Breaking the Fall
In my experience, when you play at being Icarus, you're bound to get burnt and take a free fall at some point.
This is doubly true if you happen to be taunting a revenge-bound Max Payne in the process.
"You want to be a bad boy, Max? You think you can outsmart me?"
In instant hindsight, I come to the realization that asking a question of this sort, under the circumstances, might be stretching the fate tempting line a bit too far.
Fate is pissed off.
So is Max.
And these two are obviously in some sort of elaborate conspiracy against me.
Before I get the chance to construct a plausible conspiracy theory, though, my wings begin to melt. Or, at the risk of being somewhat less poetic, the platform I'm standing on begins to tilt. The drop follows almost instantaneously, and I don't get much reaction time. Physics respond in my stead, and rather brutally, I might add. Probably their own brand of payback for all the times I've narrowly avoided playing by their rules.
The fall is short, but manages to be remarkably unpleasant nonetheless, especially since it doesn't come to a stop when I hit the surface beneath, but instead transforms into a rough, diagonal roll that I'm not quick enough to halt.
I eventually land on my back, head connecting sharply with a hard surface. Could be floor related. I hear a cry of pain escaping my throat, but I can't locate the source of the pain.
Propping myself up on my elbows, I immediately try to get back on my feet, but unfortunately, two things stop me – the first is the fact that my vision is unfocused, rotating like a loosened carousel and sending a wave of nausea through me. The second is a pointed pain shooting through my left foot - my ankle is apparently twisted, maybe even broken – don't think it holds a great relevance, now.
The charming number three will be coming along shortly, I'm guessing, in the form of Max. And then I won't have to worry about the first two at all.
Taking several bullets only to be brought down by a light concussion and a twisted ankle.
I'm sure there's some sort of feeble irony to be found in that, but all I can see is the sheer, insulting stupidity.
I haven't even really noticed the bullets, truth be told. A sting here, a sting there. Heated metal mosquito bites. From the red spots shamelessly tainting the white of my shirt, I'm just assuming there had to have been some.
My suit, I assess, is ruined. No big deal - it's always been a little too big at the shoulders, anyway.
And I doubt they have dress codes where I'm going.
Which is where, I wonder?
I've always found the concept of an afterlife a little naive - wishful thinking - but at this point, keeping an open mind seems like the best strategy.
It can't hurt, can it?
My face contorts independently, releasing some expression. Could be a smirk, could be a snarl. I can't keep track.
The good old clichés turn out to be somewhat exaggerated - my brain doesn't flash me with a quick replay of my life, no buried memories choose this moment to resurface. I am, in fact, seeing nothing besides a foggy world that keeps swimming and fluxing treacherously around my head.
Maybe it's better this way.
Leaving without saying goodbye.
Wouldn't be my first time.
But it would certainly be my last.
My vision finally reaches a clarity, finding a focus point on the barrel of a Desert Eagle.
My, detective, what a big gun you have.
My gun, as a matter of fact.
So that's where it went.
Being killed by your own gun is, in a way, like falling on your sword. Wouldn't be my first choice – a little too Eastern for my tastes, but I suppose that works, too.
With Max acting as judge, jury and executioner, you could even call it poetic justice.
This is Endgame.
Black Knight takes White Knight.
And yes, I know it's the other way around. I'm not completely delusional. But the suit is still white.
Where it isn't red, that is.
The time for last thoughts is over.
I let a small smile manifest as I look into the dark tunnel of the gun – as far as I can tell, there's no light at the end.
You've got to meet Death with a smile. It's only polite.
I'm ready.
Lights, camera -
...Well?
I keep staring into the barrel, but it's silent.
As if the world has chosen this particular moment to freeze up.
Funny. I didn't know the world could get cold feet.
Max either, for that matter.
Is he having a malfunction in his revenge design? Too many painkillers, maybe?
This is annoying. Not to mention unnerving.
"Max, you need to pull the trigger for the bullet to exit," I helpfully remind him. My voice is hoarse, the previous shouting taking its toll. It's also performing strange altitude swings, not settling for any particular tone but twisting without a balance. I can barely recognize it. "That's how guns usually work."
