The truth of existential crisis (Version 1)

or: The archer's crisis


„Why are you reading this?“ asked Jim and pointed at Graham’s book by Dostoyevsky. “Have you committed moral suicide or what?”

Graham stared at him for a second, but ignored the question and carried on reading. Jim and Neil started talking about Shannon’s leaving do which was the night before. Graham was a non-drinker and therefore it was no surprise that he was a complete outsider at parties or any kind of social gatherings. The only advantage the guys had from Graham’s presence at parties was him driving them home safely afterwards.

“Anyway” Jim said “I did try my luck on her last night, since she broke up with Furry Fred last week…”

Neil chuckled. It was a common thing to laugh at Fred’s nickname. Nonetheless he was one of the best Cricket players on the whole campus in Bristol. Girls like Shannon obviously liked confident ‘athletes’. Graham licked his middle finger to turn the page.

“The odd thing about her is that despite of being drunk, she’s still sober” Jim said.

Neil raised an eyebrow “What do you mean?”

“Well, as soon as I approached her, she seemed to know what I was up to and immediately threw me off the chair. Do you know any girl like that after five shots of tequila? And hell knows how much she’d already drunk before we came!”

“Well, obviously she’s not over Mr Fur.”

“Well after all she finished the relationship! And I just wanted a memorable goodbye-shag! Well, her loss, I guess!”

Graham closed the book and slammed it loudly down on the table. The noise made the waitress spill the coffee whilst serving a customer.

“Gee…” Neil muttered, recovering from the shock.

“Rubbish, isn’t?” Jim grinned at Graham “Whereabouts are you?”

“He’s about to pull the axe” Graham answered.

“That’s the best part!”

“I’m saving the best part for later.”


On his way home, Graham stopped at the off-license to pick up some coffee, mints and paracetamol. In the queue was a couple arguing about whether crinkle fries or curly fries tasted better, on his right was a little girl crying and sobbing uncontrollably because her mother wouldn’t buy her any Hello Kitty chocolate biscuits. Crowded places hold nothing but nasty human scents, he thought, such as the sharp smelling breath of the person behind him and the awful rustling noises coming from crisp bags and shopping bags.

“Hi.” That voice sounded like an arrow through his heart.

On his left he saw Shannon, smiling. “You are Graham, right? You were at my party yesterday.” She was holding a bottle of skimmed milk, a pack of cereal and a pregnancy test, which she attempted to hide.

“Hello.”

She looked hung over; her dark curly hair was worn out and unwashed, the blue of her eyes pale and enwrapped in exhaustion.

“You didn’t have fun last night, did you?” she asked.

“Of course I did. What makes you think I didn’t?”

The queue was moving forward. Graham noticed that the person behind him looked disapproving of Shannon’s presence, as if she was about to jump the queue.

“Come on” she said “you were staring at my Francis Bacon posters for hours!”

“I like disfigured faces.”

She narrowed her eyes in slight disgust, whereas he began to smile. “You’re weird” she said.

“Oh and you’re not? They are your posters after all…” he stated.

When Graham was next at the till, Shannon immediately handed him her shopping. “I’ll pay you back in a minute.” As she disappeared behind the magazine stand, he could smell the sharp breath of the person behind him even stronger than before. He felt nauseated. The man at the cashier scrutinized him before scanning the pregnancy test. Graham stared back at him.

“What are you staring at, young man?” the man asked.

“Your thumb!”

As Graham turned around to leave, he heard the closing of the till and a shriek.

Graham was dragging Shannon out of the shop with such force that she had to push him away to release herself.

“What the hell got into you?”

He noticed that the blue in her iris had come back to life again all thanks to him grabbing her arm and overflowing her with confusion and a little bit of his frenzy¬.

“Nothing, just some precog…, oh nevermind!”

The sirens on the main road felt like a butcher knife slicing his brains in two. He started walking away from Shannon, who was terribly insulted and chased after him:

“It’s precognition! Do you think I’m stupid?”

