Prologue: I am very sad
I saw a vision of an angel of the world lay down and die
“How did you meet Master?”
“Magic,” she says, shrugging, her face adorned by a wide and innocent grin so typical of her. Her querent – some young chick drunk to high heaven – apparently is satisfied by such a response. The girl smiles – more out of politeness rather than genuine interest – and turns back to the guy sitting right to her, the guy whom for the sake of convenience and anonymity we shall call Master. It's how she calls him anyway.
I can see, however, how much of that sincere look is a put on. Or maybe it was sincere, but then whatever else bothered her flowed back onto the surface. And by the look of it, it was a lot. A god damn awful lot. You could see it just for a moment, as her eyes moved away from the pair on the other side of the table to the glass of water in front of her – the desperation, the longing for escape, for a release. But most of all the absence. I remember the time when her eyes shone like diamonds with vitality and joy rarely seen on earth – what could've been expected from a creature from another world? – but with every month passing by they seemed to go bleaker and more distant. Have you ever looked into the eyes of the strangers you meet on the street? Or even the eyes of you friends? Your girlfriend? Your parents? If you look carefully, you'll see that most of the time the expression in them is that of total blankness, total emptiness. They might smile, they might cry, they might rage in anger, but whatever state they're in, the eyes are of the same dull, monotone quality, as if they're cut off from the world, not really here, absent and seeing things no one else but them can see. It's like staring into the eye of a somnambulist, a zombie. It's scary. Sad. And even more sad is seeing her eyes, her magenta eyes that sparked with such energy and were so bright one look was enough to get enchanted by her, becoming human.
As she looks down at her drink, taking occasional sips through the blue straw, you can see her without the external cover. A dashing naked lunch. No smile is present on her face, but something that looks like a mask of regret, maybe despair. If you were a stranger who came into the bar and saw her, your first thought would've been “damn, that girl looks like if she's going to cut up her veins the moment she goes home.” So much devastated does she look.
Pay attention at her, the way she sits! It says a lot. She tries to occupy as little space as possible, be as invisible as possible. She is leaning over her glass, shoulders bent, neck barely visible, ears hanging low. Her chest and belly barely move as she breathes; they actually seem to be paralyzed. Only by the quick up and down movement of her shoulders you can tell she is actually breathing, but even their motion feels unnatural – fast and shallow.
And the way her body moves... You'll be surprised if I told you that a few months ago she moved so gracefully and so fucking sensually that even seeing her walking was a turn on of the most intense kind. Have you ever seen cats or lions or tigers move? Hell, have you ever seen any animal moving, be it an elephant or spider? Have you noticed how beautiful and natural their motion is? Now imagine that but with her and bring into it the hottest woman you can think of. Yes, that was her beauty. Nothing has such an effect on me as memories of her. That lucky bastard!
Nowadays, though, that thing, that magic, is gone. The way she moves – rigidly, every moment calculated and precise, carefully as if not to bump into someone else – is so damn robotic. Tense. Human. I bet if you just put your hand on her shoulders, she would jump and then recoil away from you like an amoeba from a hostile agent, even if you have your best intentions in mind.
Even when Master touches her, you can see her fear. He pats her on the head, passes his hand down her neck, plays with that bloody collar – that damn thing is ugly, and it looks so wrong, so fucking wrong, on her – or strokes her back. She smiles in response, but the smile is beyond fake. Just look into her eyes! You can fake a good mood by pulling up muscles in your face; however, there is no way you gonna hide your emotion from your eyes – it needs a readjustment inside and on all levels, from the conscious to the subconscious. And so much fear is there you can barely look at her without wanting to jump from your seat, punch the fucking Master in the face, and embrace her, telling her that everything will be alright from now on, like to a child saved from abusive parents. The most horrible, though, is that you can't. You fucking can't! She is his pet – or something like a pet but with more privileges, as she explained a long time ago, but I don't see any damn difference between her and an average dog. Boy, how I hate seeing every kind of animal leashed. Were it my will, I would put any person who owns a pet on a leash and then into a cage and then make them live the pet life for a week and then ask them if they fucking enjoyed it. Always didn't like the idea of pets. There's something utterly perverse, sadistic, in putting a collar on another creature and then imposing whatever fucked up rules you have on the pet against its Will. In most cases, we can't even tell if the animal likes what the owner does to him. You know, they say that animals who live with humans develop diseases rarely seen amongst their brethren in the wild, like cancer, infarcts, strokes, stuff like that. I'm not surprised, really.
