Seven Ways to Live Again
Title: Seven Ways to Live Again
Author: Mushroom
Rating: R
Summary: Learn how to piece yourself together, in seven easy steps!
1)
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Something catches Charlie’s eye. About four meters from where he and Lewis are standing, right behind the wall with the posters of that rising shampoo commercial model with shiny black hair and buck teeth, there is a strange cat with horrible yellow splotches and a bloody right eye. The cat jumps, startled by an rushing bicycle - hot pink and glaring - and the driver is a girl he vaguely remembers as his neighbour’s cousin, a pigtailed brat who scams everyone within reach. The cat meows irritably and scurries away from its humble home of newspapers and rotting vegetables, leaving specks of blood-rain on the street.
“I will never regret what we had.”
Suddenly Charlie remembers about that girl with the pigtails, with the scandalous bike, with the maniacal grin of one who wanted to ram herself, bike and all, on an unsuspecting pedestrian. She was the one who greeted him earlier, who tried to sell him some home-baked cookies he was certain he saw in a bakeshop downtown. Well, that explained why they looked like blobs of brown, synthetic sugar disguised as a tasty treat. Another cat shows up this time, the thinnest pregnant cat Charlie has ever seen, and it brushes its nose against the specks of blood-rain on the street.
“It’s never too late to be friends.”
Charlie decides it's the perfect time to walk fast, far, and away. So he does. He has this gripping, relentless urge to run after that girl and her rampaging bicycle, because he is not hearing what he thinks he’s hearing, and this will not change his life. So he follows the cat with a hole in its head and steps on the specks of blood-rain on the street.
2)
The first thing Charlie thinks about is that he should be doing something else other than sitting around, trying to feel. As soon as his mom cleans up the table he sifts through the daily newspaper, tossing the other sections away, reads the headlines and the local and international news. A hundred people died during a flood, says the smiling broadcaster of a night-time news show. Google informs him that a killer is on the loose, and tells him to look at sexy Asian girls in school uniforms. He thinks about hunger, the death of his sister when he was three, the war on the other side of the world, the street kids with dirty fingernails. He feels sick. He feels wrong, misshapen because does not care, to be honest. He struggles with sympathy and the human will, but it does not come. Their world is too big, and the world he’s in is not as huge, as impressing, and there are no agencies in his world that can give him aid, no international rights to violate.
3)
“The poets were telling the truth.”
Lino tightens his grip on Charlie’s shoulders. His breath reeks of Ribera del Duero.
“That thing Pablo Neruda keeps on talking about. Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Rosemonde Gerard, that bitch. Those unknown people. Faggots. It’s real. It’s fucking real. And you know what sucks so bad? Is that it can happen to anyone. That’s right. Those fucking movies can happen to you. Poets, songwriters, the fucking saints, they think they’re the ones who’ve been through everything. But you’ll go through everything they say anyway. It’ll happen anyway. They just fucking write whatever screws other people up, and sometimes they get paid for it, and then you see their names in text books and in papers. Fuck them. You know what, I have a theory. We are all seriously fucked. We're fucking doomed.”
Lino crushes Charlie against his chest.
4)
Ten waking hours later, and Charlie feels like he ought to die. It’s the end of the world. He’s supposed to die, because Lewis took away everything and left nothing, that’s how it goes. He is dead, basically. But he’s not. He’s painfully aware of how normal his breathing sounds, how his alarm clock reminds him that it’ll be shrieking in twenty seconds, how sticky his left cheek feels because it landed on a puddle of drool.
It is cruel and inhuman punishment, Charlie thinks, to breathe air, so he stops, and the sensation overwhelms him.
Charlie’s alarm clock rings, and his body betrays him.
“Fuck,” he says.
The left side of the bed is cold. Charlie’s heart aches suddenly, with a twinge that reaches his belly, and then down there, right there, exciting him. He’s horny. And strangely enough, he’s alive.
What he needs is a fuck. He touches himself, tentatively, and his cock twitches with longing. Soon his strokes are fast and efficient. He does not think about anyone -- only two large, calloused hands stroking his cock, just the way he likes it -- and there is no need to dwell on unnecessary details. Temporary delight, only it hurts, so he closes his eyes, wishes for the orgasm to never arrive, and relies on his lonely creativity.
5)
Charlie shows up on Lino’s doorstep, carrying a dusty bottle of rhum that he excavated from the loose wooden panels on their kitchen floor.
He raises the bottle with a sheepish look. “Um, I promise I won’t throw up on your shoes again.”
“Not to worry, I’m wearing my Dad’s old sneaks right now.”
