Black Riders cannot be killed because they are already dead. Spawned from a godless world, no force can destroy them - unless that world is destroyed. They surround my house in furious anticipation. I can stay in and die or come out and die, either way. But my death they must have. I've seen others in their time of dying gather guns and other useless weapons in vain pursuit of protection. The look of horror on their face when they find out the futility of what they've done is like seeing a man who suddenly realizes he's facing an oncoming train. Black Riders want you to arm yourselves in whatever way you feel makes you powerful and safe: your lie is their pathway to destroying you. You can cry for help or disappear in silence, makes no difference. The very world that spawned the Black Riders cannot come to your aid. You're alone as Jesus on the cross, hung out to dry with no penitent hope. Some fools believe the Black Riders serve them and their purposes not knowing no living soul will be spared. Some lament how things got this way, pointing and blaming. Some speak out against the Black Riders' rule in fiery opposition. Some chase rainbows that will set the world fantastically free from the consequences its own decisions. Some profess victory in self-immolation. Some profess glory in pointless sacrifice. None of it changes anything. Powerless we're born and in helplessness we die. Every oar is tied together, those untouched as well as those that row forward and backward. Unity is a universal death sentence yet only in unity can there be hope - yet nothing true can be mandated. The world is its own victim, mandating death as survival's price. The only sound left last is the Black Riders' laugh.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
I've got no way to live. Not possible for anyone to love me. I'm just a big nothing. What can I do! What can I do if there aren't any other losers like me out there???
The Creep slowly but inevitably stepped across the roof of the skyscraper. Peering over the edge he saw his fate. It's one thing to be unloved, he thought, it's something else to be unlovable. He never met a friend if he couldn't bribe them and never met a bribe he couldn't befriend. The entirety of his life had been one long series of retail transactions. "Say and pray" had been his mantra, pounded into himself night and day until he lost any perspective. "Say anything and pray they believe it."
I'm the biggest loser in the world. The biggest of all time! I must be Judas reincarnate.
Stepping onto the edge of the roof, truth and lies became opposites. To die was to live, to live was to die. He never did find a way to make his lies work for him - just as no other person in living history has. Living in constant terror of exposure (not knowing he was already exposed to anyone who looked), life had become unbearable, a ceaseless circus of distractions banning him from the paradise of peace: the outsider always yearning to be in. To end it is to win it.
Then a voice came down from below.
"Jump!"
The voice gathered other voices to it.
"Hey, moron, you gonna dive offa there or what?"
"Make my day and splatter your ass on the sidewalk!"
"Don't be a coward full of chicken ambition. Show us what guts ya got!"
The Creep cocked his head in wonder. They love me! Listen to that sound. So earnest! And all for me!
He started clapping his little hands in mutual applause, his audience cheering him and he delighting in finding his long sought approval; a moment he'd been unknowingly preparing for all his life.
"I love you all!" he shouted out. "I'll show you I'm a man of the people. I'm coming down to join you!"
As the crowd roared its approval, a horrified woman walked by, appalled at the crowd's ravenous hate.
"Are you people out of your minds urging that man to throw his life away? You have no idea what you're doing. That's just deplorable."
"Ha ha, lady! That's us, alright, we're the deplorables! No one cares what you have to say. He's our hero! He makes us feel good about being morons."
Then they told her to leave or she'd be lynched because "we don't want anyone to know us."
The Creep was giddy seeing such dedicated support. "As long as I'm going to die anyway, I may as well burn this building down too. How about a simplistic mindless chant? Burn it down! Burn it down!"
The taunting masses exploded in response, lustily carrying cans of gasoline up to the roof. At long last they could take unjust revenge for the sorry state of their lives, praising with their lips the Creator they hated while cursing with their hearts the world they created. If they couldn't be happy then nobody could, terrorists and traitors all, feeding off the outrage of the godly, carrying the deluded convictions of a spurned lover. To them, hope was a word never to be uttered, never to be dreamed; the ultimate betrayal of their cause.
The Creep poured the gasoline down rooftop ventilation shafts, followed by lit matches. As the smoke billowed out he cackled in glee. "I can't wait to lie about this later!" The giggling monster at the top of the towering inferno gloried in the crowd's accolades. "We are the true victims!" he declared. "See how they fight us every step of the way, trying to put out our lovely fires and even saying I'll die from it? But I don't care what they say because so many people agree with me!"
Self-important talk shows posed questions on "how do we stop this madman?" The Creep and its supporters laughed as they watched the consternation they caused in those whom they wished the most to love them. The TV voices cried out, "We must call him out! People won't know he's doing evil otherwise. Now is the time to unify! We must be like a farmer who unites the wheat with the chaff so everyone can win."
