Author's Note
I originally wrote this one-shot in September of 2016. For those of you familiar with my "Masked" characters, this story was the first appearance of Peter. His name is not mentioned as homage to the fact that in "Fight Club" the narrator remains nameless.
Tongue-in-cheek to the point of near satire, this goofy little gem of a piece wouldn't exist without the immeasurable talent and creativity of Chuck Palahniuk and the Wachowski siblings.
"Fight Club" remains one of my favorite novels (and films) to this day, and "The Matrix," in plainest terms, changed my life and the way I perceive reality. A huge thank you to these creative geniuses. May their works live on forever.
~ Mar
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"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. It is a prison for your mind."
-- Morpheus, The Matrix
"I am Jack's complete lack of surprise."
-- The Narrator, Fight Club
__________
I have the headache from hell. Straight from hell. Like, right out of Satan’s ass.
Not the cool kind of headache, either. Like the I-was-in-a-fight-and-won kind of headache. Nope. No Fight Club rites of passage for me. No insane acts of heroism masking a carnal desire to feel alive. No "you should see the other guy" tales. No wins.
Only losses.
My boss, Deena, is saying something. She sounds like a Charlie Brown teacher. Wah-wa-waaah. Hazy. Far away. Even though she's standing in front of me. Right in front of me. As in, I can see her pores and the lipstick on her teeth in front of me.
She's trying to look demure as she lectures me. Something about getting something filed. Or is it filled? Or is it…?
Man, what the fuck?
The truth is, I couldn’t care less what she’s going on about. All I can concentrate on are my sweaty palms, dry mouth, and pounding headache.
If this was Fight Club, I'd be the narrator: stuck in a boring-ass office of paper-pushing drones, being lectured by a frumpy-ass supervisor I don't like.
I can't even begin to focus on her words, let alone their meaning. It feels like I'm not really here. Like I'm watching her lecture my empty body from across the room. The Fight Club narrator said something about a situation like this... "When you have insomnia, everything is an out-of-body experience. Nothing is real. Everything is far away. Just a copy, of a copy, of a copy..."
I might be paraphrasing, but mad respect to the author. That shit is Hashtag Truth.
Not that I'm sleep deprived. Not really. I'm suffering from deprivation of another kind. And this one-way tête-à-tête with my boss is only making the itch worse.
I'm not here. I'm a copy. She's a copy. This is a copy of a copy of a conversation we have almost every day.
Ah, shit. Now she’s looking at me like she expects me to say something. Did she just ask me a question? Or…maybe she’s just making sure I’m paying attention. Which I’m not.
I go with something affirmative yet ambiguous: “Yep, got it.”
I do my best to smile. I bet it looks fake. Or goofy. Or both.
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