Lino snickers and Charlie laughs - loud and true - and then his jaw aches from the sudden movement. He stops abruptly, feeling guilty and not knowing why.
Lino scowls.
6)
Charlie spends his mornings jogging along the streets. He already knows everyone in Winston Drive, and became fast friends with a kind old lady that gives away coupons and gift certificates. They talk a lot, mostly about the government thirty years ago.
Charlie is rather fond of Nimka, the old lady’s pet terrier. One time he volunteered to give her walks free of charge for the old, and he enjoyed it immensely. Nowadays one is not seen without the other; meanwhile the old lady cannot walk too far, so she sits on a bench and waits.
Charlie lets Nimka lead him, allows her to show him places he never really cared about before.
With Nimka’s help Charlie and Lino also discovered that there is an ancient-looking bookshop at the end of Winston, right before the road meets with gnarly-looking trees, menacing grass, and a sign that probably said KEEP OUT but is now decorated with spray-painted quotations from a dead person. There are no self-help books in the store that remind Charlie of anything, mostly laughable romances, stories of aliens in other planets, tales for children, and tales that are meant for children but are actually loaded with political intent. The owner is a crabby old man, but he doesn’t really talk that much, so Charlie usually grabs a book at random and leafs through the crisp, coffee-colored pages. He loves pressing his nose against them; inhaling the words as if he spoke to them in their tongue. Lino loves teasing him about it.
There are seven thick books stacked on Charlie’s bed, and they are from the bookshop; he reads them before going to bed, and proceeds to dream of black stars and fairytale murders.
7)
When Lino tells Charlie that he loves him, Charlie says it doesn’t work that way, that he has finally learned to live again and it is just too unbearable to live for another person, to care and die for one.
Lino looks at him straight in the eye. “Just so you know.”
Charlie feels like hitting him. “Am I supposed to say something?”
“Not really,” Lino smiles sadly.
*
Charlie does not say anything. Nevertheless, he knows that Lino will never take his life, no matter how much he wants it.
Yet Charlie is going to give it to him, anyway. He will read the newspapers and the columns and the ads, and all the stories in the bookshop before the pages crumble with time; he will smile and laugh and forget the jaw-hurt; he will taste the changing, crazy world with Nimka. Charlie will live and die a thousand times in a span of eighty years; he will stop himself from breathing at night and then wake up the next day; and in the seventh misshapen morning of his life, he will love again.
Author: Mushroom
Rating: R
Summary: Learn how to piece yourself together, in seven easy steps!
1)
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
Something catches Charlie’s eye. About four meters from where he and Lewis are standing, right behind the wall with the posters of that rising shampoo commercial model with shiny black hair and buck teeth, there is a strange cat with horrible yellow splotches and a bloody right eye. The cat jumps, startled by an rushing bicycle - hot pink and glaring - and the driver is a girl he vaguely remembers as his neighbour’s cousin, a pigtailed brat who scams everyone within reach. The cat meows irritably and scurries away from its humble home of newspapers and rotting vegetables, leaving specks of blood-rain on the street.
“I will never regret what we had.”
Suddenly Charlie remembers about that girl with the pigtails, with the scandalous bike, with the maniacal grin of one who wanted to ram herself, bike and all, on an unsuspecting pedestrian. She was the one who greeted him earlier, who tried to sell him some home-baked cookies he was certain he saw in a bakeshop downtown. Well, that explained why they looked like blobs of brown, synthetic sugar disguised as a tasty treat. Another cat shows up this time, the thinnest pregnant cat Charlie has ever seen, and it brushes its nose against the specks of blood-rain on the street.
“It’s never too late to be friends.”
Charlie decides it's the perfect time to walk fast, far, and away. So he does. He has this gripping, relentless urge to run after that girl and her rampaging bicycle, because he is not hearing what he thinks he’s hearing, and this will not change his life. So he follows the cat with a hole in its head and steps on the specks of blood-rain on the street.
2)
The first thing Charlie thinks about is that he should be doing something else other than sitting around, trying to feel. As soon as his mom cleans up the table he sifts through the daily newspaper, tossing the other sections away, reads the headlines and the local and international news. A hundred people died during a flood, says the smiling broadcaster of a night-time news show. Google informs him that a killer is on the loose, and tells him to look at sexy Asian girls in school uniforms. He thinks about hunger, the death of his sister when he was three, the war on the other side of the world, the street kids with dirty fingernails. He feels sick. He feels wrong, misshapen because does not care, to be honest. He struggles with sympathy and the human will, but it does not come. Their world is too big, and the world he’s in is not as huge, as impressing, and there are no agencies in his world that can give him aid, no international rights to violate.
3)
“The poets were telling the truth.”
