… and there’s still some more…
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Who I am (the modest version (October 2020)
I am fantastic, amazing, wonderful, effervescently great, impossibly creative, fundamentally gorgeous, unshakably caring, I am here to make the world a better place just by me being a part of it, I am enormously energetic, gigantically generous, infinitely strong, stunningly gorgeous, unbelievably awesome, positively productive, undoubtedly game-changing human being, fearsome leader, phantom change agent, iridescently curious, constantly rejuvenating, miraculously resourceful, interminably helpful, source of a striking genius, lovable at first, second and third sight, invariably enthusiastic, sharply Apollonian, ecstatically Dionysian, transcendentally Hermetic, one for the ages, forever relevant, diachronically significant, dogged fighter, loyal friend, shimmering beacon of truth, bliss and evolution.
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Alex Blue and the magic red bike (September/October 2020)
Το C.B. and A.G.
Alex Blue was a girl who lived in a house on a hill.
This hill was so steep that each time Alex Blue stepped out of her house she would roll down, all the way to the foot of the hill.
Afterwards, Alex Blue would have to strain and struggle and try with all her might to climb back up to her house.
Alex Blue was fed up with this situation.
She had bruises all over her body, she hurt everywhere and she felt very frustrated.
She was moreover jealous of all her friends, who lived in the valley surrounding the hill where her house was.
They could run around, play and have fun in all the ways that she could not because of the stupid, steep hill slope.
Alex Blue thought that she had no option but to pray to All Saints and ask for their help.
So she did, and the effort and emotion she put in her prayer were so strong and intense, that as soon as she had prayed she slept for three days and three nights straight.
What Alex Blue was not aware of was that the very day she had prayed to All Saints happened to be their holiday (Holly Day), so almost all of them were out of office, unable to hear her desperate plea for help.
Yet, Fate arranged it so that on that day St. Christopher was the only saint on shift.
St. Christopher was understandably bombarded and under water, having to singlehandedly deal with all kinds of prayers, requests, complaints and curses by so many people.
Yet, amidst all this barely manageable workload, he couldn’t fail noticing Alex Blue’s prayer.
So true and urgent it felt to him, that he made it his utmost, absolute priority to take care and properly respond to her.
And being the Protector Saint of travellers, and the means travellers use to move with, he decided to bestow upon Alex Blue a special gift, falling under his holiness’s scope and domain of responsibility.
So when Alex Blue woke up after her long sleep and carefully opened the door of her house, she found a red bike right on her doorstep.
It was, in fact, a bright red, magic bike, as it was apparently floating in the air, only a couple of inches above the ground.
Excited and overwhelmed by joy, Alex Blue mounted the floating red bike and started frenetically pedalling.
She could go up, she could go down, she could go round and round,
She could ride here, she could ride there, she could ride everywhere,
She was so happy, she felt so grateful,
This was so clearly fateful,
She was now free, she was relieved, oh, if all of that proved not to be short-lived…
As Alex Blue was proudly and cheerfully flying over the hill and the valley, her friends gazed at her from below, in awe and disbelief.
And it didn’t take long for one of them to become truly jealous of her.
He picked up a stone and threw it at the flying Alex Blue and her magic red bike.
He urged the other children to follow his example, by shouting out loud: “Who does she think she is? Flying above us like she is so better than us…! I say, down with her, down with Alex Blue”!
His poisonous words had a drastic impact on the other children, who were also quick in picking up stones and throwing them towards their levitating friend.
Alex Blue was in shock and dismay, as she saw scores of stones headed towards her direction.
Her first impulse was to land on the valley below and explain to her friends that, no, she didn’t mean at all to brag about the fact that she now had a flying bike, nor did she intend to make a point that she was better than them.
She only felt so exhilarated that she wanted to celebrate with them – her friends – the fact that her long-lasting torment, because of her house on that steep and unfriendly hill, was now over.
However, upon assessing the situation more objectively, she realised that the other children seemed so mad at her that even if she had all the good intentions in the world in approaching them and opening up, this would do no good to her.
They would probably still hurt her badly and destroy her magic bike.
Upon these reflections, and with true pain in her heart and burning tears in her eyes, Alex Blue ascended into the bright blue, cloudless sky above her.
