The Egg Said Nothing (9 page)

I could avoid anything that might get in the way of my purpose. Again, I wouldn’t have children. And I already knew about the book that would get my mental gears turning. I could probably pick it up at the library.

Killing myself no longer seemed the wise option. Maybe that version of me knew what he was talking about, but I had to choose my own path. One guided by the future, not dictated by it. I just needed to hide out until all the details came together in my head.

In the elevator, I pressed the three-button. It started to descend. When the elevator stopped, I got off, walked to 312 and knocked on the door.

No response.

I knocked again. And again and again. I started to pound out a continuous beat, knowing my persistence would pay off.

And, eventually, it did.

A frail, weathered-looking woman answered the door. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Manny, Mom. It’s Manny. Let me in.”

She squinted at me. “Manny? Manny who?”

“Your son. Open up.” I put a hand on the door and eased it open.

“My son? Okay.” She looked confused, but let me into the apartment. Leaving the door ajar, she walked back to the living room and sat down in her recliner. She picked up a glass and took a drink of something. Her television blared loudly. I closed the door.

So far as I could tell, my mother never left the living room. All this space was wasted, really, but her monthly fixed income was more than enough to pay for both her apartment and mine. It sounds bad, an incapacitated woman unknowingly paying her adult son’s rent. But she wasn’t a very good mother. And she didn’t do anything to earn the money; it came from her ex-husband’s pension. Though I had never wanted to, I had to stay near her. There was no one else. She and I may have had problems, but I still felt an obligation to her. And if I was tethered by that sense of responsibility, she could pay my fucking rent, thank you very much.

I wandered down the hall, headed for the empty room farthest from the blaring television. The noise was too much. The old women spent all of her time with the TV on, just sitting and staring at it. Watching her waste what was left of her brain was something I no longer cared to witness.

All I wanted to do was sleep. I made it to the room and heard murmuring from the other side of the door.

I turned the doorknob with great care, gaining access to the room silently. I peeked my head in to see a figure dressed as me, sitting on a bed, watching television.

He reached out and picked up a telephone from the bedside table. My mom’s old rotary dial that she refused to update. Not that it mattered, I guess. She never used it.

“You should eat it,” the figure said, shoulders quaking with stifled laughter. Hearing me taunt myself made me feel ill.

I advanced toward him, my anger swelling like a fever blister. I grabbed the receiver out of his hand and, raising it above my head, brought it down on his face with all the power I could muster. The bridge of his nose cracked and collapsed under the force; a torrent of blood gushed from his nostrils. I wrapped the telephone cord around his neck and pulled it tight, rendering his gurgled cries inaudible.

We sat there together, in our mother’s guest room, until he went limp in my arms. I closed my eyes as his body fell to the floor. When I opened them, he was gone. All that remained of the whole encounter was the blood on my hands and a rusty old shovel leaning against the wall.

~Chapter 14~

In which the narrator taunts a fragile man over the phone and gets royally fucked up by some guy with a shovel.

The phone stared at me as a heaviness settled into my chest. Was I really going to do this? How could I justify harassing myself when I had just executed someone for doing the same? Not knowing if I would be able to change anything, or had changed anything already, I picked up the receiver and dialed my own number.

It rang.

“Hey, I’m out right now. Leave a message.”

Beep.

“Salt, pepper and chives,” I said. “Add a little cream to make it nice and fluffy and eat the goddamn thing. You must destroy it. All of you—the ones taped up on the floor, the ones lounging about in the Laundromat—you all need to go. That egg will bring you nothing but unhappiness.

“I’ll lay it all out for you. You’re going to go out, and your life is going to change. You’re going to fall in love. Ashley is her name. She’s going to love you unquestioningly. You’re going to bring her home. With her, you’ll attain a happiness you’ve never felt before. Then you’ll kill her. Like a rabid animal, you’ll crack her skull with the flat side of a garden shovel.

“Why would you do such a thing, you ask? Because she’s going to change you. She’s going to help you see the world for how it really is. She will help you develop ideas. I don’t know what they are, but they’re pretty fucking cool. You’ll change the whole country. And you’ll have a kid together, but then things will fuck up. Really bad.

