CHAPTER FOUR
“What are these for exactly?”
“They’re mood stabilizers. They’re supposed to iron out the creases in my head or something. I don’t know really. I wasn’t really listening. I didn’t think it mattered all that much.”
“These are some serious drugs, they do some serious harm; could really fuck up your head. I think that matters, don’t you?”
The Tall Dark Stranger had turned and was looking through the gaps of the two front seats. He had the plastic container in his hands and its weak bond hardly fought back against the man’s crushing grasp, splintering the plastic into long shards.
“You don’t need this rubbish. You’re not sick” he said.
“Then what’s wrong with me?” asked Gavin.
“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with you Gavin. You’re healthy and deranged, just like everybody else.”
“He said I was depressed. My mum thinks I’m crazy. My dad says I’m lazy and riding his coat tail. My brother says I’m like a child, not retarded, just that I never grew up, that I don’t take any of this seriously.”
“Your brother is an idiot. Children and adults are peeled from the same fruit, it’s just the adult’s effect is worsened through age. The child is light and fanciful, his good and even his foul intentions are honest, sweet and springing. The adult is heavy and guiling; he will bottle your tears with his good intentions and when you thirst for remorse, will sell you salvation with a bitter, salted sting. The child is like the grape juice. His passing is in all occasions and will leave you only with the sting of buoyant youth on the cracks of your aging lips whereas the man, he is a bitter heavy wine, too much of his company and your stomach will turn, he will lead you into a begging attrition and he’ll mark you with an oasis of droughted and prolonged suffering. And worse yet, he’ll call that a good time.”
Gavin stared out the window and watched the rows of houses zipping past and marveled at the graffiti tagged all over their walls. On the houses, it was understandable that a couple of kids could climb up a wall and hang on for dear life as they sprayed roughly with their other hand. But one building had him in awe. It was maybe twenty stories. Its roof disappeared off into the low hanging fog and drizzle. And there was not a ladder or a holding of any kind for anyone to climb up to the heights that they had. In the furthest regions, up by the forming of clouds, were letters that were as strange as the words that he could not read, but that wasn’t as important as how those markings got there in the first place.
“Do think anyone died tagging those walls?”
They all looked to their left, following Gavin’s trance. Most were as still as he. Maybe they hadn’t paid much consideration before. Maybe they just didn’t know.
“Would you understand their meaning better, if they had?” asked The Tall Dark Stranger.
“I dunno. I don’t think it’s that important what they say.”
“Is it something you would like to do?”
“It’d be nice to be heard, you know?”
“You know a baby’s first cry when it’s born?” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
They all nodded.
“Everyone gets so relieved and they start to cry and you’ll never seem them really, as happy as they can be, outside of that moment. Not really happy, you know, like a string being wound from happiness and sadness that gets wound so it’s perfectly in tune. Anyway, the baby, it doesn’t really say anything. It just cries, but never in its life will it ever be as clear in its message as it was that moment. Cause its voice, its cry, its song, whatever; it was dressed against life and death.”
“I want that,” said Gavin.
“You want to speak against the backdrop of death?”
“I don’t wanna say anything. I’m not smart like that. I just wanna scream or shout or something. And I wanna be heard.”
“I felt that once,” said The Beautiful Girl. “My father, before he died, he apologised. It felt like you just described. He’d said it a thousand times before it’s just, knowing he was about to die, I guess it sounded more like I wanted it to hear.”
“Why was he sorry,” asked Gavin.
“I can only imagine,” said The Beautiful Girl.
“And do you?’
“What? Imagine? No. It would serve me no wellness to turn a thousand stones in search of an old man’s curse. If it was something that I had been a part of but for the headache of age, I couldn’t remember but unto which, under a spell of irony, I somehow found through my excoriating curiosity, what favour would an old forgotten apology serve me then? If in what I found - what truth I might have forgotten or never known – if that needless thing of which had him speak had my heart bleeding for an apology, what good could come from hearing one spoken in my own voice as my mind tried to form a memory? I would never be able to hear the apology as it was meant to be; shackled to the post of an old man’s deathbed. So no, I don’t imagine. But his apology was beautiful. It weighed as much as the hurt he must have done.”
