Double Seppuku

Knock! Knock!
Knock!

Gabriel peeked into the small glass hole. He saw the distorted face of Heloise.

"What do you want? I'm a loner. I don't want to be disturbed. Please go away!"

"Gabriel, I wanted to talk to you about something important." Her words seemed to ooze out of her mouth. "Remember how you wanted to go out with me. I've reconsidered."

The door opened. Heloise could see Gabriel, smiling slightly. His smile always looked confused.

"Do you have anything to eat?" Heloise asked.

"I've got ramen noodles. I can make them in five minutes." Gabriel prepared the ramen noodles, and served them to Heloise.

"It's very good," Heloise observed.

"So when are we going out?" he asked.

"Well, it's not quite like that. Actually, I've heard that you're obsessed with Freud. Freud stressed the fact that it is our "id" that we often seek to satisfy. We are motivated by the pleasure principle, are we not? The only time we are motivated by something other than pleasure is when we are dealing with our traumas. We go back to the same, interior places that gave us the pain, and seek to heal ourselves through repetition, through a peculiar habit even. Why do we do this, Gabriel? Repetition never brings any healing to the trauma. Pleasures never last. I've got a better solution."

"Are we still going out?" Gabriel asked confusedly.

"Gabriel, I have a proposition for you. Let's end this life in grand style. Let's fuck our way to death," Heloise looked for his response, "I know, I know. It sounds too dramatic. Why all this drama? Isn't it the perfect way to go, though?"

"You want to have sex with me?" Gabriel asked, "and then you want to kill me?"

"We'll kill each other at the same moment when the alarm rings. We'll shoot ourselves with this death serum," Heloise looked positively otherworldly.

"Are you fucking with me? This is seriously twisted. You're turning me on and off at the same time. What makes you think that having sex with me will bring you so much pleasure anyway? I'm just a Korean loner. What would make me think that having sex with you would be the most pleasurable experience of my life?" Gabriel was fuming a little.

"The sex could be perfectly ordinary or even less, but our minds would be calm for we will know that this world is a world of hedonism and nothing more," Heloise finished.

"Isn't there more meaning to life than sex and pleasure? Don't our traumas and our repetition compulsions lead us toward the truth?"

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know. I don't know. It's true that I've always wanted to have sex with you. To tell you the truth, I've been reading all these books that I don't understand just to try to impress you. It's just that European girls like you, you just don't seem to take us Asians seriously. Even if we did such a thing, it would just prove that life was about pleasure and nothing more, and that has already been proven so what's the point of proving it again?"

"What's the point of continuing to live a life that is about pleasure and pain?"

Heloise kissed Gabriel. It had been such a long time since he had been kissed. It was nice. She kissed him like she meant it, like she wanted to give him petals of love to help his heart to blossom.

"Ok. Let's do it!"

Gabriel saw Heloise nude for the first time. She did not look like the Greek statues of women. She had a human body. It occurred to him that she was real, just as he was. Her curly hair was loosened madly around her. She kissed him and he kissed her back.

Gabriel saw the curve of her shoulder, the loop underneathe her breasts, and felt the thumping of her heart underneathe her skin. He couldn't believe that he was having sex with her. He couldn't believe that he was going to die soon. She kissed him again, and it was over. They had been passionately together. He had felt that he was her equal somehow.

The alarm rang. Already?

"Now shoot this serum into my veins," she asked. He did as she asked. He felt a bit hypnotized. She shot the serum into his arms. He was waiting, waiting for his life to fade quickly or slowly.

"Don't you think that there's pleasure in doing something really well?" Gabriel asked.

"Doesn't even that pleasure come from the fact that we did something better than another person. We're knocking out the other person with a punch, saying we are better than them. It's all the instincts of the caveman," Heloise responded.

"How about those who really try to create a better world, and are truly willing to suffer in the present for a better future?"

"Like whom?"

"Like Martin Luther King Jr."

"He was doing it for heaven."

"Jesus Christ?"

"For his father's glory which is his glory."

"Heloise," Gabriel asked,"When is this serum going to take effect? I don't feel even slightly sleepy."

"I lied to you. It's some harmless drug. It makes you feel euphoric."

"So what happened?"

"I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me."

"I'm sorry. I thought he was the psychotic jealous type."

"He was just pretending to be obsessed with me. It made me feel so prized, so protected."