So, you’ll get the bright idea you should be the one to change them. You’ll learn about quantum physics, or astral projection, or some such bullshit. You won’t be an expert. You’ll be no mechanic, but you’ll know enough to change your oil filter, enough to change a tire. But you’ll act as if you know more. You’ll overhaul the engine. You’ll try to repair a bent fender. You’ll apply some fucking Bondo. But you won’t read the manual.

“And your girl will still be dead. Your egg will be so remarkably disappointing. You’ll still have hatched nothing worthwhile. But you have the chance, even though your future self thinks it’s a bad idea. He’d rather you waste your life away and achieve nothing than to achieve something and have it not work out exactly right.

“And how do you feel about that? How can you feel? Is there a choice? That guy is you. His decision is your decision. His reasoning is yours. But, here’s the really fucking funny thing: you don’t have a choice in the matter. If you don’t do it, he can send somebody else. You’ve got the illusion of free will, but your actions are so meaningless they don’t even mean anything to you. Your existence affects you about as much as it affected your parents when they were children.

“Of course, you can try. After hearing this message, you’ll have all the information just a little bit earlier than I did. And then there’ll be two of us who can fight it, if you choose. It’s that preservation instinct. You should embrace it, though you won’t have any reason to believe me yet. Here’s something: there’s a disc in the egg. Break it, you’ll see.

“I don’t even know why I’m wasting my fucking time.” I hung up the phone, stared at it, willed it to burst into flames. It didn’t. I howled in frustration and picked up the phone, slamming it against the wall. The plastic receiver shattered.

“Manfred?” my mother called. Great. Perfect. She can’t hear the goddamned phone ring, but she can hear it hit the wall. Fucking convenient.

“Manfred?”

I imagined I could hear her creeping closer, though the din of the TV prevented any such thing.

“Manfred?”

“What?” I yelled, punching the wall. I looked down at my fist. The knuckles were dusted with white from the hole I drove into the drywall.

“Manfred, what’s all that noise?” she asked from just outside.

I opened the door. “It was just the train, Mom.”

She looked at me, her dull green eyes searching for answers.

“The train?” she asked.

“Yes, the train. It came in through this wall like it does every day. It went through the living room behind your chair and disappeared into the refrigerator,” I said, staring at the ceiling.

“Into the frigerator?” she asked.

“Yep, into the frigerator,” I replied. “You can go watch your shows some more.”

“Okay,” she said. She turned and walked back down the hall. I watched her go, her fragile frame moving slowly. I didn’t imagine she would last much longer. A few years at best. Would she outlive me? Would she ever give birth to me? Would she ever leave me at home as a child?

Could I beat her head in with a shovel? Could I go back in time and take care of her before I was born? Could I hit her father over the head with a shovel?

For the first time in years, I looked with tenderness at her white hair and her old stained sweater. Maybe her shitty parenting wasn’t her fault. Maybe my childhood mistreatment was designed to make me unable to trust. If I couldn’t trust anyone, I wouldn’t be able to maintain a relationship with Ashley. What if my fucked up childhood was only in place to prevent someone else’s?

I curled up on the floor, using my arms as a pillow. I stared at the broken phone, the empty wall. My eyelids felt heavy. They dropped. Fucking life. Fucking bullshit.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. I knew what I had to do. Forcing my eyes open, I got to my feet and grabbed the shovel, accepting the one gift I had unwillingly left myself.

I would take that shovel and go upstairs. I would beat to death anyone who stood in my way. And then I would do everything I could to reroute time, to destroy everything.

I could see myself doing it: piling up every scrap of flammable material and torching it. With nothing left of my present, the future would be mine again.

“Orange peels and gramophones!” I called down the hall as I made my way out the front door, resisting every urge to stay and hide.

“What?” my mother yelled, her voice barely audible over the television. I could see the white cotton ball of her head peeking out over the top of her chair.

“I’m sorry for making you such a shitty person!” I shouted, apologetic for all that I had done and would do to her.

