Total Life Page 6

  I begin to force the chains on the headboard. The material is a solid wood and the chains tighten in my arms, the tone of wich turns red and then purple due to poor blood circulation.

  I think of Peter and how he must be stroking Mandy's face now.

  I pull the chains and moan.

  Mandy running her hands over Peter's face, brushing his hair off his face and smiling in a sincere way that only a few people are capable of.

  I let the chains relax a bit, trying to recover some of the circulation, and then I pull it again.

  Mandy tells Peter that she loves him and he looks at her in confusion; his own father doesn’t seem to love him, so why would a girl do it? But the urge to smile at her is stronger ...

  Blood begins to flow down my arms from the wounds that are opened by the chains.

  ... And the impetus to say that he loves her too is even greater.

  Maybe letting the blood circulation come back was not such a good idea.

  Peter kisses Mandy's lower lip.

  I pull the chain again, this time concentrating more force and hearing a crack in the wood.

  Mandy returns the kiss and Peter touches her waist, being able to feel the accelerated heart of the girl connecting to his.

  I pull the chain harder, my bones ache, and the blood runs.

  The tongue of Peter is the one that takes initiative, caressing the roof of Mandy's mouth.

  A louder crack.

  And Mandy's tongue also enters Peter's mouth, spinning and turning as they feel each other's body and indulge in the moment, a moment when Peter feels important in a way he has never felt.

  The headboard breaks and my arms are free, covered by blood and wrapped in chains.

  Meanwhile, Peter feels his body shiver as Mandy approaches his ear and whispers that there’s nothing to be afraid of, that everything will be all right.

  I try to say the same to myself, untying the ropes of my feet. I don’t have time to work on the chains now, so untying the knots of the ropes requires more effort. I do it, however. And as soon as the knots are undone, I fall to the side, crashing to the floor with my head dizzy.

  Come on, there's no time for that now, I say to myself, writhing my red fingers. Polasky is coming back and he'll kill you if he finds you lying on the ground. He'll ride you like you're an old dog and then stick that iron bar in your head, ripping out your rotten brain and spreading your blood just like you did with his wife. Come on, can’t you hear the footsteps on the stairs? Polasky is coming back.

  I get up and spit blood on the floor. I stagger back to the iron bar and pick it up in my hands, listening to the footsteps echoing up the stairs as Polasky approaches. It's time to teach the son of a bitch a lesson.

  I stand in front of the door and wait until the doorknob begins to turn. I bit my lip and held my hands on the iron bar, like a hitter in a baseball game. The door opens, he widens his eyes in amazement and opens his mouth to say something. The impact of the iron bar against his skull, however, makes him swallow his words and turn back. The chains weigh in my arms, but I can still hit a second blow against the back of Polasky's neck. Not with the burning tip, of course, for he doesn’t deserve to die so fast.

  I grab Polasky's neck with the chains.

  He struggles as the air drains from his body. He tries to reach my arms, but he doesn’t have the strength to do so. Polasky drool and a strange smell covers the air as he sees death approaching and defecates in his pants. I loose the chains for a second, only to give him the false notion of hope, and then I apply the final blow, breaking his neck and letting the dead body slowly fall to my feet.

  I take off the cloth from my mouth and spit in Polasky's face.

  I go to the window and look through the curtain. The butler closes the trunk with the reverend's wife's body and looks sideways, making sure there's no one around. It's already dark, but I can clearly see the butler getting into the car and disappearing through the great gate of the mansion.

  He's not coming back so soon after he finds out what happened to his boss. He’s not so dumb. He knows that if he opens his mouth, he will end up being arrested for being an accomplice to everything Polasky has committed.

  I go to the bathroom, where my clothes are scattered on the floor, next to my wallet, my identity and my phone. They are all dirty with blood, so they won’t serve to escape from here and act as any citizen.

  I go to the sink and carefully take off the chains of my arms, displaying the wounds on my skin. My forehead is also sore, and my eyes have large black purses underneath. I turn on the faucet and let the water wash the blood, bringing a reddish liquid to the drain. I close my eyes and sigh. It burns like fire.

  Next, I’m looking for clothes in Polasky's closet. The shiny black shoes look perfect on my feet, but the black shirt and pants are a bit wide. Not that I'm complaining, after all, it's a lot more discreet than my bloody clothes.

  I take my things in the bathroom and I have to resist not to see if Steve sent me another message. Then I pass through Polasky's dead body and down the stairs whistling. There’s still blood scattered around the living room, although the security body has also been removed from there. I see the dirty columns with the brains of the blond woman who only expected to have a romantic dinner tonight with the man she considered a good husband.

  The moon is covered by clouds, but there are still some stars shining lonely in clean pieces of the sky. I walk down the sidewalk to the gate, turn around, and look for the last time at the mansion that was the stage of a real carnage. I take my cell phone and open the app Steve sent me to turn on the bombs.

  The fire explodes through the windows and rises to the top of the mansion, swallowing it amid the flames.

  And as I watch the fire consume the mansion, I receive a call.

  A call from Steve.

