” she says, “you have nothing left, no money, and you’ve given up on writing.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“What are you going to do from now on?”
“I was thinking about staying in Donostia and begging.”
Chieko tilts her head and purses her lips.
“So do you intend on being a homeless woman for the rest of your life?”
“Probably. I can’t think of anything better to do. I guess I’ll find out how that goes.”
I smile, but I feel my throat choking up. I lower my head. I feel the warmth of Chieko’s hand as she takes mine, that I was resting on the table, and she squeezes it gently.
“I don’t think that’ll go very well for you, Izar,” she says.
I wipe my eyes.
“I don’t care. I guess that… I have given up. Can you blame me? I can’t even blame myself. I’m sick of all of it.”
Chieko looks at me with sympathetic eyes.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to go somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else where? Where is there a place for me?”
Chieko rests her face on her palms. She has finished her coffee, but she seems content with witnessing how I take my time with my breakfast.
“You can’t stay in the streets of Donostia forever.”
I finish my second egg. Chieko seems to be waiting for me to come up with a plan for my future.
“Whether I can or not,” I start, “it might do me some good to finally be alone for a while. Everyone I’ve given my heart to has betrayed me. I guess it’s time to learn the appropriate lesson, don’t you think?”
Chieko shifts in her chair. A car goes around the roundabout, the noise of its engine splashing against the glass panel that separates the outside tables from the road.
“Didn’t you enjoy travelling the world back when you were much younger, with your parents?” she asks.
I guess that information has appeared in some press note.
“I did, actually. I was happy with them, and I felt safe, before I knew what they were going to do. I was naïve, as a child who daydreams about magical beings can be. I didn’t know anything about the world back then, nor about how people work. In any case, are you suggesting that I should travel the world again?”
Chieko smiles at me, and despite my mood, that bright face makes me want to believe in something better.
“Maybe you should,” Chieko says.
I eat the last bit of Iberian ham, and savor it carefully. I can’t rely on Chieko paying for my next breakfast.
“I think I’m done with adventures,” I answer. “And I need to be alone.”
Chieko leans back on the chair and stares as if daring me to hold her gaze. I can’t get over how red her hair is. It looks too good to have been dyed, but I have never bothered to look into such matters.
“Would you have been happier in another era of this world?” she asks.
I don’t know what to say. If she had asked me that question when I was thirteen, I would have answered without hesitation.
“I feel too old for such hypothetical questions.”
“You’re thirty one years old, Izar Uriarte. You can’t afford to be afraid of the future, not to the extent that you won’t prepare for it.”
I sigh.
“I guess you have paid enough to lecture me… Well, do you actually want to know if I would have been happier in another era?”
“Yes, I do. So, if you could choose an era of this world, or of humanity’s presence in it more accurately, for you to live in, which would you choose?”
“Probably the Renaissance.”
Chieko smiles playfully.
“What’s so great about the Renaissance?”
“Well, there was the invention of the printing press, a huge step forward. And I would have preferred living during the golden age of chivalry, as opposed to the iron age of capitalism.”
“You are Joan of Arc material, aren’t you?” Chieko says with amusement. “The Renaissance was a very different time.”
“I’m just saying that it might have been better. I would have had a more appreciative audience.”
Chieko leans on her elbows as she smiles at me.
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? To disappear from here?”
I sense a fatalistic tone, or maybe I’m imagining it, but I want to clarify the point.
“I don’t want to die, Chieko. I wish I hadn’t ended up like this.”
“Then you shouldn’t have given up on your life.”
I shrug, then slouch on the chair.
“What’s done is done. Besides, I’m going to end up dead sooner or later anyway.”
“It’s going to be sooner. This current existence of yours doesn’t have a future.”
“Well, I prefer this one over the others.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine.”
Chieko crosses her arms, her first defensive gesture. She seems to have come to a conclusion.
“If you think you are done, will you follow me? I can offer you some other place.”
“What kind of place?”
“You’ll see. It involves a certain amount of trust, although I know that will be hard for you.”
I feel a sudden coldness on my skin. Chieko is still smiling, but she has become a bit more solemn.
“You are enough of a fan that you wouldn’t want me to be homeless, I understand that. But what is your intention with all of this? You searched for me and approached me deliberately.”
“You’re right,” Chieko answers calmly. “I had a purpose in approaching you, and I still do, Izar Uriarte. I intend to preserve your life, and your talent.”
“Do you mean preventing me from dying in the streets?”
“Yes. Because in less than a week you’ll be a bloated corpse floating in the Urumea river.”
I stare at her in disbelief.
“You are… one odd person, Chieko.”
“I don’t know if I’m odd, but I think you’ll like what I have to offer. If you really want to live, then it’s better to go with me now.”
Chieko gets up from her chair and looks behind me, probably to signal the waiter for the bill. I’m confused, but I stand up as well and rub my cheeks.
“I will follow you then, if only because you are more likely to feed me than any of those strangers.”
“I thought you were going to say something like that,” Chieko says with a smile. “Let’s get out of here.”
Post-mortem for “Odes To My Triceratops”
Not much to say, really. I won’t be recalled back to work until next week or so. It was around one in the morning in a Thursday and I could tell it was one of those nights in which I wouldn’t fall asleep until around four. I figured I would try to write something fun, so I put together a few prompts on a Google Docs file, as usual. The last one of them read, “William Griffin, before he died tragically at age seventeen in October of 2008, wrote a song about his friend Lorenzo, who is a Triceratops with a portal to hell inside his throat. William was also in love with a sixteen years old neighbor of his, a blind girl named Claire and who couldn’t read nor write.”
I don’t recall having to think much, if at all, for that to come out of my fingers. A boy writing a song isn’t fun enough to write about, but it is more fun if there’s a dinosaur involved, and even better if you have a contrasting third character who is also interesting. I ended up writing until seven in the morning, and the following day I ordered the stuff into a somewhat coherent narrative, then uploaded the first two parts. That Friday I also wrote most of the poems that comprised William’s demise. As usual, I was alone and half-delirious, so it came out easy.
I ended up writing a few more poems for both the first and the second parts of this strange tale in three parts, so if you read the first two and liked them, you might want to go over them again.
Odes to My Triceratops, Pt. 3 (Poetry)
Once William’s triceratops friend was seen for the last time, William Griffin’s mood plummeted. His neighbor Claire Javernick moved away days later. Riddled with guilt and despair, the texts that William produced during this stage up to his death have remained a source of discussion for years.
I met Lorenzo a long, long time ago.
I bet he is somewhere in the sky.
When he died I put him in the earth,
Buried him in a hole you can’t see.I met Claire last night.
She was sixteen and she was blind,
She was blind but she could see.
The way she looked at me with those greys,
I was sent straight to hell.Her house has been empty since then.
‘Hell Yeah’ by William Griffin
She took my warmth with her.
She went down to hell to stay.
She had said it once but said it again:
“Hell yeah.”
The shadows, the black and the grey
Ran down her face so dreadfully.
Every time I looked I saw her tears.
She never agreed to stay the night.Lorenzo, a giant skeleton,
A living graveyard for the dead.
A door in his throat
Was leading right to hell,
Where there are worms and dinosaurs.Claire, you can’t escape your fate.
Claire, the sixteen years old girl
With no idea how to read or write.
You’re so small, but in your heart
You’re a fourteen-year-old slut.I like boys, I like boys,
‘Worms and Dinosaurs’ by William Griffin
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys,
I like boys, I like boys.
Lorenzo killed the dinosaurs,
And he’s about to kill your ass
For snorting his drool
Like I’ve seen you do.He’s been hungry for a while now,
That triceratops.Fuck you, don’t open the door.
You’ll never find him there,
And you don’t want to see what’s behind.A door is there.
You’ve got to step inside,
And pray that I’m wrong.“I love you, Claire,” I’d say.
“I’m so glad that we were born!”
And you would say, “I love you too, Billy.
What are we going to do today?”
“I think we’ll walk the stairs
Up to the last, then maybe
Go for a swim!”We can’t stop! We can’t stop!
Never stare at the door, I said.
‘Lorenzo the Kinslayer’ by William Griffin
Never stare at the door
When it opens.
Lorenzo was the dino from out of town
‘Keep Your Last Name’ by William Griffin
That everybody knew for years.
Lorenzo was the dino from out of town,
And he was gonna stay a while.
He didn’t even have a last name.
He would have taken Claire’s.
They made a deal
To see what they were made of.
They ate, they drank and they made love
In good times and in bad.
Lorenzo was the dino from out of town
That everybody knew for years.
Lorenzo was the dino from out of town
And he was gonna stay a while.
Claire was the girl from this town,
The girl from this town,
The girl from this town.
She was supposed to stay.
Claire,
‘In Your Fingertips’ by William Griffin
You couldn’t write a thing,
Nor read for that matter,
But you must have known
Just by the way my smile felt
In your fingertips
That my love for you was real.
All I could do was walk the streets
And keep you near.
I loved you, Claire,
But now you’re gone.
Lorenzo died then, in the night.
I was sleeping when he passed away.
I was nowhere near that place, I swear,
Where they said he died.
He was singing a lullaby to me.
I heard beauty in his voice.I wish I could hear his voice again,
And both our voices would sing together.
I wish it was a real voice that I was hearing,
Instead of a track of white noise.I wish this voice I hear was him,
Not his part in a symphony orchestra,
That way a dinosaur’s voice breaks,
But only for a second.Just like the choir song
‘Joy to the World’ from ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’,
I wish I could be hearing and feeling the joy
And singing songs.And I would love to sing a song
‘I Know I Can Sing’ by William Griffin
About the day that I kissed her.
Like a cool breeze on a summer’s day,
It would keep on going on.
Lorenzo was a friend of mine.
We didn’t always see eye to eye,
But he was a pretty good friend to me.Until one day that I noticed
That he’d given me his voice
And now his voice is in my head,
Whispering things about stuff he said
And about some things he did.So maybe I’m doing the same thing.
Maybe I’m doing something bad,
But it feels so good to be the one
Who caused it all to go wrong.Lorenzo betrayed me by fucking my girl.
‘A Debt’ by William Griffin
Claire, you were sweet as apple pie.
You felt all alone and I couldn’t bear to see
That you never opened your eyes.
Lorenzo was the friend of a girl
Who makes me feel bad,
‘Cause she went and turned her back.
His trunk was like his throat,
Where you could see inside
A portal to hell.And she thought he was pretty cute,
‘A Friend Made Me Grow’ by William Griffin
And back then I believed I was in love,
I embraced a kind of craziness.
I guess I owe it to Lorenzo,
Who held a mirror towards me,
And in there I saw a fool.
It was a friend that made me grow.
Lorenzo was a big ol’ triceratops,
A sort of prehistoric water buffalo,
With a God-awful nightmare in his throat.
He went on a dangerous journey to hell,
To let the devil back into our town.So I stabbed the son of a bitch in the neck.
His blood squirted all over the damn place.
I buried the motherfucking bastard.
I thought about Claire, but…But why should I worry about that bitch?
She thinks she can fuck with triceratopses.
She knew she would have been sorry in the end.
I ain’t putting up with it no more.Lorenzo didn’t forgive her.
He killed her too, poor Claire,
Or at least I imagined he did
To forget how she stared at me then.Lorenzo fell in love with her too.
Claire smiled at him so beautifully.
She was a looker, could have caused a war.
To have someone like that to call my wife.Forget the girl, forget the snake.
‘You Were the Reason for All of This’ by William Griffin
I put him in a tomb,
And when the pressure gets too hard,
I’ll open it and let the big bastard out again.
The words on the page,
They are just too plain.
I can’t read.
I have no clue what anything means.The man in the sky has sent me a plan
To prove I am insane,
And I can hear the crash of the sky falling down,
Crushing me into ashes.I can hear the wail of the cries,
But why can I not hear the child of divine creation
Playing with that strange man
Behind the gate?I don’t have the ears to hear his laugh.
‘Let Me In’ by William Griffin
The gate is mine now,
And I don’t know where the hell I am going.
Your name was Lorenzo,
And it’s time to resurrect.When I’m awake, I’m in hell.
When I’m asleep, I’m in hell.Your name was Lorenzo.
You were waiting for a token
To open the portal.When my mother is crying,
I am smiling, don’t you know?
My mother cries and my father smiles.
My mother cries and my father smiles.
My mother cries and my father smiles.
My mother cries and my father smiles.How could he had the responsibility
To guard the portal to hell
With a name like Lorenzo?And in your black hole,
Do you hear the angels’ chorus?When I am asleep, I’m in hell.
When I’m awake, I’m in hell.Your name was Lorenzo.
‘Lazarus’ by William Griffin
No angel nor animal will help you.
What are you waiting for?
The bones in his body
‘Just a Skeleton’ by William Griffin
Showed through his eyes.
In his throat there was a portal to hell,
But the portal to hell inside his throat
Stopped him from being a giant.
Now he lies as a skeleton
On my pillow.
I could sing a lullaby to a dinosaur.
I could sing a lullaby to the triceratops
With the portal to hell in his throat.
I could sing a lullaby to my sixteen years old neighbor,
Who used to be there,
And couldn’t read nor write.Come on my way to play basketball
With the ancient astronauts.
Come on my way to play baseball
With the dinosaurs.
Come on my way to play hockey
With the cyclops.
Come on my way to see the triceratops
With the portal to hell in his throat.You can kiss my hairy, hairy ass
‘Lullabies for the Undeserving World’ by William Griffin
While I’m playing with the dinosaurs.
I’ll kiss yours,
So kiss mine, if you want to.
All I remember of you is you’d look into my eyes
And you’d ask what I wanted,
And I’d say, “I want to go to heaven.”
You were the Devil’s child,
Filled with this hatred for me.
