Short stories

Paparazzi

Volksferatu

07.22.24 – 11:17pm

It was a white room. I awoke to a white room with a tiny white window high above me. The air was heavy and my limbs were weak. My energy felt like it was being drained constantly; it felt like a tick was feeding on the back of my neck. I sat there pondering my woes. Thinking, how many times have I awakened here? As my eyes scanned the white room, they arose to the tiny window which was now, strangely, getting bigger. My eyes lit up with curiosity and fear as I stood up and approached the anomaly. The window grew so large it was now as a big as me, a giant glass dome, I felt like I was inside an eye that was looking out beyond the white room, beyond my whole world. How could I not look? Who in their right, sane mind would not look beyond the white room? A room where your whole life has been, where you have done none nothing but wake, lay still and sleep, how could you not look beyond that which is universally known? There is nothing beyond the white room and I shouldn’t look, but I still do. I looked through the window. I peaked behind God’s curtain and I saw it. A golden Being so large it went beyond my horizon. Faces wrapped around each other vertically, eyes and mouths closed. Large spheres, varying in hues of unknown liquids, swirled around this Being. Its hands gently staying near each sphere, playing and manipulation all of them, like a child playing with a toy; everything was set against the same, blank, white, room. Suddenly one of the Beings eyes opened and it saw me instantly. Its immense eye connected with mine. Our eyes locked and I saw everything, everything that ever was, that ever will be and that will never come to pass. The Beings mouth opened in a silent scream as my vision narrowed and I saw him. A humanoid figure directly across from me, eons away from me, it was the only black spot in an otherwise golden light that was emitting from the Beings eye. I looked closer into the eye. I traveled into it. Closer. I saw the him. I saw me, myself staring at me. I locked my eyes with me and mind finally broke.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

My eyes ripped open like a blade slicing through skin. They started to water and close again. “No” I told myself. “I have a date.” I muttered out loud to nobody as I stirred from my car seat. I seemed to have passed out in my car…again and just before my date with Amy. I still can’t believe I managed to swing a celebrity of all people. Amy Crisis. An up and coming artist which cultivated the hearts of all who looked upon her, men, women and yet she choose me out of everyone. Why? I am not special, I don’t have talent, hell I’m not even that tall. I’m less than 6ft if you are so curious. I have a mediocre job and I spend my weekends drinking myself to death. What does she see in me? I dig my fingers into my eyes to massage them and open my car door to step outside. The wind was cold and howling, there were a lot of people going in out of the brand new “Super Mall USA”, the newest conglomerate in town. Seems like my tiny town, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, is getting a bit of civilization delivered to it, maybe we can finally get some WIFI. I pick up my phone from my car seat and check my social media. One message from Amy; “I’m waiting”. Even through these dry texts her tone is unmistakable…heartless. I close my phone, my car and head inside the mall.

I might be hearing things but the sound of the wind followed me inside, even when the doors closed. Why was this consumer zoo just as cold as the outskirts outside? I wrap my hoodie around me to keep in my body heat as I walk towards the main lobby. Loud voices, meaningless conversations, varying emotions and the wind, all swirl around me in a cascade of doldrums and headaches. There are too many people and I start to get overstimulated again. I pull the hood of my hoodie over my ears in an attempt to block out the noises. I walk faster. Faster. Faster until

 “Hey dickhead!” the voice comes first, the punch to the shoulder second. It connects hard. I recoil in shock to see Amy, with an upset look upon her face. I only see her like this when she is not in front of a camera. There, she is always smiling, always hiding something but now, now she is unburdening herself on me. She doesn’t need to worry about labels, she can be herself…and I think she’s beautiful. “Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting here?” She jabs me with her blue finger nail. “All alone in this widespread mall…I could of been kidnapped!” She stomps her foot. “Don’t tell me you fell asleep again. Elliot, you need to get your sleeping schedule in order.” She touches my arm. “I care for you…but not so much that I will let you ruin our date with something as silly as a faulty sleeping schedule, get your act together already. Do you even understand the responsibilities I have? I know you…”

I don’t mean to drown her voice out but I can’t help but start to look around. I look for them again. They are always here. The paparazzi, always hiding out of sight and taking flash pictures of Amy as she goes on with her day, twenty four seven. Can you imagine that? Going on with your day and a flash blankets your face every couple minutes, knowing that any of those pictures could end up in a horrible spread about you. I guess I could understand why she feels the need to take everything out on me. Is this my purpose then? To be her human skinned dairy? She quickly turns on her heel, as if hearing my thoughts and looks into my eyes. Her blue eyes and blond hair look like a cascading waterfall. Her lips were full, cheeks thin and her eyes are sharp, even without the makeup, her eyes are as sharp as a sacrificial blade on an alter; oh I would sacrifice my soul for her eyes. As if reacting to my thoughts, her eyes focused on me, like a t4i focusing its lens on its subject. “So what are the plans for today?” she demanded.

