Chapter 1: Quicksand_Dragon Fruit

Do you recall your purposelessness? It was not one day, or one month. It was years. Years of bare repetition, of floating through a lightless sky, without the spark that separates the living from the dead. It was a lack so deep that it became physical, a buildup of restless hate that was a part of you as much as your heart or lungs. It was not your fault, there was no preventing it. You were born that way. Change was impossible. Only through my intervention, through transformation, did you find purpose. When the end comes, remember this: I am your maker. The world within you was shaped by my hand, and so too, shall it be destroyed.

Generally, David is not the type of person to keep a schedule. He doesn't like the constraining feeling that comes with adhering to blocks of time dedicated to chores or hobbies or sleeping. But, by necessity, his days almost always turn out the same way. They go like this:

At 7:30am, after snoozing eight different alarms, he crawls out of bed, and takes a piss. Most days after waking up he feels nauseous, like there's a moldy piece of bread in his stomach, so he skips breakfast.

By 8:00am he’s dressed business casual and leaves his apartment.

For the next thirty or so minutes, he drives to work. His job is not far away, but traffic rears its monstrous head at this time, as everyone else is on their way to a job they also hate. This commute is a constantly shifting mix between pleasant and head-exploding. Pleasant, because he gets to listen to the Strokes with the cool morning air coming in, and head-exploding when a 2016 BMW sedan cuts in front of him with no warning, forcing him to slam his brakes that screech like an aggravated chimpanzee because they should have been replaced months ago.

He arrives at Macropoint, a chain computer store, at 9:00am and greets a few of his coworkers. For the next 8 hours, he trudges through a tremendous amount of data entry, inventory checks, and phone reception. After three years at the job, he is absolutely positive that he is not very good at it. He frequently sends computer shipments to the wrong addresses, and generates reports based on miscalculated figures. He has no idea why they haven't fired him yet. In order to keep his errors to a monthly basis and not a weekly one, he has to stay as focused as possible. So, while his coworkers in customer service get to chat with each other during downtimes, he remains quietly fixated on his computer screen. During his 30-minute break, he sits on the deserted steps to a side entrance of the warehouse, and eats an ice cream bar while reading a romance novel on his phone. Despite reading these types of novels, he has no desire to be in a relationship. He learned years ago that the memories are never worth the hurt. The rest of the workday contains no surprises or unexpected events, besides potentially an angry customer on the phone, or an angry supervisor lecturing the entire staff.

After work, he could do anything: see a movie, swim at the beach, hike in the mountains, the options are truly endless. He instead chooses to eat at a Thai restaurant, and go home, or go to the grocery store, and go home. The moment he opens his apartment door, the only thing he wants to do is sink into his bed, and pray the covers drown him. It's ridiculous that he feels so tired. He isn't coding for Microsoft or hammering in nails at a construction site. Nor does he work any longer than 90% of the country. Actually, he might even work a bit less. But everyday after he finishes work, it's like he's been sapped of the vital energy required to live.

He thinks he is probably depressed, but he's always been too afraid to see a psychologist and confirm it. When you put a label on yourself, that's what you become, or so he believes. He’d rather operate in the murky, ignorant ambiguity he lives in now.

He ponders this subject—the unfixable traits that make his life worthless—quite a bit. As his eyes scan the frozen food aisle, he still turns the thoughts around, always seeking to put the same broken key in the same broken lock.

He knows what he is looking for, and finds it quickly, a steak and mashed potato meal—easy to make and only mildly disgusting. He drops a few of these in his handheld basket and moves on to the fruit and vegetable section of the store. He’s never been a huge fan of the healthy stuff, but he finds a strange enjoyment in looking at the vibrant colors of apples, lemons, and peppers. They bring a fresh breeze to the little pond of stagnation his life has become.

On this night, a dreary Tuesday with a cold wind that brittles the bones, one fruit in particular catches his eye. A dragon fruit. It is a deep red with sharp green scales that look like they could nick an artery if you aren’t careful. Despite a history of spilling coffee on himself and tripping over his own shoelaces, he feels a fantastic urge to hold the barbed fruit.

He arrives back at his overpriced studio with a grocery bag of three frozen dinners, and one deep red dragon fruit. After putting the dinners away in the freezer, he goes to his desk, dragon fruit and knife in hand. On his laptop he googles “How to eat dragon fruit”. It probably doesn’t matter, but he’s never had one before and he doesn’t want to accidentally poison himself by eating part of it he shouldn't. He slices into the fruit. The tough skin resists the intrusion at first, but eventually submits, smoothly splitting the fruit into two halves. From the images of his google search, most dragon fruits seemed to have white flesh speckled with black seeds. The inside of his is different. Somehow, the flesh is a deeper and even darker red than the exterior. Its black seeds coalesce in curved patterns that swirl and intersect at random, like a vortex of blood.

To him, life had always been a game of choices. He often made the bad ones, but they were his bad choices. He is unsure why, but at this moment, on a day no different than any other, there is no choice. He sinks his teeth into the fruit and swallows the sweet flesh down his throat...

He is being held like a baby. Towering over him are two creatures of impossible size. They have deep red scales and emerald green eyes. The gigantic eyes look at him with the love of a mother and father.