Trey’s World

Trey opened the door. This was not what he was expecting. He fell back in shock. No. This can’t be. This was not how he was supposed to die. He looked down the barrel of the gun as the pressure of the liquid flowing in his blood increased. The masked man was still, unflinching but alert. Trey could see it in his eyes. The look of a cold-blooded killer with the build of a gym-freak and the stance of a military man. No. This was no ordinary thug. He was being held up at gunpoint by a professional Assassin.

Trey had understood the realities of life. He knew what it meant to be practical. He felt the ruthlessness of the world around him. He felt the surge of competing for that was the only way he knew. He had been abandoned at the doorstep of an orphanage long before his first memory. Ironically, the first memory he had managed to retain from the dusty, old, useless memoirs section of his brain was that of him being found at a bench somewhere down the countryside by a fat lady. Someone must have forgotten an ordinary kid wrapped in the blanket in one of those pity trips they take the orphanage children to. He could remember the sun pestering him as he tried to sleep in his tight blanket when that lady appeared and hid the sun with her face. He never could remember that lady’s face. She was a nice lady.

He had lived in the orphanage for so long, it was the closest to what he could call a home. Then again, he had never experienced the word “home” to ever know its true meaning. He had acquaintances in the orphanage who used to help him then and again. But a lion’s share of his time at the orphanage was spent in defending himself against the Bullies. They were his arch-nemeses. They were his dragons to slay. He fought. He ran. He struggled. He took the beatings. It was an unexpected change when a couple adopted him.

The Assassin moved forwards, across the threshold and into the apartment. Trey jerked backwards and hit the wall behind. His heart was battering at his chest like a piston on the verge of exploding. He felt the Assassin’s grip on the metal slingshot tighten. He looked at Trey with a stare so dead that his eyes looked almost inhuman. Trey’s mind was in overdrive. He had to find a way out. He had been a fighter. He had been a survivor. Had he not survived this cruel world ? Had he not fended off those bullies ?

He was analysing every move he could make, calculating his chances of survival when the Assassin jerked his gun which brought Trey’s attention back to the barrel of the gun. The Assassin was signalling him to move inside the apartment into the living room. Trey felt it best to go with the situation until the status quo changed. He started moving when the Assassin pointed his gun at Trey’s forehead. He felt that fearful pounding evermore heavily. The Assassin signalled towards Trey’s hands and then towards his forehead. Trey got the signal. He slowly planted his palms on the back of his head and started moving towards the living room.

Trey’s Foster Parents were one of those couples who you knew existed, but that is all you ever knew about them. The man was a clerk in an insurance firm whereas the woman was a cashier in one of those high-end low-paying pretentious grocery stores which was run by those people who had a nasty load of wealth at their hand. Trey led a life of isolation even when he was surrounded by throngs of people in the school. He did not mind his foster-parents as long as they did not bother him. The School was the orphanage all over again with the Bullies having their own rendition in the School. What irritated him further was the fact that he was not allowed to sit alone in the class. He could not work alone. All the projects were made into group activities when a single person sufficed to do the work many times over.

He often remembered the girl who used to tag around him incessantly, never ever leaving his side, never pausing for catching a breath from prattling on about how she lost the game of catch the other day or how she didn’t like the substitute teacher. Trey believed with utmost genuinity that he could really do without that Girl in the Ponytails. His home, though quiet and almost translucent in his life, held some of the most torturous moments in his life. His Foster Parents forced him every year to come with them to meet the rest of Foster Relatives. They forced him to go out and play with the kids down the street. He hated playing with them. He preferred playing chess with himself. It gave him the mental tenacity to face the diabolical world and gave him solace during times of duress when he was fending off the World for survival.