The only thing I don't understand in her whole affair with Master is why does she keep doing it, why does she keep suffering. She is not an animal who can't express its Will in a way understandable for us, humans. She can express herself in a way others will understand and act upon. Hell, she only needs to tell about Master to someone, and then it will eventually reach the police. We live in a progressive country. Rape and abuse – especially of females – isn't an issue taken lightly. She just needs to say that Master presses upon her in a way she doesn't like, and his life is ruined for good. Many innocent men suffer pointlessly because of a night of a drunken sex with a drunk female who upon sobering up decided to sue the man for non-consensual rape because her hangover was giving her a bad mood, while true nutcases – or men who are more likely nutcases than normal – walk free and free of charge. She can put Master behind the fucking bars, where he fucking belongs. Why does she subject herself to such treatment?
Her Master, well, what could be said about him? It's difficult to describe him. Mainly because he's just your average guy: middle class, not too ugly, not a top male model, but with enough muscle and personality to charm the ladies. As far as I know, he has some tech job - IT, computer programming, all that stuff. You know, degrees in that area are the best thing if you want a good career. Always in demand. It's the golden age of reason. Newton's sleep in full swing. But if you don't know damn about maths, and especially if you're of an artistic disposition, then kiss good life goodbye. It's a dark age for people who like to think with something other than the mind, or even go beyond thinking. Life's fucked for them. Well, yeah, everyone can write and everyone can get published if his ideas hook the publishing house, and everyone can paint, carve, mold, but it takes a certain brain damage to have an artistic vision and interesting ideas that could have an effect more profound on the reader than a quick and easily forgetable emotional masturbation. If you have it, then I wish you luck. You're fucked.
It's no surprise that Master always has some female admirers around him, and her also. Once I was pissed that women go for the rich guy. Life changed that. After all, we all want to survive, and it's better to survive in comfort than living from pay to pay with all the money going on food and basic needs. Considering the end of our time here, living on the dime is pointless. Better commit suicide instead of prolonging the suffering from the previous day to the next.
Women, I must say, have it easy these days. They only need to play nice around the rich guy, and their life is set down the road of comfort. Don’t know why feminists shout about giving more rights to women. Women have more chance of living well if they decide to be quiet and be submissive to the guy with money. They have the Internet – there they can bitch about oppression and the delusions of persecution as much as their heart desires. In real life, it's best for them to keep their mouth shut. In the end, the guys always go for the women who actually act like women, not their beer buddies. And it takes a special kind of masochist to be poor, miserable, but proud about her condition because some group thinks that their hallucinations are more important than reality.
As far as I can see, the women around Master seem to be smarter than their feminist compatriots. I wonder how they feel about her? Are they jealous of her? Or do they treat her the way a wife treats her husband's porn - something inevitable but harmless in the bigger picture?
I think this averageness is what makes Master so attractive and desirable. The abnormal – the truly abnormal, not the abnormal of the kind hipsters and kiddies delve in trying to get attention – creates mixed feelings, a pendulum between fear and disgust. Women don't like that. Especially nowadays, with the whole rape culture, when you can get a rape sentence even for looking at women with a wrong expression. Back to the medieval age: evil eye, rape without contact, incubi, immaculate conception, all that stuff. The fact his reputation is immaculate only adds to the attraction. I have yet to hear someone say something bad, really bad, about him. “He's a nice guy, has a great sense of humour, has interesting things to say, looks good, cares about others, can go to places” - these are the main things everyone says when I mention him. Sometimes he can act quirky, say something edgy – you know, the cute edgy stuff that women like, not something truly transgressive and aggressive, and who says stuff like that in these times of political correctness anyway – or act like a playboy, but you know what they say: “He's young. We all have been there. He will grow up, find a woman, make kids. It happens to everyone.”
To be honest, absolutely, honest, it feels good being around him. It feels like being with a bro. He chats with you, smiles, and you feel like talking to a buddy you've been friends with since elementary school. You can tell everything to him without feeling afraid that the next thing you say would make you look like a creep. And he listens. Actually listens! And another thing is, he has a joke for everything. You come depressed, share a few beers with him, and then you're in an entirely different mood and the solution to your problems seems clear and the problems themselves seem to be nothing. If you get to know him just a little, or just look at the way he acts in a bar, you'll understand why he's popular with the ladies, and why she has chosen him. No surprise there.