I could feel it, it was no secret,
I could see it in your eyes and in your rage,
With your tears as well as your laughter.
I could see you were truly evil.
The blood running down the side of your beak,
Your hands full of death. Your wrath was terror.
You took my innocence, you stole my childhood.
You contaminated my heart.But you are no longer here,
‘Lorenzo Is No More’ by William Griffin
And I’ll see you in hell.
Everybody hates, yeah, everybody hates.
Except for some idiots, yeah, everybody hates.
They hate the heroes, yeah, everybody hates.
Some say “Hate the rich,” yeah, everybody hates.
Sugar and spice and everything nice, yeah, everybody hates.
They hate the geeks, yeah, everybody hates.
All the old people, yeah, everybody hates.
All the kids, yeah, everybody hates.
I hate the whole fucking thing.The way you must be feeling, baby,
Your daddy was gone too soon,
But I do believe in hell, I do.
In my dreams He tells me all about it.
I hear the angels, how they shout,
And the babies keep on crying,
And the sun is sinking.Well, I know I’m a little weird, yeah,
‘Everybody Hates’ by William Griffin
But I’m harmless, yeah,
I harbor the beginning of the end,
And I’m not gonna last very long.
I am seventeen years old.
‘I Hope I Die Soon’ by William Griffin
I am an animal and a monster.
I live in a mirror,
And that’s my home.
I will hunt you down
And make you suffer.
I’ll tear your heart apart
And then eat it.
Lorenzo could have stayed
A creature of the Earth,
But the fiery heart that burned within him
Could not be so restrained.
He was twisted like a prison cell,
And tortured by the fears in his head.
He hid in his shell so no one could see
His pain and torment.
He was not meant to be like this,
He was meant to be left alone.
He needed help, but no one could help him;
Who knows how to treat a goddamned dinosaur.
They were all supposed to be dead.There’s no hope, there’s no hope.
‘Inside His Shell’ by William Griffin
There’s no hope, there’s no hope.
There’s no hope, there’s no hope.
In his secret diary, Lorenzo wrote,
“Griffin, my body is a fortress of reason.”From the sky full of stars above,
A silver rain pours inside,
Though I’m just seventeen.
Claire’s gone, she’s gone too.It’s so strange, how could he have
‘Why Haven’t I Died yet?’ by William Griffin
Left a girl who wasn’t finished?
I could have told him, but he’d never listened.
Maybe he’ll listen when I’m finished.
I am locked inside my mind.
I am losing the flow of my thoughts,
And I need someone to save me.I was taken to a doctor but he wouldn’t help me.
I need a scientist, a shaman or a preacher.
Tell me how to escape this.
Alone and dumb, lying alone in the night.I am crying and I am crying and I am shaking inside.
I am trembling, I am shaking and I can’t hide my hate.
I am crying, crying, crying, crying and I can’t hide my hate.
I can’t escape this!Well, yes I can!
‘Panic! Panic! Panic!’ by William Griffin
I’m gonna die anyway.
I’m gonna die anyway.
I’m gonna die anyway.
I am ill, this I know;
My heart is sick and my head rotten.
I’m here on earth today
‘Cause it is Saturday,
And all of a sudden I see it clear:
I see that it is too late.All of the things I had wanted to do
Would not have made a difference.
Had them once and never again.
I am sick of wanting it to be different.I’d die to be just where I am,
But in a land of plenty.
There is no fear in this journey.I would die to be like Lorenzo.
‘Extinct Like You’ by William Griffin
At least I think I would.
Everyone must die,
So why don’t I follow him?
I can’t die a virgin.
I wish I had a pistol;
I’d shoot myself
And die a martyr.I’m in love with this girl.
Someday she will look at me
The same as I look at her.I know that my time’s up
And that I’ll die a virgin,
Just like God.Someday I’ll meet her,
But it won’t be today.
I hope that she’s standing
In a black and white photo
With her hand on her chest,
Waiting to hear me whisper,
“I love you.”Someday I’ll marry her
And we’ll be together,
And when we’re old
And frail and lonely,
We’ll talk and she’ll say,
“Tell me again.”“I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you.”But I didn’t love her enough.
‘Die a Virgin’ by William Griffin
I’ll die a virgin.
I know where hell’s fire burns,
In a place where everyone goes.
I know the gates are closed,
But who knows for how long.I feel like hell’s on the inside.
Why was I born to suffer this?
Was I spat here to stand this pain?I know the path is long,
And that I will die someday.
Hell is all around,
‘Cause I’m stuck, trapped
In a hell with no escape.Here’s to Lorenzo, who was a triceratops
‘Where Hell’s Fire Burns’ by William Griffin
With a hell portal in his throat.
Hear it on the hilltops of the east,
Those wondrous portals
Opening to a crystal labyrinth
Inside my head.What then goes into the nothing?
I’ll give you the portals.
They open to a jumbled rose field.
You tell me if it is the cloud of Eden.A great fiery pillar
‘Firefly Bumblebee by William Griffin
Going nowhere and coming from nowhere.
Lorenzo and Claire with Him
As I swing the peephole closed.
Heaven is now on the move.
Lorenzo sat on the hill of flame
And opened the door to hell.
Two souls escaped with wings of fire,
Both headed out of here.Someday I’ll make it to that far shore
Where eagles fly on the smell of earth.
I’ll sit and rest in my blue suit.
The memories will blur and fade to the wind.Lorenzo will sit with his eyes upon me
On the grass ignited with flames,
And as I shove my hand down my throat,
I’ll recall the day he took you from me.I yearn for my soul to burn,
‘Rest in My Blue Suit’ by William Griffin
And your spirit to land upon my hand,
As I wait in the dark.
Will swallowed a cancer.
His asshole was full of pythons.
He swallowed an earthquake,
And the stars fell to their knees.
He swallowed a goddamn volcano,
And threw up an avalanche.
He swallowed it all
And it almost choked him to death.In his throat, a dark-red portal to a land
Where damned souls roam free.
Stretching forever, a bridge through time
To the endless void of the Abyss.In this vast and desolate land of hungry monsters,
He will face His executioner.
Alone Will stands, strapped to a rock.
A vengeful god shoots him with a flamethrower
And burns him alive.He’s burning like a chicken.
His flesh is sizzling.
Burnt wood, burning steak.
He dies.
Hell burns, hell’s walls collapse.
He dies again,
Once, twice, thrice.He dies.
‘William Griffin’s Death Song’ by William Griffin
It’s over.
He’s dead.
Lorenzo was a triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat.
Claire was a self-righteous fifteen years old
That has never been to school.
She did not want to love me,
Although I did the best I could.I am a young man, but my fate
Is clear as a blackboard.
Lorenzo was a triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat.
I would have been the size of a dinosaur
When I grew up.
I cannot change my past,
Don’t want to heave these mistakes.And my final words,
Written before my tragic death,
Are:Well, shit.
‘Farewell, My Friends’ by William Griffin
I’m seventeen,
And I loved her,
So there’s that.
William got no answer from Claire Javernick before he died. Will therefore died a miserable teenage boy. He had a beautiful mom, a wonderful sister, and a step-father who didn’t love him as much as he should have. But in the end William lost his two friends.
Before Claire Javernick died in a car crash on December 14, 2019, she wrote a poem about William, which she never titled.
I was walking in the snow
With a boy named William.
He was my neighbor in our street.
He was born on the 6th of May.
One night he called me crying.
He was only fourteen years old.I felt scared,
And never so alone.
I looked at the sky for an answer.
His sister took away his songs.
I’ll never forget him,
And I’ll never forget him,
And I’ll never forget him.
Claire also wrote about some tree which is located in a forest in Vermont.
William Griffin died on April 6, 2009. His story remains unfinished, and his lyrics continue to be discussed on William Griffin’s official website, which is run by his sister.
It was a dark night for Triceratops. Nobody around him lightened the mood. As he walked, he found himself surrounded by horrible birds, alive and dead. He was worried about finding a place to sleep, because all the good spots were taken. He also needed to eat if only to fill an emptiness in his throat that he hadn’t felt before.
“Well, what am I to do?” Lorenzo asked for input to the sky.
He disliked when the guy in the sky remained silent. For some reason He thought that He could get away with that.
But then God said to him, “Look at your right side.”
The triceratops looked at his right flank, which had never seemed so red. A warmth was rising from his legs. He felt he was going crazy.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side in a field of sleeping sheep, all of them facing the sky and snoring. Everything was getting redder and redder. Then the sound of snoring stopped and even the wind got quiet.
Lorenzo looked around the field until he spotted some people with their bodies covered in red. They were walking towards the group of sleeping sheep, and one of the people was staring at the triceratops. The next thing Lorenzo knew, he was flying along with the group of red men. He soared above the rolling hills, but he wasn’t enjoying it, because he thought he was going to die.
“That’s great,” he thought. “All this redness and pain, just to die by getting covered in sheep crap.”
The more he thought about dying, the more it scared him, because he was quite sure that he would end up in hell. The triceratops cried a little.
Some of the sheep got up and looked at the triceratops and his red eyes, and beautiful red hair, and beautiful red skin.
The triceratops continued flying around and around and around, until he heard the sound of a human voice. It sounded a little like his friend William Griffin, but different. Lorenzo landed on a large rock. The sheep had all gathered around a human being, and they were staring with sad, worried faces.
Lorenzo walked over to the sheep. He wanted to say something, but his throat hurt so bad that he could barely speak, and he knew that if he did speak, it would sound as if he were dying.
Then the human being said, “I have been given the gift of eternal life. I have been given the gift of seeing and experiencing the world. I have been given the gift of being surrounded by living things that love me and care about me.”
The human being lay down, and the sheep started running around him. Then he said, “I was a human once, until I was judged and separated from God, and because I was considered unworthy, I was sent to be in the place of living things, and I am to be around them to teach them about God, and how to become more like God, and live a godly life. And I am to help them find their way back home, back to God. And when they die, they are not supposed to become dead, so that there is no fear of death. They are supposed to be pure and innocent, so that they can face God without fear of condemnation.”
The triceratops became concerned, and he said, “I am a triceratops, and I am innocent and pure, and I have never lived among sheep.” He gave it more thought. “I can understand being around sheep, but living among them? I am not innocent and pure like them, so I will be judged, condemned and sent to hell. How could they be pure and innocent if they are like me?”
And then he remembered what he knew about God, and he felt sorry for the people that they will judge and condemn, because they will have no one to help them when they die. And he thought about his friend, who died young, and who was, like him, judged and condemned and sent to hell. And he thought about his loved one, who can’t read nor write, who is stuck with animals, because no one has ever shown her that she is important to God. And he remembered the times that he would try to tell his friend William Griffin what he was told to teach, and how Lorenzo himself never understood a single thing that he was told to teach. And he realized that no matter what, he had a choice, and that this would never happen again.
“I will choose to love God. I will choose to live among sheep. I will choose to be in the place of living things. And I will choose to help them know God and to live a godly life, and if I fail and I go to hell, I have no problem with that, because I have chosen to love God and live among sheep. And because of the choice I have made, I will never be sent to hell, and because of the choice I have made, I will know eternal life, because I have chosen to love God, and to live among sheep. And because of the choice I have made, I am no longer the same person I was when I started.”
The triceratops started walking away from the group of sheep, and he told himself that he would choose to love God and live among sheep, and he would help them find their way back home, and he would make a place for himself where he would always be with the sheep. And he told himself that when he died, he would be purified, because he had chosen to love God, and he would be given the gift of being around sheep, and he would be purified, because he had chosen to live among sheep.
The group of sheep that had started walking with Triceratops followed him as he made his way back to the place where he and his friend, who had died, had stayed. And the place where he and his friend had stayed was back in the world of the living, the world of beauty and darkness, where there is light and dark, sunshine and shadow.
THE END
Odes to My Triceratops, Pt. 2 (Poetry)
Claire got a little lonely on the night of September 20th, 2007, when a letter written by her mother on a yellow post-it jumped out of her mailbox onto the lawn, causing Claire to run out of her house without her shoes on. As mentioned, the letter was from her mother, Mary, who had accidentally fallen down a well years ago. However, she was now standing in Claire’s lawn. The girl was the only person that could see her mother. Mary had planned for her daughter to die a slow, painful death. She shot a bullet into Claire’s heart, but the heart was already broken, which caused the bullet to break instead.
Nobody would help Claire, so she decided to get a rifle, a bow and arrows, and a dildo. She ended up having sex with her rifle, then killing a turtle she was hunting with her dildo, after she failed to kill a variety of small animals.
Claire never revealed that the yellow post-it said that her parents would try to join her in Hell. When she read that, she immediately ran back home to get her sledgehammer. She was greeted by her deceased father and mother, who were holding hands. Claire wanted to smash their heads together, but then William knocked on her door. He invited her to come along with the triceratops to a party at their home.
“Plan For a Renegade” by William Griffin
First things first, I wanna talk to you about
Things like war, motherhood, fatherhood, and fatherhood.
Anyway, there’s only a verse about my friend.
See, Lorenzo has a mission that his parents planned:
Gotta shoot a renegade deinonychus, he’s a chupacabra.
Hell’s Gate-a-ray, his parents are sending him down to hell.
“Okay, this is going to sound too crazy.
Hell’s Gate-a-ray, ole-yeter. Uh-unh.”
Lorenzo asks, “What was that, Gramps?”
“Shut up, you son-of-a-gun. Next, I’m tellin’ you the truth,
We’re gonna build a missile out of your heart, ’cause, um,
You, uh, you ain’t, uh, been an angel, but, you know,
You’ll repent and, uh, uh, don’t let the devil tempt you, boy.
An old fart like me, I know.”
“Strings and Gunpowder” by William Griffin
Grab your guitar!
Grab your gun!
Grab your life
And have fun!
Wake up at night and sing a song
Under your friend’s bedroom window.