Soon, she was out of the range of her stone-throwing, once-upon-a-time, friends.
In fact she could now barely see them; they looked to her more like little, angry, black, minuscule insects, meaninglessly and harmlessly moving and jumping around.
Alex Blue decided to forget all about them and focus her attention on the sky above her.
Up and up she was going, feeling as free and curious as ever.
Alex Blue and her red magic bike in a sky blue background: this was all that was left in this world.
Alex Blue closed her eyes and smiled.
And never again did she look back…
…………………………………………………………
The Ascent (June 2020)
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Greta (April 2019)
Her whole life it seemed to her that she was standing on an invisible pedestal.
She never spoke too much. She actually felt she always said much less than she ought to.
But, then again, she was asking herself already from a quite tender age, would there be anybody to listen, truly listen and understand her, truly understand and empathize with her, if she were to voice all these things that were important to her?
No, she replied – always to herself – there would not be anyone. So, she had remained in essence silent for her entire life.
And like any human being who consistently and persistently forces themselves into a situation they are not happy at all about, like any person serving a self-imposed sentence, she came to hate herself for loving her prison cell.
However, regardless of that, there was no choice for her but to go on living her life. Besides, there are so many things in life that don’t involve speaking; at least the kind of honest, boundless, straight from the mysterious true core of someone’s existence speaking, that she felt she had been forever deprived of.
So, she grew up and flourished, even in her own, predominantly silent, way, and in spite of the fact that there were barely a handful of moments when she approached a feeling that could be considered akin to self-appreciation.
And now, there she was, in her early twenties, beautiful and bright, gifted and sensitive, lighting up with her peculiar, unique, strangely mesmerising and naturally pure and impossibly inescapable energy any place she found herself at. Only problem was: she could not feel it, she could not feel how unique and incredible she was. Or, better: she could somehow feel it, in the sense that she was, of course, able to somewhat register her own deep and lasting energy footprint, but she felt she could not translate it into words and therefore into something practical and useable for her.
At least, that’s what she thought.
At least, that’s what she was (not) telling herself.
And, thus, she felt miserable most of the time, with her misery constantly being confirmed and reinforced by what was happening outside of her. Because Greta – that was her name – never looked directly at the world around her. Greta – like, one could say, any other human being, by default and by construction – looked at the world through a mirror she had placed, or that was placed, in front of her and, also, a bit sideways; so that she could look at things going on, without having to look at herself. This mirror was placed there as a means of self-protection, in the sense that it distorted reality as much as Greta – or any other human being for that matter – would need to in order for her not to lose her mind. But as the case is for any such tool or for any tool in general, the existence and the use of this mirror required a price to be paid. A price that in Greta’s case, due to her uniqueness and the natural gravitas of her presence and energy, was heftier than what it usually is for most of her fellow human beings. Because while the distorted perception of things that the mirror offered to her was preventing her from foraying deeply into the existentially dark and dangerous territory of despair, it simultaneously held her back from seeing beyond any doubt who she truly was and what she was truly capable of.
From Greta’s point of view, that’s what her, so called, life looked like. And most of the times, if not at all times, it seemed to her things would never change. She was condemned, she was telling herself, to slowly and painfully fade away, having accomplished nothing at all, unblessed so that she would never experience a single moment of meaning, joy, transcendence.
But, as in every self-respectful story, things were bound to fundamentally and irreversibly change. And the catalyst for this change Greta had almost succeeded in convincing herself not to crave for anymore, came in the form of a little, but significant, secret, that she was told by a funny and mysterious figure in one of the rare lucid dreams she ever remembered having, one warm summer night at around that time of her life.