I kinda felt jealous at first, but what can I say in my defense? I am a guy. It is wired in men to feel as worthless shits when other men have more luck with the ladies than them. But then I decided to let the whole thing go fuck itself. Some men are born normal; others are born with a certain defect that makes them look like creeps and repels everyone away from them, male and female alike. It doesn't matter if you look good, have a lot of money, and have a nice personality if you have this... this... presence around you, an aura that something is off with you, that you're an outsider. You may talk good and correctly, the way other people like, but still there seeps in at times the weird otherness of your being, and others start to look at you with suspicion, as if you were mentally ill, a foreigner, a creep. And you yourself realize that you aren't like everybody else. No, it's not the teenage feeling of loneliness, that nobody understands you, all that stuff. That passes with time, and even in the teenage years most find some crowd where they feel accepted, real or virtual. This is another thing. You go from one crowd to another, from one scene to another, you understand and play by the rules existing in these spaces, but in the end you still feel out of it. Absolutely out of it. The mimicry works, yet you find yourself questioning almost all of the time the rules, the behaviour, the people around you. In the end, it rubs off to others. They can't stand you on some gut level. Maybe it's because they're too involved in the scene and view everyone who doesn't conform one hundred percent to the rules as the dreaded other, maybe it's because they consider you a part of the secondary crowd that moves from group to group in accordance with what fashion dictates. It doesn't matter, though. They'll drift away from you – that's what matters. And you'll drift away from them, and stick to another group, and the cycle will repeat itself. On and on and on.
The same is with casual people. They act normal, you look normal, but still there's no contact, no revelation that “Yes, these are my people.” And you question their behaviour, try to mimic it, but it all ends up the same – they feel this otherness in your being and move away, leaving you alone, confused, and angry. Angry about why you're not born like everyone else, why can't you behave like everyone else, why can't you think like everybody else. In time, you accept your faith. You stop pretending and become the liminal being you are, looking casual but at the same times existing on the outskirts, an outsider, barely noticeable by others. An invisible man.
Look at him over there, at his grin, at his right hand wrapped around the girl's waist! You don't have to be a psychic to understand what's going on between them. It looks so weird, bestial. He kisses her, but the way his large mouth envelops around the lips of the girl, who giggles and returns the advance in little pecks, seems odd, strange. His big kisses that seem to penetrate deeper and deeper into the girl's mouth with every new advance look more like the efforts of a predator to tear off the flesh from the beast that has fallen prey to his claws. A tiger intoxicated by the thrill of the chase and the taste of blood – that is what he looks like to me. When shadow and light fall in a certain way, I can clearly see him as a satyr that came from the woods and put the disguise of a human being in search for women and the energy they provide. The mask, the glamour, is not perpetual, and at times you can see the ridges and distortions that makes the satyr's head, and at times you can even see horns, goat horns, protruding from the forehead. But most of the time you can guess it's a satyr by the general oddness of form, an overall deformity that can be perceived when looking from weird angles and under unusual lightning. Maybe I am hallucinating, maybe I am just projecting some stuff of my own – doesn't matter, really. All people look like that to me: a carnival of strange, deformed creatures with empty eyes: a dance of satyrs. Don't try to look at people from unusual angles – that's all I can say. Hell, try not to look at people at all. Especially in the eyes. At times you may penetrate beneath the facade, and then, well, then you’ll understand why it’s scary when the abyss stares back.
His hand travels down the back of the girl. He seems to be lost, not aware where he actually is. That's the power of lust, or maybe the power of power, of having her all surrendered to him. No! His hand stops at the rim of the skirt – enough sense left no to go down the deep end. He wants it, though. Look at the way his eyes shine, finally a sparkle of something called life present in them. The dullness is there, but it's in the background. The power of sex: the ability to arise something from these beings that walk through life as in a deep and muddy haze. Maybe that's why everyone is obsessed about it. It's not as much as sticking a dick into a hole as the feeling of being alive that it brings. Even there the dullness pervades, though. Rarely you can find someone nowadays that truly feels something to the core. Everyone is lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. Dead. Every emotion comes out dull. Look at the fury of an animal and then at the anger of man. One's an aesthetic experience; the other is just, well, a contorted face, as if the person is stuck on the toilet and in the middle of bowel movement but is unable to push the shit out.
