"M. meets M." continued


M. glances down at his trembling right arm to find that he is holding an unlit cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand, He brings it to his lips and a moment later a plume of smoke is dancing through the air, black against the whiteness of the light, Okay, M., I'm going to level with you, so that you don't get any funny ideas…I was here long before you were, You've just arrived, just woken to smell the coffee, and all because of a single anonymous letter, the contents of which you say you no longer remember well, though I'm sure somewhere in that fetid subconscious of yours the message remains buried…At any rate I'm the one she wants to see, Clair, that is (I know you're undressing her in your mind right now, Don't even try to deny it), and so, basically, I'm the only reason you're here, M. Stone, not her, Get that through your thick, rock-filled head, Without me there would be no Clair, no Lila, no Fish, Without me you don't even have a shadow to trail behind you in the light, nor an eye with which to see in the dark, eh?  Oh and, by the way, why the name "Stone"?  Do you think you're fooling anyone using that silly alias?  You ought to be proud of your god-given name, instead of always trying to hide your genuine identity through a truncated-nay, crippled-one, You can't hide from yourself, as the saying goes, M., Who are you trying to fool!  M. takes a pull from his cigarette, coughs wheezily, and then runs the back of his hand across his upper lip, He is startled to discover that a prickly mustache has sprouted there in such a short period of time, I hear you, M. says, But you don't fool me, I'm onto you, you see, I know that you're no more than a chimerical image, a mere reflection of the real me, All I have to do is climb back upstairs into the darkness and your gone, poof! like a phantom, for phantom you are, my friend…M. places the cigarette on his bottom lip and allows it to dangle there, He wonders what he must look like with the mustache and the cigarette now, probably very detective-like indeed…

No, M. Stone, his reflection seethes quietly, You've got it all mixed up, You're the one who will disappear when I'm gone, not the other way around, You ought to be thankful for me, Without me you're nothing, literally, Wrap your brain around that conundrum, why don't you?  You think you're so smart, waxing philosophical about "reality" and "dream" (as if anyone actually cares about your hackneyed theories), flaunting your incomplete knowledge of books and the "art of detecting" (and here his reflection soundlessly slapped its knee for emphasis), though you don't even hold a professional investigative license, You keep pretending that all of this actually matters in the long run, that all of this internal dialogue you allow to spill out into the world is anything more than the incessant chatter of a borderline schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, and that others share your obsessions enough to want to listen to any of it…Well, unfortunately, you're dead wrong, Stone, Wake up!  The coffee has gone from burnt to boiled-out, and there's none left for you to drink, can't you see that?  You'll just have to scrub the bottom of the pot with pumice until it's translucent again, How old are you now, Stone? in your late thirties, right?  Well, let me tell you something, you're getting yourself nowhere, You're like one of those lab mice (rats are too smart) that run themselves to death inside their plastic wheels, They get the feeling that they're moving, but in the end not only have they not gotten anywhere, but they're still inside of the same cage as before, You, too, seem to think that by pursuing things that don't exist you're getting somewhere, making some sort of progress, but you're just like those mice, I assure you, I suggest you take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror sometime (figuratively speaking, of course) while considering these words carefully, There is nothing unique about you, Stone, Stones of your variety are worth less than a dime a dozen, Before long they'll be cloning humans anyway, as they've done with rats and sheep and deer, and then you'll become extinct, You're already a dinosaur, M. Stone, mark my words…

M. clutches his head, which feels as though it is about to split into so many fragments, and as the cigarette falls from his bottom lip he turns around and begins to walk back in the direction he had come from, back toward the ladder…Hey, where are you going, Stone?  You can't run away from yourself, you know, Remember that without me you're nothing, You're just a wanna-be detective without even a body to search for, When are you going to stop playing these games with yourself?  M. pivots on the heel of his foot, one hand in the pocket of his jacket, and flings a metal lighter at it (could his reflection have planted it on him? he certainly hadn't had it before), and then, without turning back to see whether or not he has hit his target, he begins his ascent back into the darkness to search out his body and to prove, once and for all, that he is more than just a common stone, that he is, in fact, a one-of-a-kind gem, a sleuth that would have made the hapless Lönnrot of Borges' short story green with envy…