COGNITIVE-DISSONANCE
“… There were voices down the corridor, I thought I heard them say …”Patina’s room
, GITMO
25 NOV 2019. 2100 ETC
…
..
.
Patina’s on her back, in her room, on the bed, music up.
Her smoothly shaved legs cross together against the wall, over the headrest.
Her duck-lips, finger tips, and tippy toes rock along to the song’s guitar solo.
Her little mini cat, Tilcayo, pounces up and over her a few times. Hunting for cuddles, and nestles her neck.
She purrs as Patina caresses her teeny-tiny chin.
A honey-wax candle sets a dim and flickery mood.
Long cast shadows dance to her flame along all four corners of the room and plafond.
An entire wall of dead monitor screens reflect a hint of mischief.
A copper lined memento mori chandelier hangs high up in the middle of the chamber.
She made it herself.
Smiling, she traces the glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars she also stuck to the ceiling.
Sings along melodically.
“Wake you up in the middle of the night, just to hear them saaaaaay”
She gracefully rolls her feet off the bed and sticks the landing.
Puts on a spider-silk bathrobe to cover her skin.
Gently picks up kitty for company.
They sit together at the vanity desk.
She adds to her face product from an über-expensive kit.
Its logo reads,
“Blend in. Be seen.” –By Emma Goldman tech.
She adds lipstick.
And some blush blush.
The song plays,
“mirrors on the ceiling, the pink champagne on ice.”
And she said,
“We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.”
She inserts a fluid cartridge to her needle pen.
It contains a blend of plant and animal neuro-paralyzing agents.
“….they stab it with the steely knives but they just-can’t-kill-the-beast.”
She leans closer to the vanity mirror for a last-second touch up.
A smidge to one eye to balance the eye liner, maintaining her Cleopatra look.
“…we are programmed to receive.
you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave…”
She had asked gunny to meet her at the jacuzzi.
With both his pants and the lights off.
How she always likes it.
She leaves her cat behind the room door as she closes it, promising mommy will be back soon.
Puts a high tech night vision eye patch on.
The music follows her out the room, and down the hallway.
Gunny hears her come in.
Feels her hands over his shoulders behind him in the dark.
He moans in relief, been waiting for a while.
Glad he wasn’t stood up this time.
She asks him the usual as she warms him up.
How’s the wife and kids? What toys did they wish for for Christmas?
Did he really think they were good this year and deserved it?
He plays along, answers, how they could always do more, how his expectations are high, how he didn’t have the same privileges they have growing up.
She goes from that topic and digs deeper into a more intimate area of his life.
“How are you feeling? About the whole, Cassandro thing. Anything on your mind?”
Gunny shakes his head, exhausted.
“That guy’s crazy but… … He does something where…
I guess, it gets you thinking you know? What if.
Who am I when it comes down to it? Do my actions line up with my words? If I’m only human, what does that mean, you know?
…I don’t know… what about you? You coming in?”
Patina giggles seductively, “Yeah baby, he got me thinking also. Give me a minute, gotta find the hanger for this robe, then we’ll be clear hot.”
Gunny imagines her smiling as she always does when she says that.
He’s ready to connect with her, and disconnect from all these thoughts that have him feeling vulnerable, exhausted, and alone.
She’s been observing him.
Knows that he hasn’t been playing his video games or going to the gym lately.
And the final straw, she tracked him using her wi-fi to look up “Parasocial relationships”.
She removes her pen from her pocket and gives him a pinch with the needle behind his neck.
Gunny freezes in place. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t feel his heart.
His thoughts and emotions are running on full revs, on a chassis with no transmission.
Patina’s hands feel warm against his face as she pushes his head deeper underwater.
He couldn’t move to resist, no reflex as the water made its way into his lungs, could not even show a semblance of fighting back.
He thinks back on how he never had control, but did have a choice.
His last thoughts were of guys he waterboarded. At least they could fight back in their restraints.
