The Last Christmas On Earth

EPISODE IV-7

The boy stopped a few steps away, determined to shoot in case she wouldn't give up, but it was enough for her to go back to look at him a little more intensely and make him feel at her mercy again. His arm began to bend and his wrist rotated as if they were moved by a will of their own; Yuri immediately understood what was happening and tried to loosen his grip on the stock to let the weapon fall. But his hand did not want to open, his fingers gripped the butt of his gun and he found himself aiming his gun at his temple, completely terrified. The index finger began to caress the trigger of the gun and he could not remove it from there, an imperceptible movement under the balaclava informed him that a cruel smile had just bloomed on the woman's face and it made him feel like dead. He could not have said how long he had stayed like that, suspended between life and death and sunk into the most absolute panic, but when he swallowed, thinking that his hour had come, his arm suddenly relaxed and he felt it like a dead weight. The weight of the gun gave a tug to the finger resting on the trigger, firing, the explosion echoed in a thousand echoes in the rooms with very high ceilings. The bullet bounced off the marble floor and splashed away shattering a leg of the museum's founder Jaroslav Kusov, and immediately after the deafening noise of the alarm began to screech in all the rooms. Yuri knew he wouldn't have a second chance, he dropped his gun and ran to the keypad to type in the password that would free him from that nightmare. The front door opened and the woman, after giving him a last sneering smile, disappeared into the black of the night. Immediately afterward Yuri silenced the alarms and sat in despair in his seat, closed the book of Applied Chemistry and waited for the arrival of the police, convinced that no one would have ever believed his crazy story.

Thinking back about it, Andy realized that soon that would have been a bad day. He had noticed it at the end of the first cigarette when he had nipped the butt to throw it into the manhole. Instead of falling straight into the loophole, as usual, it had bounced off the edge a few times, then rolled along the notch toward the crack, but instead of falling into the void it had stopped against chewing gum, chewed by who knows who and spit out there just for spite. At that precise moment, the negative escalation had begun. He had lost the subway and had been late for work; to catch up he had made a good cut and his anger had caused him a great headache. At the end of his working time, he had discussed with the restaurant owner because a customer had complained about a steak that was too raw, he had reacted by reproaching his back wages and then he had told everyone to f**k off. On his way home he had quarreled with the metro inspector because he had lost his ticket and he wanted to find him, so he ran away and decided to walk home. He had wandered for a while in order to get rid of his anger until he had been caught in a downpour, then he had holed up in a bar while he waited for it to stop and when he returned home in the late afternoon he had not found Deborah.

On the other hand there was a letter attached to the refrigerator with some adhesive tape.

"It would certainly have been easier to leave in silence, but there are too many things that I kept inside for too long and it's not fair that I continue to swallow them. I know in the end that this letter will be useless, but at least I will have succeeded in blowing off some steam. I know that as soon as you finish reading this sheet you will tear it to pieces, then you will begin to destroy everything next to you, thinking that I am only a b***h. Thinking that I, like everyone in this world, don't understand you. Afterward, you will get drunk and you will continue to get drunk night after night, always coming back later from work because you have been walking around the pubs and you will wake up cursing the headache and your loneliness. Until one day, when you will find another helpless person who will give you confidence, for some time you will make her feel like a queen until she'll get bored too, then you will start your usual game again. You will begin to be frustrated and you'll play the victim again and you will neglect it, in order to commit only to your selfishness. You won't change, you will never change. You will not change the world because you are not able to change yourself first, but above all, you will change neither one nor the other because in the end you do not give a damn ... and then f**k you, I hate you! I hate the way you crush cigarettes, which always leave a wisp of smoke because they are never completely turned off, I hate your sloppy sense of style when you surrender, I hate your way of talking and your attitude. I hate even the way you press the elevator buttons as if even that small gesture had to hide who knows what incredible magic. And I don't want to see your face never again! f**k you, Andy Bayler. f**k you! Deborah".

Andy could not say how many times he had read that letter, he only knew that while doing so he had smoked so many cigarettes that smoking one more would have made him sick, and he had been drinking so much that an extra glass would not have made him any effect. Certainly, at that very moment she was crying on the shoulder of some of her friends, probably the very next morning she would ring the bell to make him open it because she had left the keys on the kitchen table. Unlike Deborah's predictions, up until then, Andy had managed to control his anger, if only to give her that satisfaction, and he had even tried a self-examination in order to understand how much truth there could be in that letter. After all, that was the story of his life and he was repeating it to infinity. The protagonist was always him, each time the co-stars and extras changed, but the film always ended in the same way. New job, new enthusiasm, new girl, then boredom, depression, alcohol, arguments, and finally loneliness. And each time, his belief that the world was all wrong came out stronger. He had continued to think long and loudly, between drinking and smoking, until it was time to draw conclusions. If apparently there was no place in the world where he could live happily with someone, was the problem really the world?