As the flames engulfed the building, those who were trapped by the fire cried out for help from the windows, furious with the rooftop ruler. A reporter from Eyeballs News dangling upside down from a helicopter gave forum to the arsonist. When asked about his burning victims, the Creep replied, "I don't know these people. They're saying bad things about me for no reason. I tried to help put out the fire! I deserve an apology!" Then, fearing some may yet pay attention to his victims, the Creep pulled out his penis to create a distraction ("I'm going to tweet my meat!") which was quickly seized upon by a compliant media.
With the camera off his victims, the cult leader addressed his acolytes: "Do you hear their partisan complaints? So full of hate! They want to destroy us, they are so vicious! There's no living with them! Repeat after me: Rape! Torture! Kill! This is God's will!"
The angry swarm below religiously repeated the chant, faces glowing red in the reflecting flames. They too had been waiting all their lives, waiting to reveal their murderous intent, steeped in their philosophy of discontent. But fires consume oxygen and thus can't last forever. The crowing Creep was at its zenith, forced to leap as the building crumbled beneath him.
"They called me a fraud but as I make this jump you'll see the true winner that I am!"
The mob gave its loudest cheer yet. Intense media speculation and debate ensued as Creep supporters shoved their way on camera.
"He's the greatest of all time! You naysayers will be left with egg all over your face. Just you wait and see! All you goddam reporters trying to take him down with facts are going to be exposed in the end."
A woman passing by was asked of her opinion of the murdering arsonist creep. "I'm sorry, I just can't believe those awful things you say about him in the press. It's just too terrible to believe so it must not be true."
A random smart ass was asked next, but he only replied with, "Homo says what?" As the reporter reiterated the question the smart ass kept with the same response. Finally, the reporter dropped his professional stance. "Look, smart ass, I don't like getting played like that!"
"Why not? You been letting that creep play you."
A group calling themselves Creep's Angels congregated on the Creep's projected landing spot, loudly proclaiming, "We love the Creep and the Creep loves us! He'll never hurt us!"
Under his breath the smart ass retorted. "You're exactly whom he's going to hurt, morons."
The justice of doubted reality was served. The Creep landed on his godless angels, killing himself and everyone beneath him. History declared the Creep a "forever loser." Those who still cared about life burst into applause at the end of the reign of terror. Others committed suicide, following in the footsteps of their Judas leader. Never again was the Creep mentioned by any living soul.
CODA: Creep followers were undeterred in continuing the decline of civilization even in the face of death and history's humiliation. In the face of their unrepentance, a mother who'd lost a daughter in the Creep's fire lambasted them. "Your barbaric cruelty is evil without end - and evil has no future!" "Lady, don't blame us because you're a loser. The world is evil and you're in it. So if evil has no future then neither do you."
In Revelation it speaks of a rider on a pale horse, come to change the world. I too saw a rider on a pale horse - and it too brought revelation...
The two girls who'd been in the car with me emphatically pleaded with the police who were handcuffing me.
"It's not him. He did nothing. He was with us the whole time!"
"Have you lost your minds? How could he have caused all this when he was in our car?"
The police have as their stated goal to be the truth. But the truth is more than most can bear so one switches to what is considered to be a more pragmatic - if eventually fatal - view of keeping one's job. Just arrest somebody - anybody - to keep the angry masses at bay. God can be dealt with after paying the rent.
So I was led away in handcuffs, never once protesting my innocence nor speaking a word. Amazing how the truth comes out sometimes.
The two girls were sitting up front in the four door sedan while I was in the back. We'd all seen the madman on the white horse interjecting himself into the stopped traffic at our intersection just below a highway overpass. It was a WTF moment for all of us. As if sensing the tension he was causing, the rider suddenly took off to the right. It was easier for me to track him from my vantage point and I wondered how he was going to overcome the concrete obstacles on the side of the road that would hamper his escape.
The galloping horse attempted to jump over them but failed on his landing, knocking the rider off but with his foot stuck in the stirrup. Panicked, the horse veered back into traffic, bouncing the head of the rider on the pavement who must either be unconscious or dead. Cars were slamming into one another in avoidance and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse the horse became entangled with a car, causing it to veer onto oncoming traffic and the tragedy increased multi-fold.
I'd witnessed all this as if watching a dream, not believing my eyes, not wanting to witness the daylight insanity before me. It repulsed me to think I lived in a world of such disconnected values that a man would endanger himself, a helpless animal, and others in such a reckless way. What was he thinking? How could he have hope? All I knew I was put in a position of undeniability - the last place my lying ass wants to be.
Besides the unfolding horror of what I saw, what got me most was my unspoken guilt in watching it. Maybe I wondered if I could be that man on the horse, losing his way, perhaps desperately asking for help in some perverse way. It was if he'd reached inside me and grabbed my soul in questioning inquisition. I was not ready for this thief in the night.
I guess the guilty nature of my recounting to the police made them arrest me, that I was somehow in cahoots with the horseman, that I was holding back. Most of all, I knew I could never say the words, "I'm innocent." I couldn't remember the last time I felt innocent.
Naturally, in jail I was asked what I was guilty of. "Name it," I'd reply, giving no eye contact. Even the creeps wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe they felt I would be a vehicle of revelation for them too and no one wanted that - especially the lying cops.
