New Inheritors of Earth

New Inheritors of Earth 

By Paul Murphy 

The phone rang. It was 3 am so I let it go to voicemail, too tired to talk, but too awake to not immediately check once I realized there was a message. 

My friend Noam called late a couple evenings ago, and I guess this was the reminder that there was a party that his best friend Atto, fairly popular jazz musician in the area, really wanted me to attend. 

It was a birthday party, not for Atto, but for one of Atto's friends at Atto's house. 

I was a bit apprehensive at first, as I knew that it'd be a party laced with great people sure, but also kind of hipper Montreal people and whatever that comes along with. Just the fact that it would be full of people I didn’t know, and that it was a birthday party for an adult person I had never met was a bit daunting. 

In the end though I thought that since Noam was going it would be fine for an hour or two. In addition, that it was such a formal invitation and from someone I didn't know who I just so happened to have listened to on my record player a few hours before the call made me curious. Not just curious. There was an overwhelming feeling that I had to go. 

We met a few blocks from the address at a spot Noam had picked out because it was close to the party, but also because it was the site of Atto’s latest art installation. A series of black cameras strategically placed, and projectors that projected the images that these cameras captured in real-time on the buildings all around us. Ghost apparitions of text superimposed behind the real-time imagery, appearing and disappearing on different buildings intermittently.

One sentence that caught my eye that sticks with me when I think of it now was “Are you alive? Does it still hurt?”

“Jesus, this is pretty intense, huh?” I said looking back in Noam's direction to make sure he was still with me. “He thought of this and just randomly came up with the concept at the last party.” Noam replied with a sense of pride. 

“Wow. He’s an intense fellow.”

“He’s incredible.” 

We opened the door to the house. The words “Happiness is All Around You” dangled from the porch ceiling in glittery letters that one might expect to say “Happy Birthday”. We took off our shoes and proceeded into the house proper, after a comment I made about the “host knowing how to make a fella feel welcome” was heard by no one. 

There were people praying as I walked into the house - not a discernible religion or traditional pray vibe. It was some sort of ESP test thing- a greenish hue engulfing the room, some sort of neon army green light coming from a couple sources. 

I think the people there may have been on some sort of hard drugs, which is fine. Not my cup of tea, but fine. No one looked up and so we proceeded into the next room without even attempting to communicate. 

The kitchen was cluttered with cake and confectionary of all varieties, and of course the birthday girl and Atto, and a few seemingly very close friends. They are sitting uncomfortably (or what would be uncomfortable to me) closely together around the table, maybe 6 people in total not including myself or Noam. 

I said “hello,” my voice shaky and hollow and reverberating. I looked back for Noam for moral support, to put a little confidence in my stride but Noam was nowhere to be found. All that is in his place is a cold Heineken, presumably from the case we brought on the counter top, freshly popped. Thanks Noam. 

"You must be Paul" said a bearded man sitting kind of hunched and pensive, no doubt heavily intoxicated. He was dressed in a gaudy pink shirt that was designed to look like wallpaper circa late 1970s or early ‘80s.

"I've heard lot about you but never seen or met. Hmm.. Noam tells me lots about you. Would you like a slice of double chocolate birthday cake? I apologize, there is no napkin in which to take it. Perhaps a piece of toilet paper. Perhaps you can just bare hand it. Bare hand it, ha. Perhaps." He took a single bite and turned quickly towards his laptop. He continued for the next 5 minutes to chat with me and the others in the room, not with words but with images he found on the Internet, projected on the walls of the kitchen, all manipulated in some way, things grotesque and pseudo spiritual but also kind of meant to be humorous I think: Two morbidly obese women with crosses and Ak47s [the ak47s of course superimposed by Atto's own hand probably]. A picture of a woman with a crack pipe kneeling down before a priest, with a thought bubble pasted above her head which said something to the effect of "the things I do for you oh Lord HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!” A picture of himself with a body builder's body holding a bar vertically sans weight and other things of such nature. Interspersed between every image were words that I think were meant to be subliminal, in caps “WE-THE-NEW-INHERITORS-OF-EARTH.”