I raise my gaze to his face. It's immobile, except for the eyes. That familiar, intense fury is blazing inside. It's hotter than all the fires I've started combined. I can almost feel the sparks flying off.
All I need to do is burn.
No problem. I can do that.
It's so simple.
But he's not letting me. Drawing it out instead.
Cruel and unusual punishment, Max? Didn't think it was your style.
"Max –" I begin, the shape of the word resembling a growl. I come to a slow halt then, having no idea how or where to proceed.
Is a decent death scene too much to ask for?
It's all wrong now. Can't he see he's ruining it? Ruining everything?
"Do you want to die?" he finally speaks, expression not budging an inch.
I stifle the instinctive, compulsory 'What?' - wouldn't want to appear like I haven't prepared my homework - and go for the next available response, "I'm not afraid of dying."
Several beats later, he speaks again, same monotone, "That's not what I asked."
"I…" my trail of thought – whether it was there in the first place is a point for debate - becomes lost. He's making me think, and that - that just doesn't fit. Not here. Not in the end. He's killed more than enough people, and somehow, I doubt that was a question he'd stopped to ask any of them. But fine, maybe he's gone philosophical. I can play along. I make a few sharp turns inside my head, and finally reach a suitable answer - "There are worse things than death."
His response arrives after the regular pause. His mouth moves slightly, in a way that highlights the shade of a pseudo-smirk-grimace that he'd trademarked long ago.
"I know."
You would know, wouldn't you, Max?
You don't even know what life is.
Though, truthfully, I'm not one to talk.
Life and I have been walking on alienated paths for while now.
Just lacking that final step of separation.
All those misplaced ideas make me realize that the adrenaline is begging to wear off.
That's bad.
Very bad.
The pain slowly inherits it, creeping in from all directions – the ankle is radiating in a sharpness that makes me think it's most likely broken after all; my head transmits a deep, throbbing ache; even the wrist that killer bitch shot me at is making a startling, pulsating comeback. They're all nagging to get my scattered attention. But that's nothing. Pain I can handle. It's hardly the worst part, though.
The worst part is rationality.
Thoughts that weren't even digested at the time they were conceived come back to haunt me.
Shooting Max - that should have severed my last tie to a reality I was sick and tired of marching to the tune of.
A farewell bullet.
But, true to his bulletproof reputation, he came back.
I can't say I was genuinely surprised. A little irritated, maybe.
But all it really meant was that my tie to reality would be cut in a slightly different way.
It's all the same in the end.
You have to look at the big picture.
That was Woden's philosophy, the one he's spent over a decade trying to teach me.
And look where it got him.
Not even a picture frame to keep him company.
A new revelation suddenly crystallizes; a fresh addition to that 'big picture'.
Woden is dead -
And I feel nothing.
No joy, no ultimate satisfaction, no great catharsis.
Nothing.
All it took was one shot, and not even a planned one, at that.
He didn't beg for his miserable life.
Didn't scream.
The bastard even had the nerve to pretend he was one of the good guys, in the end.
He gave one hell of a performance, I'll give him that.
I almost cheered.
All those times I ran it through my head, coming up with a million and one ways to remove his presence from the world, to wipe that superior expression off his face - it was always bigger, better. The thought alone was enough to sustain me, when nothing else seemed to work.
It was supposed to be the solution to everything.
And here I am.
Figures. Life is a mess of shattered dreams and expectations that can never be fulfilled.
There were no crows, either.
One pitiful shot.
And Max couldn't even let me savor that little moment.
I try to reach for some spare rage, but find that it has followed in the adrenaline's footsteps, abandoning me.
That seems to be the trend.
But it's not as if I'd be able to truly direct it at Max, anyway.
He's just being Max.
Except that even that hypothesis is starting to crumble under this fresh new 'stare to death' technique that he's adapted.
How hard can it be to pull one trigger?
Then I remember my first time. The cold sweat that it brought on, how drunk I had to get so I wouldn't have to think. It didn't help, by the way.
I can almost taste the trace of vomit on my lower lip.
But it got easier after that.
