As we walk, we notice two points of light forming in front of us. And as we keep going further we see the two points of light getting far from each other. One is closer, and has a different colour, pink, purple, close to these. The other is further, the exit, and is just white, natural.
The coloured point of light gets bigger and bigger until we get to a place in which all the walls of the cave are enveloped in this pinky, purplish colour, and we keep walking through this amazing tunnel until we get to the source of the unnatural light. It's bright, even disturbing to our eyes. Everything around us captures the colour purple from the bright neons. The neon sign is similar to the one from the restaurant in Bucharest, but it has one more line under.
二
Two parallel neons that you can't stare at for too long as they are so bright. The sign is placed above an open entrance, the entrance leads to a hallway which is lit by different neon sings of different shapes, colours and intensities. On one side of the entrance is a showcase, and there is a robot in it, it's the robot from a film, from my childhood. 'The Iron Giant' as i remember, but it doesn't look that old, and is not covered in a rusty metal. The robot is fully made of chrome, and the lights behind the window, of so many colours, form a play of those colours on the chrome metal, especially if you change your position as you look at it. On the other side of the entrance are parked a few mopeds and three motorcycles. There must be people inside.
"What is this?"
"i don't know, some kind of restaurant or something, it seems interesting."
"Then go inside, tell the people you need help and I'll continue my walk."
"Aren't you coming in too?"
"No, I must quickly get to the first police station and tell them what I saw in the Berbers camp."
"Then here we part our ways."
"Yes, go and eat something properly and get medical help for the wound on your arm."
"Farewell and, thanks."
"No problem. Don't forget to eat."
i shake Bear Grylls' hand and watch him continuing his walk towards the exit of the cave, i turn towards the, entrance to whatever this is, and go in. The neon lit hallway is very narrow, and each neon has a different colour so that when you walk along it, you're under the spell of an optical illusion that has lots of lights and colours following you.
At the end of the hallway, long enough for the dance of lights to give you a headache, i see a robot behind a counter. The robot looks like it was taken out of a cartoon, especially its mouth that is a continuous smile and only lights up when it talks.
"Irasshaimase-e-e!"
The voice is very robotic and lacking human warmth. The robot gets quickly out from behind the counter and stops in front of me. It's a simple robot, without hands, and that stands on top of a single metal bar that has at its end a small wheel. At the chest of the robot is a compartment with a metal door that opens up as the robot stops in front of me. In the compartment i see a palm scanner of sorts. i place my palm on the scanner and see a line of light going across it, up and down and up again, scanning my hand. The line of light disappears as it goes up and the door of the compartment closes fast. i barely got my hand out of there before it got caught in and crushed. i got my fingertips touched by it as it closed.
"Rouka no saki ni."
The robot turns and faces a wall covered by a very narrow curtain. i go to the curtain and pull it away, it's another hallway but so much narrower. i try to get in but it's just too narrow, i look at the robot and as it sees me it turns to the side. Of course. i turn to the side and walk sideways, as if i'm walking on a narrow path of a mountain, my back stuck to it and the drop in front of me. But in front of me is just a wall and so many posters glued on it. The posters that cover the wall make the hallway so much narrower than it's supposed to be.
Different posters with different themed parties along the years, but in each picture seem to be naked women. Most of the women and the clients are Asians, but i also see some foreigners, but all of the clients are wearing suits, including the women that are clients, they are all wearing working suits.
At the end of the narrow hallway is another curtain, i pull it to the side and am hit by this play of neon and fluorescent and UV lights and laser projectors, and that's all i can see until i have to turn my head down and my eyes closed as to not get blind. i open my eyes again and try not to look straight at the lights. It's more of a fight between lights, all move continuously, each against the other, it's very tiring for the eye.
"Ooooohhh!"
Behind me i hear some noises and i'm pushed, shoved away from the narrow hallway by three men, all Asians, that are very amazed and ecstatic by what they see. Inside is too much smoke, but the smell of cigarettes is not as noticeable as it should be.
