Pete and Re-Pete had beat the system. Two mid-level drug dealers making the biggest score of their lives, they'd never have to work again. Unlike the "suckers" out there, they had the world figured out. Pete even fancied his worldly success as a blessing from God, that he was indeed a moral figure (Re-Pete never thought much anything of anything except taking what's in front of him). But Carlos was a drug lord of his own making and that's how Pete and Re-Pete found themselves tied to a pair of chairs in an underground room with their clothes covered in gasoline.
"You think you clever boy!" Carlos accused Pete. "Put your sniper man up high to protect you!" Pete had used Re-Pete as his backup as per their usual plan when making a switch. But Carlos had been one step ahead. It was clearly a case of minor league versus major league.
"Please don't!" screamed Re-Pete, horrified by the sight of the lighter in Pepe's hand (Pepe was Carlos' right hand man.)
"Just take the money! You'll never see us again!" promised Pete.
"What a pair of idiotas we got here, eh, Pepe?" Carlos leaned down into Pete's face. "Hey, smart guy, you know how many times I sell this same cocaine? This make third time! Now that what I call high profit!"
Re-Pete fell into sobs realizing what complete suckers they'd been from the beginning, blinded by their own greed. Now they had no way out. Pete, who fantasized his life a moral endeavor, found his brain short-circuiting as he could find no rationale for his present dire dilemma.
"God won't let you get away with this!" he lashed out. Carlos and Pepe laughed at a response they'd never heard before by a victim about to be killed.
"Eh, Pepe, we got a man of God here! Let's put it to the test and see if God stop this fire. Torch these assholes."
"Wait!" screamed Re-Pete. "I don't care about God at all! I just want to live."
"It too late for that, homie. It dying time now."
Pete felt he had nothing to lose. "One day God will get you! Let us go and God will spare you."
Carlos turned to Pepe with a wry smile. "You get this guy? He looney tune!" Then he turned back to Pete. "You know what? God can suck my dick. How 'bout that?"
"It's true! I believe with all my heart! God exists and God saves."
"Like I said before, let's put that to the test. Roast 'em, Pepe!"
Both the bound victims wailed in protest as Pepe stepped forward. But suddenly Carlos realized he was enjoying himself. "Wait a minute, Pepe," he said waving him back.
"Thank you!" begged Pete, having deceived himself yet again into thinking he was saved.
"You idiotas want to live so bad, then say after me: God, suck my dick!"
Re-Pete blurted it out right away. Pete hesitated. "Please don't make me say that."
"No one make you do anything! God protect you, right? But I got a idea for you. Listen to this."
Carlos held up his large screen phone for the pair to see. "These last guys that buy my dope. Mira este!"
Right before their eyes Pate and Re-Pete saw their fate as three men were burned alive, screaming and wailing and howling from the depths of hell, every second an eternity. Re-Pete was overcome with terror, crying uncontrollably. Pete broke.
"God, suck my dick!"
Carlos laughed like he hadn't in a long time. He wondered why he hadn't noticed before how much fun it is for the cat to play with the mouse before killing it.
"Like Sister Maria say to me: you got no faith, boy. How you gonna face God now saying somethin' like that?"
"But God is true. This isn't right killing us like this."
"Right? What right got to do with it? You think you in a movie or somethin'? It right because I do it. Tell you what, if it make you feel better, you just pretend I'm a cop and you a nigger. Now I got right to kill you!" Carlos confirmed with an approving smile from Pepe how clever this argument was.
"But them niggers deserve it!" Pete crossly declared in complete conviction.
Carlos and Pepe both burst into laughter.
"You get this guy? Mister racist Christian think he somebody! I bet he even vote!"
"I do! Republican always!" proclaimed Pete, misunderstanding all he saw.
"Well, you got no vote here. Glad I talk here first. I'm gonna enjoy toasting you twice as much now."
"What!? I thought you understood! I'm a man of God!"
"Only God here is me! I say what happens, nobody else." Carlos' face turned dark, as it always did on the brink of committing murder.
"Please! How can I prove it?"
The sound of Re-Pete's sobbing filled the cold concrete room. Carlos had had enough of this "man of God."
"This last time I say it. I the only God here. You want to life then you have to please ME! You make your choice and you make it now!" Carlos un-paused the burning video. Pete made his choice.
"I will please you."
"Good! Now since you said God to suck your dick, now you gonna suck mine. Suck it like God's!"
No precept of Pete's previous existence remained intact. From that moment on he was wiped clean, forced to face how unhinged from reality he'd lived his life. He'd convinced himself he was a "good man" who made up for his sins with religious gestures and thus nothing bad should ever happen to him. And yet, this nightmare didn't stop as he watched Carlos walk over putting his crotch in Pete's face as he unzipped his pants.
