The apartments a mess. I keep meaning to clean it, but between work and family obligations, I can never find the time to do so. I try to focus on work, but I keep being distracted by a pile of old CDs in the corner.
The CDs are from
when I was younger. My parents were old fashioned, so when I asked for music
for my birthdays, they’d always give it to me on a CD. That way, I’d always
have it even if my computer broke, they said. They gave me all sorts of CDs,
mostly from bands I wasn’t really interested in. They could never remember what
was hip, they said. Eventually, I just told them to give me iTunes money.
Strange, the one
on top has a picture of Julius Corvin on it. I don’t remember owning any of his
CDs, I’m pretty sure I was buying my own music by that point. I reach over and
pick it up to see if I can figure out when it was made. On the front is the
title “Life’s a journey”, on the back is a bunch of songs with titles like,
“Old friends”, “Trouble at the office”, and “The Future”. Wait, those aren’t
Julius Corvin’s songs.
Those are my
songs.
“I must say, you
are a truly wonderful songwriter. Never has there been music I was more eager
to steal.”
I leap up and look
around, then see him standing next to me. A man, about as tall as I am, with a
cold, calculating grin. “You’re Julius Corvin!” I say.
He looks at me like
I’m a three-year-old learning the names of colors for the first time. “Why
thank you for noticing. It’s not everyday I come over to the common part of the
world to meet one of my devoted fans you know.”
“Who let you in
here? How did you get here? Why are you in my house?”
He brushes me off.
“Irrelevant.” He says. He walks around the room, checking it out thoroughly,
with a look on his face that suggest he’s just entered a slum. “This place,” He
says derisively, “This, room, if that’s what you want to call it, is truly the
worst place I’ve ever been in in my entire life.”
“It’s called
living within your means. I don’t make millions off my music like you do, I
can’t even get any adds, and thanks to you,” I say, waving the CD case in his
face, “I will never be able to make any money-making music. Then again, I’ll
never make money selling people the belief that they own things they don’t
actually own in such a way that it sets the world on fire, so maybe that’s a
good thing.”
He looks at me out
of the corner of his eye. “Is that meant to be an insult?” He asks.
I pause to think up
a decent response. He continues, “A woman living in a trashy studio apartment
with furniture so old it would be in a museum if it was anything anybody wanted
to see thinks she can insult a man with a fanbase stretching across the globe.
Do you really think I care if you don’t think my actions make me a good person?
Goodness is never worthy of respect. Goodness makes you give up everything you
have, so nobody can say you have more than your fair share. Goodness made you
decide that it was worth spending money you would never have to go to a college
you didn’t want to go to so you could waste your life at a job that makes you
miserable.” He shakes his head sadly, “When I look at you, the very essence of
purity and goodness, the compassionate person who would do anything if it made
people happy, I don’t feel anything but pity for the circumstances that made
you who you are. Just think of how much better it would have been if your
parents had encouraged your bad tendencies.”
I can’t believe
what I’m hearing. “Are you actually Julius Corvin, or are you the devil?” I
ask.
That’s when I
look up and notice the blood red sky, with mountains around us and people
screaming in the distance. “Oh god.” I scream.
“Why are you
invoking his name?” Julius asks me. “You don’t believe in Him. Neither did your
parents. For you there is no god, nobody to look after you in your time of
need, only people who want the world from you but never seem to give back.”
I shout angrily,
“My boss may be awful, but my coworkers are nice. My parents may ask a lot from
me, but they give a lot in return. Janine’s amazing, she’s going to change our
world one day, and Lisa, well, she’ll figure out who she is eventually, and
when she does, she’ll amaze us all.”
Julius looks at me
with one eyebrow raise. He says, “Your boss is awful. You admit as much. Yet
your coworkers don’t seem to be able to stand up to him and tell him enough is
enough. You’ve seen what happens when people quit their jobs. All it would take
would be for you to walk away and convince your coworkers to do the same. Then
your boss would have to change he ways.”
He starts pacing
back and forth. I swear I see steam rising from his footsteps. “Then there’s
your parents. You say they give you a lot, yet they didn’t even give you a
present for Christmas last year.”
“I’m an adult.” I
retort, “And I read online that expecting adults to give presents to each other
is stupid.”
He looks at me. I
sigh and say, “Also, I couldn’t afford to give them anything, so I told them to
put the money they were going to spend into Lisa’s college fund.”
