0816. Asleep
I WAS BORN IN LOS Angeles. In fact, I have lived in this house all my life.
It was different then. We still called it the villa but most of it was crumbling until they took the money, opened their doors to the grifter and his magic beans.
At one point we only used one or two rooms, the one Ova called the great room and then Ova’s private bedroom, where I slept in a small cot on the floor.
Ova told me: This house is your birthright, it’s why we can never leave, someone might take it away from us and then what will we have?
The world is cruel and it will try to deprive you; you must always fight for what’s yours by blood.
I learned where we lived from all the books in the house’s library; the one she warned me not to go into, not because she didn’t want me to see the books but because the bookcases weren’t anchored and at some point before I was born there had been a terrible earthquake that ripped down the shelves and nothing was ever repaired, because you don’t like outsiders.
Much of the room still holds shards, broken things.
I used to tiptoe around them to find the old atlases, memorizing the capital cities of Czechoslovakia and the USSR.
Everything looks completely different now and I’m not allowed to sleep in my old room beside the courtyard. I miss it. I can still see the greenhouse from here, but it’s not the same. I don’t think you like it either, all these changes.
They revere you still, but they don’t listen. The more they fail, the worse it gets.
It’s true that I don’t remember life without you, but you obviously remember life without me, which can be very disconcerting.
I don’t know what’s a memory that I don’t remember and what’s a memory that I never actually lived.
Sometimes I wonder, is there even a difference?
What is a body, really, under these conditions, in the midst of all these dreams. I’m just the executor of your will, the meat sack you use to transport yourself.
I eat when you remember to eat, I sleep when you need me to sleep, or whenever you need me to be docile.
I am obviously not in charge here. Kind of makes me wonder why you even need a meat sack at all, and if you do, then why is it me?
If this is as prestigious a position as you make it sound, then hey, why not hold auditions?
Any of them would be happy to host you, and then maybe you wouldn’t have so many problems. Just think what you could do with a body that never has blackouts or tries to destroy itself or isn’t allergic to eggs.
He—the one who hates me, who tells people I’m his son and who loathes me like only a father can, so maybe he is in some ways—would gladly, ecstatically take you.
The curse of my existence is everything he craves.
A rotten irony, really. He keeps me this close, closer than either of us wants, because he needs me in order to have you—but then again, my presence is a permanent scar.
Recurring proof that I was chosen over him.
At first, I thought all he wanted was the villa.
I thought the ritual could go on without me, that it could be tied to this place rather than to me.
I told him he should file a new deed with the county and I wouldn’t fight it.
I don’t want any of these things Ova says I’m entitled to.
Needless to say, it didn’t work, because the thing he really wanted wasn’t something I could give up. Not for lack of effort.
Later, I tried poison, which I would never do again. Too slow, and too horrific to live through, which unfortunately I always do.
Anyway, I was told I didn’t understand anything because the house was never mine, by all reputable measures I didn’t exist, and the only reason I had you inside me to begin with was because something had gone wrong, hence the constant perfecting of the ritual.
He said, “The old man lost his touch in his old age, and look where that got us.”
Ova didn’t like that, but she knew better than to say so aloud. Over time the situation went from satiating Ova to pleasing her, though I’m not sure it will last. Theirs is a tepid alliance, reliant on the razor edge that is their mutual set of goals.
I don’t hate this house. I miss the life I used to know inside it, the one before the rot set in.
Ova didn’t like me leaving too often, back then, but she still let it happen.
The seizures were always unpredictable, but things were never this dire before.
Before the fire, before intruders came into our lives, before everything the damage wrought.
I miss the public library, the freedom I used to have to come and go. The internet, back when it was new for me and very exciting, although since I learned to use it, I’ve always seemed to have access to more information than I want or need (see also: the box under the bed).
It does make certain things a lot easier. For example, I’ve watched every single one of the Marvel movies and I’m very excited about the next Doctor Strange. It’s frankly almost enough to live for.
It’s inarguably the very worst in the franchise, you say.
But I disagree! Doctor Strange likes to collect things and so do I. He has an ancient one and I have you. I know I sound about five years old when I say things like this but it helps to have some perspective. In some other story, maybe I get the chance to be someone.
“You are someone,” she says.
Anya is here again. She has the lipstick on, so I know this is a dream.
You’d think that would be comforting, but just because I’m asleep doesn’t mean you are.
In fact, you’re probably with her right now, and she doesn’t know that the only reason you’re keeping me alive is because you need a body, a set of suitably functioning limbs.
“Anya’s an unusual name around here,” I comment, making conversation, and she laughs.
“I’m named after a character from a TV show,” she says.
I don’t know how I know this. Maybe you know it and so now I know it.
Maybe I read it somewhere online. Anya probably has a blog from when she was a teenager or maybe she said it in a comment she thought was forgotten.
But the internet’s memory is long, and so is mine (yours).
Or maybe I don’t know it at all! Maybe I’m making it up. You never know with dreams.
“Jude isn’t my name,” I say. It’s short for Julian, to her, and for “Jude the Betrayer,” to him. But my real name is your name. We are one and the same, as you’ve always told me. I am you transcendent, any thoughts of my own as thinly imagined as a dream.
“I think you’re going to wake up soon,” she says.
“Oh, okay.” I touch her lipsticked cheek. She’s drawing all over her face now, on her forehead and her chin, it’s everywhere. I feel my heart crack with a sad fondness.
“When you wake up,” Anya says, “I think we should go for a drive.”
I picture her careening off a cliff. Hanging upside down like a bat. Flinging herself from the theater balcony. Offering me a shaking hand, tears streaming in pale streaks, the light of the moon casting the rest of her in shadow. Eaten alive, slowly but surely, by overgrown shadows of mold.
“Let’s take my father’s car,” I say.
“Yes, let’s.” She closes her eyes and the hand with the lipstick finally stills. Her skin is starting to blotch, dappling her beauty with consumptive circles of black. Her forehead is cool and slick with sweat when I touch my lips to hers, breathing her toxins in.
I know this is my fault, or it will be, or it already was.