Got the email notification today. Funny part, of course, is that I've never had a Twitter account. But that did not seem to matter. According to the message, "Elon is butt hurt" over my not having an account and that he "takes it very personal [sic]" that I shun his platform and he is lodging a "formal protest." It went on to say he "cries himself to sleep at night" over my absence. Who knew? In a post script he begged, "You can criticize me all day long just so long as you don't say anything bad. Free speech forever!"
In related news, a man sauntered out of his lower middle class apartment today completely nude with full erection. As he began to masturbate in the parking lot, he declared he was making a protest. Of what, no one was exactly sure. Some said he must be protesting not having a girlfriend while others insisted he did have a girlfriend. Rumors abounded. The reactions of women who observed the event ranged from indifference to "my life is ruined."
In further protests, Russian army recruits turned on their officers and shot them dead. Every officer who insisted they keep shooting was shot until finally a few who were more rational realized it was in their best interest to keep their mouth shut. However, no generals nor the Russian leader survived the protest as they had been "all in" on killing. At that point the soldiers returned home and were never ordered to shoot again.
It's just keeps getting worse. Round and round in me head, always back to where I started: Who am I?
The fucks are sending me to Bristol for certification. I'm only pretending to be a mechanic, ya clods. Aunt Mimi got wind of it and think it's great like it's going to cure all my ills instead of making me slit me wrists. I can't talk to her but she's all I got.
The lying is killing me. I'm going nowhere. Spending all me money on concerts which makes everyone think I'm a loser idiot. I know I should be saving towards something but what? Can never save enough to get out of these nightmare dead jobs. Everyone on me ass about making something of myself when all I want to do is dream.
I don't see a way out. God just needs to take me. Been running away since I was little, never facing up to nothing. That's not so bad if I'm really nothing. But when I close me eyes and put me head on the pillow, the universe comes out, more than I can ever say. Liars know no peace.
I can't shake this belief I should be up there on the stage with those rock gods. Guys at the shop would roast me if they found out my stubbornness. Girls only listen to me because they think I'm some wounded bird they can fix when I need someone like Yoko who drives me forward into life.
I'm always crushing on girls I can't have and when I kept going on about Yoko at the shop - me couldn't help it - one guy calls her "flavor of the month." See, I wouldn't have these problems if I was a big star selling songs to the world. I'm being punished for my bad decisions.
Sometimes in me most private of moments I sit on the docks and watch the ships come and go, circling a world I'll never see. Those faraway lands, what are they like? It's like a love that can't be seen, shrouded in impassible fog. These visions of a fool I can share with no one.
I want really twisted sex with girls who are bad for me. I don't want to know anything about me. I want them to despise me and spit on my face. That hot nurse Rachel who walks by every morning smoking her fag, I want her to flick her ashes in my mouth. How do I tell her that?
I swim in a sea of shame, music echoing in my ears. Is the tune good or bad? I use it as me therapy but to what end? Just to stay afloat in the middle of nowhere, no land on the horizon.
I get so lonely sometimes I even hate me rock and roll. That would never happen to a rock star.
One time I went down the street not thinking whistling one of my tunes. Couple of birds heard it and got excited, asking name of the song. How do I explain it's a song I never shared? I want no one to know what I've done to me life. Every time I think about being me...
To tell you the truth, what I should really do is just go away and never show my face again
so there's nothing left to do but time...scribbling in the corner of my room knowing those who can see it cannot read...and those who can read cannot see it...as we go through the hollow ritual of decoration as the world burns...leaving us to demonize the past as a prelude to praising our perverted present...
******
you never fully sleep on death row...just fitful starts and stops in pools of sweat brought on from worldly exhaustion...waiting for the bell to toll, an exercise in tortuous evil committed on men both innocent and guilty...but always from men of tortuous evil...
*****
"Ize Nose ewe! Ewe won dem pinko commy faggats knot lettins gud peeples havin gunz in there travelins! Tryinns ta gets alls kilt!"
"Oh, no. Just the opposite. I think every kid should be issued a full on bazooka when they turn 18. That'll keep us safe!"
"Just get the damn car!" she hissed furiously under her breath.
It was the smallest of moments but largest of impact.
You are little people! I have money. I'm better than you. What have you done with your lives compared to me!
She'd resisted the thought for the longest time but it at last she released the genie from the bottle. Then she questioned if maybe she wasn't so wrong after all...
She'd carelessly lost her valet ticket somewhere inside the domain of the high end luxury store. The valets were huddled together, deciding what to do. But the sight of their hesitation and confusion and uncertainty caused a stage one breach to boil through that which mattered most in life: her facade.
As a self-professed "saved soul", to admit anything other than perfect happiness would be betrayal of the highest order. She knew the lines she must say, and she knew the line she must walk. Outside of that, she knew less each passing day.
Yet, in the middle of the night, when her liar's will is stripped away, her truth begs to be set free. And that is her worst nightmare, her "existential death".
Standing on the rainy Boston street as umbrellas scurried by and cars sloshed through dirty water, none noticed the shattering earthquake that occurred as the valet shut the door on his disgruntled customer.
So, I got picked to do day labor for this construction dude. As I hopped in the truck to take me to the work site I noticed his driver side mirror was missing. I asked him if he was going to get that fixed.
"Oh, fuck no! I hate the President."
Have to admit that answer threw me. Part of me said ask no more but I persisted.
"The President, huh?"
"That's right! That cocksucker is ruining everything! I ain't getting jack fixed until my guy is in office."
That's some serious petulance, I surmised. Or, was it something worse?
"So you think that missing mirror will get the President out of office?"