In her dream it was night and she found herself walking with big strides in a dark and otherworldly forest, illuminated only by a strange, full, azure-coloured, moon, pinned on the dark sky above her and surrounded by an effervescently misty halo. In the dream, Greta was feeling in her gut that she had to move as quickly as possible, traversing this ominous place, to arrive on time for the occurrence of some opaque event of supposedly great importance to her. At the same time, she was so afraid of what she would find waiting for her at this mysterious event… After a lot of, extremely agonizing, dark forest wandering, Greta eventually found herself in a big clearing, where she could enjoy an unobstructed view of the big and strangely luminous azure moon shining down on her. Immediately she felt relieved, her stress and craving turning into proverbial soap bubbles that were quickly dissolved into the rarefied air, as if they were never there to begin with. Greta elected to sit down on a flat and relatively comfortable stone and admire the bizarre moon for a while. Moments passed before she realised that the side of the moon she was staring at had her exact facial characteristics. Once she reached that realisation, the Greta’s face-shaped azure moon smiled at her. Greta was in shock and awe; and before she had any time to apply herself to the situation, she heard her own voice from up there telling her in the softest and most assertive tone she had ever spoken: “Listen to what the Little Man has to tell you and follow his advice”.
Then, in an instant, the Greta-faced azure moon was replaced by the regular full moon we see once a month at night, provided there are no clouds, in our earthly sky. Moreover, Greta heard quick footsteps approaching her, so she instinctively jumped up, and with adrenaline pumping through her body and her blood boiling in her veins, she turned around and faced a man standing in front of her. In fact, she was looking down on him, as he was barely half her size. The man was dressed with awkward, old-fashioned, comically flashy and uncanny clothes, of which the most notable was a bright scarlet bonnet, and had almost his entire face covered in a thick, bushy, beard. He fixedly and intensely glanced at her for a moment that seemed to be lasting for a while, to make her realize that she should stay right where she was, and not turn her back and run away from him as she might be tempted to do, for she had to listen what he was about to say. Once the man felt sure Greta would not attempt at escaping their awkward interaction, he proceeded with telling her the following: “Beauty and greatness is in the eye of the beholder, but the eye must be able to see things for what they are, and not for how they are reflected in your mind’s mirror of distortion. So, remove the mirror – you don’t have to break it – and look at the world and at yourself, once again, or rather for the first time in your life, at face value. You will undoubtedly be horrified by what you will first see, but, once you pass this test, this rite of passage, you will be liberated – for good – and you shall be as ready as never before to fulfil your unprecedented and unrepeatable destiny, oh Greta the Great… And, speak up, damn it! OK, now wake up”.
Thus the Little Man spoke; and once he was done, he abruptly snapped his little left hand’s fingers, bringing Greta back to the world of the, so called, awaken.
Greta spent almost the entire day after having that outlandish dream on her bed and on her sofa, reflecting deeply into what she had experienced and allowing herself to soak in the dream’s fleeting, yet vibrant, energy as much as possible. The night after, she slept for 12 hours or so, enjoying the most carefree and unperturbed sequence of rest she could recall having in many years. Then, the following day, Greta woke up and, after having a very lean breakfast, headed straight for the storage room of her apartment and dug out her painting equipment: her canvass, her palette of colours, her brushstroke. She placed her canvass in her living room and started painting, for hours on end, herself and the world as she could see them, in an unobstructed fashion, for the very first time. And what Greta painted was terrifying and glorious in a way that was beyond the most eloquent poet’s or the most talented word craftsman’s descriptive capabilities. While painting, at times she was laughing out loud, like a maniac; at other times she was sobbing uncontrollably. The whole experience was feeling extremely liberating to her. She was shattering into pieces the vow of her existential silence, she was breaking free for good and she knew it; oh, boy, did she know it!
Late in the afternoon of that day, when she was about to complete her work, I was walking on the street right outside her apartment. Since the latter is situated on the ground floor of the building she lives and since her living room’s curtains were open, my attention was unavoidably drawn by the amazing and deeply touching work of Art I was seeing. I am obviously at loss of words for describing it, but I will try my best and say this: it depicted her face, as dazzling, as literally awesome and as scary as one could imagine a human face. Her mouth was open and seemingly everything that matters in the world emerged out of it, old beyond description, but at the same time fresh, pure and innocent as a new-born child…
So there I stood, paralyzed by the feverish and all-encompassing energy of her masterpiece, until the time when Greta, who, without having a mirror anymore by her side, knew who and where I was, as of the very first moment of my arrival, turned to me, smiled and said: “What are you looking at, Little Man”?
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The Secret (October 2018)
The secret to striving for impossibility and to attaining perfection is to never reach what you were aiming for
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Happy hour (March 2018)
“If you need me.
If you need me.
