A Wall in a House

If walls could talk, this one would ask you for a goddamn cigarette right about now.

I’m joking, of course.

Even if you could supply me with one, I’ve got no arms to light it with, no mouth to suck in the smoke with, and no lungs to be blackened by it, because in case I wasn’t clear- I’m a goddamn wall!

Here’s what happened:

Back when I wasn’t a wall, I was a father, a damn good father. I did the whole thing: mowed the lawn, took the kids to school, parent teacher conferences, poker nights with the in-laws, yadda-fuckin-yadda.

Anyway, one day I go to the doctor because I’m feeling really shitty, and he tells me I have lung cancer. Now, of course, the kids are really sad about it, and my wife is a total mess. Tina was only twelve at the time, and her older brother, Isaac, was sixteen.

I had my whole proverbial ‘battle’ with cancer, but to be perfectly frank, it whooped my ass. There was no Rocky-style, get back up in the late rounds sort of moment. it took me out and it wasted no time doing it. Six months after my diagnosis, poof! Gone. That was less time than the doctor predicted I would be around.

While I was in the hospital though, I listened to a bunch of podcasts, and these big-brain scientists would come on and talk about transferring your consciousness after you passed on. I was really into that idea, seeing as I was about to leave my wife and two kids without a dad, and I had my wife look into it. Turns out, my death came just in time for the beta release of Life-Op, which was this new technology that could transfer the consciousness of a loved one into a sort of “home device”, like the ones that turn your lights on and off and adjust the thermostat.

So, Life-Op technicians came by and turned me into the wall in our home, and to be honest, it was fucking awesome at first. I could see all the rooms using cameras that my family set up throughout the house. There was an AI that knew my voice, so I could talk to my wife and kids and it would sound like me, like I was really there! There was an interface so I could watch movies and play games with my kids. The whole thing was revolutionary.

So, why do I sound so pissed off? I essentially escaped death right? Well, yeah, in a way, I did, but if you believe in potentially going to hell after you die, just listen a while longer, and you might agree with me that that is exactly where I ended up going.

You see, with any new gadget you give to your kids, they play with it for a while, then they get bored, and start playing with it less and less. The novelty wears off. That happened to me. I was a screen in the wall to them. They didn't realize, and I couldn't ask them to, that I was still capable of feeling every waking emotion that any human could, and that I was still their father.

It took me a while to come to terms with this, but I eventually did. I realized that I wasn’t in a normal circumstance, that I should just be happy I get to see the kids grow up. I mean, the alternative was fucking death. I got to share in big occasions like Isaac getting into the college he wanted, and Tina getting her soccer scholarship. They gathered around me during Christmas time to open presents, and I could still participate in poker nights. My wife just had to interact with a screen to allow me to move on my turn.

However, when the kids were both out of the house and busied with college and careers- and I suppose I can’t blame her for this- my wife decided it was time to move on. She disabled my speaking feature, so I could no longer communicate to her. I don’t think she realized that she didn’t fully shut me off. I could still see everything going on in the house (She never was very technically savvy). Anyway, I would see her leaving and coming home from dates. On many occasions, she would bring her dates back to the house. It was always some jerk off who looked a bit like me, which I guess was flattering, but imagine you’re a wall, and you can do nothing but watch as your wife hooks up with some stranger in your bedroom. Needless to say, walls can have egos, and those late nights did a number on mine.

Eventually, one of those dates, some douchebag named Mike, came and swept her away in his Porsche, and they moved to San Diego. I watched the furniture get cleared out of the house afterward, and then new furniture came in, and a few open houses took place. My kids came over before the house got sold, and I heard them discussing the prices for moving me to a new place. I heard the figure, and my metaphorical jaw dropped. I knew then and there, that it was the last time I was going to see them. I understood too. The wires and screens and microchips that made up my consciousness were apparently so integrated into the walls, floors, and appliances of the house, that they would have to rip it all out and reinstall me elsewhere. All of that would end up costing more than the house itself.

By this point, I was more than a little depressed, and the salt in the wound came when I listened to the real estate agent marketing the house to people. She would say, “…and the house comes fully equipped with AI controlled home appliances!” That was me. All I got was a one-sentence description. I had been reduced to a neat little feature that turns your fucking blender on for you. Want your coffee ready when you get up in the morning? Sure thing, just program it in and I have no choice but to get brewing every day at 6:30 a.m. sharp! I had no problem doing these tasks for my family, but somehow the thought of doing it for strangers who I didn’t give a shit about felt a bit less rewarding, and the family that eventually moved in ended up downgrading my system for a cheaper price. What that means is, where I once could watch movies and listen to music and things, this new family decided this privilege was too expensive, so they shut it off.