All i can see are tables covered by velvet cloth, at which businesspeople sit down and on top of which naked women and men dance on the pole. Poker tables, roulette tables, everything that can be categorised as a vice, all seemingly guarded by these naked strippers dancing seductively. From the ceiling hang down cages, also looking cartoonish, in which naked men and women spend their sentence of an eternity of dancing. Some dance, others just wait limply for the time to pass.
And robots. So many robots, and they too have costumes drawn on them, with bow ties and this time they have hands and two legs. The quality of the robots is much better than the one at the entrance. Each robot is carrying a plate or a bowl with food or drinks or drugs or sexual toys or other objects that i wouldn't even want to know what they are.
All is in some perpetual motion, from the chaos of lights, to the dizzy and unfocused walk of the clients, the dance of the dancers, and the synchronized and errorless slide of the robots. All looks like a show with a choreography such well done that nobody hits nobody. One of the robots that isn't carrying anything notices me and slides to me. i see that it is wearing some kind of rollerblades on its feet. The robot scans me and on its chest, which is a screen, the menu comes on. On the first row is written in neon lines of different colours:
MENU
And after, again only one dish is presented, again with the name of the restaurant, and again it costs nothing.
二 ¥ 0.00
The same as the old restaurant, also in some Japanese kind of style is made this restaurant too. The first restaurant was, i think, some kind of…safety? i don't know if what i'm remembering now is a memory or… i know that, that restaurant was a safety, first one, created by my doctor. Because i wasn't eating or drinking. It didn't work. But the second safety? What is it for? i tap on the screen on the only thing on the list and the robot leaves instantly.
There's a constant smell in the air, besides the weak flavour of cigarettes, there's this strong smell of alcohol, stingy, and in some parts a smell of cheap detergent. Now i notice too that absolutely everybody is drunk and still continues drinking. They all look injured, more than drunk. And everybody just drinks, even though there are many types of food laid on the tables, and i don't know how every time i only see just an option on the menu that is presented to me, but in spite of all these foods that are at their disposal, everybody just drinks! And does lots and lots of drugs.
From behind me a group of women, all dressed in nurse outfits, come to me. These nurses pull me towards a darker, more private corner, where there is a red leather couch and they sit me on it.
The nurses sit down to my left and right, behind me, in front of me and at my feet. From up close i notice that they actually aren't wearing any clothes, but the outfits are drawn on their skins to look like nurses. Their nipples gave it away, but other than that it looks very authentic, no cracks or discolouration. But the nipples aren't covered by anything else but paint, the same way with their…
"Ahhh!"
i cover my mouth with my hand. Nobody around me heard me cry, anyway in this noise, who could have? i felt a strong pain on my ribs, i look at the nurse to my left, she's having her hands on them and caressing them lightly. They still hurt at touch, and my chest, and my leg. i'm caressed everywhere by the nurses. Everywhere! The robot that showed me the menu comes back with a first-aid kit on a tray. This is what it brought, this is what was on the menu?
The robot leaves the first-aid kit on the table in front of us and leaves hurriedly to its next client. The nurses open it and start patching and bandaging me up. They start putting cream on the bruises, wipe and sanitize my wounds on my feet. i didn't even knew i had wounds on my feet, but a lot of blood is flowing from them. Another nurse wipes the blood off my face, probably still dripping from the wound made in the mirror.
In short time, all the bandages and wipes are soaked in blood and thrown in a yellow garbage can forming a pile of rags covered in blood. The nurse from my right looks at the wound done by the viper and pulls another viper that sticks to the wound, and she squeezes the viper's head. The viper bites. Again i feel the venom entering my bloodstream. This time i start feeling sleepy. i try to not…but…
i wake up. i fell asleep, i slept. i know for sure, it feels like it. But nothing changed in the meantime. Not even the smallest thing. It must've been only for a second then. Everybody, the nurses, the clients, the robots, are all in their spots, positions, actions, but the nurses are now just waiting and looking at me.
i look at my body. It seems they finished with me. The wounds are wiped, bandaged, the shin is splinted, and the bruises are shining from the cream. Only my face was wiped and cleaned, but i don't feel like i have any cream or bandage on it.