Hey, Lorenzo! Lorenzo!
Plan to sleep all night long?
(“Shut up, asshole!”)
Yeah! It’s good to be back!
It’s good to be back!
La-la-la-lee
La-la-la-way,
Yay-eh!
Put your fingers on the strings,
Put a bullet in the chamber.
Boom boom boom!
Bang bang bang!
Hit ’em right in the heart!
“Prehistoric Punk” by William Griffin
Lorenzo is one ugly son-of-a-bitch.
His eyeballs are poison green.
With those claws, scales, and horns,
He’s like the truest form of punk.
Lorenzo the triceratops
Carries a tiny soul inside his skull.
That goddamn freak walks around
Like he could topple city blocks.
He’s got the guts of a machine gun,
And a portal to hell inside his throat.
Sing something, Lorenzo!
Rawr, rawr, ra-rawr!
Grr, grr, gr-grawr!
Rooo, rooo, ra-ra-roo!
Rawr, RAWR, RAAAAWR!
“Crap” by William Griffin
This crap is mine, and I am proud.
I’m gonna keep on singing, singing, singing.
I’m gonna keep on singing my crappy song,
And nobody can stop me.
It’s my own little song
That I’ve made myself,
And I’ll sing it any day
If I’m not getting beat up.
I’m gonna keep on singing, singing, singing.
I’m gonna keep on singing my crappy song.
I will sing forever and ever and ever,
Or until the day I die.
“Cruisin’ While Horny” by William Griffin
My friend Lorenzo is a triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat.
He would drive around for hours on end,
Trying to find some chicks.
Where did you get that car?
I don’t even have one.
What the hell are you doing, Lorenzo?
What the hell are you doing, Lorenzo?
Every day he’s doing this.
Dude, I’m worried about him.
This whole thing is getting out of hand.
When I told Lorenzo I was scared for him,
He shrugged his shoulders and said, “My bad.”
“Lorenzo 2.0” by William Griffin
Lorenzo the triceratops from space,
Born and raised in a cave.
His parents named him “the Obliterator,”
For that’s what he does best,
But they called him “Lorenzo” for short.
He’s not your average triceratops:
He doesn’t eat plants.
He eats the souls of the dead.
Lorenzo: update version 2.0.
New features include:
More soul-eating capacity.
Greater evil force.
Dark matter bazooka.
Enhanced chupacabras.
Fixes include:
Fixed flaming diarrhea bug.
Dating’s not his strong suit, though.
When Lorenzo dated that allosaurus,
He lost his mind and had to leave.
A relationship doomed from the start.
Lorenzo’s not afraid of anything.
When he heard the allosaurus was after him,
He said, “Bring that bitch over here!
I’ll smash her skull with a crowbar!”
“Father God” by William Griffin
My mom’s the sweetest flower,
But she married a prick.
Mom and stepdad drink together.
The whiskey flows through their veins
While they sing old songs
About suffering and death.
Father God
Looks down upon us.
His teeth are knives.
His heart is cold.
He kicks the poor,
And breaks the sick.
His feet stink,
So does his dick.
Fuck that big asshole up in the sky
Who wants us to love our father,
My dead dad’s replacement,
Who’s so generous with his fists.
Are you proud of what you’ve done?
“Cancer and Virgins” by William Griffin
Our souls are connected
To our bones and our flesh,
But to me Claire could only exist
On the surface.
Lorenzo is half metal
And half stone.
He’s like a newly launched gunship.
On the inside we’re alike:
Cancer and virgins.
But because he is a killer,
Lorenzo is a strange boy.
My sister has an iron fist,
And keeps screaming in envy.
We’re more the same than we are different.
I hate to touch a hand that’s metallic,
She hates to kiss a mouth that’s metal.
But deep down we’re the same:
We are born to murder.
“The Hair on Her Arms” by William Griffin
Claire, I love the way you cry,
And the tears that fill your eyes.
Every time you get close to me, I feel warm.
I dream about the hair on your arms.
You two are my best friends:
Lorenzo and Claire,
A triceratops and a blind girl.
My inspiration for most songs I write.
In these mountains, everything is cold.
What was left behind has turned to dust.
I find myself walking around town in the dark,
Just to know that I’m alive.
* * *
Although the relationship between the trio of friends was becoming strained, Claire and William grew closer to the extent that he eagerly transcribed the poems to which she gave birth.
* * *
“To Old America” by Claire Javernick
This boy can keep me up to date
And help me fix what’s wrong.
I’ll take him to old America.
He’ll show me the way.
This boy can keep me up to date.
His face speaks of new understanding,
And it’s my spirit that he surrounds.
I think I could live in his love.
“Supernova Snack” by William Griffin
If I got hungry in the forest, Claire,
Would ya give me some of your blood?
If I fell in the river and got drenched,
Would ya lick me dry?
You’ve got an ass that could put out the flames
Of a raging forest fire.
(By which I mean your ass is very nice.)
Claire, you’re a fucking snack!
Everything you say makes me hard.
What should I do, girl?
Should I stick my nose in your arm, or what?
The only thing better than dying in battle
Is to get blown up by a meteor,
Or eaten by a carnosaur,
Then get fucked by you.
Claire, if you’re hungry,
Eat my eyes.
If you’re cold,
Light my bones on fire.
The stars will go out,
The planets break apart,
But for now, I’ll be feasting
On my supernova snack.
“Marmalade Sun” by William Griffin
A bird is building a nest in my mind.
Butterflies flutter around in my mouth.
There’s something living in my nose.
(You know those bioluminescent creatures that live in the black depths?
That’s what I have swimming in my guts.)
You and I, my ginger beam,
We were born from dinosaur blood
And that marmalade sun.
My head is round and rounder.
I don’t eat, I live on laughter.
No matter what, we’re going to die,
So we might as well enjoy the ride.
“Eyes Closed” by William Griffin
I’ll never forget the first time we met,
‘Cause something in your eyes
Made me want to try to touch your soul.
It’s such a shame how your eyes are always closed.
There’s a place that’s hidden deep inside your soul,
And if you knew the way to find it,
We could be lost in love forever.
When we find that, then we’ll find what’s within,
And everything that we’re searching for
Will come true like the stars in the sky
And the places on the ground.
“Lorenzo, No” by William Griffin
Lorenzo, no.
I could tell you so many things,
But you’re never gonna hear them.
So go back to your cave
And think on life,
And you’ll find it’s so much better
Than what you think.
“Monster With a Hellmouth” by William Griffin
My friend doesn’t just have a hellmouth:
He also has a monster head
Made of chromium steel.
Whenever Lorenzo sings a song,
He sounds terrifying and murderous.
His hellmouth gushes dark smoke
While all sorts of horrors pour out.
(This does happen a lot.)
He’s a monster with a hellmouth;
I don’t know what to tell you.
Lorenzo ain’t afraid of ghosts or leprechauns.
If you run into him in a dark forest,
He’ll impale you on his horns,
And make a wish with your bones.
He’s also very well endowed:
It looks like a bazooka.
His seed comes out of his mouth
While his bazooka throbs.
(I’m not sure what nature intended
With that reproductive system.)
When I close my eyes, I still see it.
“Hold in There, Lorenzo” by William Griffin
Tumble through the cracks of this shithole town.
A boy and his fucking dinosaur.
You wear your horns like crowns
While I just wear my skin.
I see myself in you tonight, Lorenzo.
You’re out in the sun’s fucking bright light.
Drinking time (fuck yeah).
You’re headed for the bottom.
You’re out there eating your dick.
You’re full of shit,
All fucked-up inside.
Your gonads hold the world in place.
You know we’re all going to die.
“Don’t Wanna Be the One” by William Griffin
Just look at how you’ve changed.
You don’t even look like yourself any more.
Clothes are hanging on you,
Your hair is a mess.
It looks like something’s wrong with you.
Lorenzo.
I don’t wanna be the one
To tell you the truth,
But I think that I should be the one
To tell you the truth.
I don’t like the way you’re acting.
Oh Lord, please help me.
So it’s true what they say.
I love you, and I know you care for me.
Just tell me why you always treat me bad.
I can’t stand you any more,
And I really don’t think that it’s fair.
I don’t like the way you’re acting.
Oh Lord, please help me.
So it’s true what they say.
I don’t wanna be the one
To tell you the truth,
But I think that I should be the one
To tell you the truth.
“Odd Paradox” by William Griffin
We’re losing control.
Somehow I have to make it stop.
As far as I’m concerned,
I’ve got myself a stinker.
I’m obsessed,
And nothing I do
Seems to please him.
He feels that I hate him,
And he’s right, so
Could I really blame him?
It’s an odd paradox.
The world’s a funny place.
I guess he’d prefer
If I was killed
Right here and now.
That seems to me
Extremely ungrateful,
But that’s just the way it is.
“The Same as It Is Now” by William Griffin
Don’t shut the portal to hell,
Don’t close the portal to hell.
Don’t be afraid of what I tell you,
Or you’ll end up down that well.
It will be dark and it will be cold,
And it will be you.
No! It’ll be the same as it is now,
Except with a lot of kids singing songs
About things that go boom.
“Into Hell and Out Again” by William Griffin
You, my friend, will disappear into hell,
So throw away your cigarettes,
Your scarlet lady and your tin box,
‘Cause you have a better life ahead.
It’s just the world we live in:
There’s no one to lead us.
The highway’s packed with assholes,
All of them worse than the last.
Forget the girls who betrayed you,
Every lie that brought you pain.
We should sit back and laugh,
For this life will go away.
You, my friend, will have to cross this stream,
Wading in the water with your arms wide open,
Feeling for each stone with your toes.
Throw away your scarlet lady,
And your cigarettes too.
This fucking world’s a garbage dump,
But not your heart, for that is home.
“Afraid of His Dick” by Claire Javernick
Dude, dude,
Try not fuck with him, ’cause he’s a goddamned
Mammoth triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat,
And a dick like a spear.
He won’t let you go, and he will follow you
All the way to the end of your life,
But in the meantime he won’t let you die,
‘Cause he knows a lot of stuff about science.
He wears a shell with a god inside.
I swear, he won’t let me die.
He wants to kiss my vagina,
But he hates the taste of petroleum.
When he bites me,
He comes off as murderous,
But I can never alert the authorities,
‘Cause I can’t read nor write,
And that’s just embarrassing.
Dude, can I tell you something?
If I were to kill him,
You could write about the slaughter,
And then we could kiss,
And drink some wine
And eat some tacos
And watch a movie.
“Cretaceous Razor” by Claire Javernick
Somewhere at the end of the black and blue,
A yellow rose falls from the sky.
Lorenzo’s throat is stuffed with joy and hope.
His heart is a lighthouse in the dark.
His love is a fast-flowing fountain of thought.
It’s a hell of a way to live and love,
It’s the difference between life and death,
To know the feeling of a dino’s claws.
He’ll shred you to the size of a cactus.
Some may find the signs of wisdom.
Lorenzo can’t understand anything from them,
But his warm and kind stories
May make you love life more than death.
A razor from the Cretaceous that cuts the sun.
He’ll make your hat more than seven feet tall.
The curve of his horns is erotic.
He’s an angel in the blackest of hells.
“Girl With a Limp” by William Griffin
Lorenzo’s a dinosaur with a triceratops brain.
If you know his liver, then you know his scrotum.
If you don’t know his liver, then you know his scrotum.
Those balls are hard to miss.
If you asked him where he got his good looks,
He’d say, “A vat of acid.”
If you asked him how to get his abs,
He’d say, “Stick a saw blade in your guts.”
If you asked him where he lives,
He’d say, “Under your bed.”
If you asked him how to find true love,
He’d say, “Open the gates of hell!”
If you asked Lorenzo where he was going,
He’d look at you like you had three heads.
If you told him where he was going,
He’d call you a liar.
Lorenzo would get drunk and fuck my girl.
He kicked her while having sex.
She’s a charming sixteen
Going on twenty-four.
Her eyes are milk,
And she walks with a limp.
“No Entiendo” by William Griffin
His name’s Lorenzo. I think it sounds like a brand.
I was just a kid when I first heard the wailing
That howls out from the depths of his throat.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay.
No entiendo!
Hey, no entiendo.
Yo no entiendo.
Lorenzo takes me by the arm.
“Se llama amor, pero no lo entenderías.”
He runs toward our school with a bomb
That blows up the town and my home.
Necesito una sombrilla.
Hoy es luna de sangre!
“Love Thy Tyrannosaurus” by William Griffin
Tyrannosaurus Rex,
Tyrant lizard king.
He runs with his brothers and sisters
Through the thick jungle brush.
He was born under the shadow
Of a thousand lightning bolts.
Love thy tyrannosaurus,
But keep thy distance:
He will kill thee,
And eat thy guts.
He’s just a vicious dude
In a giant reptile suit,
And we’re one and the same.
“When the Fence is Gone” by William Griffin
The actual lady, Claire,
Is in love with the beast.
She’s trapped in his throat,
Bound by a curse.
We’re the sheep that go out to pasture,
The livestock in a fenced field.
You’re the shepherd of a foolish flock,
Feeding on our blood and souls.
I wish I could pretend
That you never existed,
But now I will pretend
That I care for you.
The day will come
When the fence is gone,
And you will be the one
Left all alone.
Beast of the old ways.
“Hell Is This Way” by William Griffin
Oh Lorenzo, what can I say?
I never liked you when we were kids.
You have a face that’s a million years old.
The portal to hell has swung open.
I am Triceratops, and my wife is Spartacus.
Handsome or ugly, what does it matter?
My wife gives her life away for Triceratops.
Hell is this way.
Hell is this way.
Hell is this way, triceratops.
A world far below this one,
Where darkness never ends.
Your blood’s the best of wines.
