God of the Game (Dreamstate) (51 page)

Jimmy likes it w
henever he comes back, convalescing from combat; tells me stories of the campaign reclining on fluffy cushions eating Roman Ruby grapes. But often too soon he’s got to return to the battlefield. The troops await their leader. And when he leaves, I drink a glass of wine; reminiscing.

This is way superior to
being a sex object; though I sometimes miss being a toy - less responsibility, getting thrown about. Now, I’m the boss. I lead. I am dominant in the bedroom. I am a control freak, a desperate and paranoid housewife. Does Jimmy know I fool around? I sleep with dicks, big and small, rich and poor, gorgeous and grotesque. I’m a nymph, I confess; but back then, I didn’t have a choice. Papa forced it down my throat. 

Nowadays, I have the authority to refuse. But I don’t. Rarely. I fuck any juvenile or senile I se
e. Animals too, cute or beastly, they are not spared. Why, should I feel guilty? Jimmy fucks his armaments. And who knows what he does beyond the door of my presence. What you sow is what you reap, lover boy. 

I consulted a psychiatrist once, and he theorized my behaviour was the revenge of a repressed childhood. Stripped, humiliated and made powerless by daddy and his cohor
ts, I now reverse the roles and buff in pride. I didn’t like what I heard, so I had the shrink executed. But not before I gave him the time of his life. The pleasure I bestowed was so divine he eagerly died and regretted marrying his wife.

Most men do, if they
are honest - regret marrying their wife. That’s why Jimmy and I never tied the knot. I never walked the aisle, and there was no nuptial contract, no matrimonial vows. I am just Jimmy’s mistress. His top whore. Do I prefer this arrangement? I mean, I guess it’s easy, slipping in and out of love to our convenience. But do I want more? Does Jimmy want more? He oozes this plasticized cool whenever conversations breach the topic of a formal family; says, and I agree with every word that proceeds from his mouth, that we’re not mortals. Only humans are bound by the law of marriage. Even the Bible states,
angels do not marry, nor are they given in marriage
. And we are of much higher office than angels.

But one last thing he requires of me to be
totally free. Jimmy says, after an eternity, I still carry a whole load of luggage. I am perturbed. He is about to do something serious. Jimmy’s always got this look before a showdown: a subtle narrowing of the eyes, tightening of the cheeks and the pouting of lips. His forehead wrinkles o’ so lightly. Jimmy snaps his fingers, and two trolls bring in a filthy, chain-bound individual having his head stuffed in a sack.

Jimmy begins. Says he is disappointed. After an infinite amou
nt of time, he’d expected more; expected me to be free from my past. But obviously, I’m still stuck in a rut. It’s time to play his hand. He says I’m no different than Hitler. Everlasting life is up for grabs, is before our very eyes, but we return to shit, we return to vomit.

I dissent. It’s offensive to link me to that pathetic man. For one, he was a person of influence reduced to the inner ghost of
paraphilias. I, on the other hand, was an abused maidservant who ascended to the position of power.

Jimmy slams a table. Shouts that it makes no difference. Why am I Babylon, mother of harlots and queen of heaven? I was about to fire up my nuclear reactor to launch a tirade of defensive missiles when Jimmy shut
s my silo down.        

No more am I clothed in regal colours and royal h
ues. I’m just plain old Sharon again, sixteen years of age; punk attitude meets Japanese schoolgirl anime.  

Remember who is king.

I do. I exist because of Jimmy. He overruns my eternity, controls my afterlife. But he said he’d always loved me. In order to take his side, and together, be like a spectral Bonnie and Clyde, robbing and murdering everyone’s dream, I have to first be the sacrifice.
They that keep their life shall lose it, while they that lose their life for my sake (whose? Jimmy’s?) shall find and keep it
. It’s the same governing principle in all stratums of truth. I have to make a choice. Up till now, he’d proclaimed for me liberty, the independence to do as I wish. `Cos he knows me, he knows me well. Knows I’ll go up kicking and screaming if I don’t have my bloody way. So he lets me, hoping I’ll make the correct call. But I don’t. If it were anyone else, Jimmy states, he would have implemented marshal law a long, long time ago. Take complete control. Instead, he hands over half his kingdom, the peaceful half that I may show off and fuck around.