"Go ahead. Meet your new best friend. Make it happy, your life depend on it!"
Pete thought of the blow jobs he'd received in his life and how powerful it made him feel. As the cock slid into his mouth he felt a sensation he knew he could never un-know, branded for life. Pete still felt he was in a dream, that none of it was happening, and that as he desperately followed Carlos' commands to "work it, bitch", he'd somehow wake up safe in bed. But the last bit of denial vanished as he tasted the bitter, salty cum in his mouth. Where was God, his savior?
Carlos was pleased with himself. "I been too quick torching you punks! Shoulda made all you suck my dick first! OK, Pepe, light 'em up!"
"What!" wailed Pete. He'd pleased his god and that was supposed to bring salvation.
"You still whinin'? Don't you ever stop. Die like a man! You think suckin' my dick gonna save you? Man, what in your head?" But once again an idea hit Carlos has he waved back Pepe. "No, wait. I'm gonna give you a choice."
Carlos walked over to the camera he used for recording and showed it to Pete's face. "Tomorrow, I'm gonna send this to police. They won't see me. Just my dick in your mouth. Then I send to news people. Then it go on internet for whole world to see! You be famous, bitch!" Carlos laughed at the look of horror on Pete's face. Then he felt compelled to lecture the self-righteous hypocrite tied up before him.
"Welcome to the real world. It all about winners and losers. You been thinkin' you a winner, don't you? Now you know different! Know what happens when that video go out? Whole world laugh at you! Your momma gonna be proud when she see you!" Carlos turned to Pepe who chuckled at the thought. "Your girlfriend gonna leave you. No girl gonna suck dick of loser like you. Cops know your face. You gotta go get a job! Maybe janitor. Make ten dollar a hour! How that sound to you?"
Pete was drifting into shock, hearing the words in an out-of-body experience. The entire speech was a litany of nightmares he'd sought to avoid his entire life. He wished for death's escape.
"But then they not even let you do a job after video. Put you on street to die. You ever live on street? I have. You die sloooow. Your knee start hurtin', what you gonna do? Go see doctor? No money! Something go wrong, nothing you can do, just hurt more and die more so people run when they see freak like you. Maybe then you go to votin' and church and see how that work for you! You too stupid to live!"
Carlos snapped his fingers to Pepe and pointed to Re-Pete. Pepe then lit the pool of gasoline at Re-Pete's feet who was quickly engulfed in flames, screaming at the top of his lungs. Pete had slipped into complete shock, losing his mind at the sight of his best friend burned alive after just days ago planning a vacation to Tahiti. Every time his mind tried to re-engage reality it snapped back in horror. Hell was for other people, he'd always assured himself.
The next morning he was alone, the bonds cut from his chair. Re-Pete's charred body was gone but the burn remarks on the concrete remained. Pete was nauseated by the still pungent smell of gasoline on his clothes. He was alive but worse than dead. As promised, the video was released to the world, exposing his foolishness in lifelong shame. He grew a beard and labored at menial jobs until the pandemic came and even those weren't available. Pete ended up on the streets as predicted, wishing he'd never been born and had never believed he was the exception to the world.
My past has caught up with me and I don't know what to do. If only I had just kept my mouth shut before! But I couldn't. She was my most favorite person in the world. I, however, am not. Terrified of rejection, I poisoned what we had, forever fouling her on me. And now here I am the only one who can help her. Un-fucking-believable.
From far above a piano is falling directly where she stands. No one else is near enough to help. I already know she won't listen to a thing I say. I've fallen on hard times without her, I look and feel like shit to boot. Like I said, my past has caught with me.
"Amelie, you need to move from where you are!"
Silence, eyes straight ahead as if I'm not even here.
"I know I was manipulative in the past but this is different. A piano is falling directly where you stand. You have to move!"
She looks down at her phone, checking her email.
"This has nothing to do with you or me. It's just about saving your future. I'd be saying same thing to anyone who's standing where you are."
She scrolls through recent photos.
"Just do me this one thing, please. Just look up. What harm can there be in that? Just look up and see for yourself."
In a flash of hope, she puts her phone in her purse - but only to resume looking defiantly straight ahead, like a Marine during inspection.
"I don't have the words. I don't have the capacity to undo what I've done. I'm terrified even talking to you after what I did. If someone else were here they could save you but I have to stand here and fail knowing it's all my fault. This is beyond unbearable."
So I jumped beside her. "Sorry, God, I can't watch someone else die because of my failings."
I only have time to
In the afterlife I was able hear her thoughts from before.
"Amelie, you need to move from where you are!" I can't believe he has the nerve to think I'd listen to anything he has to say. He's a nonentity.
"I know I was manipulative in the past but this is different. A piano is falling directly where you stand. You have to move!" Don't come whining to me about what you did. Live with it!
