Post by Benjamin Atreyu on Dec 27, 2015 14:53:40 GMT -5
I seemed stuck in a moment of time. The picture was almost a portrait of morbid curiosity. I sat on one side of my office as I peered out into my open view of the world. Except my view was obstructed. Obscured by something quite odd. There was a man in my window. On the ledge facing outwards, he clutched at the brick behind him, peering down at the parking lot below.
Dumbfounded, I rose from my chair and approached the subject. Being separated by a thick plate of glass, I took a moment and watched his mannerisms; the shake of his arms, the fear in his eyes, the hesitance in his muscles. I would be a liar if I claimed that I didn't want to see this play out to its conclusion.
It must not have been easy to climb up to the fifth floor.
Though that isn't what got me the most. My mind had already jumped forward to a post-man-in-my-window-incident point in time. If what I thought was going to happen did occur, would it affect me as well? I can't help but think that my co-workers would look at me less as Head of Talent Relations and more as that-guy-with-the-office-with-the-jumper. Benjamin "Thats the guy who watched the other guy fall to his death" Atreyu.
People will walk into my office to talk to me, but they won't be looking at me. They'll peer over at the window. This moment, having already passed, would stray into the present. Their gaze would focus on where they think he was standing. Trying to imagine what he looked like before plummeting to his death. With his stupid plaid button-up shirt. Idiotic jeans. Hipster glasses. Dip shit buzz cut hair style. He'll be the jumper. He'll become the office. Forcing me to get a new one. Forcing me into a mess of paper work.
Not that I can judge him. As a former drunkard nihilist with reckless abandon, I'm sure I've ruined a number of places with stories of a that-one-guy-crashed-his-car-right-there nature.
After a moment of dwelling over the mess this could get me in, I sighed and became an active part of the universe. Knocking on the window. He turned around and stared at me. He looked like grim death, or at least a man standing far too close to it.
Its funny. Not the jumper, of course. I mean windows in general. Not that they are all that hilarious. Let me back up a bit and explain what I mean. A few days ago I was staring out the same wall of glass and engineering, but there was no man. Instead, it was the city landscape, but not quite the city landscape itself. More a little part of it. My gaze was focused upon a store front a little ways down the road.
It was right outside of a barber shop. Someone was on their knees with their hands in the air as something was pointed at the back of their head. A criminal facing an arrest? A man staring into his last moments? Of course not, just two children playing a gruesome game of Cops and Robbers.
I didn't manage to catch it at the games inception, but they caught my eye as one came running down the sidewalk after the other, pointing his finger-gun at him. The one on the run, who I assume is the criminal- unless kids these days love playing some sort of meta-alternate universe form of the game- tripped on an uneven tile of pavement. He landed on his hands and knees as the other approached from behind.
For some reason I found myself engrossed in the scenario. I had paper work, but it took a step to the side as I watched the scene outside. Melodramatic theatrics at its best. I couldn't hear a single bit of their back and forth, but I could see that some dialogue was being traded. Chances are it was nothing spectacular, typical 'slaying' interplay repeated in movie after movie, but being unable to hear it, my head just buzzed with its own interpretation. The "gun-holder" slapped the other in the back of the head. So, it was a game of Bad-Cops and Robbers.
After a moment or two, both children stopped talking. A heartbeat. Another. Bah-dum, bah-dum. The thumb came down past the pointer finger, sending the hand up, feigning recoil. The child on his knees fell forward, crashing against the concrete. The gun-hand rested at the side of the another child's hip as another moment passed by in stillness. Say what you want about violent movies, but if kids these days were learning anything, it was dramatic story-telling. If they manage to focus themselves, and not just forget about this in favor of poon-tang or weed, they maybe able to refine that talent and become renowned film-makers or novelists in their future.
The downed child rose to his feet, and just like that, the abusive police officer and the cornered criminal melted away into the meta-verse. Where all characters of make believe dwell. No longer enemies, the friends returned the way they came, putting a unceremonious end to an odd-yet-engaging scene of make-believe. The imaginary blood on the concrete may never wash off, but it mattered very little. I, too, went back to my work. Letting time wrap their play in a veil of a memory.
I imagine, if I stared out that window long enough. I might see the same scenario occur, but without the veil of playtime. The criminal might be real. The gun might be real. The brains on the wall might be real, and for all its worth, no one would be getting up and walking home. Just dead. Not alive. Maybe a few days after a woman might be mugged, or a couple months after that some other woman might be walked across the street by the cheeriest damn boy scout you've ever seen. The window is just a frame, and if I looked out it long enough, I could watch the world end.
I could watch it. Sit in my chair and let it happen through the small box in my office staring into the outside world.
So, why did I tap on the window?
It was no longer a screen. It was life, and there I was, an active participant to the episode entitled:
"The Man in the Window".
He still looked scared. No surprise. Life is scary. So is death. Its a hard choice.
I looked at his hands, which seemed desperate to keep their hold on the brick. They were red, refusing to shift their position, but working with frantic hope to keep in place. In cold winds like this, it wouldn't take him very long to lose circulation, and at that point, it wouldn't be his choice anymore. Maybe that's what he wanted. The idea of him making that decision to end all decisions was too much for him to leave in his own incapable hands. Let nature do it. Hold on until the winds take you, then its all the fall's work.
Suicide; a coward's machine in a world where a coward is too smart for his own good.
He watched me as I walked over to the side. The curiosity I'm sure he felt didn't steal the fear away from his face, but his eyes kept on me, waiting to see how my tapping would play out. I unlocked a smaller, but adjustable window that sat a little to the side. Sticking my head out I felt the frigid breeze of a passing wind. I, certainly, wouldn't bother to drive myself to hell in such uncomfortable temperatures.
"Before you decide to spread yourself across the pavement," I asked, looking at him from the open window, "why don't you come in for a word. Its the least you owe me, considering you are using my window for your fun."
For a moment he didn't reply. Just stared. Processing... Processing... Process... "Sure," he replied... Processing... Processing... Process... "um..." Error.
"Think you can climb one more floor up?"
He looked up, "I believe so."
"Well, there is a balcony up there," I looked up with him, "which I imagine would be easier to stay on than this ledge. I'll run up a flight of stairs and let you in. Deal?"
