Enlightenment

Enlightenment

0.

Born as every child. Raised as every child. There was nothing special about me, nor there is now. Except Larry, he’s always been there.

1.

-“Wanna go to my place?” - I say to the girl. Fifteen minutes dancing is enough to know she won’t refuse my invitation. Her eyes are filled with lust, her brain with alcohol. She came with friends, but she’ll leave with me, as they all do.
I never had much morals, but I have always considered myself a gentleman. I sat patiently with her holding her hair all the time on that dumpster -commonly known as the club’s bathroom- until she let it all out, taking care it didn't become dirty with vomit. Now what kind of gentleman would refuse to do so?
It’s not that I take advantage of drunk girls. I’m quite handsome and I don’t lack confidence in myself, so I know I don't need to kidnap girls to bring them home; it's just Larry prefers them unconscious.

The happy pair leaves the club- or at least that’s what we look like, I hope in my head - and get in the car. It’s a blue 90’s Audi, nothing too eye catching, but it’s more than enough to make the girl point at it and mumble “Nice ride...”
I nod my head and open the passenger door for her. We spend 40 minutes just driving around, no particular destiny, no particular talking topic. I just want to make sure we aren't being followed - you can never be too careful.
As expected, she falls asleep, so I proceed to take her to Larry.
It doesn’t take me long to park my car and carry the girl inside, where I leave her on my old striped couch.
She's pretty. Blonde and with a provocative blue dress that would get any boy to look at her.
I look back to see how the lock from the front door turns and makes it’s undeniable *click*, meaning it's now closed. Suddenly, an echo starts forming in my head. A thousand voices start whispering in a low tone inside my head. All at the same time, all saying the same.
-“Hello Johnny” - I hear, and yet I don’t.
-“Hey Larry.” - I answer to no one in particular. - “Look what I brought for dinner”
The steady breathing of the girl is the only sound in the room, yet to me theres the whispering which never goes away. Never while inside Larry.
-“Johnny. You have done well.” - the voices whisper.
-"Whatever, just stop calling me Johnny. I'm serious, I've told you how many times now? Twenty? Really pal, you need to grow up."
I don't expect an answer, and surely no answer is heard.
In an act that doesn't makes me feel ashamed instantly, I drop my pants and start undressing the girl with shaking hands.
"Talking about playing with dinner" - I say to myself to calm me down. I never did this before, but tonight my monster is outside. That monster we all carry inside, hidden and locked up. I left my guard down and now he's out.

The girl is out cold, so I take my chances and try to finish my business quickly.

...

When i'm done dressing her again, I take a last look at her and go to the kitchen. I feel the tears running down my cheek already, and my voice cracking up when I try to say "I'm sorry".
She's not going to be alive for tomorrow, so I use that as an excuse to justify myself. Of course that doesn't stop the memory from haunting me afterwards. It will always haunt me.
I grab a beer from the fridge and sit quietly in a corner, shaking and with my heart racing.
I raped a girl.
It doesn't take much time until i'm drowning myself with some stronger stuff.
The whispering that lives in my head starts to get erratical, almost as if the alcohol was interfering with my connection with Larry, but that's okay. I don't like bonding with him when he eats.

And then it happens.
I hear another *click* coming from the door leading to the living room, where the girl is.
-"The door is locked" - my mind tells me - "and Larry the beast is onto his food."
A minor buzz starts pounding in my head, and I hurry the bottle of whiskey i'm holding down my throat.
One. Two. Three. Just like that.
The door is unlocked again and the buzz in my head fades away, and I know with complete certainty that the girl isn't on the couch anymore. In fact, I know she isn't anywhere in this earth anymore. According to Larry, she is now with the others, on "the crack this universe has created."
I never knew what that meant, and I never asked. To me it's all the same. He eats them. Larry eats them.

2.

It's dark. It's very dark. No one has paid the electricity for months now, so it's only natural my room is in complete darkness. I'm crying again, scared and alone. Most 15 year  olds hate their parents at this age; the age of rebellion. But I would give anything to have them again. A simple car accident took them along with my happiness, and now i'm left with nothing. Just my life and this house.

