INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1

INITIUM
NOVUM:

Part
1

[Disclaimer: This is not the
full novel.

This portion is only the
first of three parts.

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(The heaviest burden)…

What, if some day or night, a demon were to
come to you in your loneliest loneliness and say:

"This life as you now live it and have lived
it, lonely and miserable, you will have to live it again and
innumerable times afterward; and there will be nothing new in it,
but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and
everything, small or great, in your life will have to return to
you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and
this moonlight between the trees, even this moment, and even I. The
eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down, again and
again, and you with it, a speck of dust!"

Would you throw yourself down and grind your
jaw and curse the demon who revealed this truth? Or will you live,
finally learning to become, to yourself and to your life, the
master of earthly indulgences, to regret nothing and to live every
moment as if it were one you would live again, and, with due
serenity, accept this ultimate eternal loop, living life as an
immortal would, forever and evermore?

~from Nietzsche's The Gay Science,

Casper Greysun transl.

PART 1:

Initium What?

CHAPTER 1:

With his vision fading in and out of focus, he
finds himself waking up at the bathroom mirror. It doesn’t make the
least bit of sense that he’s not in his bed. He has never slept
walked before, so that can almost certainly be ruled out. Weirder
still is the strange unfamiliarity with consciousness that he’s
experiencing. It’s as if he has, just now, awoken for the first
time ever. The memories of his past are with the young man but
they’re blurry and obscure, as if he’s been drinking his whole
life. He knows that he is, yet he cannot recall much
else.

There’s no hang-over causing his minor
amnesia, if it can even be called that. There’s no headache, upset
stomach, or scent of alcohol to suggest that he had been drinking.
Yet, his body is tired and it feels as if he’s gotten no
sleep.

He ponders the possibility that he might have
been drugged? But, no. Who would want to drug him, and towards what
purpose? “No, that just doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbles as he
shakes his head.

Maybe he drugged himself, he begins to ponder
as he stares at the empty bottle of Vicodin on the shelf, near the
toothpaste. The top of the pill bottle sits in the sink, forsaken
and left behind. He wonders if it’s there because of him. Maybe
he’s overdosing at the very moment and doesn’t even know
it.

No… Again, towards what purpose would he drug
himself for? And to his knowledge, Vicodin doesn’t affect the
memory. Still, just to be sure, he checks his heart rate with his
index and middle fingers on his neck, then the inside of his wrist,
and examines his pupils for dilation in the mirror.

“Fuck me,” he says, rubbing his forehead as if
it might joust his memory.

Everything about his life seems normal and in
place. It’s just him. He feels out of place. He knows all of this,
but “fuck him” if it doesn’t feel brand new.

He proceeds to do what he does in the
bathroom, the normal routine, nothing special, nothing fancy.
Heading back to his bedroom, he wonders where it might be at. His
feet, however, never stop moving, never stop taking him to his
room, even though he does not recall its exact location. It feels
almost routine. He passes one bedroom, but does not enter it
because it’s not his bedroom; somehow he knows this without even
knowing that he knows it.

When he reaches his own bed, he lays down but
is drawn back to his feet by a sudden urgency to rise. It’s as if
he has to do something, somewhere to be, but his mind draws
blanks.

It’s probably nothing he concludes, but the
sinking feeling in his chest, so deep that three spatial dimensions
couldn’t explain it, tells him he must move. It gives him the
jitters. He stands there not knowing what to do, as still as the
words on a finished page.

Then something happens.

A sound comes from nowhere.

Calendar.

The sound of an unknown voice reverberates
around him. Feeling the vibration of the air surrounding him, he
obeys the voice. His obedience is not a result of him following the
command intentionally, but a result of the sound frightening him
and placing him in an alarmed and nervous state. He quickly scans
his room, but sees nothing which might have made the noise. After a
minute or two, he finally calms himself down and decides to
disregard the voice he swears he had heard.

“That’s weird,” he says out loud, then stares
off into space. As he dazes out, he notices something on the
wall.

Suddenly becoming aware of a facet of his
life, he walks over to small calendar. It’s posted there in an odd
and out of place way on an otherwise bare wall. Today’s date is
encircled. Inside the square, the word “interview” is
written.

“Oh shit, I have an interview for a job
soon.”

The realization dawns on him in an unusual
fashion, as if it just became so, as if it were an interview out of
thin air.

With that, he readies himself. Much to his
convenience, there’s a neatly pressed suit in his closet.
Unfortunately, the suit is completely unnecessary, but he wouldn’t
know that, he couldn’t know that; unless there was something that
knew it for him.

No suit.

He pauses as he’s dressing himself. For the
second time in a matter of minutes, there’s a voice in the air
which he swears he hears. Seconds of silence go by. The sound he
thought he heard doesn’t recur. He shakes it off, puts the suit on,
and begins to leave.

On his way out the door, he spots an eviction
notice. There’s another note taped to that informing him that he
has a week to produce two thousand and one hundred dollars, three
months of back-rent and exactly half, his half specifically, of
what is actually due. The actual amount is a little over four
grand. The second note, written on a post-it and signed by a “T”
was left there not by the landlord but by the roommate as a blunt
and intentional reminder. This “T” didn’t want his roommate to
forget.

“Here’s hoping I get the job,” he says,
crossing his fingers as if the gesture will help him achieve his
desire. He leaves, embarking on the half mile walk to the nearest
train.

The sky is cloudy and the concrete is wet with
patterns of drizzles. There is a crispness to the air which
suggests that heavy rain is impending.

A man holding a delicious smelling sandwich
walks closely by him; so close that the scent of the toasted
croissant and bacon wafts through the air and tickles his nostrils.
The time on his wrist watch reads 9:05 am. His interview is
scheduled for 10:00 am. Surely, a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts
couldn’t hurt his time, he rationalizes. And he is right, because
it is not the time which the coffee and sandwich eventually
hurt.

A medium vanilla coffee and a breakfast
sandwich later and he is on his way. Too preoccupied with the
tantalizing aroma of the breakfast he plans to consume in a few
moments, he does not notice anything peculiar, not even the man in
a red and black Leatherman jacket sitting near the window staring
out at nothing in particular now. No, instead he continues about
his way, oblivious to the man with the grim look on his face and
the stone-cold glare in his eyes; eyes which had been staring at
him without his knowledge just a moment ago.

Hearing the sound of an arriving train –
possibly his train – he swipes his fare-card at the turnstile and
hustles all the way to the platform, carefully maneuvering his
coffee and sandwich through the waves of oncoming passengers.
Suddenly, there’s a hiccup in his otherwise graceful dodging of
people. There’s a large, round man rushing directly toward him,
oblivious to the path ahead of him. There’s a weird, almost sideway
gait to his rapid footsteps and a constipated look to his face. At
their proximity, even if the big guy were to move to avoid the
collision, there wouldn’t be enough space in the area for an
accident not to occur either way.

He sees what’s coming, he know what happens
next. Once his elbow collides with the fat fellow’s torso, the cup
of coffee in his right hand has one of two destinies: it splashes
him or it splashes the person behind him; that is, should he be
fast enough to move out of the airborne liquid’s path.