(rli: how nonsensical it is to talk sense into drug addicts)

CHP 7. Chinese Food

 

      The other fool, she lies. The bed has not moved in days -- not a shudder, not a sigh. The ceiling receives her gaze. A pure white ceiling, shadowed and dirty. A ceiling not showing the end of the room. The fool, she stares at something else, something not there, something beyond the end of the room. Perhaps it is something pleasant, something she has not seen before – stars against a dark sky, a clean beach.  Or perhaps there is nothing there – perhaps yellow eyes have lost their sight. A riveted hand, with cables with insulation with mechanical screams with every movement holds her down -- into the unwilling bed of vacant immobility. 

      The door opens easily now. There is only one strong enough to lift the mechanical hand, only one who can see and fight what isn’t there. Eight feet tall with a plated, angular face Naimlis, the other god, enters. Long hair covers an exoskeleton, both in the darkest gray. A large black pearl scrapes across the breastplate.

      “Lindsey.”

      Product of your world, come into mine. Lose your way, fall behind. Listen to me, my muted friend (she steps closer) I say I think I’ll stay a while.

      “I will stay with you tonight.”

      She doesn’t respond.

      “Lindsey!” I shout at her lifeless body.

      She’s staring at something, though. I sit down at the foot of her desk so I can poke at my shame. They are the many black and yellow patches on my arms. There are probably more, but those were the only ones I could see. All the others there seemed to not care – as soon as the band played the next song, a new wave of friendly moshers entered the pit. I can hear Lindsey’s computer whirring softly. It is the soundtrack to the little room.

      Shame! I have never been defeated! Let her meet me again – let her follow me into my oblivion. This world could be my destruction and I could create another! They do not know! They know nothing! Shame! How could it have happened? The Pearl, that is how.  I could take it back. I could take my world back. Let all who run their preprogrammed lives be trapped in MY infinite loop! My infinite loop runs on no logic but my own! Do they not see? Do they not realize that I have laid waste to thousands of lives more worthy than their own!? I have destroyed entire towns in a daydream and rulers in a cough. Shame, what Shame! The one who shamed me shall see! She will see the other god, the one with the dark armor and the axe! I will come to her, and she will know. She will know who I really am.

      Damn this world! I will damn it! For such a world based on science and logic to have such chaotic lapses of mindless cruelty is unacceptable. It is an unforgivable offense. There is no honor here, no desire for strength or nobility. I can hear the lives of the worshippers of the mechanical god right now. It sounds like a computer whirring in a tiny room. It is steady and sedating. Monotonous! It gives artificial life to an unnatural thing! Shame!

      I approach her body.

      “Lindsey!”

      She does not respond. I will take her back. A blow to her face, as one had come to me. Hard -- and fast -- with many clawed rings.

            “Damn you Lindsey! Get up!”

            I’ll kill her if she doesn’t get up. I will go, into my room, into my closet, and get the pearl. She will be gone – I will send her to wherever the little chip implanted in her brain sends her.

            Another hit, this time in her soft belly. Her cotton shirt offers no protection at all. My steel knuckles crash right through. There is no infinite loop here. This one will end. I will kill her if she does not wake up.

            “Fucking bitch, I’m going to kill you!”

            A look of pain suddenly creeps onto her face. She moves a little.

            “How the hell do you turn this thing off!” I yell at her.

            Brute, warrior hands claw her scalp. She pitifully tries to ward me off by sitting up.

            “How do you turn it off!” I demand, again. I smack her head with my palm. I didn’t mean for one of my spiked bracelets to strike her shoulder, but it did. She screeched in pain.

            “Fucking turn it off, right now!” That is an order.

            She moves a frail arm up to her head, it looks like.

            Not fast enough! I grab her wrist and stamp it on her head. She tries to say something.

            “No, not there,” she whispers.

            I let go.

            She slowly moves her hand down to behind her ear and pokes at something. She looks at me, shocked. I recognize the computer whirring.

            “You weren’t moving.” I say.

            Lindsey looks at the open door. “Did I leave the door unlocked?”

            “No. Your roommate let me in,” I say.

            “Natalie?”

            “Yes, Natalie.” Natalie is not there.

            Lindsey hugs her stomach. She looks like she has something to say.

            “It’s been three fucking days. You’ve been high on that shit for three fucking days,” I can hear the dark, Minor voice of the Warlock.

            “I think it actually does burn holes in your stomach. Do you think it does?”

            “What.”

            “My stomach really hurts. It feels like there are holes in my stomach. It wasn’t supposed to mimic the adverse effects, too.”

            “Your stomach hurts because you have not eaten in three days.”

            She looks at me, scared. “I have holes in my stomach, Naimlis.”

            “You are just hungry, that is all. Get up.”

            She doesn’t move. “I wasn’t supposed to burn holes in myself.”

            “We are going out to dinner.”

            “What if I die, Naimlis? I could die. Do you know how long you can live with holes in your stomach?” She is grave.