"Damn skippy, it will! I'm a victim! Iffen I fix that I can't call me a victim no more."
At that point I was tempted to ask his favorite brand of glue to sniff.
"Sounds like a plan," I concurred, much to his delight. "That's quite the martyrdom. But what if you wreck because you can't see approaching cars?"
"Exactly! That damn President don't give a damn if we die! The man is a monster!"
Self-projection will out, I mused, misquoting the Bard.
Later that night I was drowning in my own misery. Working on a million dollar townhouse during the day only to be shuttled back to my shit-hole window-unit-AC dump by a lunatic who was stupid and proud of it got me to thinking: Hey, I can be a loser too!
I have no possible future money-wise. And no woman wants to share my futureless future. So, yeah, since I fit the profile, may as well become a senseless shooter. I only plan on killing a couple, not even enough to make the evening news.
No one in my neighborhood can fund the self-pity the way that construction overlord could, so I had some walking to do with my one object of ownership that had any value: my Glock.
Wasn't long before I reached the hood of woefully entitled wealth filled with exhorting yard signs. "President is bad daddy!" "We had an illection!" "The only truth is what's in my head!"
Couple of pot-bellied middle-aged dudes in red caps were gleefully pounding in another sign when I yelled out, "Time to die, loser dicks!"
They immediately got down on their knees, begging for their lives, even though both were carrying guns themselves. Must be Uvalde cops.
"Please don't shoot us, sir! We're just a couple of white niggers, not even worth the bullets in your gun."
I stood my ground as they began a helpless wail. Then I tried an experiment.
"Look, if I shoot you now, you can blame it all on the President and tell everyone how awful things are with him in charge."
The whimpering immediately ceased. They looked up at me with tear stained cheeks.
"You'd do that? You'd do that for us, for real?"
"My pleasure!"
"Fire away!"
I shot up their legs so they'd never walk again. They couldn't be happier. I even called the cops on me for them. When the police arrived I showed them the TikTok video I'd made of my encounter.
The two officers looked at each other in disbelief - then to my own disbelief asked if I had any bullets left in my gun. When I informed them I still had half a mag, they squealed like teenage girls.
"Shoot us, too! Shoot us, too!"
Again, here I am capping the ass of two armed men, so I figured I'd double down (as is the fashion) and shoot them dead.
EPILOGUE:Word spread like wildfire of my shootings and soon I was the darling of the anti-President crowd. I was invited to all expenses paid "shooting engagements" across the country amidst a media circus. Commentators quizzed my willing victims of how they were going to vote for their guy if they were dead. "We doan lissen to no lamestream medias!" they mockingly exclaimed. "We's just vote after we dead. Other side been doin' it fer years!" With a GoFundMe page entitled, "Help take out the President!" I'm now living large and looking at one of those million dollar townhouses myself.
Ya know, the great thing about modern day grifting is you can do it right out in the open! Sure, I hear those talking heads all outraging themselves at my ill-gotten gains, pointing out exactly what I'm doing to stone deaf ears,but none of them ever lived in my old dump, neither. Nope, I'm here to tell ya, folks, there's money in morons and I'm here to take it!"
Sir Admiral Farnsworth Lord Haha Billingsly III, Esq was a man of treasonous rank and serpentine wit which, of course, made his counsel highly treasured in the court of non-public opinion. In a room of golden inlays - for the value of one's surroundings proves the value of the one - he ruled the hearts of the heartless who had the stone cold gall to seek positions of the utmost trust knowing full well the discontent of the their disposition and whose ships stay afloat by swells of public dissonance and whose inflamed minds have no family but those on to whom blame can be placed.
"We must hide, ladies and gentlemen, inside the caverns of cruelty and hollows of hate in the hearts our fellow man. This is where the strings of power connect us to our puppets who, once firmly in our bidding, will decry it freedom to choose slavery! In the mirror they refuse to face, we paint them portraits of prestige they trust will fool our Maker and thus be safe in their consuming of life. Seek ye to keep ye blind.
"In this way, no future is possible - making it ours. So what matter what we do? Live a life one cannot rue! With this intoxication we control the world! With the reckless conviction of the inebriated and secular certainty of religious solemnity, they will, at our command, jump off the cliffs of despair, cheering us, flying our flags on the way to doom. In their suicide they will find meaning and purpose and direction so desperately craved yet zealously refused.
"After we contrive disasters inevitable, then do we protest with the greatest of outrage equaled only by the impotence of irreversibility. We are the Great Protectors, stomping out honesty in every quarter, railing against truth in every form - be it science, sex, or sorcery - and protesting injustice as the savior for our way of life.
"If I were to walk out of here onto the grand public plaza with my penis exposed to the world I'd be forever shamed and discarded. But if we propose murder, arson, rape - for their "enemies" today, (for them tomorrow!) - we'll be as untouchable as the clouds. So fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all! Fuck every last one of them. They both deserve and crave our contempt. Embrace the fullness of moral hypocrisy as the weapon of war that crushes the roots of hope.
"And have no reservation, Hope is our truest enemy. War and hate are the fuel for our fire. Forget the ostensible arguments you hear droning on, Life is nothing more than a battle for deserving love. Self respect cannot be tolerated! It's a battle that must be won at any cost. We don't have to win the reality, just the argument. Then we make the argument reality. That is how we win the world. That is how we win life."
Nothing is happening tomorrow but I have to pretend there is. Nothing will be said tomorrow but I have to pretend to hear. Nothing will be learned tomorrow but I have to pretend to grow.
I am the invited Uninvited.
Few here at the Filet De Sole mega-chain know much of my story. To the diners I'm just the busboy. My co-workers have their own worries and/or lives. To the corporation I'm just another cog.