“And what would you say?” asked The Tall Dark Stranger.
He was looking at Gavin unblinkingly through the mirror in his lowered visor.
“I dunno. Stop; maybe.”
“Stop what?”
“Everything. I dunno. Everything that people do.”
“People don’t do anything, not anymore,” said The Beautiful Girl.
“What do you mean?” asked Gavin.
“Well, you look at the world we live in today. With this new technology, nobody is committed to anything anymore, not even to themselves. It’s like mankind is emancipated from itself, you know. And now with computers and this stupid digital fucking world, people are emancipated from their own conscious selves. Like with computers, people create an external self that they can consciously gauge and manipulate, mainly because they can’t work within their own. That’s why we have computers you know. Our own irrationality of our own selves had our fears inspire the development of a more logical an accessible version of ourselves. And now, with this digital world that is built around everyone’s new conscious selves, people don’t actually live anymore. As long as they are absorbed in their aborted consciousness, they don’t actually do anything. And everything is fleeting and momentary. Their beliefs, their grievances, their loves, their friendships, everything. The technology is so fast now that if you want something, you click a button and you receive it. So, you can almost get something at the exact second you desire it. Where is the work ethic? Where is the just reward, you know? Where I’m from, when you desire something, it becomes a treasure or some kind of a destination but you have to lay every brick along that path yourself and it takes time, no matter what the desire. It could be a new car, it could be a new CD, it could be fresh water or some salt, to lather on a bloodied carcass to keep the meat from spoiling, whatever. But you have to work to earn your treasure and when you get it when you reach your destination, your feet might be sore but your mind will be light and you’ll have accumulated no greater interest than the satisfaction of accomplishment. First deserve, then desire. But now, with these technologies, these people, they desire and they receive and if what they get is not even remotely close to their repugnant tastes then they are so quick to just abandon it and desire again and they act like they never wanted it in the first place. And it’s not just the things they consume; it’s the things they so call believe. They like this and they like that not for the arduous giving of their selves, but for the immediate reward and title that would come from having liked this or having liked that and they will call this activism, the passing of notes when one billion fools are folding their own and none of them are opened and none of them are read, they just passed from hand to hand. They call themselves more humane because they observe life through a fractured lens on these social networks and through these news programs. I was in a car accident once, man years ago, on a highway not far from here. My car slid on some oil and hit against a wall. I think I slid across three or four lanes. I can’t rememb
er too much. I do remember though the feeling that something was about to hit my car. I didn’t feel scared. My mind I guess knew what was happening and it gave me an overdose of endorphin so I felt completely relaxed. Everything washed out of my mind. Every thought and every fear. That’s what happens before you’re about to die, you find peace. And so a truck travelling behind be smashed into my car and sent it flying into three more in front of me who had stopped to help. Now the crash wasn’t so much as bad as having to see through the bonnet which was wrapped around my waist, the hours of traffic passing by my car at a snail’s pace, with their windows down, their mouths agape and their cellular phones filming my tragedy. I guess it gave them a glimpse of their own mortality. You know something interesting though?”
Gavin shook his head, he didn’t know.
“That section of road was renowned for accidents. My crash, as serious as it was, was just a passing incident, another tally of predictability. Interesting enough, though, there was this sign, just beside where my car came to rest, untouched by the accident mind you, and it read ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Chicken – Next Exit’. I remember seeing that giant billboard. It was on a kind of slant because the car was on its side and my head was trapped between the handbrake and what was once a dashboard. Anyway, I had to squint, because of the blood that kept spilling from a cut in my head into my eye. But I remember thinking, ‘what is it?’ you know, if it’s not chicken. Anyway, when the fire rescue finally got me from the wreckage and put me in the ambulance, they were doing all this work pumping on my chest and shoving tubes down my nose and into my stomach but I remember, clear as day, when we passed the next exit, there was a crappy little restaurant sitting on a hill at the off ramp and it was packed, cars beeping their horns and lining up all the way back onto the highway. And I wonder if I hadn’t of crashed my car, whether all those people would have known about that place or not. It’s the only way you can get people’s attention these days, pour some oil on the road, cause a pileup and everyone will be trolling past your message. Accidents, the news, whatever. People watch so that they can peer into another person’s sadness or tragedy so they can feel empathetic for a moment and then look at their children or their friends or their lovers with adoring and fragile eyes and remember why it is that they loved them to begin with. People get content so easy and just forget the things that it takes tragedy to remember. Life and love should always be treated as if it might wane as if tomorrow it might never lie beside you again. You know, the only time that people think that way?”