“The fund they are
managing with utmost care, letting it grow into an amount that, when the time
comes, will let her attend Harvard if that’s what she chooses?”
“Lisa doesn’t want
to go to Harvard.” I say, then backpedal, “At least, I don’t think she does.”
“Whether that’s
what she wants or not is irrelevant. If your parents have the money and think
she can get in, they’ll make her apply whether or not she wants to go, and if
Harvard accepts, she’ll have to go even if that’s not what she wants. That’s
what they made you and Janine do, wasn’t it?”
He’s not wrong. I
may be the only person who cheered when she found out Harvard rejected her. “Well,
even if my sister is a complete airhead, she still deserves the best chance she
can get to have a happy life, and if mom and dad have the money to make it
happen, they should try.”
“Indeed, they
should try if they have the money. But, I fear, they don’t have the money to
make it happen.”
I leap up, “You
don’t know that.”
He looks at me the
way a parent looks at a child who’s pet rat has just died, “You remember what
your professor said when you were learning about finance. Don’t trust
investment advisors who say they can do better than the stock market. You told
your father that when he was looking to grow his retirement account. Yet your
father went with him anyway. You keep telling yourself that it was just a
harmless mistake, that your father would never let himself get hoodwinked, yet
here he is, convinced that not only is his youngest daughter a genius worthy of
getting into an Ivy league school, but that he’s so good with money he can make
the same mistakes everyone else makes and suffer none of the consequences. Is
it not possible that he’s doing this because he knows it will devastate you to
learn that you sacrificed everything for your sister to be successful, only to
then have to help pay for her college anyway? Could it be that he’s waiting for
the day to show you just how little he actually cares about you?”
“You don’t know my
dad! He’d never do something like this! He worked as hard as he could to make
sure we had a nice house to live in and could join all the clubs we wanted to.
He was there when I couldn’t pass algebra and needed a tutor. He was so proud
when Janine got into law school, and I got my degree in business. He’s not
evil, if I need anything, he’ll be there for me.”
In response, Julius
points to my left. I turn an old lady, withered and frail, with baggy, wrinkled
skin, and snow-white hair. I gasp, and see her mouth open too. I reach up to
touch her, certain she needs help, then I realize.
It’s a mirror.
It’s me I’m seeing.
I smash it. Glass
goes flying. “I see you can’t handle the truth.” Julius says. He comes over and
puts his hand on my shoulder. “Your job has aged you. You are no longer young,
or pretty. Anyone who looks at you sees somebody so ugly they wish they could
erase them from their mind. Yet you say that your parents would be there if
they needed you. I don’t think they could be less present if they lived across
the ocean.”
I want to clap
back. I want to say that there’s no way it could be this bad. I want to say
that even if I aged one hundred years since this pandemic started, my parents
would still love me. But he’s right. As soon as they could convince themselves
it was safe, they started pushing me to come over for dinner. Even when I had
work, they made me come over for my sister’s birthday. Even though I told dad
time and again to check his financial statements, he told me I knew nothing
about a subject I had to study to get my degree. I know they love me, but at
the moment I’m not sure they care about me anymore than my idiot boss does.
Julius laughs.
“You finally get it. You finally understand that parents who push their
daughter to go to law school could never be good people.”
“Not all lawyers
are bad.” I say.
“True.” Julius
says, “Just enough to taint the whole lot of them. Like how all singers aren’t
evil, just the ones you like to listen to.”
The he laughs. And
doesn’t stop laughing. The ground beneath me begins to shake, then open up. I
fall in, screaming for help, then land. I look around and see the metal bars
surrounding me and the ceiling made of stone. I’m in a cell. I scream and bang
in the bars. Then Julius comes up and grabs my wrist.
“Don’t bother
screaming. Nobody will hear you, and even if they did, I doubt they would care.
You’re trapped here, just like your trapped in your putrid job and your awful
family. You will never escape, things will never get better, you will always be
a prisoner.”
I pull my arm free
and scream at him, “I am nobody’s prisoner. I won’t let you destroy me. I will
break free from this cell and my miserable life, and I will be successful.”
All he says is,
“Be grateful I stole your music. It’s the only way anyone will care about what
you have to say. Too bad they’ll never know you said it.”
***
I wake with a
lurch. Thank God it was just a dream. Wait, if it was a dream, then why didn’t
I take the chance to punch his stupid face when I still had it? I know I’m not
good at lucid dreaming, but surely when I saw that the man who used to be my
favorite musician was in my apartment gloating about how he stole my music, I
should have known it was a dream. Who would even publish music on CDs anyway
unless they were planning on selling it at a crafts fair?
