Chapter One
I am a chair with no legs, filled with feathers but not of bird's breast, I skitter across a river's surface in the moonlight, and when you look me in the eye you'll see yourself a lie. What am I?
I wonder how long it took you to reread that senseless sentence above and try to put it together in some way. Did you try to look it up online? Or did you make a mind-map like the still halfway intelligent of people nowadays? If you did the first, I pity your children, if you even have any. If the latter.. Well, better on you but I still pity you. If you did neither, well done. You have beaten about 99% of humanity in terms of will of mind, and you know why? You saw something nonsensible, perhaps considered it for a moment or two, and left it.
Everything is inconsequential. Humans like to place blame on events, on people, even on places and god damn particles in the air when the ship steers south. If your coffee tasted bad in the morning, it's because you overboiled the beans, Samantha, not because the alignment of the whatever-a-scope collection of stars spelled out your unlucky day. In reality, there is no series of events. There is just that, events. A butterfly flaps its wings. There is a wave in the sea. War breaks out on the other side of the planet in the Middle Eastern Saharas. If you try to argue that there is a plotline here then… Get a life.
That's ironic, what I just said. For some context, I take lives. Scary, right? It actually isn't. There is one thing I will give credit to humans for, and it's their ability to guess what comes after death. Not Christians or Muslims, or any of those massively popularized and followed collectives of pedophile narcissists. I mean individuals, the 1% who didn't try to answer the faux riddle above and who actually formulate original thoughts and opinions. I met this kid once- sweet boy, only sixteen when I had to take him- who already had reality wrapped around his ring finger. He said this to me one day over a letter:
"It's so sad how quickly some people forget they exist in a universe and not in a bubble. You know, all those people who advertise 'self-love' and doing things for yourself just because you want to. Somehow everyone in my decade considers them worthy of worship. It's ridiculous. What is there really to love about who we are? Souls trapped in heavy, soft sacks of flesh and organs that leave waste everywhere we go because we don't know why we're really here. There is nothing to romanticize there. Why will no one accept that this life isn't a gift or a reward but a punishment? Why won't anyone accept that the selfish things we do aren't actually selfish, and that we consider selfless is the real selfishness? I wish I was where you are right now. You've never actually told me where or how that is but… It must be better, even if a little bit. I hope when my punishment is over that I end up one of you."
His name was Daniel. Sweet boy, really, in a way that made you wonder why he was on Earth in the first place. I couldn't remember, quite frankly, it had been centuries. Oh, that's another thing: time doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a year, a minute, a millisecond. It's another human concept that was so well constructed despite its irritating complexity that was somehow incorporated into their existence. I am disappointed in myself every day that I fell into the trap of using it because I don't actually need it. It's quite easy to fall into the habits of others, I've noticed, when you spend as much as an hour around them. Ah, I've done it again.
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I sit in a Cafe Nero now, hands gripped around a branded ceramic mug filled with one of the only good things that came out of human development: hot chocolate. It's pouring cold rain outside and the wind is so strong that the loose side barrier of the bus station flaps around its hinges. It looks just about ready to snap, and the man underneath it appears as though he couldn't care less if it impaled him. What is that children say now? "Mood". The woman behind the counter drops a carton of oat milk- why do people drink that shit?- and curses in a foreign language I recognize to be Albanian. Her colleague, "Jesus" as says his tag, starts scolding her while she scatters to the nearby counter for a rag. I watch as she drops on her knees and starts frantically wiping, or so I think considering I can't see her anymore, and Jesus stands a little taller above her. Faintly behind his anger I recognize a glimmer of pride. Superiority complex. Pervert.
The hospital is right across the street, I believe it's the Euston Road one. I've sat on the bench outside several times this week, just watching people of all ends of the world slip and out like ghosts, some returning, some new, and some that never left. I've never actually been inside. I find the smell and the atmosphere very suffocating. What is with the blinding white tile anyway? A few men passing by have thrown me looks, especially after sunset. I've noticed that the darker it is, the more drunkards and close-to-an-overdose junkies will try to grab your ass or just get a whiff of your hair or… something disturbing of the sort. I haven't felt it myself yet, but I know enough about people to know that it doesn't stop there. You're lucky if all you get is a cheeky squeeze. I stopped sitting there when one of the male nurses from inside offered me a 'cig' and blatantly commented on my "sexy cleavage line". Pity on his wife.