“Bitter Bites” by William Griffin
And after all the lies he told,
The rocks he threw at me,
That dino got what he deserved.
I saw tears in his eyes.
He will never betray me again,
That bloody demon.
To satisfy a weird urge,
I cut up some of his flesh,
And ate it.
How sick is that.
“The Devil Inside My Throat” by William Griffin
I met this girl who wouldn’t give a fuck.
One day she led me to her bedroom.
Today I couldn’t look her in the eyes,
Even though she’s only ever seen black.
Her scent is a morning in early fall,
And her voice soft and pleasant,
Like a mother who wouldn’t abandon you,
Or a father who would never hurt you.
It’s all gone.
The devil lives inside my throat.
I hear his chortling every night.
Sometimes he burns my clothes.
He also pees on my bed.
Name’s Lorenzo. I’m a triceratops.
I have a portal inside my throat.
When I open it, smoke comes out
From the bowels of hell.
I see the darkness within me.
I’ve always known it was there.
Odes to My Triceratops, Pt. 1 (Poetry)
As the boy’s loved ones feared, on April 8, 2009 the Santa Cruz County Coroner ruled the 17-year-old’s death a suicide. His name, William Griffin, didn’t mean anything yet to the public at large.
On April 16, 2009, at the funeral in Watsonville, William Griffin’s parents Lisa and Ken welcomed two strange new visitors to their family’s life: the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog along with his wife Angela. Many have seen this as a sign of fate, but the Griffins did not. And a few days later, on April 21, 2009, William’s mother Lisa was brutally murdered.
William Griffin lived in a rough inner-city suburb in Grand Rapids, MI. When he was ten he got accidentally sucked into a TV during the sitcom called ‘Garfield’. The episode in question featured a new character, the triceratops named Lorenzo (triceratops being a large, sharp-toothed, three-horned dinosaur). William therefore met not only the major characters of the ‘Garfield’ series, but also the aforementioned triceratops named Lorenzo, who would end up exiting the TV along with the boy and being welcomed into his family. Out of respect for William Griffin’s passing, the episode where Lorenzo the triceratops was introduced didn’t air until about a year after William died.
The surviving family wished to leave behind painful memories, but as they hurried to move, they discovered William’s treasure trove of poems and cassette tapes. William’s step-father Ken made them available to the public. It didn’t take long for the lives of not only Will, but also his neighbor Claire Javernick and William’s best friend, the triceratops named Lorenzo, to come into focus as they were featured in documentaries.
The following texts were composed by a fourteen years old William, some as lyrics for his songs, others as simple poems, or both.
“Lorenzo” by William Griffin
He has a small black mouth
Like a bottom.
His skin is brown
Like a beet.
His horns are round
Like a pepperoni pizza.
He’s just twelve.
He’s just eleven.
He’s just my best friend,
My favorite friend.
He’s just twelve.
He’s just eleven.
But he’s also twelve.
His horns are round
Like a pepperoni pizza,
And they grow in the middle,
And they’re as big as cans.
They’re aching for a fight.
Fuck yeah!
“Lemonade and Willies” by William Griffin
Gather ’round and hear my tale
Of horns, scales, and a tail.
My best pal, he’s a damn dinosaur:
A trike, a tricera-you-know.
Lorenzo is so proud and tall.
He walked by me at the school gate.
He pointed at me and said,
“I am a triceratops. I am so cool!”
A ponopodon is what he found inside his throat.
He swallowed it and out came light.
He gave me another ponopodon and said, “Have a bite!”,
But the ponopodon was horrible,
And it bit me,
And gave me the willies.
“Tricera Troubadour” by William Griffin
Hey, how did that tune go?
Oh, yeah…
Doo doo doo doo,
Doo doo doo,
Do dodo, dododo, dododododo,
Doododo,
Duh, duh, duh
I walk behind Lorenzo in the library,
Where he devours dinosaur books
By chewing them up.
“Come here and have a snack!”
Lorenzo has six letters in his name.
He uses Google to translate Chinese,
And sings every song to the tune of…
Doo doo doo doo,
Doo doo doo,
Do dodo, dododo, dododododo,
Doododo,
Duh, duh, duh (rrrOOOOAAARRrr!)
Tri-tri-tricera-troubadour,
Tri-tri-tricera-too,
(duh, duh, duh)
Tri-tri-troubadour.
“If I find one penny on the floor
And my best pal finds two,
I can share it with him
And we’ll have four!”
“Lorenzo, that’s not how math works!”
“Playground of the Prehistoric” by William Griffin
Remember the Stegosaurus, with those plates and spikes?
Can’t forget the velociraptor.
What about the Brachiosaurus? Imagine how tall it was.
Oh, and the mighty T-rex.
They’re still out there, somewhere.
Lorenzo eats clams and lobsters,
Crocodiles and lions.
He’s eating me to bits.
He’s eating me.
We’ll all slide
down his throat
Into the portal
to hell.
Swing, swing, swing away!
Don’t give a damn what other people say!
Swing, swing, swing away!
(In a playground of the prehistoric)
Don’t give a damn what other people say!
(Out there somewhere)
Swing, swing, swing away!
(Dinosaurs still live)
Don’t give a damn what other people say!
(And play hide-and-seek)
“Dinosaur Carnival” by William Griffin
A dinosaur carnival
Is coming to town!
Who is excited?
I am excited!
The merry-go-round spins
On the backs of ankylosauri.
The roller coaster cars are draped
Upon the necks of brontosauri.
There will be duck-hunting booths,
But I don’t think they use rubber targets.
I hear there’ll be an ice cream stand
Serving frogs and slugs.
Lorenzo is the star attraction,
With his tail, horns and scales,
And the portal to hell inside his throat
Which makes his voice extra loud.
The show’s over.
The carnival is done.
But the dinosaurs remain,
And they are ravenous.
“Claire” by William Griffin
In front of my house
There’s a girl
Who can’t see
What I do.
Her hair is fire.
Her eyes are milk.
She’s as blind as the world.
I bet
She would have liked
To see
The stars.
“Tricera Girl” by William Griffin
Hey, Tricera girl!
You don’t seem mean.
What’s your name?
What’s your age?
How come you exist?
Is that a smile?
That’s a nice tail.
That’s a nice ass.
And that’s the nicest head
In all the land.
My, my, my.
Oh, my Tricera girl,
Where have you been?
My Tricera girl,
How about we go together
To the bakery?
I will help you be happy,
I will help you be brave,
I will help you enjoy
Everything you have.
Tricera-trip, tricera-trops,
Tricera-tricks, tricera-triple flips,
Tricera-tope, tricera-topade,
Come dance with me!
Where have
You been
All my
Life?
“Better Dead Than Blind” by William Griffin
My friend’s name is Lorenzo.
He’s a three-headed triceratops
With a portal to hell inside his throat.
When I’d sit around and play,
I’d play my guitar,
And he’d come over and sit down by me
To hear me sing a song.
My neighbor she is a blind girl,
And she can’t read nor write.
We are just like friends.
We’d sit on her front porch and talk.
While I sat on her front porch and talked,
She said her name was Claire,
And she said her daddy and mommy died,
And she said she’d rather be dead than blind.
Then she went into her house.
I said, what was that?
Then she came out and asked me
If I’d like to go home with her.
I said, what the hell?
I said, what was that?
She said her daddy and mommy died.
She went in and closed her door.
I said, what the hell?
I said, what was that?
She said her daddy and mommy died.
She went in and closed her door,
Closed her door.
“I’m Cactus” by William Griffin
My cactus is fed the fuck up
‘Cause it hasn’t had water all week.
Its body is covered with spines,
So I ain’t gonna go near it
And get my hands stuck full o’ pins.
If I were the official supervisor of this plant,
I’d have to resign.
My cactus is green with yellow stripes,
The same color as the planet Saturn,
But the planet Saturn
Ain’t got no spines.
My cactus doesn’t like to complain,
So it keeps its mouth shut tight.
I’m a prick, a prick, a prickly prick,
For not watering that thing.
I got my hand stuck in the cactus again.
Ow, damn it! It hurts so bad!
Ow! Ow! Ow!
Ow! Damn! Fuck!
AAAAWWWW!
I’m bleeding!
“Who Even Knows What Girls Want?” by William Griffin
Who even knows what girls like?
I’m a tricera-dude.
Lorenzo, you’re a dude too.
So I guess we’ll never know.
Who even knows what girls like?
Maybe they like trains or trucks.
Maybe they like rocks.
Maybe they like dirt.
I have a hole in my jeans.
Maybe Claire likes holes.
I asked Lorenzo, “Let’s pretend you’re a girl.”
Lorenzo said, “Hell no.”
I asked, “Why not?”
Lorenzo roared loudly in my ear.
That hurt.
At dinner, I slipped into a nightmare
Where the steak was screaming,
“Who even knows what girls like?!”
Ooh-wee, ooh-wee, la-la-la-lee
Ooh-wee, ooh-wee
Claire, do you like stuffed animals?
“I like stuffed animals. They’re cute.”
Do you like flowers?
“Yes, they remind me there’s beauty in the world.”
Do you like dirt?
“Uh… I don’t.”
Alright then.
“Claire With a C” by William Griffin
Me and my friend Lorenzo left on a motorbike
Toward the woods of the North.
We lived in a house
Filled with all the old books.
Claire (Claire with a C) lives next door.
Lorenzo (who’s a triceratops) with his green eyes,
Purple skin and parrot-red hair.
I’m William, fourteen years old.
I can read and write, I’m terrified of my sister
(We have the same mother, our father is deceased).
Claire (with a C) she can’t read and she can’t write.
I don’t think she knows how to shave.
Lorenzo (who’s a triceratops) takes care of our parents.
Claire (Claire with a C) never comes to our house.
She eats everything in her mama’s pantry.
Lorenzo (who’s a triceratops) drinks blood to eat.
We watch Stephen King movies every Saturday
On our projector screen.
Claire reads scary stories to me,
Or she’s making them up because she can’t read.
I found out Claire is a vampire.
I couldn’t care less.
“Part Goldfish” by William Griffin
She must’ve been part goldfish and part salt lick,
Because she could swallow letters and numbers.
My friends told me they had seen her pet goldfish grow
Just six inches long. It could read and write.
She carried a paperback to school in her backpack.
The letters and numbers had traveled through her mouth.
Other kids wondered why she couldn’t read and write,
Even though her eyes were clearly dead.
She would just say that’s alright to all of her friends,
‘Cause I can read and write. That’s my only friend.
Claire is gone and I miss my beloved friend,
Because she has her eyes open just for me.
“Let Me Eat Your Stuff” by William Griffin
Claire, so beautiful,
With such a sweet smile,
Even at 14.
She’s in love with me.
We spend every minute
Like lovers do.
She takes me to a place
Where no one can see us.
I saw her first!
It was last Thursday
In my backyard,
When I was doing chores,
And I saw my friend Claire,
For she was standing there.
She was so beautiful.
Such a beautiful smile,
And I just couldn’t resist.
She made me this toast
With strawberry jam and butter,
And made me some cookies too,
The sweetest I’ve ever had.
I ate all of her food,
Even her share.
I watched as her eyes
Lit up like a candle.
“Fairy Tale Too Real to Be” by William Griffin
Claire is Claire is Claire.
She walks and talks and wears a dress.
Claire’s a fourteen years old
Fairy tale too real to be.
Lorenzo is Lorenzo is Lorenzo,
With a portal to hell inside his throat.
Lorenzo is the Devil’s spawn,
Is the beast that does not eat.
It’s hard to describe Lorenzo.
What a stunning day that was,
The day Lorenzo came to us,
Came to us from God above.
Lorenzo is sweet and sappy,
Has a voice that chimes like the bells.
Lorenzo’s tongue is sweet like honey.
Lorenzo lives on old tobacco leaves.
“Eat Your Friends” by William Griffin
Those dinos from the ancient past,
They’re extinct
They’re dead.
Long gone, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
How much would it hurt
If both of them left me behind?
Lorenzo could fall into a tar pit,
Claire end up frozen in ice.
Eat your friends, don’t you wait.
Chew through the skin,
Chew through the hair.
Don’t let the chance escape.
Hold onto your friends
With teeth and nails.
“I Am Your Stegosaur” by William Griffin
I am a stegosaur and so is you.
A piece of me in every creature,
Like you and him and all the people.
We all have a heartbeat
And a soul inside.
We like you, Claire.
And since we’re here we may as well be glad
And say a prayer, for just because you’re blind,
You don’t have to be stuck in a place
Where there’s nothing to see.
There’s lots of beautiful things in the world,
Lots of beautiful people.
You’re one of them.
When the sun comes out,
The grass shakes off its dander.
When it rains, the clouds roll in and out.
The mountains and the rivers,
The sky and the earth,
The stars and the planets,
One big beautiful living organism.
Beauty never dies.
We will never see each other die.
The color’s gone from your eyes,
But not from your heart.
“For Claire, Who Can’t Read” by William Griffin
You know, you’re the special one,
The one who took a gander.
You’re a girl that’s cute,
And you’re the love of my life.
She’s just fourteen years old,
And the words we write together,
That I write I mean,
Because she can’t read,
Are nothing but lies.
She’s seen the future,
And the past is past.
I said to her, “Don’t forget your roots,”
Because I learned you gotta grow.
So you ain’t no bigger than a matchstick,
But you still got your roots.
A girl, she’s got a good heart.
She’s just fourteen years old,
And the words we write together,
That I write I mean,
Because she can’t read,
Are nothing but lies.
You know you’re the special one,
The one who took a gander.
You’re a girl that’s cute,
And you’re the love of my life.
She’s just fourteen years old,
And the words we write together,
That I write I mean,
Because she can’t read,
Are nothing but lies.
And we only make each other up.
Never gonna be the truth.