I’ll be there by your side.
I’ll be there by your side.”
Typically speaking, his eyes were registering his environment.
But, in reality, the only thing he was looking at was the wound inside of him, which was growing bigger and bigger.
Meanwhile, it was the umpteenth time he was listening to this song – for the last week, pursuant to what had happened, his headphones had turned into a single-purpose vehicle of that particular melody and those distinct lyrics.
The other side of Mt. Heartbreak.
This other side seemed not only light years away from the position of his psyche at that very moment, but, furthermore, it felt as if it belonged to a totally different dimension, irreversibly unattainable and unreachable.
However, what was imminently reachable was the, low-key yet clearly visible, entrance to a bar.
“Happy Hour” was its name, as indicated, somewhat ironically, in the old, dingy and unavoidably miserable sign right in front of him.
He didn’t it give it much thought: moving in an uninterruptedly seamless fashion, he climbed three steps, opened the heavy, blue and red, wooden door and entered the bar.
Inside, some of the heads of the clients – most of them projecting this unmistakeable air of co-owning the place because of being regulars for years on end – turned around and looked at him, rather indifferently, as he was heading straight for the counter and sat in one of the tall, empty, bar stools found there.
He removed the headphones, placed them around his neck and momentarily hid his face in his hands.
He realised he must have looked as if he were really desperate when he revealed his face to the world once again, only to see the perplexed faces of the two female bartenders trying not to stare too much at him and, obviously, failing to do so.
However, he didn’t have time to feel self-pity or shame, as he immediately became absorbed in the spectacle of the two girls.
They looked so different and, yet, they seemed so complementary…!
One was petite, dark-skinned, with a fluid, nervous way of moving – her focal point apparently were her two big black eyes, which maintained some distance from each other and were brimming with an expression that conveyed to him a sense of urgency; not one with stressful connotations, but rather a “let’s live life now, before it’s too late” one.
The other one was tall, blonde and athletic, projecting an air of, under the radar but solid as a rock, determination and competence; she seemed open and accessible, but at the same time discreet and possessing a sense of Spartan efficiency.
Eventually, the dark petite girl approached him to ask him, quite predictably: “can I get you anything to drink?”.
«Something strong and neat”, he replied.
“Whiskey? Brandy? Cognac?”.
“Cognac, please”.
She looked at him in a deeply examining fashion for a moment; and once the moment was over she told him: “I think I might know exactly what you’re looking for”…
A few moments later a golden-coloured liquid was inside a glass in front of him.
The petite waitress’s body had assumed a position which was not hiding her pride for what she had just prepared: she had her fist-shaped hands on both sides of her waist and, with her head slightly raised, she was looking at him, as if she were expecting to be congratulated by him, sooner rather than later.
But what he did was to glance at her only fleetingly, with a look betraying the blurriness of his mind and soul, before picking up the glass, barely raising it off the counter, mumbling a faint-hearted “thank you; cheers” and barely wetting his lips with the golden-coloured liquid.
“So, do you like it?”, the petite bartender impatiently asked him.
“It’s good. I just need some time to enjoy it by myself”, he, politely but firmly, told her, in a decisive attempt to thwart what he thought was her attempt at establishing a proper, full-bodied, conversation with him.
With a polite smile on her face, she commented: “Sure, I’ll leave you to it. If you need anything else…”.
“… Yes, I’ll be sure to let you or your friend know”, he was quick to reply, pointing with his head towards the tall and blonde bartender.
“Great. Please feel free to address us by our names: I am Happy and my friend and colleague here is Hour. Together, we are Happy Hour, the mind and soul of this bar, which is named after us and which we are named after. Enjoy your drink and, perhaps, talk to you a bit later!”, Happy informed him, and then slightly bowed and walked away, where Hour was; the two of them immediately engaged in a discussion, which – as clearly indicated by their body language – was about him.
He told himself that he didn’t care and brought the glass to his lips again, this time actually swallowing some of the liquid that was contained in it.
It immediately brought a very warm sensation in the interior of his body, which made him feel good.
The moment, however, that he started to feel a bit better, the image of her smiling face popped up in his mind’s memory screen.
Back into the sea of misery and hopelessness he immersed.
How could he keep on living without her?
