THE ROOF OF THE TACHYCARDIA TOWER
Charlie stood on the roof the Tachycardia Tower, looking west, one hundred storeys above Metaphoria. He counted six people flying. There was clearly a sea monster in the harbour. He found it hard to take his eyes from the flaming tall ship sailing down the main street. The primary geographic feature of the north end was a mountain, with roads and houses wrapped around it and an incredibly vulvic cave entrance on the south side. As one would expect, there was a tall phallic tower, complete with slight curve, rising above the south. There were so many wonders that Charlie couldn’t look away, which is why he didn’t notice the path of the Cyclops’s fist until it connected, with grace and intention, with his left eye.
It was not the hardest punch the Cyclops had ever given him: Charlie rose upward, but not that far. As he fell back down, the Cyclops caught him. Holding Charlie by the lapels of his purple velvet jacket, the Cyclops walked to the edge of the Tachycardia Tower and dangled him over.
‘Wanda left me this morning. Did she tell you?’
‘I haven’t heard from her.’ Charlie resisted looking down. ‘I thought she was trying to fight the zombie clones of her old boyfriend.’
‘Are you surprised that she left me?’
‘Fuck you,’ Charlie Waterfield said.
The Cyclops was not so impressed.
‘Fuck me?’ The Cyclops shook Charlie vigorously. These efforts had the opposite effect of what the Cyclops intended: the more the Cyclops shook Charlie, the more Charlie laughed.
‘What do you want me to say?’ Charlie asked. ‘I didn’t know you were with her when we met. Obviously, I either ignored or suppressed the signs that she was married. I will admit that. But doesn’t the fact that she slept with me say something? Doesn’t the fact that she fell in love with me say even more? Come on! Where’s your self-respect? Where’s your self-preservation? Where are your standards? Why do you want to be with a woman who doesn’t want to be with you?’
‘She does want to be with me.’
‘Not for the right reasons.’
The Cyclops started shaking Charlie even harder. His body flopped around like he’d been deboned. His head bounced in unpredictable ways. His right shoe came off. Charlie and the Cyclops watched it fall. The ticking grew louder as the shoe got smaller. At the sixty-seventh floor, the shoe was so small they couldn’t see it anymore. The same was not true for the ticking, which remained loud in Charlie’s ears. Inspired by the poetics of the falling shoe, Charlie had an epiphany. He waited to smell burning cedar and see purple smoke. Neither of these things arrived, so he decided to share the epiphany with the Cyclops.
‘The failure isn’t when love ends. It’s refusing to accept that it’s gone.’
‘You’d like to believe that, wouldn’t you?’
‘I know it to be true.’
‘Wouldn’t that be nice if it were. It would make everything so easy.’
‘Accepting that love is gone is no easy task.’
‘That’s because you’re a coward. And that gives me comfort,’ the Cyclops said. ‘To know that you will never be brave enough to love Wanda Parks. Not fully. Not with passion. Every day you will have to live with this. Every day you will be forced to confront the truth that a woman as wonderful as Wanda Parks has fallen in love with you, but you are too fearful to love her back. You will pretend that you love her with all your heart, but your heart is cowardly. Eventually, you will begin to realize that that’s why she stays with you. That this is the real reason she fell in love with you in the first place, why she continues to love you: because you’re unavailable to her.’
The Cyclops fell silent. He looked Charlie in the eyes as his grip began to loosen.
‘This is going to hurt you very much. And it still won’t be as much pain as the pain you’ve caused in me.’
‘What about your revenge? I’ll never learn that Wanda only loves me because I can’t commit to her emotionally if I’m dead!’
‘Oh, Mr. Waterfield. Have you really not figured out how this place works?’
‘Wait! Wait! Do you still love her?’
The Cyclops stared at Charlie, or rather in Charlie’s direction. The Cyclops’s eye was focused on something invisible and far away. When the Cyclops did look back at Charlie, he had clearly forgotten all about him and was surprised to find someone dangling at the end of his fists. With great power and little care, the Cyclops tossed Charlie away.
Charlie rose upward. He was three storeys above the roof of the Tachycardia Tower when the Unnamed Ghost appeared beside him.
‘Hey, asshole! Pay attention! What are you doing?’
‘I’m … What am I supposed to be doing?’
‘He’s got it, Charlie! That Cyclops has figured it out! You guys are stuck on the same thing! Why do you think he keeps showing up? And he’s done it! You’re missing a chance to free both of us!’
The Unnamed Ghost disappeared. It was at this moment that Charlie realized his name: he was the Ghost of Charlie’s Capacity to Love. Charlie looked down as he continued going upward. He saw the Cyclops sit on the roof, put his chin in his hands, then rub his eyes. The Cyclops was crying. He issued a deep, forgiving laugh. It was unclear who the Cyclops was forgiving.
‘Charlie! It’s so easy! You should do it too.’
‘Do what? Do what?’ Charlie asked.
But Charlie’s question arrived too late. Even though he continued rising upward at an alarming rate, so that he was now the highest object in all of Metaphoria, Charlie could see the purple smoke gathering around the Cyclops as he sat on the roof of the Tachycardia Tower …
Poof!