He kisses her again, this time on the neck, and in the same fashion of a hungry animal, merely a moral inch away from sticking his teeth into the carotid artery. It's fun to see people in such situations, you know? When the usual control is gone, the more interesting stuff surfaces. And you know what? It's at moments like this that you realize something about all these nice guys and gals you see on the streets, interact with in your workspace, and try to seduce in bars and clubs. Something unpleasant.
But you know what irks me more than Master? It's her. And the way he treats her. I've been more or less drinking buddies with Master for some years, way before she appeared. I saw the way he talks with women. I know how he behaves around someone who raises his fancy. I'm not jealous. It's a thing you kinda keep noticing if you spend a long time with someone, be it your friend or just an acquaintance. Well, since he started appearing in “The Black Lodge” with her, I had never noticed that he made the same gestures towards her as towards other women. The thing between them was sexual since the get-go – there is no way to deny that – but it didn't go along the usual routine Master employed. The sexual element was so implicit that at times it was requested for them to get a room: the groping, the caressing, the way she responded to his touches, not bothering to hide her enjoyment. Yet, if you look carefully, you can see how much of a disturbing relationship it is, Master being the top and she just a submissive, a puppet in his hands. Just look at the collar, for Chrissakes! If that's not enough for you, look how certain words, even glances, make her change her attitude, from that of brash and confident lady to that of a frightened and utterly weak teenager. That was the main thing that set me off the first time I saw them.
“It's a twenty four seven,” I overheard Master explain once. “An experiment for me and for her. The sex is great.”
Maybe I just don't like sadomasochistic things. I don’t know. But I clearly didn't like it back then; and I absolutely detest it now. The more she stays with him, the more she looks drained, lost, a shell of who she once was. She hides it well – no denying that. Just a little smile, and it seems that some of her former sef, the aura of otherworldly power and joy, returns back into her magenta eyes, even if its in a form of a little spark, and then you easily forget the sadness behind, that despair coming out of her pupils so intensely staring at you, demanding help, escape. She's strong – that's a fact – but no man is an island; eventually, cracks appear and then they only get bigger and bigger and then the dam breaks and all the water comes out. The more I look at her, the more I wonder about what exactly is fucking happening behind closed doors.
She casts a quick glance at me, then returns to staring at the bottom of her glass. Look how tense she is! She pushes her head down into the shoulders and moves her legs – well, hindlegs – closer, a ball of nerve. I can't look at her!
How I love the sea, especially on moonlit nights. The moon's white reflection looks hypnotic, unreal, shimmering, when seen on dark waters. I could drown in it. When I don't have to work, I like to stare at the shifting waters and the ghostly light reflected in them for hours until the place closes and then sitting on a bench outside. Sometimes I look straight at the moon. You know, the more you look at the moon, the more nostalgic you feel. There suddenly dawns on you an intense longing to simply leave this hellhole and fly into that milky whiteness. The world around you becomes heavy, distant, a solid trap that slowly but surely suffocates you; and the only thing you want at that moment is to be among the stars, on the moon, free. When you feel a sudden urge to walk out of the human cage by any means necessary, then you know it's time to go home and have some sleep. I wish I could forget the longing, though, along with that ever gnawing feeling of insignificance and pointlessness of every form of human activity, that apathy toward everything other people like – girlfriends, night clubs, parties, marriages, careers, jobs, friendships. Everything feels pointless, meaningless, just a waist of energy. It's not an existential crisis. Existentialists say that the meaninglessness of human life gives you the potential to create your own personal meaning, independent from the one given to you by others; but what if every single meaning you try to find falls flat again and again and again? And it's not like I suffer about it. I simply do not see the point in all that stuff. No matter what I do, that feeling that all human activities are utterly worthless still haunts me, and the only thing that stands clearly before my consciousness is the reality of release, of ending it all. I don't know what keeps me going. Most of the days I feel like standing on the edge, ready to end it all at the closest opportunity, yet it seems as if something is stopping me. Maybe it's her? Don't know... But I do think a lot about her. About how sad she looks. I can't stand it. It's my nature. I just can't stand sad women or girls. The first thing I want to do with them is simply hug them and say that everything will be fine.
