God of the Game (Dreamstate) (15 page)

    The Nepali’s
broken English accent came out in letterings of blue, gold and green, as if he were blowing iridescent alphabet-bubblegums. The words slowly ascended, floating, mutating to blimps or zeppelins above KL city.

    The guy from Myanma
r with the fake football jerseys was now selling shape-shifting t-shirts with dimensional-gate designs encrusted below the badges of soccer clubs. You could walk into Old Trafford through the sponsor’s logo on the dri-fit replica Nikes and watch a match between MU and Liverpool, for instance.

    This one got me:
the Invincibles Arsenal playing Chelsea at home. A Thierry Henry number 14 provides the unsurpassable opportunity for fans to sit in his soul – unrivalled and unparalleled - offering the best seat of the stadium, the ultimate experience to share his ecstasy and frustration in front of goal.

    I touched the emblazoned cannon of the Gunners.

    I was back in the devil’s room.

30

    Pixies fluttered behind my eyelids. They pointed firearms directly into the pupils. Miniature vixens, leather clad and assorted butterfly wings, bored holes past the cornea, ejaculating me into a state of stupendous terror. I tried warding them off, but my hands were numb, tied by magical ropes.

    It was also when I tried screaming that I realized my mouth muffed by some stinky sock. The
pong
…I panicked and started to struggle, but the occulted cords tightened and cut into my wrists. It was painful; and Vesper, now a Gestapo interrogator, playfully smacked my shoulders with his black gloves in a gentlemanly manner.

   “You are pathetic,” mocked Lo
lla Lollipop, coming from behind to place her palms on my restrained arms even as she licked me with her blue tongue, which tastes of maggots and lice. Plump squirmy fly larvae dripped from my cheeks to the floor while parasites crawled up my nostrils and ear.

    Stamp to def
use the itch.

   “Don’t over love him
, Lolla,” came a voice from the rear, “we don’t want him infected.” To make matters worse, Fat Man and Little Boy stood sniggering at the edge of light, eating into the darkness and regurgitating a trivia of shadows.

   “Let’s begin therapy,” the disembodied voice continued, “you didn’t get t
oo far, did you, in Esotoria Lane? How do you expect to get to AXXion at your rate?”

   “The question is,” added Vesper the narc
issistic Nazi in front of a two-way mirror, “why does he want to get there in the first place?”  

   “Yes, tell us,” punched in Lo
lla as she removed a striped stocking from my orifice to allow me to speak, “Why you wanna go to AXXion?” Her tongue was long, rolled out like a party whistle. Violet and wet, funky blueberry jam, more yellow worms transposed onto my face. 

   “Looks like you had a makeover,” I comm
ented on her foot-long salivating sausage, “who’s the cosmetic surgeon?”

    Lol
la’s irises turned a sickening silver; two technicolour lollipops bounced within like old Atari games. She suddenly kissed me. In my mouth, I could feel a thousand eggs lay. I wanted to spit, but she forced me to swallow, the oropharynx-serpent deep down my throat. She was strong. I jumped and pranced like a rattlesnake’s tail.

   “That’s enough
, Lolla,” the voice said again, “please don’t possess him. He’s confused enough as he is; don’t add your kaleidoscopic spirit into him.”

   “Now
, let him speak,” Vesper commanded; looking very much the part in his World War Two fascist regime fashion statement.

   “Why
do you want to go to AXXion?” He slapped me again with his pigskin glove.

    I was already in tears. Didn’t know what was going on. Why did this devil unexpectedly have a change of heart? He was so nice earlier in his study. Moreover, what the hell did that candy-sucking bitch poison and impregnate me with? And who or what in the heaven of heavens was that voice?

    Esotoria Lane;
it was such a harmless mistake. All I did was handled the O2 sponsor’s font, and now I’m tortured like a traitor. All this is so very, very perplexing. Internally and externally, I don’t know where to begin. My mind’s muddled by the beleaguered state of affairs, as well as my own internal drowning, and the complicated programming of Sha-Rronne in ZOOL.A.ND by my unconscious being.

