Armageddon

I

A/N: Part 2 (Completion) has not been edited. As such, it is extremely unwieldly and not as refined as Part 1. I promise, if you are confused by a digression that happens, I'm almost just as confused as you are. I will get an editor as soon as I'm done with it, but please be patient with me for now.

***

Women like me are the scum of the earth.

Maybe I need to accept that fact - learn to live with it; maybe even embrace it! That would beat allowing myself to be ruled by the shame of it all.

The first step to freedom is accepting that you're not perfect.

Is it really possible, though, to free oneself from one's greatest weakness? Isn't the pursuit of perfection the one, true goal of all humans? Is that not what makes us all human?

I find it frustrating that the same questions that plague my mind today are the same ones that plagued it yesterday; the same ones that plagued it three years ago; the same ones that plagued it since I started to tell myself that I don't care anymore. I feel like I am stuck in a loop and people tell me I'm perfect the way I am, but I don't feel that way.

Well, back when I had people around me, they would tell me that.

Now, all I ever do is go to work and try to convince myself that life is still worth living, come back home and try to bury all my emotions under a bottle of sweet rosé. It usually costs me fifty nickers a bottle - you know, the cheap stuff. And I'll occasionally screw with Alejandro. Sometimes, it gets thrilling wondering when his fiancée will realise that he's fucking another woman. At least it allows me to feel something.

Women like me are the scum of the earth.

"I should go," Alejandro tells me, gently pushing my head off of his chest. "Valeria must be worried sick."

I feel the bile rise in my throat and I roll my eyes; then, I leave the room before he can say anything. It felt good to be in someone else's embrace, but women can't enjoy anything for too long. At least his shirt feels good on me.

Maybe getting caught wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I grab the wine from the fridge - a glass already in one hand - and pull the cork out with my teeth. Just then, Alejandro emerges from the bedroom in a shirt he had left with me the last time he was here. The next time he comes, he will take this one back and leave me with another. That's what I've become: a laundromat for a man who should be planning his wedding.

He frowns. "You're drinking."

"Wow! You can say a sentence without mentioning your fiancée's name?" I seethe.

Pause. "Edgar, if you want me to leave Valeria, just say the word. You know I'd do that in a heartbeat."

I take a sip. "Whatever, loser. Just go."

He sighs. His sigh is as heavy as the one he cries out when he comes - rife with guilt. However, where his coital cries never indicate any sense of wishing for me to stop, this one is weighed down by despair - like a man at the end of his rope; a man who needs just one reason to give up on life yet refuses to accept the million that scratch constantly at his feet.

He asks me to hug him. I refuse. It's no use lingering where I have no business being. "Valeria's worried sick," I remind him, spitefully.

He runs a hand through his hair and takes a seat at the couch right across from the island I've employed as a border between the two of us. I was happy when I first moved in to this apartment - it would be my first leap into being a truly functional adult and member of society. It is close to a few pubs and restaurants, and a lot of my neighbours are my age. Lately, however, I have found that I prefer being locked up inside its walls, and any thoughts of going out to meet anyone make my chest constrict. I much prefer watching them move about their business from my window.