He looked back at me. Confusion was setting in. He had come here to end the continuity of his existence. Now? Well, he was being invited into the office of some big wig he didn't know. "Meet you there," I pulled my head out of the window and made my way upstairs.
To be honest, I was a bit confused myself. A thought for another time.
Despite what I had said earlier. I didn't "run" up the flight of stairs. I knew it would take him a little bit to get to that floor, and if he got there before I did, it wouldn't kill him to wait a little bit. And in the end, if he didn't make it, it didn't really matter how long it took me to get up there.
I passed by a series of familiar faces, greeting as I did any other time. I had nothing to hide, but chances are, if asked, I wouldn't give out the nature of my walk around the office. Don't want to come off as one of THOSE types. You know, the kind that helps people.
I reached the floor with the balcony and noticed a small grouping of individuals by the window. Shit. Without hesitating a moment, I pushed through the small crowd and opened one of the sliding doors to the outside where the jumper was standing. I pulled off my suit jacket and threw it around the man, carting him passed the huddled masses.
"Jimmy, you crazy brother of mine," I yelled over the murmuring, "how many times have I told you that you can't just scale buildings like that." We moved at rapid pace. Cruising down the stairs and back to my office. Once we were in the safety of my private room, I pulled the jacket off of him and set it on the back of my chair. I figured I'll wash it later. There was that new laundromat I've been meaning to try. I walked back to my chair and took a seat, offering him one in turn. Confusion still ravaging his simple mind, he hesitated for a moment before accepting my offer.
"Now, mister...," I paused for a moment, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Francis," Francis replied.
"Well, for the duration of our conversation, I'll be calling you Jimmy, because that's the name I've already put to your face when I saw you. Complaints?"
"Um...," he peered around the room, taking it all in before looking back at me, "No. I guess not."
"Good, from here on out, do not talk unless asked for a reply. Okay, Jimmy?"
"Sure, that works."
"Excellent," I reached over and clicked out of the minesweeper game on my computer before turning back to my suicidal guest, "Jimmy, I'm sure there are a lot of thoughts going through your head right now. Moments ago you were going to crack your skull on the pavement and now... Well... At the very least its been postponed. I'm going to need you to gather your thoughts and answer some questions for me."
"I don't know if-"
"No talking while I'm talking, Jimmy." He looked down at his feet as I leaned back in my chair, eyeing him over, "I feel the first question should be obvious: What brings you here today...not here, but to my window...and not so much my window, but to any window?" The question came with no inflection of concern, but instead with the air of an interviewer asking a man applying for a job.
"I...um...," his face went red, "I'm not sure if I can..."
"I understand," well, not really, "its a pretty direct question. My bad for thinking we could go head first into this. Let me start with something easier: You have any family, Jimmy?"
"Yeah," the intensity of the situation seemed to melt away, "mother, father, brother, two sisters. Some extended family, but don't really know them."
"You talk to them a lot?"
"I...um...," went quiet for a moment, "not as much as I used to. Use to be really close with my brother. We talked all the time, but not as much in the last couple years. The rest of my family kind of fell out of touch with me a while back...not that I really tried to change that."
Nodding, I looked out the window, the one he had been in. All I saw were the slush covered sidewalks and busy bodies moving along like drones on a track. "Hobbies? Something beyond stamp collecting, I hope."
"Kind of a writer," aren't we all?, "Have had a couple poems published, a short story here or there, but no luck as far as novels. I mean, I got like two written, but no one has gotten back to me. I tend to write sci-fi, sticking mainly to a first per-"
"What do you do for a living?" I cut him off, turning to watch his reactions with more intent.
"I told you, I wri-"
"No," I interrupted him again, "A few sold short stories an establish writer does not make. What do you do to keep your roof above your head?"
"I work..." he paused, these stops were becoming frustrating, "that is to say, I used to work in a warehouse. Moved boxes, made sure things were shipped to the right spot. Stuff like that, I guess."
"How long did you work there?"
"A couple years," he shrugged, "found out there wasn't any room to move up the ladder...so I just left, ya know?" I'm sure.
"Did it pay well?"
"Paid alright, not as much as your job probably does," he turned in his seat to get a better look at my office, probably taking note of the expensive accessories I keep around.
"You never went to college?"
"Huh?" his gaze shot back at me, a bit startled.
"I assume that you worked in a warehouse, because you didn't have a degree that would allow you to obtain a better job."
"Well, I was going to school for an english degree," he fidgeted in his seat, "Got through a couple semesters, but...ya know...realized it just wasn't for me. Got pretty tough, sooo..."
"So, no degree."
"Right."
"Hmm," I reply, fingers tapping against the desk in slow succession, "hmm."
"Hmm?" he eyed me over like I was a doctor withholding results.
"Are you a loser, Jimmy?"
"Excuse me?" If I listened closely, I'm sure I could have heard his jaw drop.
"You're excused," I chuckled to myself, "don't take it the wrong way. I'm not judging you. I just want to know. God knows this world needs losers. Are you one?"
"No, I-"
"Of course not," I rose to my feet. He went to do the same, but I gestured for him to remain seated, "but I'm sure you've been called such, as well as many other horrible names."
"I..."
"Remember, Jimmy, no talking while I'm talking," I put my finger to my lips to emphasize the point, "All through your life you've been called one thing or another. Starts just as a bitter jab; an insult that's meant to hurt, and you take it as such. When you hear it, you knock it away in anger.
"After a while, something changes, doesn't it, Jimmy? Doubt starts to creep in. You begin to question things. You add up things in your head, a picture starts to form. At one point its no longer some missile hurled in your direction for the sake of damage. It starts to take on a new form; less an insult, more a reminder. A failure or two later, when someone calls out 'hey, idiot', you're inclined to agree.
"It begins to consume the entirety of your being. You are no longer Jimmy, a man does a loser thing every once in a while. Its Jimmy, a man with loser tendencies. After a while, its Jimmy, a loser of sorts. Finally, its Jimmy The Loser. You are it. No longer an occasional action, its you."
I could see my words were hitting some sort of mark. He shrank in his seat. I continued uninterrupted.