Another loud noise sounds from the cash desk and I glance sideways. It isn't a glass this time that broke or a carton that ripped on the floor. A man in a dirty with soot and probably vomit hood stands at the little opening between the two large fridge sections, leaning heavily on a trembling elbow. His shoulders are wide, his hoodie stretching slightly at the back. Very faintly I can see a deep scar running from his middle knuckle towards the cover of his sleeve. A veteran, and by the sound of his damaged by prolonged drinking and smoking voice, a failed one. No, I didn't tell by the scar that he was a veteran, that's silly. He has a tattoo, just barely visible above the once-white sock on his right ankle. I place my mug down and roll up my sleeves, getting up slowly with my eyes locked onto the hooded back of the man's head. The Albanian barista looks mildly terrified, while our friend Jesus works at his station by the coffee machine, majorly unbothered. It isn't the first time this has happened. Just the other month while I sat in a three-floor Starbucks in the heart of New York a homeless man holding a rusted, dull at the tip knife crashed clumsily through the front door threatening to cut someone if they didn't first empty the cash register and then provide him with a bag of the sweets and sandwiches from the fridge display. It felt pathetic, really, to have to see him carried away in an ambulance so soon and then pronounced dead of heart failure at only 8:39 in the morning, but what else was I supposed to do? Would have been far more trouble to take ten people instead of one. I stand directly behind the man now, while he mutters something under his ragged breaths. I tap his shoulder.
"Excuse me, what for are you bothering this woman?" I ask, and the man turns abruptly. To my surprise, he isn't holding a rusty knife or a gun or a sharpened spoon. In fact, he doesn't appear threatening at all. One of his eyes is missing, a peculiar empty space where the eyeball should be now a swollen lid and black space loosely sewn by an amateur, certainly. His lower lip is split in half nearly, held together with a staple. Doubtless that his skin hasn't seen proper care in a long, long while. Gruesome view, really, but I understand now.
"Botherin'? I'm trynna order coffee, buddy, scram." Harsh. Makes sense though, it's unimaginable how many idiots like the barista and myself in the moment have misunderstood.
"Ah, pardon me then," I reply with a chaste smile, then fix my posture up-straight. I always forget to keep my shoulders rolled back, which is apparently a sign of.. 'Poshness' in the human world. I turn to the barista now, and she still looks pale, her lips pressed into a tight, undeserving smile. "Get this man anything he asks for off your menu and heat up one of the sandwiches to go. All his choice."
It's never a let-down to watch the reactions of simple people in the face of generosity. Not talking about the man who gladly and silently accepted my offer, but that woman, Agnes. As she scrambles in light shock to compile the two hot drinks the man ordered, I can feel the rapid heartbeat radiating tension off of her body. I can't tell whether this sudden willingness to work for a man miraculously lower in society than her was due to her guiltful reaction or due to the heavily patronizing act on my behalf. However you look at it, action is always born out of something similar. You can cover in the onion-like layers of the unconscious mind and "daddy never said he was proud of me", but it's simple. Humans, you hate the idea of being low.
As I swipe my card against the reader and Jesus thanks me with a cold-shoulder, I take my sandwich bag and sit back down at my table where my chocolate had been slowly getting cold, a thin film layer forming at the top. I watch as the man leaves, the two drinks in one hand, and hung over his other elbow, the bag of food that was surprisingly small. Peculiar. I thought he would have taken more. With an uncomfortable aftertaste of fake chocolate now staining my lips, I take the last couple sips I could manage, leave the mug at the counter, and carry myself outside into the rain. My coat clings to my shoulders immediately, and the shirt underneath begins to soak through just ten steps away from the cafe. There are many people, some carrying umbrellas way too large for a single person and others trudging through puddles as if it was the middle of 'July'. Tottenham strikes me as that sort of place where people of all classes cross paths, is it not? You see doctors from the hospital strolling down the street in their Gucci-tailored black trench coats while public school students with half-empty backpacks sprint through the crowd to catch the 18. Mothers walking dogs stop in front of the Tesco to drag onto a cigarette and the homeless man- Kevin is his name, nice guy- that sleeps outside calls on passerbys for a coin, or a warm drink.
"How are you doing, Kev?" I ask as I crouch down by him in the cover of the overhang of the building. A steady stream of droplets falls inches from Kevin's duvet, so I pull it in further.