Now, all I had to do for entertainment was watch the damn family: Three kids, all little fucking monsters with no redeeming qualities; Two stressed parents pushing the boundaries of divorce with every waking second they spent around each other; and one depressed wall that, unbeknownst to them, despised all of them, and secretly wished they would go missing on a family vacation to the Bermuda Triangle. One day, the middle daughter, (she was ten) found my communications setting and turned it back on. Thinking I was some sort of emotionless helper-bot, she asked, “can you do my math homework for me?”

To which I replied, “Get shit on, kid”

She started crying. Her dad came in the room wondering what was wrong.

I spoke again, “Get fucked, Dad. You piece of shit. By the way, take the camera out of the bedroom. I’m tired of watching your flabby ass wife get dressed”.

He promptly found the communication setting, and turned it off again.

That was the best I had felt in decades.

Eventually, that marriage did end, and it caused the household to split into two different buildings, neither of which was mine, and so I was back on the market. Fucking woohoo.

The next guy to move in was interesting as hell. He was a movie director, Arnold Kafka, and he was every bit as eccentric as one would expect an artist to be. He rarely left his house. He got food delivered to him so he could spend more time inside writing and watching movies. He repainted the walls, me included, about ten times in the two years that he lived here. To be honest, I liked the repainting. It felt like was getting a makeover every few months. Arnold was a wall’s best friend, and I realize now that I actually loved him, mostly because he turned my communication setting on again, and spoke to me like a human being. He would bounce movie ideas off of me, and recommend movies for me to watch. I told him I couldn’t watch movies at my current setting, and so he upgraded me.

We built quite a friendship over his two years there. I would watch every movie he recommended and give him my thoughts, and when he got food delivered, he would usually jokingly ask me if I wanted a bite. I noticed him drinking a lot. The volume and frequency of his alcohol consumption increased as the stress of his screenplay deadline approached. I was in no position to judge his mental health though, as mine was far past the point of repair.

He was a fun drunk. After enough wine he would challenge me to play chess. That was one of the games on my interface. I had gotten very good at chess after years with nothing else to do, but I would let him win, usually, so that he would keep playing against me.

Arnold had highs and lows. When he was really loving a scene he wrote, it would come through in the form of joviality and excitement. However, when the writer's block hit him, he became mean and nasty and unapproachable. Because of this, he rarely had visitors, and when he did, they were usually prostitutes. One thing that I really appreciated about him though, is that he always did one thing that nobody else ever had the decency to do. Even my wife never thought to do it. Whenever he took a woman to bed, he covered the fucking camera.

He finally finished his script one day. He was unhappy with it, but that was to be expected. Artists are never happy with their work. For two years he had toiled over it, and I had watched it tear him apart and piece him together again on a weekly basis. It had transformed him into a full blown alcoholic, and I had been there with him through the whole experience, witnessing the entire show. Finally, the time had come to present it to the producers. Everything was riding on this script for him, and he let that knowledge root deeply into his sense of self. He and the script were essentially the same being now.

So, when the executives told him to toss the script in the trash, he understood it as an instruction to dispose of himself, which he did, in the bedroom, with a rope and a stool.

Unfortunately for me, he did not remember to cover the camera this time.

I saw it all.

It has been a full year now since my friend did that, and while it seems inappropriate and random to talk about property values right now, it is necessary for me to explain that once a person kills himself in a house, the house pretty much becomes worthless. So, the real estate agent came back, and she tried to sell me again, but at a much lower price. Eventually, she gave up completely. I was excited, because I thought this meant I would finally be torn down and disassembled, that they would build a new house where I once was, and a new family would move in, and I would be long gone and never have to witness any of it.

This, I came to learn, was wishful thinking. I was abandoned, and squatters moved in instead. Well, squatters is perhaps too gentle a term. Crackheads is more accurate. They are my current inhabitants, and they like to get high and scream and write on me. My communication setting is off, as are all my other settings. When the bill stopped being paid, I eventually lost most of my capabilities. The only thing I still have is the view of the bedroom and living room, and my own damn voice. I talk to the crackheads. They can’t hear me, I just do it to stay entertained.

“God, your ugly,” I taunt them, “can’t you brush your teeth or read a book or something”

One of them is walking over now, to sit down and lean his scabby back against me.

“Hey slim,” I say to him, “How about it? Can I bum one of those cigarettes?”