Gavin shook his head again. He didn’t know.
“Bringing an egg from the fridge to the pan.”
He was thinking something way off.
“They hold it with the utmost care, tenderness and fragility. Even when they crack that egg, they don’t break it bullishly. They crack the egg with poetic grace as if their hand were just touching upon the shell and orchestrating its birth into the bowl. Why can’t people put that much attention into what matters? Why can’t they feel how much life and love they have in their heart without having to invent some tragedy to almost divorce themselves from it?”
She was looking at Gavin with impassioned eyes and though he might have fretted to once before, he found himself looking nowhere but into them. And he felt the postponing of his fear and insignificance as her captive eyes made a wanting prisoner of him. And when she made her point, she leaned towards him and touched her gentle hand on the back of his and when she did, his skin electrified and tickled and the hairs all down his neck and back all stood on their ends and he could feel each one of them, reaching out and catching her breath as from behind every word, it wisped off her tongue. And he wondered if it were true - these things that she was saying - then how he felt right now, he would never be encouraged to feel again, not unless some tragedy were to put a ransom on her tongue. How sad then for to absolve oneself in love, one must condition themselves so that they are immune to its senses until that is, that love returns to its fragility.
“And when that feeling wanes, when love becomes as apparent as a worn callous on their working hands, they will look again and again and again. Every time they peer through the window or through the paper or at the overturned car, at the baby thrown from a seventeen story window, at the school ravaged by a lone gunman or at the travesty of war and its portrait of disparity, they feel kindly and impassionate and giving, more than they normally feel. They want to help, for the first time, someone other than themselves. But what they don’t realize is that they are in fact only helping themselves. They do it for the dopamine and the endorphin, nothing more. And in the end, they buy the chicken, they travel to Disney, they update their profiles and they buy that thing, whatever the hell it is, that thing they can’t afford. They’re fucking junkies. They say they support this or that, but they only support their own addiction. Getting high on someone else’s tragedy. Someone has to put an end to it” said The Beautiful Girl.
Gavin shook his head. He agreed with every word and her hand was on his.
The car stopped in front of a large gate. They were in some kind of industrial complex. Gavin had no idea where. He had never seen this part of town. And he was more enticed and attracted by The Beautiful Girl’s accented words that he paid no mind to where they might be and in the distance, to a roller door rattling as it coiled back up towards the roof and from behind it, the armed men who motioned towards their car, opening the gate and ushering them through.
“Where are we?” asked Gavin.
His fingers were secretly curling over the handle of the door, trying to clasp strong enough so that he could rip open the door with one hand, unshackle himself with the other and then dive from the moving car and skid along the dusted and pebbled path and somehow find his feet and scurry on through the dust swept up in his escape.
The Beautiful Girl reached her hand over and rested it upon his. It quelled his desire to run and though it didn’t stop his heart beating rampantly, it did entice it into staying inside his chest long enough to get some kind of response.
“We’re here,” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
Gavin took his time getting out of the car. They were inside an old hangar maybe. It could have been anything. It was a giant metal shed and the roof was so high that he was sure that there were clouds forming somewhere below the lighting fixtures.
“This way” shouted The Tall Dark Stranger.
“Come with me,” said The Beautiful Girl, taking Gavin’s nervous hand.
They both climbed up a small ladder that lead to a loading bay and then followed The Tall Dark Stranger through a red rusted door into a massive room,
Gavin stood in awe.
“Welcome to The Camp,” said The Beautiful Girl.
She looked out over the sprawl of busying activity like it was something she herself had made with her own hands. And she wore, in her eyes, the look of a proud mother, busy spending her child’s upon her child’s achievement.
“Is this….”
