“Who am I?” they ask, staring into the mirror.
A distinctly human set of green-blue eyes is staring back, face framed with long hair the color of sun-bleached straw, alabaster skin undershot with blue veins, the gleaming, cold, metallic jaw at odds with the otherwise precisely sculpted visage.
He leans back, the leather chair upholstery softly creaking as he shifts his weight. Chin rested on his fist, elbow leaning on the armrest – the 21st century 8-bit-spawned equivalent of Rodin’s thinker – he scrutinises his beauties, one by one, the nine big panels arranged in a 3×3 grille. There’s nothing else in his field of vision. He has painstakingly sanitised the space to eliminate distractions so he can concentrate on who he’s watching. Obsessions have a process too.
There is something else about having a smoke all the way up here, amid the stars. A special kind of enjoyment. A treat for the senses right at the edge of words properly making it justice. I watch the nebula we’re sailing by eyes wide open. You’ve maybe seen a thousand different nebulae of unimaginable colors and shapes, but the thousand-and-first is no less jaw-dropping. With my butt comfortably seated in my commander’s chair and legs kicked out in front of me, a tumbler of scotch lodged in the other hand, this is my own personal theatre. Living the life. Inhaling death one short, slow lungful at a time to the backdrop of Guns n’ Roses’ Sweet Child of Mine braying in the loudspeakers, while watching a big-ass asteroid sail within a hairbreadth of the cruiser.
We’ve lost so much.
I’m not sure what’s worse. Whether us not remembering what good was in the world. Or choosing to forget there actually was some good in it. Mankind retreated to some preternatural state, where violence is the one universally accepted currency. I feel ashamed to admit I have dealt in it too.
The target is acquired, the objective within sight now. All senses engaged and in overload, despite his mask of calm. The polyrhythmic drumbeat in his ears is the blood boiling under the surface. The woman in the red dress approaches with a slow, measured gait, as if she was walking a tightrope over the chasm still separating what he wants and why she came here. Her stiletto heels produce a sharp click with each step. He will compartmentalize the sights and sounds for future remembrance. The sequence has been initiated.
At night, the world shines at you differently. Leaning against the balcony of my apartment terrace, I can pick out the ingredients of the spell it throws at me with my eyes blindfold. I inhale the mixture of light and sounds. It’s intoxicating, in its own neon way. In the artificially lit dark, what you choose not to see during the day takes on a whole new, sharper form. Perhaps I see it precisely because I’ve always been a nocturnal person.