017: Trading Places.

The first of many to come. Stay tuned!

OOO

“Why are people so… unpleasant?”

“I don’t know.” The man strapped to the torture device replied, then blinked. Squinted. Was he…?

“Honestly,” Said the man not strapped to the torture device, “it’s so difficult to truly care about so many things without, first, knowing the answers to some of the most fundamental, mind-ravaging questions! How can--”

“Excuse me,” Said the man strapped to the torture device, “But am I supposed to be here?”

This gave the man not strapped to the torture device pause. “Well, yes. If you weren’t I would expect that I would have gotten it all sorted out several buckles and screws back. However, there you are, and here we are. Where was I?”

“Not strapped to the torture device.” Said the man strapped to the torture device, not a little bitterly.

“Ah, yes. Funny, that, that the transitory pain of a few straps of leather and metal can so sharply define our equally transitory positions: captor and captive, speaker and audience, each equally nailed to our positions on this rotten stage we call life. Along with every other squalid, putrescent co-actor who decided to show up and then decided, once they felt the nails driven through their feet, that they didn’t want to be there anyway and are now hell-bent on making sure no one else enjoys themselves at all, even for a minute--”

“That’s excessively negative, you know.” Said the man strapped to the torture device in a voice of strained patience. “There are some nice people. I know a couple.”

“Are you sure you’re not just insane?” Said the man not strapped to the torture device, flatly. “That the flickering channel of your reality only makes it seem as if those people are ‘nice’ in comparison to the maggot-ridden offal the rest of your mind is obsessed with?”

“Uh. No. Definitely not.” Said the man strapped to the torture device.

“Funny.” Said the man not strapped to the torture device. “I think so all the time.”

They stare at each other for awhile.

“Look,” Said the man strapped to the torture device, clearly reaching the end of his patience, “Could your flickering tv-whatsit possibly persuade you to let me go? I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

“The ‘tv-whatsit’ was a metaphor. For the manifest instability of a common frame of reference.”

“I… see. Is that a yes?”

“That’s a no.”

“Can you loosen them, then? I mean, it’s a good thing I’m a small guy and all, but some of these straps and that… that barbed pointy dealy, wow, they’re really too close for comfort.”

“Think of the sensation as a gift, a reassurance that you are not dead yet. What you’re feeling is the life in you, crying out against the divide! I would hate to take that from you: the final gift of true certainty, that you’re alive and you want to remain that way. To loathe the very breath and blood inside your own skin is a terrible thing.”

“That’s… nice of you. In a really insane way. Do you have a name? I can’t keep thinking of you as ‘the man not strapped to the torture device’.”

“Oh, don’t worry, you won’t be thinking of anything in very much longer. But as we’re getting along so well, you can call me… well, I guess you can call me Eddy V. My friends could call me Dy, if I had any. And you?”

The man strapped to the torture device opened his mouth, shut it again, against a rising tide of nausea and confusion. “I…I’m John… Jonathan Cervantes. I don’t think—I mean, I know-”

“That’s a really dull name. Do you have any idea how many Cervanteses there are in the phone book for this town alone? Can I call you Johnny?”

“Jo- Johnny? Yeah, sure, go ahead, call me whatever.” Johnny smiled. It was very forced. “So now that we’re getting along so well, you can let me out, and I can-”

“No.” Edgar said again. “I’m sorry, but like I said before: insane. I have to kill you. If for no other reason that to prove to myself which side, if any, I truly am on.”

“You—you-” Fury rose up in Johnny’s throat, thick and choking. “YOU FUCKWAD. I’m not supposed to BE HERE.”

“For all your insistence that you shouldn’t be here, here you remain,” Edgar retorted sharply. “Deny your imminent death all you like, it won’t change a single aspect of the matter and you might as well come to grips with your incipient mortality. Where is your regret, your remorse, your fear?”

“FUCK fear, FUCK you, and FUCK your insanity!” Johnny shouted, “If I ever meet you again I am going to rip you to shreds, and then rip your shreds to shreds, and then stomp on them until you’ve had enough, and then I’m going to set you on fire and MAIL YOU TO SATAN--”

“Goodbye, Mr. Cervantes.” Edgar said, politely, almost regretfully, and pulled a lever. “It might have been nice to know you.”

It was at that point that the torture device clicked into motion and the very angry man strapped to the torture device found he no longer had a throat to speak with, or a brain to bother with speaking. Technically, he wasn’t even strapped to the torture device any longer.

Edgar the homicidal maniac watched the remains for awhile, almost pensively, then turned and left the room. As he brushed the light switch, he sighed. “And we were getting along so well, too.”