Another nameless tale

A little story I wrote on the train on the way to my Ma's this weekend. I hope you like it :)

I’m wandering through a wilderness of my own creation. I keep telling myself this, but the landscape continues to amaze and frighten me. What began as a desert (and always does) now appeared as a land ravaged by volcanoes, torn asunder by earthquakes. Am I really this emotionally unstable?

In recent years my waking life had improved dramatically, a loving wife, numerous wonderful children (as was the custom), and a house that did virtually everything for me, from cleaning itself to scheduling appointments. I had no need for a job any more, I have moved into the upper echelons of society - the wealthy elite.

So why such discontent? And why now, of all times, when life was so idyllic?

I floated over a particularly violent volcano, and saw her face. She, who had somehow just appeared in my life, on my planet (over whose population the house was supposed to have control), who had somehow thrown my life into turmoil. And, as far as I could tell, for no good reason. She wasn’t the prettiest (she had, in fact, a very ordinary look to her), nor was she the most exciting. But I wanted her.

I continued to move silently through the dream world, gazing into chasms and rivers of molten rock. The land cried, and I with it.

Tentatively I looked up from the monitor screen, dazed, depressed, and more than a little confused. I hit the delete key with religious fervor, casting this abomination, this blasphemy in the church of my life, into oblivion.

Purged I felt a little better, as though this would help remove her from my life. I wanted my thoughts, my feelings, to be my own again. Not hers.

Hands on my shoulders jolted me from my reverie, and I looked into her eyes. Thank Christ the wife and kids were on holiday. I would fix the recordings in the houses data centre later, not a problem with the technology available to me. A look of benevolence flowed from her, she seemed to understand that this would not, could not be forever, and she accepted it with grace and ease.

I looked away, ashamed of myself, trying to hate her and failing miserably. She rubbed my shoulders and I hoped she wouldn’t see the reflection in the screen of the tear which coursed down my cheek as I sabotaged my own life.

“FUCK!”

The word echoed through the house, mocking me with each repetition. I leapt to my feet and she backed away, unused to my violent outbursts. I picked up the two training swords by my bed (one can never be too careful, even in this day and age) and began to systematically destroy everything in my sight, everything I had tainted with my own betrayal.

Blood firing through my veins, adrenaline powering my strokes, I ripped into the wall hangings, tearing them into shreds. I pummeled the cupboards, the chest of drawers, the side tables, pounding them with all my might, and flung the antique paraffin lamp into the kindling.

She ran out the room knowing full well that the house would take douse the fire before it did any real damage, but primal fear taking control anyway. I turned and followed her, sedate now that the destruction was complete. Seeing the pleading look in my eyes she opened her arms to me and I fell, weeping, into them.

Six months later, and she lies dead at my feet. Her, along with my wife, my seven children, my eighteen man-servants, and the rubble of my house.

I grasped my new passport in one hand, a suitcase full of money in the other. I looked impassively over at the wrecking and watched the distant police take away the poor clone who suffered what was honestly my fate. Smiling inwards I climbed into the car, and drove away knowing that tomorrow really was the first day of the rest of my life.