"That is how your brain begins to process the information. Through this new filter. Everything that doesn't add to this thesis is missed by your new net of perception. Life seems different. To a point, grayer. These thoughts creep into your head. A thought about something your should do. An act that would fix this train of thought. Why should a loser continue to take up space?
"There is something else though. See, that angry swiping hasn't disappear entirely. Under all that self-loathing comes a far more bitter of a thought; 'this'll show'em!'."
"Wait a second," he stood up in his seat, but I slammed my fist down upon the my desk, silencing him.
"One solid motive is never enough for humanity! Maybe if they see your smashed corpse scraped off of the pavement, they'll think 'oh, no. If only I had been nicer to him. If I had just given him a chance.' It'll be your final victory, to make them belief that it was their fault! A final catharsis you'll release upon the world! Every time this time of year comes around, every time they pass this very parking lot, or maybe any parking lot for that matter! It'll be you and only you they think of!"
I paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. Letting the air in the room settle, I sat back down in my seat, "unfortunately kid," I replied, "there is a different truth to the situation.
"Sure, at first that'll feel bad. There will be that ping of regret. 'what could I have done?!', but after a few years, maybe even just a few months, they'll move on. Sure, if they pass by here, they might recall it all, but the pain will be a mere memory in comparison. Some new tragedy could occur and melt you away entirely, for can a human healthily hold onto every unfortunate occurrence in their life?
"In the end, where will you be? In the ground? In an urn? You're attack will be a momentary act of self-aggression in someone else's life, but also the lost, but from there your power would be non-existent. Your act would have been in vein.
"Jimmy, if you want my honest opinion. You mix catharsis with your sense of personal doubt, and that is your mistake. Not your inability to finish college. Not you losing your job. It is the veil you few everything through, because you made the ever so human mistake of thinking what other people think matters in the slightest. You've held yourself down, making it impossible to face their challenges.
"If you want to show up those who have made you feel weak. You do it the right way. By crushing them. Rise, and show them they were wrong. You make them feel stupid as 'the loser' becomes the unavoidable monolith in their life! They will see you in every magazine, every TV spot, and your face will be a constant LIVING reminder! You can live along with them and make sure their wounds are always fresh, always constant, and if you wish, worse the next day than the one before! That is how you do it, Jimmy. You don't go on a final attack aiming for the jugular, you take a little blade and play connect the dots with their mind."
A hush fell over the room. The atmosphere was pregnant with thoughts from both men as they stared each other in the eye. There was a life in the room. Not in the sense of a living being, but the entirety of an existence electrifying the air, a beginning, middle, and possible end raging through the currents of reality as the two men stared at each other for what seemed like an hour.
"Or jump,doesn't matter to me much. Just try not to hit my car on the way down. Now, if you don't mind..." I motioned to the door, "I'm sure you can find your own way out. Preferably through the front door."
At first he just sat there, looking as if he wanted to say something. Say anything. A few more moments of silence. A few more heartbeats. Bah-dum, bah-dum. He closed his mouth and rose from his seat, shuffling out of the office, leaving me to my own company.
Why? Why did I tap on that window? Why did I force myself to be an active participant?
I worked until the evening came. As I walked out the front door, I saw no spinning red and blue. I heard no siren. Saw no crowd massed around one spot. No dead body. Just the night sky. It was one of the things I hated most about the winter. It got dark so quick. Day was gone in a flash. The world felt like it was wrapped in shadows.
It never felt that way in the summer where the light died away at the late hour of eight or nine. Something during the winter presented the image of the world being a kind of dead thing. I, having grown up in states where winter hit the hardest, could never shake this feeling, and despised it whole-heartedly.
The parking lot becomes a road and I find myself behind the wheel. It is without much thought that I've found myself hear, driving.
There wouldn't be many more days like this, would there. Not with the jumper. I mean days where I just worked. Where paper work was my biggest challenge. Waking up in the morning. Eating breakfast in a waking daze. Showing up to work with the bright shine of the sun to my back. Punching through mind-numbing paper work. Leaving as the sunset on a dead day. One of many dead days. A dead day in a series of unchanging, corpse-like, cold, unmoving days. A passive job in a passive world.
Did I hate this? Isn't this what I wanted? To work this job? To be at a comfortable distance between the real world and wrestling. To watch both, but never touch? Is this not enough? Is that why I attacked Vengeance? There is no reason I needed to cause him physical harm. I knew the system. I could have just reported him. He would have gotten the proper punishment, and I would be back to work...working like a man waiting to die.
If only all of wrestling had but one neck to break!
I slammed my fist against the steering wheel. The horn honked, and the car jolted to one side before I quickly righted myself.
If only all of society had but one neck to break!
I tried to take deep breaths, but it swelled. The frustration. I was a man becoming enveloped in my anger, and I was trapped in a steel box moving at high speeds across a highway.
If only all of life had but one neck to break!
I screamed. I screamed with a force almost alien to me. It filled my steel box. It was like hatred escaping through my teeth.
Despite how reasonable I want to be. Sometimes I still want to see the seas dry up and the sky crack.
There are days where my whole body convulses in violent hatred of everything. People. Politics. Change. Chance. Chaos. Myself. Wrestling. Wrestling. Wrestling. The melodrama with all those things will inevitably involve.
Big scenes of absolute destruction seems like the only way for the mind to properly express such feelings. Which is understandable in its own caveman-like way. Objects of a grand nature succumbing to horrid ends. The suicide of the sky. The murder of the ocean. The plummeting of the stars. The bleeding of the forest. The strangling of the mountains. The masses dropping in a flash of death. Images of an impossible nature offering the proper context to the noise going on in my head, like a sandstorm sweeping up thoughts and blurring them all into one giant mess.
It gives me a calm... It use to. It feeds the neanderthal tendencies in my head that the body hasn't managed to work out after eons of evolution. I am a slave to it. It is an addiction that drives needles into the vein of every thought. every invention. Every idea. Dulling the senses to a point of lethargic existence. The smartest of men succumb just as easily as the most oafish of beings, making them equal in their weaknesses. It fed Oblivion and Vengeance as much as it fed me, and that makes me sick.
Giving into it seems like the only option at times. Looking up and wanting to see a slit through the perfect blue that hangs overhead. An idea always strikes me that these ideas could really be an unconscious wish to see something to offer me a chance to be insignificant versus the entirety of the galaxy.