He stopped and turned back around. She was one of the few girls who wouldn’t confuse precognition with déjà vu, he thought. The sound of the sirens was now far away.

“Do you want to come around my house?” he asked.

“I…I don’t know. I need breakfast…”

“I have bowls and spoons…”

“I actually have something important to do…”

“I have a toilet as well.”

She looked slightly irritated but finally gave in.


He was watching her walk around in his apartment, which looked extraordinarily neat and smelt as fresh as a midsummer morning. Her previous insecurity about entering his apartment had suddenly vanished, as she was overwhelmed by how tidy guys could be. Down the corridor were two bedroom doors on each side, one open, the other one closed.

“Is that your room?” she pointed at the one with the door open.

“Find out”, he said whilst preparing her breakfast. The fresh midsummer smell had combined with the smell of Shannon’s sweetly-scented water lily deodorant.

“Oh my God! I can’t believe you live with Jim.” She sounded almost aghast like a little girl who had just realized she wasn’t looking at a ladybird but a firebug. She must have surely seen his party pictures on his pin wall or smelt his terrible Jean Paul perfume. “You could have warned me that you live with this dirty guy!”

Suddenly he heard her opening the door to his room and spilled the milk. “Hey!” The moment he stormed into his room, he saw her standing there stiffly; staring at his myriad H. R. Giger posters showing biomechanoids, aliens, necronoms and Debbie Harry which are all fascinating masterpieces painted with dark acrylic colours resembling the shades of metal. But what Shannon saw were probably ominous eel-like creatures with either a man’s glans or a woman’s buttocks as heads and numerous naked female reptilian humanoids intertwined and penetrating each other. His room still smelt of the black coffee he had in the morning.

“Speaking of dirty…iew” she said.

It sounded like “eel” to him. He was still standing behind her stiff back, and then he watched her carefully tilt her head as though examining the Anima Mia poster in greater depth. The rigidity in her posture loosened up. She put both of her hands on her hips and they slowly moved towards her bum. Graham immediately licked up the tasteless milk from his hand before it dripped onto the carpet.

“You lost weight since last semester” he muttered after guessing that she was comparing her bum with the eel’s head. She turned around with a questioning face somewhat indicating perplexity and curiosity simultaneously. She quickly looked on her left (where the bed was), as if she had missed something and then she looked on her right. Her curls seemed revitalized; they were dangling like tinsel on a Christmas tree. She had had a shower after all.

“Are you religious?” She pointed at the cross above his bed.

“I guess. Why?”

She looked on her right again, scrutinizing his favourite piece of art by Giger Satan I. That poster illustrated Satan using Jesus as a bow. Jesus’ pose was exactly like on the cross, except that on the picture there was no cross, but a string attached to both of his hands, which ultimately formed a bow. Satan’s hand was tightly clasped around Jesus’ lower body. He and his demons were staring right at the viewer. The most unnerving facet of that picture arose from the arrow which was also aimed at the viewer. Every time Graham looked at it, he saw Satan in his comfortable stance, drawing the arrow back to the anchor point and…

“How do you sleep at night?”

“What?”

“How the hell do you sleep at night?” she repeated “Every time you sit up in bed, you have the devil playing Wilhelm Tell with you!”

He could feel a grin developing at the corner of his mouth and hoped it was an innocent one. “Your breakfast is in the kitchen.”

“You’re weird.”

“I’m not having breakfast at 1pm!”


Awkward silence was hanging in the air while both were sitting on the sofa, staring at the empty screen of the television. There was an ashtray on the table with a No Smoking symbol in the middle of it.

“So uhm, who do you think might have impregnated you?”

She almost choked on the milk and he was certain that milk was coming out of her nose. After a round of coughing and wiping her lower face, she threw a fierce glance at him.

“That was beyond impertinence!”

“As far as I’m concerned, I paid for the pregnancy test…”

She shook her head numerous times and carried on eating her cereal. He looked at his watch and couldn’t overlook the fact that it was time for lunch and not breakfast. His leg started shaking.

