The Story of Non-existence
“Mind your own business, Jack. Was it you who told Doris that we don’t need her?” Doris was the name of my predator who fell helplessly into my arms.
He forced a heavy, smelly exhalation out of his nostrils contemptuously: “No. If I were there I’d tell her to fuck off instead of leave me alone.” He intonated the last words as sissy as possible. Lord, was I disgusted. “Roy was doing the talking. Roy always does the talking. Shit, couldn’t you just wake up for one single fucking second?”
“And you? What are you doing here anyway?” I began to get used to Jack’s language, but with overcoming lethargy. I started to drowse a little bit.
“I don’t know. Goddamit.” He relented. Seeing it as a chance to take over the body he didn’t want to arouse me. That scoundrel. “It is you who should take the responsibility if I am to cause any trouble. You smelled the blood, and I react to it. BOOHOO. Do you get what I mean asshole?”
I pulled my face, silenced.
“Good.” He laughed with disdain. He really enjoyed it. Till this day I still wonder how come Roy thought that we should get rid of Doris, and what was his ethical proof to make this judgment? He, like Jack and I and numerous other “personas”--- some of them I was acquainted and held conversation with; some of them, till the day they wither and die away in an interminable dream inside the head, I never have had the chance to know of--- should have the right to reign this body equal to other personas. Maybe I was just jealous of him, because he is so emotionless, so indifferent, so immune to the outer world whereas the outer world wasn’t immune to him that he had the perfect ability to make Doris cry in three seconds, and I have to amend the damage of her self-esteem as well as her infatuation in me (precisely, this “collective consciousness”) for three weeks, if I am granted the chance to rule this body long enough. Not only that he had a power over the outer world, he who was every inch an executive also had a power over us--- it began to dawn on me that the one who ordered me to leave Doris was Roy.
“Don’t tell me you love her, asshole; Don’t you forget you are in the body of an 18-year-old female animal, and you study in a Girls’ high school. I’ll puke in your face.” Jack heard what I was thinking of. I blushed.
“Oh, I almost forgot…” his face distorted with an evil smile. “You don’t have the ability to love at all, do you? Eros, you want to attach to someone, someone you think you could emotionally exploit or whatever terms you motherfucking intellectuals would like to use. What a shame that you never succeeded. And you never will…”
I turned pale. Before I was conscious of what was happening my fist had already thrust a sound blow into his emaciated face, and there, he bleeded.
“Jesus Christ!” He exclaimed, and was quick to knock me down on the ground, the back of my head bumped heavily against the pavement. I swooned in black instantly, while Jack’s dirty execrations making their ways into my ears. The next thing I remembered was seeing Roy’s face, marble-like white and grave, seeming old, overhanging above my own face in a very close proximity that I could feel his calm breath brushing the surface of my skin--- but in fact, we did not breathe at all unless we take over the body. A common sense--- body does the breathing.
With Roy’s aid, I managed to sit up to peered through the filmy screen of consciousness into the outer world, and I saw Requiem “taking care” of the mother. Requiem was the most courteous of us all, and one of the few remaining female personas. Mother was shouting at her. I could guess faintly from the circumstances what might have happened during my absence, for Jack has always had a crush on Requiem, needless to say, the absolute opposite of his own image. I turned and looked at Roy inquiringly, as he should’ve been the best one to deal with such an unpleasant occasion. He heard my thought and gave his head a shake, his blue eye sockets sunk ever so deeply that they were like two deep holes merged into the darkness behind his face, and his irises inlaid in which were like fire sparks in the depth of an abyss. He began to whisper:
“I want to die… but since I do not exist in the very beginning, should my death be counted as death? Alas, I am just tired. But apathy easily kills hallucination, because hallucination is produced by an over-active brain--- yet I do not simply die of a sleep, a trance, not even disillusion. Therefore I live, retaining my disposition, thinking like an independent person, and the only thing that differentiates me from an actual 40-year-old-man is that I have no body of my own. How do you think, Eros?”
I was left speechless with such coherent thinking. He smiled. “I only say this to you, Eros. When I die I shall ordain you my logic as a gift…”
“Maybe we should die….you know, as a whole…”
“Silly boy, before you could draw that conclusion, you should ask other people’s opinion; especially Requiem. She is working very hard to survive reality right now.”
I was surprised that he used “people” instead of “personas”. I realized that the part of soul that comprised the existence of Roy has become old, senile. So old that the death within him brimmed, about to spill, that he was compelled to accept things as they were, indulging in weakness, condoning sins. But why didn’t you ask for my opinion when you coldly decided to eliminate Doris from this life? Don’t you know that I’ve always wanted a dear relationship, regardless of if it is a perverse one? Or is it because the one, an unknown” person”, crueler than you used to be, more dictator-like, was there to intermeddle? Tell me just how many of us are there in this body!
I was certain that he heard my thought, but eluded me ingeniously:
“My boy, you must’ve wanted to know my comments on Jack, as he often teases and pushes till your boyish countenance bittered. You must forgive him. Though he enjoys living, he cannot continue to live for too long.”
Roy was right. Due to the medication abuse, the condition of the brain deteriorated with astounding speed. Several weeks afterwards Roy died, his corpse split into three new personalities. Without a leading force inside this body, some people pandered to Jack’s tyranny, but few remained neutral--- I was one among them. Yet as Roy prophesied, Jack committed a great error--- he killed our house-hold pet dog in a terrible frenzy and threw Mother into greater hysteria--- no wonder she screamed like the mortally wounded dog. The poor animal’s intestine was coming out with blood’s odor. Not only was he condemned by all of us, he was treated with euthanasia. A personality that is no longer suitable for existence should be put to death--- but was it death? If Roy was still alive at that time, it is definitely the question he would ask.
Insofar as the story has told you, dear audience, you know that I am not real, nor Jack, Roy, Requiem and many other potential characters. There were times when I tried to find a niche, or namely, characters that can be used to describe shattered pieces of a soul, for each of them, as if the psychological disorder is purely a matter of no longer remembered contingency--- Roy represents logic, Jack is fury, Requiem stands for composure, Yuko has the complete memories before 13 years old but who is still missing; Mortis was too misanthropic to see the light, so on and so forth--- after we consented unanimously that we should leave the whole of our hope unto me, and one by one they slept, until I was the only one left. Those who existed but did not really live have transformed into one who lives but does not exist; such is the phenomenon of multiple personality disorder, so easily turned the question Socrates asked into an absolute tragedy.
What ethical proof do I have to tell a story, as long as I do not exist at all? I do not know, dear audience. And my ethical proof might seem even more untenable if I tell you that they are awakening from the long sleep, and I begin to have some period of my hours missing, completely devoid of memory. I get so sad at the notion that I am no Eros, and Eros is not me, that the female body is not under my monopoly even if I struggled to be humane, have learned to fall in love with a man, despite equally tragically--- but that is another story.
To end the story I need either a pistol or drug--- otherwise it never ends.
I begin to understand what Roy felt before his death.