’Cause all my life is wrapped up in yesterday
No present or future here
I see your name's going astray
But I still fall in your dream

Perplexity is an interesting human reaction. Its definition: ones inability to understand and deal with something complicated and unaccountable.

It is the normal reaction when our brain cannot process an information deemed too complex for its intellect. Yet it can occurred in simple cases such as a meteor falling on you or someone suddenly becoming friendly.

I looked at my name on top of the result board, wondering if it was maybe a mistake, but when my teacher came to congratulate me, I couldn’t deny it: I ranked number one.

I was certain I had flunked. Unable to concentrate since the transfer, my brain had run on blank mode and unwanted flashbacks. Yet, somehow in that second state, I made it. And I couldn’t understand why.

But I apparently was the only one because the rest of the day was a procession of praises from the school and the center staff, all hailing the efficiency of their program, in a disturbing complacency. I remember listening to the chairman going on about his work finally paying off and rejoicing over our reputation boost, while offering me a cupcake. Swimming in his beige robes, he was squirming around his desk, excitingly, alternating between polishing his messy grey hair and stuffing his mouth with the rest of the pastries.

“I really made the right choice with you,” he said while walking me to the door. “This is good for business. Great work, Brian.” He patted energetically on my shoulder and closed the door to give some calls.

His compensation cupcake still in hand, I heard his high-pitched voice through the door, pompously reporting to one of our benefactors the “wonderful” news. The pinkish frosting was melting on my fingers, losing of its cuteness as fast as the chairman’s exhilaration was increasing in the other room.

If it wasn’t for my reluctance to waste food, I would have throw the sugary bomb away. There was a young girl, with colorful pearls in her hair, moping near the window. She was distracted by the street life outside and didn’t see me approaching. “Do you want a cupcake?” I startled her. She looked at it, suspiciously, probably wondering why I was offering her one out of the blues. “They give me one, but I don’t like sweet stuff,” I clarified. This seemed to suffice her. She took it, with sparkles in her eyes. The pastry was definitely suiting her more than me.

I returned to my room and lay down on my bed, empty. The day had become surreal in such a short time, it was hard to put an emotion on it. Pushing my glasses on my forehead, I covered my eyes with my hands and played with my phosphenes until I hurt. Watching the gold ring disappearing from my sight, I rubbed my face to release some pressure. My fingers were sticky.

Some frosting had dried on it. I licked it. It was outrageously sweet, artificial and nauseating. “Just like his words,” I muttered out loud, looking at the ceiling. Now what?

What was my next move? I still had potential brawl pending on me, less time than ever to come up with something and a sleep quality turning my brain into S'mores. I couldn't think straight but I was pretty sure getting such a high score wasn’t going to help. The plan was to get a good position and sail smoothly, not to take a freaking speed boat and crash it in the marina. Somewhere, I felt I had fucked up but I was too tired to measure how much exactly. This isn’t good, isn’t it?

I fell asleep before I got the chance to answer that question. 

I let my bed take me away but as I was escaping, the blanket under me, usually stiff, became soft and moist, like a protecting coat of cream. Intrigued, I looked down. I was laying on top of a giant red velvet cupcake.

The carmine frosting was burying me up to the hips, the ground sucking me in, like quick sand if I stepped forward. I looked around searching for an exit but the edge seemed to expand wherever I put my eyes on, until all I could see was an endless sea of red icing standing in starless sky. 

“Good Brian” I suddenly heard the chairman’s voice above me. “Have some more.” I lifted my head searching for the man and saw some red thick liquid appearing in the air, slowly building up and finally falling on me like a waterfall. It dug me further in the cake, forcing me to wiggle to keep my heads afloat. But the thick substance was plugging my nose and mouth. I gasped.  It was slimy and no longer smelling like chocolate and artificial berry. That stench. Like rot and metal. Something strong and animal. I knew the perfume. I smelled every time I cleaned the toilets and got the trash out when we had meat. I smelled it when I slept in the street and when I last walked down the corridor of my school. “I have to leave!” I thought as I struggled to stand up.

