The rules of the game. Part 3

Alice wanted children, a decent house, and food. I want nothing more than food, and now, air and some freedom, and I also need you to kill someone for me. You owe me for the other day, remember, and I couldn't remember. I stopped to search the past and found only a few cartridges and a revolver, a cold bed, and remorse. I'm no good at any of that shit; you need a special kind of personality for that. Inert, putrid matter, the words stuck in her head like rain usually does. Well, then there won't be another time. I looked at her from my other dimension. From four degrees north-southwest, and when I could part my lips a little, I told her it didn't matter. She asked for a cigarette, and I handed her the pack I had bought for her.

She leaned against the wall.

She lit one and appeared a little calmer.

Looking down at her breasts, I could see the contrasts, where before the light couldn't reach because of the darkness and the alcohol, I could taste her a little more. Inhaling her smoke. The undulations of her hips and her hair like a modern, intertwined construction. From where I stood, I could smell very expensive shampoo and I wanted to hug her.

Look. Someone has to fix this. She took another puff on her cigarette and waited for a response that would bring her out of her lethargy. The rain began to patter on the zinc roof of the house, and after the strict five minutes had passed, a few drops began to fall into a bucket I had placed there before looking at her again. Too bad, but there's nothing we can do, I said.

She took another puff on her cigarette and looked down, staring at it for a long time, then told me that everything was easy.

I leaned back in a rickety chair I had for myself, and before telling him all the predictable crap in the world, I was able to smile at him. I sketched a rough drawing on the edge of the table. He had time to hear me curse, to settle into another, more uncomfortable position. I have no answer for that, and I don't want to have anything to do with any future events.

You're absolutely right.

I've been to the penitentiary only once and I don't plan on going back.

You don't understand. Life is like a roller coaster; I can assure you that you're almost always going uphill, only to fall down at breakneck speed. Do you have another cigarette for me?

Behind that plateau there's a thousand dollars.

These cigarettes are pretty strong.

And behind the toaster, another thousand dollars, take it.

Do you have any tea? I'm feeling nostalgic.

It seemed like you knew something about me, but you don't know anything, I said under my breath. I can die here, or in that bed. Stare at my wall and die. Take the memory of my dead with me forever. Have a bomb inside me and explode, if I can't destroy the wall, at least stain it, make it so illegible and smelly that no one will study it.

But I can't even kill myself.

Do you know the rules of every game?

No.

Most people don't know them or ignore them, everyone rearranges the world to suit themselves, but every game must have an end as its first rule. Now an inefficient idea is like a game where you're missing pieces. If you've failed, take all your shit and go somewhere else, no one else wants to know about your life and your memories. This game is quite simple. Kill.

What do you know about plaster? I said, just to talk.

Are the tea bags in this drawer? she asked me, and put the water on to boil. The coffee maker began its cynical hissing noise.