Now you're mine, completely.

Me and my friend Claude were about to cross the German-Belgian border, walking for miles through the woods, casually talking about giving relatives aneurysms as birthday presents, when it first struck me that we were not alone. I alerted Claude of the fact that we were being followed by a man of medium height and amazingly obese proportions. Claude was not surprised, but that was not surprising. In fact surprise fitted his character as a glove would fit a chicken. He said:

“I’ve had my eye on that fat bastard ever since we left Eupen.”

I asked him why he hadn’t informed me of this fact, but he just shrugged. Claude shrugged a lot. The thought of Eupen had him commencing a long rant about the ability of the place to smell like cowshit all over, without ever actually displaying any cows or any of the rural charms you would expect of a place that perennially stinks of dung. At first I was distracted by the presence of the obese man, but I quickly fixed my attention again on the river of sounds that gushed out of Claude’s mouth. That man sure had a way with words. He didn’t just use them for their functionality as little beacons of meaning in a sentence, but he stripped them totally, a bit like you would undress a deliciously firm young girl if she’d happen to be in your bedroom when you develop an erection, and put them in unforeseen and often obscene contexts. I had somewhat of a man crush on Claude, I must admit, and I sometimes fantasized about being him. I, of course, could never be French, for I can’t stand the foul stench of fried frogs’ legs nor did I prefer my women unshaven and smelling like the countryside. Claude’s discourse, a Parisian salute to all things less noble than the French capital of the world, which were, as he claimed was evident, all the things in the world, reached its climax and, soon after that, its end. I applauded his words and tried to sound neutral when I sang his praise as a great orator. I might have even had an erection, for nothing stirred me like a good old verbal temper tantrum from a guy friend. He just acknowledged my words with a slight nod of the head and a “bien sur” that was really more of a whisper than a real semantic statement.

“So far, so good, this will be a perfect day, with no god higher than bacchus, if any”, I thought. I was wrong, as it turned out.

Only a couple of more steps and we would have passed the border. I carelessly looked behind me and saw that the fat man had gained on us and was now at arms’ length strolling behind us. He was sweating, a vast stream of little beads on his forehead developing into rivers by the time they reached his nose, temples and cheeks, like a disgustingly salty mountain river. His mouth was open and his tongue was churning inside it like laundry in a washing machine. It was as if he was French kissing an invisible creature. I’m afraid I found it all to be intolerably funny and I turned around, so as not to laugh in his face. The border was there, right ahead of us, a yellow line in the middle of the woods, surrounded by German flags and drawings of eagles and all the other things the Germans love to make silly movements with. The eagles on the banners had a menacing quality, their eyes were pealing out just a bit too much, as if they were afraid. They looked like they wanted to come out of the cloth. Or were they real eagles, actually? I thought that there had to be something wrong with reality, but I couldn’t really tell what it was, exactly. My ears were ringing. Claude was not talking anymore and the ringing sound was soon cancelled by the sounds of the woods all around us, which hadn’t gripped my attention before, a thousand birds and millions of bugs and the wood and plants slowly and creepily growing and creaking. I felt the fat man’s hand on my left shoulder. I turned around and gaped into his face, a greasy strip of bacon in which the eyes fiery and violently shone. I could see the sweat stains yellowing up under his armpits. This was one stinky heap of flesh. He burped in my face and as I wanted to object he sang: “…but will you still love me tomorrow?”

Never before and never again in my life have I heard such a beautiful and sweet voice. It resonated in my ears and shook until it reached my stomach where it exploded in fragments going through my entire body. It was the perfect voice, the voice of a god, of a golden creature that knows not of pain and suffering and of the tediousness of everyday existence. Knows not of falling in love and falling out of it, of getting sick and of recovering or dying. It was the voice of a being with no permanent marks and no stains, only perfect, and nothing more. He just closed his eyes for the shortest fraction of time and he smiled, after which he turned around and strutted up the path down to the nation of dung people.

Well, we just stood in silence, as we had been turned to stone, and being filled with awe and such, but I’ve never been one to pounder to much about mystery and miracle, so after a couple of minutes I just slapped Claude on the back and we started walking again, with some effort. When we crossed the line, one of many which arbitrarily separates the brotherhood of men and turns them into enemies, I said:

“What a strange, fat man.”

Claude just looked at me and said nothing, he looked and acted speechless and I could tell he was shocked by my words, which was another miracle. He was not likely to be shocked, not even when you would piss on the Tour Eiffel. This seemed like a triviality, in away, but I could tell he had a hard time shaking it out of his body. When we reached Aachen in the evening we checked into a hotel and went to a bar and I decided to get crabs from some cheap prostitute named Lutzy, or something like that, while Claude chased after some bird with a ribbon in her hair, probably to look cute and innocent, which fooled nobody, except maybe herself. I put my dick into Lutzy, and I started ragging and ramming her comfortable and publicly accessible loins. I’ve always been a fan of the facilities that modern democracy has to offer.

As I reached my climax, as I jizzed int Lutzy’s purse, I could hear, as out of nowhere, but very distinctly “but will you still love me tomorrow?” It was beautiful and it wiped the feeling of my orgasm away like a butterfly is destroyed by a hurricane. It scared me shitless, and crabby Lutzy had to chase me down the road to collect her money. I was already back at the hotel when I realized I hadn’t pulled my pants back up. An hour later Claude came home too, with a face as white as a glass bottle of milk, and as we exchanged stories we both realized we had heard the same thing. We had both heard the singing voice of the fat god as we had an orgasm, even though we were both at a different point in space-time.

How heaven can become hell when you’re stuck in it. During every single orgasm I have had since that day, 2392 according to my log, I have heard his voice saying those words. Even when I have a wet dream after long periods of abstinence his voice never fails to wake me up.

I went looking all over for him, in Eupen, in Germany, in the rest of Europe and the world. I had an artist sketch him and I carry this image with me, everywhere I go. Nobody knows him, nobody believes my story when I tell them. Doctors have looked at my brain, have asked me questions, have tapped my knees and listened to my lungs and drained liquid from my spine, but nobody found anything. It seems I’m sane, except for this one thing. It has killed Claude, not literally, but it has reduced him to a shadow of himself. He’s become somewhat of a maniac. He’s in an institution, now, they have to tie his hands together so that he wouldn’t masturbate until his dick goes to shreds. Poor old Claude, I have loved him so.

People ask me if I think it would have been better if I never would have heard this glorious and heavenly sound, now stuck in my mind, probably echoing something outside of it. I think this hypothetical situation is not one I can seriously consider, because I don’t even remember the time before I heard the voice very well, and all these years before seemed like a waste of time. I just wished I’d know what it is all about, because no questions have been answered by the revelation of this godliness in my life. When I was an atheist everything was clear and I was perfectly contented without a purpose or a meaning beyond itself. Now, I’m always worried. Am I doing good? Am I doing right? Does anybody care? Is somebody watching me, and why, and when? What is the purpose of life and where are we all going, over there, at the end of existence? Questions, I feel, only one fat man can sing to peace and silence.