As they entered the living room, Trey calculated all paths of escape from the Assassin. Meanwhile, the Assassin had the gun pushed into his spine as they moved towards the armchair which had turned out to be Trey’s partner in solitude. Surprisingly, the gun felt different than he had expected. What he had been staring down was a double-barrel shotgun but what he was definitely a single-barrel pistol. Did the Assassin really need two guns? Surely, he was no high-risk target. Then again, somebody had hired an assassin to terminate him. He was a definitely a high-risk liability in somebody’s eyes. But who? The Assassin slowly moved to tie him down to the arm chair, with his arms tied to the feet of the chair and torso bound to the backrest. Trey had no option but to wait now. Although he knew something strange was happening, he could not pinpoint at what exactly. The Assassin could have had killed him right at the doorstep and left without leaving a trace. But instead he had tied him down and was now sauntering around the living room looking around whatever little decor was present in the apartment.

He went out of the room and headed towards the bedroom. Surprisingly, his confidence in moving around the house was almost as if he had lived in the apartment or had been very close to Trey. After what seemed like an eternity, he came back with a box of old photographs. Slowly, he started arranging the frames around the living room. Trey watched in confoundment as the Assassin slowly placed photos of his childhood, his school and his foster parents all around the room. What was even more disconcerting was the fact that Trey could have bet on his neck that the Assassin was a man. But suddenly, beneath the black layers of wool and cotton, the longer he looked, the more it looked a woman-like structure. He would have called it an illusion of his eyes, if the Assassin had not coughed just in that moment. Trey knew that cough. He could have recognised it anywhere. The Girl in the Ponytail used to talk non-stop. And every ten minutes or so, her throat would give up on her and she would have no choice but to face a coughing fit until she gulped down floods of water. Trey sat aghast as he saw the Girl in the Ponytail, place around photos of his past, photos he did not imagine he had.

When Trey had left for college, his foster parents seemed to make too big a deal out of it. He did not like actions of which he could not find the true intention. Though he did not expect his docile foster parents to intend anything too significant. College life proved to be a moment of pure freedom initially. No one bothered him and no one forced him to work in teams. He spent his time in the library or on the lake of isolation. He could do as he please. He had never been at such an ease. But this world was a never-ending adversary for Trey. Soon, all the fun ended only to be replaced by rumours. Rumours that Trey was a drug addict, an ex-convict, an underground hacker and a myriad of different sketchings soon reached his ears.

Trey was not bothered by the rumours themselves. He was agitated by the fact that these rumours may indirectly affect his career choices. He was already being rejected out of background checks of various projects. And while he was battling this many-headed monster, it was like a deja vu when his roommate suddenly started taking interest in Trey’s life and showered an unending stream of attempts to confirm that he was one of the delinquents from the rumours. He even succeeded once in getting him drunk to answer his questions but Trey gained control of himself within hours and return from the bar. His attention was as unnerving as the Girl in the Ponytails. Yes. His Roommate was an exact replica of The Girl in the Ponytails except that the Girl in the Ponytails hardly ever took interest in his life. Trey’s struggle continued as he figured out ways to reach half his mark at the least given all the rumours which would never end. The world indeed was proving to be a fitting rival.

It had been two hours. The Assassin, which Trey now knew to be the Girl in the Ponytail, had been arranging the photographs on the wall until the huge carton was filled with the dust from the photographs which Trey had allowed to amass on his past. Trey was utterly perplexed by now. He did not understand the Assassin’s intention one bit. For starters, the Assassin was not killing him. She was arranging photographs from the attic. She knew the apartment as if she had been following him for days. Moreover, ever since she had returned from the bedroom with the carton of frozen memories, she had not been carrying her gun. Trey had been struggling with the tapes for an hour now, slowly wriggling his hand in an attempt to loosen it, but in vain. The Assassin now came and stood before Trey. She signalled towards all the photos and then signalled something. It took Trey a moment before he realized that the Assassin was asking for more photographs. As confounding it felt, he pointed towards the floor panel beneath the ottoman.

