Day 79 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 28 (2719 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 28

It was only in Paris that she felt safe, and only in the city centre, the low arrondissements, if she were elsewhere she would be looking over her shoulders and would not be able to control the terrifying feelings that overwhelmed her. That safety was born out of a sense of belonging, and place, knowing it and feeling it in every street and alleyway. It was not the safest city in the world, but she had spent so much time here as a child, walking it's streets and feeling it's heartbeat, that it felt like home, and home was a familiar place.

Eveline Petit still lived in her parents apartment in the Rue de la Victoire in the 9^th Arrondissement a few minutes walk from the Opera and the streets and alleys that criss crossed the central city, so close to everything and so much like a playground for her. She had not seen her friends in some time, not since her return from America in fact and that was over a year ago. She was not ready, not yet anyway.

Her parents had named her Eveline, it was for a favourite author of her fathers James Joyce, a char character in one of his novels and very little to do with Paris or anything French. It was a French name, a lovely one that most people assumed was an appropriate choice for parents, but it was a quiet rebellion against the culture by naming their only subversively after the Irish novelist who was at home here, but never one of them. It was a sense of place that Eveline carried with her to the adult years, this was where she felt at home, the city not the apartment they lived in. Travel was always going to be the thing that took her away, took her on adventures and showed her more of the world. She was interested in experiences, good and bad that would come her way. Or at least she had been interested until now. Now she wanted to feel at home, feel contained, within the bounds of her own world where she was not in control so much as in perfect sync with the parameters of her life in her own environment.

She got up late most days, when the foot traffic had slowed she would find one of a number of cafés and take her morning coffee, she took care to never take her coffee at the same place two days in the same week, instead she would work through her list of favourites and to the people there who got to know her, it was like an irregular and unpredictable occurrence that she would take a drink there. To her though it was a necessary and daily ritual that kept her grounded and enhanced her sense of being at one with where she was, what she was doing and how protected her routine would be.

Her café au lait inside for for a start, the nearest boulangerie or patisserie would be the next port of call, as the café changed daily, the nearest pastry or sweet treat she would get would also be sourced unpredictably, it was part of the ritual. Taking a few bites every few steps she would wander, aimlessly at first until something caught her eye and then she would find purpose and follow that like an unravelling thread leading her out of the maze.

Today she was walking along Boulevard Haussmann and despite her initial attempt at connection was still not sure where she was going or what she was doing. Half heartedly she browsed through the Galeries Lafayette trying things on, discarding them unpurchased and working her way up the levels, her eyes drawn up to the always impressive dome, feeling it pressing in on her today, the darkness of the day, cloudy and grim not helping her unsettled mood.

She eventually left and took to the streets again, looking for something as the sky and her mood both darkened with a cold front moving in, the pressure dropping and the feeling of tiny drops of rain threatened the morning. She would have to bee off the streets soon, the lunch rush was too much for her, she would have to be home again, she was not far but her sense of purpose was not yet fulfilled. She knew that it was not necessary for her to find that distraction, it would not make one blind bit of difference to her and the next day would continue on as every other day would do so.

If she did not find her anchor moment, the one that held her day together, then the rest of the day would be ruined. Just that day only, but the remaining hours would be unbearable and they would drag on and her sleepless night would be as endless as the hours she felt when not in her home any more. She had to find it, tomorrow may be another day and another chance, but tonight would be hell on earth for her. Her pace quickened, which enabled her to cover more ground but also meant that she was missing things, the details and the flourishes that pointed her to her anchor for the day.

A shop window loomed up in front of her suddenly and she stopped, skidded to a halt in front of unsure why. Then with a certainty she knew why she had been caught up, this was not her anchor moment, this was him. She had caught the glimpse of him in her periphery and deep in her sub conscious her brain had run a sub routine of sorts, one that recognised faces and shapes and attached reactions to them. His face had pinged into her mind, asserted itself violently bringing her to stop and stare at the monitors stacked on the edge of the shop display, and tuned to the news channel, not showing him now but talking about him for sure.

His face came up again, a mug shot she recognised from the arrest, the trial and the media frenzy that came at the time. Feelings welled up, like water rising inside her threatening to spill over, lose control of herself and her ability to be herself ever again. A tremor started in her, in the centre deep down and rode itself to the surface with and oncoming cold feeling as it passed up through the layers to her surface.

Before it broke, crashing it down around her fragile feet, she saw eight numbers at that lined the bottom of the screen under his mug shot and she knew that she had to get home, quickly.

Her parents were there already, her father had left work when he heard and come straight home at her mothers request. They saw her walk in and come straight to the television, turning up the volume and sitting right in front of it and waiting for the details. Her mother got up and poured a Brandy for her, into the wide and bulbous glass for the drink. It was the perfect choice because she could barely stay still enough to keep the liquid in the bowl. She took the first hit, not yet warmed to body temperature, and it burned her throat, setting the tears to the corners of her eyes but not yet brimming over.

“Did he suffer?” She did not turn away from the broadcast, talking as it was about the excessive obsession with the brutal reality show that would only happen in a place like America. The TV presenter was at once sounding fascinated and disgusted with the morbid curiosity and obsession of American audiences with the gladiatorial like deaths of their criminals. However, in no sense of shame they had broken into regular programming to bring this update.