Routine.
It should be a piece of cake, for Max.
But now the certainty that I'm ready to go is beginning to smear, leaving blind spots.
It's not fear of death – I haven't been bothered by that little pest for so long that I can't even recall what it's supposed to feel like. Instead, it's the little things that begin to sting.
Missed moments.
I promised Jon I'd watch The Godfather with him, since Winterson wasn't too eager on letting the kid enjoy the greatest cinematic masterpiece of all times. I never did see the problem. It's educational. At least, it was to me. I've even figured out how to describe the scenes to him, took notes. I wonder if his grandparents would let him watch it, since they'll probably get custody.
I doubt it.
A fucking shame.
It's my mother's birthday in two weeks, and she'll worry when I don't call.
She always worries.
And I always was curious about how kissing Max would be like. Would that dark intensity of his would translate into taste? Would there be an air of charged silence around it? Would he be able to retain his usual expression?
Another fascinating research goes down the drain.
"Why?"
His voice doesn't change as he asks that, but somehow, a deeper sentiment slips through.
Frustration.
Disappointment.
Sadness.
I don't mind his bullets, all that much, but this sudden emotion...
It's disconcerting.
What kind of question is that, Max?
Why not ask what the meaning of life is, while you're at it?
Why what?
Why I can't bring myself to care whether I live or die?
Why I betrayed you even though you ironically are the dearest of all my friends?
Or maybe it's the why I shot that femme fatale girlfriend of yours that concerns you so much?
Instant recipe for a forbidden love affair – mix cop with a troubled past, mysterious assassin, rain of bullets.
Stir and enjoy.
Really. Your standard Romeo and Juliet fare.
All I did was provide the tragic ending.
Best ending they could've gotten, really, though I doubt Max sees it that way.
Why, Max?
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
"Fate," I toss at him. I can hear a question mark forming after the elusive word. One that I definitely did not intend to put in there.
Max perfects his staring technique some more before countering, "You actually believe that?"
Judge, Jury, Executioner -
Shrink?
What next, ballerina?
Would go well with his dress sense.
But I suppose I owe him an answer.
I let out a sigh.
Fate.
I'm sure it made sense, at some point.
Nothing does, anymore.
If lying doesn't do it, then maybe honesty will be good enough to move the trigger in the right direction.
The truth shall set you free.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
"I don't know."
The trickiest thing about the truth, though, is that in the end, after you've exhausted all evasive maneuvers in your arsenal, you're the one who's forced to face it.
And usually, it's not pleasant.
The universal truth I couldn't give the slightest bit of a damn about. It doesn't exist. Nothing but a huge universal lie, a tapestry of practical jokes toying with humanity's collective mind.
But when your truth, your whole foundation is uncertain, everything else begins to shake.
Entropy finds it way inside. Or, most likely, it has been there for a while, lurking in the shadows, making small shifts and biding its time. Looking for the one weak spot where all it needs to do is apply the lightest pressure.
Waiting for this very moment.
Max lowers his gun.
Then it all starts to collapse.
Not gradually, piece by piece, like a good little crash. Everything together.
Cataclysm party.
Hopes, dreams, aspirations, grudges, plans, memories, concepts.
My life.
My death.
It's not just his revenge drive that's malfunctioning.
It's the whole goddamn world.
Irreversibly damaged.
It's some kind of giant misunderstanding, that's all. Why can't he see that?
"Max, I'm supposed to fall."
It's a last moment plea in reverse, stretched miserably across a rising tide of desperation.
He has to understand.
But he just looks at me, his face containing something akin to bewilderment, but with an unshakable touch of that goddamn sadness again – I urgently wish for the rage to return - then shakes his head. I'm not even sure whether the gesture is intended for me, could've easily been a instinctive motion, but I absorb it nonetheless.
A novel idea creeps in.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it's not the world that's broken, after all.
Maybe it's just me.
A stinging sensation in my eyes reaffirms that notion. I don't immediately puzzle out what this implies, but once I do, a ridiculous feeling of panic arises at the very prospect.
A laughter that sounds chopped off around the edges follows on its heels.