If my problems seem like an infinitely mediocre part of the grand scheme, then maybe I don't have to feel bad about it. If a planet were to split in two and drift of the edges of known space, than there is a chance that I can forget the little things that tighten my muscles. If God died on his throne and fell to Earth, maybe then I could sleep.
Maybe I wouldn't have to wrestle. Maybe I could just sit at a desk all day.
It wasn't enough now. In days past, I could crush everything in my mind and feel something close to resolution. It would be what I needed, but now it all just piled on. The garbage fire would grow with each day that passed. Something was different.
I grip the steering wheel tight as I watched snow crash against the windshield like a million ineffective kamikaze bombers with the backdrop of night and headlights. Headlights which stretched across the road into an eerie emptiness. I stared into it, watching as nothing crossed to obstruct the light. A dead emptiness. A lasting emptiness. A lonely emptiness.
An image jammed sharp hatred into my mind. A counsel meeting at my old company...at my father's old company. Me at one end of the table. Everyone on the other. A vote. A lack of confidence. There too, I sat in want of mass mutilation. My old office, but empty. Empty like the road. Memory skips days. Skips to me on that bridge, staring into the Mississippi river. Staring into it like I stare into the threshold between the light and dark where my headlights can stretch no further. On that bridge. Hands on the railing. Its a wonderful life, isn't it? Wouldn't it be a pity to end it with lungs full of water? Staring into the road, I slip in and out of memory. The road. The meeting. The Vote. The Office. The Bridge. The water... Me walking away. Choosing not to taste the muddy stream below. Did I regret it?
I do have but one neck to break. All the worlds I could destroy in my mind might just be a weak substitute for the one I could end immediately. Could end now. Could just turn the whee-
I rolled down the window. I played into the winter air. Letting the cold wrap around me. I took a deep breath and my nose stung with the quick intake of freezing winds. My body filled with a sort of consciousness that only comes with a rapture of ice. I am human. My arms shiver as I continue down the highway with the windows down. I feel everything. I am human. Wake up, Benjy.
What was it that I had told, Jimmy? Dying would be quick, momentary, and then death would be forever. That would be your last act, and then it would dissolve in the air over time. It would be the highest absolute in the world of the inactive.
That is the lie, isn't it? That is the one I ate every day. I believed that was what I wanted. No, it was what I feared the least. I was pretending. The finger gun. The fake recoil. I spent days smiling, but as a defense mechanism against myself. I dove into monotony telling myself that if I smiled there was no way I hated it. The thumb passed the index finger and sent me to the ground, but it was there I stayed. I didn't want to get up. I didn't want to go home. If I never got up, I would never have to stop watching the world through the window. I could watch the world end.
I would never have to face the truth; my compulsion to fight. If I stayed on the ground, then I would never have to serve my mania and chance dying in the ring. Die in the ring like my body seemed ready to do. Like my body was forcing me to.
Is that why I tapped on the window? Is that why I struck back at Vengeance? Could my mind no longer fight what my body urged to do? I pulled to the side of the road. I pushed the door open and sell to the ground, vomiting violently. It hit the ground in a noisy splatter.
I didn't come into work the next day. I stayed home. One was coming. I was scared. Not of Vengeance. Never of Vengeance. Win or lose, I cared not the outcome of the match. I feared what I was going to learn by the end of it. Even after spending the entire morning trying to collect my thoughts, I couldn't shake every feeling that came over my body like a swarm of carnivorous insects. In the face of doubt. In the face of a giant crushing me, I made a call.
"Shut up, Benjy," Gable spoke with a calmness I could seem to sum up.
"Huh?" shocked, taken back even.
"I don't want to hear this shit from you," he continued, not registering my reaction, "'Oh, my gerd, I'm scurred, Gable! Herlp me!' You found out one of the many things I already know. Despite the cold randomness of the universe, there might be such a thing as destiny. Not a living entity watching over humanity that decides what person gets to win the lottery and who gets a blow job- though often the same person- but, instead, it is something far more internal. Not supernatural or spiritual, its more evolutionary. You are fighting evolution, my friend."
"But its not what I want!" I screamed into the phone.
"Oh, like hell its not," he chucked, "its everything you want. Its the one thing you're good for and you know it. What you don't want is to be shit at it. Get into business. It wouldn't kill you to suck at it. You become 'head of talent relations', you feel alright about it if you fuck up. This though. This is important. If you suck at this, that's all you got. You suck at the thing you are destined to do."
I sat for a moment. Clenching my teeth.
"Is that you-knowing-I'm-right I'm hearing over the phone?"
I refused to reply.
"You made it so much more complicated in your head, didn't you?" This time it wasn't a chuckle, but hearty laughter, "I love you, Benjy, but you are like reading a book. I bet you sat up late into the night trying to pull together philosophical ideas of yourself juxtaposed against the rest of the world. Existence and all its wonderful fixin's. Am I right?"
"I didn't call you to mock me you overpaid hack of an actor!"
"Oh, get your balls out of that knot, buddy," not even an iota of anger, he sighed, "I'm not mocking you. I just find it funny that one of the smartest men I know can over think himself into such simple corners."
"What do you suggest, then?"
"Stop fighting destiny," Gable was enjoying this too much, "The match is already planned. Get into that ring and let that animalistic instinct of yours take over. You're a man being hurled down a set of tracks, thinking you have a choice and in the end thats whats killing you. Vengeance isn't even your real opponent. He is just a mcguffin, a stepping stone to the next phase of your life. The phase where you realize you WILL die in that ring. With so many other things to think about in this world, stopping thinking about this.
"Walk into One, like you should have been doing years ago, and tear that little melodramatic piece-of-shit to shreds. He likes to walk around and make people think he is insane, but you're the fist of god coming down from on high. You will hit that ring and everyone is going to forget Vengeance, like they should have years ago.
"I teamed with the dude, not that anyone remembers with how long that lasted, but there is nothing but air between those ears. You are 'God Given Greatness' Benjamin Motherfucking Atreyu. Why the fuck are you bothering me with this shit? If he isn't questioning his life choices, you definitely shouldn't."
"And if I lose," I replied.