“Since you’re so straightforward and direct, let me ask you something.”

“Anything.” His voice sounded nervously high all of a sudden, but she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m not convinced that you believe in God.”

His leg stood still again. She continued “You use Him as the apple on your head…”

He lowered his head and felt how everything around him was turning black. His head had started to ache and he was tired. “I didn’t put it up there. My mother did” he finally said.

“So…you don’t believe in God?” she carefully put the empty bowl on the table.

“I do” he muttered and swallowed a paracetamol. “It’s just – everything was so much easier when I didn’t…”

As she approached him, she said “But nobody’s telling you what to believe in?”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because of what I did.”


He carefully leaned his ear against the bathroom door whilst she was inside, urinating. She had told him that if the test was going to turn out to be positive, she would not drop out and leave Bristol but instead would make Fred marry her after finishing the last semester.

They were both sitting on the sofa again, close to each other like a nervous couple, staring at the strip, which was in Jim’s glass – the one he used for mouth wash each morning.

“I can’t believe it took us two and a half years to become friends, Graham.”

He remained quiet.

She continued “Sometimes things end sadly when no one makes a move. Or it’s simply fate.”

“You made the first move today.”

“Yeah…that was because I had no money on me” she smiled “Other than that I thought you were a weirdo.”

He smiled a genuine smile for the first time in her presence. A minute had passed and there were still no coloured bands visible. Suddenly he felt numb and nauseated again.

“I told you, I never used to be like that” he said “It’s my new perception on life. And yet, I feel no guilt towards what I did; it’s only my mother who says I should. After all it’s her God who is either too weak or spiteful to eradicate evil. And yet, I pray to him to go away.”

“There seems to be a lot of paradox going on in your life. Your own introspection is making you paranoid. I don’t approve of what you did, but…”

Finally one color band appeared on the control region, but there was no apparent band on the test region. She had completely lost thread and looked somewhat confused, as if not knowing whether to be happy or disappointed or as if double-checking that there was really no band appearing on the test region. None.


When Graham’s archery lesson began, he felt alone like never before. Even though he had numerous people around him carrying bows just like him, he couldn’t remember what fellowship felt like or what the significance of it was. Their instructor always spoke with a kind of manner, where people failed to listen carefully:

“Safety and responsibility always come first! Watch your companions and make sure you don’t endanger anyone! And don’t ever shoot bent or broken arrows – self-explanatory…”

Graham noticed some people getting impatient. “As if we were kids with no common sense!”

“Now” the instructor said “an archer, who intends to hit the bull’s eye, must not directly aim at it, but slightly to the side…”

Graham shuddered. There was no wind.

“…Ok, get ready then. First put on your finger and arm protection, then check your bow, the strings and your arrow!”

The blinding sun was decreasing Graham’s attention span. At least there are clouds approaching.

“So. Now get into your comfortable stance and don’t forget you draw the arrow back to the same anchor point on your rosy cheeks!”

Every student had drawn his arrow and was aiming at his target intensively. Graham felt that his target was not 20 yards away, but a lot further. After closing his eyes for two seconds, he opened them again and recognized a man about 25 yards ahead of him with the target painted on the lower part of his body. There was an arrogant smile forming at the corner of the man’s mouth. Graham couldn’t see it, but he knew it. His hands started to shake and sweat was running down his head.
He bent his right knee a little, drew the arrow back tightly and shot it up into the sky. The arrow disappeared in the clouds.

“Oh my God!” the instructor shouted “What are you doing?”

Everyone was staring at the sky, as if their feet were glued onto the ground; all looking frightened and uncertain about whether to run or not. Suddenly Graham felt his cheekbone lifting up to a smile which then evolved into laughter.

“We’ll evacuate this place right now!” the instructor shouted after which everyone started running away from the field. He grabbed Graham tightly by the arm and dragged him off the lawn.

“I won’t tolerate this! You are in such a mess. What were you thinking?”

“About Twilight Zone” Graham answered, still laughing.