“Did he suffer? Like the others? Some of the others died quickly yes?”

Her parents said nothing, unsure if this line of thought would be helpful or harmful to their daughter.

Eveline turned and looked at them, tears now streaming down he face. “I don't need him to suffer, I don't. I just need to know. How. How. How.”

Her father turned around the laptop and had on it the video link on the Facts Alone website. He pressed play and they let their daughter watch episode six, she had not been able to watch the sections of the previous instalments. Not while Garth Parker was still alive at the end of them.

She knew all about the game, read about it daily in Le Monde, and listened to her parents commentary about the grand scheme of it all, edited for too many details about her own brush with the player Garth Parker. She was following it but she could not watch him, not see him walking about, freely and not behind bars. They had told her that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, that he was suffering mentally with the game, but she was not impressed or interested in this. She still could not see him, knowing that he could walk away at the end of it all. She prayed to a god she no longer had much faith in to deliver her from his evil. Now it had happened and she whispered a prayer of thanks, feeling no remorse or guilt from the pleasure of his death. She watched the latest round intently, and while all eyes were on Vargas and what would happen to him next, she was rewinding and watching her tormentors demise into madness. Then she watched again, slowing down and closely following him through the course, seeing the doubt in his eyes, the fear in his step and counting the length of time he was feeling that way. The weeks of the game, the tears in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the elation of surviving a round, the despair of starting another each time.

There was a moment, a split second, and she replayed it again and again to be sure, as sure as she could only be after days in his presence. The instant where he let the fear take over, when he knew that there was no hope, no escape and that death was his only option. The moment that he was dead, it was before he exploded into nothingness, it was when he lost the thread he had been following, the anchor moment he was looking for that showed him the way through the round to survival. This time there was none, there was only another round and another chance at death, not at life mind you, a chance at death. He lost the game in that moment, he died then well before he separated himself and eventually pulled off this vest. That was the moment she wanted to see, the moment when she could face the memory of her friends who had suffered so much at this man's hands.

Her two friends that travelled with her were dead, he had held all three of them at gunpoint before securing them in a trailer, parked in a vacant lot with blacked out windows far enough away to not hear the muffled screams. He raped all three of them, over a period of a few days, and the killing of them was not the option he would have preferred, it was a necessity he told the court. Eveline had gotten free and escaped, she ran and ran until she found an open gas station and screamed until the police arrived. They followed he back to the trailer, but Parker had killed her two friends the moment he knew that Eveline was free, and had fled. She only had seconds to loose her bounds and get out the trap door into the floor, she heard the door opening behind her as the trap shut on her head, had she hesitated then she would have never got out, and all three of them would be dead.

He had gone on the run, but not got far with his face all over the papers, the internet and television news. He had little to say except that the two women he killed were not his fault, they were Eveline's because she ran. Would he have killed all three when he grew bored or felt them to damaged to enjoy any further? He swore that it was her fault, the fear that she bred into him by running and getting the police that drove him to the moment of madness. She did not believe him, she was told not to believe him, the parents of her friends praised her courage and the justice she brought for their daughters death and she accepted all of that. Beneath it though, she wanted more time, replaying the escape in her head she wished for more time. For a weapon to defend themselves with against his gun, but there was nothing he left that would have worked. She wished for more time to free one of the other girls. Then she would have had to choose, who would she free and who would she choose to condemn? She knew that choice was not hers, it was his as he had all the power, but in wishing for that time, time she knew she never had, the power of that choice fell to her and she found herself wishing for more.

Then he had escaped, he was on the run and free. Eveline was on the next plane to Paris, she could not walk the streets of New York anymore, it could not be a less hospitable place to be, America was not big enough to hide in, she needed to be within the walls of her own Arrondissement again, to feel at home and away, half a world away from him. The embassy assured her he would be caught, he was a career criminal and not smart or measured enough to evade the police for too long. Time passed and he did not surface, and so many people told her that he must be dead, he was not clever, shrewd or resourceful enough to not make some mistakes and get caught. They said it was only a matter of time, and then he would be dead for sure or in custody.

They were right, but not in the way that anyone expected. When he was invisible she could not leave the city, the 9^th or for a long while their apartment. She started walking out for the mornings a month before the first instalment came through to her, something had changed in her and she felt like she could push those boundaries. She needed purpose every day for her routine, that anchor moment that held back the fear and self-loathing that accompanied her every day. She would go out, drink, eat and then find her anchor for the day, the thing that grounded her in the moment and in the safety of her metaphorically walled city.

The game started and the routine became more important, she knew he was incarcerated in a way, but he had a chance and a mission to free himself. To be the fittest, to be the survivor. Like the guilt, the blame she felt but knew she should not, his winning the game was as an unlikely event as anything else. She could not watch him, she could not believe the reports of this instability, not until he was dead and she knew it.

The vaporisation was not that satisfying and she knew that she had lied to her parents, she had wanted him to suffer in death, slowly and painfully, so much catharsis for her at the very least. It was not to be that way and she took the definitive nature of the explosion as gospel, while others wondered it it were even real, she knew it to be true. This was her new anchor moment, she did not need to go out for it ever again, she could dial it up on the internet, the video could be played on her phone anywhere and she would feel the solidity of the ground beneath her feet, the walls against her back and the sky above her now open and no longer pressing.