“I have Jam,” muttered Rod.
“Jam is only friends with you because I am friends with you. We pity you. He lives by the mantra: ‘keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’ He absolutely despises your guts because you are a narcissist.”
The young man held his tongue and did not spit back a retort as he was apt to do when confronted, and waited for his mind to slow down from the racing thoughts. He looked at the father-daughter couple, and imagined that it was it was his ex-girlfriend, of whom he only dated for a mere two months, half-of which was spent in constant anxiety and the other half in constant argument. His heart picked up speed at the mere suggestion that it was her; at the mere thought that his woman was a few feet away from where he stood on the cobblestone his mind whirled once again like a grey storm. When the old man opposite her looked at him with his cold blue eye, a feature which added to the evidence that it was the woman in question, for her eyes were also blue and icy, he looked away quickly with shame.
Rod rolled his eyes, “Jam and I have been friends much longer than either one of us has known you...” he trailed off, distracted by the sudden images of the brunette woman tormenting his mind.
“Your idea of friendship is completely different to how everyone else perceives it,” Aleku replied in confusion, “including me, because you obviously care about insignificant things like that as though your life is some kind of movie and you’re the main character of it; you care more about the fact that you’ve known us for so long rather than the character of the person in question. Does this not indicate something to you? Does it not indicate that you care more about superficial things that feed your ego rather than accepting people as they are? Fuck, you can’t even accept people as they are because you literally cannot see people as they are. Perhaps to cope with the fact that you were repeatedly rejected by your peers, your guardians – those who were meant to look after you – and so you said to yourself, ‘to hell with it: if everyone is going to reject me then I’ll reject everyone before they can reject me; and what I’ll do is I’ll push everyone away with my behaviour, but because I still need them (though it pains me to admit that I do) I’ll pull them in, focusing only on whether I can succeed in doing so.’ Is this not right, Rod? Is this not why your relationships keep failing? You are a broken man.”
“It is the world’s fault,” said Rod, raising his eyebrows.
“And how has blaming everybody worked out for you? Hm?”
Rod wondered for a moment in confusion, placing a hand to his dripping forehead. “Everybody else just doesn’t understand me,” he said finally. “They couldn’t possibly understand me,” and he grew angrier, furrowing his eyebrows and turning up his nose, remembering the beautiful brunette woman he had lost all those years ago, “you couldn’t possibly understand me.”
Aleku sighed, “Why did I even waste my breath? Seeing your downfall will be even more entertaining. Anyway, about my system: what are your lecturers saying about it?”
“What do you want to know?” Rod hissed, clenching his fists. “Couldn’t you just ask Jam, isn’t he some software programmer or whatever?”
“I can’t get ahold of him. He’s gone off the grid ever since he went AWOL. That hit on the national grid a couple years ago was him I heard down the grapevine.”
“Really?” Rod said exasperatedly. “No way. That was him?”
“I can’t say for sure, but my sources told me he’s apparently apart of some blackhat group operating out of central Manchester; a bunch of leftist radicals underground. He reaches out every couple of years briefly, but that’s it.”
“What went wrong with him?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“I was about to laugh at the irony of the question,” Aleku began, the sound of his teeth sinking into the cigar muffling the speaker for a moment, “but you’re not worth the expenditure of air such a laugh would entail – especially for these big ol’ lungs,” he said with an amused air. “Jam was a secretive man, you know. Ever since...the incident, he’s never been the same. A dark, haunted man; a man with a lot of skeletons in his closet.”
“Skeletons he created,” added Rod bitterly with a slight sardonic smile cast upon his face. “He hated me because I was him; it was like staring into a mirror. I knew it, he knew it, you knew it, and yet you all denied it. If I am narcissist, then so is he. Perhaps that’s why he started calling it me? Because he was simply projecting his own belief about himself onto the person closest to him. He’ll turn up, they always do."
“You can’t be sure about that,” Aleku said.
“You did. You turned up like a stray cat missing his milk-provider,” replied Rod, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
“This is why you don’t have any friends,” sneered Aleku.
“I’ve always been ahead of you lot, anyway,” Rod jabbed back hastily, a hint of sourness in his breathless voice.
“I hate how you think about things, Rod,” cried the businessman, the squeak of a bed betrayed his current location, “I think you’re really, really full of yourself, but you think that you’re not. You are an irritating man-child who refuses to grow up and take accountability. You show glimpses of genius in conversation, and you show truckloads of stupidity in your behaviour. You’re neither the clever man you think that you are, Rod Beasley, nor the victim you believe yourself to be. That’s why I am up here, and you are down there.”
“Being up there requires neither cleverness nor virtue, but stupidity and wickedness,” spat Rod, his heart racing; and he started forward, turning his head towards the seating area as he passed by the brunette woman. His heart could not beat quicker even if it had to, and he felt all the blood drain out of his limbs as he watched the woman slowly turn her head also to meet his gaze over the old man’s shoulder. She was not beautiful.
After a full minute had passed, Aleku coughed. “I don’t have time to listen to you make excuses for your wretched existence, Rod,” he said, “and before I hang up, I want you to give me an idea on how I can get system back to the top of the market.”
“And like I said, why would I help you?”
“You know why you’ll help me.”
“I don’t, Aleku.”
“Maybe you’ll understand if I just get straight to the point. This system must be the only one adopted by the UK government. I have powerful people betting on this, and they have entrusted me to ensure that this happens.”
“Why would I care?” sighed Rod. “Wait, are these people from other countries? You’ve finally realised the value of people from different countries,” he joked.
“Because, Rod, this system isn’t only going to be used for medical purposes.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t say much – you can never be sure who’s listening – but watch out. Do you really think you’ve got nothing to lose? When you walk past that bridge on the way to lectures, do you really think there’s a way out of this?”
“What? What are you talking about?” said Rod confused.
“Oh, well, well; something clever Rod Beasley doesn’t know about. You know, I’ve always been slightly jealous of your mind: it always fascinated me. But now? I’m glad that I’m not you,” teased Aleku.
“Stop talking in riddles,” snapped Rod.
“You’ll find out in due time, Rod Beasley,” said Aleku calmly, “every time we speak I try to educate you on topics that you don’t know about and you brush me off with your condescending attitude. Well, this time I’ve had enough of trying to get through to you through words and arguments. I came to this conclusion after coming across some motivational poster one of my employees put up in the office, which read: ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.’ No, this time I will show you, Rod Beasley. This time I will show you out of your damn wickedness.”
“Where’s this all coming from,” asked Rod.
Aleku laughed. “Money is boring to a man who doesn’t need to work for it,” he said. “I don’t want money. At one point I did even though I had all my bills taken care of by my parents. No, what I want is power. Power is what I want, and I am not afraid of tell you that. You know why? Because you are utterly powerless. But I want to give you what you want; no, what you truly want. Not what you think that you want, but what you actually need.”
“What I need? You can’t give me what I need. What I need is her; what I need is that woman to love me again and be with me again and talk to me again and be my fucking friend again.”
“Oh, I was afraid you wouldn’t say that!” roared Aleku, louder than before. “You are desperate, hm? A desperate man is easy to take advantage of.”