            Shame! I should have died tonight! She, whose life is meaningless, clings to it like it was made of gold.  Death by electronically hallucinated “holes” is a far glorious fate than her present existence. Never again will she use the neuro implant. I will tear it out of her somehow. I will tear the implant out of every unthinking, post-human creature in this logical world.  I head over to her desk and start stuffing her purse with her wallet and cell phone.

            “Chinese food! We are getting Chinese food. Outside, away from this room. If you do not eat, you will die –holes or not.”

            She looks at me, shocked.

            “I will make you come with me if you refuse. I shall lift and carry you myself and suffocate you in your own fried rice.”

            Lindsey gets up from the bed and stumbles a little. She still has the same shocked expression on her face as she puts on her shoes.

            “What?” I bark.

            It takes a while for her to answer. She does, though.

            “Thank you, Naimlis. Thanks for caring about me.”

            “Let’s go.”

      

       …….

      

            Lindsey looks up from her vegetable fried rice.

            “What?” she says.

            Her face looks as flat and pale as the wall behind her, though it could be the lighting. I must have been staring at her.

            “Is it any good?” I ask.

            “I was expecting this place to suck, but it’s not too bad actually.”

            I have been to this Chinese place once before and I have not caught the name of it not then, not now. It isn’t quite a restaurant, though it does have a handful of tables. Four tables. The floor, walls, and ceiling all have the same pale dirty white color. The menu board has faded pictures of entrees, but all of them too blurry to see what the entrees were exactly. It’s a dirty little dump with good food.

            “You know what? This isn’t going to work,” Lindsey says, throwing down her fork.

            “What’s the problem?”

            “I can’t eat with you watching me. You’re just sitting across me and staring at me—I can’t eat like that!”

            I guess I was.

            “I’ll look somewhere else, then. Just finish your food.” I look up at the ceiling.

            “That’s even worse! Why don’t you get something to eat?”

            “I’m not hungry.”

            “Get an egg roll or something. Soup? At least get a drink! It’s driving me crazy that you’re staring at me.”

            “I guess those holes in your stomach are gone.” She was so convinced she was going to die, a few minutes ago. She had thanked me for caring about her.

            Did I care about her? The virtual drug addict in front of me, pale and shadowed like the wall behind her, who sits, and pick out the water chestnuts from her rice? Could I actually feel some kind of compassion for this one, this one who crunches loudly now, but who had just awakened from a three day trance? An angry short person, who is also good at foosball.

            Lindsey stops crunching the chestnuts to nod (an exaggerated nod) at me for a moment. I nod back.

            What weakness has coiled inside her? What a simple creature she is. A simple animal in extravagant disguise; she is sheltered from this world in a drug induced illusion. There is no fight for survival, Lindsey’s clever inventions have forfeited the fight for her.

            She throws her fork down and explodes at me. “I can’t eat with you watching me!” 

            So angry, she always is. Angry, but fighting nothing. She is the frustrated coward. I think I pity her.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “I just can’t stand when someone is watching me and I’m eating. I don’t know why you don’t understand that it is strange to just… I don’t know….. Stare!” she shouts at me. She then widens her eyes and shoots a forced stare at me.

            I can hear the Chinese people in the kitchen chatter something.

            “I’m thinking.”

            “About what?”

            Lindsey is a coward? Lindsey is a drug addict? Lindsey is frustrated? Lindsey likes water chestnuts? Lindsey is afraid to eat alone? Lindsey is cared about?

            Is Lindsey cared about? Do I care about Lindsey?

            “Lindsey?”

            “Mmm?”

            “How come your room mate didn’t wake you?”

            “I guess she thought I was asleep or something.”

            “What about your friends?”

            “Oh, they knew I was getting high.”

            “So why didn’t they wake you?”

            “What do you mean?” she asks.

            “You were dehydrated. You were starving. You could not turn off the chip.”

            “They knew I knew what the risks were. A lot of people use the chips. You can only trust they know what they are doing.”

            “So why didn’t they wake you.” This is getting irritating.

            “I don’t get in their business, they don’t get into mine.”

             “And I assume you had the entire situation under control.”

            “For the most part, yes.”

            “Which is why your room mate let me in to find you almost dead.”

            “I wasn’t almost dead.” Lindsey hisses at me.

            “You were.”

            “No, I wasn’t.”

            “You were.”

            “I think I would know if I was almost dead.”

            And this is how she repays the one who saved her life.

            “Should I have left you then? To die? To die in your bed while your room mate sat at her computer and your friends passed by your door? Should I have done that?” I put an intentional weight to my words.

            “What difference does it make to you?”

            “You are the decline of your human race.”

            “What?”

            “I care about you.” She thanked me for it, earlier.

            “What was that you said before?”

            “I said I care about you. You worry me.” Do I care? Do I worry?

            “You said I was the decline of something. What did you say before?”

            “Nothing.”

            Lindsey looks at me, almost theatrically.

            “I see,” she says.