  X

  “You did better than I expected,” Steve says on the phone. “I was really surprised when you left the mansion and moments later the cameras stopped working. You learned a few things from me, didn’t you, Jimmy?”

  I walk among the trees in the neighborhood, avoiding getting too close to the other mansions. Down below, it’s possible to see some people approaching the mansion. I hope that pitch blackness is enough to keep me hidden.

  “You left me there,” I say to Steve.

  “You have to learn to walk by your own. How can I be sure you can do whatever it takes when the time comes?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That was your second challenge, Jimmy. The next one will come when I decide it's the right time.”

  I reach the street where I left Laura's car. There’s no one around here, everyone is heading inquisitively to the mansion that burns in the night.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask Steve.

  “It wouldn’t be so fun if I told you, right?”

  I open the car door, walk in, and settle into the seat.

  “I just hope you're satisfied with all this.”

  Steve laughs.

  “You'll be happy when it's all over. But for now, just wait until I get in touch with you, Jimmy. And always remember: all I want is your good.”

  The call ends.

  I need to get out of here fast and stay as far away from this goddamn mansion as possible. Only now I feel my heart racing, realizing how crazy this whole thing was. James Gibson would never do these things, ever. Maybe the James Gibson with VR glasses would, but not James Gibson who spends all day charging people and hearing offenses from his wife. It's as if the truth that Steve wants so badly to show me was inside me. And may God forgive me, but I'm beginning to think I like this truth. When you are a repressed person who has spent your whole life with your head down, feeling some blood on your hands is somehow refreshing — as crazy as it may sound.

  I wanted to see if Elise would say I was a sloppy bum if she found me hanging Polasky, killing the security guard or blowing up the mansion. I wanted to see that bitch's fa
ce squirm in fear, apologizing for everything she said to me.

  “You are not and it will never be anything, Jimmy,” she said, one time when I brought her a bouquet of flowers and tried to say that I could be a better man. “You'll never be anything because you're just a coward who never has the attitude to do what you wanna do. You're just gonna wander aimlessly through life, always bowing your head and giving a little smile as someone spits in your face. Some people were born to be puppies, Jimmy, and you're one of them.And get this fucking bouquet and take it away from me. A real man does much more than buy bouquets nowadays.”

  She threw the bouquet on my face and went into the kitchen, leaving on the floor the flowers I chose with love, my heart shattered on the white floor, the flowers that I hoped would at least gimme a smile from the woman I chose to be the mother of my son.

  That night Elise slept without a sheet, turning aside without saying anything to me. She was naked and I could see her anus, my cock crazy with the desire to possess her. But I didn’t do anything. I just stared at the ceiling, crossed my hands over my stomach and slept.

  The next day, Elise told me, “See how you're just a useless coward, Jimmy? I slept with my ass turned to you, and even that wasn’t enough for you to do something. A real man would have possessed me by force and would have made me like it. So we would fuck all night and he would do whatever it takes to make up for it, but things with you are never intense like that, are they? Damn, what was I thinking when I married you?”

  Sometimes I think that any resemblance to Laura cannot be mere coincidence.

  When I get home, I leave Laura's car in the garage and go inside. Everything is quiet, with only a few LED lights glowing in the dark of the night. I climb the stairs with careful steps to make no noise and go to Peter's room. I turn the knob slowly and look inside, but all I see is a messy bed.

  I go to my room, where Laura sleeps in a bed as messy as Peter's. How can a person move so much during sleep?

  “Come on, wake up,” I say, pulling Laura's sheets and throwing them to her feet. She wakes up scared and naked.

  “What the fuck, Jimmy? Have you lost your mind?”

  She bends to pick up the sheets, but I'm faster to pick them up and throw them on the floor.

  “Where’s my son?”

  “And how could I know about your son? Come on, pick up this shit and give it back to me before I use it to cover your corpse.”

  I take the phone out of my pocket and start walking to the porch while I look for Peter in the contact list. Laura stands behind me and punches my back.

  “What the fuck's your problem, motherfucker?” she shouts at me.

  Laura prepares to punch me again, but I turn and hold her arm up. The sleeve of my shirt falls, exposing the wounds in the arm. Laura gawks at them and her eyes slowly move up to my face.

  “What the fuck happened to you?” she asks.

  “It's none of your business,” I say, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her around the room.

  “Lemme go, it hurts!”

  Laura lets out a scream when I push her back on the bed. She turns her neck to me, spits a lock of hair out of her mouth and looks at me with the air of someone who has just gone through a cognitive dissonance.

  On the porch, I call Peter. It takes a while before a voice speaks.

  “Jimmy? It's me, Phill! Glad to talk to you again, my friend. Have you recovered from that day at the bowling alley?”

  I frown and stare at the houses ahead.

  “What are you doing with my son’s phone?”

  “He's kinda busy right now, he can’t answer. Are you listening to that sound in the background? I know it sounds like a real band, but it's just our kids rehearsing. Aren’t they great? Peter is with the drums, Samuel with guitar, Mandy’s singing and another boy they invited is playing the bass. If things go on like this, soon we'll have rock stars in Desert Rock.”

  “Oh, that's great ... I just ... you know, I got home and I didn’t find my son, so I was a bit worried.”