"Then what?," he asked with irony dripping from his voice, "You lost. You suck at it. Are you going to keep fighting destiny? I can picture it. Its either you die in that ring or from a five story drop."
I sighed. He was right. Not much else for a dead man to do.
Dumbfounded, I rose from my chair and approached the subject. Being separated by a thick plate of glass, I took a moment and watched his mannerisms; the shake of his arms, the fear in his eyes, the hesitance in his muscles. I would be a liar if I claimed that I didn't want to see this play out to its conclusion.
It must not have been easy to climb up to the fifth floor.
Though that isn't what got me the most. My mind had already jumped forward to a post-man-in-my-window-incident point in time. If what I thought was going to happen did occur, would it affect me as well? I can't help but think that my co-workers would look at me less as Head of Talent Relations and more as that-guy-with-the-office-with-the-jumper. Benjamin "Thats the guy who watched the other guy fall to his death" Atreyu.
People will walk into my office to talk to me, but they won't be looking at me. They'll peer over at the window. This moment, having already passed, would stray into the present. Their gaze would focus on where they think he was standing. Trying to imagine what he looked like before plummeting to his death. With his stupid plaid button-up shirt. Idiotic jeans. Hipster glasses. Dip shit buzz cut hair style. He'll be the jumper. He'll become the office. Forcing me to get a new one. Forcing me into a mess of paper work.
Not that I can judge him. As a former drunkard nihilist with reckless abandon, I'm sure I've ruined a number of places with stories of a that-one-guy-crashed-his-car-right-there nature.
After a moment of dwelling over the mess this could get me in, I sighed and became an active part of the universe. Knocking on the window. He turned around and stared at me. He looked like grim death, or at least a man standing far too close to it.
Its funny. Not the jumper, of course. I mean windows in general. Not that they are all that hilarious. Let me back up a bit and explain what I mean. A few days ago I was staring out the same wall of glass and engineering, but there was no man. Instead, it was the city landscape, but not quite the city landscape itself. More a little part of it. My gaze was focused upon a store front a little ways down the road.
It was right outside of a barber shop. Someone was on their knees with their hands in the air as something was pointed at the back of their head. A criminal facing an arrest? A man staring into his last moments? Of course not, just two children playing a gruesome game of Cops and Robbers.
I didn't manage to catch it at the games inception, but they caught my eye as one came running down the sidewalk after the other, pointing his finger-gun at him. The one on the run, who I assume is the criminal- unless kids these days love playing some sort of meta-alternate universe form of the game- tripped on an uneven tile of pavement. He landed on his hands and knees as the other approached from behind.
For some reason I found myself engrossed in the scenario. I had paper work, but it took a step to the side as I watched the scene outside. Melodramatic theatrics at its best. I couldn't hear a single bit of their back and forth, but I could see that some dialogue was being traded. Chances are it was nothing spectacular, typical 'slaying' interplay repeated in movie after movie, but being unable to hear it, my head just buzzed with its own interpretation. The "gun-holder" slapped the other in the back of the head. So, it was a game of Bad-Cops and Robbers.
After a moment or two, both children stopped talking. A heartbeat. Another. Bah-dum, bah-dum. The thumb came down past the pointer finger, sending the hand up, feigning recoil. The child on his knees fell forward, crashing against the concrete. The gun-hand rested at the side of the another child's hip as another moment passed by in stillness. Say what you want about violent movies, but if kids these days were learning anything, it was dramatic story-telling. If they manage to focus themselves, and not just forget about this in favor of poon-tang or weed, they maybe able to refine that talent and become renowned film-makers or novelists in their future.
The downed child rose to his feet, and just like that, the abusive police officer and the cornered criminal melted away into the meta-verse. Where all characters of make believe dwell. No longer enemies, the friends returned the way they came, putting a unceremonious end to an odd-yet-engaging scene of make-believe. The imaginary blood on the concrete may never wash off, but it mattered very little. I, too, went back to my work. Letting time wrap their play in a veil of a memory.
I imagine, if I stared out that window long enough. I might see the same scenario occur, but without the veil of playtime. The criminal might be real. The gun might be real. The brains on the wall might be real, and for all its worth, no one would be getting up and walking home. Just dead. Not alive. Maybe a few days after a woman might be mugged, or a couple months after that some other woman might be walked across the street by the cheeriest damn boy scout you've ever seen. The window is just a frame, and if I looked out it long enough, I could watch the world end.
I could watch it. Sit in my chair and let it happen through the small box in my office staring into the outside world.
So, why did I tap on the window?
It was no longer a screen. It was life, and there I was, an active participant to the episode entitled:
"The Man in the Window".
He still looked scared. No surprise. Life is scary. So is death. Its a hard choice.
I looked at his hands, which seemed desperate to keep their hold on the brick. They were red, refusing to shift their position, but working with frantic hope to keep in place. In cold winds like this, it wouldn't take him very long to lose circulation, and at that point, it wouldn't be his choice anymore. Maybe that's what he wanted. The idea of him making that decision to end all decisions was too much for him to leave in his own incapable hands. Let nature do it. Hold on until the winds take you, then its all the fall's work.
Suicide; a coward's machine in a world where a coward is too smart for his own good.
He watched me as I walked over to the side. The curiosity I'm sure he felt didn't steal the fear away from his face, but his eyes kept on me, waiting to see how my tapping would play out. I unlocked a smaller, but adjustable window that sat a little to the side. Sticking my head out I felt the frigid breeze of a passing wind. I, certainly, wouldn't bother to drive myself to hell in such uncomfortable temperatures.
"Before you decide to spread yourself across the pavement," I asked, looking at him from the open window, "why don't you come in for a word. Its the least you owe me, considering you are using my window for your fun."
For a moment he didn't reply. Just stared. Processing... Processing... Process... "Sure," he replied... Processing... Processing... Process... "um..." Error.
"Think you can climb one more floor up?"
He looked up, "I believe so."
"Well, there is a balcony up there," I looked up with him, "which I imagine would be easier to stay on than this ledge. I'll run up a flight of stairs and let you in. Deal?"
He looked back at me. Confusion was setting in. He had come here to end the continuity of his existence. Now? Well, he was being invited into the office of some big wig he didn't know. "Meet you there," I pulled my head out of the window and made my way upstairs.