I remember the police told me I had to go to an orphanage, but I said no. I had lost my family, I was already miserable. Being around other kids who had suffered as I had would only make me feel worse. I fought against them when they tried to take me there and hid in the house. I knew every crack of it, and eventually the cops just yelled they didn't want to make me suffer and left me alone. I don't think they were supposed to just leave, but maybe they understood what I felt. No one else bothered coming to the house after that, so I ended up staying there, living on my own.
Through the next few weeks I kept skipping school and just wondered around town aimlessly, wishing something would either give me purpose again or kill me to end my suffering.
And one day, almost two months after my parents death, I met Larry.

3.

-"Johnny. Wake up."
-"Huh?" - I mumble, getting up from the floor, my face still humid from my tears.
Silence.
I look around with my heart pounding on my chest; I know I heard someone.
I'm about to take a step towards the living room, but suddenly I hear the voice again:
-"Johnny. Hello."
I jump on the spot and start looking everywhere on my room, trying to find the source of the weird whispers that are located in my head. (Had the whispers been there all along?)
I feel my blood pumping faster and faster, and my body fully prepared to fight or flight; yet I don't move. It's not fear what I feel, rather pure shock. What is this?
-"He.." - I try to articulate, but my voice breaks. I take a deep breath and try again.
-"Hello?"
-"Johnny, my name is... Larry. I am here to offer you purpose."
The feeling the voices gave me was similar to the one must feel while insane. It simply couldn't be real.
-"What? Who are you? Why... who are you?"
I wait impatiently for the voices to answer, and I feel how in time the whispers start growing to form the words.
-"Johnny, my name is Larry. I am offering you purpose. Do you wish to hear what I have to say?"
I can't think clearly, but in almost a whisper I accept. Wasn't this what I had been waiting all this months after all? Something to give purpose to my life?

-"Johnny, I am an entity not from this world. I don't have a name, but Larry should be sufficient for you to call me. For reasons far from your understanding, I have bonded with this construction you call house, and I have come here with the only purpose that is to help specific individuals from your species reach enlightenment."

-"...I don't. I don't know. Why do you call me Johnny?" - I say.

-"Johnny, I have no desire to enlighten you as of now. You have purpose still. And so I ask you, will you help me in this task I have been commanded?"

Still numb, and looking nowhere in particular due to the lack of origin of the voices, I think briefly my options, and despite the madness to it, I end up whispering in the cold air of the night:
-"Yes."


4.

I didn't understand what I was doing. Even to this day, years complying with Larry I still don't understand.
I do know however how it made me feel: Full of life and purpose - just like that being had predicted. I finally had something that felt important and necessary, something that made me feel useful and that filled the gaping hole my parent's death had left in my life. I of course had trouble at first. Kidnapping people and making them disappearing wasn't an easy concept for me to grasp, but I did it. Larry said it was enlightenment after all.

Years went by like this. I would go to some place Larry would tell me and pick up someone. There were usually girls who i'd flirt with easily and bring home. Sometimes there were guys, and I would have to pretend to be gay to carry them by their own will. If that didn't work I could always put something on their drink, but I hated that. I felt like a "bad guy".

I also rarely talked with Larry. Most of my questions were ignored by him, and when he did answer, he did so in a deflective matter, with his strange mannerisms.
Of what i've understood so far is that he's either from another world or universe, and that his superiors told him he needed to bond with something of our world, and enlighten certain subjects.
I don't know why I was chosen, I don't know if he has an actual name. I never see the people who disappear on my house ever again.

5.

6 years have passed since I met him. 6 years enlightening people.
Drugging them.
Killing them.

It's incredible how much the human brain develops over time. Maturity can take a while to come, I know that now.
Right and wrong. Good and bad. Enlightening.

I thought I had a purpose with Larry, but now I know i'm just his puppet.
I don't want to have this purpose anymore. I don't want this life.

I want Larry gone.

6.

-"Ohhh Laaarryy!" - I shout while carrying some unconscious teenager through the front door - "Look what I got for you, boy! Fresh food!"
My joke has no answer, and so I drag the boy inside.

But something is not okay.
Today is a bad day. It's one of those days I remember my parents are dead and i'm alone in this world.
Generally the thought of Larry and the purpose he set upon me is enough to make me get new strength, but lately I have been reflecting a lot about my life.
Is this really what I want to do until the day I die? Am I really doing something that helps people and makes me a better person?
I don't know anymore about that. Sometimes I watch myself in the mirror and I don't recognise the person i'm looking at. It's like this new life I took has drained me of my soul.