So you know that you’re the special one,
The one who took a gander,
You’re the love of my life.
“Ceratopsy” by William Griffin
Ceratopsy, ceratopsy.
(Horns, horns!)
Claire, Claire.
(She’s got horns!)
I love my little Ceratopsian.
Time for a ceratopsy!
In my heart, I want to eat her.
I will eat her hands, her feet,
Her ears, her hair, her skin,
And those boobs like little moons.
I will swallow her
And keep her
Forever safe
Inside me.
Yeah, uh, um, okay, so, I’m a boy,
And I like you, and you’re a, um…
You have, er, eyes, and you’re blind,
Uh, and, um, and Lorenzo’s a dinosaur,
And y’know, um, you’re very pretty…
Ceratopsis spreads inside me,
Eating me, eating me, eating me.
“Ponopodon Blues” by William Griffin
Lorenzo can light cigarettes
With the fire from his throat.
He went through every stage in hell.
The devil became his buddy and said,
“You have suffered enough.”
Then returned Lorenzo to Earth
With ponopodons in his throat.
Alarm (alarm)
Callers (callers)
What the fuck am I even doing.
As if these songs of mine
Would ever go anywhere,
No matter how hard I try.
Get on a stage in that outside world?
I don’t even want to know what’s out there!
I’ve got the Ponopodon Blues.
I’ve got the Ponopodon Blues (what can I do?).
Oh baby, I’ve got the Ponopodon Blues,
For loving too hard.
There’s also a nasty ponopodon stench
Coming from my pants.
I don’t give a fuck, no sirree!
Can’t give a fuck anymore.
Just let the shit pour out.
Give me a bucket.
“No Magic Potion” by William Griffin
Triceratops, I love you more than anything
(But I’m the only one who sees your white behind).
All the girls adore you,
And they want to touch you.
Claire, if you want to, you can have me,
For I’m not ashamed.
I hope you’re not ashamed.
Triceratops, there’s no magic potion
To chase off
Those lonely feelings.
Claire, there’s no such thing as eternal bliss
Or a hell of aces,
Only eternal regrets.
“Wait About a Month for Love” by William Griffin
It’s not like my heart has ever been full,
In all my life,
Until I met your two eyes.
It’s a matter of fact that I’d like to have you,
And that I’d take any length of time,
I’d take it all if it means,
I can lay my head on your breasts.
But what would I think, if you should tell me
That you’d prefer if I didn’t come at all.
Can I tell you how scared I was, how scared I’ve been,
Every time I thought about you.
My step-father told me don’t play around,
Go for what’s worth having.
He said when a man has a real woman,
He’s got to wait a while.
He said it was about a month.
I asked my step-father, what do I owe to you.
He said the man who says I ought to settle for I love you
Is the man who can’t make me quit.
I asked my step-father, what am I missing.
He said, there is a place where the most evil men are,
And they just laugh at us down here on earth.
And what’s going on in heaven, I don’t know.
“Helpless and Pure” by William Griffin
Claire’s a girl so helpless.
Claire is blind.
Claire’s a girl so pure.
Claire is blind.
This love won’t end in pain.
“Please, Play With My Guitar” by William Griffin
Claire’s really a sweetheart,
As pretty as a picture.
She just doesn’t wanna get wet,
But wait and see.
She’s a human,
But what’s behind
That painted
Fake face.
If Claire had eyes,
She would look into mine.
I’d let her see.
I’ll teach her to read and write,
I’ll teach her how to play,
With my guitar.
This is from William’s diary:
So I look at Lorenzo and I’m just mad ’cause he’s gross. All I know is that he has the Mark of the Beast inside his throat. When he laughs it’s rancid and crumbly and when he cries it’s just creepy. Lorenzo’s ugly and he makes me afraid. When he’s with me, he uses his fist as a piano. I try to pretend that I don’t care when he stares at me like that. Deep down inside, I wish that he would leave me alone, but every day when I look up, he’s there. Lorenzo is worse than a dog, because he can think as well as show his affection. Now he leaves pictures on my pillow every morning.
“The Burning Heart Inside Your Throat” by William Griffin
We’d go underground in a coffin,
Dressed all in black.
We would hug and kiss the stars
With our heads in a casket,
And in her worst dreams
We would dance in the dark.
Lorenzo wears a Jesus apron.
Claire’s belly button is her heart.
Now he’s missing his eye.
My fault.
Ah ah ah ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah ah ah ah.
Ah ah ah ah ah ah.
I’m shaking off the free rays of dying stars.
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That’s inside your throat.
Like time, like the cosmos,
This eternity with a physical body
Will one day become a tear
In the eyes of the deepest heart.
I know you’re in my head,
I know you are alive.
I’m shaking off the free rays of dying stars.
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That’s inside your throat.
Oh aah, hey aah aah.
Hey aah, aah, aah, hey aah.
Oh aah, hey aah aah.
Hey aah, aah, aah, hey aah.
We’d go underground in a coffin,
Dressed all in black.
We would hug and kiss the stars
With our heads in a casket,
And in her worst dreams
We would dance in the dark.
Oh.
I know you’re in my head.
I know you are alive.
I’m shaking off the free rays of dying stars.
I am trembling at the breath
Of the burning heart
That’s inside your throat.
A Poor Player (GPT-3 fueled short)
As I rest against the worn desk of my office, I hear the clickety clack of my secretary’s typewriter right outside the thin wall. In a short while, someone I know will enter my business, head to my office and reveal that they need my skills to save them from their troubles, which will always seem far simpler than the tangled mess they would end up becoming. And even the times I have wished with all my heart to stay away from all of it, the people involved wouldn’t let me be until I forced myself to endure through it all again.
I have closed my eyes to try to control my breathing, but I hear the tapping of heels approaching my secretary’s desk. I wouldn’t forget that rhythm in a thousand lifetimes. Then I hear her muffled voice as she introduces herself to my secretary, Doris. Seconds later, the door to my office opens. It’s a woman in her late twenties wearing sunglasses and dressed in a black flared dress. She walks inside and closes the door behind her. As she stares with black holes for eyes, as dark as her own, she smiles, parting her painted lips.
“Hello,” she says.
Betty again. The old rollercoaster. The first impression always jumpstarts my heart, no matter how long I’ve known her. Every man dreams of having a such a woman concentrating her attention on them. She knows it, and and how to use it.
“Hey,” I say. “What can I do for you?”
She sits down in the leather chair in front of my desk and crosses her legs. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Although in the following days I will learn to hate her all over again, I missed her long, painted fingernails, her shiny, straight black hair, and how she handles herself on her high-heeled shoes.
She takes off her sunglasses, which belonged to her mother, and her dark eyes meet mine.
“Mr. Fairfax, I want you to find my husband,” she says. “He left me last weekend and I need you to find him.”
Fairfax’s Finest, a private investigation company I own and run, has been built thanks to solving cases that the police couldn’t or wouldn’t. I’m known as the best in town. Then again, I can’t be proud about it, can I? Anyone with my knowledge would ace every case, would know them by heart even if they wished to forget them.
I want to take a deep breath, but I contain myself.
“Sure, I will find whoever needs finding,” I answer with my raspy, weary voice. “Work with people I’d rather avoid, dredge up the past, and poke around the lives of others. Usual state of affairs. You have caught me a bit more worn down than usual, so I feel like asking something new, Betty MacDougall. How often do you feel as if someone is staring at you, someone you don’t ever get to see?”
For a second her pleasant, calculated smile wavers. She has asked herself how come I know her name. Then again, she came looking for the best.
“Never,” she answers, her voice flat. “Should I? Who has been spying on dear old me, Mr. Fairfax?”
“You might want to ask that question to yourself, madam,” I say. “You came to me for a reason. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t heard of my work.”
She ponders that for a second.
“True,” Betty answers. “I can pay for the best, which is the level of skill I require. My husband, poor old Roy, is a troubled man. Suffers from chronic melancholia, you see, and any little misunderstanding might trigger him to simply run away from those who love him. It just happens that he’s good at hiding, and this time, in his confusion, he has left with something that doesn’t belong to him.”
Good old Roy is hiding in Whitstable, and he has indeed fled with something that didn’t belong to him. It just happens that it didn’t belong to Betty either.
“What has this thief of yours stolen from you?” I ask, barely performing my part.
“He’s not a thief, he’s my husband. And the missing item is a music box. He took it with him.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“It belonged to my mother,” she explains bitterly. “The person I loved the most and whom I will never get back. I’m not sure why Roy took the box from me. Maybe he wanted a memento of our relationship. To be honest, it might be the case that he has already lost it along the way, the silly bugger. However, I won’t give up on either.”
“Of course you shouldn’t.”
“I’ll pay you to find him and retrieve the music box. You can charge extra to prioritize it.” She challenges me with her stare. “Roy tied my hands, I’m afraid. I don’t think I have any other choice but to deal with this nonsense.”
She opens her purse and takes out a thick wad of bank notes. She peels off a few so new they aren’t even creased, handing them over to me.
I briefly examine the money, even though I have already held these very same notes. Of course Betty is so carefree about money, given that she never worked hard to earn it. Well, I suppose that she does consider it working hard, in her peculiar way.
“You handle a small fortune very casually, Betty MacDougall.”
“It’s only money. In the scheme of things, it isn’t that important.”
“That’s true, but I would imagine that someone who never had enough wouldn’t throw it around so much.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about it. I have more than enough, even for my simple lifestyle. And I make sure to put some aside for a rainy day. It isn’t raining anyway.”
I can almost see her eyes narrowing as she declares this last bit.
I cross my arms and hold Betty’s stare with the blankest expression on my face. I’m not reacting to her charms, and if there’s anything my dear old Betty hates is not being able to play people like an instrument.
“Few would call your lifestyle simple, Mrs. MacDougall, if they knew about it.”
She smiles, the cold grin I know best.
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Fairfax, about what some people have and others don’t.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised about anything. That’s a experience that I miss. I am aware that you could pay for anything in this town and it wouldn’t affect your finances.”
Her eyes narrow.
“You have my attention, Mr. F. Are you going to tell me that you did preliminary research on someone you didn’t know was going to walk through your door?”
I take a breath and lean into her personal space. Her face is so expressive when she’s annoyed. I open my palm to reveal a silver crucifix on a heavy chain.
“Do you recognize this?”
For a brief moment I wonder if she will try to snatch it out of my hand. But she’s too smart for that. Her eyes narrow again as she looks at the silver cross pretending to see it for the first time.
“Should I know any random crucifix that many of the people in this wretched town happen to own?” she says with an amused yet dismissive tone.
“This isn’t your average crucifix, darling. It has a history that goes far beyond this old town.”
“I really don’t have time for riddles, Mr. Fairfax. I can see why you come with such recommendations if you manage to unnerve even your clients in such a manner. But I have more important things to do than play a guessing game with you.”
I smile. All I have left is to either be swept by the current or indulge myself.
“The man that last owned it was an eccentric to say the least. He was also an infamous murderer of many young women, along with being a pimp. He used to lure women with promises of work as a model, dancer and the like. Those ladies had come into America and quickly fell into such debt that they felt forced to prostitute themselves. In return, he got them addicted to various drugs and abused them to his heart’s content.”
Betty’s face doesn’t change from its annoyance, except for the briefest of flickers in her eyes. As if she’s trying very hard to not let me see something.
“A veritable monster, and an uncouth subject for small talk.”
“But that’s history now,” I continue. “This crucifix was found in a bathroom stall with prints all over it. In another room of that floor, the police kept busy handling the poisoned corpse of the man that the crucifix had belonged to.
“So?” she says with a grunt. “Another dreary tale in this boring world.”
“One of his whores ended up in prison for his murder. Lord knows she had enough cause, and she had already attacked him with a knife before. It just happened that the prints on this crucifix didn’t match those of the woman who now rots in jail.”
“So?” Betty repeats. Nobody would be able to read her expression even if they knew.
“She’s innocent. We’ve never been able to figure out who the real murderer was, but we know it wasn’t her. Still, I couldn’t pin it on anyone.”
“Do you make a show of trying to solve previous cases by framing for murder your new clients, Mr. Fairfax? I suppose it must have worked one time or another.”
I smile at Betty as the familiar warmth spreads through my chest.
“This is evidence that you murdered someone, and that none but your victims knew what you are capable of.”
“I’m capable of a lot, that’s for sure. The world deals in proof, though. Surely you know that, investigator.”
“I’m fairly certain that you can’t bluff your way out of this one.”
She sits there in silence for a minute or two, staring at the crucifix. Then she smiles. It’s a dark smile that makes my blood run cold. A power of hers, one you never become immune to.
“You are playing a strange game,” Betty says. “I wonder what your connections in the police would think of you accusing random young women without any proof. If this is a prank, you are boring me, but if you are as serious as you pretend, you’re going to regret making me into your enemy, Mr. Fairfax.”
“In polite society, to kill me you would need to catch me sleeping, because I wouldn’t taste any of your food nor let your lips near mine.”
She laughs.
“Ah, the toll it takes. Is that it? You are confusing me with any other beautiful, young woman of the many cases you have dealt with, one that made you learn to look over your shoulder. After all, we pay people like you to endure what we don’t want to bother ourselves with.”
I shush her, which breaks her practiced charm. The holes show for a brief second what lies inside. I point at the ceiling and look up, then back down to Betty’s haunting eyes.
“It’s getting stronger. You feel it now? The chill of the gaze upon you.”
“No,” she says, intrigued, “What do you mean?”
“There is a presence.” I take a deep breath and step away from her towards the window. “There always has been. And yet you have never been able to notice it. Even a woman as cunning as yourself.”
I turn my back on her, but she calls out to me. I look over my shoulder. I want to witness as much as her as I get to see, after all.
