INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1

by Casper Greysun

  INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1

  Title Page

  Part 1

  PART 1:

  CHAPTER 2:

  CHAPTER 3:

  CHAPTER 4:

  CHAPTER 5:

  CHAPTER 6:

  CHAPTER 7:

  CHAPTER 8:

  CHAPTER 9:

  CHAPTER 10:

  CHAPTER 11:

  CHAPTER 12:

  CHAPTER 13:

  INITIUM NOVUM:

  Part 1

  [Disclaimer: This is not the full novel.

  This portion is only the first of three parts.

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  INTIUM NOVUM. Copyright © by YEAH DIGGITY PUBLISHING.

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  (The heaviest burden)…

  What, if some day or night, a demon were to come to you in your loneliest loneliness and say:

  "This life as you now live it and have lived it, lonely and miserable, you will have to live it again and innumerable times afterward; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything, small or great, in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, even this moment, and even I. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down, again and again, and you with it, a speck of dust!"

  Would you throw yourself down and grind your jaw and curse the demon who revealed this truth? Or will you live, finally learning to become, to yourself and to your life, the master of earthly indulgences, to regret nothing and to live every moment as if it were one you would live again, and, with due serenity, accept this ultimate eternal loop, living life as an immortal would, forever and evermore?

  ~from Nietzsche's The Gay Science,

  Casper Greysun transl.

  PART 1:

  Initium What?

  CHAPTER 1:

  With his vision fading in and out of focus, he finds himself waking up at the bathroom mirror. It doesn’t make the least bit of sense that he’s not in his bed. He has never slept walked before, so that can almost certainly be ruled out. Weirder still is the strange unfamiliarity with consciousness that he’s experiencing. It’s as if he has, just now, awoken for the first time ever. The memories of his past are with the young man but they’re blurry and obscure, as if he’s been drinking his whole life. He knows that he is, yet he cannot recall much else.

  There’s no hang-over causing his minor amnesia, if it can even be called that. There’s no headache, upset stomach, or scent of alcohol to suggest that he had been drinking. Yet, his body is tired and it feels as if he’s gotten no sleep.

  He ponders the possibility that he might have been drugged? But, no. Who would want to drug him, and towards what purpose? “No, that just doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbles as he shakes his head.

  Maybe he drugged himself, he begins to ponder as he stares at the empty bottle of Vicodin on the shelf, near the toothpaste. The top of the pill bottle sits in the sink, forsaken and left behind. He wonders if it’s there because of him. Maybe he’s overdosing at the very moment and doesn’t even know it.

  No… Again, towards what purpose would he drug himself for? And to his knowledge, Vicodin doesn’t affect the memory. Still, just to be sure, he checks his heart rate with his index and middle fingers on his neck, then the inside of his wrist, and examines his pupils for dilation in the mirror.

  “Fuck me,” he says, rubbing his forehead as if it might joust his memory.

  Everything about his life seems normal and in place. It’s just him. He feels out of place. He knows all of this, but “fuck him” if it doesn’t feel brand new.

  He proceeds to do what he does in the bathroom, the normal routine, nothing special, nothing fancy. Heading back to his bedroom, he wonders where it might be at. His feet, however, never stop moving, never stop taking him to his room, even though he does not recall its exact location. It feels almost routine. He passes one bedroom, but does not enter it because it’s not his bedroom; somehow he knows this without even knowing that he knows it.

  When he reaches his own bed, he lays down but is drawn back to his feet by a sudden urgency to rise. It’s as if he has to do something, somewhere to be, but his mind draws blanks.

  It’s probably nothing he concludes, but the sinking feeling in his chest, so deep that three spatial dimensions couldn’t explain it, tells him he must move. It gives him the jitters. He stands there not knowing what to do, as still as the words on a finished page.

  Then something happens.

  A sound comes from nowhere.

  Calendar.

  The sound of an unknown voice reverberates around him. Feeling the vibration of the air surrounding him, he obeys the voice. His obedience is not a result of him following the command intentionally, but a result of the sound frightening him and placing him in an alarmed and nervous state. He quickly scans his room, but sees nothing which might have made the noise. After a minute or two, he finally calms himself down and decides to disregard the voice he swears he had heard.

  “That’s weird,” he says out loud, then stares off into space. As he dazes out, he notices something on the wall.

  Suddenly becoming aware of a facet of his life, he walks over to small calendar. It’s posted there in an odd and out of place way on an otherwise bare wall. Today’s date is encircled. Inside the square, the word “interview” is written.

  “Oh shit, I have an interview for a job soon.”

  The realization dawns on him in an unusual fashion, as if it just became so, as if it were an interview out of thin air.

  With that, he readies himself. Much to his convenience, there’s a neatly pressed suit in his closet. Unfortunately, the suit is completely unnecessary, but he wouldn’t know that, he couldn’t know that; unless there was something that knew it for him.