    Sha-Rronne, well it all started with her
, didn’t it? She’s the source. She’s the ‘mother’ that triggered this crazy chain of events. 

   “I want to know,” I said.

   “Know what?”

   “Why I created Sha-Rronne. Something’s lacking
, but I don’t know what. She’s the answer to this lack…I think…subconsciously I made her to fill a certain emptiness, but I don’t know what. I don’t even know that I’m empty, I don’t feel empty. How can I be empty? I ask myself. I have everything. And I figured, perhaps it’s because I’m complete that I am insufficient. I need to remember my Earth life, my struggles and difficulties, the challenges I so often failed. That’s why I visited Club Utopia, to taste that salt and skin.” I was howling by now, my speech crackling, like vinyl, but minus its warm tonal quality.

    I
continued, “I feel that I need to experience suffering, Jahr said so too, that I should embrace all…both sides. That’s why I asked about AXXion, and…and…and Esotoria Lane. I want to know more.

   “But now
, I don’t understand. Why are you all hurting me? It was just some harmless t-shirt, so what if I touched it? …Just let me try again…please, let me try again,” sobbed my shattered dignity.

    And as if by god’s grace, I stood under the arch of Petaling Street once more. Little Boy chatted to a denizen salesman, whilst Fat Man slurped
guilinggao
(turtle jelly) by a golden, potbellied statue of Buddha.

    They both gave me a ‘go ahead’ look, a dare to try again without touching anything till the end of the road. 

    I started; slowly, cautiously, uncertain of my steps, like a toddler’s first few wobbly strides. In my ears, I dug deep into my internal resolve; experience gathered over an expanse of eternity, which was mostly foolhardy, never gaining real knowledge, no learning from past mistakes, always erring again and again. Regardless, I prepared for the sonic assault screeching toward my eardrums from the larynx of foreign workers selling their wares, that I may not be tempted by weaknesses, which are considerably many.

    I need a woman. Plain and simple. Why the psychological analysis and theoretical doldrums? That’s why I created Sha-Rronne – the yearning to share a life. A life that
was snatched from me, by Gee Ni; but way before that, by my favourite lover, my sanguine sweetheart. Why did she leave? All that happened after were merely repercussions of this one cataclysmic event, a domino effect, the same spiral drilling into hell; the face of a different woman, but all possessing the same soul,
hers
, paid or otherwise. 

    It was time to be joined. I never married on Earth, and now my spirit longs to be yoked with another forever in time. Unlike my playboy flirtations, this is not the same. Yes, I’d mentioned my cleaving to other beings, impregnation
s that’d birthed infant universes; but we are not talking about sex, the procreation of offspring; not even of matrimonial vows, the covenant to be a unit, a family to raise the young. I’m referring to fusion. I am lonely. All creation is lonely. I’ve felt this loneliness, this corporeal loneliness, since my somatic spell on Earth. We orbit around the Sun, our lonely planet encompassed by lifelessness, the vacuum of space. Within its atmosphere, we revolve around our own lives, touching others, but only fleeting. We are selfish, inward looking, wanting satisfaction, hoping to be filled by others, by a special other, but the restlessness of our lust cannot be satiated. That which blossomed before now decays, that which was fresh now rots. Life becomes boring and we seek new thrills. We feel guilty about it, and therefore return to the mundane, to the familiar…to contempt. We seek to be faithful, but inside, a boiling unrest resides. The lava flows, the flame is fanned; and I hoped that death would free me from this terrible disdain.         

    No, I am not talking about the paltry, feeble relationship we so crave to be joined at heart. I’m talking consciousness; I’m talking the two becoming one…literally. My thoughts are your thoughts, my mind is yours, our spirits are singular. So that’s why I created Sha-Rronne, she is the splinter of my cell. Since I cannot have love, I will love myself.