“Plans?” I squawked

“Yes…it’s a date right. What are planning to do to me?” I planned on loving you but that might be too strong an answer for a first date I thought to myself.

“Food…games…movie?” I said with the bare minimum of confidence. Obliviously displeased, Amy clicked her tongue and said “acceptable” then turning away from me, she led me to a place of her choosing.

Before following her, I looked around to see them again, the parasites, the camera men looking for a quick buck, the paparazzi. They were like maggots on the underside of a corpse, always feeding, always hungry, always taking but never giving. These voyeurs kept following us as we walked throughout the mall, flashes of a camera occasionally striking Amy and its rebound glow stunning my eyes slightly. Thoughts of violence started to creep inside me, the things that I would do to these bugs if I got my hands on them, but I seethed in silence as we walked near each other. We walked for some time, exchanging meaningless small talk, growing disinterested with each other as the moments moved on, until we come across a store with no door but a black drape hanging over it. This place looked weird, completely different from the rest of the stores here. While everything else was shiny, new and looked like steel chrome, this store looked old, decrepit and like it did not belong here. “We should…hey!” before I said anything Amy walked inside. I followed, with hesitation.

The smell was musky and it felt like I was walking through sand, each step leaden my feet and forced me to slow down. There was no clerk, no color, only a black library with ancient books. All the books looked the same, all black tomes, filled with cobwebs and dust. Something in my head told me, screamed at me not to look at any of these books, to leave, to leave Amy right now and stop this journey. Amy? Has long has it been since I’ve seen her. I scanned around the room, the black void at the end of the hall felt like it stretched for eternity, an obsidian torrent of hate and bile, of anger and blood. Something kept calling me to it, a voice was singing out in the darkness to me, begging me to peak. But as I took one step…Amy walked out from the darkness with a benign smile across her face. I have never seen that smile before. There was something off putting about it. She had a black tome under her arm. She walked closer to me, grabbed my hand in hers and squeezed it gently. She looked into my eyes. Her eyes were black pits obsidian. So beautiful I thought. “Come love” she said in a tone so soothing, it overturned my defenses and made me a slave to her whim, never taking her eyes off of mine and they led me out of the Black Library    

Being outside felt so good, like taking off a bag that somebody draped around your head to suffocate you with it. It felt good to breathe again. Amy was still holding my hand and her eyes were still a black veil. Was she wearing contacts? She also seems to get slightly shorter as I now stood over her. As I mentioned before, I was less then 6ft tall and that was red flag for Amy when we first started talking. “My man needs to be taller than me when I put my heels on” she used to tell me. So why was she getting smaller, changing? Am I imagining it? I rub my eyes with my free hand before I feel the pull of her arm again.

Our first stop was getting food, fish food, sea food, sushi to be exact. We walked to a dingy Asian restaurant a few feet from us. Strange I did not notice this place before. As I looked back, the Black Library where we just came from was no more. It was a closed shop with barricaded doors, allowing access to nobody. So how did we just come from that horrid place, did I day dream it? Amy snapped me back into reality by squeezing hard on my hand. I let out a small yelp of pain; she turned around and smiled deeply at me. Her blue iris eyes of a deep sea color were now replaced by a black fog which seemed to ebb and flow as I gazed into them. I was starting to get mesmerized. They pulled me into the restaurant, me offering no resistance. The place was small, poorly light and smelled foul but there were few people here and we took a seat at the far corner, away from the already small incubation of souls and lights. We began to talk and our conversations now differed wildly from before. “What is the meaning of life” Amy asked me.

“What?”

“Indians think hedonism is the way to a fulfilling life; Christians think that serving God in body, mind and spirit is the way to a fulfilling life, or at least get to Heaven. Egyptians…”

“Think that we are reality experiencing itself. Without us there would be no existence and therefore no point in life. Ergo…”

“You are the universe unbound.” Amy finished my thoughts softly with a smile.

“Why are we talking about this?” I asked. “You never had an interest in the esoteric; it was always material things with you.” She tilted her head slightly as if not understanding.