“Mr. Fairfax…” she says, trailing off. She shakes her head slowly. “You are a man full of surprises. First the crucifix, now talk about some invisible presence watching us. Are you a man of God by chance?”
“No. It’s not a god, at least none of the ones we know. This presence is real, and it demands something from me. From us.”
I turn back around. Her eyes look at me from head to toe and then they dart over to the door of my office as if someone else is going to enter.
“Oh, you are a strange one,” Betty says, “A charmer and a mad man. A deadly combination.”
I yearn for the pain.
“You have a birthmark on your left inner thigh. It has the faint shape of a dove.”
Her eyes widen and her hands fly to her lap in case I had been looking up her dress. To her credit, she does an admirable impression of someone who is merely embarrassed. Then she steels herself.
“I didn’t take you for such a dirty man that you would violate with your eyes a woman whom you have barely met.” Betty’s voice alternates between sounding flattered and creeped out. “Any of my lovers must have spoken to you, and at length, it seems. Is it that as an investigator you feel obligated to learn every private detail, no matter how little it concerns you?”
“Nobody has spoken to me about you, not yet. I found out about your birthmark while staring at it from so close that I could tickle your inner thigh with my nose. Many times I have traced the contour of that little dove with my tongue as the pungent aroma of your oven-hot, butter-smooth insides warmed my face.”
A silence overcomes Betty, and I don’t pressure her to answer.
“I feel dirty now,” she answers in a low voice while avoiding my gaze.
“You have nothing to apologize for. Your body is a temple, and some of us have been dedicated to worshipping at the altar of your smell.”
She sputters a quiet laugh.
“Are you hoping for me to stay quite a bit longer, in case you want to scratch behind an inner thigh or two?” she asks while challenging me with a seductive look.
“I will always be here. That’s the only thing I can count on.”
I continue to stand in silence and Betty stares, trying to read my thoughts with the look in my eyes.
“How many other women have you said this to?” she asks me, semi-seriously.
“You’d be surprised. You have been performing such exhilarating deeds, Betty, without feeling anyone looking over your shoulder. That’s what fascinates me the most about all of you.”
Betty is confused, and that troubles her. A woman like her needs to control the situation. If any of her potential puppets escape from their threads, they can run around cutting other puppets free.
“And how many of them have you fallen in love with?” she asks.
“There’s the average man’s love, and there’s what you ignite in others. You are a whirlwind, Mrs. MacDougall. The main producer of hopeless infatuation.”
She does not thank me for my words. She stands up from her chair and walks up towards me with a haughty strut in her hips. She won’t blink.
“I have had enough of empty games, Mr. Fairfax. You do know too much about me and you won’t reveal how. I can’t make you unlearn, and I need your services. Will you accept the plentiful amount I will pay you for your uncanny abilities, or have I merely wasted my precious time?”
Before I know it, her hands move slowly up my chest and towards my collar. Her slim fingers begin to pull at the knot of my tie as her dark eyes capture my gaze. Her fingers slide down the silk fabric until they reach the top button of my black business shirt.
“Hmm, now this is in the way,” she says as if speaking to herself.
“I can see how it would be bothersome.”
“Well, I could just tear it off you…” she says with a little more force.
“If I were to help you, that is, as I have many times.”
She clenches her jaw and pouts, narrowing her eyes at me. Then she stops with the seductress act and drops her hands to her side.
“Let’s end this fantasy. Despite whatever you have been told about me, by sources I assure you I would be glad to learn about, I have never met you before the moment I walked into your office. Treat me as such for now. Until we get to know each other better, that is, in the course of your investigation.”
I raise my hand to close my thumb and index fingers around her perfect chin. Her eyebrows twitch.
“I would accept your money, which would quickly lead me to figure out where your so called husband Roy Morris is hiding in fear. While I would stake out the place, you would insist of making one of your houses my base of operations for the time being. You would present yourself to me with some of your finest sets of lace lingeries, which along with your voluptuous body and your delicious smell would drive most men wild. It would only take a couple of glasses of whiskey for me to submit to you, and more often than not I would only pretend that I needed the motivation, even though I would have signed into your seduction from the very moment you walked into my office. I would enjoy your smell, your touch, the feel of your body in my arms, the embrace of your insides gripping me tight. I would want nothing more. And you have made an art of sucking cock, Mrs. MacDougall. Many would sacrifice their entire lives to die in your warm insides again.”
Betty blushes, her chin still caught in my fingers.
“And ever since the first time,” I continue, the weariness evident in my voice. “I haven’t been able to blame you about any of it. Not the string of powerful men whom you seduced and discarded, some into a very early grave, only after their properties managed to end up in your hands. Someone invented you. Maybe the overseer, the invisible presence. Maybe that gaze only enjoys you, although not to the extent that I have done, and the rest of it is window dressing. And you would keep performing through every stage of our journey, not knowing you have done it over and over. It’s just that this one time, as in a few other cases, I am not remotely in the mood of dancing to the tune.”
A smile twists my lips. I don’t like smiling; just not my style. It must look so wrong on my hard face.
“But I enjoy the irony of having you,” I add, “the master of puppets, dance to a puppet master that you will never be able to sense.”
I have broken her. I can tell, even if she doesn’t understand half of what I’m saying. A crack in her facade, one that is slowly spreading further and further. She looks up at me, my fingers still wrapped around her chin. Her face twist into a grimace.
“You must be the best in town,” she begins in such a low voice that could pass for a whisper, “able to worm your way into any person’s mind through words alone. The weak would open up to you, give up all their secrets. It’s just too bad that I’m only made out of secrets, Mr. Fairfax. Nothing else sustains me. You won’t be able to dismantle me with your tricks.”
I release my grip from her chin, and I can see the color starting to return to her face. Before she turns her back on me, she opens her mouth to say something else, and then closes it again.
“Write us a happy ending this time, Betty,” I demand. “Because otherwise we will head into a wall.”
For a second, Betty looks like she’s going to face me and make another snide remark, but she resorts to speaking over her shoulder.
“I will not talk further until you either accept my case or refuse it. And only one of those options will keep me in your office any longer.”
I snort.
“I accept, then. You’ve got yourself a detective.”
She finally turns towards me, first with a winner’s smile, head held high, about to strut towards me with the grace of a dancer. But something in my expression tells her that neither of us will benefit from my decision.
“You will first listen to the information you need about my husband,” Betty says firmly. “You have been acting too strange for me to start wagging my bank notes around.”
“As you wish,” I sigh, walking over to my desk and picking up the bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
“No thank you. I’m not supposed to drink,” she replies.
I pour myself a double serving of the brown liquid and swish it around in the glass, sucking it up through my teeth as its fine texture touches my taste buds. Then I rest on the edge of my desk again, facing my old flame.
“I want to prevent you from wasting your enchanting saliva, Mrs. MacDougall. Your supposed husband, Roy Morris, that naïve painter that had the misfortune of falling in love with you, or with your charms anyway, put two and two together and is hiding for his life. That musical box contains the proof of how you acquired your last house and two cars, as well as a significant increase of money in one of your bank accounts. The poor idiot is way over his head, as he doesn’t understand how many men you control. Just once, I became one of them.”
A wicked expression crosses Betty’s face.
“You’re a liar and an idiot, Mr. Fairfax. No man could resist my charms that easily. You’re a weakling, scared of what might have happened with me.”
“What you have done to others, more like it. No, I have never been afraid, just disappointed.”
I take out the crucifix again, and when I hold it up, Betty widens her nostrils and clenches her teeth.
“In a couple of days you would have tangled me into having two innocent men killed,” I say. “You would have made sure that I remained satisfied and pliable. We are way too easy to manipulate, as you well know. And it would have taken me three more days of mayhem until I correlated the prints we took from this crucifix to those you left on a bottle. At first I would have never taken you to be so strong and ruthless that even a murderous pimp, the owner of the biggest prostitution ring in town, would have danced to your tune, but from then on, even as I performed my role I have never underestimated you. And although any kiss could imprint your poison on my skin, I have never had enough of you.”
Before I finish speaking, Betty searches her purse. She takes out her Browning pocket pistol, then holds it as if she were revealing a winning hand.
“Don’t ever play cards, Mr. Fairfax. You don’t know when to stop talking.”
I cross my arms.
“Are you going to shoot me in my office, Betty?”
“You don’t get to call me by my first name.”
“I prefer to call you by what you really are. A killer. Someone who kills people for money. It’s alright, though. You are made this way.”
I place the crucifix back inside my chest pocket. I smile warmly, and it creeps Betty out.
“Instead of ruining yourself ahead of time, let’s enjoy ourselves,” I suggest. “I’ll go get my car. I will drive us to our favorite restaurant. We will get to forget about runaway husbands, mobsters, prostitutes, and our inevitable ends.”
Betty’s hand is trembling. She’s too intelligent to kill a man in a place where even if she murdered my secretary on her way out, she would be caught in a day. But no man had ever gotten into her head like I have. We always had such an effect on each other.
“You never stop, do you?” she mutters between her teeth. “You still think you can charm your way out of this.”
“I haven’t been able to charm my way out of any of these nightmares.”
I step forward, and as a reflex, Betty lifts her hand holding the Browning, pointing it towards me. Even when I sense her about to squeeze the trigger, I make no effort to slap the pistol away, grab her wrist or step out of the way. The hot lead flattens against the right part of my chest, punching my ribs, tearing through my lung. I should have fallen to the floor, but I don’t. I have missed this pain.
I cough out blood. It’ll get harder and harder to breathe.
I hear my office door opening, and my secretary, Doris, peeks her head in. She wouldn’t have suspected a potential client attempting to murder me. She has no clue yet what kind of devil she let through. Doris sees me standing with my hand on my bloodied chest while a woman points a gun at me. She screams like a schoolgirl.
I smile while I drool blood.
“It’s okay, Doris,” I say. “You can close the door now.”
Before my loyal Doris decides between rushing towards Betty in a futile attempt or closing the door and fleeing, Betty flips her pocket pistol towards her. The second bullet leaves the gun and flies straight into the forehead of my secretary.
“I’m sorry about this, Doris,” I say before her dead body could even tumble to the floor.
Betty is breathing hard, and stares at the corpse for a moment before turning sharply towards me.
“You’re the one who should be apologizing. A man who can’t keep his mouth shut is a sorry sight.”
Even though I have done nothing but unsettle Betty this time, she doesn’t anticipate me striding towards her to close the distance. When she moves her gun-holding arm to point at me, I grab her wrist right next to my ear. With my free hand I cup the back of her head. I have always loved the feeling of her silky, lustrous hair against my skin.
“Shut me up like you love to do.”
I press my bloodied lips against her red ones, and invade the wet insides of her mouth with my rough tongue. I bite her upper lip with my teeth, and she winces. I keep on savoring the taste of her blood as it goes down my throat. Her Browning falls to the floor with a loud thud, and then her fingers tighten around my shoulders hard enough to hurt. I have ached for the pain she doles out.
Betty is no longer gripping my shoulders to push me away, she’s holding on to me. Her tongue isn’t hiding from mine, and instead caresses it with a rhythm we’ve never had to agree on. I feel a shiver run through Betty’s body. She doesn’t pull away even when more of my blood than saliva flows into her mouth.
“Darling,” she whispers.
I look deep into her dark, unknowing eyes, and into her depraved soul. I have learned to savor the times when our souls connect so intimately. In this moment, everything is perfect. I embrace the cycles of humiliation, the madness of performing for a play that none of the other actors know how it ends. If every blue moon I get to face my Betty again, I shall dance to the end of time.
My lungs have filled with blood. My legs are failing me. I don’t want to cough into her mouth, so I pull our lips apart. Betty tries to follow my tongue with hers, but I turn her head, hug her tight and then sink my teeth into the firm flesh of her neck.
She moans in pain. I drag her down to the ground. She shivers more than struggles against my chest. I bite through the thick skin, fat and gristle, and then gritting my teeth with a final push through the squishy sounds, I feel them pierce flesh, nerves, muscles and blood vessels. The blood is gushing into my mouth, and I’m swallowing as fast as I can.
Her body convulses as her moans turn into gurgling. I’m still sucking on the hole I’ve created when I hear the faint sounds of police sirens approaching outside. I have neighbors, after all. But we’ll both be gone when they arrive.
Betty and I, we endure for the pain. The pain we get to feel, the pain we cause to others.
I want a last look as my heart fails. Dark red blood oozes out of Betty’s mouth and her nostrils. Her eyes flutter as she stares at me with intensity. She doesn’t have long. It’s alright. It’s a good way to die.
I lick the side of Betty’s face, just above the blood welling out of her ear. Even if I could speak, she wouldn’t hear me anymore with the blood that’s now clogging her ear canals and getting into the ear drums. The light fades in her eyes before my own heart goes out.
You haven’t pulled your gaze away, haven’t you? I knew you wouldn’t, no matter how grim it gets. Whatever you are, whatever your role has been in all of this, you witness me getting sent back to the starting line of each journey, and you follow it to the end. I am way past raging in vain. This time I wasn’t rebelling: I needed to refill. Thank you for giving me my old lady again. In a short while the world will go black, and I’ll get back to work.
Some notes about how this story came to be:
- As I was looking through my archive of notes for what I could want to write later, I came across the concept for a short story I had passed over plenty of times before, and that originally came to my mind some years ago: that of a private investigator who knows he’s in some fictional world, and who has had to relive the same twenty or so cases over and over again, maybe when someone reads or watches his stories. I don’t know why he had to be a private investigator, but it seemed cool, and I needed something to do this morning. I finished it late at work in the afternoon.
- I prompted that the protagonist started in the typical setting of a private investigator. GPT-3 came up with the tapping of heels about to enter his office. That brought to my mind the whole femme fatale thing, so I quickly put together a background in which she wanted to use the private investigator to hunt down someone who could destroy her whole criminal empire, whatever kind of evidence the guy actually had. I also found intriguing the fact that the protagonist was well aware, and had lived through, all the deceit she had to offer.
