Part I
Dead center in the scope, motionless, I held my target.
The speech was taking place outdoors. Behind the lectern, his arms gesticulated like a dancing balloon. The puppet, a red star, shone with outrageous radiance.
Seized by delirium, a crowd inhaled the opium of words. The shapeless mass drifted beatifically toward its fountain of youth. The fever of the moment could be felt. The forecourt whirled with it. Soon the supernova’s explosion had swept them all away.
The cameras rolled at full tilt. Up on the platform, he offered himself like a grazing doe. His torso came to the center of my crosshairs. Slowly, I drew breath. We formed a perfect line — him, the weapon, and me.
In the apartment assigned to me, I shoved the barrel into a hole I had dug out. Beneath my belly, the floorboards chafed me raw with impatience. The plastic clock rang out like a cathedral bell. Turned to stone, I waited like that the whole morning through. Near the altar, a man with dimmed glasses took his place.
The game’s name? No matter — the front-runner in the coming elections. A danger to the ecosystem. I imagined the effort it took to track down such a breed. Its pelt fetched a high price. Unspeakable levers wagered fortunes on it.
Once trained for shows, they shipped it off to the zoo. It let itself be fastened to hopelessly tangled strings. It only had to stretch out its limbs in time.
And yet instinct struck. It spat the bit back in its masters’ faces. Leaping over the fence, it ran for liberating flight!
“But… not everyone can become Pegasus.”
Between false hopes flung out one after another, the roaring intensified. Under the leaden heat, his vocal cords went off the rails. His soaked shirt, sticky with sweat, gave him that possessed look.
Crashing into one another, Panurge’s sheep clamored for more. Before those frenzied harangues, they tore off their wool. Cast into their cave, he assumed a messianic posture there.
The demented festival reached its climax. That tremor, that cadence of words — I bowed before it. There he proved his worth. The exact opposite of my own.
In a previous life, I was an ardent activist. The jack-of-all-trades hand took care of the ratonnades. We smashed up plenty of extremists! Fifteen against one, often.
“They, and their pitiful chivalric morality.”
Our little group was dismantled. Tottering, the organization ground itself to pieces under the first pressure. A few of us took the blame. Me among those on the list. Guilty of our shared responsibilities. I was risking a lot: tar-black cells, tepid smells, bars.
I learned they had sold out the organizers in exchange for our heads.
“Comrade, fight for the collective,” those traitors chanted without cease.
“Thanks, I’ll make a note of that! Everything is about money, apparently.”
Hunted, I defended my case. Sold myself with boot-clicking precision. Defying cadaverous omens, an offer was made. I seized it.
From my earliest memories onward, roots steeped in my stomach. They coated me in a dreadful acidity. That affliction dictated what followed. Constantly, they used the skinny runt as a punching bag.
“Each person is unique,” the privileged droned on.
“Affirmative. Deformity is too! The unhideable above all. My proof? This nose: Gibraltar! Mother Nature and her gentle redistribution.”
I tried my luck with the little night-lights of the world. I scattered them across whole fields. But the bleak seasons struck me with famine. The frail one loved without return.
“O fruit of my labor—why does no one see you?”
“If only the list ended there.”
The unmooring of endless moves. Drugged suffocations. My progenitors and their mental convulsions… That agonized dance.
My solutions ran dry. I dug in vain for my livelihood. An inch from giving up, I resigned myself to the pixels of screens.
Alternative routes opened up. Plugged back in, I leapt into the infinity of possibilities. On the shores of the new world, I discovered the ones like me. We shared our resentments. Soaking it all in, I communed with the dogmas. In the digital occult, concisely, I drew up the list of those responsible for our condition.
Moving beyond the virtual, we undertook something concrete. My vitality devoted itself to the group. Donning my finest mask, I banished the option of losing them. All that only to end up bartered away like a flogged slave.
I snapped that night. In that cage of waiting, I dreamed of an apocalyptic farewell. But first, I had to tear open the chrysalis.
In Numidian marble, I engraved: Never again will I cross to the other side. Set down in carbon ink.
When the long-awaited opportunity came, my heart floated to excess.
“This operation… the common good… We are identical,” my recruiters assured me.
I fitted myself into the link of the chain. The shared objective took shape. For years, I had been blinking on their radar. The spheres of influence included me in the agenda.
“You’ll have the recognition you deserve. The ball is in your court.”
In the bargaining, they promised me exfiltration. I prospered valiantly in pursuit of my own interests.
“To me—glory so long dreamed of!”
The tables turned. I clasped the palms of the men in anthracite suits. The unofficial training began.