I felt something near my leg and stopped moving. After a short hesitation, I plunged my hands in the goo and, despite my consciousness yelling to not take it out, I did. It resisted at first, and became heavier and heavier as I was pulling on it. Then, using all my strength, I gave one brutal stretch and I took out some hair. Black, long, glued together, dripping of red. Then a head, and a torso. In the end, I was holding an entire body. A woman. She had no face. No nipple. No genitalia. She was just an empty generic human body, like clean sheet waiting to be filled. A mannequin made of flesh, covered with jelly frosting reeking of musk, excrement and blood. In gurgling, a second body, a man, emerged next to me, followed by another one. Then two more on my left. Five. Ten. I blinked and the dozen became a hundred. Corpses surfacing like dead fishes in a poisoned sea. Male, female, old, young, faceless and sterile. Floating around me, with no identity. And I was standing in the center of the carnage.

The woman I was still holding, suddenly moved and grabbed my arms. On her face, a cross formed like a black whole, cutting her flesh all the way through. With a titanic force, she pushed me down as I resisted and smelling me, she growled with a distorted voice: “Here he is!”

The sea fluttered, stretched then raised up, forming a wall around us and dragging the bodies like foam on its surface. I saw the woman's cross opened up like a maw, drooling black like a starving animal. She gobbled my head before the world fell on us.

What’s my name?

I opened my eyes. Outside, the sky was dark. I look at the time. It was past curfew time. Obviously I missed diner. I sighed. I turned on the light and grabbed a book, as Adla’s voice continued to echo in my head.

Another night where I wouldn’t sleep.

Being first in something was a strange position to have. Like being the first to dig into a giant buffet. Everyone is forced to look at you, curious to see what will take but hoping you won’t pick what they want, and rushing you to have their turn. If you go the obvious, they will say you are unoriginal. Take the limited item and you will be selfish. Like the healthy food, you will be boring. But go for the unpopular one and you will be called weird and disgusting. 

Junior internships were a shaggy practice allowing adult to make money on our back. In exchange of a free training, little businesses were getting cheap labors. And parts of benefit would go in the pocket of the center. We, all we were getting were credits for our majority. Not actual money that we could touch once adult, but an estimation of a loan we could get. And the higher were our credits, the lower our payback interests would be. For many, it was more than ones could hope for. 

But, yes, it was a scam. Using us as bait and catch. It was like promising a meat cow to free her if she agrees being milked. Normally, I didn’t want any part in that game. But now, I was quarterback. I needed to play subtle, if I wanted to stay on the bench, while still giving the impression I was allowing the team to mark points.

But I couldn’t sabotage the job. If the employer was unhappy, the center would be suffering from it, and the fault would fell on me. So I had to choose  a single post, to avoid being isolated with someone trying to skin me alive. Something that nobody wanted, to avoid making envious. Something easy yet busy enough to keep my brain occupied and my ass covered. It shouldn’t have been hard. But it was without counting the chairman’s greed.

Despite Magdad being a shit hole, there was still some upper ground business running. One in particular was thriving. Nope, not drug. Construction.

It was booming as fast as buildings were being blown to parts. The biggest in town was Miller Construction. Whenever there was a police intervention, a Miller contractor would always lurk around. True, business is just business, but seeing them crawling toward disaster like rats on a dead body always had me think that some legal businesses belonged in the same bucket as any underground activities.

Ordinarily, our internship options were tapping in the bottom of the societal barrel. So, of course, excitement arose when it was announced that the Miller Group had suddenly decided to open its door to us for the summer. But the CEO, like a VIP, said he would personally pick his own team among the applicants. So we had to earn the place by gaining his favor first. “That’s how the interview works, after all” giggled our nincompoop chairman, without realizing he had just set fire in a flour silo. Center kids’ rivalry was spicy. But their competition mode was something rather ugly to watch, even more to go through.