It's obvious I should have meant more to myself somewhere along the line. Woe to the nonbeliever.
Corporate honchos are arriving tomorrow so it's all-hands-on-deck for the closed door afternoon meeting. As part of that, HR will want to discuss my career options. How do I tell them first I need a career?
As my heart sinks into darkest depths, I'll be informed of the "exciting opportunity" of being cross-trained as a dishwasher. From there, who knows? On to meal prep then one day maybe even fry cook.
One thing's for sure in life when you're on the wrong path: the abuse only piles higher.
It's been over twenty years since I went to film school. Art takes heart, and soul, and commitment. They don't tell you that until after you pay your tuition.
I still go to film festivals to be tortured by the life I ran away from. My own film dreams, of course, are a state secret. When I'm there, I'm the uninvited Invited.
I tried to manifest some money to get me out of this hell. The universe responded with a 14 cent check (literally). I guess you can only get out what you put in.
History will be made tomorrow. You heard it here first. Another part of me will die, another tear in heaven for the weeping angels. Only they write my true story.
On a side note, last Saturday, sometime in the eight o'clock hour I took a forbidden peek up from a table to see the sun break through the distant cloud formations. Had they known what was happening, the diners would have left their seats and crowded the large plate glass windows. It was a Portal Beam to the dream dimension. True, you can't stay there but any chance to visit is to be taken, like finding water in the desert. It's the only place where good things don't have to end and life never fails.
Two ships that list in the night,
Must pull together to win their fight;
Apart they sink in waters black,
Waiting for their hulls to crack.
Pity the eyes that see Divine,
Neither launch the saving line;
Aboard the ships sad adults cry,
Little children asking why.
Is it shame or fear or pride?
Who's the soul to admit they've lied?
Having cut the lines but twice,
Who would dare to make it thrice?
"Of this woe, we do tire!"
Deadly shots of panic fire;
Choosing not to end the pain,
Increases ranks of strained insane.
Missing missing missing hope,
On the decks a coiled rope;
In the day they wrecked their dream,
So into the night they do scream.
From Thunderball, on Bond being informed of the emergency meeting:
Moneypenny: Ah-huh - in the conference room. Every 00 in Europe has been rushed in, and the Home Secretary too. Bond: Somebody's probably lost a dog.
Can anyone possibly imagine an irreverent quip like that from Bond (or any hero figure) today?? Most are humorless, or what comedy there is is forced and phony. Far as I'm concerned, Bond died on 9/11 when it was decided to re-invent him as Loser-Bond, 'cause he so baaad, as the times seem to require. The new Bond doesn't know the difference between cockiness and mean-spiritedness. Craig was the anti-Bond, repressed and joyless, a poser. But I won't judge those who had commercial demands to be met.
The original Bond - the Bond of the books - was a character who answered to himself; entering into the service a compromise. Unlike Bourne, he questioned himself on following orders to kill on another man's say-so. Ultimately, he would have shaken those shackles because he knew he had a duty to himself as well as Queen and country. You see, killing without losing your humanity is a tricky feat; one lives in rarefied air.
Mundo Nulla Fides (Have no faith in the world)
That Latin phrase was embossed on the letterhead of real life spy Sidney Reilly, one inspiration for Bond. That more nuanced view of the world has taken hold and is only getting stronger every day. From the film Shooter:
"There is no head to cut off. It's a conglomerate. If one of them betrays the principles of the accrual of money and power, the others betray him. What it is is human weakness. You can't kill that with a gun."
Killing bad guys through targeted attrition to make us "safe" is outdated and archaic thinking. Years ago I saw a hilarious article on the number of movie posters showing one lone figure who will save the world for us! That illusion is more than tired too. As I explained in Zatoichi Principle Addendum, no one is going to save us, no matter how much we ram that time-worn lie down our throats.
One great aspect of the Bond films actually is how they've been used to reflect the times in which they were made. Given that, the next 007 will be mandated to be a non-binary, non-white, politically-correct, sign-holding protester so he can be "inclusive" and lobby the world as to what is right and wrong on the assumption the world cannot know without him. Oh dear God, please let him rest in peace before that happens.
When asked what he was going to do after the war, Ian Fleming enthusiastically replied he was going to "write the spy story to end all spy stories!" Part of him truly believed in the Bond fantasy and its other-worldliness. Part of me does too. But how to write of a dreamer in a world that has become a raging nightmare?
At best, we have the Ukraine example. A nation full of heroes fighting to save the day. In Zatoichi Challenged, the Edo-era blind swordsman Zatoichi fights to protect an innocent couple from being killed by a Shogunate samurai sent to kill them. Unfortunately, in the middle of the battle with the samurai, another bad guy sneaks up also intent on killing the couple. Zatoichi flings his sword to kill the man, leaving him defenseless against the samurai's blade. At that point, he can only fight with his heart.
So maybe in the next Bond, he has become disillusioned (come on, who wants to die for that Boris Johnson asshole??), left the service, and committed himself to his life, as each of us has to in the end. Of course, no one else believes he will stay out of the fray (whatever fray there is) so he's attacked, and forced to defend his corner of the world. And that's all anyone can do, defend our small corners of the world, even when we have no weapons like Zatoichi against the government agent, we speak and act from the heart, that which will never die.
Don't worry about the lack of subtitles. Greatest sword fight of all time.
You might think sitting alone in a police interrogation room - when they "ice" you - you'd first be rehearsing what story you're going to tell. But that's actually the farthest thing from your mind - and the most irrelevant.
