ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

As soon as the man awoke, he began to pull on the thick straps that bound him to the bed. Rather methodical and calm so far, but his self-control was weakening fast, that much was obvious.

'Why am I here? What kind of sick joke is this?' he demanded, with eyes filled with fear and anger. I sat down beside him on the bed and put my hand on his. His pulse was racing, not entirely from his agitation. 'What do you want? I have plenty of money, if you release me I can get you a check or anything! Just let me go!'

'Do you realize that your threats and promises are completely unoriginal, just like yourself?' I asked back, watching him for his reaction.

'You are some kind of sicko who gets off by playing power games with people, aren't you! Get away from me!'. He was breathing hard now.

'Do you know what the bitter taste in your mouth is? Aconite, mixed with some other herbs. You are dying, Ralph.' I told him matter-of-factly. His reaction was a rather odd mixture of fear, disbelief and horror. Then he began to scream abuse again and I went to the sink to wet some handkerchiefs. They would be needed later.

After a while he tired of screaming and hoarsely just asked: 'Why?'. I returned to his side and looked at his sweating face. The eyes were wide with terror and the beginnings of pain. His pupils were black pinpricks on a field of brown. He had been bland before, like his conservative clothing, but now he looked downright interesting.

'Ralph, what day in your life has been the most important to you?'

'What do you mean?! You tie me down and try to poison me, just to ask me personal trivia?'

'Its hardly trivial, Ralph. Your life may depend on it. Was it your wedding or when you first met Brenda?'

He looked more shocked by that simple question than when he first realized that what I had told him about the poison was true. 'Brenda... that was the happiest day of my life.'

'But was it the most important day in your life?'

'Oh my God... Please make it stop! Of course it was. I loved her!'

'Did you really, or did you think you loved her?'. A quite banal question, as befitting a banal man giving banal answers.

'Of course I really loved her... I was ready to do anything...'

'But you didn't do it.' Those words stung more than the poison and his whole body spasmed in a kind of cough.

'Please! Let me go! I haven't done anything!' Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

'Exactly. That's the problem. You went to school and had the mind to get almost everywhere but followed peer pressure and your grades were just above the mean. You met Peter and mostly watched him destroy himself, and later you felt so guilty about the whole story that you invented the fact that he was a "lost soul" which no force could ever have saved — you even said that at his funeral!' Ralph was just staring at me, sweating and tense. I continued relentlessly 'Then you met Brenda, which you maybe even loved but you didn't dare to break the conventions enough to take the final step, so you settled for a cosy marriage with the daughter of your future boss. I'm not even going to mention your kids or your career. Lets face it, you are a complete nobody who hasn't ever done anything for yourself. You have never stepped out of line other than in your dreams and possibly when you actually complained about your traffic ticket last summer!'. After my outburst Ralph looked at me, eyes wide with surprise and pain. He saw the truth as clearly as I did, and whimpered. He knew that his death would be as insignificant as his life and for the first time ever saw into the great beyond. Or maybe he had not heard me at all because of the pain and fear. He began to cry and moan louder now.

'But... there must be something...' he exhaled. I wiped his brow with a wet handkerchief.

'A way out, you mean? You are taking it, you know.'

'No... please...'

'And I won't kill you out of mercy. I'm trying to tell you something with this.' Great, now I'm sounding like a bad television villain.

'You're... killing me!'

'Yes. That's the whole point, really. To rid you of a worthless existence and possibly give you a chance for a new one... I hope.' Suddenly I realized I needed faith as much as Ralph did. What if the Good Death and everything we believed in was a hallucination? A straw to cling on, like father Tagliaferri had claimed before he died? What if I was murdering the helpless fellow securely bound to the bed beside me? A wave of doubt poured over me, but then I remembered my own initiation. That could not have been a hallucination. At least not entirely. Even Ralph should be given the chance. I turned back to him, he was screaming louder now as muscle after muscle locked into their final cramps.

I whispered into his ear: 'I'm going to tell you a secret, Ralph. The poison increases your strength a lot. You no longer care if you injure yourself and your spasms are getting stronger all the time. You could probably break those bounds, kill me with a single strike and then get to the razors at the sink. That would end it all. Just blessed darkness, no pain.' Ralph must have understood my suggestion even if he did not understand my words and began to struggle more. I watched dispassionately as he screamed and writhed, making the bed jump on the floor with me on it. Suddenly his right leg broke free from the leather straps, and with a violent twist (which I think broke his left arm) he broke free from the bed, throwing me to the floor. Ralph collapsed into a ululating pile beside me, bleeding from cuts from the splinters still strapped to his extremities and from the teeth he had crushed. He screamed until his lungs were empty (and they would never inhale again, ever), constantly twisting and seemingly filling the entire room with his cold pain. For an eternal minute he just lay there, locked into a brilliant universe of agony slowly decaying into a dark, welcoming heat-death of asphyxiation.

I reached forward and touched his head. His face was locked into a rictus, eyes unblinkingly staring into infinity. I felt his essence, freed and activated by the pain, leave him to seek new possibilities (or did I just imagine that, to comfort myself?). The room was deafeningly silent and stank of urine and fear. I sat down on the remains of the bed and wept.