Ending my venture into Big Bad territory by falling on my ass and crying like a little girl.
That's nothing short of perfect.
It's more that a prospect, unfortunately. The intensity of it almost burns through my eyelids.
I can't cry. Not now. Not in front of Max. It would break all death scene protocols.
It's pathetic.
It's something Gognitti would've done.
But I can't help it.
I try to stop, desperately attempt to muster up some leftover willpower, some sort of stabilizer that can halt this ludicrous insanity. Nothing works. My body has stopped listening to me. The – fuck - tears are already there, a disgusting, wet presence that I haven't felt in what must have been years. All I can do is close my eyes and hope Max doesn't notice – it's about as effective a strategy as sticking your head in the sand, but I'm fresh out of options.
There's nothing but silence on his end. Such a lively conversationalist, that Max.
I've never had one of those dreams where you show up naked for class. The concept never truly bothered me, to be honest. Big fucking deal. But I hear there are people who suffer from that, and realize this must be how it feels like.
Only a hundred time worse.
I reach the obvious conclusion.
This is Hell.
So why doesn't it feel like home?
The silence he's inflicting keeps gnawing into me, highlighting everything my mind chooses to throw at me – none of it, how very surprising, is pleasant.
None of it makes any sense, either. It's a jumbled mess of memories that might as well be night terrors; buried emotions violently digging their way up into my consciousness, leaving bloody ruptures and scorch marks; wounded, surreal images with no purpose or meaning.
There's a heat forming against my cheeks, and not the kind that fires cause.
I would rather be bleeding acid out of my eyes than this.
"What do you want from me, Max?" it's not a real question, just unchecked thoughts fleeing even before they take form. "What the fuck do you want?"
He doesn't answer, of course, just keeps torturing me with that stare of his. I can't see it, but I feel its niggling presence all over, conducting a strip search in the middle of a pouring rain.
Then there's a noise, a thumping, and I can't figure out if it's the beating of my heart – why is it still doing that? What's the fucking point? - trying to deafen me, or Max's footsteps.
I realize it's both and manage to distinguish them by the speed.
The heartbeat is at least ten times faster.
Louder, too.
It's just heartbeat now.
Where did Max go?
The sudden touch causes me to extract a startled breath. The outline of his hand presses against my shirt, while the other attends to the upper button, unclasping it.
I could be wrong, of course, but now doesn't seem to be the ideal time for a feel up session.
The best response I can come up with under the circumstances is a scratched whisper, "What are you doing?"
"Making sure you don't bleed out."
"Why?"
A pause hangs above me. My eyes are closed, but in my mind, I see his grim, weary brand of smirk.
"Guess it's not fate."
Cute, Max. Really.
He finishes unbuttoning my shirt, then untucks it from the underneath the belt.
Open wide.
Fuck, his hands are cold.
I wonder if his fingerprints will transform into frostbites – it takes me a significant amount of time to realize how silly a notion that is – but realism has slid out of the window a long time ago. Still, it could be an interesting branding method.
But he can't be made of ice, which means there's a big gap in temperature.
"Am I burning, Max?"
"No, Vlad. You're not burning," he uses an overly patient tone, the kind you employ against misbehaving children. "You're a little hot, that's all."
A little hot?
I might take that personally.
His hands keep running over me, playing doctor.
Does he even have the slightest idea what he's doing to me?
Obviously not.
He never does.
He probably even thinks he's doing me a favor by keeping me alive.
Go out with a bang, that was the idea. Preferably a big bang.
This – this wasn't supposed to happen.
It's not fair, it's not fucking fair – this statement repeats in my mind until it breaks through whatever filters I have left, finding its way into the verbal world.
My voice sounds small, appropriately so - it's such a childish sentiment. I can't believe it's coming from me. Maybe the ghost of the headless Vinnie Gognitti truly has come back to haunt me. I bet they get special breaks for that sort of thing in cartoon heaven.
I involuntarily imagine the late Italian mobster as one of those tacky, baby-faced angels. I'd say Raphaelite, but I'm sure the only thing his ghostly presence would link it with would be ninja turtle related.