Instead, your true crimes come flooding in. Crimes unfaced, lurking in the garden of your mind like weeds needing to be plucked - but never are. It's then you feel the guilt no officer of man's law can comprehend.
You flash back to stupid conversations misspoken and misbegotten, arguing around your fear-and-trembling truths. That look of hurt on her face, locked away in the deepest crevices of your heart, vaulted for eternity. Then, she's gone, both the excitement and the terror. That's when you fall into the void.
From the void originates every crime.
Your head compresses in the ensuing vacuum. Sometimes, in the swelling panic, you can almost convince yourself she's still there. Your heart comes alive, beating in hope like in before-times.
In stilled breath, a world made perfect, as voted on by the masses, making you whole in your hole.
Enter the criminal. He saves the world in delicious malicious intent, a misguided battle of life and death, fearing himself most.
Do the cops know what shame I've done since she's been gone?
That's the fear that grips you. Oh, I'll tell them what I did alright enough (they know already) - just not the why.
I amuse myself thinking up reasons they might buy. Will probably need to see the actual asshole who questions me before I know which excuse will work. Of course, if they really wanted to know they wouldn't ask.
I'd like to throw out "replacement theory" but don't think I can say it with a straight face like those shooters do. But if I can pull it off, I may get a mention on the national news as part of an alarming trend. That'd be cool!
Since I lost her (and my self-respect) I've struggled mightily to keep crap jobs and my finances have suffered as a consequence. So I could float out there "economic pressure" because that sure as hell has beaten me like a flea-bitten dog.
Or maybe I go with the Johnny Cash lyric and say, "I did it just to watch him die." Damn, that would be funny!
Shit, it's then I realize I've been smirking as I rotate various excuses in my head. God only knows what they're thinking behind the mirror.
So two guys come filing in. I can tell they've done this before. One stands off in the corner acting predisposed. The other sits in the chair opposite me and smiles. I feel like I'm in a fucking movie.
He's speaking but I don't hear his synthetic words. I hear only the song dream I played over and over in my dark harrowing room the day she left my life.
Unexpectedly, a sense of reality rushes in. I explain a pain in my soul was killing me in unbearable agony, like I'd been stabbed in the belly.
"So you belly stabbed a man for that? To 'express your soul's need for help'?"
"Sure looks that way."
I get "the gaze", him trying to see if I'm bullshitting. But I'm so twisted at this point it always sounds like I'm bullshitting when I tell the truth.
"You picked him completely at random then?"
"Sure looks that way."
Yeah, he didn't like that answer, either. By now I've disconnected, watching the entire scene in the third person. Cut to camera three in the ceiling corner.
"That's messed up. You stab a man on the street, completely at random, no reason whatsoever." Him not liking what he's hearing.
I lean back in my hard metal chair in self-satisfaction. "Oh," I explain, half-smiling, "there's always a reason why."
Time for the big showdown
I let that hang in the air like a bad smell, knowing he's going to crack.
"OK. Would you care to enlighten us, Mr. Simmons?"
Like I'm going to tell this asshole prick about my girlfriend problems. Then it struck me.
"OK, sure. But you first."
Now it was his turn to lean back, suspicious as all get out.
"Just exactly what in the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Yeah, man, I know exactly why I stabbed that guy: pure loserdom. Which means I know exactly why everyone does it.
"Simple. Just tell me why you cops keep killing unarmed black men."
So Paul claims his mother came to him in a dream "speaking words of wisdom." As I sit in my dank, dark hole I'm thinking I need me some words of wisdom. A dream in the night, a whispered prayer in my ear, or better yet, etched tablets from God. I'll take just about anything at this point in time.
Things are bad - maybe more bad than I can say - and are only going to get worse far as I can tell.
I would like to do something constructive with me life; beautiful and noble if yet on a dying planet. Be the light, so to speak. I am an empty urn yearning and aching to be filled.
Yes, many are those seeking guidance. But a shared pain does not lessen the agony. Help!
But God ain't talkin'. We're on our own. You can ask, but you will not receive.
"It's all bullshit. We're just here to die, end of story. Money is bigger than God. You say for me to ask?? OK, I'm asking!"
In the ensuing silence my thoughts turn towards Emily, and I think: traveling twice the speed of sound it's easy to get burned.
My interest is in nothing, null and void. How can I be interested in a life without her?
I start the march to my dreary bed, unspeakable cross of doom awaiting me in the morn. The monsters may not win every battle, but they've won every war.
What exit freedom?
So I gave up, all doors closing; and closed my eyes under the weight of my blanket of despair.
Then an angel appeared, asking I be not afraid.
"Oh, hell. I'm not some fucking shepherd. You know this insanity is almost over, don't you."
The angel said there was a message for me and did I want to see it?
Well, that was a strange question, I thought. I prayed for the damn message. Of course I want to see it!
Don't I?
Surely this is isn't one of those "Be careful what you wish for" moments. I mean, I'm at my wit's end, nowhere to go. What hope could I possibly have outside of this message? Of course, the only reason I'm getting it is just so God can prove me wrong (again) for saying I'd get no response.
So I said "Yes", with instant karmic regret.
In a vision that can never be erased, the angel unfolds the message with its flaming red letters: "WHERE'S THE GODDAM RENT?"
"I can't go living like I am. I can't notgo on living like I am..."
He's in trouble. That was my exact first thought when I heard Hennessy speak his peace. In my extremely loose knit circle of losers, Hennessy stands out because had actual provable talent, a AAA ball player for the Rangers at the time of his demise. Politically, one can't really prosecute him for getting hit by a drunk driver at 2 AM in the morning after partying since it was not his fault and many, many kids at that age do the exact same thing with no consequences whatsoever. Hell, the whole team was celebrating that night. What kind of malcontent would have opted out?