He could not, it was impossible.
That meant he needed to establish a whole new life.
And a whole new life required that he forgot about her.
And the best way to forget about her, he reckoned, at that moment was to get impossibly drunk.
This last thought triggered his grabbing the glass, raising it in the air above his head and then emptying its contents into his mouth.
No sooner had he done that than he started coughing manically, unavoidably drawing the attention of both Happy and Hour.
Hour was the one who approached him, asking him amidst his coughing crescendo: “are you alright?”.
While he continued coughing, he moved his head in a bizarre way, which failed to convey a satisfactorily meaningful answer to Hour’s question – supposing that this was his aim in the first place.
Hour decided to take an initiative and with very swift and efficient moves she filled a glass of water and handed it over to him.
He took the glass, drank a small sip and, as soon as he calmed down a bit, he nodded to Hour as if telling her: “thank you”.
She gave him a friendly, professional smile as if to say: “you’re welcome”.
He looked then at both of them – a long, careful look – and he told them: “You two make a very nice couple”.
In hearing this, both of them smiled widely; Happy even bowed slightly and formed a silent “thank you” with her lips.
He drank a bit more from his glass – and then, in an “a ha” kind of moment, he remembered: it was not the first time he visited this bar; he had visited it also some months ago with her…!
But back then there was neither Happy nor Hour serving customers; in fact the place had an altogether different setup and name: “The All-nighter”.
It was in the very beginning of their relationship, perhaps on their first or second date.
Oh, how happy did he feel back then, how complete; and how much was he in love with her!
And how foolishly blind was he to believe that life would go on, forever and ever, just like that, with the two of them residing, eternally and irrevocably, up there, on their own private cloud, surrendered to the ultimate bliss a human being could ever experience and exploring the world and its marvels; together, not as a mere sum of their two individual presences, but as a new, magnificent, entity, comprising both of them.
It was unbelievable, back then, in the “All-nighter”: everything was attuned to them, to him and to her: the bartender was serving them the “Drink of Eternal Lovers” – with a secret recipe of his own that he did not want to reveal to them – and the DJ was playing a compilation of the best love songs ever to be written and performed by the modern troubadour of the hopelessly romantic love, Bryan Adams.
“Up on cloud number nine”…
But, now, the “All-nighter” had become the “Happy Hour” and the male bartender had been substituted by two female ones, whose individual names – or nicknames? – very funnily reflected the bar’s new name.
At that moment, as he made that very trivial remark, he felt a sudden and unexplained wave of euphoria throughout his body.
More instinctively rather than deliberately, he turned towards Happy and gestured at her to come over to him.
As soon as she arrived with a smile, he told her in a calm, yet clearly urgent, tone: “I need you and your colleague to get me drunk; as effectively and as quickly as possible”.
Happy looked at him puzzled for a moment; then, smiling dubiously, she invited Hour to join them and, while still scanning her mysterious guest with interest and a bit of amazement, told her: “Hour, the gentleman here wants us to get him drunk, as quickly and as effectively as possible; what do you say: are we up for this task?”.
It was now Hour’s turn to look at him with a wide, confident – if a bit reserved – smile and playfully comment: “If we aren’t up for this, then I wonder who might be, Happy”…!
… To begin with, they prepared for him three cocktails: one was green, one was blue and one was yellow; the two girls specifically stressed to him that he needed to drink them as swiftly as possible – it goes without saying that he wasn’t allowed to accompany his drinking them with any kind of edible substance.
Then the spirits followed: whiskeys, brandies, cognacs; you name it.
Finally, the shots of tequila came; innumerable, one after another, without any slice of lemon of pinch of salt to compensate for Mexico’s national drink’s traditional and inescapable hammering effect on the body and the head.
Of course, sooner rather than later he was as drunk as fuck.
He realised it beyond any doubt when, in an ill-advised attempt to pay a customary visit to the men’s room, he found himself lying on the floor and laughing so hard he thought he would suffocate.
Happy and Hour ran next to him and, not without a considerable amount of effort, helped him to stand back on his feet – they were also courteous enough to escort him to the entrance to the gents’ area; Hour even stayed outside to wait for him.
It took a while, but eventually he reappeared, with a slight hunch, a less slight limb and a quite idiotic smile on his face.