The nurses make space for an older one to come. The woman seems to be some chief nurse, she must be between 30 and 40 years old, but she looks incredibly young if you don't look attentively at the marks of ageing. The chief nurse sits on my healthy leg, but she sits a little tensed to not have her whole weight on my leg, and then she gets uncomfortably close to my face… i kiss her. Fuck, it was so tasty, literally, like she used some lipstick with fruit aroma.
She moves her head back and looks at me a little annoyed, but the cute kind of annoyed.
"Ugokanaide!"
From a bandage roll she opens and rips small pieces of bandage and sticks them to my face. The bandages have less than 2 centimetres width and i can see them, some of them on my face, even after being placed, but it doesn't bother my sight so much. After she finishes covering all the scratches on my face with bandages, she pulls out a mirror and lets me look at myself in it.
i look strange, i look like i'm seeing myself through a broken mirror repaired with a thin white tape. For my eyes, the nurse is dripping down some solution drops and then she puts an eye pad that she glues somehow to my skin. i can't see anything now, through my left eye. The nurses move aside and i get up from the couch.
Everything looks less redder…
i look around at the people again and at what they're eating. i'm not just starving, but these kinds of tasty foods give me such a craving, but if i eat…it's for nothing. i'm just making myself sick. But i'm dying for an omelette, the one made by my love. i was so dumb to not eat it. i just fucking couldn't!
What the fuck was my grandma's saying?! What was she saying about those who don't eat!? Cuz i ain't eating! i just want to eat that fucking omelette…with her… Who knows if i'll ever have the chance to eat it again… No. i have to make it, to stop the tower, and come back to her. i have to live.
i get away from the group of nurses, but as soon as they notice this they all grab me and try to hold me back, to pull me back on the couch. i get out of their grasp and get away from them. i see them trying to reach out for me, begging me with their hands, trying to charm me back with their gazes.
i turn around and head towards the exit, but i don't know where it is. i can't find the narrow hallway that i came from, i can't see anywhere the curtain that i pulled to the side. i'm so hungry, i feel my stomach upside down and i look at the food and get these cravings and appetite and sickness. And i can't eat anything. And i feel this, exactly the same, second after second, like a constant pain that is a motherfucker, just because it doesn't ever stop.
i walk. i walk and look for an escape, an exit, a way out of this place, but i don't see anything from this stampede of men, women, horses, robots and lights. i walk blindly, just forwards, shoving everything standing my way, piercing through the mob without stopping to watch or be attracted the least by a boob or an ass or a stake.
i walk, i walk until i see an archway, an arch big as the entire club, that leads to nothing. Same as down in the tomb, in the dungeons… On the other side of the arch is a pure black, nothing. The lights of the club don't make it past the arch. i look at the edge of the arch, it has close to 10 metres width and is tall up to the ceiling. To the right, i see a white switch on the interior, lit part of the wall. i go to it. Above the button is this big red text: 'Don't press'. i press it.
The dark part lights up suddenly, giving off a bright light, natural. It's the sun, grass, and an old wooden fence, and the green and rusty metal door that leads to my grandma's house. It's Oma's garden, Oma's house, i'm at my grandma's… But she doesn't live in Brașov. Behind me, the same club full of lights of different colours, but dark, untouched by the sun's light.
And i make a step forward and stop, right in the middle, between these two worlds. One side of the body white, full of light, and the other side dark, affected by hundreds of colours that change constantly. With one ear i hear the deafening noise of the club songs, and with the other i hear the nature, the light breeze, different animals and birds.
Two paintings put face to face, each pushing against the other, but a world doesn't taint the other, only i, am stained by both.