She walked over to the ottoman and moved it aside with surprising strength. She pulled open the hatch and bent to bring up the casket placed inside. With even more astonishing tenacity, she brought over the casket in one go and placed it in front of Trey. It was then that Trey noticed something strangely familiar. The Assassin was scratching the back of his neck in fixed intervals and without active notice, as if it had become a habit. Now, this is something you don’t really notice or realize in a person, unless you have known the person for four years and have lived with him in the same dorm room to recognize the mannerism instantly and without doubt. The Roommate had a scar on the back of the neck which itched whenever sweat accumulated over it. Trey was astounded. Was this the Roommate? Was it not the Girl in the Ponytails? The gait of the Assassin again turned into one of an athlete as Trey noticed him more and more. Was he hallucinating? Had he been drugged? All these were the thoughts on his mind when his eyes fell on a single picture in the open casket. It was a picture of him with his roommate in arms with the rest of the college batch in the bar. And while each one of them looked stupid on every level, it seemed like a euphoric atmosphere. It was genuine smiles. And with the entire batch nonetheless. The Assassin proceeded on arranging the new batch of photographs over the walls of the entire house slowly turning it into a kaleidoscope of memories. Trey sat and mulled over his college days while the Assassin decorated the hallway with more artifacts from the Hatch under the Floor.

Life after college brought nothing good for Trey. His job was terrible. His colleagues even more so. His life was an absolute low. His superiors were quite prone to preferential treatment towards his other sycophantic colleagues. He had been attempting to save up on his salary to accumulate enough to initiate his own venture but in vain. Promotions were not an accolade he had been the recipient of. His colleagues kept pestering him to join them for drinks. His Foster Parents kept badgering him by asking to fly in the town to meet him. His college friends, his Roommate in special, kept asking him if he would visit the reunion. The world was hell bent on stopping him from living his life fully. Here he lay on his bed, in his dingy apartment, on his rickety armchair in a silent conversation with the bare walls. Then there was a knock on the door.

It had been six hours. The sun was glimpsing from the blinds. Trey had no strength to struggle against the binds. The Assassin stood before him. The light was behind him. This obscured his face quite effectively. In the background of the birds chirping away their morning, the Assassin’s breath was audible. It was deep and oddly unsettling for it was too smooth, too perfect, too inhuman. The Assassin removed his or her mask. Trey had given up on detecting the real person in that mask. All he could see was a silhouette. But that silhouette was familiar, too familiar. It was the memory of a distant, long-gone sunny afternoon. But the moment was present before him. The sun was behind her. The Good Lady. She stood there before him. They looked at each other for what seemed like ages. Trey had no idea what he was looking at, but the black contrast shielding him from the burning bulb was like the comfort of a wintry wind on a summer night. She turned. She was out of the door. Trey sat their for a while. His mind was boggled, to say the least. What had happened ?

He struggled against the bindings. Strangely, there were none. His hands lay gripping the arm of the rickety support. The bindings of his legs and torso were gone too. He got up dazed. He had woken up. He did not know from what. He looked around him in the gallery of his life. The frames looked back at him through the transparent glass. He moved around the house bewildered at the memories he had stored of the people around him he had hardly ever cared about. He may have hated the world around him. No, that was on the surface. Somewhere deep in his distrust, lay a small pool of connection. A connection of love, support, friendship and family. A connection that he had actively kept cold for a reason he could never remember. Seeing all his memories in a blast was like a jolt from the past. He saw the pictures of him smiling with his Foster Parents on a trip they went to in the mountains. He saw the photograph of him with the Girl in the Ponytails, smiling away on their first day at school. His college friends had prepared a collage for the students of the batch to keep them connected to their roots in the college. He had forgotten all about the happy moments he had experienced in that short amount of time. As he passed by the door, he saw a note.

Trey, you have been living a different world. A world you made up in your head. You had a life much different than you imagine. People have been part of your life in different capacities. Do not dishonour their contribution in your life by imagining something unhappy. You have faced difficulties in your life. But that should never cloud your only hopes for the rays of sun. I am the Good Lady. I am your Foster Parents. I am the Girl in the Ponytails. I am your Roommate. Dear Trey, I am your real World. Not the one you made up in your head.