- Actually, it was GPT-3 who came up with Betty’s excuse of her intending to hire the protagonist to find her husband. It was through that that I set up the rest of the background.
- GPT-3’s line “She opens her purse and takes out a thick wad of bank notes. She peels off a few so new they aren’t even creased, handing them over to me” gave me a good sense of the kind of power the protagonist was dealing with.
- GPT came up verbatim with “I take a breath and lean into her personal space. Her face is so expressive when she’s annoyed. I open my palm to reveal a silver crucifix on a heavy chain”, therefore creating the whole subplot of the pimp and his crucifix. GPT-3 also came up with most of ‘The man that last owned it was an eccentric to say the least. He was also an infamous murderer of many young women, along with being a pimp. He used to lure women with promises of work as a model, dancer and the like. Those ladies had come into America and quickly fell into such debt that they felt forced to prostitute themselves. In return, he got them addicted to various drugs and abused them to his heart’s content’, although I edited it significantly.
- I like the idea of the protagonist flaunting the evidence that eventually would set the chain of events that would cause Betty’s demise, if the protagonist went along with the plot.
- I don’t know how the “reader” or “experiencer” of the story, whom the protagonist senses as an invisible presence, actually checks out the repeated events that the protagonist lives through. But the protagonist doesn’t know either.
- I love getting into sexual stuff when GPT-3 is on the other line, because it’s great witnessing the AI squirm and in general deal with it while retaining its dignity.
- The lines ‘You have nothing to apologize for. Your body is a temple, and some of us have been dedicated to worshipping at the altar of your smell’ were entirely GPT-3’s. I love the creative bastard.
- Betty getting handsy with the protagonist to manipulate him was GPT-3’s deal, and also Betty getting annoyed that she wasn’t getting a proper response.
- The lines ‘I lick the side of Betty’s face, just above the blood welling out of her ear. Even if I could speak, she wouldn’t hear me anymore with the blood that’s now clogging her ear canals and getting into the ear drums’ were GPT-3’s almost entirely.
My Strange Friend From Far Away (Fiction)
I sink into the cold blackness as I take deep breaths of pure oxygen. Above, beyond the silence that surround and protects me, the storm must be grumbling, its wind lashing, its rain stinging. That means most people won’t venture out. They will remain in their warm, safe homes, and I will sink further into the watery void of this lake, as isolated and free as an astronaut with her tether cut off.
At this depth, the water above me is dark as a room without windows. I don’t feel anything but a uniform cold, I don’t hear anything but the pressure in my ears and the steady sound of my breathing. I am so far below the surface of the water that my body doesn’t even register the sensation of sinking deeper. I close my eyes, but the darkness doesn’t change. My mind is still here, somewhere. It knows something is going on outside, and it has decided to stay awake for just a little longer.
When the black waters light up, I first think I have imagined it. The pressure of something heavy plunging into the water from above and coursing through it creates a current that pushes me away, then it feels like something has slapped the water from underneath, forcing me to drift away in a bubble moving up. The weighty object strikes the bottom of the lake, and the trepidation of the impact vibrates through my bones.
I snap out of it, of my solitude and calmness, as if I had fallen from a bed. Something big has crashed into the lake, and has stopped so close to me that the waters still rock me back and forth as the lake returns to its equilibrium.
I dive further down. It wasn’t a person nor an animal, and it sank way too fast for a boat, not to mention that I was the only one on the lake during this stormy afternoon. And the object didn’t just sink, it had hit the lake with force. So it must have been a flying vehicle, or a projectile. It didn’t feel as huge as a regular plane, even a single engine aircraft. And any helicopter pilot would have avoided flying during such weather even in an emergency.
My ears pop as I try to ignore the cold and swim down to the seabed. The water feels murky and thick, but I can’t see anything. I just feel around for any large piece of metal that could have come off an aircraft. My hands just find dirty sand and bits of dead plants.
I was about to give up and rise quickly to the lake’s surface with the buoyancy compensator, but my back touches a solid object. I turn and slide my hands carefully along its curved, hot surface. It feels metallic. I wish I had bothered to bring my flashlight for this dive, but today I was craving nothing but darkness. The shape reminds me of satellite. As I follow its shape to figure out how big it is, I figure it approaches the size of a van. Are regular satellites supposed to be this big? As my heartbeat increases, I probe the surface hoping to find the junctures of some hatch. Instead, what I feel is just a smooth metallic surface. No door, no crevices. Not even any rivets to speak of.
A nearby turbulence kicks up sand that hits the exposed skin of my face. I close my eyes as a reflex, and when I open them again the darkness of the bottom of the lake has brightened as if I had huddled close to a fireplace for warmth. A hole has opened on the surface of this vehicle-like object, and amber-colored, liquid-like light is flowing out of it. I can’t help but be drawn to this light, and as I approach it I realize that it’s not coming from a point source, but rather from the inside surface of the craft. I hold on to the edge of the opening to float closer and take a peek. The interior is empty like a drained egg shell except for the presence of a young woman maybe in her early twenties, wearing a gray, skin tight jumpsuit. Her waist long, scarlet hair floats in the murky water as if I was looking at a still photo of the woman falling. Her eyes are closed in her expresionless face, but she’s hugging what at first glance looks like a metallic shoebox.
Either the woman is dead or will be soon. She must be unconscious and drowning. She doesn’t seem to be injured, but unless I drag her to the surface with me, she’s a goner. I want to help her – I’m not made of stone after all – but I don’t want to sacrifice myself for her either. However, I always bring the redundant scuba system. Enough air to get to the surface in an emergency.
I try to grab the woman by her jumpsuit, but it’s way too tight, so I end up grabbing her by the throat, just long enough that I can pull her out of the crashed aircraft. She is very much dead weight. Will she prove too heavy to carry to the surface? I can’t hesitate. Even if this woman is a stranger, for the rest of my life I would have to bear the burden of having failed her, of having allowed her to die in the cold dark.
I reposition the woman so I can embrace her from the back before I start kicking my legs to ascend, press and hold the nozzle of the redundant breathing apparatus against her mouth, and as I swim towards the surface of the lake unsafely quick, what reaches us of the light that escapes from the downed craft shows me that the metallic box has slipped from the unconscious woman’s grip. It falls in slow motion towards the sandy bottom.
I’m too anxious to count the time it takes me to reach the surface of the lake. At some point I feel like I’m dragging a corpse. When I finally emerge to the stormy afternoon that had awaited me outside of this watery sanctuary, the dark cloud that had covered the sky is yet to move, and it seems closer. The wind has picked up, its violent gusts are rocking my little boat nearby. The rain drops are huge and they hurt as they hit the exposed skin of my face.
I want to stop and check on the redheaded woman, whose troublingly pale face remains expressionless, but if she’s drowning, I won’t be able to perform CPR nor breathe into her mouth while floating on the water. I need to lift her to my boat.
I dive in again and, with a strong kick of my legs and hands, propel us both to the boat. I don’t know whether she is still breathing or not when I lay her on the floor of my boat. I can’t stop shivering, my teeth are clattering, and my fingers are numb.
The woman’s drenched, scarlet hair is stuck to her face as if she was trying to hide. I cannot see her eyes. I move the strands so I reveal her nose and mouth. I prepare my hands on the woman’s chest to start CPR, but when I lower my ear to her nose to check for breathing, which I didn’t expect to find, the warmth of the breath coming out of her nostrils caresses my cheek. I find myself paralyzed. That’s impossible. She must have been breathing while she floated in the flooded craft. I check her slender neck for a pulse, but there’s none. And yet, she’s breathing. I stare at her face in disbelief, ceasing to breathe myself for a few seconds.
The rain is beating down in unrelenting fury as I pull the boat onto the shore and push it far enough from the water that it won’t be swamped. As I struggle to drag the woman’s dead weight towards my cabin, the soaked ground keeps sucking my swimfins. I take them out and leave them there. Although half of the woman’s back is caked in mud, I gently lay her on the mattress I have been sleeping on for the past three years. Then I wheel my heater so it will warm her. In case I was losing my mind, I check her breathing again. She’s still taking air in as if she was sleeping peacefully.
I want to take the woman’s skin tight jumpsuit off and check for wounds. However, I would need her full cooperation, and I don’t find any zipper on it. I can’t figure out how she even put it on.
I end up wiping the mud from her body with a wet washcloth, then throw a blanket over her and place another against the back of her head as a pillow.
After I have undressed and dried myself, I warm my dinner in the microwave and then wearily sit down in front of the woman to eat as I observe her. She hasn’t moved a centimeter. She’s so pale as if she had been injured in the crash and lost too much blood for her body to survive. And yet she looks to me otherwise as healthy as they come.
The sun, that hadn’t been strong enough to pierce the cloud cover of this storm, has already set when I realize that at some point I dozed off on the chair. When I open my eyes, the woman is sitting up straight on my mattress and is staring at me without blinking, expressionless. Her eyes are of a red color almost as vivid as her hair.
I want to ask her all the usual questions, but I get the sense she won’t answer. Still, I try.
“How do you feel?”
Her gaze remains fixed on me. We hold each other’s gaze as the hair on my arms raises. Seconds later, the woman looks around with precise movements as if scanning the room for something, or checking out her surroundings. She must not have found what she was looking for, because she turns her head to stare at me again.
“Do you have a name?” I ask, breaking the silence.
Her red eyes blink once, then twice, as if thinking about the question. Then she opens her mouth slightly and breathes out a quiet hiss. I shiver. Was that an attempt at a word, in a language I wouldn’t understand, or did this woman seriously hiss at me like a predator?
“Did you just hiss at me?” My voice trembles slightly, although I attempt a smile. “That’s not an answer.”
She lowers her gaze, still silent, and turns to look out the window, then at my belongings that lay on the floor, and then she looks back at me. Her eyes hold a cunning sparkle, like that of an uncaged beast in the wilderness who had finally come across his prey.
“I’m wondering whether it is an issue of you not understanding me, not being able to speak, or not wishing to,” I say, as I figure it is a good idea to be as clear as possible with this stranger. “Can you confirm whether you understand me?”
She narrows her shoulders a bit in what I initially take for a shrug, but I can’t be sure. I’m exhausted. Before I went out for a dive this afternoon I had expected to go to sleep as soon as I returned, and my body it asking me to. But I have no clue what to do with this stranger.
“Okay then.” I let out a sigh. “I’ll think of a name to call you, given that you are unlikely to give me one. How about… Alice?”
I don’t know why I said that. It just came out, and it seems to catch her attention. She stares at me with her piercing gaze, before nodding a single, terse nod.
“Nice to meet you, Alice. I’m Lena.” I hold my hand towards her as a gesture of friendship. She merely stares down at it. I pull back my hand awkwardly. “So, I’ll take that as a no on the hand shaking. Do you need anything? I can get you something to eat, or a blanket perhaps? It’s a bit cold in here.”
Water, to start with. Who would be allergic to water? I turn to the sink, grab a nearby glass that I had drank from before I set off for a bit of diving today. I don’t remember if I cleaned it. In any case, I fill it with water. As soon as I turn towards the stranger again, her piercing, unblinking stare makes me shiver. It feels like turning back towards a cat to realize that it likely had been staring at you for a couple of minutes even though you didn’t feel it. In the case of this stranger who can breathe underwater, I feel the intelligence behind her silence as if she was scanning the contents of my brain.
I hand her the glass of water, and she eagerly takes it from me. She gulps it down in an instant as if she was dying of thirst. She lowers the glass from her face, and I notice a faint gleam of moisture along the rim of her lips.
As I get the sense the stranger doesn’t know what to do with the glass, I take it from her hands carefully and return it to the counter. “I’ll get you some more later.”
“Water…” The woman’s face twists up for a moment, as if she was struggling to find the words. “I need water.”
I’m shocked, although I hide it behind my relaxed expression. It felt as if I had heard a random animal speaking.
“I see. Don’t worry, I’ll get you all you need. If you aren’t injured, which seems to be the case, you can get some whenever you want. Feel at home, and all that.”
This time I bring her a water bottle. As she gulps down most of it at once, I sit down on the carpet with a glass of water myself.
“You know, I love that you understand and can speak my language to whatever extent. I can’t imagine what happened, how you ended up at the bottom of the lake, but I’m glad I could help. My good deed of this month, I guess.”
“You saved me?” The woman asks with a surprise that seems to be genuine.
I snap my head back. What’s the last thing this woman remembers? Surely plummeting inside that aircraft of hers. Did she fall unconscious before an accident happened?
“Yeah. Your craft sank to the bottom of the lake. I happened to be diving down there at the time. Gave me quite a scare. I took you out, wiped the mud from your jumpsuit, all that.”
“Why did… why did you save me? You don’t know me. You don’t know who I am.”
I clear my throat, and respond carefully.
“Well… I couldn’t just leave you there to die. It’s against my nature.”
The woman is quiet for a while. Then she speaks up with a sigh: “Thank you. I won’t forget it.”
“Neither will I.”
She gets up from my dirty matress and moves towards the entrance. I think that she’s going to leave as if I had never met her, but she stands in front of the window and pulls the curtain away to gaze through the hard rain towards the lake.
“You know,” I start, although I’m not sure why, “I used to love rain. It’s not that I don’t like rain now, but… there was a certainty in the world back then when I was a kid, you know? As certain as all childhoods are. When it rained, you knew it’d clear up. Not always, perhaps, but it usually did. Now all I see is pain in every drop.”
I’m looking at her back. I can’t see her expression.