31

    I live a borrowed life. All that I have is not mine, the providential graces of others. A scorpion stings the back of my neck. I am crawling on all fours, dressed in leather grey.
The sand is pure and fine, sifting through my fingers, and I am in the confines of a wilderness; as far as my vision can cast, are dunes.        

   “Where am I?” All I remember was I fa
iled…again. This time I got past the irritating peddlers, but halfway down the noisy market I met my greatest test. Pirated DVDs. No, not the latest blockbuster movies, I can get by those...

    Porn! No need for magic or enchanted properties draping over the
natural to distract my focus, the disc jackets of hanging tits, colossal or perky, was enough to sidetrack me.   

    And with that
, I was removed from Esotoria Lane once more. (I will never get to AXXion at any rate.)

    The desert landscape reminded me of a drawing by an artist
whose name I cannot remember. It was apocalyptic. A rusty fire-engine and other corroded vehicles, the skeleton of a once great city now carrying soulless streets. Could this be the wreckage of my heart?

    And as my eyes adjusted to this oxidized scene, and my kn
ees elevated from unfertile ground, I see an image that was wrong in proportion to the tarnished scenery. A transparent, sapphire-blue sarcophagus stood out like a clown amidst dull-faced, black-suited mourners in a funeral. Protruding from the coffin are motley valves of tubes linking to a low cloud of the same azure, hydrating the box’s content; breathing, I presume, for a figure seems to gently flow in it.

    I
crept nearer, my hands out wide; they appeared webbed; and I touched the surface, my palms tenderly resting on plastic. She was asleep, dead perhaps, Sha-Rronne with eyes wide shut, a mannequin, serene as a baby in dreams. The fluids calmed her nerves; she was, as yet, unborn.

    Saline rolled out my
tear ducts. I kissed the glass which separated Sha-Rronne and I. She woke not.

   “Where am I?” I enquired onc
e more; and a gentleman approached.

   “You are in
you
,” he explained, “the interpolation of your soul in Jai-I’s ZOOL.A.ND to create Sha-Rronne.”

    I do not recognize this man. It is a
new production with a different cast. Vesper, Lolla Lollipop, Fat Man, Little Boy and that disembodied voice had been fired. In place was this guy who was in Doc Marts and a no-trousers penguin tux; his pubic department, free for all.       

   “I shall be your guide from here on. My name is Mr. PP, Perverted Penguin
, if you must know; but you can drop the Mister and just call me PP, or Double P. You may have guessed by now that your power animal is the penguin.”

   “Is it?” I retorted, “I always thought it was the rat.”

   “You are mistaken. It is the penguin,” replied PP, who had now come up by my side to admire the beautiful Queen sleeping in her watery grave.

   “Take a walk with me and allow me to explain.”

   “This is the beginning,” he started, “your first subconscious desire towards divinehood, rubbing against the set menus of ZOOL.A.ND, triggering the innate longing of all beings.”

   “Divinehood?”

   “Yes, you heard right. What’s it got to do with your precious Sha-Rronne, you say? Everything, my lad.” This chum, whose skin was as pink as babies’ flesh, spoke. He was five-foot-five, and he tilted from left to right in small steps when he moved. He had a nose as hooked as his cock, and a double chin like testicles bobbing loose in scrotum soup; they moved with his uttering mouth, as if an invisible hand stroked.

   “People, when you first taste infinity only have fun in mind. I don’t blame you; you’re children after all, devoid of such luxuries in life. It’s only natural that you splurge.

   “But as your stay becomes permanent, you want your own; your own little corner in everything, your suburban bungalow in all possibilities, the penthouse going up and up and up forever.

 
“Often it begins in the layer beneath mental activity. Even as you’re playing, having fun, your other-self is slowly laying the foundations for your next rung of evolution. And my friend, Sha-Rronne is yours. This period usually heralds confusion, whereof I’m aware you’d been suffering recently.” He motioned pink painted fingers in piano playing fashion.