#idontthinkimphysicallycapableoffunstuff

[casdaffresesquisses]

The Blind Child's Soliloquy

The truck driver stood there, between the parking lot and the tower's main hallway, next to the intercom. His lips were moving silently, his eyes fixated on the button next to "Shoxe Hip".

He placed a finger on it, took a deep breath, pressed the button. A stuttering buzzing noise rang out.

After a few seconds, came the sound of a handset being picked up, and a husky feminine voice. "Yes ?"

"Please don't hang up."

It took him 7.75 seconds until he broke the silence.

"Thank you." He leaned closer to the microphone. "I will not come up to your apartment and I won't take too much of your time. All I want to tell you are the reasons for what happened."

Silence.

"I am breaking that promise I made to myself to get out of your life, but I need you to have the whole truth, I can't let you go like this. It's not fair to anyone, neither you or me."

"_________"

"It's necessary that you hear it. It has to do with some people that I knew for a very short while, and a guy that I don't even know."

His face got a little more tense, he closed his eyes for a second, then began.

"This is the kind of guy who doesn't go out a lot. Doesn't have a lot of friends, family is far away and not too overbearing, his hobbies involve computer stuff and electronic music. An organisation noticed him, and they selected him for a process that's important to their projects, but that's not relevant to our story. They called him the candidate, and they needed to lure him to a precise place in a shitty building to do their stuff, which is when they contacted a few people. I was one of them."

"They told me that they needed "Story Seeds". What they did is that they implanted something in my skull, something that would select random memories, dilute them, and use them to give life to an illusion, a lure for the operation. The memories would be lost, otherwise it doesn't work."

"______"

"They told me it was impossible to know what I was going to forget, a few of them tried to dissuade me from going on and tried to appeal to whatever I'd love to remember. But in, what's it called... My hubris I guess, I just assumed that nothing in my life was really worth a place in my mind's palace."

"_______"

"When the implant began to do its thing to my brain during the lure operation, I felt nothing. I did not notice anything going away, going fuzzy or encrypted. The whole operation went smoothly, I went home. But then came that wednesday night, and you tried to talk to me. And I asked you that fucking question. I can't even say that it came out not the way I wanted to, because I did not even think about how it would sound. I just said it. And as soon as it was out I understood how horrible, completely awkward it was." He gritted his teeth.

"__________________"

"There isn't anything left of whatever we shared. There's like just this, just this artificial blackness that is there instead. As if I closed my eyes and put on white noise at full blast in my ears, complete void. But when I understood that I just ruined something important, this overwhelming, dreadful grief came over me. I cried myself to sleep that night, and in the morning, half a second after I woke up, the sadness disarmed me again, paralysed me."

"And I can't blame the guys, they tried to warn me, that was my decision, my responsibility." He said, defeated.

"Now you have to know, I don't expect any kind of forgiveness... What you need to know is, how I felt during these moments didn't go away. All the details and anecdotes, they're maybe gone forever, but I can feel the emotional prints they left and I am certain that, had they not been pulled away by techno-sorcery, they would have remained until my brain cells melt."

The intercom remained silent.

"I still cringe at what I did and I'm sorry but, I don't see myself ever stopping to. Because that's my truest self, a repressed, ugly little boy who cannot begin to think that he matters to anyone, so he assumes his head's contents are worthless. I see past that now, and everyday I pray that this will serve as a lesson for my future self."

No sound came out of the intercom.

"I know that the world you live in is packed with exciting stuff ; of course jerks like me can be stumbled upon, but wonderful bright things will also be there for you. I have no fear for you, what you lost here is meaningless."

Something that seemed like air being expelled through the nose.

"I... Every time my mind comes back to our thing, the feeling of shame is so small compared to the shadow of what we had. I can't describe it, but it is as if I knocked at a door to another reality, you opened, we spoke, and I slammed the door shut. I can't be sure about what lies beyond, but I remember the door, I know it exists and I got through it. And I can sense that it shined a light that thawed my eyes."

"So again, thank you for bringing this to me."

He stood in front of the intercom twenty seconds more. For a moment he believed he could hear a breathing, but he could not be sure, and he did not want to be.

While the sun set, he headed back to his car ; and as he unlocked its door, he looked up at the left window of the third floor.

"I will remember what I can."