by Lena van Beek
How did I end up here, you ask? Well, actually, that’s a long story. Not really a long one, though. Like all stories in real life, this one does not have a happy ending. As you know. You are so used to everything resolving and coming out nicely at the end. But not here. There you go. Out here, people loose their jobs, they don’t get to marry the love of their life or to fuck the girl they always had a crush on, and they often die, too – sometimes they go crazy. But let’s start a the beginning, not at the end, because you already know how it will end, right? Exactly, with me being here, talking to you little bugger to pass time.
I always was kind of a weird kid. Kept to myself, mostly. Never played outside, never had friends except those I let copy my homework at school. I never felt lonely, tough. My parents didn’t really care about me – I mean, they did love me and feed me with food and TV and all that stuff parents should do, I was never beaten or abused so don’t you try get to me with that Freudian shit, it won’t apply here. My mother was a nurse and my father had the noble occupation of being a professional asshole at nameless company. You don’t care about company names when you’re still peeing your pants now, do you.
So, when exactly did it all start? I was like, what, five, when I had my first thing. It is somewhat hard to describe, because I never really thought about it, it just came to me naturally. I could… well, see things. I was alone a lot so I guess I started making me some company. I didn’t exactly read much nor watch lots of TV, but some stuff stuck to me. So one day I was happily splashing in the family bath tub, which, at that time, seemed very large to me, as do most things when you are small and the world is infinitely bigger than you, and every object has its own mystery, its own story to tell you if you just care to explore it. You could have fit three boys my size inside that bath tub, and I had a few toys – a rubber shark, a wooden ship, and a barbie some cousin of mine had left at our house at the last family get-together. And as little boys usually are, I was very impatient, I wanted to get out and do stuff, I was bored, so I tried to play with the toys my parents thought I liked, but toys never worked on me for some reason. I just pushed the barbie doll underwater to see if it came up again on its own. It didn’t. The rubber shark did, though, and the wooden ship with a thin layer of lime upon its plastic sails did, too. Great. Now could I get out, please? Of course, I wasn’t that cynical yet when I was a kid, but I guess you could say I already had the basics of my later character laid out and I was preconditioned to be a nag.
My fingers started to shrivel, I stared at the barbie at the white bottom of the tub. Still lying there, green hair floating in the lukewarm water. It grew a fishtail for some reason. Just as I leaned over to take a closer look at what might be an illusion caused by circulatory collapse, being in hot water way too long, I slipped. My head hit the edge and my face hit the water, and I blacked out for a second and panicked. Someone said „Hi, dear.“ When I opened them again, I screamed. A little. No bottom in sight. I was underwater, and bubbles emerged from my mouth. But as it turned out, the mermaid-barbie was quite nice and took me to some Ariellesque underwater party with fish and seals and a nice Neptun-like uncle and we had so much fun.
Yeah, right. Don’t look at me like that, pal. I know what you think. But wait until you hear this, then you’ll really think I’m nuts. I never told my parents any of the stuff that was happening to me, though it was hard to me to keep myself from screaming when it went bad. And it was bad a lot. Like that one time when I was stumbling through that wintery forest with Bambi and his mom, my nose running and instantly spawning tiny icicles. You could hear their stomachs growl down to Paraguay. I was the first one to cave in. They started tearing away at my flesh, sinews and tissue hanging out of my blue-cold skin and hyperbolically red blood pouring into the Disney-white snow.
Have you ever been eaten alive by deer? No? In retrospect, I can tell you, it’s quite interesting. They basically treat you like a tree, they rip off your skin with their sharp runty teeth, like they’re peeling the bark off, until they get to the better, softer parts.
But you see, there was that to it, too. Talk about kids having a vivid imagination. It’s true, I seemed to process bits and pieces of that media multiverse that subconsciously digged into my head, whether I wanted it to or not, and then – transform into something so entirely weird, I couldn’t influence it in any way. I couldn’t tell myself to stop thinking about it or making it up, because I wasn’t. Nor could I distract myself, these episodes just popped into my head like paperback visions.