And yet, he told me later a little voice told him not to go out that night. No entity in all of history of creation is as ruthless as the Universe. Make all the plausible excuses you want, but every weakness will be found and exploited without fail. Hennessy was taking the ride where his talent was leading him but committed he was not. I always wondered how that would have played out in the majors.
But the bond in our little circle is bitterness and I seriously doubt Hennessy would adopt my point of view. He just feels cheated out of his chance to escape the drowning drudgery of the world and every day alive after that is a bitter pill he found harder and harder to swallow. It'd been going on for years - always some sort of blow up on his job, always not his fault - so I was not surprised seven months ago when I heard him say that remark while white-knuckling a beer bottle.
"Hell, none of us can," I truthfully replied, but he was inconsolable. Hennessy had gotten more adamant over time that his talent would have flourished in the majors and that gave rise to greater justification for his anger. That rarely ends well.
I didn't know he'd started working at a bank - or I'd been more concerned. "One crap job is same as another," the only teeth-gritted clue he'd provide. Hear, hear, to that! But handling other people's money - money he felt had been denied to him - must to have driven him crazy. Crazy enough, it turns out, to be suspected by police as inside man for an armored car heist. Cops don't like it when you just so happen to hit the armored car when it's got the most cash. Did Hennessy cross the line? Did he give in to his anger? My gut tells me 'Yes'.
Part of me hopes he's innocent, that he takes this scare as a life lesson and lets go of his rage. But if he does, I feel he'd be an exception to the rule.
Look around you. The dam is starting to burst wherever you look. "I can't go on like this. I can't NOT go on like this." Slowly but surely it's seeping in to our consciousness that we don't have a vote on what's real and what isn't, and that attacking the truth-tellers does not alter the truth. So many vain plans made doomed to fail. In the end, of course, it's just a mad scramble for love.
It's a simple formula: lie to yourself, call yourself a victim when things go wrong, but blame your demise on those who don't share your lies. It's getting more brazen and absurd each passing day. We live as slaves in the name of freedom and want the fuck out no matter how well we're bribed or deluded. True freedom is coming, it's just a matter of emerging consciousness. How painful that process is is up to us.
Dr. Annette high-fived her assistant Roberto as she entered the morning office. Her political "Hero Savior Man" (HSM) had just been elected Dear Leader over all the land!
"Now we're going to see some changes for the better! He's a fighter and a truth-teller. That's why they keep trying to take him down: they can't handle the truth!"
"What wrong with these people, Dr. Annette?"
"I don't know, Roberto, but I do. Some people just want to stay in a bubble and hear only what they want to hear. And the minute the truth gets in they melt like a snowflake!"
"Just no living with peoples like that!"
"You're so right! But now there'll be no more fake news. No more being a sucker. No more being victimized."
"Yes, is good, Dr. Annette, ma'am! Muy bueno!"
"You know, Roberto, HSM hates dirty Spics like you. Kind of surprised to see you supporting him."
"Oh, not worry, Dr. Annette. I'm good Spic, hate on myself very much, yes."
"That's the spirit!" encouraged the deluded doctor. "I knew I hired a non-white for a reason - especially when I've no fruit to pick."
HSM was conducting a holy war, removing any and all critics who spoke truly, burning down their houses in scorched earth policy, and when they came to complain he called himself a victim. Dr. Annette gleefully joined in the purge, lighting fires, joyfully disconnecting from reality as she descended into political fantasy. And this was how she intended to save that which she valued above all: her medical practice.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a doctor more dedicated to her calling. Dr. Annette was relentless in her pursuit of new methods of healing, certified in techniques rare in the land. She did not suffer fools. If you came seeking advice only to not heed or listen to the truth she was conveying, she would not waste her time. Live or die, it's up to you to choose life or be a victim. And these same qualities she projected onto HSM, however falsely.
Deborah Hanssen Brown (DHB) was also a doctor. She was young and just starting out, looking to make a name for herself and reap the ensuing rewards in gobbling greed as she opened "Debby's Best Little Clinic In Texas". She too was a supporter of HSM, in the most extreme possible way.
One day she ran across a client of Dr. Annette, a man suffering in ill health, overweight with aching joints. "That woman was mean to me! She said if I keep eating Twinkies and Ding Dongs for dinner every day all sorts of bad things was gonna happen to me. And guess what? They did, damn her!!"
DHB was incensed. "That liberal witch! How could she do that to you? Just imagine spreading fake news like that. Don't you worry, you can eat all the junk food you want and be just fine!"
The man beamed with gratitude. "Thank you, doc! I feel so much better now about my idiocy."
"That's what it's all about! And don't worry. I'll take out that witch denying you your freedom. I'll stop her campaign of terror."
BHB began her wave of terror through every media outlet possible. "Dr. Annette lets space aliens use her clients for experiments! She locks people in cages if they don't do what she says! She makes up fake facts just to cover herself. This woman must be stopped at all costs. She'll get everyone killed!"
Her angry army of junk foodies, lazy lay-abouts, and other self-destructive degenerates vociferously echoed her talking points. But when the media brought in doctors who claimed diet and exercise were essential to good health, DHB cried out in a fit of fury. "See? This is why everyone hates the media: FAKE NEWS! Making people feel bad about themselves. I am a victim persecuted for telling the truth. And remember: if they'll do this to me, they'll do it to you too!"
"Burn the witches!"
Dr. Annette first tried responding with actual health facts but was drowned out by ferocious accusations of betrayal. "She's a free-thinker like we're too afraid to be! She's not one of us!"