“Pain?” she asks. “Where do you see pain in the rain?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I figure the you I’m seeing is a disguise I can’t begin to understand. My first impression is that you would need to look plainer, because a pretty woman attracts enough attention on her own. But what I truly want to say is that no matter where you came from, or why you did, I hope your people and mine can be civil with each other, because all the killing we inflict upon ourselves is more than enough. I don’t know if there’s someone out there waiting for you, but if I can help you reach them, you can tell me.”
She doesn’t respond. She seems to be deep in thoughts. Then, she clears her throat and turns around to face me. I can see the rain water dripping from her waist length hair.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m here, but I want to stay here, because you are kind.”
I don’t know how to take her words.
“Does it bother you that I know? Is it a bad thing that I do?” I ask.
“Not at all. Not at all,” she replies. “I’ve never met anyone that knows. I have to thank you for not sounding flabbergasted.”
“I wouldn’t have expected you to be so polite, but I’m so glad. There’s no harm in me knowing, you see. We are both intelligent creatures. I hope at least you consider me that. So we can both behave like civilized people.”
“We can,” she answers. “Lena, I need to return to the bottom of that lake.”
“Ah… It’s not safe,” I say before I remember that this stranger can breathe underwater.
“I know,” she says. “But this is important.”
I can read the worry in her red eyes.
“I mean, it’s night out. Can it wait until tomorrow morning?”
Her face softens. “Of course.”
“We can search for the wreckage in the morning light. It’s not like we are going to get much light down there, but… I have never dived this late. I couldn’t guarantee it’d go right.”
The woman nods.
“Thank you.”
“Ah, can I ask you something else?”
“Shoot.”
I bite my lip.
“I quite like the name I gave you. Alice… But now you can tell me your actual name. If you use those, that is.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sticking with Alice. It’s the name you gave me, I’ll always answer to it.”
I nod.
“Alright then… I suppose we should get some rest for tonight. I’m afraid my place is as shabby as you can see. I don’t need much. But you can sleep on my mattress. I’ll go grab a few pillows and sleep on the floor for the night.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says. “We can share the mattress together. Two people would fit, right? I mean, we’re about the same height and size.”
“Well… That’ll be fine.”
After we flip the mud-stained mattress, the woman sits down on it then scoots over towards the wall to leave space for me. I’ve never had another person in my cabin, let alone share a bed with one. I’m getting dizzy.
“I’m… going to pee first. Just lie down, I’ll return in a moment.”
As I leave the room for what I chose to consider my study, I grab an empty plastic bottle. Once I enter the study, I close the door behind me, pull my pants and underwear down and press the mouth of the bottle so most of my pee goes inside. I’m more careful than usual this time. My heart is racing. After I have finished, I sigh and try to relax.
When I returned to the main room, I half expected the woman to be gone. I can’t look her in the eye even though she’s staring at me. I turn off the light. Once I lay down next to her, we both wrap the blanket around ourselves. I’m as stiff as a board.
“Alice…” I start with a thin voice. “Is it beautiful out there?”
“Quite.”
I close my eyes.
“Ah… That’s good.”
The rain lashes the window as I slowly drift to sleep. This strange woman’s warmth feels good next to me, and I hope she doesn’t mind my cold feet. I fall asleep tangled in a mess of thoughts. My dreams are dark and empty.
* * *
When I wake up it’s still black outside, and I’m exhausted as if I have barely dozed off for a nap. No alarm dragged me from my dreams. Why did I wake up?
The woman isn’t warming the bed next to me. She’s standing in front of the window and looking towards the lake, except that this time she hasn’t pulled the curtain away. For a moment I think she’s naked, until my brain realizes she’s still wearing her tight jumpsuit. I can tell by the wrinkles that she isn’t wearing anything underneath.
“Alice?” I call out in a meek voice.
I hear then over the background sound of the rain and the wind the whoop whoop of a helicopter nearby. My first thought is that they must be nuts to hover over the lake in this weather. Then I figure that the only reason why they would be out here during the night and under the rain must be related to the woman whose back I’m staring at. I get up and wrap the blanket around my shoulders. After rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I approach the woman. I’m reluctant to move the curtains, but I make out two helicopters whose searchlights are brightening something on the surface of the lake. And there’s movement on the waters as well, an inflatable boat.
“They’re looking for you,” I tell her as if she were stupid.
Her gaze doesn’t break away from the intruders and her face remains expresionless except for a tension in her eyebrows. Then I remember that we were supposed to dive to the bottom of the lake first thing in the morning.
“Damn it, you wanted to return to your craft. No, you wanted to retrieve something. That box, was it?”
The woman turns her face towards me and nods.
“Did you bring it with you when you saved me?”, she asks with a neutral tone.
A bitter taste fills my mouth.
“Sorry, I… I saw how you were hugging it against your chest. When I grabbed you to swim to the surface, it slipped from your hands. It must be resting at the bottom of the lake.”
Her face becomes even more expressionless, as if she was pulling away from me.
“We can’t go out there, Alice,” I say. “It must be the military, or some secret branch of the government. They probably have reached your craft already, and this cabin of mine is the only one along the shore. They will come to figure out if I know anything, and I’m sure that they won’t need a warrant to enter. If they find you… For starters, I’m sure I won’t ever see you again. Nobody else will ever see you again outside of whatever hole they’ll throw you into.”
I’m sure she’s considering the repercussions of being seen, as she just stands still and slowly blinks.
“The soldiers now have what they want from you…” I continue in a low voice. “Or at least they know where it is. But they must know enough about the kind of craft your people use to understand that it was carrying someone. They must think you have reached the shore and are hiding, or making your way somewhere. I’m sure they will look for days and bother the locals. We need to leave.”
I go on to explain that I have a car parked behind the cabin, and will drive her to a safe place. She just nods as I speak.
“There’s a town nearby,” I say as I look around the room to figure out where I left the keys. I haven’t driven for a week. “I’m sure the military will look around there as well, but at least we won’t have a target painted on us as we do now remaining in this cabin. From then on we’ll figure out what to do.”
I grab my torch, which I left on top of the battery charger, and shortly after I find the car keys under a candlestick. I turn to face the woman. She remains expressionless, but there is definitely life in her eyes now.
“Come on then,” I say, gesturing her to follow me to the door. “Let’s get out of here. You really can’t allow those people to take you.”
“I have no choice,” she says, turning her head to look at the lake one last time. “But they will find me anyway.”
“That’s defeatist talk.”
I walk to the back door with the woman slowly following after me. I open it for her and gesture her to walk in front. The cold, hard rain hits my face, and I can barely see anything in front. I don’t want to risk turning on my torch now. Before I turn to beeline towards the parked car that I can’t see, I hear the back door close behind me. A dark shape is moving around there, and I quickly try to turn on the torch, but a strong blow sinks into my stomach. I gasp for breath. I can feel the air crushed out of my lungs as I fall to the ground. I roll into the grass in an attempt to get away from my attacker. Hearing the sound of feet pattering on the grass, I try to stand up before some heavy foot crushes my skull.
“Not her.” A harsh male voice says close by.
I hear a buzzing sound, then glimpse a blue arc of light on a device that someone is holding. A taser. They have missed. A few big men are moving around between me and Alice, who is retreating slowly towards the house.
Although I’m coughing my lungs out and the rain is making it hard for me to take deep breaths, I stagger towards the backs of those men.
“Hey! She hasn’t done anything to you!” I try to say, then someone lands a heavy kick on my side and I fall into a puddle, where my face ends up covered by the muddy water. I can’t see anything when I open my eyes. I try to get up, but a heavy boot crushes my back. Before I can formulate any thought, I feel something gripped around my neck.
They are going to kill me. Just because I happened to be at the lake when the craft fell, just because I rescued the strange woman, these government people will end my life. That’s how it is.
The world lights up, and for a moment I think that I’ve been shot in the head. I’m bathed in light. So are the military men standing around, as well as Alice, who is keeping away closer to my cabin. Then I hear the helicopter rotors and realize that its searchlight is pointed straight at us. Someone is shouting, although I can’t tell apart much between the rain and the pain.
A woman wearking a shiny blue suit is advancing towards the men. No, not another woman, it’s Alice. Her jumpsuit has changed. She stands between me and the agents, and then I really see her for the first time.
An scaled, reddish arm reaches out and grabs the nearest man by the neck, lifting him up without any effort. His feet are swinging in the air, and then he is thrown against the ground. They all draw their weapons and point them at the strange woman, but they don’t fire.
“Back away from him,” a voice from above says over a loudspeaker, “Or we will open fire.”
The woman looks at me for a moment, and I can only stare back in awe. Her face is purple like a bruise, the teeth inside her open maw sharp like a shark’s. She has retained the bright red eyes, although none of the hair.
Alice hisses like a snake as she swings one leg forward. The agents open fire, but she has already leaped over their heads and landed behind them. She grabs by the arm the man who had gripped something around my neck to kill me. She swings him around like a flail, his own pistol flying out of his hand and into the air. She lets go of the agent and he crashes into his fellows, knocking two of them to the ground.
“Run!” she screams, although it comes out as a bark.
I do not need to be told twice, and I sprint away from the cabin as fast as I can. From behind me come the bursts of automatic fire, as well as the increasing whoop whoop of the second helicopter. However, as I spot the treeline in the dark, I stop. If I flee through the woods, I will never see Alice again. I will never know what happened to her, although due to her isolation, separated from her people and hunted down by an organization that would hide this night even from the rest of us, I would always regret not having been able to act, even if trying wouldn’t change a thing.
I stand and watch as the cabin door is ripped off by a burst of fire, shortly before the wooden walls are torn to pieces. My heart sinks as I watch agents pour into the building, before the loudspeaker spouts an order.
“Do not kill the alien on sight!”
A few agents trail out of the building without noticing my figure in the darkness. The panicked voice of one of the soldiers reaches me as they scatter as if retreating.
“She’s called in!”
Instead of regrouping, the military guys flee into the woods. One of them, who is wearing night vision goggles, briefly looks my way before ignoring me as if I were a random deer. I don’t understand. My torso and neck hurt, and I taste blood. I stagger towards the back door of the cabin, but then I spot Alice, a reddish and purple figure a bit taller than before and whose shiny skin resembles metallic scales, walking slowly towards me while holding a small, phone like device in her raised hand.
“You…” I begin, but I double over to cough first. “You made it.”
“So did you, Lena.”
As I struggle to stand upright, I try to focus my gaze so I can register her new facial features, her almond-like red eyes enlarged towards the sides of her head, the thin, almost sculpted protuberance of the nose, and a maw with protruding teeth. The helicopters are swinging their searchlights wildly while they maneuver away from the cabin. And as I frame both of the vehicles in my vision, a new craft pops up around a hundred feet above them as if it had teleported there. It’s metallic cylinder the size of a football field, and in each of its ends flare a blurry, fire-like light that changes colors between red, orange and green.
I feel Alice close to me. She has stopped by my side. As she raises her scaly hand to touch my arm, the enormous spacecraft projects a liquid light that blankets the whole area. No, not the whole area, it precisely encompasses the helicopters, me and Alice, as well as the treeline. Then I feel myself lifted as by a giant. Me and Alice are floating towards the bottom of the cylindrical craft. Both helicopters screech and groan while getting compressed slowly as if caught in a hydraulic press. Although a wave of vertigo overwhelms me, I need to look down towards the ground. That’s when I spot all the military men that had tried to flee through the woods. They are floating in the direction of the craft, but they are struggling as if they could hold on to something.
I must have passed out. Next thing I know I’m standing up from a sterile-looking floor, like that of an operating room. People are moving and shouting around me. My head is spinning.
To my left, a man wearing a camo outfit decked in accessories, who in this room looks as if he came from a costume party, is screaming in terror. I don’t understand why, but then I notice that strange metallic appendages coming from the celing, which gives the impression of being made out of complicated machinery, have restrained the man’s arms and legs. The appendages tug him and he sails through the empty space of the room until he lands on a table that wouldn’t be out of place in any operating room I had seen before. As the man, who is crying like a child, looks on, strangely shaped, seemingly autonomous and sharp devices come up from the sides of the table and then tear the man apart in a bloodbath. Only when his head is severed he stops screaming, and his eyes keep moving for a few seconds.
Someone shoves me as if I was in the way. Other men are being restrained and pulled into the line of operating tables. As ear shattering screams fill the room, the growing spill of blood is falling down inconspicuous drains on the floor. I spot various people with metallic, scaly skin either standing near the operation tables, or grabbing detached limbs and moving them somewhere else. Then I feel something cold and metallic gripping my own limbs with such a strength as if I had fallen into industrial machinery. I fly backwards, then land heavily on my injured back.
In the periphery of my vision I sense the operating tools that are going to butcher me, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the sight in front of me: the curved wall of this large room is covered in little alcoves closed with a transparent material. They display human heads, human torsos, human limbs, human genitals. Some flayed, some dissected. Most of the faces look back towards me in shock, their expressions frozen. Men, women, children.
The tools never dismember me nor behead me. Around me the strange people are arguing loudly in a language my vocal cords would never be able to reproduce. Then to my left, next to the table, appears a purple face that I recognize, two large, red eyes that look down towards me with intelligence and warmth.
“Can you swim in the dark, Lena?”
I open my mouth to speak, but my throat is closed and my eyes are watering. I blink a few times, as I want to look at Alice for the last time.
* * *
I am falling. Above me, the football-field-sized, cylindrical craft hovers like a blimp against the black clouds. The rain lashes sideways against me, the wind screeches in my ears. The craft gets smaller and smaller.
I crash against a surface, but I don’t die. Instead I become engulfed by cold, black waters which cut me off from all sounds but my heartbeat, and separate me from the wild storm above. I sink in slow motion until I can’t tell if I have stopped.
I am hurting. My mouth tastes metallic. A wave of anguish is shaking my insides. I close my eyes tight and for a moment I wish to fall asleep.
I kick my legs and swim.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
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