*
i take another step towards grandma's house, and leave the old world behind, completely forgotten, i turn my head trying to remember where did i come from, but it's gone.
i'm here. Grandma's house. The big yard to my left surrounded by unpainted wooden fence where the chicken and the pigs used to stay, is now empty and deserted. To my right is half of the house, brick made. The house goes a few rooms to the right and a few rooms back too and it ends where the open kitchen is. The open kitchen that lays right behind the green and rusty metal door, acts like a transition path from one house to the other, and is covered from rain or snow by an open attic. Back, behind the big yard of birds is the second house, consisting of only one room, that's where i used to sleep when i came over…
i finally find strength to make the first step. i walk on the old footpath, beaten by entire generations of grandparents and grand grandparents and open the heavy old green and rusty metal door. It's not locked, but it releases a hurting squeak as if it hasn't been used in centuries. The door never sounded like this. But also, there's no one to come here anymore, since…
"Finally, you remembered to visit me. And I thought I'm going to die forgotten."
She's alive! No, it's a memory? i don't remember something like this. i get closer to grandma and sit down at the table with her. The sun is hurtful bright, and even if i'm sitting down at the shade of the open kitchen it still somehow reaches me and blinds me.
"Since your grandpa died, god bless his soul…it's been so quiet around here. But, you? What are you doing now?"
"Good… With college."
"you finished high school?"
"Yes, now i'm going to college, in October."
"Good for you, you're a smart ass now, that's how you say it right?"
"Yes…"
"Tell me now, what do you think I made for you?"
"Uhmmm, the chef's speciality?"
"Exactly. Omelette with sausages, just how you like it."
"But, how did you know that i'd come?"
"Eh, young boy. If you don't call me anymore, eh, that's what I'm doing every day, and I leave it by the stove to keep it warm. Just in case…"
"i'm so sorry Oma, but i was occupied with my high school, the exam…"
"I know you little smart ass, it's not a big deal, at least you got here now."
Grandma gets up from the chair with a hole on the bottom and goes to the stove. That was grandpa's chair, i remember when he was cutting it with the saw and i asked him why is he doing that. He wasn't able to hold it in anymore, but he had enough strength and energy to keep doing work around the house. He was old, my grandpa, but it was so suddenly when he got devoid of strength, one day he was alright, the next one i visited he was lifeless, limp.
i remember when i was coming to visit them, and grandma was cooking food, and grandpa was eating lesser and lesser, until he couldn't eat anymore, until he didn't want to eat at all, and granny was begging him, feeding him by force. At his last meal, he just stood up, barely holding on his feet, excused himself that he couldn't eat, and left. She, had a saying, she said, if you don't eat…
"Here boy."
In front of me there's a plate with omelette with sausages, exactly how i like. my favourite food, and it smells so good, looks so good, my mouth is watering already. But i can't eat…
"i'm sorry Oma, but i can't eat."
"How can you say this you little rascal, is your favourite, and you look like you're starving, like you haven't eaten in days. Only the dead don't eat."
That was it, her saying. And at some point, grandpa stopped eating, and he died.
"C'mon you little rascal, eat."
i look at grandma, i shake my head to say no…
"If you don't eat, I'll die."
Oma collapses suddenly off the chair and smashes violently to the cement floor. i jump up and go quickly to her. She's pale, so peaky, much too for a human. She looks like she died a long time ago. my hands that i'm checking her pulse with are bleeding. They're bleeding so much. What is happening?! Where is this blood coming from? i look at her neck, no open wound, it's just stained from me. The blood is just dripping from my hands. i run to the sink to wash my hands. Turn on the tap, but it flows blood, i can't get rid of it. In the mirror i see my face, with the bandages stained from blood, pale, with some huge dark circles around my eyes, bigger than the cheeks and completely devoid of life. i look like a dead man. This person in the mirror, can't be alive. Those people from the wear your seatbelt ads could win a beauty pageant compared to me. For a second, the light around me flicks to something cold, artificial.
"you got too late. you didn't want to eat, you killed her."
"i didn't killed her!"
i look above my grandma. It's a spirit, some kind of cloud in human shape, brown, scratchy, looking exactly like sand, and sand falls from it.
"Who are you?!"