Jimmy doesn’t accuse me of infidelity. Can’t blame me for actions he’s guilty
of himself. That’s beside the point. In fact, Jimmy loves it that I’m promiscuous. Makes me so much more appetizing. What’s wrong is the core. I’m putting on pomp as a cover. The psychiatrist was right; Babylon, mother of harlots, the queen the whole world fucks and no one respects is the same young girl daddy raped. I’d not changed, I’d just inflated my deathly misgivings an ominous amount. Look here, it doesn’t matter if I’m having my vagina dug out or I’m cutting off cocks, or I am in ownership of the most exquisite piece of pussy in the entire universe, I’m still giving daddy a blowjob after blowing off his face! And I’m crying and gorging down cheesecakes.

86

Jimmy

   “This is wrong, this is wrong,” the man in the mask screams. But his tone is muffled, and he smells decay. The dirty, brown and coarse bag his face is in had been intimate with the death of many men...and ladies too, he presumes. Present throughout history, in the French revolution, Japanese occupations, Al-Qaeda terrorism, in the hanging of famous persons, this un-glorified veil had masqueraded the truth, and hidden lies. It’d kept two worlds separated, two realities isolated, two branches of knowledge cut off from each other. In the open light is the accusing mob, society seeking payback; but behind the gloomy curtain, in the stinky blackness caked with old blood, is the criminal, or the victim even, taking his version of events to the grave. So much so, because of this shroud, textbooks only detail one side of the coin, the victor’s tale.

    For the man crucified, this is his account:

   “This is wrong, this is wrong,” I screamed. But my tone is muffl
ed, and I smell decay. A dirty, brown and coarse bag swallows the trepidation of my face, the fear on my phizog. Outside, I hear voices. Two people, male and female. It’s the sound from Adam’s apple that is prominent, and I think the lady, young most probably, is sobbing mainly.

    The man is saying something about what she must do. It’s concerning her freedom; the guy gestures and orders, and I feel huge
and rough hands round my neck. They’re not a human’s grip. “Take it off,” was a crystal command. “Leave us.”

    Sunlight bites my eyes. I cringe in pain and disorientation. My sight is a blur, but I can make fuzzy figures out, and the opulence of a throne room. If I am to die today, at least it is in style. That was my dismal hope.

   “Daddy?”

    The girl calling out her father.

    The scenario is not yet registering; till my pupils adjust to a proper volume. 

    Then I see her. Then I see him! A Manga schoolgirl and James Dean. “You...!” I screamed in shock. “Sharon...” I spoke again, with a pinch of composure this time, her name hanging off the tip of my tongue as if dangerously stranded at the edge of a cliff. 

   “Daddy...” the skinny one with big boobs announced once more. I was calculating the timbre of her tone. Was it surprise? Dread? Joy? Anger? Or a thrill? All of them, I suppose; wrapped in a voice of an angel. I was excited to see her; my groin, exceedingly agitated.

    But Jimmy, that James Dean lookalike, has got a metal piece in his grasp. His hand is raised, level to Sharon’s eye, and she’s cloaked in an unreadable stare. Jimmy doesn’t say anything, silent as a stone, his fierce, focussed expression doing all the talking. After about thirty seconds, she takes the revolver off his load. It’s
a Smith & Wesson Remington Magnum; Dirty Harry’s piece.     

 
  None of this is in the script! By right I should be in the director’s seat; not staring down the barrel of a .44. Sharon and I were never meant to meet. My job was to motivate and inspire Sanguine Lover to play the role of a used and confused adolescent female. To play it so well that Sharon’s life would seamlessly fuse into reality; to play it so well that the actress would win an Oscar, and a Best Director statuette for me.

    Cameras are rolling
. An oddity, `cause I’m more familiar behind one. Clearly, I’m not in charge anymore. Whoever is, he or she is doing a great job.

   “Daddy.” Sharon says again, now absolutely calm and collected.

   “I’m not your father,” I replied...hesitantly.