“Okay,” she said.
Okay.
It’s as good as anything. I closed the door and made my way down the hall. I pressed the elevator button, but decided not to wait. Opening the door to the stairwell, I stepped inside.

The lighting was so poor I could barely see anything. It was no wonder that mugger had chosen this place as his hunting ground. Anyone coming up the stairs would be virtually helpless. I heard a squeak as a door opened, then a pounding from down below. Someone was coming. I looked down over the railing and saw a man with my hair and my clothes.

Holy fucking shit
, I said to myself. I crouched down in the darkness and waited. I had no idea if this one was going to try to kill me or not, but had to assume as much. Self-preservation demanded that I kill myself at every opportunity. He came nearer, finally reaching the landing.

“Hey,” he said, looking nervous. His pace quickened. He was scared and likely had no idea what was going on. I stood and hefted the shovel onto my shoulder. I stepped toward him, as stealthily as possible. It was my hope that I’d be able to brain him without having to face him.

But I tripped on a lump in the carpet. The shovel left my hands; my face met the floor. With great effort, I got to my feet.

While searching his face for some sort of understanding, I missed the subtle shift his body made. I almost didn’t see it coming, the shovel flying at me. There was time to get away, but the urge was strangely lacking.

I dropped to my knees, my hands moving reflexively to my face. I pulled them away. Blood. Lots of blood. It glistened in the light, trickling over my fingers. My eyes caught my attacker’s face. He was smiling.

A weird tingling sensation overtook my body; my vision started to blur. I was screaming, but couldn’t control my jaw. Teeth chattered as I rolled and thrashed. Blood trailed over my face, down my neck and into my hair. The handle of the shovel now lay alongside me, like Ashley had for the span of a few short hours. I felt numb.

“Where’d you get those?” he shouted. I saw the shovel leave the ground.

“Whaaa mmph,” I said, and felt pressure on my knee. The shovel’s shadow moved across the wall.

“Where’d you get those quarters?” he demanded. I felt more pressure, this time on the side of my body. It was as though a plastic shield covered my ribs, and someone was hitting it with a golf club.

“You’re gonna steal from me, you son of a bitch? Those are my fucking quarters!” A tremendous impact hit my chest. The breath left my lungs. I heard his psychotic screams, muffled by the dampness in my head. The shovel tore the flesh of my arm. Blood flowed onto the carpet, a now familiar sight.

“Get a job, you piece of shit,” he said.

His shadow moved away. Something bumped my leg after bouncing on the carpet. My leg stung. Feeling seemed to be returning. I heard the elevator door open and shut.

I stared at the ceiling. My eyes blinked involuntarily as tears welled up. I had destroyed myself.

I had destroyed myself.

I had destroyed myself.

At some point, I rewired my thoughts, pirated my own intentions. I made myself a loser, a loner, unable to have a relationship with another person. I forced myself into hiding.

When I was seven, I probably killed my own puppy. I probably prevented my parents from having any other children. I made my mother abuse and abandon me.

I quarantined myself from a world I no longer cared about and turned into a blank page. Eraser shavings littered my surface; gritty gray smudges defined my life. Pretty words used to be there. Ugly ones, too.

Now there was nothing.

All of this shit was pointless. The letter. The video. The girl. None of it said anything because none of it would come to be.

My erasure was in process.

~Chapter 15~

In which the narrator sort of dies.

Try waking up in a stairwell after being beaten senseless. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Just try opening your eyes and coming to the realization that you have to get up again. Even though you know that nothing you do will result in anything, and nothing you can do or have done will ever be worth a thing. Your life is a mirage, your thoughts arcade slugs.

Do you decide to get up? To exact revenge on yourself? If your actions mean nothing, at least you can take some personal act of vengeance on the sadistic universe that spawned you only to snuff you out like a child’s first cigarette.

So, you’ve decided to get up; I don’t really understand you, but I’m with you. How do you deal with the pain? I don’t just mean the broken bones, the skin ruptures and the fact blood still pours from your face like an overturned pitcher of Kool-Aid. Have you learned nothing?