Kdaj mi bo odbila zadnja ura?
69
A huge clock appears out of nowhere and plays with time.
It’s been no more than three weeks since Julija’s departure, and I’m already feeling pain in my chest, angel. She made me give this nonsensical encounter a form. I’ve been working day and night to turn this travesty of a conversation into Lake Redoubt’s supplement, making it almost unrecognizable from said disaster in the process. And now when it’s more or less finished, I feel nothing but pressure of emptiness growing in my head and heart, as I know the story is not going anywhere: it will merely be.
I walk from that point of the square which a hypothetical drawbridge would have to touch to the nearest two ends, and finally to you, with my head and hair down, and say, “Oh void angel, please take Julija’s blade and cut off my head.”
The void angel retorts that Julija’s blade is not for surrender; according to him it was forged for continuity and persistence; that I desired permanence: “This is the shape of your war against time and oblivion.”
I slowly lift the sword with both hands and press it against my neck.
The angel says that I do not understand the blade, asserting it was created to carve out a home for a soul that no system or religion could take under its wing, and to fight the world’s attempts to define me: “If you turn this sword against yourself, you will show to the world that your sorrow was nothing but illness.”
Me: “Something … is still … preventing me from using it against myself! Angel …”
The angel observes that this is so because I am protected by my defensive structures: “Idleness does not equal failure.”
I lower the sword with my tired arms, and let it slip slowly: first from the left, then my right hand. Its fall makes a tender sound. I stand still with my head down, and because hair is covering my face, I resemble Julija’s ghostly form: “I want to do what Julija does when faced with horror: the groaning, crying, and screaming. But I can’t! There’s no relief, no exit for me. But eventually, something will force me to … I don’t understand! Oh angel, I’m scared. Scared – because I don’t want to die!
The angel says that I should scream out of defiance.
“Ah-h-h, stop-p-p teasing me-e-e!” I say with an annoyed voice, and start running from one arbitrary point to another while laughing softly, “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The angel observes this sudden emotional effusion with curiosity and follows me silently.
Void angel’s rodent minions gather around Julija’s blade.
Me: “Don’t touch that!” I quickly return to the place where it was dropped, pick it up, and put it in my right hand, after having dispersed the startled demons by merely rushing towards them. “C-control your servants, void angel!! … You are not my friend. I can’t believe I wanted to hug you …”
The angel lowers his head, forcing his minions to hide in ground holes and grass.
70
I am well aware that one day, the world will force me to die. But this place, including you, void angel, will live on in the voice of the word net that has been woven and entrusted with its representation.