To be honest, I was a bit confused myself. A thought for another time.
Despite what I had said earlier. I didn't "run" up the flight of stairs. I knew it would take him a little bit to get to that floor, and if he got there before I did, it wouldn't kill him to wait a little bit. And in the end, if he didn't make it, it didn't really matter how long it took me to get up there.
I passed by a series of familiar faces, greeting as I did any other time. I had nothing to hide, but chances are, if asked, I wouldn't give out the nature of my walk around the office. Don't want to come off as one of THOSE types. You know, the kind that helps people.
I reached the floor with the balcony and noticed a small grouping of individuals by the window. Shit. Without hesitating a moment, I pushed through the small crowd and opened one of the sliding doors to the outside where the jumper was standing. I pulled off my suit jacket and threw it around the man, carting him passed the huddled masses.
"Jimmy, you crazy brother of mine," I yelled over the murmuring, "how many times have I told you that you can't just scale buildings like that." We moved at rapid pace. Cruising down the stairs and back to my office. Once we were in the safety of my private room, I pulled the jacket off of him and set it on the back of my chair. I figured I'll wash it later. There was that new laundromat I've been meaning to try. I walked back to my chair and took a seat, offering him one in turn. Confusion still ravaging his simple mind, he hesitated for a moment before accepting my offer.
"Now, mister...," I paused for a moment, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Francis," Francis replied.
"Well, for the duration of our conversation, I'll be calling you Jimmy, because that's the name I've already put to your face when I saw you. Complaints?"
"Um...," he peered around the room, taking it all in before looking back at me, "No. I guess not."
"Good, from here on out, do not talk unless asked for a reply. Okay, Jimmy?"
"Sure, that works."
"Excellent," I reached over and clicked out of the minesweeper game on my computer before turning back to my suicidal guest, "Jimmy, I'm sure there are a lot of thoughts going through your head right now. Moments ago you were going to crack your skull on the pavement and now... Well... At the very least its been postponed. I'm going to need you to gather your thoughts and answer some questions for me."
"I don't know if-"
"No talking while I'm talking, Jimmy." He looked down at his feet as I leaned back in my chair, eyeing him over, "I feel the first question should be obvious: What brings you here today...not here, but to my window...and not so much my window, but to any window?" The question came with no inflection of concern, but instead with the air of an interviewer asking a man applying for a job.
"I...um...," his face went red, "I'm not sure if I can..."
"I understand," well, not really, "its a pretty direct question. My bad for thinking we could go head first into this. Let me start with something easier: You have any family, Jimmy?"
"Yeah," the intensity of the situation seemed to melt away, "mother, father, brother, two sisters. Some extended family, but don't really know them."
"You talk to them a lot?"
"I...um...," went quiet for a moment, "not as much as I used to. Use to be really close with my brother. We talked all the time, but not as much in the last couple years. The rest of my family kind of fell out of touch with me a while back...not that I really tried to change that."
Nodding, I looked out the window, the one he had been in. All I saw were the slush covered sidewalks and busy bodies moving along like drones on a track. "Hobbies? Something beyond stamp collecting, I hope."
"Kind of a writer," aren't we all?, "Have had a couple poems published, a short story here or there, but no luck as far as novels. I mean, I got like two written, but no one has gotten back to me. I tend to write sci-fi, sticking mainly to a first per-"
"What do you do for a living?" I cut him off, turning to watch his reactions with more intent.
"I told you, I wri-"
"No," I interrupted him again, "A few sold short stories an establish writer does not make. What do you do to keep your roof above your head?"
"I work..." he paused, these stops were becoming frustrating, "that is to say, I used to work in a warehouse. Moved boxes, made sure things were shipped to the right spot. Stuff like that, I guess."
"How long did you work there?"
"A couple years," he shrugged, "found out there wasn't any room to move up the ladder...so I just left, ya know?" I'm sure.
"Did it pay well?"
"Paid alright, not as much as your job probably does," he turned in his seat to get a better look at my office, probably taking note of the expensive accessories I keep around.
"You never went to college?"
"Huh?" his gaze shot back at me, a bit startled.
"I assume that you worked in a warehouse, because you didn't have a degree that would allow you to obtain a better job."
"Well, I was going to school for an english degree," he fidgeted in his seat, "Got through a couple semesters, but...ya know...realized it just wasn't for me. Got pretty tough, sooo..."
"So, no degree."
"Right."
"Hmm," I reply, fingers tapping against the desk in slow succession, "hmm."
"Hmm?" he eyed me over like I was a doctor withholding results.
"Are you a loser, Jimmy?"
"Excuse me?" If I listened closely, I'm sure I could have heard his jaw drop.
"You're excused," I chuckled to myself, "don't take it the wrong way. I'm not judging you. I just want to know. God knows this world needs losers. Are you one?"
"No, I-"
"Of course not," I rose to my feet. He went to do the same, but I gestured for him to remain seated, "but I'm sure you've been called such, as well as many other horrible names."
"I..."
"Remember, Jimmy, no talking while I'm talking," I put my finger to my lips to emphasize the point, "All through your life you've been called one thing or another. Starts just as a bitter jab; an insult that's meant to hurt, and you take it as such. When you hear it, you knock it away in anger.
"After a while, something changes, doesn't it, Jimmy? Doubt starts to creep in. You begin to question things. You add up things in your head, a picture starts to form. At one point its no longer some missile hurled in your direction for the sake of damage. It starts to take on a new form; less an insult, more a reminder. A failure or two later, when someone calls out 'hey, idiot', you're inclined to agree.
"It begins to consume the entirety of your being. You are no longer Jimmy, a man does a loser thing every once in a while. Its Jimmy, a man with loser tendencies. After a while, its Jimmy, a loser of sorts. Finally, its Jimmy The Loser. You are it. No longer an occasional action, its you."
I could see my words were hitting some sort of mark. He shrank in his seat. I continued uninterrupted.
"That is how your brain begins to process the information. Through this new filter. Everything that doesn't add to this thesis is missed by your new net of perception. Life seems different. To a point, grayer. These thoughts creep into your head. A thought about something your should do. An act that would fix this train of thought. Why should a loser continue to take up space?