You know, this thing I feel for her reminds me of a crush I had for a girl back in the degenerate days of high school. She looked like the kind of girl that gets picked up on by others – pale, eyes always looking down, shoulders bent. She looked kinda lost and alone. I wanted to comfort her – that was my main fantasy. Not sex, not kissing, but just to give her a helping hand, make her smile, bring joy into her life. My main desire was simply sitting with her in the library and studying, bringing her coffee, listening to her, and seeing how the gloom that seemed to envelop her disappeared as a beaming smile slowly crept on her face. In retrospect, though, I think I was projecting, seeing things that came from inside rather than outside. When I tried to make a move, I learned that she had a boyfriend – not a surprise, really. I am ugly, physically and morally – weak, fat, short. I check my sanitary state, however – the feeling of being dirty or just smelling my own sweat makes me sick - and I have an absolute aversion towards facial hair, but it doesn't really help to tone down my ugliness. Even the clothes I wear – nothing special; just stuff that looks casual and clean – don't help. I am not very smart, don't know any interesting stuff or topics that could carry a conversation – that also plays a role, because when at times I happen to chat with girls, the talk quickly dries up and both of us realize how dull the interaction was along with the source of the dullness. In addition, I am clinically autistic. Well, not to a strong degree - hell, not even to medium degree - but still autistic. Even if negative, the experience with her confirmed to me that I was just seeing things rather than seeing the real world.
With her, it seems more or less the same thing, but stronger. I see her several times a week, and every time I see her, my heart contracts. I see that sadness, that desperation, in her eyes, and I am torn. I can't do absolutely nothing to help her. Don't think of me as an absolute coward. I am a coward, but not a total one, mind you. I tried to talk to her, make her laugh; but it seems that every time a kind of opening happens, when she's ready to say something important and vital, Master appears and closes her. It happens not as much as through speech – Master usually answers my questions in his cheerful way – as through glances. A second of a hard emotionless glance at her is enough to make her recoil away from me and shrink – a painful sight for me to see. I really wish I could help her, but the knowledge that I absolutely cannot do anything for her is tearing me from the inside, driving me onto the walls. Maybe one day I will get enough courage, or become crazy enough, to kick Master in the face with my bare hands, or preferably with the help of some tool, like a chair, for example, and then liberate her from that collar and take her away from this shit.
You know what's the most weird thing about them? Nobody knows how they have met, or why they even came together in the first place. Master usually says they've met in the Interzone, and that it was actually her that found him first; but something inside me refuses to believe his words. I guess it's still that romantic, idealist part of me that can’t accept power is the most powerful aphrodisiac, that women like men with power – economic, societal, sexual, whatever - more than men without it. Although, to be honest, it's kinda sad that females from different worlds still are made from the same stuff. You expect that maybe in some distant part of the universe there are female beings who are enlightened enough to see beyond the masks of power and reputation right into the core of a man's being and choose accordingly, but time and again you just see that women are a complete disappointment everywhere. On the other hand, maybe it's my intuition telling me that something is fishy with Master's story. I've seen her plenty of times, and although she is brash, at times insensitive and rude, there's something...feminine about her. Pure. Innocent. For example, I've never ever seen her cast sexual glances at other men than Master, which is weird considering that women with her type of character are inclined to inspect the whole football team, if you know what I mean. In the end, however, it all may boil up to me, and I'm just seeing my own sadism in Master and my sadness in her. Actually, it kinda sounds like the most plausible thing of all. I don't know. My heart still aches.
After all, everything we've heard about their relationship came from Master alone. She never speaks about it. Sometimes she describes some aspects of her relationship with Master, but they're not very detailed - unclear, fuzzy, open to interpretation, an example of feminine prose, as someone like Kristeva or Irigaray would say. You have to pay attention to the way she says it, to the way her body moves. You'll be surprised. I, personally, was terrified by the possible implications. It's usually Master who speaks the most. I think her story should be heard. It's impossible to recognize the cheerful, light, joyous self in her new one. His story is history for us. I suspect, however, that her story is not exactly his story, not part of history of their relationship. Where'sher story? What'sher story?