Solipsism

tucker struyk

“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”

— René Descartes

In their sockets, the amber eyes of Marisol Mejía spun around at volant rotations. The rest of her body stock-still, under a state of paralysis... age spots... In slow cycles, her brain waves self-fired at an estimated rate of fourteen hertz. Her eyelids fluttered. Beneath, her eyeballs twirled about in incessant loop-de-loops; each revolution charted course along the same velocity curve as the great stars and galaxies of the cosmos... incontinent... From the depths of her spinal cord, motor neurons released an inhibiting cocktail of neurotransmitters, glycine, and GABA that left her paralyzed… death... Her pulse quickened… day of wrath...

***

She was roused by murmured voices.

Harsh, fluorescent lighting greeted her delicate eyes. The walls and floor emitted a sterile, white hue. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and found her head had been hooked up to an EEG at the crown. The wires led back to a handsome, young lab technician, as his impenetrable blue eyes scrutinized her results.

Her gaze then found the aged doctor sat in front of her. He watched her regain consciousness with an analytical look on his face. Then, in a cumbersome approach, he began to detach the EEG from her scalp. There was something awkward about him, though she did not fear him. Gradually, the recollection came to her. He was a renowned doctor of neurology and oneirology. His name was Dr. Wendel Somerled.

Dr. Somerled smiled. His warm grin only served to accentuate his already self-evident laugh lines. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “How did you sleep?”

She sat upright, her legs crossed. Placed high up on that bed, she felt exposed in her hospital gown. “Good,” she said.

“Good.” His head cocked to one side. “What did you dream about?”

She puckered her face as she tried to form a thought. Eventually she gave up, and her facial muscles relaxed once more. “I didn’t have any dreams,” she said, “I never seem to anymore.”

“Your brain activity begs to differ.”

She shrugged. “If I do, I don’t remember them.”

Dr. Somerled nodded. “Do you drink a lot of caffeine,” he asked, “or alcohol?”

“No, I drink a perfectly normal amount of both.”

“What is a ‘normal amount’ to you?”

She scoffed. “Two to three cups of coffee a day. A glass of wine on the weekend.”

“I only ask because the overuse of stimulants could negatively impact your REM sleep,” he said. “There are a number of ways to improve your sleep habits. One remedy I’ve...”

Stale sound waves from the doctor’s convoluted advice reverberated off of the office walls. Each word landed heavily.

Marisol nodded along and mumbled in agreement, until the content of his words were no longer enough to hold her attention. Her eyes wandered from the pair of skin tags beneath his eye, to his unsightly paunch, to the blotchy skin and age spots. Unconsciously, she checked the

time on her phone. She sighed. Now, he was wasting her precious time on Earth just as he had done with his own.

“… I would like to personally thank you for your time and participation in this clinical study,” he said. “You will receive an hourly pay rate for your contribution.” He walked her towards the clinic’s exit. “Take care.”

***

The pine wood door to her home office swung ajar and nearly struck her cat on the other side—a spoiled, Siamese cat named Channa.

Channa mewled in response to her abrupt entrance.

Inside of a baseborn studio apartment, her home office consisted of a business laptop atop a desk shoved off to the corner of her bedroom. Channa leapt onto her desktop and brushed his whiskers against the corner of her computer—purring while he did it. Marisol tsked, while she waved him away from the MacBook. Once Channa scampered over to his cat tower, Marisol set down her coffee mug and put on her headset for another tedious shift at work. With the click of a button, she clocked-in for the day.

The first call appeared on her screen. She answered.

“Hello, you’ve reached Alcheringa Insurance Group. I’m Marisol. I’ll be your inbound advocate today,” she recited. “How may I be of assistance?”

A male voice spoke on the other end, “Hi, Marisol. My name is Brian.”

“How can I help you?”

“I’m calling on behalf of my mother, Cessair McCormack. She has early onset dementia and she says her policy won’t cover the expenses.” A labored breath lapsed his sentences. “She doesn’t have the money to pay out-of-pocket and I’m barely scraping by as is.” His voice cracked. “It’s not fair. She’s worked hard her whole life. She deserves coverage. She deserves that much.”

Marisol had a sudden intake of air. Her tired eyes opened and darted about the room. “That’s just awful. That doesn’t sound right at all. There must be some sort of mistake,” she said. “Let me take a look at her policy to be sure.”

He sniffled. “Thank you.”

She put him on hold, while she sifted through information scattered across several different programs uploaded to her computer. Her eyes scanned every file and every line; though she never found the reassurance that she sought out—reassurance that these people were being cared for, reassurance that she put in good work for a good cause.

Then, she found it, clear as day, in the fine print of the company’s policy. Turned out, Brian was right about all of it. She muttered her anxious thoughts aloud. Now, she was tasked with the burden of breaking it to him.

With her headset microphone muted, she cleared the phlegm from her lungs.

She unmuted herself. “I just looked over Cessair’s information and it appears your mother is correct.” Her words were stalled by hesitancy, but she continued anyway. “For dementia coverage, there’s a waiting period threshold that her policy hasn’t quite met yet.” She paused. “I’m so sorry, Brian. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Brian balked. His voice came out gravelly and off pitch. “You don’t understand. She’s not just sick. She’s incontinent for Christ’s sake.” He spat. “Now, you want me to wait? Well, guess what. I know the truth. With people like you, help always comes too late.”

He hung up.

The phone line trilled in Marisol’s ear.

Under her breath, she cursed him.

Slowly, the blood flow thrumming within her head began to subside. Channa flashed her a

wide-eyed stare. She tittered and gave Channa a scratch under his chin. He bent to the whim of

her touch. “Don’t be afraid, compañero,” she said. “The mean man’s gone now. There’s nothing

to worry about.”