  No suit.

  He pauses as he’s dressing himself. For the second time in a matter of minutes, there’s a voice in the air which he swears he hears. Seconds of silence go by. The sound he thought he heard doesn’t recur. He shakes it off, puts the suit on, and begins to leave.

  On his way out the door, he spots an eviction notice. There’s another note taped to that informing him that he has a week to produce two thousand and one hundred dollars, three months of back-rent and exactly half, his half specifically, of what is actually due. The actual amount is a little over four grand. The second note, written on a post-it and signed by a “T” was left there not by the landlord but by the roommate as a blunt and intentional reminder. This “T” didn’t want his roommate to forget.

  “Here’s hoping I get the job,” he says, crossing his fingers as if the gesture will help him achieve his desire. He leaves, embarking on the half mile walk to the nearest train.

  The sky is cloudy and the concrete is wet with patterns of drizzles. There is a crispness to the air which suggests that heavy rain is impending.

  A man holding a delicious smelling sandwich walks closely by him; so close that the scent of the toasted croissant and bacon wafts through the air and tickles h
is nostrils. The time on his wrist watch reads 9:05 am. His interview is scheduled for 10:00 am. Surely, a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts couldn’t hurt his time, he rationalizes. And he is right, because it is not the time which the coffee and sandwich eventually hurt.

  A medium vanilla coffee and a breakfast sandwich later and he is on his way. Too preoccupied with the tantalizing aroma of the breakfast he plans to consume in a few moments, he does not notice anything peculiar, not even the man in a red and black Leatherman jacket sitting near the window staring out at nothing in particular now. No, instead he continues about his way, oblivious to the man with the grim look on his face and the stone-cold glare in his eyes; eyes which had been staring at him without his knowledge just a moment ago.

  Hearing the sound of an arriving train – possibly his train – he swipes his fare-card at the turnstile and hustles all the way to the platform, carefully maneuvering his coffee and sandwich through the waves of oncoming passengers. Suddenly, there’s a hiccup in his otherwise graceful dodging of people. There’s a large, round man rushing directly toward him, oblivious to the path ahead of him. There’s a weird, almost sideway gait to his rapid footsteps and a constipated look to his face. At their proximity, even if the big guy were to move to avoid the collision, there wouldn’t be enough space in the area for an accident not to occur either way.

  He sees what’s coming, he know what happens next. Once his elbow collides with the fat fellow’s torso, the cup of coffee in his right hand has one of two destinies: it splashes him or it splashes the person behind him; that is, should he be fast enough to move out of the airborne liquid’s path.

  The young man looks over his right shoulders. There is a feeble looking older lady with a walker coming up strong behind him.

  “Oh shit,” he says to himself, in the brief faction of a second that it takes for him to see the impending situation. On his far left, the ding-dong signifying the closing of the train’s doors rings. The very train he needs to be on will be leaving in a matter of mere moments.

  Before he can make a decision, it happens. The fat man comes barreling towards him and bumps into his arm. Unintentional reflexes in his forearm cause his hand to tense up, squeezing the cup of coffee so that the lid pops right off. His elbow is now bent beyond ninety degrees. The coffee is swishing, gathering in a small wave, ready to be sloshed out of the top. Luckily, he had poured a few ounces out just prior to descending the subway’s steps. This freed space inside the cup buys a few milliseconds of time, but not enough time to change the course of the near future.

  Time slows almost to a standstill. It’s as if some divine and merciful entity has granted him the opportunity to control the outcome of this situation. If the coffee splashes on his shirt, he will most definitely not get hired by the prospective employer he was on his way to see. Something in his gut tells him that he really needs this job; it might be his last employment opportunity in a long while. The second choice would be to move out of the way and let the hot liquid spray across the old lady’s face. This would be horrible, as he can feel the heat stemming from his hot drink. His guilt consumes him as he ponders the scenario. The very idea of scorching the poor, old lady’s skin turns his stomach and breaks his heart. Finally, prompted by necessity, he makes an unexpected action, an option he did not know was available. It all happens very suddenly; as spontaneous as a nerve twitch. The tensioning of a bicep and the swift flick of his wrist snaps his hand open. His fingers abandon the cup, letting it go completely. The cup falls, turning in the air and landing on the man’s belly like a Styrofoam missile. The hot liquid soaks the fat man’s shirt causing it to instantly cling to his large gut.

  “Ahh, that’s frickin’ hot,” he bellows.

  Without a second thought, the young man takes off towards the train, the faintest echo of its closing ding-dong still in the air. The fat man chases behind him, albeit not as fast. The young man barely makes it, sliding into the car just as the doors are closing shut. Catching the fat man’s eyes, he mouths “my bad,” hoping that his apology will make up for the hot coffee he had just dropped on him.