In those days, contempt for the divine did me harm. I was taught to loathe it. Skillfully, the system maneuvered through our search for identity. It demanded the dividends from me.
But from my designation, a doubt arose. The sinner and his redemption—burst forth from the papyri. My radical beliefs softened. Thanking Him seemed so wise. Now, I had to answer to the demands.
“All will kneel before the monolith”
The order was limpid. No manifesto to provide. No one to convince. The antipode of that pathological liar. The mush was served. Superstitious, I engraved the bullet with a small subliminal figure.
Filamentous clouds hung over the square. A gray hue covered the thousands of faces. Saliva in my mouth, I prepared to commit the existential act.
Placed at his two o’clock, the man with the shaded glasses touched his ear. Three seconds. No more, no less.
The wind held its breath. My senses imitated the calm harp. The monastic state. As before the forest logs, I anticipated the eclipse.
The veins in my skull swelled. The clock and its ticking evaporated. My lips dried out. My tongue swelled. The cries of the square formed a relaxing symbiosis.
The doe lifted her neck in my direction. Softly, her lashes fluttered. The scaffold smile… Pinocchio realized. The pin glinted.
Impact.
Part II
The branch gave way. The pigeons’ wings clapped. That crackling entered the lungs. The wish of the candles came true.
Trembling, his pupils rolled. From the throat a blackish pulp gurgled. Swarming, the seal of worms hurled itself upon him. Roasting in that desert, I made an offering of it to the vulture clouds.
In that sweet shiver, my portrait was plastered into gilded moldings. They built the tallest of mausoleums. The scene gave thanks to me.
The echoes drew near. Apollo’s war arrows. Alexander’s drunken conquests. The massacres of Genghis Khan. My Bolshevik revolution. Yes, they came to witness the coronation.
“Your servant: chosen as humanity’s heir!”
In the ascension, my scars stitched themselves closed again. Up there, a deity, the thousand-year maple carved itself into me. In silence, the sermon began its prelude.
The event horizon drew me in. Passing beside the engulfed specters, I took those interminable stairs. The once, the here, the to-come… all were abolished.
Our existence—a mistaken snap of the fingers.
From that abyss, a mist appeared. The steps turned into an icy slope. Caught in the thickness of it, I slid, annihilated.
In the bleak dwelling, I thought I felt the riposte. The stained-glass windows whistled. That rumble intensified. Rotor blades crisscrossed my surroundings in jolts. Liquefied, I took refuge in the darkness of my eyelids.
Amid the smell of gunpowder, a force invited itself in. Paralyzing, it spoke in a whisper:
“Poor in spirit. Look at yourself obey.”
The entities kept the servile one on a leash. Freely, I had acted by their rules. The devious brains—owners of my outer edges. I spun in a straitjacket in the leprous carousel. This pure ruin…
“Stop!”
The sky turned violet. The storm seemed dormant. The remnants of my consciousness switched on the battery radio.
“Brrr… no news of the candidate…,” I switched stations, “…maximum procedure triggered by the central government…” — “…keeping you informed by the minute of the internationa…” — “…the phase we are enter…,” I changed again! “…tributes are pouring in across all social netw…”
The air in my nostrils turned claustrophobic. My fists hammered the machine. The clinking was lost in the darkness.
“Control yourself.”
The countries thought I had fled—surely.
“Were we of the same species? — Ah! These knots in my skull, I hacked all those damned cords to pieces!”
The sirens woke me. Those acute earaches hurled out the alarm. Like an accordion, they spread as far as the sails of trawlers.
“No. Th-this could not…”
Then, strident, the red curtain dripped down:
“Impact imminent. Take shelter. Impact imminent. Take shelt…”
The escalation of tension increased. The bipedal sphere weighted itself with vice. My scathing contribution like the terminal spark. In the morbid machinery, I was the missing micro-screw.
The unpunished forces cut the red ribbon. The large-scale slaughterhouse opened. Their promises… So many contractual lies.
Their prophecy lurched into motion.
“I would so have liked to rewind—to alter the course of the machine.”
I implored the sky to choose the ending! But the East lay down without waiting for day.
The cyanide rocket lifted off. The enemy retaliated. Weeping in the void, I reckoned, like the billions who should have known me…
In the foam of renunciation, I opened the broken window. That intersidereal emptiness. The predators must have taken refuge in the underground cloisters.
The white point of the blast burst open. Buildings, in cascades, scattered into dust. The magnitude froze me.
To the very end—cursed life.
“Fifteen minutes of glory. Was that too much to ask for a Puppet?”