He was a good Marine. Staff NCO level. Followed orders. God and country. He wasn’t ready and. This. wasn’t. fair.
Patina keeps his head down.
Not because she was afraid he could still be alive, she could never be afraid of him.
More so, a part of her admires her work, while another part criticizes that he was never even a challenge.
She feels a bit of disappointment that he didn’t have that character trait she finds so enticing.
As it’s the only one she respects.
…A moral compass, and a sense of direction…
Satisfied, she removes her eye patch and turns on the lights.
Washes her hands. Double checks her makeup.
Opens her phone.
Her screen displays Cassandro adjusting himself in the interrogation room.
Reluctantly surrendering his hands to the table lock.
Patina smiles, her evening date’s ready. Glad he’s not keeping her waiting.
That would’ve annoyed her.
briiiiiiing, bruuuumb.
The custom elevator ding sounds as its doors split open.
Patina flips the light switch and adjusts her spider silk robe.
Her Hutterite goose down slippers keep her feet dry and toasty as she walks to Cassandro’s cell.
She admires the cave-man drawings on his wall as she helps herself to some of Cassandro’s lamb’s bread.
A man with a spear is surrounded by 4 individuals with arrows aimed at him.
On another side, the paintings depict the spear person and the 4 archers chasing down what looks like a mammoth.
She thinks, “Très magnifique.”
And puts a fat joint in her mouth.
Patina joins her midnight date in the interrogation room, sitting across him on the table and a bit to the side.
Immediately across.
She slips her right foot off its slipper and rests it on Cassandro’s chair, between his legs.
lightly touching him.
She asks for a light.
He shrugs his shoulders.
She unties his belt and loops it around his hands from his elbows to his wrist.
She then helps herself to his bracelet.
“Took me a while to figure out that of course, your bracelet would be functional.
I’m going to go so far and guess that the wood charm is some kind of poison…”
Pins the cloth strand down with the iron cross, and sparks the flint cross over it.
Just as she expected.
The fabric tip ignites, she lights her joint with it and shakes it out.
inhales.
And presses it to Cassandro’s lips for a drag as well.
They both exhale at the same time.
“I got you a gift.”
She puts his Pikachu in his palm.
“Kept it alive for ya. It was quite the handful.
Who gave it to you by the way? Have I earned the chance to ask?”
She keeps her legs closed and robe tucked-in while she speaks with him.
Cassandro smiles. Feeds the Pikachu. It does a digital happy dance.
He feels better being reconnected to it.
“A girl. Long ago, when I was in a UN orphanage.”
She smiles. “There’s always a girl… I’m Patina by the way.
She must’ve been really important. What did you learn from her?”
“…That gods don’t give gifts.”
Patina’s intrigued. “What happened to her?”
“While everyone else was watching Arthur the Aardvark.
She was rpd for the last time and buried by the management officer.”
She shakes her head, “…so evil… What did you do to them?”
“Made stilettos out of the jolly ranchers he used to give us in exchange for favors.
Swissed him with it, and ran away.”
Patina, impressed, asks for more.
“Oh my goodness. How old were you?”
Cassandro solemnly admits.
“Must’ave looked around, 10 to 12…”.
Cassandro is pressed by her finger tips to smoke more.
His face is fixed on the pikachu. He gives it another digi-cookie.
She shakes her head, “The sick things these men can do. Not even animals, cartoons, or morgues are safe from their disease…
…So… He who spies with wary eyes…
What did you think of my animal collection?”
She leans in and looks at his mouth as he speaks.
Cassandro tries to avoid her gaze.
“Something wicked”
“Oh!? What a strange thing to say. What did you see that makes you say that?”
She combs his hair with her finger nails.
“A vampire queen in a kingdom of bloody cages, exploiting the nuances of domestication…”
Cassandro shakes his head at her in disgust.
“…you’re indulging in some sweet spot where zoochosis, money, and learned helplessness intersect.