Frozen, she stood at a standstill in front of her desk. The desire to carry out an honest day of

work had long since passed. She simply could not stomach another call like that. All of the

hostility and anguish—it was too much for her to bear.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, something nosedived by the bedroom window.

She spun around, but the shadow had passed.

With hesitancy in her stride, she crept toward the window until the tip of her nose skimmed the glass. Her eyes strained to witness the spectacle beneath. Below laid a gruesome corpse splayed upon the sidewalk’s cracked pavement. Their body had become shattered residua; fractures and gore were all that remained.

She gasped.

Without meaning to, she retreated from the window. At once, she was both scared stiff and dead set to help. Now was not the time for inaction. She withdrew her phone from her pants pocket and rang the police.

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

“Something just flew by my apartment,” Marisol told her. “I went to check and it’s—it’s a

person. They’re dead.” She found herself panting between remarks. “They’re dead on the street.”

“I’m going to need you to calm down,” said the dispatcher. “Take a deep breath for me. Can

you do that?”

She did just as the dispatcher instructed. In time, the repetition became somewhat soothing to

her jumbled thoughts.

“Good,” said the dispatcher. “Now, what’s your name and location?”

She relayed what little she could to the dispatcher as the shellshock waned. Her statements flowed in a scattershot stream of conscious. Meanwhile, she inched back to the window. The body outside tempted something within her and she was not alone. Hordes of people had congregated around the corpse, like turkey vultures circling the carrion. They spectated and commented.

Nobody lifted a finger.

“When are you going to be here?” Marisol asked. “Crowds are forming out there. Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

“Officers are en route to your location,” said the dispatcher. “Right now, I’ll just need you to hang tight and answer a couple more questions.” The clacking of a keyboard was audible on the other end. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Do you have any medical conditions or ailments?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s the dead guy outside that you need to worry about.”

“Are you afraid of death?”

Marisol blanched at the woman’s line of inquiry. “I beg your pardon.”

“Do you ever talk to yourself?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you ever talk to yourself?”

A creeping quiet suffused the apartment complex, until it took hold unreservedly. All that existed—outside of that preternatural vacuum of sound—were the dispatcher’s queries that jarred Marisol’s senses and left her scratching her head.

“Do you ever talk to yourself?”

Her face jerked away from the phone’s screen—that recurrent question still blaring from its speakers. She ended the call.

Someone knocked on her apartment door.

She jumped into a guarded stance. Immediately, her mind went to the paranoid thought that the dispatcher was on the other side.

Channa paced back-and-forth in the entryway. All of a sudden, he stopped and crouched in front of the door. The hairs on his tail bristled. His back arched, in neurotic posture.

The knock came again. Yet, the door was not the same. It was now painted an olive green hue; it had been red before—had it not? Or was it orange? Marisol could not recall. She looked around suspiciously, her head on a swivel. The confines of that studio apartment vanished to the creamy, magnolia walls of her childhood home.

Another knock pounded at her door.

“I’m coming,” she said. “Give me a second.”

Only, she no longer had the voice of a woman; rather, the tone was that of a child.

She unlatched the lock.

As soon as the door was open a crack, Channa scurried outside. He scooted across the cul-de-sac, squeezed past the neighbor’s fence, and strolled into their backyard. She tried to pursue him, but the intruders on her doorstep planted their feet and refused to budge.

Two Jehovah’s Witnesses stood side by side, each clad in short-sleeved button-ups and neckties. They smiled. Their faces were clean-shaven and light.

Underneath the twinkle in their eyes, their smiles exuded a servile quality about them.

Marisol narrowed her eyes at them. What compelled them to live this way, going door-to-door in hopes of converting some poor soul in need of divine salvation?

In unison, the pair waved.

She waved back.

One of them stepped forward. “Excuse me, child. Do you know God’s true name?”

For a spell, nobody spoke—just the white noise of barking dogs on a quiet suburban street.

“Jehovah,” he said. “Jehovah is His name.” He raised a forefinger to the heavens. “I tell you this for a very important reason. You see, we live in the final days of the world as we know it”—he began to wag his raised finger at her—“but that is not something to be feared. Not if you have acknowledged Jehovah in this life. Only those who reject Him will face the inevitable day of wrath. The rest of us will be ushered into Jehovah’s kingdom on earth.”

The other, silent missionary offered her a magazine. She took it; a monthly issue entitled Awake!, full of articles and illustrations. The colors were vibrant, the fonts were bold. She skimmed the pages, while the talkative one prattled on ad nauseam. From the other room, her mother called out, “Cierra la puerta.”

Marisol obeyed her mother and slammed the door in their surly faces.

As she retreated into the familiar home, she became enveloped by an overwhelming ennui. Nothing seemed quite right about the place. The absence of her siblings, a landline phone in the kitchen, vacant picture frames. Eventually, darkness seeped into her field of vision. The walls of her birthplace crumbled to scattered pieces of drywall and two-by-fours on the ground, until even the hardwood floors rotted to cubical fractures between her toes. Soon, that omnipresent darkness consumed all in its path.

All except Marisol. She, alone, subsisted in nihility, in anticipation.

***

She was roused by murmured voices.

Tucker Struyk (he/they) is a queer writer and podcaster for Hookswitch Hotline. He has pieces published by Cosmic Horror Monthly, Murderous Ink Press, Eerie River Publishing, and several other publications. His piece “Our Father’s Judgment” was published in the spring 2021 issue of 13th Floor Magazine, where it was awarded an Editor’s Choice Award, and his piece “Getaway” was given an honorable mention in the Fall/Winter 2022-23 issue of Allegory.