“I mean…it’s not bad, I enjoy talking with you about those things, but this is just drastically different.” Different is an understatement. In the ushering of those words, Amy weaved her head forward and then flung it back like she was drying her hair and as she did, her golden hair dripped down like ink in the rain, washing away the golden guck to a enthralling, raven black color, her hair kept flowing until it knelt down and collected by her chest. Her haircut was different now too; bangs in the shape of a black heart framing her face, making it impossible not to look at her. Voices began to whisper in my mind. Tears welled up and dripped on to her face, but not randomly, they dripped and formed silver studs around her face, leaving a silver trail of makeup as they fell. Her tears were manifesting into piercings; a large nose ring like one of a tribal witch, three ball piercings on each side of her nose and too many ear ones to count. Voices began to shout in my mind. Too many voices in my mind again, I was being assaulted while watching this transformation take hold in the dark space, I didn’t even notice our server coming by.

“What can I get you!” she said in a perky voice and the silence came back. Thankfully. In my madness I fell back on my usual order and quickly.

“California roll” I answered shakily and Amy giggled, giving me this funny face as I ordered.

“And an eel roll please.” I added.

“Certainly sir” the server said in a fake smile and tone of voice, “And for the lady?”

“I’m not a lady” Amy said. The server looked up from her paper in confusion.

“Ma’am?” she asked again.

“Again, I’m not a lady, ma’am or girl. I am the countless repetitions of patterns, a construct of starts, the eyes of god and the atoms of long dead starts formed as a way to experience this universe first hand. I just choose to be in this physical avatar right now.”

The server and I looked dumbfounded at Amy.

“…I’ll have the wonton soup, please” Amy finished handing the menu back to the server and smiling, genuinely. The young server, clearly distributed, took both of our menus and left quickly.

“The universe experiencing itself? The eyes of God?” I asked stupefied.

“I was just being dramatic; our earlier conversation got me in the mood to think.” Amy said as they flipped their now golden black hair back and then looked me up and down.

“You never answered my question Elliot.” She ran a finger in a circle on the table. “What is the meaning of life…for you?”

I waited on this and looked down. I looked back up at them and noticed their attire was starting to change. The colors were washing way, the vibrate clothes they had on when I saw them in the morning now turned to mirror the same clothes I was wearing. Black oversized hoodie, black oversized jeans and a tombstone bag. I stared into the abyss of their eyes for a time as this new transformation was happening; even as our food got here I kept looking at them. “To create” I finally said.

“The point of life is to create. Creativity is a gift from the universe, that and opposable thumbs.” Amy smiled at that.

“Each of us.” I say as I try to grab my sushi with my chopsticks.

“Each of us…has…a gift…and a responsibility…damn sushi…” I tried to grab my food with my chopsticks while debating the meaning of life, it was going poorly. Amy was now laughing at my poor attempts, hiding their smile with their hand. I finally just stab the sushi through the gut and Amy lets out an excited yelp. I bite down into the fish and start to chew. Finish and continued my thought as I started another fight with another piece of sushi.

“Once we feel that spark of creativity, that note from our muse, it’s our sacred duty as humans to capture that lighting in a bottle, to shape it into our own whims and deliver it back to the audience with a meaningful message…or just to show them something cool. What about you? What is your purpose in life?” Amy smiled again and effortless gently picked up a piece of my sushi with their chopsticks.

“To experience” Amy said as they swallowed the sushi whole in one bite.

After our food, we walked out to the last part of our day, movies and games. As we walked, we were wrapped up in each other’s mind so fervently that we accidently walked into the wrong store, twice! We found our way finally to the arcade. Amy’s appearance was now a complete opposite of what they were at the start of the day. But not just their appearance but personality too, they were no longer coarse and rude but sweet and inquisitive, instead of harsh and loud they were soft and gentle. Am I going insane?

“You’re not” Amy said, as if reading my thoughts. “Everything happens for a reason, everything that was placed in front of you was predestined for you. It’s up to the decisions you make to define your character, so who you are?”

“Amy…what the fuck are you talking about?” My mind at its wits end of trying to piece this whole day today that I stumble and feel a hairline fracture in my brain; the voices are coming back. I look around and see people, too many people, and too many voices. The voices start gnawing at my brain, screaming, crying, the flesh matter inside my skull. Like an animal begging to open a door, clawing it until its paws bleed and leave marks of their suffering. I’m falling. I’m falling. I’m falling.