Lino tightens his grip on Charlie’s shoulders. His breath reeks of Ribera del Duero.
“That thing Pablo Neruda keeps on talking about. Pedro Calderon de la Barca. Rosemonde Gerard, that bitch. Those unknown people. Faggots. It’s real. It’s fucking real. And you know what sucks so bad? Is that it can happen to anyone. That’s right. Those fucking movies can happen to you. Poets, songwriters, the fucking saints, they think they’re the ones who’ve been through everything. But you’ll go through everything they say anyway. It’ll happen anyway. They just fucking write whatever screws other people up, and sometimes they get paid for it, and then you see their names in text books and in papers. Fuck them. You know what, I have a theory. We are all seriously fucked. We're fucking doomed.”
Lino crushes Charlie against his chest.
4)
Ten waking hours later, and Charlie feels like he ought to die. It’s the end of the world. He’s supposed to die, because Lewis took away everything and left nothing, that’s how it goes. He is dead, basically. But he’s not. He’s painfully aware of how normal his breathing sounds, how his alarm clock reminds him that it’ll be shrieking in twenty seconds, how sticky his left cheek feels because it landed on a puddle of drool.
It is cruel and inhuman punishment, Charlie thinks, to breathe air, so he stops, and the sensation overwhelms him.
Charlie’s alarm clock rings, and his body betrays him.
“Fuck,” he says.
The left side of the bed is cold. Charlie’s heart aches suddenly, with a twinge that reaches his belly, and then down there, right there, exciting him. He’s horny. And strangely enough, he’s alive.
What he needs is a fuck. He touches himself, tentatively, and his cock twitches with longing. Soon his strokes are fast and efficient. He does not think about anyone -- only two large, calloused hands stroking his cock, just the way he likes it -- and there is no need to dwell on unnecessary details. Temporary delight, only it hurts, so he closes his eyes, wishes for the orgasm to never arrive, and relies on his lonely creativity.
5)
Charlie shows up on Lino’s doorstep, carrying a dusty bottle of rhum that he excavated from the loose wooden panels on their kitchen floor.
He raises the bottle with a sheepish look. “Um, I promise I won’t throw up on your shoes again.”
“Not to worry, I’m wearing my Dad’s old sneaks right now.”
Lino snickers and Charlie laughs - loud and true - and then his jaw aches from the sudden movement. He stops abruptly, feeling guilty and not knowing why.
Lino scowls.
6)
Charlie spends his mornings jogging along the streets. He already knows everyone in Winston Drive, and became fast friends with a kind old lady that gives away coupons and gift certificates. They talk a lot, mostly about the government thirty years ago.
Charlie is rather fond of Nimka, the old lady’s pet terrier. One time he volunteered to give her walks free of charge for the old, and he enjoyed it immensely. Nowadays one is not seen without the other; meanwhile the old lady cannot walk too far, so she sits on a bench and waits.
Charlie lets Nimka lead him, allows her to show him places he never really cared about before.
With Nimka’s help Charlie and Lino also discovered that there is an ancient-looking bookshop at the end of Winston, right before the road meets with gnarly-looking trees, menacing grass, and a sign that probably said KEEP OUT but is now decorated with spray-painted quotations from a dead person. There are no self-help books in the store that remind Charlie of anything, mostly laughable romances, stories of aliens in other planets, tales for children, and tales that are meant for children but are actually loaded with political intent. The owner is a crabby old man, but he doesn’t really talk that much, so Charlie usually grabs a book at random and leafs through the crisp, coffee-colored pages. He loves pressing his nose against them; inhaling the words as if he spoke to them in their tongue. Lino loves teasing him about it.
There are seven thick books stacked on Charlie’s bed, and they are from the bookshop; he reads them before going to bed, and proceeds to dream of black stars and fairytale murders.
7)
When Lino tells Charlie that he loves him, Charlie says it doesn’t work that way, that he has finally learned to live again and it is just too unbearable to live for another person, to care and die for one.
Lino looks at him straight in the eye. “Just so you know.”
Charlie feels like hitting him. “Am I supposed to say something?”
“Not really,” Lino smiles sadly.
*
Charlie does not say anything. Nevertheless, he knows that Lino will never take his life, no matter how much he wants it.
Yet Charlie is going to give it to him, anyway. He will read the newspapers and the columns and the ads, and all the stories in the bookshop before the pages crumble with time; he will smile and laugh and forget the jaw-hurt; he will taste the changing, crazy world with Nimka. Charlie will live and die a thousand times in a span of eighty years; he will stop himself from breathing at night and then wake up the next day; and in the seventh misshapen morning of his life, he will love again.