"Death, I'm only here to show it to you."
"What?"
"How you killed her. How you'll die."
The background changes. It's different, all is dirty. The pile of plates in the sink is full of garbage and rotten food, what once was omelette with sausages. Cockroaches are crawling and swarming everywhere. The table is filled with omelettes. Grandma gets up from the ground and takes a dirty plate. She throws the rotting omelette right on the floor, then goes to the stove and puts another omelette from the pan that was on fire. She puts the plate on the table and takes out her old foldable phone. She's calling someone.
"Hello, what is my favourite rascal doing? Oh, I'm sorry I'm interrupting you…yes, I know you're learning all day long, I wanted to ask you if you want to come over, eat the grandma's speciality…yes I understand…well, when do you finish with this exam…yes, alright boy, well when you finish with your exams come over to me, I'm waiting for you. Good luck at the exams. Bye."
Grandma sits down on the chair with a hole in it and leaves the phone on the table.
"Oh, little rascal, why won't you come visit me, at least for a little bite, because I'm so hungry."
Grandma's body turns slowly into sand and drains through the hole of the chair.
"One lunch. And after that, maybe you could've caught her alive after the exams too."
No, he's right. For one fucking lunch, i could've visited her. One fucking half an hour, one hour, fuck, i could've stayed even an entire night there. So many days i did nothing, and i had so many occasions to visit her, to eat one more omelette, to get her to eat too… She needed me…
"Wait!"
The door opens, on it enters a neighbour, he's in shock. i look at the kitchen, grandma…was on the floor, fallen, dead, rotten, eaten by cockroaches. Cockroaches, worms, ants, rats. The animals weren't touching the omelettes at all, they were just for me, but my grandma's body was missing half of it. i sit down on the chair. i close my eyes. i breathe in.
"Forgive me Oma…"
Breathe out.
"Only the dead don't eat."
i open my eyes, get all of the air i have in, out, all of it, and i grab a big piece of bad, rotten omelette. It looks like old, dried-up vomit, but i shove it in my mouth. i puke out instantly, but i plug my mouth with my hand and swallow the entire vomit back, i shove another piece of omelette and another, and another, until i finish it all. i'm holding my breath, i'm clenching my teeth, i'm tensing tight my neck. i do anything in my power to not throw it out. i'd rather die than do it, because if i do it i'll die anyway…
Still, a powerful squirt of vomit is propelled out of my stomach, with acid, i feel it burning my stomach, and my neck. But i won't give in. i throw punches into my face, into my jaw to keep it shut. She called me so many times, i think she called me once every week to ask me what i'm doing. At least! And i refused to come to her! i even stopped answering her calls. i can't keep holding my breath! i have both my hands holding my mouth shut, holding it shut as tight as i can. i let nothing out!
i exhale, it's not air. All the vomit is projecting out of my nose, my nostrils are burning and i feel it going up my sinuses. i let go of my hands and all of it is propelled out of my mouth. All of it. The entire omelette, all the sausages, exactly how i ate them. Undigested, unaltered. All of it, it's thrown out of me. Just after i manage to throw it all out, i get to take a breath, i have my nostrils clogged, throat clogged. i fall down on my knees and start grabbing the omelette from the floor, but it's slipping through my fingers, like sand.
"So desperate to eat?"
"No…"
"Why?"
"There is no reason to eat anymore. i'm already dead."
"Then come with me."
my body, i feel it turning into sand, and it's draining out of me like my whole life is draining, little by little. i'm not fighting. Only my shadow is, i don't know why. Is it worth it anymore? At the top of the hill behind the house, i see the tower. All is shaking again. And the loud roar, it makes every molecule of my body vibrate in fear. Each grain of sand, but not just of me, of him too. Death starts draining too. The roar's vibrations continue to affect us both, and the roar keeps blasting without stop. i look at death fighting, struggling, draining and trembling, but…it's…me. i am dying there. And my body, is also draining, the same way, but much slower. i'm dying here too… i get up and dash towards the tower.