I look at the boy I brought. He looks at peace, though his face was of terror when he realised his drink had something in it.
I just pretended to be his friend and be carrying him home after a night of too many drinks, though I couldn't shake the feeling that what I was doing was simply wrong. It hadn't happened ever before, as I always thought I was doing them a favour by letting Larry enlighten them, but lately my reality is shattering.

I have started to hate Larry, and I don't think I can take this anymore.

I go to the kitchen as always and let the kid rest in the sofa. How many lives have vanished in it? I try to count, but the number is too high.
I take out a beer and gulp down. Then again, and again. Soon i'm drinking from the whiskey bottle I keep locked up for celebrations.
By the time I see the door from the living room start closing, the bottle is dry and on the floor.
"What does he do to them?" - I wonder. My mind races with wild ideas of torture and murder.
My hand is shaking, and I kick the whiskey bottle when I stand up.

In the split second when the door finally closed, I gathered the courage inside me I could never gather before, the courage to let Larry go and accept my parents death.

I stand proud and ready to face death itself if that's what it takes.
I charge towards the door with all my might, ready to see what's on the other side.
The whispers in my head are now stronger than ever. Not even the alcohol can suppress them now.

I hit the door with my full body, but it doesn't open.
-"I have to see what he does to them." - I insist in my head - "I can't forgive myself if I killed all those people"

I take a step back and hit the door with all the strength i'm capable of gathering, and in surprise I see how the door blasts back and opens, revealing what's inside.

All I see is a light, the brightest light I have ever seen in my life.
And then... everything.
The universe in a grain of sand.
Heaven in a wild flower.
And then... dreams. I let the cosmos engulf me, and the feelings of a thousand civilisations wash over me.

And then... nothing.

7.

The blackness disappears, and I open my eyes.
-"What... where am i?" - My mind wonders as I raise my head and look around me.
The sound of waves crashing against some rocks makes me look to my right, where I see an endless blue sea. White rocks are scattered all along the coast, and from there miles and miles of sand extend to each side. To my back I see hills full of beautiful long grass.

There are a couple cabins built a couple miles away, far from where I am. They seem strong, but not very well made.
I stand up to try understand what just happened, but I can't seem to remember how I got a beach.
The orange evening light blinds me when I look to the horizon, and I feel my sneakers get heavy with sand when I start walking to the coast.

But suddenly I stop and hear because I get the feeling there's someone near.
Yes, on the side of that big rock.
I make my way towards there and I see a blonde girl with her eyes closed. She's using a pretty blue dress, and seems to be resting.
In my confusion and obvious need for answers I decide to go talk to her. My steps are sloppy, but i manage to get near her.

She's sitting calmly against the pale rock, taking in the fresh air of the evening. Now that i'm near I can hear her humming; a ballad I heard my mom sing as a kid.
I stay still, watching her blonde hair dance with the wind and the sweet tune fill the air.
Her blond hair... The blue dress...

Suddenly I felt an old wound in my heart open again, and I wondered if karma had been responsible for it.

-"I'm sorry" - I let out in a whisper. My voice is broken already, and tears are suddenly running down my face. Only later I would realise i'm on my knees.
The girl suddenly opens her brown eyes and looks at me. What I was wasn't a look of pity or hatred; just peace.
-"It's okay." - she says calmly. - "You had fear and sadness in your heart."
Her voice is filled with forgiveness, and i understand she was conscious when i had taken advantage of her.
-"I don't understand. You died... Why... Is this enlightenment?"
I sound lost, and I am lost.
"It's okay." - she answers, her eyes showing compassion. - "You helped me by sending me here. You helped us all, even without knowing you were doing so. They are all in that village up there. We have been waiting for you for a long time."

-"Waiting for me..." - I repeat - Am i... dead?"
-"Who knows? But aren't you glad you are here now?"
I keep looking at her, not believing my eyes.
-"I don't know where we are" - she continued - "And I don't know how we got here, but I like it. And i'm sure you'll like it too in time."
Her brown eyes kept looking at me with their piercing sight.
-"Will you meet the others?"
The question leaves me speechless for a while, but there's something about her that calms me down.
-"Yes." - I finally say.
The girl smiles at me and stands up. She extends a hand towards me, and i take it.

-"Then lets go!"

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