Ozymandias – Chapter 2

 

Tyler wasn’t expecting a call from his mother, Lillian. It had been two years since she’d called him. She always preferred her privacy.

“Tyler?” she asked.

“Mom?”

“It is you. And you’re fine?”

He couldn’t remember her being so solicitous of him. It was unnerving.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“I thought something happened. I must have imagined it, I guess. But you’re fine.”

“Of course,” answered Tyler, just as unnerved by the thought that something terrible had happened to him. Just because he thought terrible thoughts didn’t mean he expected them to be acted upon.

“What happened?” asked Tyler, after a few moments hesitation.

“Oh, nothing. Just an old woman’s dreams. I should know better. How embarrassing.”

“It’s alright. You can tell me.”

“This is silly, Tyler. Even for you. You’re fine. I’m fine. There’s nothing to discuss. Now maybe if you let people know from time to time.”

“Know what?” asked Tyler. It was his mother who wasn’t talking to him. Was she faulting him for not keeping in better contact?

“That you’re alright. How do you do it now? Do you tweet it?”

“You want me to tweet everyone that I’m doing alright, no need to worry?” asked Tyler. “I can do that everyday.” He didn’t even have a Twitter account, though it didn’t make her suggestion any less absurd.

“It doesn’t matter,” she groaned. “It’s these ambien I’m taking ‘cause all I need is a good night’s sleep for once. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I slept a solid night. But now I can’t tell if I’m sleeping or waking. I should probably stop.”

His mother had always complained about insomnia. She once told him it was because she was up all night worrying about him, as if it were his fault. She wanted him to feel responsible. Considering she never let him go anywhere for fear of the worst case scenario, his mother had no reason for concern, and no call to blame him for her brittle nerves.

Tyler was half way through his latest prescription of Cymbalta. He wasn’t about to divulge such information, considering he once told her he didn’t need medication, after six years of being forced to consume antipsychotics for a condition that required the support of caring people, and not the people who shrugged him off as beneath notice. Tyler was only 16 when his mother explained the misdiagnosis, that he had fantasy prone disorder not schizophrenia. He was only 16 when he knew he could no longer trust her.

The only reason he agreed to meds four years ago was to curb his mounting anxiety about a world that was beginning to resemble a mine-field, the potential for apocalypse always just around the corner. The last thing he wanted was to resemble his mother who’d worked diligently to protect Tyler from the dangers of a normal life.

Tyler was beginning to detect that resemblance again, which was more cause for worry.

“Are you alright?” he asked her, turning the conversation to her health, or lack thereof.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she snapped.

“What did you think happened to me?” asked Tyler. “And I don’t care if it’s a dream. I want to know.”

“Where did that get you? All that dreaming? All that talking to your dead grandmother?”

“Where did what get me?”

“Having to know everything. Thinking you knew everything, and that you knew better than me. I know you don’t want to talk to me. And I won’t keep you.”

“You never answer the question,” noted Tyler. The only reason he prodded for information was because she never told him anything. He was through with secrets.

“Do you?”

“Didn’t I just tell you I’m fine? I answered your question. I ask how you’re doing and you get defensive.”

“You suggest there’s something wrong when there isn’t. If I have news, I’ll tell you.”

“Your health.”

“Whatever you’d expect from a 67 year old woman, Tyler. You think I deserve your accusations? I’m the only one who protected you. The only one who stood by you.”

It only took just over a minute for the familiar admixture of paranoia and self-congratulatory bloviating to emerge. Tyler had done nothing to invite it, yet how quickly the conversation reinforced their damaged dynamic. Was there no repairing it, even now?

“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m happy you called. I’m well. I assume you’re well. Conversation done, I suppose. Unless you have anything else to add?”

“No, but one day you’ll be rid of me, which is what you’ve always wanted.”

“It’s not,” he answered. He was lying. He would be glad never to think on her again. But he didn’t hate her. He only wished she’d been happier.

“You thought I’d died?” he asked after a break in the conversation. His mother had been imagining him dying ever since the car accident with his grandmother Vi when he was ten. He’d survived without so much as a scratch, although the grandmother who raised him had been crushed by the impact, her face unrecognizable. Tyler still remembered what could happen to a human, how someone so alive could be turned to mush as if they’d merely been raw material for a school science experiment.

Tyler wanted to dispense with the topic of death, which was alright if it could inspire a graphic novel. If not, it was just death, which did no one any good at all.