  As the train is taking off, he suddenly realizes that his breakfast sandwich is no longer in his possession. The train begins to depart and pick up speed. But just before the station is no longer visible, he sees the old lady with the walker. The one he had saved at the fat man’s expense. Tunnel vision strikes him as his sight zooms into towards the ground near the lady’s foot. He watches as her shoe introduces itself to the sandwich with a squishy, warm embrace.

  “Oh shit,” he says to himself, somewhat aware of what’s going to happen.

  The lady with the walker slips on the sandwich. Her foot slides, she loses balance, her other foot comes down and steps on the sandwich next. The walker comes off the ground, she spins, and finally lands hard on her back after being airborne; both feet having left the ground for a split second before gravity beckoned. Never having let go of the walker, the metal walking device lands on her top of her chest vertically, then topples over, crashing on her head. Needless to say, the old lady will be there, on the floor, for quite some time. The station disappears from view as the train enters the darkness of the subway tunnel.

  The young man leans against the door, takes a deep breath and releases it with a long sigh. Replaying the entire event in his mind, an unexpected emotion rises in him. He takes another deep breath, trying his best to fight a most cruel and horrible urge that is growing inside him.

  Go ahead, laugh.

  He hears the sound from earlier again. This time it’s a faint whisper. Looking around, he sees that there are no passengers close enough to him to have produced it.

  He shakes his head.

  No, he won’t laugh he tells himself. It’s not funny. An old lady might have been seriously hurt. There’s a good chance that she broke something when she hit the ground. At that age, such an injury can be fatal. No, it is no laughing matter; no laughing matter at all.

  He shakes his head.

  Still…

  The unexpected image of the old lady in the air flashes into his thoughts, reminding him of cartoons and the injuries they sustain.

  A snicker escapes. Then a chortle, followed by a fake cough into his fist, intended as a cover up. A few people look toward the noise. He tries to fight it but soon he’s laughing, plainly and enthusiastically. The other commuters look at him disdainfully, shooting him dirty looks every couple of seconds. Most of them know what he’s laughing about. They were there too, after all.

  A young female dressed in a very stylish business attire and expensive looking heels, maybe in her late twenties, mostly likely in her early thirties, takes notice. Having been seated near a window, she, like many other passengers, witnessed the scene. A small grin begins at her lips. She holds the smirk in and looks away, but the only other things to look at are other passengers and the darkness of the tunnel outside of the window. Her eyes land on him again. This time a half smile appears. Then a full one. The young man, now straightening up and catching his composure is oblivious to the young, beautiful woman who, at that very moment, is taking a liking to him.

  He looks around for an empty seat. The one near the smiling female is semi-available.

  Go to her.

  He walks over and motions at her purse, which is sitting on the seat. Just a stop before he had entered the train, the lady had refused to move her bag for a hipster-looking gentleman, but this time, she has no objection to moving it. A head nod and courtesy-grin later, the two are sitting shoulder to shoulder. He looks down and slightly to the right, his eyes land on her crossed legs.

  Touch her.

  At this point, the voice begins to worry the young man to the point where he briefly questions his own mental state.

  Imagine that: touching a stranger for no reason; a pretty, young stranger at that. “And touch her how?” He asks himself. The idea is ludicrous. He looks at the lady, their eyes meet. She smiles coolly. He smiles nervously. Without actually deci
ding to, his left hand slowly glides over his lap and lands, gently, but also very awkwardly, on her knee. As he awaits a reaction, his mouth hangs slightly open and his eyebrows are semi-arched in what seems to be confusion. The expression on his face is, in a word, dumb. He cannot believe he’s followed directions from a voice that only he seems to hear. Anyone with any sense knows that listening to voices in one’s head is a sure sign of mental illness. The young man knows this too. Still…

  Taken aback is too strong of a term for the lady’s reaction to the stranger’s touch. She looks at it with one brow curved, almost in an arch, but a bit more nonchalant. The grin which had been on her face evolves into a full smile. A scoff escapes from her mouth.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” She asks.

  He retracts his hand quickly, shrugs, and offers her a smile rooted in sheer embarrassment, the kind where the lower lip tenses across the jawline.

  The only excuse he can think of is, “I don’t know,” and he says it with a nervous chuckle. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m thinking about.”

  “I think you know exactly what you’re thinking about. Don’t get shy now. What’s your name?” She asks him.

  This surprises him. He tries to answer her, but his attempt results in him drawing a blank, again. He does not know his own name so he stares dumbly at her as she waits for his answer.

  “Okay… Are you high?”

  “No… I don’t think so,” he answers.

  “That probably means, yes.” There’s a giggle and an eye roll as she says this. “In a suit too? I hope you’re not on your way to work.”

  “I’m not high,” he responds.

  “So, you don’t want to tell me your name then?”