We were at the dinner table. All memory of preceding events eluded my consciousness, as if I'd just been born a few seconds ago. She must have carried me to the table herself.
She'd been looking better these days at least. She'd been trying to eat more for the past couple of weeks and her diligence had paid off.
White cauliflower soup as usual. It wasn't like Liz could taste anything she ate; she did most of the seasoning mainly for me.
I asked her how long I'd been out and she said three days. She said the rat bites didn't wake me up—I was becoming immune to them.
"Liz, I don't know how much time I have left. We can't go to the hospital. I won't be able to work."
"You'll be fine. I've sent off my resume to the supermarkets. They'll call soon enough."
She'd been fired again. She just couldn't keep a steady job.
"I can ask Margaret to send over some money."
The girl shook her head, her hair swaying back and forth. "You don't have to do that."
"She won't mind."
"I know, but," the spoon in her tiny hand dug into the cauliflower bobbing up and down the surface. "Your family has been helping us out a lot, with this house and your brother-in-law trying to decode the messages."
Then she said, "I don't want to be a burden, so I'll help out for now. You should rest."
Now that you mention it. "How am I still alive?" My hands felt the abdomen where the stab wounds had been before they disappeared that day. I should've died when those spiders jabbed me in the back at her apartment.
Liz nodded. "You're just really lucky."
That got a chuckle out of me. "For how much longer?" My throat was hurting.
"Depends on how long want to live."
"You're giving me too much credit. The will has no role in nature. If fate decides my time is up, I'm done."
"Fate, huh..." Her spoon whirls circles in the bowl that now had nothing but soup water in it. "If you're alive for this long, you must be pretty special, then. What does fate want from us..."
"It wants to see me suffer."
She gave me this strange look when I said it, as if she thought I was lying to her.
"Fate must be pretty sadistic if it wants something like that," she said.
It could be someone with a scroll or with a white beard and white robe, that was what I wanted to say, but it was hard to talk. Something was wrong with my vocal cords. I could barely hear myself, so I just stopped and shook my head.
"So if fate rules over us," she pondered. "Who has control over fate? If there's a system that decides how the shape of the world should be like, what created this system in the first place? If there's a mold that gives form to the clay, right? Then what made the mold? To say that it exists as it is just doesn't make a lot of sense."
"If fate is a guy, he has a lot to answer for—" I couldn't take it anymore. It was as if my head was being split open. I stood up and tried to get back to my room, on to crash down on the black cement. Liz came over to help me up, and brought me to my bed.
She sat on the edge of the mattress on the ground and looked at me.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for putting her in such a position.
I'm the last person you'd want to be stuck with.
"An infinite loop."
What?
She explained, "Something as grand as fate could be going on a journey of its own, with its own life and its own 'fate'. And the thing that controls it would have its own 'fate'. What is life but a never-ending chain of people trying to influence each other's lives, you know?"
"What about the will?"
"I think the will is a smaller part of fate. If you don't really desire life, then soon enough fate will decide for you that you don't deserve to live. We all find our own destiny through our own will."
"You've changed your mind?"
"Hm?"
"You said we're puppets with strings."
"No, I don't think I've ever changed my mind on that. I still think the will is an illusion. We just pretend that it's real so we can at least feel like we have some control over our own lives. And to some degree, we do. Although free will doesn't exist and everything is predetermined, the uncertainty of the future somehow brings it into existence. All wins and losses have no meaning. We are free to experience life, to know nothing and to be helpless."
"So we don't have free will, but we're punished for our wickedness... Do you think you're being punished for something?"
She looked up the ceiling and thought for a while.
Then she said, "Probably. We're always punished for something."
And we had very little control over it.
The pain was acting up again.
I turned my leg to take a look at the bite marks on my calves. A huge chunk was missing, as if it had been gouged out.
The bite marks were getting bigger.
And the shapes looked different.
I couldn't hold back a smirk.
Fate was cruel.