Atto with a half smile, after every three or four images, looked around the room to gain approval, always ending his slitted, red eyed stare on me. He kept it there for an awkward length of time every time, and for a longer period of time than he gave the others at which he glanced, which I think was meant to make me feel special or to intoxicate me in some way but aroused little other than already awkward feelings and began in me the intense desire to escape quickly and unseen without so much as another word. 

After quickly consuming my beer I needed to use the bathroom. I looked around the room to see if anyone noticed that I felt awkward and was about to depart for good.

Atto was intense in conversation with a very pretty young woman with black hair. He was mumbling what seemed to be complete babble, something about the taste of tree sap, and the gentleness of her kisses. In between words he fed her grapes and pieces of chocolate. 

It was time. Time to urinate, and ultimately time to leave. 

I went quickly to the bathroom so as to make my impending exit as direct & non-chalant as possible. 

The bathroom was littered with Sci Fi paraphernalia: magazines, pill bottles, comic books, what looked to be empty blood collection sample bags, posters, novels, action figures, taxidermy certificates, dollar store trinkets. 

The soap was contained in a plastic dispenser meant to be shaped like a character probably from some HG Wells novel, or actually M.A.S.H now that I think on it more, which doesn't make as much sense given the contents of the rest of the room.

The soap smelled like a purple freezy. I decided to use it but made a mental note to wash up immediately upon arrival home, as there was no possible way something that smelled like a sugary purple Freezey could actually clean my hands.. I lathered and rinsed them, dried them and finally made my way back into the living room. 

It seemed to be much later in the evening when I entered that final room.. almost as if 3 or 4 hours had passed.

There was no science however behind the inference, it just simply felt like some time had passed without me. Noel was sprawled out on the couch with his socks off getting his temples massaged by an older pretty woman who was whispering something inaudible and mantra-esque. 

"Where you goin' man? It's just gettin' started" Noam said in a high pitched voice, higher than I’d ever heard him speak. High enough that it could have actually been his elderly woman friend. "Did you talk to Atom?" He said. 

"Yeah. He's nice. Atom?" 

"Atto. He asked if he could lend you a book before you left. I said yes. He chose it though so I don't remember what it is called. It is called... I don't know what the title is. I think just a bunch of stories from this guy... Borhayyys?" He slurred out the rest of the sentence, but it was something attempting to describe the style and contents contained within the book.

 “He said to let you know it was nice to see you finally and to meet you. The book is on top of your shoes actually, in the porch area. Remember man- happiness is all around you. I'm high as a fuckin kite!" 

"Ok. Sure. Yeah.. I'm gonna go. I just feel a bit too drunk I think. My stomach is all fucked up. I'll call you." 

"I have dreamed your image” His elderly woman friend said softly to me I think, but looking only at Noam and continuing to massage his temples. She pressed her lips against his neck. 

"OK, sure." I replied not really caring who she was talking to in the end, just wanting to just get out of the building at this point.

I grabbed my coat and headed for the door, something reminiscent of or probably actually 'Bitches Brew' by Miles Davis played on the stereo in the room behind me. 

I reached down for my shoes. Sure enough there was a black book of "collected fictions" by Borges. I picked it up and held it between my knees while tying my shoes.

I didn't want to take it. I thought against it. But again, some ominous overwhelming feeling clouded my better judgment. 

I slipped the book into my knapsack and left the house without another word. 

The next day I turned on the television to see that there was an explosion in the area of town that Atto lived which involved "suspicious dealings gone awry. Yet to be identified 20 somethings and space worship". I found it kind of comical, the quote, keeping in mind the possible dire truth that lay behind it all. 

I called Noam’s answering machine and left a message asking if he'd heard or seen the news, in hopes that he simply had, or just to hear his voice, which in turn would mean that he wasn't part of the yet to be identified death toll. There was no answer. 

I thought of the Borges book in my knapsack. I quickly retrieved it and opened it to find that all the pages were torn out and replaced with what looked to be a will with a vast sum of money left to me. Underneath that a photo of Atto on a boat in the Caribbean with an AK47 and a quote that had been cut and pasted in the white of a cloud above Atto's head, which I later learned was taken from one of the pages of that same Borges novel which Atto destroyed: 

Ergo, God exists. 

The phone rang. I picked it up