The Hell...

I rolled out of bed as the sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, my head throbbing uncontrollably. I couldn't remember how exactly I got back to home---that part was somewhat hazy in my mind and frankly, I didn't really give a damn if I could remember it or not.

I wished I were dead.

Stting on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, that was all I could remember. Wishing that I were dead. I didn't exactly have a death wish in a voluntary sense of the word, but things were so fucked up by this point that there was no reason to not just kill myself and end it all. I mentally ran through the whole series of fuck ups. First there was Aileen. We were to be married in two month's time, but somehow she managed to get herself pregnant, and I wasn't the father. She made a whole big fuss of ``keeping herself for the night of her marriage'' and somehow got herself knocked up. She told me that last night when I was going out with her, which promptly made me leave her in anger and head to the bar for a night of straight drinking. Then there was work. My boss was getting more and more psychotic, what with all the impossible deadlines and the crazy requirements. And the abuse. Verbal abuse. Always shouting at me and telling me that I'm some kind of loser who should've been fired to be replaced by one of the many hundred cheaper foreign talents. His mismanagement somehow became my incompetence. Finally there was that ongoing libel case from that public figure. I wasn't really gunning for her reputation, but was just trying to highlight some points on the policies that she was making. But somehow, either she or some faceless drone decided to take offence at what I wrote and slammed me with a rather expensive letter of writ demanding all kinds of impossible things.

My headache started to throb even stronger, and I tried to massage my temples in a bid to assauge it. The sunlight grew stronger, and through my squinted eyes, I stared at my alarm clock. Noon. No wonder it felt so discomforting. I stood up decisively and stepped into the shower, and cranked faucet up to its maximum. A torrent of near-freezing water emerged from the narrow shower head and slammed itself upon the crown of my head before following the contours and washing over my torso and parts beyond. The cold shocked my headache away temporarily, and I was instantly awake and alert. It did nothing to improve my outlook though---everything was as bleak as before. As I washed myself under the shower with the soap and shampoo, I kept on brooding on the three big problems that I had been facing, the hangover-induced migraine forgotten. I had to give a call to my lawyer regarding that libel case; we had to negotiate with her to reduce the amount of damages and what-not because it was just too much to be borne to be considered fair, considering that I didn't even single her out deliberately and explicitly. As for the psychotic boss, I had no idea on what to do about him. The only good thing was that it was the weekend and so I didn't have to spend the day looking and working with him, if that could be call working. And Aileen. My heart ached for a moment when I thought of her, but my reawakened rational side stepped in and shouted at myself to get a grip and realise that she was a lost cause. The wedding had to be cancelled. There was no way that such a level of cheating could be tolerated, no matter how deep and important our relationship was. It was clear that she didn't really treat the time we had with the kind of respect and care that I did, and so I was fully justified in calling off the wedding. There would be hell to pay though, since we've already made down payments on the reservations for the banquet, sent out the invitations, and all the other myriad of things that comes with a wedding preparation. And the parents and in-laws. My parents would probably begrudgingly understand, but the in-laws (or was it near-in-laws?) would be a tougher nut to crack. To them, she had always been the purest of all the divine virgins, and had never really accepted that I would be a good husband to her. Now that the marriage was going to be cancelled, they were sure to exploit it and cause a bloody ruckus. And since I had a twenty-four-hour lag behind her, she was likely to reach them first and give a sob-story version of how I was abandoning her and leave me to attempt to tell the full story under a case of heavy bias. I cursed Aileen under my breath for this unnecessary mess as I turned off the shower and dried myself before stepping out to get dressed.

I got to the living room and checked out the answering machine. There were twenty-five new messages on it. I knew I was living in the modern world, and that everyone had cellphones and what not, but I just preferred a landline. Call it nostalgia, or call it paranoia of always needing the ability to call out for help should the need arises, but the landline was second conduit to the world, the first beign the internet. I pressed the ``play messages'' button on the answering machine and went to the small kitchenette to make some light breakfast of instant noodles. I wasn't a fan of instant nnoodles, but it was the fastest thing that one could lay one's hands on that doesn't take more than ten minutes to prepare. And I knew that I didn't have that much time, if the answering machine was to be believed. As expected, the first few messages were from last night after I had left Aileen, where she called repeatedly to seek forgiveness and wanting me to take her back. Those turned quickly into the words of a raving lunatic who was threatening to take away what little I had, and to break me as a person for calling off the wedding after all she had done for me. Each such message delivered was just yet another piece of evidence to prove to me that ditching her was the best option. I had gone out with Aileen for nearly five years, and nothing seemed to tell me much about her except for that fateful moment and these messages. I suddenly felt vindicated for saying the words I did to her.

