The Horror of Ordinary Life

"Yes, hurrah, I could write a book about zombies! I'd plunder thousands of pages of literature and cinema, so much cinema. You know, the first zombie movie dates back to nineteen hundred... Wait, let me check Google..."
"Save your fingertips! You'd only be plundering material that others have already plundered. You'd just be serving the same reheated soup."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure!"
"So zombies are a no."
"Let them rot in peace."
"How do you feel about a detective story with an inspector?"
"You mean the usual inspector who's despised by the entire precinct, smokes without restraint, clings to the bottle like it's his mother's breast, has a wife and kids who refuse to see him, and when the case stalls, decides to take justice into his own hands?"
"An inspector like that, but without the mother's breast part. You know, it might make the whole thing slip into incest."
"Leave it alone..."
"Why?"
"Because it's a cliché – one that sells, God knows, but still a cliché."
"A pathologist then! A forensic pathologist who solves cases. I actually know a pathologist. I'm not saying he'd take me on a honeymoon to the morgue, but he could give me some tips about his profession and some gruesome details. Maybe I'll invite him to dinner..."
"But there are thousands of those!"
"Of pathologists who solve cases?"
"Who else?"
"But I'll give him a vice..."
"After Bukowski's books, there's no vice left that holds up."
"A birth defect then. I'll make him dyslexic!"
"That already exists..."
"A dyslexic pathologist?"
"Not exactly. It's a detective, but what's the difference!"
"Can I say a bad word?"
"No!"
"Shit!"
"You said it!"
"After the dyslexic inspector, I had the right. What if I switched to a serial killer?"
"Hmm, a bit overused but always interesting..."
"I'll make him special... Ah, listen to this idea... He's a serial killer who doesn't know he's one. I mean, he dissociates. He replaces his persona by imagining himself as a brute crossing the desolate countryside in an old van..."
"Already done..."
"Really?"
"Oh yes!"
"A homeless serial killer. One who hides in other people's homes and..."
"You're late to that party, my dear!"
"One who goes around unarmed and when he has to kill his victim, improvises..."
"Already done."
"And who would this genius be?"
"I'd tell you but I can't. It's the same author as this story and he'd end up being disqualified."
"I'll read something of his."
"You should, he's good."
"A serial killer who kills virgins!"
"Oh God!"
"He goes around wearing a mask!"
"Ugh!"
"He's a religious fanatic."
"Come on! Are you giving up?"
"No, damn it! I'll write a story with femmes fatales, criminals, vampires, and demons cheerfully chasing each other among city skyscrapers!"
"You forgot the werewolves..."
"It wouldn't work, would it?"
"Maybe it would, if we were in 1948, a bit before the advent of television."
"Infernal machines, lethal epidemics, interplanetary coups... A xenomorphic organism - an extraterrestrial parasite that single-handedly exterminates the entire crew of a large space cargo..."
"Who are you trying to fool?"
"Doesn't work?"
"No way, beautiful!"
"Let me think. An idea must come to me, sooner or later... I've got it. An enormous library, full of books with the names of all people who have lived and are living on this earth written in them..."
"And with their birth and death dates, perhaps..."
"Yeah, perhaps! Why are you laughing? Ah, I get it, already done. Let's try then with the story of a child who talks to the dead, an Indian cemetery that brings corpses back to life, a frustrated girl with telekinetic powers, an epidemic where everyone's dead but the people at the Arctic base don't know anything. A story with a corpse preserved in a fridge, an Amazon expedition that discovers the tree of life at the center of the ecosystem, a society where they burn books, an abandoned hotel in the mountains, someone who has a car accident and is cared for by a strange nurse... Some young fellows who venture out in search of a corpse?"
"Come on, don't let yourself go. You need to stay calm and you'll see, an idea will come. Right now you're stressed and you won't get anything out of that little head of yours. It's late now. I need to throw something together to eat and then I'm going out. I have yoga class, you know?"
"And I'm sad..."
"About this inspiration thing? Don't think about it and you'll see it'll get better. Now don't be offended, but I really have to go..."

Today my friend has been cynical, more than usual.
I leave her when she's already focused on finding something in the back of her pantry that can be ready in less than ten minutes, and in just five stirs of a spoon.
On the landing, with the door now closed behind me, I sink into the confused sounds of a couple of televisions, unwitting messengers of the same lie. I choose not to take the elevator and face the eight floors stepping on pristine steps. They seem not to have aged at all, and to have preserved in them a bit of the smell of those years, when apartment buildings replaced meadows with the same speed with which night alternated with day. I form an idea of which reheated dishes were preferred for that evening and am surprised that the tenant on the third floor is singing a song against the fragrant backdrop of sautéing.
Outside, the usual street, which seems to have not yet digested the afternoon traffic.
A procession of pedestrians defies death, heads bowed and faces barely lit by the opaque reflection of the sidewalk.
A couple of cyclists faces the green light with an underlying tension that can be felt from a distance. He, with square pedaling and curved shoulders, heads straight for the service road on the opposite side. She follows him, nervously huddled in her gray leotard.
The beggar at the corner hasn't left yet, and the homeless woman under the lamppost seems to have found company.
The businessman arrives menacingly, maintaining the exact center of the sidewalk. He brandishes his briefcase like a battering ram, and his secretary follows him with breath scraping in her throat. She's tired and walks fighting with the constraints of a too-tight skirt. She has X-shaped knees that converge inelegantly toward the center, heels dangerously seeking a manhole to slip into, and in her eyes the desire to go home, and to do it as soon as possible.
The mother struggles to keep the capricious child in check. Five years old, maybe six, and a cascade of decibels to vent into the ears of the unfortunate around them. The woman apologizes with a forced smile, placed on her face as if it were fake.
The street vendor with roasted chestnuts could still package a few more bags, but has been systematically ignored by all passersby. I move on, clearly perceiving the watershed between disappointment and anger. The girl behind me, twenty years worn poorly and an organic chemistry formula bouncing confusedly in her brain, stops in front of the roasted chestnuts, hesitates, and leaves without buying any.
I pass the newsstand with a mummy inside, the window of a stationery store that has lost faith in itself, and the dusty collection of an antique dealer.
Finally, I reach the metro stairs and catapult myself into rush hour hell.
The train has already pierced the station's saturated air with a roar and welcomes me into an atmosphere of unreal heat and brake stench.
In the car, an amorphous regiment of human beings is attracted to their phone screens. They sway, synchronized with every movement, and sometimes feel the need for support. A forest of hands projects everywhere, searching for the right hold. The man with tortoiseshell glasses misses his mark and messes up the snow-white hair of the little old lady with the dog in her arms. The exchange of apologies and pleasantries is seasoned with a nauseating blend of hypocrisy and good manners.
The girl on the other side of the car is metaphorically naked.
She's devoid of a phone or a companion to converse with. The dirty window doesn't reflect the image of her beautiful face.
We look at each other, across the few meters that divide us and the thousand life stories enclosed by zippers.
I imagine her under a straw umbrella, set in the hot white sand of a tropical beach, with the light breeze that precedes sunset, the sun's reflection on the shoreline, and a spread of red clouds on the horizon. For a moment, I perceive a breath passing through her black hair.
She hints at a smile, shy, drawn with a light stroke behind the evaporated memory of lip gloss. We seem made for each other, but we can't find the courage to speak.
When my stop arrives, too soon and suddenly, I get off with two solid certainties.
The first is that I will never see the metro girl again.
The second is that I've had an idea for a book.
It will be set in the streets of my city and it will be a horror story.