My silence frustrated everyone. Yet, I had nothing to say. To speak would be to do self-harm. "What is truth," inquired Pilate of Jesus, as if Pilate could not know himself. Why would I speak to what is self-evident? I've spent a lifetime of lying and could do more, regardless of the consequences. But a society that fears change more than damnation needed a convenient scapegoat. There was no shortage of professional Judases willing to define me in the worst possible way and did it with great, if short-lived, glee; for it was themselves they were defining in the end.
Can there be any seepage of real-time justice into this world? Apparently not. I'm surrounded by those who insist the farmer mix the chaff with the wheat, bringing ruin to all. It became clear judge and jury wanted to leave no living witnesses to their earthly deeds. How ironic they did not perceive my own guilt, that I had simply run out of lies. I was placed on a pedestal of righteousness and in doing so gave cause righteous cause in the minds to tearing me down. The more I was reviled, the more moral they must be.
I was silent to the end, a witness to the persecution, watching mad fairies fly around me in constant agitation, wielding swords and lances in wild ejaculations of ecstasy, furious at the inner fears they cannot escape, blindly stabbing at repressed demons of their own making, seen only in their own mind, praying to slay that which cannot be slayed - only freed - and to lose their life by trying to preserve it.
The madness was here, the madness was there, the madness was everywhere.
People think this is political. God, do not forgive them, for they know what they do.
I got your contract, got your job permit. For a hundred years I've had to write this shit. I have to dot the I's and cross every T, But I need a job, So I have to be a Paperwork Shuffler, Paperwork Shuffler! It's a dirty office in a dirty land, And my doting boss doesn't understand, He lives his life inside a dry inkwell, It's a boring job, But he wants to boss a Paperwork Shuffler, Paperwork Shuffler! Paperwork Shuffler... Paperwork Shuffler... Cried a thousand tears, what's a soul to do? I got no windows so I lost my view, Days stretch longer in the corporate life, It will stone your heart, I pray not to be a Paperwork Shuffler, Paperwork Shuffler! If you really want it you can have this job. Call me a dreamer, can call me a snob. But I'm suffocating in a living hell, So I need a break, Want to be more than a Paperwork Shuffler, Paperwork Shuffler!
There's a saying prison: "The deeper the sleep, the deeper the nightmare." So you never really get complete rest, part of you must stay awake 24/7 just to keep the monsters out, perpetually pushing against the door they keep trying to beat in. Some fail, of course, and the monsters come in and take over. Those are the scary ones and you wonder where God is. So every scrap of friendship is a lifeline not to be ignored.
Some take advantage of that, buddying up to you to see what they can wrangle. Self-doubt creeps in when you're in a place like that, surrounded by animalistic creatures, guards and prisoners alike. Cut off from the outer world, it turns into a distant dream becoming more unreal every passing moment. The overwhelming desire is to rebuild a semblance of life like you had on the outside, seeking out your own kind. The system, of course, only wants to crush you - because it can.
Men talk of the bonding that comes from wartime. In here, we're also under siege. Two or three at the most you'll come to trust. Once the suspicion passes, you see the mutual fear and there lies the foundation. You talk about things: normal things, outside things, future things. I had people say they were glad to of met me, that our paths had crossed like they had. "Dude, we're only meeting because of my crimes!" What purpose does it serve to make relationships in prison? Shouldn't I be hanging with the fellow shining stars like I was meant to be?
These unfair questions crossed my mind.
Afterwards, in the real world you find out how real things were inside. In there I could hide what a loser life I lead, so easy to appear to be more than you are. Oh, sure, I'm going to do all these cool things when I get out. But in the daylight I cannot hide. A few of the guys really do go one to do cool things, having a life and family. I remember sitting there on this guy's couch wondering if he knew how miserable I felt seeing him and his family living their lives. That was hopelessly out of reach for me.
He showed no hint of rejection or being ashamed of me. Friendly as always. Maybe he figured prison had done something to me and it was understandable I was still broken. What he didn't know was I was this way before I ever got in. I mean, were I functional person I'd have never of committed my crimes in the first place. I never went over there again or even made contact. I felt I was merely soiling the carpet with my presence.
Other guys are fuck ups like me. They are genuinely happy to see you, excited to meet someone to whom they need not explain their past. They like to bring up old bullshit that doesn't interest me but still they are better than nothing. In the end, I don't see a future with them, either. The last group is those whom you immediately avoid on sight - and they you. No one wants their shame revealed.
So all of them and none of them are my friends. I think of the Beatles hanging out with the Stones and other rockers in that Swinging Sixties London scene, colleagues and collaborators. Then I think who Lennon might have met stuck in prison when his actual soul-mates were worlds away. I feel like he could of made some genuine lifelong friends - but no Paul McCartneys. He'd of led a shadow life, at times pretending it was his real one, but only he knowing the truth.
