Persistence of Reality (Ch1)

Chapter One. Drowning out reality

The wall clock ticked the seconds away with its owner lying on the bare cement floor in her lingerie. She appeared to be asleep, on the floor in front of the small television, except she was not. Minutes passed before her muscles registered visible movement. Her eyelids fluttered open with effort and her eyes tried to focus on the movie being shown. The screen seemed to form a face that her brain could barely register. The sound was also garbled and came to her as incoherent jumble of syllables.

Her head moved sideway as she looked at her limp hand on the floor. Her lips formed a smile. It was funny to her that despite not being able to make out the picture on the screen, she could distinctly see the misty waft of smoke that came from her cigarette. She followed the ascending mist as it absorbed the colors emitted by her television.

She willed her hand to her mouth and dragged on a cigarette stick of a brand ironically called Hope. She let her hand fall to the floor again, this time her cigarette fell from between her fingers. It added to the many burn marks on her floor. She ignored it and eyed the empty bottle of Jose Cuervo and the small shot glass containing the last of her precious potion. She didn’t even bother to buy lime or even a chaser today. She moved her arm closer to the glass but after moving an inch, decided it was too much effort.

Sighing, she let her body lie flat on her back and stared on the water-stained ceiling. “Reality is over-rated,” she told the stain that at that moment looked to her like a rabbit. She silently lectured to herself that reality was nothing more than layers upon layers (upon layers) of illusions made to trick. “It doesn’t matter,” she spoke to the rabbit stain again, “whether it is to trick others or oneself. It is nothing more than a trick.”

‘Why’, she felt the rabbit ask her.

“Why, you ask Barbar?” She had just decided that Barbar was a good name for her rabbit on the ceiling. It was now gaily hopping every now and then. “The answer is simple. It is because one can.”

“Won’t the truth be known?” Barbar asked again in a small distinct voice.

From the time Barbar asked her and the time she uttered her response, the fallen stick of cigarette burned to its filter and died on its own.

“Truth, and this is the truth, is nothing more than an idea that does not truthfully exist.”

With twitching whiskers, Barbar gave her a puzzled look.

“What is true always depends on the one who is jamming his or her version of it down your throat.”

She decided it was time to finish the bottle. “Another person’s truth doesn’t go down as well as good tequila.” She felt the drink wash down her esophagus followed by the alcohol-induced warmth. “Everybody lies, Barbar. Heck, maybe even I am only lying to myself. No, no, that’s not it. I’m not lying, I’m just drunk.”

Through heavy eyelids, she silently watched Barbar. The animated rabbit stain wiggled his tail and twitched his nose and hopped over one plywood to the next, crossing the brownish line.