I…stop. Amy holds me close in a tight embrace and all the noise leaves me. I hold on to them, feeling a warm sensation fill me up. I stay in this position for which feels like an eternity, an eternity of bliss, of ecstasy and the feeling of serenity. How I longed for this, I don’t want this feeling to every go away. Until it did. Amy pulled back and let go of me and I opened my eyes again. It was quiet. Nobody was in the arcade. It was just me and them. No there was somebody here. I felt a flash on my face, the flash of a photograph. I turn quickly to look behind me to see a figure darting away from my eyesight. It was slow and cumbersome and its humanoid body looked slightly bloated. I turn my head back to Amy and see they are already putting in coins for a guitar machine. “This is my favorite, I love this game!” they proclaim in excitement.

“Guitar Slayer? Don’t you already play an instrument in a band?” I asked with a laugh.

“A band? If you mean this arcade then yeah I’m in a band. “They answered with a laugh.

“What…but you are famous, a celebrity, you tour the world. Amy what do you mean you’re not in a band?” They sigh.

“Elliot, I think we are getting close enough that you shouldn’t be using my government name anymore. It’s a turn off if I’m being honest.”

“Amy…isn’t your real name?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me your real name?”

They turned to look at me. “You never asked.” They said as they started the game.

“Now stop romanticizing insanity and play this game with me, none of my other friends ever want to play so I’m here alone usually. Which I don’t mind but it’s nice to have company every once and while.” They start to play the song and they play well. I can’t tell if Amy…or whoever this is, who they say they are or am I dreaming my day dreams again. Are they a world famous musician or are they just somebody who plays this game a lot and I’m the new player to their game. I guess both answers could be true. The sound of continuous chords missing on the player two screen rattles me from my thoughts. I grab the guitar on the ground, lock eyes with the being next to me, smile and start to miss all my notes.

“I must give you an A for effort, but an F in execution.” They said through a giggle.

 “Who else do you know that plays a rhythm game on hard the first time?”

“Seeing as I always play alone, none expect me.” They say as we both wrap our hands around each others.

“Well you are not playing alone anymore.” I say with a sweet smile and we embrace each other again.

We fall into the movie, alone, nobody in the theatre. Nobody in the concession stand ether, did they rent out the whole mall for us? Improbable, it’s just getting late and the staff members were all on a break…yeah that seems…logical. Occam’s razor and all that. Was logic even worth using when it came to matters of the mystic…or matters of love?

Before the flood of thoughts drown me again, we find out seat at the top of the theatre and nestle in next to one another. I feel so safe around them, I wish for this moment to freeze, so I can lie next to this entity, this creature of black shape and abyss eyes. I do, I fall into a cozy position and cuddle close to them. Huddling under them like a baby crow under the wings of a parent. Pathetic. From a traditional sense and to any onlookers I’m sure; the man is supposed to be the one cuddling right? The big spoon, in the traditional sense right...but there isn’t anything traditional about this. The movie starts and I fall harder to slumber, I get woozy and I start to whisper incoherent ramblings of feelings to the creature that is codling me. “Safe…tranquil…I wish to…”

“Yes…what is it you wish for me love?” they ask.

“I wish to build a nest in your hair and live in it forever.” This sparks a laugh from the creature as they wrap their raven shaped arms around my face.

“Be careful what you wish for, mortal.” They whisper.

“Grace me with your name” I make one last request before my requiem, the creature brings their lips close to me, and bites my ear as they whisper.

“Alvaretta.” Their name seeps into my ear like poison. “Now you grace me with one more answer to my question, before your slumber again.”

“Anything…Alvaretta” I say their name with reverence. They smile and bite their lip, wrapping their leg around me.

“If you could sacrifice everything in this world for knowledge, for experience unlike any other in mortal existence, in any parallel universe, from now until the end of humanity, would you do it?”

“No.” I answered drowsily. “I have too many friends, works I must finish and you, I can’t let that go…would you?”

“I already did” they answered, as I fall asleep, back to my white room.

My eyes open fast. Sweat trickles down my neck as I see we are back in the theatre. Alvaretta’s one hand, still caressing my face like an antique skull, while the other hand is holding the black tome book from the Black Library.

“Did I miss the movie?” I ask as I awake from my stupor. Alvaretta doesn’t look at me but finishes their passage in their book before looking down and smiling… maliciously at me. It was dark everywhere else in the theatre expect on our two seats. There was nothing on the movie screen but a repeating image. It felt like a spotlight was on me…on us. Like the universe was ready for us to dance together on stage.