Gavin looked to the left and to the right. He couldn’t finish his own words at first. He knew the answer was being spelled out before him; he just needed to hear it being spoken.
“Are you…”
The Beautiful Girl took both of his hands in one of hers and she drew her other across his face. Gavin had never felt the touch of a woman. He felt weak and naked. He felt exposed and expendable. He felt as if he might explode.
“This is where we train. It is where we build our knowledge. It is where, as humans, as lovers of life and one another, we come together, with one belief, one thought, one purpose” she said.
“You’re…”
To his right, there was a massive set of monkey bars that stretched over and a pool of murky water that may or may not have been housing some kind of sea monster or urchin or floating prophylactic. On one side, men in shadowy uniformed appearance braced themselves to test their agility as, before them, other men bound from bar to bar, swinging above whatever horror lur
ked in the murky depths below.
To his left was a massive pile of sand and dirt with a net of mesh and razor wire sitting just inches from the backs and necks of the same uniformed men who crawled on their bellies with their weapons out before them, digging themselves further into the sand to scour their way through the obstacle.
“You’re terrorists,” said Gavin.
As he said the words, he waited for what he thought might be a charging fist from a near direction. He was expecting The Tall Dark Stranger or any one of the other hundreds of armed men to swipe at him with their trained assault and reduce him to begging for his life. Instead, The Beautiful Girl smiled. She said, “Yes, we are terrorists” and she pressed her body firmly against his and while one hand gently stroked the line of his chin, the other pressed against his chest and ran down his body and cusped between his legs.
Her eyes were like a watchman’s rifle. There was nowhere he could run but in truth, there was nowhere else he would rather be. He had never felt this sensation of fear and exhilaration, both pulling at the same string of his being. The Beautiful Girl pressed her lips against his and Gavin felt a small fire envelope his insides.
“المغرر” shouted a man from a sofa at the end of the room.
The Beautiful Girl peeled her lips away from Gavin and stared at him smiling.
“I want you to meet someone,” she said.
She could have said anything at that point.
“Ok,” he said.
The two walked over to the far end of the warehouse. They passed the sandpit and the murky water and they passed the range of targets all lined up with uniformed men no longer practicing their aim, now running about with their knees jumping up high to their chest and their weapons held high above their heads.
They were terrorists alright.
It was just like he had seen on television.
They were joined by The Tall Dark Stranger before they reached the sofa.
“Sir, everything is on plan for today’s strike,” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
“Who is this?”
The Tall Dark Stranger looked to Gavin and invited him forwards without breaking his strained appearance.
“His name is Gavin. Like all grand twists of fate, he found himself in our company and I think there is none more fitting than he deserves. Gavin” he said, ushering his hand and inviting him to face the man sitting on the sofa. “This is, The Leader.”
Gavin extended his hand, but it was brushed back by The Tall Dark Stranger. The Leader looked at him, for just a second and then went back to playing his video game. Gavin looked to The Tall Dark Stranger and then to The Beautiful Girl. He had no idea of what had just transpired.
How the hell was he supposed to feel?
What the hell just happened?
Did he fuck it up?
“The Leader is a man of few words, but he is a man of great thought of which conspires into a great act. He is but the life for which we all owe our sense of fragility. He gives what in turn he aims for us to take away” said The Beautiful Girl.
“Is that Call of Duty?” asked Gavin.
The Tall Dark Stranger rested his hands on Gavin’s shoulders.
“Very few people have had the honour that has been graced upon you. Of all these men and women who will fight and die to honour the ideas of our great leader, you are but a select few who have had such debated converse with the supreme one.”
Gavin smiled. He had never really felt like a right fit in anything in his life, not until now.
“Did he like me?” asked Gavin.
The Beautiful Girl kissed him headstrong on the lips. He almost tripped backwards.
“Everyone does,” she said. “Especially me.”
Gavin blushed.
“Do you have what it takes?” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
“To do what?” asked Gavin.
“To be a terrorist.”
Gavin was silent for a second.
He looked at the men crossing the murky water.
He could do that.
He looked at the men crawling under the razor wire.
He could do that.
He looked at the men running with a gun above their heads.
And he could do that too.
Then he looked at The Beautiful Girl.