…I find it creepy and pathetic.”
She smiles. “So you saw my cute little capuchins with the grapes?”
He adds,
“And also your macaws with the metal washers. They, also, don’t like your fkd up parasite games.”
Patina is unphased. She’s excited to speak to someone who can actually understand what she does.
“My favorite are the wolves.
The domesticated dogs don’t have initiative.
The wolf, on the other hand, keeps tackling the problem until it gets its results. Especially as a family. The hunters, always, outsmart their prey.
I guess some of us are built to be apexes, like wolves.
And others, are simply born to serve their roles as house pets. What do you think of that?”
“I think you should’ve taken more intimate notes from your omnivores.
You had a rat in a trap-cage. The rat outside of it ignored chocolate trying to free it.
Are you going to let a rat have more empathy and pro-social responsibility than you?
She splits another drag with him.
“We’ve both got a bloody past that got us to where we are today. We’re not that different. You’re not better than me.”
“Using violence to defend against monsters like you is exactly what makes me better than you.
The guns and knives aren’t the bad guys. It’s the psychos with the wrong superiorities… …in bath-robes.”
Patina rolls her eyes, nudges his inner thigh with her foot.
“…you’re fighting a hydra. Don’t you get it? If you can’t beat em, join em.”
Cassandro looks to the dying flowers and healthy mimic vine next to it,
“Cut the heads. Seal the stumps. Go for the heart….
it’s a team effort.
If you’re so apex, would it kill you to join the family friendly side?”
She nods her head, sways her legs together on the table… …
“I know about the golden rook.” She chuckles, “Can’t believe you sewed it to a boot sole. You’re looking for my little step-bro, Darvok.
He’s been dying to play with you. He’s held back because I needed to check you out first… …which is over, by the way.”
She looks at him, admiringly,
“I can see what he meant by how dangerous you were.
It’s your speed at…” She bites her lip at him, “inseminating the moral ego… but in the end–“
She leans her shoulders together, and reasons,
“–Nobility like me exists, because the humans wish us into existence.
They want to feel like they can have the option of being us.
If they didn’t, they would’ve already done something about it, right?”
She mocks, “Pray tell, how does an Übermensch like you view people?”
Cassandro sucks his teeth.
“As survivors… …with uncomfortable choices, beyond dilemmas. I guess what should be said is… …you don’t have to be anti-social bat-sht crazy Patina.
You can be the good kind of guano, the kind that fertilizes growth.”
Patina snorts, “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me”, and laughs.
Her legs loosen and swing back and forth some more..
“I uh… …hear what happened to one of your soul mates… She must have been quite the catch, to almost kill Darvok and all is quite something really…
…so, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but. I knew a guy, and for all his faults and grandeur, one thing always stuck out to me about him.
He’s the only guy I know who wouldn’t accept gravity as defined.
He insisted that it’s not about objects and their mass attracting. Instead.
It’s that the space objects occupy, that very same space wants it all to collapse right back to its center. He explained it like a balloon. As you inflate, you can feel the outside pushing the space back in.
And the inside pushing the outside in. And something about rotations momentum inertia… …He was a silly old coot, so many layers to him.
Yet, that’s the only thing I can genuinely remember him by…
His name was Kupfer.
Your communication got through to his social circle. Some nobody security guard did him in, with no regrets… “
She wipes a tear off, “Congrats, you did it. You put the fear back in us.”
She swings her legs gently apart, slightly further.
It’s been a while since she’s felt something real, and relishes the smell of irony and helplessness coming from him.
She fantasizes a connection between them that he can’t appreciate.
Convinces herself that she owns him, and feeds off of his rebellion.
She reaches down and removes Cassandros prosthesis.
Whispers.
“I guess what makes you so dangerous is what makes you so damn becoming”
Looks him in his eyes as she plays with it between her fingers.
Cassandro looks away and stares at the parts of his cell visible past the door.
Enraged. Emotionless.
Repulsed.