Author's Note:
People think that the world is getting closer. They think that modern technology and social networking is bringing us all together. It's not. All that it has really achieved is to replace real, meaningful human contact with an artificial electronic 'handshake' of sorts.
Many people feel more lonely and cut off now than they ever did before. Sure they can find out what a long lost friend is up to at any given point, but...they probably can't remember when they last actually 'talked' to them face to face.
People are beginning to fall through the cracks. Electronically fooled into thinking they are engaged in life and surrounded by friends and yet they go home to their empty apartments and sleep alone every night.
You can't replace real contact with a 'status update'.
'At the Mercy of A Stranger' is about one such person who fell through the cracks. Wounded by broken relationships and life in general. A person driven to an unconventional solution to what is now a very common problem.
Yes men and women are profoundly different. Our perspectives on life may differ, but in the end we both suffer from the same human condition. We all get lonely and we all need contact and affection. In this respect the similarities far outweigh the differences.
(In real life I have played the role of the mystery man in this story....it sounds a little vain..but I am him and he is me....writing what he did and what he said was easy...it's what I would do and sometimes what I have done. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you I have had anonymous liaisons even more intense than his one.....beautiful women met online that desperately craved the kind of anonymous experience described here. The danger of it...the thrill of giving over control and submitting their bodies to the sexual whims of a mysterious stranger. So you see, this is very much a fiction based on fact, a collection of many real people blended into one.)
Scratch the surface of this story and you'll realise that the two protagonists in this tale are really just two sides of the same coin. Their approach may be different, but in the end they simply represent both the male and female response to the same desperate problem....and....as electronic alternatives grow and continue to take the place of real human contact, it's a problem that I suspect will only get worse.
This is for the people that still want real world intimacy in a time when social media passes for a relationship.
This is for the poor souls that want something real but no longer have the social skills that humans used to take for granted...............sometimes what you crave most can be found behind the anonymous freedom of a blindfold.
Peace and love........
William (aka Dimachaerus)
*****
Angela arrived home from work, poured herself a drink, and without thinking slumped down in that comfortable familiar chair in front of the TV.
Her mind was blank.
Today was like yesterday and the day before that. Even the network news seemed to be playing the same old stories over and over again.
If her life was hell, then it was a comfortable, familiar hell.
Never ending and unchanging.
An endless daily routine that would probably continue on until the day she died.
Sometimes Angela thought she was suffering from depression. Maybe she was. She never thought of herself as sad, but then again, she couldn't remember the last time she was actually happy.
A person begins their life full of hope and ambition, and day by day their choices shrink until they are only left with one.
Angela had made her choices and she had played the game. She had put up a good fight all of her life and had never settled for the easy road. She trusted that by being brave and not giving up that she would get the life she deserved.
It broke her heart when one day she finally realized that for all her struggles, she had still found herself in this place. A place she didn't deserve.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. She was now on the wrong side of 35 and she lived alone. She had a fine home filled with stylish and expensive things, but it all meant nothing.
Her apartment contained a fine collection of IKEA furniture and it had now become a virtual showroom. The result of her own 'nesting' instincts combined with rampant consumerism. A vain attempt to fill the void in her life with possessions.
But....no matter how she tried to close it....the void always remained.
The solid oak shelves contained expensive trinkets and objects but held no pictures of a loving husband or boyfriend. There were no images of her beautiful, smiling children either. She had never had any.
There had been boyfriends and lovers of course. More than a few in fact. She had approached each relationship with hope and honesty and every time it would end in tears. She had such high hopes for each and every one, and she was genuinely shocked and hurt with each failure.
It's hard not to take it personally when it keeps on happening over and over again.
Michael, her last boyfriend may have been the last straw for Angela. She approached that relationship with patience and optimism. She was determined to take all of her previous failures and learn from them.
She did everything perfectly, or so she thought.
Angela became the best version of herself she had ever been. She couldn't be any better than that. If this failed then there was no hope for her at all.
When he told her one day that it just wasn't working out for him, something broke deep down inside her.
It was the end of hope.
The acceptance of a different kind of life.
She let herself stop fighting. She would live the rest of her days in this comfortable hell, alone.
One by one her feelings and emotions began to shut down and she began not to hurt so much anymore. No pain, but no happiness either.
Sometimes she would panic when she realized she felt nothing. She knew it wasn't normal.
She didn't crave company. She didn't desire sex with anyone. She became a non-descript, dull version of herself.
Her clothes became drab. Her hips increased in size.
It was okay if nobody desired her any more, she didn't want to be desired or even feel desire for somebody else, she had been down that road too many times and it had always ended in pain.
She was alive and nothing more. Her heart just kept beating and one day either tomorrow or maybe 50 years from now it would stop. It didn't really matter which.
Occasionally Angela went through the motions of being alive, but that was mostly for show. She was her usual happy self at work and as long as she attended the odd social function, her workmates wouldn't ask any intrusive personal questions. Her life was her own business.
Watching other people's lives and their personal dramas had become entertainment for her. She was immune to it all. She could laugh at the folly of their relationship troubles because she was past all that and she knew better.
Online dating sites were the best of all. Angela scanned the personals of the 'lost and desperate' as she put it and found it all comical and pathetic.
Once she started looking at things with a detached, clinical mind she started to see what people were really like and Angela was not impressed by any of it.
She had seen it all before and could identify every ploy and strategy that took place in the pages of those online personals. Back when she gave a damn, she had even been one of those poor lost souls. Now she was just a spectator.
She felt very smug and superior about it all, and soon, without even knowing it, her arrogance had become her greatest weakness.