The last two messages came on as I was preparing to pour out the cooked instant noodles into the ceramic bowl that I had set on the table in the living room. They were from earlier that morning and from the lawyer, Mr Davison, who was representing me on the cases involving that libel lawsuit. He said to contact him as soon as possible---there were new developments that morning from the plaintiff's lawyers and he wanted to check with me on my views before he made a recommendation on the next step to take. The first message came at around eight in the morning, and the second came at around eleven, with him saying that he was not in the office any more but he was still contactable and he urged me to talk to him as soon as possible as the plaintiff's counsels were demanding an answer before Monday. I cursed her under my breath and started wondering to myself, just what was it with women these days? Were all of them so sensitive and flaky and biased in the era of ``women liberation''? Was it a fun game to just take a man and break him utterly and totally under the rules that were written and rewritten to be in the favour of their sex? I ate my breakfast in silence, pondering upon that ugly revelation that I thought I had.

The day was going to be long, for sure. The urge to end my life had long since passed from the cold shower and food, but the problems still remained, and I was not any wiser in terms of how and what to do. I figured I should contact Mr Davison first, since that libel case had a high chance of blowing even larger out of proportion than what it had so far. The media had a field day reporting when the case broke, and instead of the typical David-versus-Goliath type story that supported the underlying, they went all out to slam me, claiming that I was making personal attacks on her integrity through the blog posts that I had made in criticism of the ineffectiveness of the policies that she had made. That made me mad, of course, since I was very careful in not attacking anyone personally but to focus on the pros and cons of the policies themselves. Somehow though it was deemed that I had crossed some invisible line between policy criticism and making personal attacks. That she was a public figure working in parliament did not help matters; it felt that I had accidentally stumbled upon the cabal of them versus the little people, and since I was ``little people'', I had to be quashed completely and absolutely. Somewhat reluctantly, I picked up the phone and dialed Mr Davison's number. The call was almost immediately picked up.

``Davison here. Who's calling?''

``James. You left me a couple of messages asking me to contact you?''

``Oh yes! Definitely.'' There was a longish pause on the other side of the line. ``James, we need to talk. In person. That case is going to get very out of hand if we don't make a decision now. And there are things that I cannot safely discuss over the phone like this. Do you think you can make your way down to my office within the hour? I'm still there; I know I said I wasn't going to be, but well you know, things cropped up and so I'm still here. I'll wait for you if you can come. It is that urgent.''

``Alright Mr Davison. I will be there. Shouldn't take more than thirty minutes if I can catch a cab.''

``Excellent! I'll see you then. Just let the security at the lobby know that you're looking for me and they will buzz you in after checking in with me. You know how that works right?'' I replied in the affirmative. ``Okay. Talk to you when we meet. Bye for now.''

``Oh and by the way,'' Mr Davison suddenly said just as I was about to take the hand set away from my ear, ``be on the look out as you make your way over.''

I was somewhat confused with what his last words were, but replied something vaguely and put down the phone. What was that supposed to mean, ``be on the look out as you make your way over'', was my life supposed to be in some kind of danger? That would be quite ridiculous; I saw no reason why that warning could even make any sense. I finished up the last bits of my instant noodles and debated giving Aileen's parents a call to tell them that the wedding was off. As I changed out of my home clothes into something more presentable, I realised that it was probably wiser to not make that phone call. It was likely to be taking a damn long time, and given the urgency that Mr Davison was trying to convey to me, was probably not a good idea to get involved with that for now. There was plenty of time (relatively speaking) to get that one sorted out over the libel law suit.

I was soon out of the apartment and heading down the stairs, after locking up behind me. I stood along the street outside the apartment and looked about for a cab. The roads were lightly populated with cars, but there was no taxi to be found. As I looked up the road, I saw a white mini-van turning down on to my street. I didn't know why I found that mini-van so interesting to keep my eyes on it, but deep within me it felt as though something was about to go horribly wrong. The mini-van kept close the sidewalk and accelerated slowly as it moved closer to me. My unease kept me from paying attention to the road to look out for a free taxi-cab. As the mini-van got closer, it started to accelerate a little, and I was about to ignore it when it suddenly screeched to a stop just beside me and a few men dressed in black from head to toe leapt out of the rear and charged towards me. I panicked and started running away from them, but they were too quick. I was clobbered in the head and I lost consciousness.