And he’d do whatever she thought was cool.
Then he looked back at The Tall Dark Stranger.
Stronger.
Determined.
Diligent.
Brave.
Confident.
Like a man.
“Yes,” he said. “I have what it takes.”
“Good. I knew it all along” said The Tall Dark Stranger. “We need someone like you Gavin. No. Not someone like you. Gavin” he said, pausing and resting his hand on Gavin’s shoulder while The Beautiful Girl tickled the inside of his palm. “We need you.”
Gavin smiled again.
“What can I do?”
“Your work,” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
“I was fired,” said Gavin.
“Can you still get access?”
“I don’t know. They took my access and it’s pretty ….”
“What? You can get in?”
“My hero” whispered The Beautiful Girl into Gavin’s ear, her other hand riding somewhere down his crotch.
“I mean. I’m not sure. But my brother. He works there. I could get his pass key and…”
The Tall Dark Stranger cut him off.
“Are you sure?”
“…”
“I mean, are you certain?”
“Yes,” said Gavin, getting a word in. “I can get his key. What do you want…? I mean, what can I do?”
“You’re going to deliver something, to the place where you worked.”
“Free humanity from the slaving binds of automation,” said The Beautiful Girl, herself now writhing against Gavin’s body.
“What am I delivering?” asked Gavin.
“There is no greater title than a man can attest than being a martyr and more so, a terrorist. Eternity is what takes us into our deaths” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
“What does he mean?” said Gavin, looking at The Beautiful Girl.
“Shhh,” she said.
As Gavin turned to The Tall Dark Stranger, The Beautiful Girl fell to her knees and undid the rusted clips on Gavin’s belt. She smiled conniving as he looked down in estranged wonder.
“Listen,” she said, unzipping his trousers and pulling his underwear down to his ankles.
Gavin’s head burst with fire. He felt every molecule in his body dancing about and he felt every nerve, tingling as the finest breaths of air, tickled his skin. His face turned a bright red as he looked back to The Tall Dark Stranger and while The Beautiful Girl pleasured him, he listened.
“A man can live for a moment and be a good man but in his life, he will amount to nothing, just simply dissolve in the expected turn of events. But some men are remembered for an eternity by an act unto which they give themselves and from this, they earn their infinite title. The Martyr. The Terrorist. The Son of God. Would Jesus have not allowed his own persecution, would he have not allowed his own brother to have to have had to betray him had he not known that for an eternity, he would be rewarded with the infinite guilt and suffering of mankind? That for an eternity, he would live as a man god. Title is the most important thing that exists. We have no idea of death or infinity or heaven but what we do know is that after our death, our names and our title can be sung throughout history and we shall be forgotten if it is that we are sung about.”
“But what about Judas?”
“What about Judas?”
“He is remembered at the betrayer, as the villain but… Well, he is the real Jesus Christ, I mean, the real martyr anyway. He sacrificed the eternity of his name so that he could help his brother to attain his sufferance, his persecution and his infinite title. That doesn’t seem like…”
“Shhh,” said
The Beautiful Girl, pausing for a second.
“Sorry, trying to shift my focus.”
“Who are you?”
“Gavin.”
“No, who are you? What have you done? If you die tomorrow, how long until it is that it seems that you never were?”
Gavin had no friends. He had no job now. He had no hobbies. He had no girlfriend. He wasn’t even invited to his high school reunion. He didn’t keep in touch with people from work and he was pretty sure that outside of his mother and father and maybe his brother, nobody would ever notice that he had lived or as a result of it, died.
“Judas died knowing he would be the villain, but he also died for the love of his brother in his heart. It was the burden of that love that cast him to tie a knot around his own neck, but his suffering had to be real. For his brother to return unto the kingdom unto which he could truly rule, he could not walk alone, he could not give himself in, he had to be betrayed, he had to die upon the cross; there had to be suffering, there was no other course than for him to portray that role. But it was his love of the ideal that ensured this martyr went into death, not as the layman’s villain, but as the catalyst of eternal religious thought, that without him and without his action, the evolution of idea and of science would remain in dogged regression and it was that thought alone, which quelled the pain he might otherwise have been plagued to endure. What do you want to be? A rock star? A writer? A nobody? Or do you wanna be a terrorist?”