In a glimmer of extreme honesty, he wondered if by chance wasn't right Deborah, if the wrong one wasn't really him. He proposed to analyze the events of the last months with detachment as if it were not his life but that of someone else, and something moved at the bottom of his soul. After all, he told himself, she had only asked him to continue making her feel important. Some of his beliefs immediately began to crumble; then he realized he was frightened that he could not afford the luxury of losing the only point of reference he had, that is his own Ego.

"f**k you, Deborah!" Was his verdict, after which, as expected, he tore up the letter and began to destroy the objects around him. When he finally calmed down he went out and walked without a clear goal, driven only by the desire to enter as many pubs as he could have visited before he was really useless. Proceeding step by step he found himself on the top of Caelian Hill, and at a certain point, he began to feel a bad sensation. He realized that he had really drunk too much and that it was time to go home, so he sat on a low wall waiting to recover a little and stared at the marvelous spectacle of the Colosseum, illuminated from below. Due to the darkness and the distance, the silence and the alcohol, the Flavian Amphitheater seemed brand new. He thought of those men who until a few centuries before had faced angry lions on that sandy oval, armed only with a spear or a knife. He wondered why he couldn't find even a shred of that courage to face himself and the world and came to the conclusion that perhaps he was simply born in the wrong age. When he reached his home, he opened the door full of graffiti. Entering the entrance hall he cast a distracted glance at the mailbox and noticed the flap of a bulky envelope that came out of the top slot. At first, he thought it was an advertising flyer and decided to leave it there, then he looked better through the protective plexiglass and noticed that the envelope came from the United States. Finally, perhaps, good news. He took the envelope and climbed the stairs two by two. Entering the house, he poured himself a glass of brandy and lit a cigarette, then, not finding the scissors, tore the envelope impatiently and sat down on the armchair. When he read the first few lines he hardly believed it, it seemed that one of the millions of job applications he had sent over the years had been successful. It was the invitation to participate in a selection aimed at covering a position at the military airbase of Nellis, better known as Area 51. He suddenly stopped reading and ran excitedly to rummage in all the drawers in search of his degree in Physics, found it under a pile of automotive magazines and looked at it for a long time, thinking that perhaps the reward had finally arrived after so many years of study and of sacrifices. On the wings of enthusiasm he picked up two or three objects from the floor to put them back in place, then he went to spill the almost empty brandy bottle into the sink and finally placed his università degree on the table in the hall. Then he picked up the letter and when he had finished reading it again he let it fall to the ground disappointed and lit another cigarette, already regretting having thrown the brandy bottle because it was the last one.

Now only the gin remained, and he just didn't like it. Someone had bothered to even write to him from the United States to offer him a simple, disgusting job as a cook ... Monkey business! But he knew that, in spite of everything, he would take the first useful flight to the United States and he would go to the selection with the intention of winning it. At that precise moment, he realized once more that he hated that profession at least as much as he loved it because it had always been at the same time his freedom and his prison. He meditated for a long time and finally decided it was time to go home. As he had done millions of times before, he imagined a new life and smiled.

Thanks to the impalpable light offered by the full moon, that evening the temple of Quetzacoatl in Teotihuacan emanated magic from every single one of its millenary stone. The Avenue of the Dead and the stairway of the temple were lit by hundreds of coarsely roughened beeswax candles. The flames were swaying driven by the breeze that spread in the air the good smell of figs and almond blossoms; not far away, the leaves of the coconut palms rubbed each other, creating a sweet and poignant melody. On the top of the stepped pyramid dedicated to the supreme god, next to the sacrificial altar it was placed the great Sunstone that served as a calendar. It had been carved in a block of circular granite and in front of that stone they gathered together that evening Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun, Teteo Innàn, mother of the gods, Tlazoteotl, god of fertility, and all the other gods of the Aztec sky, impersonated by priests who wore white robes and wooden masks depicting their features. Teteo Innan nodded, all the gods settled on the sides of the altar and began to recite their monotonous ritual litany in ancient Nahuatl language. Hearing that sweet chant, Ivan opened his eyes and for a few moments found it hard to understand what was happening, enraptured by the marvelous vision of the starry vault and by all those pure and inebriating smells, he got his questions dropped. Looking at the sky from that height, with nothing else around him, it almost seemed to be part of it. Immediately after, however, the rough and icy stone of the monolith gave his neck a sense of unease that ripped him abruptly from the magical feeling of a dream that had enveloped him initially. He realized that he was no longer in his hotel room and tried to remember how he got there; he failed and thought it might be a surprise arranged by his Susan. But how could she, alone, have taken him there? And then where was she? The sensation of muffled numbness he had felt upon awakening had already completely disappeared, he had now returned fully alert and master of all his senses. He began to perceive more clearly the nursery rhyme recited by the priests, his discomfort suddenly increased to trespass in fear and then he tried to get up, but he discovered that he couldn't take control of his own body. He did not feel his arms and legs, he felt like his body just ended at the base of his neck.