He was sorry for the wasted time. He was ready to kill this "idiot". Holger tried to take the pillow away from Varney, but he couldn't, so he pulled him off the sofa and began to beat him, but Varney didn't answer, he covered himself with the pillow and mumbled. In the end Holger got tired of it. The next day he made another attempt to bring Varney to his senses, but failed and went away so as not to return. So Varney was left without a friend or means of support.
The black sun rose above the horizon. The dark days of Saturn dragged on, wandering between pain, extreme pain, and emptiness. All ghosts rose from the subconscious and began to dance madly in Varney's mind. All sorts of inner torments tortured his brain: guilt, shame, self-abasement, self-flagellation, resentment, pain, a sense of impotence, self-pity, regret for the past, fear of the future, and a death wish. It seemed that every nerve cell was on fire, and at the same time he couldn't even move. He wasn t paralyzed, but every movement required a tremendous effort of will, and all this was aggravated by rejection of material reality. Varney didn't even want to open his eyes: every line, shape, and color was painful, every sound was a torture to his nerves, and every smell annoyed him. The smell of his own body made him sick. And how disgusting were the tactile sensations! The friction of skin against fabric was unbearable. Varney tried not to move, so as not to worsen this condition, because each new contact with material objects caused pain. But the pain wasn t physical. Varney understood it was of a subtle immaterial nature, it was a persistent, irresistible feeling of aversion to material objects, matter itself, existence as a whole. Only his own weakness kept him from final solution.
It was the worst hell he could imagine. His body was intact, while his soul burned, but couldn't burn completely, because it was immaterial, and therefore this torment had to last forever. Death would be salvation in this position. Varney dreamed of a tender, devoted friend who would bring him a vial of deadly poison. Oh! If there were a man who would understand him, who would show him compassion and kill him with his own hands! Murder is the highest form of mercy. Assistance in death is the true meaning of love. But alas there was no one in the world who would respond to his pleas. There was no one to ease his agony.
And, being in this hell, he had to solve everyday problems, take care of this mortal body: get up from the couch, go to the toilet, wash himself, blow his nose, urinate, defecate, eat, because the body demanded this. It was unbearable. When he ran out of food, he had to go to the store, but in this condition it seemed like a spacewalk. At the same time, Varney was tormented by an incredible sense of guilt and shame because of his helplessness. He couldn't even pee properly now, his hands were shaking, urine was spattering around the toilet bowl, and he didn't even have strength to clean up after himself. What a jerk he was! What scum! He had always been and always would be. Holger was right to leave him. He'd never done anything worthwhile in his life. He brought joy to no one by his miserable existence of the worm. He couldn't really love anyone. He couldn't even kill himself. Even his music was worthless: constant headaches and three shitty demos that no one wanted to listen to. He had no power to promote it, and no one else would do it for him. All his dreams were illusions. And what was the future? He just didn't have it. The future would be always the same: suffering, violence, death. If only there were no reincarnation! Just don't be born again!
When the lease expired, the landlord Herr Schweiger found Varney in a state of extreme nervous and physical exhaustion. A strange skeletal creature with deep-sunken eyes, unresponsive to human speech, resembling the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, peered from under pillows and blankets. The apartment was dim: the light barely filtered through the black plastic bags taped to the window frames. When Herr Schweiger turned on the light, Varney whined piteously. The place was a mess: empty beer cans, fast food packages, chocolate wrappers, dirty socks, underwear, used handkerchiefs, rusty disposable razors, broken audio cassettes, scraps of crumpled scribbled paper were everywhere. The kitchen was full of dirty broken dishes and rotting food crawling with insects. There was a sickening smell of decay everywhere. At first the owner thought that perhaps his apartment had become a drug den and wanted to call the police. But when he looked closely, he didn't see any used syringes or any other signs of such activity. He realized that situation was a little more complicated. This guy didn't seem normal. He needed help. Herr Schweiger had a hard time getting his parents' details and phone number out of him.
When the mother and stepfather arrived at the apartment, they saw a dreadful scene. It was hard for Eleanor to believe that this bellowing monster was her son, but she had no choice but to accept the fact and take him home. Now she was forced to pay attention to him, take care of him: wash, dress, water, feed with a spoon, because he was no longer able to do anything himself. She felt as if she had returned to the days of her youth, when her son was a baby, and she had to take care of him. It annoyed her at the time, because she was young and beautiful and needed the attention of men, and instead she had to deal with diapers and baby poo. She didn't have enough milk, her breasts ached, and this little creature kept screaming and demanding something. It needed love too, but it couldn't love her back the way she wanted, that's why she hated him. It was all gone now: she was not so young, not so beautiful, she was fed up with men. Now she wanted to go back in time and give her son the love he hadn't got as a child. She looked at the emaciated body of her son, and her heart filled with a tenderness she hadn't felt before. She leaned over his thin legs and kissed his pale blue-veined feet, washing them with sudden tears. And these were tears of happiness.