She tried feverishly to prove she too was an HSM supporter but it was too late, Dr. Annette branded a liar for life even as she tried to fight back. "DHB is a fraud who harms her clients with malpractice. She burns downs homes and when people call her out for it, calls herself a victim, of all things! She's merely projecting her own incompetence onto others in an effort to save herself from revelation."
DHB immediately set a press conference to soak in the media spotlight. "What a snowflake! She can't handle the truth! Doesn't care about anyone but herself. She's just trying to save her failing practice as everyone comes to me now! The people have spoken! The truth has been voted on."
As DHB's assertions of fact were far more entertaining and self-serving to the public than Dr. Annette's, Dr. Annette watched her practice slowly erode until barely a trickle of clients ventured past her tainted doors. She cried to an absent God for help as no god on earth was left to her. It seemed she was doomed to live out her life a shadow of what she once was.
Verbal, a longtime client who'd never consider anyone else for his doctor, finished his appointment near the end of the day, Dr. Annette confiding her woes to him.
"If a space ship landed outside to take me away, I'd get on it in a heartbeat! Why is it no one values me anymore?"
"You already know. Like the good book says: the truth will set us free - and the truth is always love."
Well, Heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none:
And some condemned for a fault alone.
It wasn't a decision, but rather a realization formed.
"It must be. It must be at all costs. I will be lauded. I will not be like the others." Over time, the inner voice pounded louder into a hardened certainty.
This conviction was never spoken, never revealed - except in deed alone. If questioned of her motives, she'd not reply. Her business was her own.
With an assassin's silence, her pursuit relentless and clear-eyed, this one master she served above all, a master she called God, to deceive both heaven and hell in assumed cleverness.
She lived above the world, in a cloud blessed by her irrefutable estimation, the only possible crime: her feet to touch the ground; apart from the masses was she, a more deserving being, destined to escape the dire traps of the average soul.
Little by little she accumulated success, building a monument to her life to be hailed and glorified in the name of God; they'd come worshiping at her temple, praising her, admiring her achievements, lauding a lifestyle reserved for the special and privileged few.
But this morning, she awoke with a tinny taste in her mouth. A switch had flipped. A worm had turned. She'd reached the end of a road.
The usually intoxicating smell of her fine Italian leather revolted her; the window light seemed foreign; voices - in her head, on TV, in the world around her - mumbled into an incomprehensible background cacophony.
She sought to escape the million dollar confines of her condo in her luxury auto. "What's happening to me? My pleasures have turned to torments! What can I live for? Everyone will find out the fraud I am, that my life is misery, and I will be outcast as a failure to our worldly bribe."
Thirty plus years in the making, she'd reached the holy grail of the con of cons, convincing herself that outward success meant inward success and none would be the wiser of the betrayal of her dreams - that which actually should be "at all costs" - and her vile single-minded pursuit of worldly acclaim.
"Why now??" But it didn't matter why, just how she could go forward on a diet she cannot stomach. She had her marriage thing, her dollar thing, her daughter thing, and her life safely in the clouds. If that's not enough then what's left under the sun? Winding her way up the mountain road she read doom in the eyes of each oncoming driver.
"Nothing I can see."
She pulled over to an empty lot, facing the wide vista of a high mountain scene.
"I'm the clever one! I fooled the world into thinking I'm something when I'm nothing! Haha! How to keep the lie alive!"
In her angry retreat from life she'd rowed herself out to sea only to open her eyes to find landless horizons in all directions.
Had she been insane the entirety of her life?
The constant inner chant, "Obtain more accoutrements of success!", her religion to save her from oblivion had put her in oblivion; a pervert she be, the beast she hated as a dreaming child.
Her solitary sojourn had reached its requiem. The blind spots in strangers - the currency of her life - bankrupted her hope as her true hopes were declared the enemy to be denied and life a perpetual hunt for a place to hide.
The clean light of the afternoon sun glanced off her windshield, a flying ant landed on her hood to seize the day; she was victimized. "An ant with fucking wings! Why would God make that horrible thing? Just to terrorize us! Is life not sacred to You? Get Your priorities straight! What is God but a keeper of denial?"
Then, with a blink she blanked. Not a damn thing she'd done meant a damn thing; imprisoned the remainder of her days to slowly dissipate; God laughing louder in bottomless victory as torment increases from the poisoned well of her pride; her lines of communication cut in bouts of vacuous vanity; the Word remaining imagined, never faced. She'd not been there for herself.
"My lie is over!" she confessed to the world. "Who can want me now?"
CODA: The police officer remarked on the lack of skid marks where the car ran off the mountain road to its fiery demise. "It's either brake failure or suicide." Her family was indignant. "It most certainly was not suicide! She had everything to live for. For her to even think of killing herself is absurd!" The officer looked at the faces of the adamant family members and complied with the desperate final cover-up. Then they too continued in the abyss of the dutifully demented as the world continues its descent.
"If you cling to your life, you will lose it, but if you let your life go, you will save it."
Like a frog being boiled, we're being twisted and molted like a wax candle left too close to heat, a slow-motion horror show that overtakes the heart and mind until nothing is left and unreality is accepted as reality and the end has come.
Conventional conservative wisdom is that Jesus is a liar, is too ignorant of the ways of the world (after having been crucified by them), and just basically is too stupid to live. We speak of our strategies and clever tactics and means and ways of fooling our Maker into having our cake and eat it too.
But we keep melting regardless of the well-reasoned arguments bought and sold.
As girls dance in uninhibited joy on TikTok we watch daily mass murder, children buried alive, food and water cut off from thousands upon thousands, and we think to ourselves: "What a wonderful world."
