OLAS Pt 2
OLAS: Part 2
The credits began to roll as an announcer’s voice played over the undertone.
“Stay tuned for even more of Agent Smith as we continue on our back-to-back marathon leading up to Agent Smith’s 4 thousand, 3 hundredth, and 50th episode! Only 8 more weeks until the premiere! Stay tuned, and don’t forget to watch with your Special Agent Sunglasses! Available at most retail outlets! If you don’t have one, make sure to use the code GOATBALLS to get a Special Agent Pin-”
The screen cut out and the reflection gave Thomas a sinking feeling. There sat a man in the middle of a couch. Several boxes of take-out piled neatly next to him making a decent faux table. In front of him a sea of emptied and crushed cans sprawled along the coffee table. It was a familiar view, each place of the room becoming more cluttered during each commercial interruption. The surprise being a person standing in the doorway. His roommate, Shashawna, glaring at him through the screen with the remote in hand. When their eyes met, Thomas remembered he forgot to modestly hide his lotion and tissues. How humiliating.
“Christ.”
This was the first voice Thomas had heard in several days that came from an organic human. The disappointing demeanor hit his ears and he felt like a dog that feared those judging eyes from the disgruntled owner. He wished he could go back to the digital voices.
“Is this all you’ve been doing the past week?”
“No, I’ve only been watching Agent Smith for 2 days.” He had in fact, only saw the last hundred and five episodes of Agent Smith. Napping intermittently between episodes. It wasn’t a great response, but Thomas wasn’t feeling like a great man. He could tell that she was at her wit’s end with him. He was honestly surprised it took this long.
“It’s been three years.”
“It’s not about her.”
“Then what the hell is this about?”
He reached his wit’s end as well.
“It’s about life. Life in general. Why the hell should I get up and go out to find some other cog to join? Why keep doing the same thing day in and day out when I know it will lead to nothing? Sure I make something and some rich person buys it because they are on another level of the totem pole than I am. Everyone is just one peg shorter pandering to one peg higher. And when you finally look at the top, when you finally see the people pulling the strings, it’s no different than an artist trying to pimp their work to the highest bidder. There’s no change. There’s no message. Sure someone gets to be a little more enlightened than another and the only way they know how to do that is to buy out my work and talk about it amongst friends. But it will never make anyone quit their job and go find a different life. No, as soon as I deliver, it will be three hours, three, I’ve seen it happen, before it goes back to business as usual. I just can’t pander to it anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“You enjoy living a tortured life because frankly, it’s all you’ve ever known how to operate. You wallow because it feeds that small part of yourself that doesn’t want to succeed. You’re your own worst enemy and you expect pity out of it because as soon as you reach a certain level, then you have to answer for yourself. And you don’t need to answer when you’re the victim. Do you think I enjoy the people I work under? Do you think I like this game? No. I hate them. I hate them all, it’s true. But damn it, it is a means to an end. My end. Now I frankly don’t give a shit about your wallow anymore. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care how you find it. But get the fuck out of this apartment right now. Go get some air. Go fuck something. Go get drunk, or high, or wallow, but fucking do it outside!”
“I’ve already paid the rest of the year and I will stay inside and do whatever I damn well please and I would please ask you to close the goddamn door!”
In this world, healthcare is free. Because frankly, human suffering exists regardless of how much care is provided to the public. Debt for health would be too easy.
Oddly enough, when no one had to worry about the bill, they were much more inclined to be violent. He finally left the apartment when the boxes were being thrown and one of them still had a pizza cutter within it. He went to Healing United and had thirteen stitches placed in his head. He couldn’t tell if it was from the loss of blood, the hit to the head, or his friends honest words, but afterwards he took a long walk.
He passed by old places he used to frequent. He passed by parks and saw children playing. He stood at the window of the cafe she used to work at. He thought a lot. It had in fact been quite a while since sinking into long nights and extended periods of sitting at home and doing nothing at all. At first it was sleeping off hangovers from the night before. Then it was feeding other addictions including screen time and take out. It had been a long road down the path he found himself on. And now he found himself on a bridge looking at the sunset. It turned the sky around him a golden color. If this was the last color he ever saw, then he would be happy.
It wasn’t that he never considered taking his life. The first time he ever thought of shooting himself was in the second grade. The first time he considered it was ten years later. Though thanks to a blank, he figured death was guaranteed. So long as he wasn’t a frail, decaying home resident he would wait for that ultimate guarantee. The thoughts persisted, but then again he told himself there were at least fifteen other people considering it in any crowded area. If they hadn’t acted on it, then he could continue on as well.
Though this afternoon was perfect. Something he hadn’t seen in ages. Perfection. What do you do when you reach perfection? There was no answer to that because as soon as you reach what you thought was perfection, then the sign, the finish line, the idea itself changed and you had to reach for a new perfection. Or you could accept the perfection in front of you and say; yes, this is it. This is all the perfection that will ever need to happen. He found his perfection.
He wanted to bask in the golden glow for just a little while longer, but then his perfection would be lost. So he climbed the rail.
The last things he saw were a security guard rushing over to him and the not so blue sky softly riddled with clouds. A smile crept along his face as he fell. He had a clarity, an enlightenment that nothing else from this point in time mattered. He finished his existence like all those before him, and he would join them soon enough.
The odd thing about Thomas though is that he was never lucky. He just had good timing. He hit the water but it was much more shallow than he thought it would’ve been. Not only shallow but warm. He could feel the heat on most of his body except his left leg which didn’t feel at all anymore. And in the shallow bubbling water pooling with blood, he heard muffled voices, and what felt like a jet stream on his forehead. If he had looked where he was leaping he may have noticed the boat he landed on. But as this unlucky man with impeccable timing drifted into darkness, the universe denied him his right to take his own life.