86. God of the Game

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 muffled, 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, and 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.”

AI generated art prompted by author

All characters and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.