  “Of course, you're totally right. Nowadays it’s impossible not to worry about young people, especially when it comes to our children. But relax, Jimmy, everyone’s fine here. And as soon as the kids finish rehearsing, I promise I'll take Peter home.”

  “I'm grateful for that, Phill. And I'm glad the kids are having fun, too.”

  “Yeah, you can bet they are.” A guitar solo rises, just after a scream from Mandy. “Do you hear that, Jimmy? They rock!”

  I just laugh.

  “Thanks again, Phill. Have a nice—”

  “Hey, wait a minute. What do you think about a family dinner? Susan really wants to meet your wife. Maybe we could have dinner together on Saturday and the boys could play for us. We have a cottage that would be perfect for that. What do you say?”

  “A family dinner? Of course, Phill ... Hmm, that would be great. Of course, yeah. We don’t go out with other people, you know, so it would be nice.”

  “I knew you'd like the idea.”

  To be honest, this is the closest I've ever come from a friendship. My young colleagues didn’t usually take me to their house or even to go out on the streets. They did these things among themselves, but for some reason they left me out. It took me a while to accept the fact that I wasn’t like the others, that I'd never know what it feels like to have people who really care about you. And the truth is that at some point you get used to it. You always get used to it.

  Is this what Elise meant when she called me a “sloppy bum”? Anyway, getting used to the misfortunes of life seems to be the only thing to do. Many times these misfortunes leave marks, and these marks teach. And that's how we become different people.

  When I pass by Laura, she pulls the sheet up to her chin and asks,

  “Aren’t you gonna sleep?”

  I don’t bother to answer. Instead, I walk down the stairs and back into the living room. I take my virtual reality glasses and put them on, sitting on the couch with the adrenaline pumping in my blood.

  It's time to have a personal meeting with Steve.

  XI

  Steve's avatar is blocked.

  I click on it several times, but I keep getting the same message:

  ERROR

  This avatar seems to be corrupted or temporarily under maintenance. Contact Third Eye Technical Support for more information.

  Great, that was all I needed right now. My plan was to try to reset the last events in Steve's life, preventing him from killing his own family or shredding his own penis. But the son of a bitch is smart, of course he is. He must have realized that I could try to erase his memory, alter the events of his life so that he would forget why he wanted so much revenge on me.

  But okay, I still know a way to meet Steve.

  I select my avatar Dani Rosewood, a blonde nurse LV 23 who I played with for a short time. I didn’t do damage to Dani's life, due to the little time I spent playing, so she seems to be the most viable option. The only morally suspicious thing I did with my young nurse was to force her to fuck the entire hospital faculty for a promotion — which was no good at all becaus of some STDs, in case you were wondering.

  The game loads.

  I'm in Dani's bed in her middle-class apartment. I raise my arms, stretching myself, and I get scared when I bring them down to the side and hit the face of a naked woman. The woman turns to the other side and grunts. She’s the director of the hospital where Dani works, a respectable woman in her forties and with firm breasts. I can’t even remember fucking her, it's been a while since I last signed up with Dani Rosewood.

  Without wasting time, I open the map and search for Steve's neighborhood, trying to make a quick trip. Soon a small box opens with the following message:

  YOU CAN NOT MAKE A QUICK TRIP TO PLACES YOU NEVER VISITED.

  Shit, today is definitely not my best day. And considering that my whole life is a big sea of shit, I think that means a lot.

  I leave the bed and wear my clothes. A pair
of white pants, a black shirt with wrists carefully folded to show off the expensive bracelets I gained by fucking influential people and a brown leather purse into which I put a Colt .38. I hold my hair tight, put on my sunglasses and stroke the lipstick carefully through my lips.

  When I'm almost done, the woman I was sleeping with comes into the bathroom. She grabs me from behind, kissing my neck and stroking my breasts. Since I'm not wearing a bra, the nipples get rigid quickly.

  “Where are you going so early?” she asks, lowering her hand to the middle of my legs. It goes through my pants and her fingers dig into my pubic hairs, reaching for my vagina. “We don’t have to work today, silly. And my husband just gets home from the trip with the kids at night. We can spend all day on the bed if you want.”

  I press her hand so that the fingers dig in harder. I moam. If you are a man and are curious about how a woman feels when you touch her, Total Life can be a good learning tool.

  “I have some things to do today, unfortunately,” I tell her.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No.” Then I think well and say, “But the promotion we talked about last night—"

  She takes her hand from the inside of my panties, sighs in exasperation and sits on the toilet.

  “I've told you things aren’t so simple. I can’t promote you that way, Dani. You've fucked half the hospital looking for ‘better opportunities.’ They'll suspect that I have been fucking with you and soon the news will reach my husband and my children. And then I'm gonna be completely fucked.”

  I hear the sound of the water as she starts to pee.

  “Oh my God,” she says, frowning and looking down at her reddish pussy. “That’s burning as hell.”

  I wanna say that she isn’t real, that her husband isn’t real, that her children aren’t real ... but my last experiences with Steve make me doubt it.

  “You agreed to promote me last night,” I tell her.

  “I didn’t agree to promote you.”

  “Of course you did.”