“Should I stay in my apartment and draw the blinds? Refuse to answer the door? Or maybe I can venture out as long as I wear a helmet?”

His mother hung up. She resented what she considered mockery in the face of tragedy, but what better way to thumb his nose at the horrific than by making light of it?

Tyler had grown accustomed to his mother hanging up on him. And that was getting off easy. If he said something particularly irksome, she’d shun him for weeks, or months, refusing to return phone calls until he correctly guessed the reason for her umbrage and apologized for it. She was always so quick to offense, and Tyler had learned to shrug it off.

He wished she’d explained the nature of her troubling dream about him. Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, much less her, that he took dreams very seriously. He figured they all had purpose and that if he paid attention, he might overcome some primal inhibition, releasing himself from anything his mother had selfishly programmed him to ignore.

The phone flashed a message. He wasn’t expecting one.

“Happy birthday, Tyler,” chirped a familiar voice. It was Hazel, endeavoring as always to ingratiate, even if that meant reminding him of the birthday he’d been hoping to forget. Besides, it was two weeks away, which was enough time to pretend he hadn’t squandered 40 years of his life on dead-end job prospects and emotionally fragile women; well, more like 20 years, which was long enough.

Tyler wasn’t ready to get older. He’d assured Hazel he hated birthdays, but she never took his protestations at face value.

“I know you’ve been busy, and so I have. But I wasn’t going to forget your birthday. Forty. I still can’t believe you’re that old.”

Tyler wilted. He never told her his age, but it was on his old employment records which she would still access, being Todd’s executive assistant.

“You look at least 37 or 38. And look at Todd. He’s 44 and fitter than a 24 year old. The two of you are doing something right. A shame the two of you don’t talk much. I wish we talked more too. It’s beginning to feel like a long-distance relationship.”

“That’s because you’re delusional,” answered Tyler aloud. “You hear me? Delusional. NO. MORE. CALLS.”

“… all water under the bridge,” she continued unabated because she’d left a message, which meant Tyler would have to wait to tell her to go to hell; not that he ever would.

She only wanted to cut him down and repackage him, maybe push a ring on his finger while Todd presented him as something artistically original, after first squeezing every last ounce of artist conscience from him, rendering him a toothless, counterfeit of an artist whose smile would betray his weakness.

“…reason I called, he’s launching the teen ninja zombie series and I thought you could come as my date, and we don’t have to talk about us. We’ll just have fun.  And we can talk about your career. If only you’d about teen ninja zombies first. Todd says worldwide sales should help him fund the best and brightest.”

What was original about teen ninjas or even teen ninja zombies, thought Tyler. If Bold Endeavors was tanking, the reason was obvious.

“So gimme a call. It’s been way too long. Alright. Talk soon.”

Hazel was at her most seductive when convincing him of her good-intentions. It would be a different matter if he agreed to join her. She’d pound him with her thoughts about him, accumulated over the past few weeks, until he pleaded for mercy, agreeing to her every demand, for his own good of course.

The way she spoke of him, the casual observer might believe she had his best interests in mind, that he and her were a couple perfectly matched. But that was only because Tyler bit his tongue, deferring battle for the drive home when she would unload on him for being an unsociable ass who could have at least been gentleman enough to embrace her in front of her friends. And it was always her friends, and he and Hazel were always the spectacle. She was still posting old photos of the two of them, convincing her many Facebook friends they would always be the perfect couple. It was a pretense, which was all the more reason to write his tell-all hate memoir about time misspent on social media, losing respect for all his friends until he realized he had none.

Just because she lived a social media lie was no reason he had to do the same. He would disguise nothing except his age, of course, since he wanted to be seen as new voice, and what could be worse than a middle-aged man calling for a humanity refresh? If anything, age had done nothing to dull his revolutionary temperament. It had given it more edge and determination.

Why did he have to be 40? Why had Hazel reminded him? Was it meant to make him feel more appreciative of the attentions of a 34 year-old? Besides, she looked at least 40 herself.

His mother’s phone call turned him from his work. He was refining page 13, correcting the lines and darkening the color to match the mood of impending doom. But thought of the apocalypse of Los Angeles, and the raising of the dead to protect it, was far from his mind. What occupied his thoughts was how egos fattened themselves by diminishing others, while proclaiming the best of intentions and sharing smiling portraits to prove that intentions were sound.