"There is something else though. See, that angry swiping hasn't disappear entirely. Under all that self-loathing comes a far more bitter of a thought; 'this'll show'em!'."
"Wait a second," he stood up in his seat, but I slammed my fist down upon the my desk, silencing him.
"One solid motive is never enough for humanity! Maybe if they see your smashed corpse scraped off of the pavement, they'll think 'oh, no. If only I had been nicer to him. If I had just given him a chance.' It'll be your final victory, to make them belief that it was their fault! A final catharsis you'll release upon the world! Every time this time of year comes around, every time they pass this very parking lot, or maybe any parking lot for that matter! It'll be you and only you they think of!"
I paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. Letting the air in the room settle, I sat back down in my seat, "unfortunately kid," I replied, "there is a different truth to the situation.
"Sure, at first that'll feel bad. There will be that ping of regret. 'what could I have done?!', but after a few years, maybe even just a few months, they'll move on. Sure, if they pass by here, they might recall it all, but the pain will be a mere memory in comparison. Some new tragedy could occur and melt you away entirely, for can a human healthily hold onto every unfortunate occurrence in their life?
"In the end, where will you be? In the ground? In an urn? You're attack will be a momentary act of self-aggression in someone else's life, but also the lost, but from there your power would be non-existent. Your act would have been in vein.
"Jimmy, if you want my honest opinion. You mix catharsis with your sense of personal doubt, and that is your mistake. Not your inability to finish college. Not you losing your job. It is the veil you few everything through, because you made the ever so human mistake of thinking what other people think matters in the slightest. You've held yourself down, making it impossible to face their challenges.
"If you want to show up those who have made you feel weak. You do it the right way. By crushing them. Rise, and show them they were wrong. You make them feel stupid as 'the loser' becomes the unavoidable monolith in their life! They will see you in every magazine, every TV spot, and your face will be a constant LIVING reminder! You can live along with them and make sure their wounds are always fresh, always constant, and if you wish, worse the next day than the one before! That is how you do it, Jimmy. You don't go on a final attack aiming for the jugular, you take a little blade and play connect the dots with their mind."
A hush fell over the room. The atmosphere was pregnant with thoughts from both men as they stared each other in the eye. There was a life in the room. Not in the sense of a living being, but the entirety of an existence electrifying the air, a beginning, middle, and possible end raging through the currents of reality as the two men stared at each other for what seemed like an hour.
"Or jump,doesn't matter to me much. Just try not to hit my car on the way down. Now, if you don't mind..." I motioned to the door, "I'm sure you can find your own way out. Preferably through the front door."
At first he just sat there, looking as if he wanted to say something. Say anything. A few more moments of silence. A few more heartbeats. Bah-dum, bah-dum. He closed his mouth and rose from his seat, shuffling out of the office, leaving me to my own company.
Why? Why did I tap on that window? Why did I force myself to be an active participant?
I worked until the evening came. As I walked out the front door, I saw no spinning red and blue. I heard no siren. Saw no crowd massed around one spot. No dead body. Just the night sky. It was one of the things I hated most about the winter. It got dark so quick. Day was gone in a flash. The world felt like it was wrapped in shadows.
It never felt that way in the summer where the light died away at the late hour of eight or nine. Something during the winter presented the image of the world being a kind of dead thing. I, having grown up in states where winter hit the hardest, could never shake this feeling, and despised it whole-heartedly.
The parking lot becomes a road and I find myself behind the wheel. It is without much thought that I've found myself hear, driving.
There wouldn't be many more days like this, would there. Not with the jumper. I mean days where I just worked. Where paper work was my biggest challenge. Waking up in the morning. Eating breakfast in a waking daze. Showing up to work with the bright shine of the sun to my back. Punching through mind-numbing paper work. Leaving as the sunset on a dead day. One of many dead days. A dead day in a series of unchanging, corpse-like, cold, unmoving days. A passive job in a passive world.
Did I hate this? Isn't this what I wanted? To work this job? To be at a comfortable distance between the real world and wrestling. To watch both, but never touch? Is this not enough? Is that why I attacked Vengeance? There is no reason I needed to cause him physical harm. I knew the system. I could have just reported him. He would have gotten the proper punishment, and I would be back to work...working like a man waiting to die.
If only all of wrestling had but one neck to break!
I slammed my fist against the steering wheel. The horn honked, and the car jolted to one side before I quickly righted myself.
If only all of society had but one neck to break!
I tried to take deep breaths, but it swelled. The frustration. I was a man becoming enveloped in my anger, and I was trapped in a steel box moving at high speeds across a highway.
If only all of life had but one neck to break!
I screamed. I screamed with a force almost alien to me. It filled my steel box. It was like hatred escaping through my teeth.
Despite how reasonable I want to be. Sometimes I still want to see the seas dry up and the sky crack.
There are days where my whole body convulses in violent hatred of everything. People. Politics. Change. Chance. Chaos. Myself. Wrestling. Wrestling. Wrestling. The melodrama with all those things will inevitably involve.
Big scenes of absolute destruction seems like the only way for the mind to properly express such feelings. Which is understandable in its own caveman-like way. Objects of a grand nature succumbing to horrid ends. The suicide of the sky. The murder of the ocean. The plummeting of the stars. The bleeding of the forest. The strangling of the mountains. The masses dropping in a flash of death. Images of an impossible nature offering the proper context to the noise going on in my head, like a sandstorm sweeping up thoughts and blurring them all into one giant mess.
It gives me a calm... It use to. It feeds the neanderthal tendencies in my head that the body hasn't managed to work out after eons of evolution. I am a slave to it. It is an addiction that drives needles into the vein of every thought. every invention. Every idea. Dulling the senses to a point of lethargic existence. The smartest of men succumb just as easily as the most oafish of beings, making them equal in their weaknesses. It fed Oblivion and Vengeance as much as it fed me, and that makes me sick.
Giving into it seems like the only option at times. Looking up and wanting to see a slit through the perfect blue that hangs overhead. An idea always strikes me that these ideas could really be an unconscious wish to see something to offer me a chance to be insignificant versus the entirety of the galaxy.
