The Grutas Complex

Left, left, forward, jump four, landing on the farthest black one, and then in quick succession- straight, straight, back, right, left, straight. He stepped swiftly over the kitchen tiles, passing over some, tapping others twice; desperate to be out of the room but not desperate enough to skip entering the code correctly. He knew better. Hit the wrong tile and they would immediately be alerted.

It was almost funny how much trust people put into the ground under their feet. Some went their whole lives without worrying themselves over whether or not their every step was being plotted. Never knowing that without the proper code the ground was like an open book. Anyone with the right equipment could chronicle your comings and goings, mark the times of departure and arrival, how long you were gone, which direction you went…

Most were ignored, uninteresting little lambs that they were. He was different. They hounded his movements like vultures on a kill. Waiting for him to mess up, waiting for some sign of weakness.

They thought he didn’t know about the code. But he did. And that was what kept him from going insane. Everything else he knew was a lie.

As each tiny bubble formed, rose, and burst the knowledge cemented in his brain, twisting and tunneling and instating itself as fact.

 

Form. Lie.

Rise. Lie.

Burst. LIE!

FormriseburstformriseBURST…

LielielielielielielielieLIE.…
 

A watched pot never boils. Hah. He’d waited ten minutes, and guess what? The biggest lie lay at his feet, destroyed and with it the credibility of its spreaders.

But that was the least of his concerns. That betrayal was expected. He knew they couldn’t help it. What really made him furious, even above their tangled untruths and interwoven stories, even above the lie, was the thing giving his suspicions life and validation- the sound.

Hysterically he spun around, clawing at his ears, staring accusingly from one appliance to the next. Anyone else would mistake the hum filling the room as a refrigerator, maybe a far off washing machine. But he knew.

And he wanted to throw it in their faces. HAH! He knew! For all their stealth, for all their craft and secrecy they still could not keep him from the truth.

The delicate whir was barely audible, but to his keen ears fatally unmistakable.

Electronics.

Bugs, taps, wires, microphones, lenses. Crawling through his walls, infecting and infiltrating. Tainting.

His hands found the wall, running over the invisible, paper-thin layer of woven sensors with the skill of a surgeon, tsking gently. No doubt they thought they hid their treachery well. To anyone else the half-degree difference in temperature would not register; anyone else wouldn’t have the finesse to feel the almost undetectable vibration of the embedded spies. But he knew.

And then he took a deep breath, beginning the task of unspooling and discarding the emotions like used film; fighting to clear his mind. Be blank. Breath. Be empty. He was only a vessel. He would not allow them to fill him with anger.

Turning, he began entering the reverse code with a quiet satisfaction. Straight, right, left, back, straight, straight, jump four, forward, right, right. And in denial deliciously square he calmly he poured the evidence of the shattered lie down the drain.

 

 

 

A piece to accompany “At the Whim and Flip of a Coin”. More psychos. Always taking the smallest platitude and twisting it into a huge betrayal. Go figure. To know there are people who are even more paranoid than me is a comfort. It makes me feel more or less normal. Or maybe the very act of dreaming these characters up is the conformation that I’m mental… Still, if I’m mental you, dear reader, are now mental by association. Welcome to the club.

 

Points I hope you caught, but in any case I will make:

A. His superiority complex. He refers to other people as " anyone else", and by this places himself on a golden pedestal, in a completely different (if imaginary) category as them. Looking down on the commoners so to speak.

B. The phrase, "and that was what kept him from going insane." I put this in for my own amusement. It’s pretty obvious this guy is bonkers. What I thought was funny was him not realizing the fact. It’s a common occurrence for the insane to refuse to accept they are insane.

C. Mistaking the hum of appliances for Government bugs. I know we’ve all been here to some degree. Sometimes when I’m reading late at night I suddenly start paying attention to little noises, wondering what in the world is making it. Lol. It’s not such a stretch to make, if you’re already intensely paranoid.

D. Believing that, with the right equipment, someone can plot your footsteps. What a can of worms that opens up. On one hand you’d always have proof of your whereabouts. On the other if your whereabouts included the hotel room of your adulterous affair or robbing a bank…. you could be in trouble. Imagine how relieved you’d be to find out about a code to make retrieving that data impossible. It’d be like being not existing at all.

E. "Grutas" refers not to the man but a minion under his control named Pot Watcher. Anyone care to take a stab at the movie?

 

The end of my little randomness schpeal isssssssssss here.