Today, I Met The Corporate Hatchet Man

"There's room at the top
"They're telling you still;
"But first you must learn
"How to smile as you kill."

America is like one big giant evil dysfunctional family bent on staying bent at any cost. The best conspiracies are the ones never spoken, just understood. Everyone at the table knows his or her assigned role as the dutiful child and happy blind applauder. Experience has taught us what to do in these sort of sick situations.

Success Riders are careful to have no soul and seek out places were no soul is required. So hello corporate America! Like moles they burrow deep into bureaucracies willing to do anything and anyone for a price. They walk around in a permanent airbrushed state of untouchability while raising 2.5 anti-septic children complete with blow-dried wife, never a hair out of place, replicants all.

Sitting at a round table in a corporate chain restaurant with a calculated choreographed personality, it's as if the world outside does not exist. No screaming famine, no hopeless futility, no crying child soldiers marching off to war, no poison seeping daily into our water, no wholesale economic raping, no world spinning out of control. Just cool A/C and a smiling blonde waitress ready to bring processed food trucked halfway across the country to a bunch of overfed assholes.

And in walked the Hatchet Man.

Got doll's eyes, like a shark

A chill descended on the table as we did our best to hide our recoil from his off-putting android presence. He/it wasted no time, producing a vile of poison and placing drops in each of our water glasses. I thought I should take offense at this.

"Won't the poison kill us?" I asked my immediate supervisor sitting next to me.

"Shut up, you little shit! You'll ruin everything!" It was as if she'd ripped off one face to reveal another, one seething red with anger, one ready to kill. I had never seen this face from her before, never even knew she was capable of it. She too has 2.5 children and I was seen as a direct threat to that, the poison not so much.

Had I had my way I would have pointed out the "everything" she was trying to protect was in fact complete and utter shit. Seems it was OK for her to die from the lie but absolutely not to die from exposing the lie. The Hatchet Man eyed us all one at a time, seeing who dare refuse his poison. I sat stupefied, waiting for someone to jump up and yell "Surprise! It's all a joke!" but instead we only descended into unreality.

Alice got nothin' on this boy.

Our Big Boss got a double dose of poison because the Hatchet Man wanted him out of the way to consolidate his power even more. That's the thing to remember about Hatchet Men: they never have enough - of anything. No way to fill that hole left where their soul should be. For them material success and corporate approval were weapons undefeatable in this corrupt culture of ours. They cared not they are thriving weeds, only that they thrive.

Big Boss was giggling at his extra dose. "Haha! You sure got me! Good one, Hatchet Man!"

A mirthful minion quickly declared, "I like to play with my poo!" And he was beaming so proudly no one had the heart to say anything in contradiction.

Another engaged our corporate murderer in a mock serious technical conversation on the contents of the poison, its effectiveness and its ability to damage the nervous system to induce paralysis before death. "Fascinating!"

Then my supervisor bragged on her capacity to be used and the amount of poison she could ingest at corporate behest until she was no longer functioning nor needed. "You definitely need to extract all the life out of me before throwing me away!"

Welcome to my world

But me, I must be mad. I did not want the poison! As my co-workers disintegrated into making animal noises to amuse the Hatchet Man I could only wonder at the purpose of my life or what possible meaning it could have. Dear God, fuck You too. You come down here and live with these face painting lunatics. My heart pounded as I realized I was utterly alone in my sanity. I was literally surrounded by the Grateful Dead.

What is not to be sacrificed on the altar of the Corporate Cult? High Priest CEOs, Shaman CIOs, Mad Monk directors, Holy slave traders, legions of bloody useful Hatchet Men walk among us in vampyric pirating, poaching the fruits of the godly as their own, defying all creation in the process. But don't you dare defy them!

We were merely Parts Replaceable Without Repurcussion; Expendables. Maybe that's why everyone thought self-immolation such a good idea. The High Priest had declared us Tainted Goods to be credit default swapped five to one, each one costing twice as much as before. So in the end, ten times more out the door, justified in grand glowing speeches on how we would magically get ten times the reward. By the time that's revealed as folly, the company will be sunk but the High Priest will have had his day in the sun exalting in the doom he had brought.

Please don't kill me!

Land, air, sea, water, human life, human dignity, the human heart - all these and more must be crushed if they get in the way of our Unquestionable Corporate Cult. I do not know where to turn, I have no answer. The Eye of Mordor is now upon me promising venomous menace if I do not call drinking poison as life, if I do not lie with a smile, and if I do not call corporate evil good. It's moments like this when I understand why people say there is no God.