He would have to devote more time to the zombies in his work, because the zombies were us, a primal hunger for self-aggrandizement preventing us from seeing anyone else, our grunts for sustenance audible only to ourselves. And the hunger had overcome curiosity about the world until we lost all ability so see or hear, our mouths opening wider and our tongues seeking the exquisite, every taste an affirmation that our purpose has been achieved without ever having to move an inch.

So much for realism, thought Tyler. This was more like a Heironymous Bosch, which was a pleasing comparison.

He considered the possibility of heroism under such desperate circumstances. How might anyone assume the risk of deviating from the norm if no one saw anything worth saving? What set the protectors apart from those who couldn’t be bothered? How had they preserved the ability to find value outside of the self?

A story required a hero, someone who refused the norm and defied the fates; otherwise it would be just like real life, everyone gorging themselves on ground-level pablum rather than braving the upper realms for the otherworldly refinement of manna.

But “Los Angeles Apocalypse” wasn’t going to be a typical story. His heroes weren’t heroes at all, choosing to revive the dead, not to save the world but to finish it off. Their motives were impure, but since when didn’t impure motives trigger world events?

Tyler liked the idea of a story without a hero or a quest. Had it ever been done? The problem with tales of heroism was that they reinforced the usual ‘I’m no hero’ mindset that prevented anything from changing. The heroes do what we cannot, which is all the more excuse for people to do nothing.

It was the undesirables and the dead who would rally together to improve humanity’s prospects, before disappearing, unthanked, into oblivion; because there was always something protecting us from our worst intentions, something that would keep us from committing ourselves to irrevocable despair.

He shivered. He could imagine the possibility, but could he illustrate it? All he could do was plod on. He’d set aside the day for page 14 but was still tinkering with page 13. It was time for the dead to awaken. It was time for the earth to open with a thunderous crack and for all that was dead to resemble the living, since the living had begun to resemble the dead. It was time for the opening of seals and the blare of trumpet. It was time for the sky to split open and it was time for …

The phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was Howard.

“So they’ve got karaoke and trivia tonight,” he explained. “Now how often does that happen?”

“Seriously?”

“You got something better to do? It’s Saturday.”

“We were there last Saturday,” he replied, preferring a better reason to abandon his graphic novel, until he remembered the curious woman with the timeless beauty he’d seen last weekend. The odds of seeing her again were infinitesimal, unless she were a lush who made a habit of frequenting unworthy places. She must have realized she’d made a mistake, which was why she’d left so quickly.

“What else you got in mind?”

“Nothing else,” answered Tyler.

“You can pick me up at 8?”

“Pick you up?” asked Tyler. He was always picking up Howard. It was beginning to feel thankless.

“So when are you getting a car?” asked Tyler. Yes, Howard was a true rarity for Los Angeles, a man without a set of wheels to call his own. And Howard could afford it. He lived comfortably off his grandfather’s trust fund, which he received every month provided he lived a model life: attending temple, all dietary restrictions, along with another nonsensical items Tyler couldn’t recall. There was no requirement to make something of his life, so Howard whiled away his days as a dedicated gamer and collector of movie memorabilia. However, his collection of old movie theater lobby cards and standees was exceeding capacity, in clear violation of health and safety codes. He’d even tried to pawn some off on Tyler, but Tyler suggested a dedicated storage facility.

Tyler once enjoyed seeing the life sized cardboard replicas of Chaplin, Monroe, Gable, Dean and Taylor; that was until Howard asked if Tyler were willing to keep them safe at his apartment. Howard pressed the point until Taylor refused to discuss it again. It would only encourage Howard to find something else to replace them with.

Tyler avoided setting foot in Howard’s Miracle Mile house because it was wall to wall Hollywood cast-offs that Howard spent a fortune ordering.

“I’m in the process,” answered Howard.

“It’s a long process,” noted Tyler.

“Look, I don’t wanna go into it. But I don’t know how else to get there if you can’t take me.”

“Maybe I don’t wanna take you.”

The moment Tyler spoke the words, he regretted them. He was never very good at saying no but wished he could be. “Yes, I’ll pick you up.”

“Great. I’ll see then.”

Howard hung up, realizing that he had to go further than removing the hero. His lead characters had to be losers, like him and Howard. Besides, it didn’t matter if they were losers. They had only to push for something better.