It wasn’t until later in my life when I realized it was all sort of conntected. When I came into that certain age when you suddenly notice that this thing dangling between your thighs is actually there for a reason. The only thing you think about is how can manage to sneak out of class for a couple of minutes to relieve yourself because the teacher’s knockers give you a boner. I had normal fantasies, I guess, until I had this episode about Alice. Little innocent Alice sucking away gently at the caterpillar’s tail, salivating its massive ring segments until it was wet and hard enough to slide between her buttocks and pop her cherry. Standing bent over the giant mushroom, occasionally cramming a little of it into her mouth, she was getting her brains fucked out. Rubbing her labia against it, screaming and moaning but not a sound to be heard, just a giant „O“ hovering above her head. Over time, the caterpillar’s body miraculously grew additional segments, slowly winding around her lithe and lissom body until she was getting it everywhere…
When I opened my eyes, I was ashamed because I had jerked off in my undies without touching myself or even noticing. Ever since I get turned on by gals wearing blue skirts. Once the brain has been kinked, it can’t be unkinked.
I lived. Not thinking. I graduated, eventually, best of class. I had bad sodes during the ceremony and puked all over the makeshift stage. You wouldn’t think that now, if you look at me, that I could have had it all. But what is that, all? Had had nothing in my life anyway, except school and TV and sodes. I couldn’t really think of anything else to do and I wanted to go on not having to think, because thinking makes me nervous. So I enlisted.
You know how they have you do tests before they even think of you as something?
Your motivations don’t count, your experience don’t count, your training ain’t important. All that they care about is not your body, not your abilities, but your mind.Which is the only thing you are really going to put to use up here, anyway.
During the wars, oh, that didn’t matter, they simply needed someone to push buttons, unleashing nuclear hell upon civilizations. But nowadays, C.O.’s most peculiar interest is rather not to fuck up a mission. Because, you know, billions of dollars in expensive hitec gear, and they are unwilling to take the risk of somebody going completely bonkers on ’em, so they can kiss their longterm investment good-bye as they see it crashing into an asteroid, the pilot screaming ‘La Paloma’ at the top of his lungs, dancing around naked with porn magazines in deep space.
I ain’t going crazy on them, they made darn sure of that. Or maybe I had just the right level of craziness that they were looking for.
It wasn’t like I was applying for a normal job, but like I was being casted to be part of a new elite. At least, that’s what they told us. It didn’t feel very elite, though, it felt like being a lab rat.
They put us in saunas, with numbers on them. No windows. Just sitting in a box without food or water, struggling to keep up to nonsense tasks. Like, I had a keyboard right in front of me, and everytime a key flashed I was supposed to punch it as fast as possible. And that was real fast, as I learned the hard way. With time passing on, everything started to blur. I tried to stay awake. I wish they wouldn’t have shaved our hair and eyebrows off, sweatdrops kept running down my head and into my eyes.
I started having sodes again, not in the usual scary way, but they helped me get through it. They were good, friendly sodes like that day I almost drowned in the bathtub. When they just let you sit there, for hours, days, weeks, you’ve got no idea how long, I was in Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. Well, you’ve done it, too, you know the drill. Time stops existing. You had no way of knowing how long you were in this thing, and then, you stopped caring. Because it wasn’t important. The only thing that is important is serving your country, as the voice kept telling me in the dark, loving it and being loved. Protecting it, too. But mostly: loving it.
I was right. I didn’t have to think at all, despite what they told us at the beginning. I did not mind the darkness, nor the cold, the heat, the loneliness and I guess they were waiting for me to crack like many others must’ve done. When there was food, there was something in it that sometimes made me drowsy, sometimes it made me able to concentrate harder. Whatever.
Yeah, of course I know what it is now, dumbass. I take it every frigging day. You couldn’t live without it, could you. So basically, that’s it. You know it from there. I came here, met you guys, worked my ass off. Believe it or not, I actually had a good time. What would they have said back then, it’s been an honour serving with you? Fuck that. When the oxygen runs out, there’s gonna be no honour whatsoever, just choking and gasping and sleeping and dying.
You know what bugs me most about it? All that couldn’t entirely stop me from thinking. I still am and I won’t stop. Now, you know what this ship looks like to me right now? A big pumpkin carriage. Yep, that’s right. So, this is how it’s going to end. The harsher the reality, the pleasanter the illusions of the mind and vice versa. What do you care if I talk and use up so much air, they won’t come get us anyway. Now, what’s your story?
headbugz 