Sergio De La Pava - Personae

4 Back to Nicole. If like her you take no steps to combat this adolescent self-absorption but instead foster it through your every deed and thought this belief of yours will psychotically extend until on some deep invisible level you begin to believe that others attach a similar level of importance to your every move, in other words that you are being watched like the public speaker and we’ve already established how fun that is. So now you’re this constantly anxious person infinitely concerned with the impressions you’re making which makes you highly unimpressive and you pick up on that so try harder with predictably bad results and those results only compound all the foregoing in a way that’s just the height of unhealthy.

5 Now you see why Nicole’s pathetically low-level insight (the world is full of other people and their trajectories are, objectively speaking, at least as important as hers) and more importantly her actions in response, served as a freeing agent formed in the realization that all eyes were not on her after all; most people’s eyes are on what they need to see that moment. She could relax.

6 Nor is this to say that Nicole changed instantly and dramatically from that moment forward. This is real life not fiction. Just pointing out that it happened.

7 He looked kind of like a forlorn figure. Standing in expectation, ready to press a specially-crafted sandwich but only if a particular customer would walk in. She wasn’t coming and he felt more than foolish standing there mentally retracing his earlier steps in an attempt to determine whether he had betrayed his situation to those around him. As is often the case it wasn’t until he mentally let go of the rope that the door sounded and in walked Marybeth wearing a perfect dress displaying a flower print and comprised of what he could tell, even just visually, was the softest material on earth.

“So sorry,” she said. “Trying to get away all day but I work for a colossally mean woman.”

“It’s okay, I forgot you said you were coming back today.”

But because the words you speak can either bridge distance or create it he quickly added:

“I don’t know why I just said that, I’ve been counting the minutes to this.”

“Me too!”

They smiled.

* * *

NOW a dark nullity in somewhat human form moves slowly, it does not walk, towards immobile him. But the great fear he feels as a result does not compel orderly movement. Instead it inspires such a frenetic extremity of such that the only visible result is a kind of catatonia. The Figure at first appears as if drawn out of carbonized smoke but as it nears the drawing hardens into cognizable human features until what confronts him at last is an over-nine-foot-tall corrosive yet inexplicably attractive being.

He is looking for his gun… or even the knife… but can’t really move… and doesn’t see either weapon… anyway he doesn’t really think they would help… and this thought is supported by the dismissive look on the face of the Figure… who calmly selects a nearby rock and doesn’t so much sit on it as descend onto it.

—¿Why do you seek to arm yourself?

He cannot speak.

—¿Do you think if it mattered I would be this still?

He hates this kind of logical interplay. Now he can but won’t.

—¿Well?

— I’ll let you worry about it in your next life as I stand over your empty corpse.

—¿That’s you perfectly isn’t it? Your way of always assuming oppositional combat. ¿Who says I’m not here to help? And don’t say you don’t need help.

— I don’t need help.

— I asked you not to say that.

Was that anger that flashed as the Figure spoke or just a generalized malice? Even sitting in calm it is a menacing sight arrayed before him. He notices for the first time that it wears an all-black suit, cut like no garment he’s ever before seen. No shirt beneath, only hairless astral-white skin. The facial hair is somehow constantly evolving into varying levels of prominence but always consistent with the straight black rivulets of hair that seem to escape the hat atop its head to cover the face below.

— As things stand now, you are going to fail.

— Swallow your predictions whole before they exit your mouth, they’re good for nothing.

— Of course you can afford to talk like that. You can say whatever you wish. But soon even this rain will stop and they begin to move again. You are at most only one person. You will then want my help only I may not appear, I’m fickle that way.

— If you feel the urge to be helpful, go help them. They, not I, are in need of it. Because you’re right that the rain is going to stop and when it does there is nothing on Heaven or Earth can save them from what they did, can save them from me.

— You say I should go help them then in the next breath that nothing on Heaven or Earth can. ¿So where do you think I’m from? ¿Who am I? Do you think.

— I know who you are and you can have at me when I’m done but not an instant before.

—¿At you?

— Yes. I don’t fear death, I don’t fear you, except insofar as it might prevent me from doing what I have to do.

— Interesting. ¿But of what relevance is that to me?

—¿Who are you? You’re not human.

— True.

— Death then as I say, or Satan. ¿Who?

— It’s complicated. Best way to say it is I differ depending on the observer.

— I don’t care. I don’t want your help and if you try to hinder me it will be you in need of help.

—¿I think if you think about it a bit you’ll see that you’ve always had my help in this area, no?

These words have their intended effect because he understands immediately what they mean and he does think about it and, although it pains him to admit it, there is some truth there.

The rain won’t stop. Will it ever stop? He thinks no. This heaven-sent water will merge with our seas to overrun all the terrestrial and flood us out of being. Already it seems as if everything solid is only temporarily so and will soon return to its natural liquid state. Also a jungle contains many animals and they are unfeelingly savage but generally hidden from view by the profluence of natural pulchritude that creates the illusion of safety. Now though that’s been inverted. Everywhere he looks he sees only the animalistic savagery. Worse, the nature itself has become animalistic with fur and claws replacing leaves and branches. He closes his eyes in attempted remedy.

When he opens them there still sits the Figure, still immense, still serenely malevolent, still staring at him as if, for the Figure, time simply failed to elapse. This discourages him and only with great effort does he manage to speak:

—¿Okay, since you know everything, when is this rain going to stop so I can get back to it?

—¿Back to what?

— You know.

— I want you to say it.

— The… hunt. ¿When?

— I don’t know everything. In fact I don’t know anything that isn’t instinctively known to everyone, problem is you forget. Think of me like a map but to the village you grew up in so already know intimately.

—¡The rain!

— I don’t know. I can’t explain rain any more than you.

— I can explain it. Clouds get too heavy with condensation. I want to know when it will stop.

— Oh I see. I thought you were interested in getting at the true center of things, their central truth, not in shallow schoolboy lessons.

— I’ll stay on the surface. Too much to do and like all men a limited allotment of time in which to do it.

— Less true than you think but either way know that until you regain strength and more importantly this rain ceases there’s nothing to be done. ¿Why not use this enforced idleness to engage me in precisely those why questions your precious science can’t answer?