In noticing a gently smiling Hour, his idiotic smile got wider and he told her: “That’s the best you can do? Come on, I told you: get me drunk”!
“I think it’s best if you take it easy for a minute, there, and do a break. Perhaps, then, you can resume your drinking spree a bit later on, if you still feel like it. I’d advise you to give my suggestion some serious thought. I’m also sure Happy would be of a similar view; right Happy?”, said Hour while helping him to drag his feet back to his stool, on the bar counter.
“Right on!”, an enthusiastic Happy proclaimed.
He didn’t say anything after that; he just placed his elbows on the counter and exchanged glances alternatively, in a comically mechanical fashion, with both Happy and Hour.
“You’re sure you’re OK?”, Happy eventually asked him.
With a look of desperation on his face, he shyly lowered his head and shrugged his shoulders without saying a word.
Happy examined his face with concern and proposed: “do you want us to call a cab for you to take you home… perhaps?.
In hearing this, he slowly raised his head and he looked at Happy with a terrified expression on his face.
“I guess that’s a ‘no’ then…”, Happy said.
It was like he didn’t hear her answer; he continued staring at her with this terrified look; until he eventually opened up his mouth, very slowly and gradually, and told her: “Play a song for me”.
There was something very tense in this moment; to the external observer it would seem like everything that had happened that night was a foreplay, a preparation, a building-up device for this particular moment.
Sensing, more instinctively than logically, the importance and the gravitas of this instance, Hour approached Happy and stood next to her looking at him with a worried anticipation.
“What song would you like us to play for you?”, Happy asked him.
He continued looking at her for a while, until he leaned his head to the left, closed his eyes and said: “The other side of Mt Heartbreak”.
Happy and Hour, in a perfectly synchronised move, turned and looked simultaneously at each other; they had a brief wordless exchange with their eyes, which now seemed to dazzle in an unnatural fashion; eventually, firmly and decisively Hour said: “I’m on it”.
She headed over to the console, next to which an empty bottle of whiskey stood, in a symbolism which nobody seemed to be capable of perceiving, and did the necessary arrangements; seconds later, the first notes of the song he had requested made their way out of the bar’s strategically positioned speakers and filled the entire space.
He remained with his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open for the entire duration of the song; he sort of looked like he was in a trance.
When the song was about to end, he leaned back – at first slightly, then less so – and with a dramatic thump fell with his back on the floor.
Happy and Hour immediately ran on top of him.
He slowly opened his eyes and he saw them staring at him – Happy on his left hand side and Hour on his right one – clearly, they were both worried.
He extended both of his arms towards them as if inviting them to help him stand up.
Happy grabbed his left arm while Hour grabbed his right one – but before they had any time to pull he pulled them himself with all the strength he could muster.
Naturally, a second later they were on the ground, lying next to him.
Happy on his left hand side; Hour on the right.
As he was looking up, at the disgustingly oily ceiling, he discerned a white spot.
The curious thing about it was neither that it was white nor that it was a spot; it was rather that it was growing and growing, up to the point that it became a big white cloud.
A cloud shaped like her face.
He was flabbergasted and in awe.
And then, out of her cloudy mouth and cloudy eyes, rivers of gold began to flow.
Soon, the cloudy face had been replaced by a golden watch; more specifically, an old-fashioned pocket one, with the most peculiar and beautiful hands – hands, that looked beyond the designing capabilities and mastery of even the most skilful, imaginative and talented watchmaker ever to have set foot on this earth.
The hour hand of the watch was shaped like Happy; the minute hand was shaped like Hour.
In fact, the watch was not a watch.
The watch was his face as it would, beyond any doubt, look during his life’s single most Happy Hour.
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Berlinale 13/9/17 (13 September 2017)
Red ambulance in the corner
No blood whatsoever
A smiling white bench
No gaps between the gaps of its teeth
I live where I leave
I leave when I stay
No identity
For the bodiless entity
A sideways prayer
Always works when you’re not there
Bottled bridge
Your spirit is flowing right below you
Inspiration
Under constant renovation, but not revision
… until one minute before…
… as of one minute after…
One light is enough
Two lights, though, and the world is mine
Retrofuturism at its best
Anticipate the trembling past, be nostalgic of the unattainable future
The dragon is the wave
In the only city that knows how to rave
One by one, all doors will open for you
Will you be ready to walk through them?