This boiling has been going on for a very long time, of course. Yesterday's unthinkable hell is today's lived insanity.
But let's not kid ourselves, as the heat turns up, so does the crazy.
Our children feel it most (which is why we view them as a threat to be controlled as we know what we're doing to them). One by one, lives are breaking down all around us, drowning in sorrow and shame and despair with no one to help. From space, the collective scream grows louder every passing moment. But who is to hear?
We make our plans and bless our future but only Nature's plans are to be realized despite our meaningless insistence to the contrary. We live in a drying desert but instead moving to where the water is we vote to not need water. And with God as my witness, every last man, woman and child on this earth will pay.
Long story short, I'm going bananas, losing my mind with the swirling madness. A new consciousness is coming, one no one will be able to deny - and then we'll find out what we've been fighting against throughout history is what we wanted all along.
Top Hat Joe preened his way down the boulevard in the pseudo-passionate pontificating way to which he had become accustomed. Beside him was Eddie, who knew no better but was certainly grateful Joe did.
"Eddie, my good friend, I'm telling you there's much of the world you need to learn. Having had the honor to serve in a parliamentary body myself, I can tell you things are never as a simple as they seem! Compromises must be made, deals struck, alliances made. It's the political man's job to save the world from itself."
"Is that so, Joe?"
"Indeed it is! In order to do good deeds for the masses I've had to make deals with the devil! You see, if you one side wants to kill all the Jews, and the other side none of the them then one simply splits it down the middle and kills half the Jews. If both sides are unhappy one knows one has made a fair deal!"
"Is that so, Joe?"
"Oh, Eddie, I could go on for hours listing the subtleties and intricacies of we godlike creatures in the political realm. It is simply thrilling!"
"Hey, Joe, look down the street. Ain't that your wife being attacked there by that man?"
Sure enough, a well-suited man was tearing off the clothes of Joe's spouse.
"Say there, my good man. It's too early for me to resort to violence as that would involve second-guessing your possible motives since perhaps you plan to stop at any moment as far as I know but I must say I certainly protest your current course of action in the strongest possible terms!"
The man continued attacking unabated, Joe's wife nearly stripped. Eddie urged his companion to act.
"Joe, do somethin'! She just about got nothin' left on her!"
Joe whipped out his ever-present notebook on which he often scribed his genius thoughts that need be saved for time immemorial. "I am, Edward, I am. I am composing the most stinging of editorials on this man's inexcusable and shocking behavior. I have friends, I tell you! Friends in high places who will have this published post haste!"
Joe's wife was now on the ground, stripped and positioned for final assault from her attacker.
Eddie urged once more: "Joe, do something!"
"I'm getting feedback now! Yes! Yes! Everyone concurs with my position most favorably! You hear that, sir? I do not wish to anger you but you must know you stand isolated in your stance by the wider community. To wit, I've been informed you are a shop owner of which no one will patronize until you cease this activity! You may wish to reconsider your behavior, I say!"
Joe's wife screamed, "Someone, please help!"
"Joe, I got my gun right here. I can just shoot the son-of-a-bitch."
"Eddie, my good man! You know full well that firearm is not licensed. Its use would be completely lawless and against the rules!"
"Rules? There's no rules in a street fight! It's kill or be killed."
"Rules and regulations are what give us a future. We must respect the law, I have signed no formal treaty with her. One must consider the geo-political implications, you senseless fool! Do you want to get us all killed?"
"Dammit, Joe, if he's dead no one need worry about that, do they?"
"I'm bleeding!" cried out Joe's wife.
"Joe, she may die!" Eddie exclaimed. "Can't you see nothin'??"
"Sir! Sir! I must warn you I plan to most vigorously prosecute you after you're done!"
Joe began texting furiously within his political circle, debating various strategies to alleviate the situation. Then, slowly and cautiously, he picked up a large stick off the ground and slipped it into his wife's hand. "Fight back, honey! Fight back. You can slow the rape and very likely delay the use of his knife!"
Joe looked back at Eddie expecting to see an approving look of Joe's cleverness but Eddie only shook his head in disdain.
"And here all this time I thought you knew somethin'! Turns out you ain't nothin' but a moron, without the sense God gave you! Now tell me somethin', Joe. Just what you gonna do if she dies now 'cause she already done been raped. Just what you gonna say then!!"
Joe first straightened his top hat so as not to appear unelectable, then resigned himself to say the speech to which he'd already rehearsed:
So Bennie the Thief dropped by yesterday afternoon. Apparently he had something pretty heavy on his mind so he came over to my indoor-plumbed hole-in-the-wall to not talk about it. That's probably why he picked me, I usually fail to pry.
I like it whenever I run into Bennie as I'm intrigued by his outlaw lifestyle even though I confided to him I cannot do the time so I cannot do the crime. Honored to be his safe harbor, I tried bringing up various innocuous topics for discussion but he just kept grousing, "Fuck [fill in the blank]" of whatever I brought up. Thusly, the literary 'heavy silence' one reads about descended upon us until I started to suffocate and finally had to come up for air.
"So, Bennie, just exactly when did you inform the guidance counselor your career path was Thief?"
That got his attention. Slowly he turns his scruffy black-haired ethnic face to me (He looks Middle-Eastern but I don't know what the fuck he is. Never asked.) and gives me a half-cocked look of, "You fuckin' with me?"
But I eyeball him right back with a smirky smirk that says, "Damn straight, I am!" Sometimes it pays to have a reputation for being sarcastic.
Then he actually proceeded to answer the question.