If my problems seem like an infinitely mediocre part of the grand scheme, then maybe I don't have to feel bad about it. If a planet were to split in two and drift of the edges of known space, than there is a chance that I can forget the little things that tighten my muscles. If God died on his throne and fell to Earth, maybe then I could sleep.
Maybe I wouldn't have to wrestle. Maybe I could just sit at a desk all day.
It wasn't enough now. In days past, I could crush everything in my mind and feel something close to resolution. It would be what I needed, but now it all just piled on. The garbage fire would grow with each day that passed. Something was different.
I grip the steering wheel tight as I watched snow crash against the windshield like a million ineffective kamikaze bombers with the backdrop of night and headlights. Headlights which stretched across the road into an eerie emptiness. I stared into it, watching as nothing crossed to obstruct the light. A dead emptiness. A lasting emptiness. A lonely emptiness.
An image jammed sharp hatred into my mind. A counsel meeting at my old company...at my father's old company. Me at one end of the table. Everyone on the other. A vote. A lack of confidence. There too, I sat in want of mass mutilation. My old office, but empty. Empty like the road. Memory skips days. Skips to me on that bridge, staring into the Mississippi river. Staring into it like I stare into the threshold between the light and dark where my headlights can stretch no further. On that bridge. Hands on the railing. Its a wonderful life, isn't it? Wouldn't it be a pity to end it with lungs full of water? Staring into the road, I slip in and out of memory. The road. The meeting. The Vote. The Office. The Bridge. The water... Me walking away. Choosing not to taste the muddy stream below. Did I regret it?
I do have but one neck to break. All the worlds I could destroy in my mind might just be a weak substitute for the one I could end immediately. Could end now. Could just turn the whee-
I rolled down the window. I played into the winter air. Letting the cold wrap around me. I took a deep breath and my nose stung with the quick intake of freezing winds. My body filled with a sort of consciousness that only comes with a rapture of ice. I am human. My arms shiver as I continue down the highway with the windows down. I feel everything. I am human. Wake up, Benjy.
What was it that I had told, Jimmy? Dying would be quick, momentary, and then death would be forever. That would be your last act, and then it would dissolve in the air over time. It would be the highest absolute in the world of the inactive.
That is the lie, isn't it? That is the one I ate every day. I believed that was what I wanted. No, it was what I feared the least. I was pretending. The finger gun. The fake recoil. I spent days smiling, but as a defense mechanism against myself. I dove into monotony telling myself that if I smiled there was no way I hated it. The thumb passed the index finger and sent me to the ground, but it was there I stayed. I didn't want to get up. I didn't want to go home. If I never got up, I would never have to stop watching the world through the window. I could watch the world end.
I would never have to face the truth; my compulsion to fight. If I stayed on the ground, then I would never have to serve my mania and chance dying in the ring. Die in the ring like my body seemed ready to do. Like my body was forcing me to.
Is that why I tapped on the window? Is that why I struck back at Vengeance? Could my mind no longer fight what my body urged to do? I pulled to the side of the road. I pushed the door open and sell to the ground, vomiting violently. It hit the ground in a noisy splatter.
I didn't come into work the next day. I stayed home. One was coming. I was scared. Not of Vengeance. Never of Vengeance. Win or lose, I cared not the outcome of the match. I feared what I was going to learn by the end of it. Even after spending the entire morning trying to collect my thoughts, I couldn't shake every feeling that came over my body like a swarm of carnivorous insects. In the face of doubt. In the face of a giant crushing me, I made a call.
"Shut up, Benjy," Gable spoke with a calmness I could seem to sum up.
"Huh?" shocked, taken back even.
"I don't want to hear this shit from you," he continued, not registering my reaction, "'Oh, my gerd, I'm scurred, Gable! Herlp me!' You found out one of the many things I already know. Despite the cold randomness of the universe, there might be such a thing as destiny. Not a living entity watching over humanity that decides what person gets to win the lottery and who gets a blow job- though often the same person- but, instead, it is something far more internal. Not supernatural or spiritual, its more evolutionary. You are fighting evolution, my friend."
"But its not what I want!" I screamed into the phone.
"Oh, like hell its not," he chucked, "its everything you want. Its the one thing you're good for and you know it. What you don't want is to be shit at it. Get into business. It wouldn't kill you to suck at it. You become 'head of talent relations', you feel alright about it if you fuck up. This though. This is important. If you suck at this, that's all you got. You suck at the thing you are destined to do."
I sat for a moment. Clenching my teeth.
"Is that you-knowing-I'm-right I'm hearing over the phone?"
I refused to reply.
"You made it so much more complicated in your head, didn't you?" This time it wasn't a chuckle, but hearty laughter, "I love you, Benjy, but you are like reading a book. I bet you sat up late into the night trying to pull together philosophical ideas of yourself juxtaposed against the rest of the world. Existence and all its wonderful fixin's. Am I right?"
"I didn't call you to mock me you overpaid hack of an actor!"
"Oh, get your balls out of that knot, buddy," not even an iota of anger, he sighed, "I'm not mocking you. I just find it funny that one of the smartest men I know can over think himself into such simple corners."
"What do you suggest, then?"
"Stop fighting destiny," Gable was enjoying this too much, "The match is already planned. Get into that ring and let that animalistic instinct of yours take over. You're a man being hurled down a set of tracks, thinking you have a choice and in the end thats whats killing you. Vengeance isn't even your real opponent. He is just a mcguffin, a stepping stone to the next phase of your life. The phase where you realize you WILL die in that ring. With so many other things to think about in this world, stopping thinking about this.
"Walk into One, like you should have been doing years ago, and tear that little melodramatic piece-of-shit to shreds. He likes to walk around and make people think he is insane, but you're the fist of god coming down from on high. You will hit that ring and everyone is going to forget Vengeance, like they should have years ago.
"I teamed with the dude, not that anyone remembers with how long that lasted, but there is nothing but air between those ears. You are 'God Given Greatness' Benjamin Motherfucking Atreyu. Why the fuck are you bothering me with this shit? If he isn't questioning his life choices, you definitely shouldn't."
"And if I lose," I replied.
"Then what?," he asked with irony dripping from his voice, "You lost. You suck at it. Are you going to keep fighting destiny? I can picture it. Its either you die in that ring or from a five story drop."
I sighed. He was right. Not much else for a dead man to do.