A city ready to sail
On a promise she cannot fail
Will they be there for you?
Will they be there to get you?
Scarlet balloon in flames
Rise, burn and liberate me, liberate US!
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The day Mario Possa had a talk with Death was a Tuesday (late 2012 – early 2013)
The day Mario Possa had a talk with Death was a Tuesday.
Mario was, as usual, sitting alone at a table in the employees’ canteen of the company he worked for (a multinational financial institution) having an early lunch. The lunch consisted of a rather plain cheese and ham sandwich which was accompanied by a handful of paprika chips. It would have never stricken Mario that the man who came uninvited to join him, sitting at the same table on a chair opposite to his, was Death himself, had not Death had promptly identified Himself.
“Hello Mario. I am Death. I came to talk to you because I need your help.”
Mario could not have anticipated that he would ever meet Death in person and, furthermore, he could not have anticipated that should that ever happen, the first words to come out of his mouth (which was full with half-chewed cheese, ham, lettuce, chips and stale bread) in addressing the Grim Reaper would be: “This had better be a matter of life and death” (In his defence, Mario hated it when his solitary lunch meals were interrupted by an external cause).
“Mario, I lost a bet”, Death went on. “Because of me losing this bet, I will be never able to take you to the other side with me. That means you are stuck here, stuck for good. Or for bad, for that matter.”
“Wait, You said You lost a bet? In which bet my life was at stake? And, if I understood You correctly, am I now supposed to live forever? Well, Death, I have to admit that sounds pretty much great to me! And forgive me for saying what I am going to say, but I really cannot think of anything right now that could motivate me to help You with… whatever it is You may need my help for.”
“Not so fast, Mario, not so fast. You skipping dying is not the only consequence of Me losing this bet. There is another consequence: everyone else, every single human being on this planet with the exception of you, must perish. You will be the last man standing on a, otherwise, human-free world. And you will be eternally bound to this fate of absolute solitude, without being able to do anything about it.”
“…”
“Unless… unless, of course, you willingly sacrifice yourself for the sake of your kind”
“Wait… Wait, wait, wait, are You asking me to commit a suicide? That’s absurd! How do I even know that this is not a practical joke or a prank of some sort?”
He had not finished his last sentence, when, before his very eyes, one by one all the other people in the canteen started collapsing. Soon, only him and Death were still standing; or sitting for that matter.
Mario, unable to come to grips with the situation, muttered: “They… they may not be dead, they probably only lost their consciousness…”
“Oh, come on Mario, cut the crap, will you? Listen to me, this is just the beginning; what you see here is already irreversible and there is not much time left before… well, before everyone else dies.”
“So… what was this bet about?”
“I bet with my Counterpart and Employer that if the dullest, loneliest, most miserable man on the face of Earth committed suicide (which I firmly believed was a matter of time), then I would retire; thus granting every other human being eternal life. Otherwise, I would be forced to spare this person’s life forever at the expense of everybody else’s. The latter is what is already happening. And, basically, I sort of lied before; I haven’t quite lost this bet yet and, therefore, this is now my last effort to save the lives of so many. I am asking you to do us all a favor and kill yourself, Mario. I mean, I have been here practically forever and I can assure you that you are by far the most insignificant and indifferent person ever to set foot on this planet. However, think about it; this is the only chance you will ever get to do something meaningful and (even more than that) something heroic and save your fellow men and women from total extinction. Come on, what do you say?”
Mario was devastated. Quite appropriately for Him, Death appeared to be dead serious. His words were really convincing and Mario felt he could not really find a counter-argument against them. Before he would succumb to Death’s morbid request and put an end to his life, however, he had something he needed to ask Him:
“I am ready to do what You are asking me to. There is one last question I have to ask You, though. Please tell me: what happens to You if you lose the bet?”
Death stood silent for a while. Then He said: “If I lose the bet, I shall die; of course, after I have first killed everyone else but you.”
“And what happens to Death when He dies?”
“I hope something not as bad as what will happen to you.”
These were Death’s dying words.