Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

And so even though he could see she was not looking at him, and could hear that she wasn’t saying anything, he was not prepared to make the leap to the conclusion that she wasn’t listening to a solitary word springing from his lips and certainly he had not the slightest clue regarding the import of the photograph she appeared to be staring at, that sort of thing generally being lost on him. But he’d also decided that today was the day they were going to discuss the Thing that happened. Today. And he had hoped to do it somewhere else. Because in there, the place he’d been forced to leave if only by chivalry, he always felt diminished by the memory.

“Are you listening to me?” he finally said. “Jack?”

“Yes. Fine, take it and go.”

“No, I think we need to discuss this.”

“What?”

“Because Donna says this isn’t healthy.”

“What?!”

“I know you don’t want to hear this but… about Petey.”

“No, stop.”

“We need—”

“Stop it Trevor, you promised. We agreed we would never talk about this again.”

“No you agreed. You agreed. I had no choice. You said you would leave and I’d never see you again at a time when I could not have dealt with that. You forced me into it Jackie, and I said okay but now I want to talk about it, we need to.”

“No I don’t need to do anything, get away.”

“Donna says it’s not healthy, that you need to talk about it. That human beings need to talk. It’s like the way you didn’t go to the cemetery that day.”

“Shut up will you? Will you please just shut up? Please? Maybe promises mean nothing to you but they mean something to me and you promised we would not talk about this.”

“I just want to know that you’re okay about this.”

“Okay? Yes, I’m okay. So okay that you should leave me alone. And fine I’ll go ahead and say what I’m supposed to say. Here it is: I’m happy for you and Donna okay? And, of course, yes, I particularly know how happy that moment will be for her and all that. Is that enough, are we done? Because there’s only so much I can take Tre.”

“Nobody grieves forever Donna says.”

“I wouldn’t know, I don’t know anything about grief. Whatever grief is, I haven’t felt it.”

“You’re grieving.”

“No I’m not. A word has to be invented for what I’m doing. For what I felt then and still feel now, even years later. Grief won’t cut the mustard here bub, maybe torment or agony try.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe those words begin to describe what it feels like in a world that can one day contain a three-foot-high giggle named Peter and the next day not. At night, like a prisoner in solitary, I mentally cross the date off my imaginary calendar as one less day I have to endure. Do you understand? What I look forward to more than anything is death because it can’t be any worse than this here. Are you beginning to get the picture? How little resemblance my status bears to yours? And someone needs to explain to me why I feel dirty all the time. How I can shower then bathe then dress in freshly-laundered garments yet still feel unclean and troubled in my own body. And the worms. Tiny flesh-colored worms made of some unspeakable fungus that writhe and crawl just beneath my skin and out of view. I feel them all the time too. And I’ll claw and tear at my flesh to get them out but all I get in return are these marks. Also what about this empty blackness that starts in my stomach and instantly spreads outward whenever I acknowledge it, and the longest I can manage to ignore it is like a couple hours and even those hours are spent in subconscious fear of the black? And I hate how much more intelligent I’ve become, how much more I know now. Because one of the things they tell you is that time is your friend, the only thing that has the power to heal your gaping wounds. More than that really, that it will heal them. And maybe before, when I had no need for these kinds of notions, I would’ve been impressed by this thought. But now I know that the people who make these statements can call themselves scientists all they want in a vain attempt to secure the imprimatur of legitimacy the term would afford them but they cannot change the fact that they are not so in even the loosest sense of the word. You see, armed with my greater intelligence, I know that if a true scientist says with certainty that a molecule, for example, will definitely do X, then it will do X. See? Yet when these pretenders tell me that something will have a certain effect on me they’re basing that prediction on some self-help section of the bookstore they themselves circularly created. And they’re talking about those wildly unpredictable entities called humans so that whatever the percentages in their favor may be, they still tell me nothing about me and what I can do to get out of this infernal cell. And worse still, I can now say from experience that this Time they’re all so fond of is nothing but an illusion. People say years like it means something, like it represents some vast expanse. Well I’m now on the other side of those years and I can report that they do nothing, they’re no different than days, weeks, months, or even hours. Every day I wake up and feel no better, every day it happens again, his hand slips out of mine and doesn’t return leaving me grasping at empty air. Each day a freshly opened lesion. I want this pain to end even though it no longer really hurts if that makes any sense. There’s no substance, no drug, no activity or person that can help me. I see life now as it truly is, its atavistic savagery, and so feel nothing but contempt for those innocents able to view it as I once did. It’s as if everyone else is in a beer commercial and I’m the designated driver and do you realize how profane this all looks to someone who’s had their eyes wrested open to the truth? I’m afraid to move for fear of getting some of the world on me,” she slumped to the floor. “I want to be left alone. There is no help and even if there was I wouldn’t want any of it. I don’t need anything other than to be alone so I can hug my knees and cry in solitary peace without affectation or shame. I want to cry until everything inside of me is expelled, especially that which I need to live. The very blood and plasma that sustain me I want to cry right out of my body. I want to die from this loss of tears, die from a rended heart. And no I don’t need or even want someone to talk to because I don’t want to talk. What I want now is just to sit and feel this. To exercise every day the last option I have, the last thing I can do that gives me a small sense of accomplishment, a sense I might be something more than just mindless animate material; to find a way each day to avoid killing myself.”

“…”

“Can you give me that? Go on. Can you at least do that you worthless, lummoxy bastard? You useless piece of shit. You shithead. That’s right, a shit head. A person whose head is composed solely or at least mostly out of actual shit.”

We are now flying over Alabaman airspace. We will soon begin our descent. Just thought y’all should know that .

So I knew I had inhaled too many of those pills when hours later I didn’t have the strongest recollection of things like picking up my bag from those cool baggage carousels airports have or getting the rent-a-car paperwork done. And either the directions I had weren’t great or their reader a true dope because I found myself basically driving around aimlessly as if touring Alabamian Highway Food & Fuel installations. After about the third or fourth time I passed the same giant overalled farmer with a burger in his hand I finally spotted a sign that said Atmore something-or-other with a picture of a tiny jail cell. I knew the hotel I was slated for wasn’t far from the prison so I took that exit in hopeful expectation I could feel my way there without the directions I’d thrown out the window in frustration.