The name sounded so strong and so masculine. He was in no way big or formed. He was nothing like the man he was speaking to or the men who ran about the warehouse in scripted exercise. He was scrawny. He had arms like straggling spaghetti and his face was sunken like a deserted and creviced moon. He looked hardly like the man that he imagined himself one day growing into being.
He had never felt like a man.
When he walked into a gym once, he left after a minute or two. The other men looked like they had been training since they were conceived. Their arms were the size of tree trunks and their legs where these monstrous flexing things and just one of their bulging veins along would be bigger and stronger than his entire body. When he walked into that gym, he felt less of a man and he walked out just one minute later vowing never to return and to dive himself into some self-loathing and degrading ideal that would distract from his less than masculine appeal.
His never dressed like other men dressed. When he wore a suit, his hanged loose on his body. He looked lost inside like he didn’t belong. And he could tell that other men didn’t see him as a threat and he could tell, with the way they turned their repelling stares that no woman saw in him, something for them to desire or to bed with and with him, to one day raise a child.
“I wanna be a man,” he said.
“المغرر, give us a second.”
“Ok,” she said, wiping her mouth.
“Let me show you something,” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
Gavin lifted his pants quickly. He did so looking around the room feeling a thousand terrorizing stares all looking at him and probably laughing because theirs was bigger.
“You see those men,” he said, pointing out to the end of the warehouse where a group of men all dressed in sheathes of colour, all loaded arsenals to their chests.
“Yes,” said Gavin.
“Today, they will be remembered for an eternity. They will go to war. They will attack a target of the east side of town. By the evening, their faces will be on every news channel on every station in every city in every country across the entire world. They will be more than famous. They will be infamous. They will live as martyrs for us in our brotherhood but for the entirety of mankind, they will live forever as Terrorists. Look at them. Look at the joy on their faces. Finally, they will attain what is rightfully theirs.”
“Are they scared?”
“Why should they feel fear? Our minds are a puzzle. When a piece of that puzzle is missing, when there is some information of which we do not know, our minds invent the worst. They invent that so we go on our search for information. It is the core of survival and the catalyst of learning. But some pieces have no resolution and so we must carve our own. Some think of an afterlife, of an eternity that awaits and rewards their giving; like Judas. Some think of their title, of the infamy they will have and of their names being read aloud on television sets and in history classes as a reward of their giving; like Jesus. Do you have faith?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you believe in god?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you fear god?”
“No.”
“Then you are not Jewish. Do you love god?”
“No.”
“Then you are not Christian.”
“Do you accept god?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you submit to his reverence like a mother does to her body when she gives birth to her child. To accept god means to love and to fear god in the same tone.”
“No.”
“Then you are not a Muslim.”
“I’m an atheist.”
“Well, that’s kind of tricky. There’s no such thing. To disprove or to disbelieve in god is to assume the idea of god as an opposite to the ideal; therefore, by incorporating god into your ideal, you assume that god exists. Atheism became the intellectualized devil so to speak and is in every right, infeasible without its opposite. It’s like believing in ‘up’ and saying that ‘down’ does not exist. So if in fact you are an atheist, we can assume that in heightened fright, you will secretly and quietly assume a thought of either god existing or its polar, god not existing. Both in their right are the same thought as both access the same function in the human brain to tickle the god receptors that release endorphins and make the idea of death seem bearable and without unnecessary panic.”
“And what about a Nihilist?”
“The faceless god. All belief and non-belief are but the same. They are just words that can fill that void in one’s mind, the one without resolution, the one whose fright is ever so heightened. What will yours be? Will you think of heaven? Or will you listen to the echo of your name?”
“I wanna be Jesus.”
“We all want to be Jesus.”
“I’ll do it. Tomorrow. I’ll do it. What do I have to deliver?”
“Yourself,” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
Gavin watched the men strapping black vests on loaded with explosives. They looked so fucking cool. He wanted to feel like they looked.
“You know what really turns me on?” said The Beautiful Girl.
Gavin had no idea.
But he wanted to know.
“Suicide bombers,” she said.