"See, it's like this..." He paused as if reconsidering the wisdom of revelation. Then, keeping his eyes peered down his beer bottle, replied: "I guess it's when I realized every good moment I'd had in life I had to steal."
Fuck me.
Now I was the one drowning in miserable silence as the truth of what Bennie said soaked into my own shit-infested existence. What is mine that is good? I'm just marking time in poverty's prison until I'm off this planet. A shared joke on a janitorial break, dreaming while driving to my soul-sapping night job while the rest of the world parties, swiping a Reeses from the office snack bar without paying; any good times for me are stolen too...
I looked up at Bennie. He didn't seem so down now and had pulled his keen, intelligent eyes out of the pit of the bottle. I sensed his spirits had lifted. Probably because he'd brought me so horribly down. The fucker.
I couldn't let it lie, of course. "Well, you know what the song says: 'There must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief.'"
"Ha! You always come up with some sort of shit to say, Harry. Just like that supervisor guy you pissed off."
Bennie looks down on my working-poor jobs as I think he's secretly recruiting me. He's referring to the time I muttered under my breath, "That brain transplant didn't stick, did it?" after one boneheaded decision too many by the brown-nose in charge. A mutual acquaintance told Bennie about it and made me out to be a hero but really I took the whole incident as one more sign my life is on the wrong track.
"That idiot redneck motherfucker. Sometimes you just got to cut loose and hope there's a better way."
Bennie stared into the unspoken abyss before him. "I'd sure like to think there's a way out of this."
Karen slipped nude between the soft silken sheets, retreating in her final resting place safely ensconced in a million-plus, neo-insulated condo. She stared with emptied eyes at the slatted neon lights on the wall as she slid across the universe into a bottomless black hole cut off from eternity, the fate of every successful liar in the world. She wrestled with her desire to be free ("The Enemy"), for she understood well living a lie in a world based on a lie was the conservative right thing to do.
Over the years her life had slowly and relentlessly been consumed to "maintain appearance." At some point there'd be nothing left. Knowing this fed her rage with heart, and keeping rage alive would "save" her - and being saved means never having to look in the mirror. Her caged love bore no fruit for all the world to see, thus her declaring "war" on the "Democrats, liberals, and homeless" she blamed for ruining her life. But time is running out.
"No one can know I'm a fraud. No one must ever know. No one can know..."
She repeats this mantra over and over, as if it would manifest into reality simply by speaking. That was her hope anyway - her last hope.
Her shovel was dirty and bloody, burying her dreams for worldly bribes. She'd been running ever since, putting time if not distance between her and her entitled criminality.
"I am not the person my children know."
"I am not the person my parents know."
"I am not the person my church knows."
"I am not the person my husband knows."
"I am not the person my anyone knows."
I hope I die before I get known.
When she spoke glowing and gratefully of "God", of her mask did she speak. "God can do anything. God makes everything right. Praise be to God!" Many were impressed by the earnestness in her voice.
I narc'd on you to God!
But in these thought-revoked moments, isolated and entrenched, she seethed against the universe that threatens her earthly empire. "I'm entitled to what I have!", of this she could not be dispossessed.
It's true the luxury lifestyle she held she needed to survive. But the demon in the night insisted she need never have deceived to get it; that, in fact, she'd have many multiples over if for having led an honest life; if she'd invested in herself instead.
What will be said of this eternal fool when this comes to light? she wondered, not knowing she was already known.
Looming on the horizon, a hazy figure she cannot make out. Was it him, of the original dream, unburied and undead come to pull her back to reality? A vision of herself clinging to the edges of a tunnel with inward wind, sucking her into its destiny, that she could not hold out forever, and once entered she'd never be the same. This she resisted with all her fury and might. "The Enemy" wanted her to give up, give in, and give way. But she would hold fast to her "faith" in darkness.
Mired in moral poverty, "that damn protester girl" on TV speaking honest words for the world to hear replayed in her ears once more. Just beyond infuriating! Why do they even have to speak to those people? She couldn't remember her words at this point but the feeling - the burning, exploding, out-of-control feeling - this she could not get out of her head. And no matter how many times she entombed the girl she sprang back to life.
"That girl will ruin everything!"
The impulse to murder was overwhelming and irresistible. "Just shut her up! Shut her up now, before it's too late!"
Had she'd seen the red rage in her face in that moment, her political self would have piously claimed, "That's not the real me."
Oh, to come clean and step into the light! To escape the well where screams are never heard as asps slither in for the kill, injecting ugly venom into her veins.
Then an unexpected doorbell echoed through the condo.
"It's him!" she hissed. "I know it! Back after all these years to finally expose me!"
In her closet, she grabbed the revolver with the world as her justification. Time to kill that haunting bastard once and for all, daring to uproot the foundation of murdered feelings upon which she'd constructed an empire.
As she approached the reckoning of the front door examination, her footsteps rumbled in Heaven as boots of lead. No more tortured wondering of who she is! She'll shoot this demon once and for all: possession correction. To prove herself as one of "objectivity" she first spied through the peephole. Sure enough, she saw the outline of a predatory male.
It is him. Let him feel my fury at last! I'm sick of it, SICK OF IT!
She threw open the door in high accusation, standing in a pool of disdain.
"No! No! Never! Never! I've got a good act going and you're not going to ruin it!" Then she shot him six times dead.
"I'm always a victim!"
Epilogue: "WOMAN SHOOTS UTILITY WORKER WARNING OF GAS HAZARD IN BUILDING"
Post Script:
"Is it true God cannot see what we do in the dark?"
"Yes," replied the angel, "that is true."
"Ha!" she scoffed in justification. Then it hit her.