"This has nothing to do with you or me. It's just about saving your future. I'd be saying same thing to anyone who's standing where you are." What sounds good for lunch?
"Just do me this one thing, please. Just look up. What harm can there be in that? Just look up and see for yourself." Damn him! Make him go away! I don't want to see anything anymore. That's how I got hurt last time. Never again.
"I don't have the words. I don't have the capacity to undo what I've done. I'm terrified even talking to you after what I did. If someone else were here they could save you but I have to stand here and fail knowing it's all my fault. This is beyond unbearable." I can't move. I've got nowhere else to go. Not letting that idiot know that. Going to close my mind and hope I don't die. I want to be right about something for once.
And so the convict crucified next to Jesus said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
Jesus answered him, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."
The convicted man thought about that for a minute then a wry smile formed on his lips which then kept building into full blown laughter. "It's true, isn't it?"
"Yes..."
"They do all this for nothing!"
Both men broke into laughter as they fully realized the futile and feckless ways of the world.
The Roman guards who heard the laughter looked up in dire fear as they already suspected they lived their lives in vain, hoping against hope the approval of the world meant the approval of God. It was if their innermost secret fear was being played out in broad daylight and this froze the guards in paralysis, helpless bystanders to what may come.
The guard captain, who'd long ago eschewed his soul as a useless hindrance, turned to hear the laughter and the sound of it ripped through his being as sharply as the nails had the crucified men. In his agony he rushed over to cease the piercing pain.
"You two shut up! There's no laughing on a cross!"
But that was as if he'd spoken the punchline to a joke the captain was wholly inadequate to understand, causing a fresh burst of laughter. Flustered, the captain whirled around to see if anyone noticed him and to his horror found every eye within sight to be upon him. He fell back on his tried and true methods.
"I order you to be quiet!" That was a quick failure and the captain felt as ants were crawling over his entire body. In sheer desperation to assert an authority he did not have, he decried, "You've been convicted by our holy courts! You criminals are fools!" When that too failed, the captain could no longer fight the feeling he'd been stripped naked before the world, thus revealing no one had reason to listen to anything he had to say regardless of his so-called rank. The captain fled, much to the the astonishment of his underlings.
"I suspect one - if not all of us here - is a moron."
The laughing had also drawn in curious onlookers, some of whom had voted for the two men's death. They too were disconcerted.
"The devil's come taken their minds!" asserted a woman who'd declared herself pious. "Read about it in the holy scriptures," she added to give weight to her argument. "It's good to be killing these two. No one can live with possessed minds like these."
A nearby banker also felt justified. "That Jesus is a most unserious fellow. He has no respect for commerce. Silly sot spoke of love as he should of money."
A coward sneered, "He said he wanted to help people. What good can he do dead? Easy to talk high and mighty when you don't plan on sticking around, the short-sighted fool."
No one who heard the laughter was able to remain silent, anymore than a person thrown into a roaring fire could. The sound pierced and piqued the soul into uncontrollable agony, forcing expressions of self-reflection - that which they most desperately sought to keep secret, even to the point of murder.
As the commenters had feared - but not dare utter - the two crucified men were laughing at their self-serving foolishness. The crucifiers acted as flat-earthers who believed killing every person who says the world is round will somehow make it flat. The hopelessness at the core of their behavior - that getting as many people as possible to agree with them would save them - made their every act meaningless and moot. In a word, they were morons - morons to be pitied and whose absurd claims bring laughter from the truly knowing.
Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
Make crime legal then it becomes OK in the eyes of God!
The war on the poor is the one war with universal support. "You see, if we don't throw families into the street we'll have chaos and death and destruction!" If you ever want to hear someone say something stupid, ask them to tell you why the concept of money is needed. Money is not love, therefore it's not necessary - but that won't stop stupid from speaking! And so we have the situation we see here where crimes happen in broad daylight and no one blinks an eye. Everyone claims to be helpless in the situation - just like when we nailed Jesus to the cross. We pretend it has to be done.
The enforcer has a piece of paper saying the tenants must pay or go. The bank has a piece of paper saying the landlord must pay or go. The stockholders say the bank must make money or go. On and on it goes in an endless game of blackmail as our possessed minds claim "there is no other way!" God help anyone who doesn't believe blood is on their hands. But know this: just as the war criminals rape, kill, and destroy without recourse, so shall the same be done to them (and twice over). It's only a matter of when. Remember this when your turn for eviction comes: by our own hands we are destroyed.
I lie, therefore I am.
I buy, therefore I am.
I cry, therefore I am.
I fry, therefore I am.
I'm sly, therefore I am.
I'm dry, therefore I am.
I'm wry, therefore I am.
I'm high, therefore I am.
I spy, therefore I am.
I sigh, therefore I am.
I pry, therefore I am.
I die, therefore I am.