Sustaining on his momentum, that covetous clown convinced himself and everyone, I was going to go for it. His face collapsed when I applied for the janitor post at a medical laboratory. “I guess this is good too,” he said visibly disappointed. “I guess,” I replied, clearing the room to head for my laundry shift, too happy to be done with it

On my way out, I saw Jeremiah with his application file, followed up by a dozen of other persons. Amazing what lure of profit can trigger on people. All year long, they just get by doing their own wild thing, saying they didn't care about the program, but give them a glimpse of potential gain, and everyone turn upside down in hope to scrap something for themselves.

Our eyes met, and guessing from his nervous breathing and way of licking his distorted lips, I was still triggering a visceral reaction in him. I felt his gaze burning a hole in my head as I left the hall. Somehow, I could still feel it, while folding a pile of underwear.

The next day, during breakfast, one of the staff came to me with a note. It was a confirmation that Mr. Miller would interview me when he would visit the center. I looked at the letter, chocking on my porridge. “Mother fucker!!”

I rushed in the chairman’s office, to ask him if he had smoked his freaking cupcakes, but the man welcomed me with even more groveling than before. He told me he was pleased that I had changed my mind and was certain Mr. Miller would be impressed by me. Oblivious of my fuming humor, he gave me a cookie, calling me Stephan, and gleefully returned to his affair like a ballerina on speed, leaving me hanging with the desire to shove his dog treat somewhere else than in his mouth.

The pigeons at my window feasted that day.

When everybody heard that I was among the four kids that would be interviewed by Miller, there was no room in the center I couldn’t go without sensing someone’s eyes on me. Sometimes I was hearing insults coming from nowhere. I would turned my head to see who was speaking, but just found busy little bees minding their own business. I tried in many occasion to change my application back to what I initially requested, but I was told it would be impolite to turn down the meeting. “Plus what a waste it would be, Rian.”

Miller was a slender white bloke with a black goatee and the expression that he was sliding above everyone’s problems, like a bird shits on the world. The privilege of success. 

We didn’t get along. At all. I made sure of it. And seeing the chairman’s decomposing from pure horror as the interview went by, I was nailing it. As for Miller, I could sense his predatory instinct sharpening every time I was running my mouth wide or screwing up one of his tests. Give me a cube and I'll put it in the triangle hole. I don’t remember how we got there, because it didn’t matter to me, but at one point, we were discussing the merit of doing his business versus being a mobster. “Gangs are this society’s parasites. They are the reason why we live like that!” puffed up Jafar. I tilted my head and calmly said “Gangs can survives without you. But your business depends on them. So who’s the real parasite?”

The chairman pushed a scream before I finished my sentence. He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out. I will spare you the lecture I was given but part of me was actually extremely satisfied. I received a full month of detention and cleaning duty for not being able to remove the smugness of my face as I watched the tiny man fuming his entire sugar reserve in front of me.

That night I slept soundlessly. No corpse trapping me. Just the sound of the rocking waves taking me slowly into a deep blue sea. My hair in the wind, I was feeling good, knowing that I left all of this behind me. Someone else would earn the post, I was going to be locked in the center all summer, an environment I had under controlling. I was in for a peaceful ride, after all.

But the thing with sailing is that you always depend of the water flow, and when you expect it the less, thinking you have everything in hands, one big wave will just sneak attack you and send you crash on the seashore.

Of course, I didn’t get the position. Not after the show I pulled off. The post went to someone else. However, following my outstanding performance, Miller decided to take me as his personal assistant. 

Never underestimate the sadism of loan shark. 

I looked at my boat, broken in pieces on the beach, while behind me the city was rising, like smoke into the sky. Slowly walking out of the salted water, Adla, appeared in her war outfit, glitching like a broken screen. Her bleeding empty face pointed in my direction, she approached me and grabbed my hand. I looked at her and once more, she asked me what was her name. Her voice was soft. Almost sad. Inside my palm, she placed a cupcake. I let go of her and bite into the sweet as she scattered away in millions of red shards. 

“Trust me, Darling. Names are overrated.”

The cake tasted like blood.