by Mario Șerban
“to be – a doomful madness with crippling despair.
to exist – a professedly everlasting hesitation”
When random thoughts remind him how he used to feign kindness, the more ominous his psyche becomes. To be satisfied… what a pity Anon thinks that is. An individual lying to himself unconsciously. Pretending long enough to be ok will eventually help him forget he is not. Is he worthy? Probably not.
“I am suffering of thirst, a thirst only of mine. A deadlock between the outer world and me. Drenched in loss, nothing seems too appealing. Stuck, embarrassed to exist, I don’t really have any ambitions or dreams, rather than being just a bloke who enjoys observing all this codswallop.
Ah, yes… confinement – What a funny word. It normally means imprisonment but can also mean birth. – Which is then again terribly funny when you realize that life itself is an incarceration from our natural forms. This fact literally almost knocks my socks off, innit? Well not really, I’m being mortified for fuck’s sake.
So, I went down the streets towards the construction district to smoke a zoot at one of my usual places: a scaffold stairway. As I was chilling on the tread, some stray dude got my attention. He was eating Tesco cherry pie, my favourite. The munchies hit my zooted arse very bad. Being so smacked, my urge for that one quid tiny cheapo pie was insane. I just wanted to be in his place and well, somewhat it happened. My blazed mind took it quite easy. So chill that I laughed my arse off watching that dummy tumbling down exactly where I was before. Felt kind of dizzy shortly after. Itchy eyes and everything was blurry, thought was just me being blitzed like I couldn’t see straight but next morning it was almost just as bad as I could recall… somewhat arguably not as crappy though.
That happening still makes absolutely zero fucking sense. To be honest the stuff was sort of dank but shit doesn’t give hallucinations. Or at least not that clear and tangible. Anyway, that’d be huge if real, thus I must try this once again. Can’t risk worsening my sight without any compensation though.
Must think of a plan.
There’s no point in trying to murder someone by switching places since there’s no certainty it would work. I should probably just try getting my hands on something valuable and small, without too many cameras or people. Might as well just burn this notebook.
Aight, so it’s decided.”
After all the imaginary scenarios and light details he could anticipate, his final decision nullified the previous assumptions. His redundant predictions just turned into a casual marauding. Maybe not that casual though. Something less than a plunder, but greater than a mere theft.
Anon takes the train to Reading, an arguably isolated town in South England and goes immediately to the university’s club surroundings. The end of the first term is close and freshers want to go out once more before leaving for holiday. To Anon’s delight, the rent is supposed be automatically withdrawn by Monday. Students have their debit cards loaded. Too bad Cheeky Saturday is about to become Shitty Swindlerday.
Our dear charlatan climbs to one hell of a craggy building, but he realizes it’s way too dumb. “Holy crap I’m actually disabled” he tells himself. Well, he could be if he falls. Anon decides then to lurk from the top of a short building, which is quite close to the cash machines.
He points to his forehead as if he was trying to convey his feeling of being smart – though if someone saw him making that gesture they’d rather think Anon is mentally ill.
After a while, when the whereabouts seem empty and a fellow lady who needs cash for God knows what at 1 A.M. slides her card in the ATM, Anon quickly stands up and aims at her with his desperate glance but somethings wrong. He starts bleeding from his eyes and nothing else changes. The girl just leaves with her 20 quid bills while Anon faints. He barely wakes up after a couple of minutes and realizes what just happened. The curses and swears he haltingly speaks are barely understandable. He gets angrier and angrier, gnashing his teeth as he is glancing towards a drunk wimp. Anon cannot believe that it ultimately worked but he was visibly in great pain. He was standing there, in front of the cash machine, gobsmacked and hesitant to withdraw the money. Amazement or pure physical incapacity he just sat there and laughed for some good minutes. Sluggishly raising his hand like a fallen angel, he enriches himself shortly after.
“For fuck’s sake I was so close to a cock-up. Never felt so much like a dirty little angry codger in my whole fucking miserable life. What a dang duffer I was. My sight is still horseshit. Not gonna lie, the twinges in my chest on the way back we’re sort of scary. Can’t believe how cack-handed my execution was. Choked some blood afterwards but far enough from downtown. The nearby grove served its purpose as a bloody cemetery for my bowels. Ugh, literally bloody, eh? Bless the soul who steps in that biological disaster. Maybe someone’s dog will eat it and gladly lick its owner’s face. Either way, I’m still in my grungy bed counting 3 000 quid. How about my body?
Very little does it matter though…I think?
if I can myself fulfill
as my gauges seem to narrow,
maniacs do not borrow –
they rather prefer to steal,
and flee like an arrow.”
After finishing writing in his notebook, Anon sips from the crappy cranberry juice box, throws it into the cursed garbage corner and thinks for himself. Resting in his bed, on the yellow sheetless mattress, wearing the very same dark blue hoodie he wears daily, the dingy baggy jeans that are not necessarily “shitless”, holding the notebook much carefully than the stack of money in his pitiful room, before our sullen antihero falls asleep, he broods once again about what his father used to ask him:
“Are you winning son?”