            “I’m sure you do.”

            “I do.”

            “But you still haven’t answered my original question.”

            She pauses. Her eyes drift over the bruises on my arm.

            It takes her too long to answer.

            I say, “I find it very strange that your roommate and your friends, who I saw entering and leaving your room daily, did not bother to wake you.”

            She thinks about it. Lindsey has not touched her food since we started talking.

            “They do it all the time, I mean, I was the last one to get the implant.”

            “Yes, yes of course,” I start. She was in store for a diatribe.

            “Of course? Of course what? You think I didn’t know what I was doing? What do you mean of course I was the last one of my friends – are you saying I just copied them or something?” Lindsey fumes, but the dingy lighting ruins the expression.

            A statement, said by Lindsey, is a cause for the regrouping of my thoughts. I have come to the conclusion that I should be telling her the topic of our conversation every few seconds.

            “I am not saying you copied your friends. I just want to know why your friends did not rescue you.” Why I had to be the one that did it.

            She shook her “rematch!” finger at me. “I can take care of myself! I don’t need anyone to rescue me!”

            “You almost died.”

            “Maybe I would have woken up.”

            Maybe she needs a list of possible explanations.

            I say, “Did you and your friends have a conflict or something? Did they ignore you? Were they taking advantage of your weakened state? Did your friends just not see you? I don’t understand.”

            “No, we’re cool.” I catch her eye poke at my bruise.

            “Then why wouldn’t they…”

            “Look man, they do what they do, I do what I do. I don’t get in their business they don’t get in mine.”

            But she looked at me, dazed, with one shoe on and said “Thanks for caring about me, Zona,” or something like that. She had the darkest circles under her eyes-- maybe not, I am not sure. She has dark circles under her eyes now, maybe they were there before, maybe it is the lighting.

            I say nothing. I look at the bruises on my arm. My skin is an odd pale olive color from the lighting and the wall. We have an overall muted image, as though we have implanted ourselves into the walls. The walls are soft and pliable and we have kneaded ourselves into it.

            “What,” she says to me.

            “Nothing.”

            “Ok.”

            She just looks at me. Either we are just two opposite walls in a room facing each other or I look like I have something to say.

            “You make it seem as though you are indifferent to whether or not people care about you, yet earlier you said to me, ‘Thanks for caring about me.’ I don’t understand that.”

            “I did?”

            “Yes, you did.”

            “Maybe it was the drugs.”

            “You were disconnected at that point.”

            She pauses.

            “Well, do you care about me?”

            I don’t know.

            “I don’t know, I think I do.” As I say this, there is a brief flash, an involuntary impulse of a memory of a beach. I cared about someone there.

            She answers though, and I do not have time to finish my thought.

            “You don’t care about me? You’re a pretty shitty friend.”

             I think I ask her this question because I think I know her answer. “Well, do you care about me, then?”

            Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t interfere with my business because I am not allowed to interfere with hers. With no involvement there can be no friendship.

             “Of course I care about you! We’re best friends!”

            What?

            “What?”

            “What?” she says.

            “So what would you do if I was in a drug-induced coma for three days?”

            “Real drugs or the implantations?”

            “How about both?”

            “Hey if you want to mess yourself up, then that’s what you want to do. You don’t want to use the real drugs. I heard people died or burned holes in their body with those. I know a guy who is really good at unnecessary surgery. If you want, I can hook you up.”

            I try to finish my interrupted thought, because it is pleasant. I am walking on cool sand. It is dark, so you notice the sound of the water.

            Did I notice the sound of the water, at the time?

            I don’t remember.

            Why were we always at the beach? We couldn’t have always been at the beach.

      “Is that a new necklace?” She asks me.

      After the concert, I bought myself a necklace at a jewelry store I don’t remember.

      “Yes, it is.”

      “I wasn’t sure if it was new or not, that’s why I didn’t say anything. It is kind of ugly, though. I don’t like the vintage thing.”

      “I don’t either.”

      “Are those real?”

      The pearls, she means.

      “No, they are not.” I cannot afford a real black pearl necklace.

            “It doesn’t really match your whole metalhead thing. I have a black and white polka dot dress it might look good with, if you want to borrow it.”

            Why are we always at the beach? I think he said he loved me, though I am not sure. If he did, then Lindsey must too. At least, she has the potential to. It may be the lighting, but she looks completely hollow.

            The Chinese people are talking loudly amongst themselves in the kitchen. They want to go home. Lindsey throws out her drink, and sits down again. She says nothing. The rice looks cold and greasy.

            “Well, I’m going to go. If you want, you can walk back with me,” she says.

            I don’t think I’ve ever been to the beach before.

            “Yea, let’s go back. I still have to finish my programming homework.”

            “You didn’t finish yet? It was due last week” she says.

            “I think actually I am just going to turn it in the way it is.”

            We emerge from the wall and walk out into the street. A finger on a bruised arm touches a fake black pearl necklace wondering whether or not there was, indeed, a beach.