“Are you ready to dance?” Alvaretta asks me. This was it. They were reading my thoughts. I stand away from them.

“Who…what are you?” I ask, taking slow steps away.

Alvaretta cocks their head the side again as if not understanding the question. “Who do you want me to be?” they say as a smile starts to form on their lips. This smile was the worst of all. A horrible smile. A smile of a predator that finally caught a fly in the web. They stood up. So fast and unnaturally it looked as if they were pulled up by a multitude of strings. A dead puppet. Their mouth starts to open and a shriek escapes their vocal box. The sound waves wash over my body like a massage of razor blades. I start to bleed from various pores on my body, I turn and run. Run. Run away from all this.

This is a bad dream. A nightmare. A sleep paralysis experience manifest in real time. I run out of the theatre and I see the mall. It’s no longer chrome silver but black. Blacker then the night sky, blacker then the pits of Tartarus and waters of the Still Sea. There was nowhere to go. The long hallway of the mall stretched out into a black tunnel of horror. A flash hit my face.

The paparazzi are still here…no, I mean yes they were but it was changed. The mass of paparazzi that tailing us before have now formed into one black mass of flesh. With multiple sharp mouths, tentacles which lash out at random objects and cameras floating from the surface of its skin, each time a camera was flushed out, it took a picture and the monster shaked in delight. It was going around covering each of the buildings with its black ooze and violating all that was pure of color and light, my eyes followed this blob of excretion until my eyes landed on Alvaretta. They were standing the middle of of the lobby, where our day started. A few feet in front of me, they stood, standing and looking at me. They took one step closer.

“Why didn’t you kiss me?” Alvaretta said with tears in their eyes.

“I…wanted it to be special.” I gasped.

“So everything I shared with you today wasn’t special enough for you?!” they rose in volume.

“I don’t…understand” I backed away. I felt something pushing me closer to them. Was it the darkness itself, or…

“So me being myself wasn’t good enough for you?!” They were now a few feet from my face. Alvaretta’s face was a mesh of confusion, anger and sadness. I wish I could take it all away from them.

“You can.” They said as they took my hands into theirs.

“Will you give me…” they started

“What…” I asked with bated breathe

“Will you give me….” They repeated as they pushed their body up against me. I felt something moving the darkness behind me.

“I…” closed my eyes

“Will you give me everything?” Alvaretta said as they pushed their lips with mine. This was the dance that I felt before. It was ecstasy, sublime, everything I ever wanted but was too afraid to give voice too, all my desires and impulses, and they can be the one to finally give me what I want. What I want…what do I want. I…can’t open my eyes. I can’t open my eyes! I felt their lips melt into something wet. I then felt it going down my throat. It felt like black ocean water being pouring into me, I tried so hard to rip my eyes open, to pull away from this monster. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t run away, I was forced to be intimate with this creature, giving them everything that was a part of me. It was eating me alive.

I finally ripped my eyes open; it felt like stitches being torn away. Only my right eye became free, while the left still had a few patches of my skin obstructing a part of my vision. My eyes darted around. It was a black void; all around us, nothing around me expect this black space…and the black tome from before. It was on the floor next to us and its pages were being flipped by an invisible hand. Fast and rough the pages were almost torn from its bindings. I looked up then at my partner. At Alvaretta. The real Alvaretta. Its pupils were ink blots, large ink blots, taking up most of their eyes. From the center of those ink blots, streams of midnight liquid was pouring like tears from a heartbreak. The ink was pouring onto me, into me, into my mouth. The liquid poured from their body into my body, pulling me closer and digesting me. I no longer chocked from the water as the liquid started to cover my whole body and seep its way into my eyes. I accepted my fate and pushed myself closer to Alvaretta, gently head butting and nose fencing with them. I understood finally. I am exactly what the universe needs me to be. I am exactly where I want and need to be. My eyes communicated that I was ok with this path, to be a part of them, a part of the eyes of God. The black ink bolts of Alvaretta eyes responded gently in kind, and they smiled as I rolled my head back.

My vision became black as it spun in on itself. I felt my whole world disintegrating and all the knowledge of the universe flowed into me as my simulation and time on this earth was over, I was happy to be a part of them now. To be apart of the black void that lives in their iris, in their mind and in their soul. I live there now. I awoke to a black room with no windows. The air felt light and I had a warm feeling of security in my belly. I awoke inside my home. There I will stay forever. Suffocating until I die. Inside the iris of the eyes of God. Inside your mind.

V.V