    Then who is? Wasn’t it me all this while tricking her emotions for my sexual satiation? Wasn’t it me rigging church services so that the leadership could commit to a gangbang at my house every Wednesday night in guise of a prayer meet? Wasn’t it me sitting on a toilet
bowl without a head, but with rigor mortis between the legs, displayed as modern artwork? I’d memorized the whole story. So, if I deny being daddy, who is?

   
Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. Sanguine Lover as Sha-Rronne and Sharon.
Jimmy as Daddy!

    Shit, it never occurred to me. Jimmy and Sharon’s father were never in the same scenes. The movie opened with daddy’s death. Jimmy leaning by the frame of the bathroom door, an
d Sanguine Lover sucking a dildo strapped onto a decapitated dummy. The flashback scenes, it was Jimmy in makeup, made to appear older, forty-four-years-old (at the date of demise) to be precise. No wonder Sharon could not tell the difference. Regardless Jimmy or Daddy, it was the same man keeping her in a loop, in a mental prison walled by her shattered emotions, in fetters wrought of guilt.

    The actor had hijacked the movie. But when?

   “Then who are you?” Sharon enquired, the loaded firearm rigidly pointed at my direction.

   “He’s the jerk that started all this,” flew Jimmy’s reply across the luxurious
but hollow hall. An echo ricochets from the golden throne right into Sharon’s brain. She seems perplexed, but what’s new, Sharon had been confounded from the very start of this tale; and Jimmy’s only adding to it.

    I
, on the other hand, I’m trying to make sense of this mix up. Since when did it get all entangled like this? “So yer saying I’m
you
...” Right? If I am Daddy, and Daddy is actually Jimmy, then Jimmy is me! But I have no recollection of this switch. In my mind, I’m poring over the original screenplay for clues. To add salt to the wound,
Sharon and I are one
. Sha-Rronne and I; but I doubt Sharon, with that powerful weapon in her palm, feels my sentiment. So what does this make us? One screwed up family made up of me, myself and I??? And what about Sanguine Lover? Part of her is alive in me as well.

   “Shoot him,” Jimmy commands, “
Crucify your old man. That’s the only way you can be free. You did it once; you can do it again. And this time for real. Not in some stupid movie.”

    There
are sweat beads on the sixteen-year-old. Somehow, her hand starts to tremble.

    I try not to panic. I said, “Wait. Let me explain...” But I stop short there.
`Cause I can’t, I can’t explain what the hell’s going on. A computer is skimming dialog in me, actors’ lines. Sharon starts to blink; real hard. Perhaps it’s dawning on her that I’m
not
her daddy.

    Jimmy’s cold; but his coolness is beginning to wear thin on patience. “Shoot him and we can be free from this dream,” he screams. Sharon
frizzles. An alert goes off in my CPU, something Jimmy said just before he stuck the livewire in Sharon’s oyster that removed them both from the land of the living. Jimmy said, “
In my past life, my name was Frank
.”

87

    Frank. Frankie I call him at times. Frank was my best friend on Earth. He was a bad man on death row. But that’s another story, and that’s all you need to know for now.

    The analogy; Jahr’s analogy. I got it wrong again. Jimmy
as
Daddy. Not Jimmy
is
Daddy. So nothing’s in error. The fucking English language: substitute a linking verb for a preposition and yer in an alternate universe!

    Thus, let me elucidate
once again. Jimmy is
not
Daddy. Jimmy, or should I say Frank, is the actor playing Daddy (and Jimmy, too) in Sharon’s story. A technical discrepancy I overlooked.

    I comprehend now. Jimmy wants to be real. He engineers an elaborate plot to free himself from my script. Jimmy’s an evil and ungrateful Pinocchio – that wooden puppet wanting to be a genuine boy. And the only way to fulfil his diabolical ambition is to kill the director. Me. It’s not enough to overshadow the worlds of th
e dead, the dimension of dreams; he wants now to rule real life. Rule perhaps, the future of the Illuminati, Elizabeth Amber’s D’Arcy, ZOOL.A.ND, the tapestries of JC, Syurga, Leper and the Gunk’s MMORPG...the list scrolls unrelenting to an omniversal abyss.