Max's reply finally arrives, carting a tired tonelessness along, "What isn't?"
Well, actually, nothing is.
But saying that is even more infantile, and there's only so much Gognitti imagery I can take. So I randomly pick what nibbles at me the most at this moment.
"He told you he was sorry. The son of a bitch didn't even think of offering me an apology."
Obviously, Max has no response to that, which leaves me to wonder why it bothered me so much in the first place.
I'm not an apology person, after all.
Then again, I haven't a vague clue regarding what kind of person I am, anymore.
I thought I wasn't the kind to spontaneously break into a girlish bawl-fest, but so much for that assumption.
Speaking of which, my chest begin to heave.
I dig my fingernails into the floor, trying to locate some brakes and finding none.
I wonder if it's possible to die choking on tears.
Maybe drown in a sea of them - a touch of Alice in Wonderland.
I've always been a fan of that book.
That would be rather amusing, as far as death scenes go.
I try to chuckle, or breathe at least – I notice I'm in a sudden shortage for air - but what comes out instead is closer to a whistle, tainted with an almost howl-like entity.
I'm pulling a Lupino.
Interestingly enough, Max doesn't seem as anxious to put me down. I don't know whether I should feel flattered, insulted, or deprived of my right to a bullet-laden euthanasia.
The world is sliding away – the words, the pain, everything is backstage. All I hear and feel are the waves – hot and cold – brutally washing over me.
A mutant fever.
His hand is pressing into my shoulder, a solitary anchor to reality. I barely manage to grasp onto it.
"You'll be okay," he assures me. I can't say I'm inclined to believe him. "I have to go," there's a nearly apologetic note in his voice. "I'll be back."
He removes his hand. Strangely, it only makes things colder. As an afterthought, he adds, "Don't do anything stupid."
I try to understand what he means by that, but the points fail to connect.
Everything is disjointed, pulling from different directions, betraying me.
After my body, my mind is all too eager to follow.
I can't hold myself up anymore, so I let go, flatten against the floor, becoming an dramatically, if rather erratically colored carpet.
Max is gone. It's just me, surrounded by the burning 'bigger picture'.
It's hard to sustain tears in this heat.
They dry up. The sobbing becomes a low-pitched hum, then a harsh cough.
Eventually, everything settles into a steady line, like on a hospital monitor after you die.
Show is over, nothing to see here.
When the spotlight moves away, you're left all alone in the dark.
The dark doesn't bother me.
It the alone part that I've never really gotten used to.
A numbness sets in. Not the regular kind, not the self-induced anesthetic, the padding that keeps reality at bay and helps maintain the illusion.
This numbness is empty.
It's all that's left.
I haven't gotten my poetry, or my justice.
But hey - you win some, you lose some.
Lost the battle, lost the war, lost everything.
Lost myself.
Finders keepers, losers weepers.
At least I have a reawakened inner child, courtesy of the Captain Baseball Bat Boy in the sky.
Something flickers in the back of my mind - a smiley face - but it's too distant, too faint.
Everything is.
Maybe I'm dead already, and death is nothing but an endless stretch of poorly linked thoughts going nowhere.
A little anticlimactic, but considering how life is, it's rather fitting.
For a while, I keep my mind completely blank.
There's a certain freedom in that.
And freedom was what I wanted, wasn't it?
I finally remember what my last words would have – should have - been.
They ring inside my head, echoing dimly between the walls of my skull.
Even in the confines of my own mind they sound ridiculous. Torn.
But I still want to hear how it would've sounded. Call it morbid curiosity. An affliction I've always suffered from.
Before I say it, I tug my lips into a smile – no, wrong word. It's more of an expression my face distorts into so I can check whether I'm still capable of moving it in that direction.
Well, what do you know.
I can.
I release the words then, and they barely form the slightest whisper. Belated stage fright, maybe. Or just exhaustion.
They try to no avail to find a small portion of reality to cling to, anything at all, but soon join the poisonous fumes in the air in a final dance.
They turn into smoke, gas and then -
Poof!
Nothingness.
"I was supposed to be the hero."
But now I've fallen and I can't get up.