"Not too bad, Noah!" Kevin says through his missing front teeth, grinning widely at me. "How's the wife, eh?" With a light laugh, I place the bag by him and straighten back up.
"I've told you before, I don't have a wife."
"Oh," he appears disappointed. "A husband?" I laugh again. People love seeing that.
"No, I don't have a spouse at all. Not planning on one either," I say, to which Kevin scoffs and abruptly waves a hand my way as if swatting at a fly.
"What sorta man are ya, not wantin' someone in yar life? Let me tell ya, kid, when you en' up old an' homeless like me, ya'll wish ya'd hit up sum ran'om woman or man in the pub."
I brushed a few strands of my bothersome hair back behind my ears and shake my head, then twist on my heel. "I'll see you tomorrow, Kev."
"See ya, pretty face!"
I never quite understood this human concept of a forever-love. What is the point of keeping the same person around for the rest of your conscious existence when there are millions upon billions of people who might be a better match for you? Why would one presently vow to never look at another man or woman when human nature dictates that no such concept can exist at all? I like the idea of love, don't get me wrong. I think I've even experienced it myself once, a long, long time ago based on the Earth timeline. However, now, when affectionate contact is as easy as a swipe on a screen and a quick emoji-based text, there is no love as authentic as what I experienced. Not that I have witnessed during my visit here anyway. In reality, I wouldn't mind discovering something like that again, though perhaps not with an Italian Renaissance artist. Those are dangerous, I'll admit. Perhaps a woman this time, an old soul. Someone with a disdain for humanity who would drop their life to live in the isolation of the woods somewhere in the middle of the Alps. Or someone who would drink a coffee rather than go to work. Either counts.
As I stand under the bus stop and thick, cold droplets roll down the side of my face and off my lashes, I notice an ambulance pass through the two long lanes waiting at a red light. It turns into the alley behind the large hospital building and vanishes behind the massive cement, ceramic and brick walls, a heavy tail of dread following close behind. A car turns into the alley just seconds later, and the two lanes return to their orderly fashion, silence broken by the honks towards the very front when the light turns green. A newspaper leaf flies past me and the short, humped over old lady next to me who sits at the bench way too thin and weak to hold anyone larger than a hundred kilos. One of the many minor forms of incapacity abuse- ableism, I was told to call it- I have discovered.
The 215 bus nears the station and I hold my hand out. Nearly splashing through a grey puddle just off the sidewalk, it screeches to a stop with the door opening right in front of me, but I don't get the chance to step in. In an instant, the edges of my jacket wave rigorously with a gust of wind stronger than that of the storm, and I watch as a figure enters and leaves my field of few faster than I can process. I realise as I blink once that my arms had raised to cover my face, and I had stumbled backwards into the thin glass walls of the station. Just before vanishing into the remaining background noise of the city, I recognize the roaring of an exposed engine. A motorcycle.
"Sir, are you alright? I apologize, my brakes aren't the most reliable," a woman in her early twenties, I would say, with soaked red hair- and I mean red hair, not ginger- approaches from a few meters down the sidewalk. Some of the people walking by throw curious glances, but at the sight of no injury or great mishap, they continue, having already forgotten. "Sir?" I return my attention to the woman, one of her hands now gripping my arm tightly as she boldly looked me over entirely. I pull away, fixing my sleeves and the front of my jacket that now had a thin splatter of rainwater across the belt.
"Yes, I'm alright," I say, my eyes on the bike she'd abandoned with the engine running on the side, keys left in. "Someone will take that, you know?" She laughs. That peaks my interest.
"Well, it's not mine so it isn't a loss," she replies, stepping aside as the driver inside the bus I hadn't realised was still there yells at both of us to either get on or move away from the entrance. She apologizes with a nod, then runs back to her bike. She doesn't put on a helmet before she rolls it back onto the street, and just as I set one foot onto the taller platform of the bus, I notice the corner of her right eye focused in my direction. Getting on, I scan my card, and take a seat on the second floor next to the left windows, as far to the front as I can. I don't see her again until we reach the streetlight, her suit jacket darkened three shades at the shoulders by the layers of in-soaked rain. Too early, the light turns green, and the bike rolls down the street faster than the bus could keep up. I lose her somewhere in the train of cars the farther down Tottenham Court Road we got and, with a light scoff, I lean my head to the window. It rattles me to my brain with how loose it is, but I close my eyes regardless.
She looked too.