Looking back, it
feels laughable to think that Julius Corvin would even be able to find my
music, let alone want to steal it. I have five subscribers, so there’s no way
he’d find it unless he knew my name, and I’m not even anywhere on his forums. Even
if he saw it, I doubt it’s original or witty enough that he would want to steal
it. In a way, I almost wish I thought he would. Then I would know that not only
am I able to write amazing music, but I’d also have the satisfaction of suing
him. Granted, it would be horrifically expensive from my perspective and
nothing more than a minor inconvenience for him, but sometimes us little folk
have to take what we can get.
Imagine what it
would be like to sue him. I’d call Janine first and tell her everything, then
send her a big box of evidence that I’d meticulously collected. Then I’d set up
a crowd funding page and tell Lisa to tell all of her followers on social media
about it. I’d then post a video talking about how much I loved him as a teen,
how he remained a source of inspiration throughout my college years, and how
when I was an adult plugging away at work, he was the only thing that kept me
sane, but then he got involved in the shadiest scam and man can attempt to pull
on those who value him, and I saw him for the man he truly was, the devil in
human form, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to steal
from someone, but I had no clue it would be me. Unlike all my other videos,
this would spread far and wide, as everyone seeing it would be moved by a sense
of justice, and I would get all the money I needed to prove I’d been wronged.
After I won the case, I would have a massive following, moved by my lovely
music that perfectly encapsulated what it felt like to live in the 2020’s.
That would be
amazing. Too bad that won’t happen.
The rest of the
dream though. I know he spent a lot of time badmouthing me and my parents, but
I don’t remember what he said. I wish I did, so I could prove just how much of
a liar he really is. I think most of it was about how my parents don’t really
care about me, they just pretend they do. Well, that’s easy enough to disprove,
just look at all the photos they hang up on the walls of me and my sisters. I
don’t think the dream was really saying anything about how I think my parents
don’t like me much, it’s just me being stressed about work.
I’m about to
settle in to go back to sleep, then I pick up my cell phone to check how long
before my alarm rings. It’s 5:15 now. My alarm’s set for six. I moan. I know I
could technically go back to sleep, but I know I won’t be able to, so I may as
well get up. I throw off the covers, and then I just weep. I’m so tired of
work. I’m tired of never getting a good night’s sleep. I’m tired of watching
the world collapse around me.
It’s not just that
we can’t get any more employees at work. It’s going through the grocery store
and seeing all the empty shelves. It’s reading articles about how many school
districts can’t find teachers and many hospitals can’t find doctors and nurses.
It’s seeing people online complain about the proliferation of NFTs and seeing
many wealthy elites buy into them anyway and watching them push us to buy them
as well. It’s knowing that the world sucks, has always sucked, and there isn’t
a thing I can do that will change it.
I don’t just want
to quit my job right now. I want to quit life. I want to just hole up in my
house and weep for everything I’ve lost, not just since the pandemic, but since
2016, that sense of hope that things would always get better and I would never,
in my life, feel like I was at risk of never having enough. But I can’t do
that. No matter how bad I feel, I can’t stop going out and doing my part, even
if doing so leaves me feeling so empty inside. I wish so badly my parents were
part of the ultra-wealthy, the people who don’t even notice we’re struggling.
Then I wouldn’t be trapped in my life, and I could live it like I always had. I
know that makes me a bad person, but right at the moment I don’t care.
I look at my phone
again and see a notification that Lisa’s posted. It’s probably from yesterday,
but she could be getting ready for class. I remember her complaining about how
horrible school’s been lately. If she’s up this early, she might have a point.
I can’t help but feel sorry for her, it’s one thing for an adult to worry about
the world, it’s another thing for someone who isn’t even out of high school
yet.
I get out of bed
and wander to my bathroom. I look into the mirror and notice the bags under my
eyes. I don’t know that my job has aged me, but it certainly has drained my
spirit.
Whatever. Nobody
in the world has ever wanted to do their part, but we keep doing it anyway
because our friends and family needs us. I could give up, but that would only
make me a bad person, the kind who lives with their parents until their forty
because the don’t want to admit they’re losers.
So it’s time to
get ready. No matter how tired I am, no matter how much I want to just leave, I
have to keep working. It’s the only thing that reminds me that I’m still a good
person.
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