As soon as they reached the sports hall, the instructor grabbed Graham by the collar and hissed “Stop fooling around, buddy! I think you’re in for trouble, aren’t you? If anybody gets hurt, you’ll be responsible!”

“Sir, do you think I’d have done that if I had known somebody would get hurt?”

“You’re out of the team!” He finally let go off Graham, who was still grinning with a fierce radiance in his eyes. “And listen to yourself when you speak. You’re absurd!” The instructor turned around and was about to walk into his office.

“Watch your foot…” Graham murmured.

“What’re you mumbling?” As he turned his head back to Graham whilst still walking, he failed to notice the janitor coming along from his right with the cleaning trolley. A heavy groan followed, but Graham was already out through the door. The ghastly grin had faded into indifference which ultimately cast a dark shadow upon his entire face.
He headed back to the empty field even though a voice had just spoken through the loud speakers telling people to steer clear of the field or anywhere near it due to the danger of an arrow. The sun was behind the clouds now and the wind had returned. Further down the field was a small millpond where someone had committed suicide before and therefore it was a spot which everyone avoided. He remembered that it used to be a place where many used to sit and have their lunch at. The arrow had landed nearby the water, head first. As he tried to pull it out of the ground, he got startled by a hissing grass snake which first, before he even noticed, had looked like a piece of deer dropping.

He fell on his behind. “Joe fucking Strummer!” He watched the snake crawl back smoothly into its hole. For a second he had to think of Shannon and biomechanoids. Then the snake crawled back out and disappeared quietly in the water.

***

The area did not change much even though he was certain that at that particular spot was no tree. It was impossible that a tree had grown that high after only two and half years. And who would even care planting a tree there?

“Hey, you’re late” someone said behind his back.

He turned around and saw his old friend Bernard. They’d been friends since the early years of High School. Bernard was wearing a t-shirt with a target on it where the bull’s eye was not red, but black. They were walking through the colourful park; though the colour of the sky was not clear, as it was changing from pink to magenta, but none of them was interested in the peculiarity of the sky.

“It’s been a while, huh? I didn’t expect that you were still talking to me” Bernard said.

“Why wouldn’t I? Well, I’ve been busy.”

“So what’s new?”

Bernard’s enthusiasm and sleaziness revealed something slightly unsettling, especially in association with his entire appearance in that rather uncanny atmosphere. But yet, it all seemed so ordinary at the same time.

“Nothing.”

“Any girls?”

“Found the one, but I can’t have.”

“Your life seems miserable…” Bernard said, sounding disappointed. He looked like he was trying to come up with a resolution. There was a beautiful female ballet dancer in the park practicing the Swan Lake. Suddenly the disappointment on his face faded like ice on fire and then changed into a familiar sinister look.

“You want this madness to stop, don’t you? You just want to be who you were.” Bernard’s facial expression had become stern and threatening as he was saying that.
They were now walking past a tree feller, who was killing a tree in the old fashioned way – with an axe. Each hit on the tree equaled the sound of a thunder. The sky had now turned burgundy.

“It’s not easy to believe that there is anything good…”

“Not even the good will?” Bernard interrupted.

“That’s mere illusion. We are still spiteful.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Bernard grinned and it turned out he was only joking. The burgundy sky was darkening and the trees which they were now approaching were losing more and more leaves.

“What is free will if He knew from the beginning how I was going to decide anyway?”

“That’s all I needed to hear, my friend” said Bernard and there was blood gushing out of the bull’s eye of his t-shirt, but he felt no pain and indicated no kind of alarm. All Bernard did then was smile and held his friend in his arms with the blood still flowing:

“Now that we’ve come to an agreement, let me tell you something: I want you. I promise you can be you again.”

***

As Graham woke up, it was in the middle of the night. The bright moonlight was stalking his room like an obsessive madman. He sat up on his bed and looked straight ahead. The hand was gradually drawing back the arrow. “Do it”, he whispered with a smile evolving on both sides of his mouth.


--
by Paula Cheung, 2010