Threads: Space Raft

Her hand danced across the canvass. I sat a few feet behind, mesmerized; entranced in the moment of birth.

I wanted to stay forever. I felt a peace - however temporal. I dare ask her of her creation.

"I don't know. I only know what intent."

I was told art is surrender. Our job is letting the message through. Artists are the only true priests. I felt lost, alone.

Then she spoke without stopping or looking, as if she could read my mind:

"Every life revolves around their belief they can have love."

Threads: It's Fun Being A Victim!

"Oh, hey -"

 

"Stop it! Just stop it! I am SICK of being ACCOSTED by MEN!"

 

"But-" 

 

"No buts about it! We women are VICTIMS! Now it's time for turnabout! I'm calling my posse, Women Who Wear Pants Like Men, and we're going to see how YOU like being a victim!"

 

"This-"

 

"Spare me your mansplaining! I won't stand for your twisted, self-serving agenda! Your problem is you NEVER listen! You think you know everything but just project yourself onto-" 

 

Then the bus I tried to warn her about ran her over.

Threads: Thoughts And Curses

"The female riddle I cannot solve; a mystery greater than the universe and as incomprehensible. I've not a clue to a clue nor hope of a hope. The touch, it seems, is as far as the moon and just as unreachable. The invisible marionette that strings my every move has me zig when I should zag, forever leaving me absent of her presence." 

My female listener assured me I deserve love. 

"Ah, I am worthy of everyone but she who speaks it!" 

She quickly departed, thinking: "Thank God he is not for me!"

Threads: Late Stage Capitalism

I saw ICE cops pull into the retail area down the road. So I was not surprised when I ran into a wall of police I had to pass through. A uniform accosted me:

"Do you have a driver's license, primary employment, and you'll be entering E.B. Wyatt's [nearby store] in the next thirty days?" He then handed me a Frisbee with advertising for Pubb Realty. "Thank you for being white." 

"Late stage capitalism," I muttered.

A young cop enjoined, "Capitaline!" 

I responded, "More like end-of-the-line." 

 

Threads: Forever Bond

She said: "I'm a fraud. And they will turn on me when they find out." 

 

He said: "My use to the world is gone. Pretending a purpose is the lowest form of hell." 

 

He became her muse and her song came alive once more. 

 

Then a man showed up to recruit Bond "back to the good fight."

 

"I am bloody fighting. I'm fighting for my love - the only thing worth fighting for. And if the rest of the world would get off their damn ass and do the same we wouldn't need to save the bloody place, now would we?"

 

Threads: False Prophets Arise

When a nation is in its death throes, a never-ending series of Hero Liars come along to breathe new life into old lies. These false beings - praised as they may be - have no future.

Neither did Bond.

Standing on London's suicide bridge he knew he could not go on as is. 

"I have to act a fraud. To be myself is to die. No way out." 

But the voice was not his but that of an American singer staring down at the same waters. Hearing his own thoughts out loud, Bond acted to stop her - and himself. 

 

Threads: Bond's Blackmares

"Gotta do what you can just to keep your love alive.
"Tryin' not to confuse it with what you do to survive."
-Jackson Browne 

Bond's new enemy was the worst he'd ever faced: boredom's prison. Purposeless. Stuck living a lie. On the road to nowhere.

Nightly were the blackmares drowning him in a black void. He'd experienced no greater terror. In the day he struggled to keep up his act. To be found out is death. 

Whom could he ask to join in his lie with death as a consequence? Bond could keep neither his love nor his lie alive. Only one way out.

Threads: Behind Enemy Lines

"Behind enemy lines."

That's how Bond describes going undercover. His worst fear was to be trapped within. And that's exactly what happened in the office that entombs him. 

Bond knew he couldn't hide being an outsider, so he remained reticent and let the gossip fly. He even played the resident Luddite telling a Gen Z having an issue: "Why don't you just download an app?" 

When criminals and government combine, for whom can he fight?

"There's no place for me now." He was a man without a planet.

 

Threads: Art Of Gold

With my closed heart, I never get invited to the cool art parties. "Because you're not mine, I don't walk the line." So I snuck into the back of one just to be there. Then this happens: ARTIST SHOOTS TWO. IN STANDOFF WITH POLICE. SAYS NO ONE WILL BUY HIS ART. I had my gun (in case of ICE goons) but a police sniper took him out splattering his blood across a blank canvas. His entire oeuvre sold at the estate sale, the bloodied canvas going for a cool mil. Success, at last. Damn, life is hard.

 

Threads: ICEd Again, Naturally

In 1943, a ballerina(!) killed a Nazi guard at Auschwitz. She will live forever as a hero. American troops shot guards in outrage as they liberated the camps. History smiles upon this, also.

The people who say we "cannot live with illegal immigrants" are the actual people with whom we cannot live. They know it is they who belong behind bars - and that's what makes them so treacherous.

A group has been arrested for an attack at the Alvarado TX camp. I wonder how history will portray them?

Threads: Shattered

 So this is why Judas killed himself... 

When people see my deeply frowning face and angry glare walking down the streets they assume it's because of my homelessness. It's not. 

My future is to remain a galley slave; washing dishes, cleaning event venues, menial labor until I die. There is no point in my being here or taking another breath. No possible meaning can come of this.

 I once found a pile of cash that would have saved me. I lost it when I lied to myself it would be fine when it wasn't.

Threads: Blessings From Below

When the bridge collapsed killing men, women and children, outraged peons demanded an investigation. 

Finding a legal bribe to use substandard parts, the case was dismissed. "No way we can live without bribes!" 

A worldly priest preached to the survivors:

 "Do not be selfish, thinking only of yourself. Think of the greater good (greed)! Though given to us by God, no system is perfect. Do not mourn these lost lives, celebrate the purpose their deaths have been given, like Jesus on the cross."

 

In Our Time Of Dying

"May you live in interesting times."
-Chinese curse

Fun times! Ever wonder what it was like for the German people to eat, drink, and be merry in the midst of concentration camps? Well, now we can know!

Only 30 minutes from my house is this atrocity, half mile away from a church. A strip club can’t be near a church but a death camp can!

If anyone in 1935 Germany said their country would be destroyed in ten years they’d been mercilessly mocked and called anything but what they were: a savior. But now we have alleged billionaires sucking up to dictators (no actual billionaire would do that), we have poor people voting to be poor, and the light of truth hailed as doom.

These abominations are a cancer upon the country, built not to enforce the law, but to usurp it. In these perverse times the light of truth is hailed as doom. But only the truth can set us free.

Jesus said we’re too stupid to survive (Matthew 24), so let’s prove him right. Party on and keep the music loud so we don’t hear the screams! 

Threads: No Assassins Here

Bond never considered himself an assassin. Yes, he'd been tasked with that but only with full knowledge and his approval. He was no Bourne blindly shooting bagged men.

For no power on this earth can truly grant a license to kill. One can only grant it to oneself. Otherwise, it eats you alive like some American cop shooting at will.

Taking out the viciously perky HR woman crossed his mind. Then he fantasied about icing ICE agents: terrorize the terrorists. 

"The world is a criminal enterprise."

 

 

Threads: Bond Zombie

Bond wasn't Bond anymore. 

The relentless daily zombification of corporate prisonhood drained his previous appetites. 

Using Q's tool, he was able to hack the server and prove the company's cooperation with foreign powers. But to whom could he report? His own branch had been compromised.

Over and over he considered his options for escape, finding none. 

With a determined look on his face so many men had seen just before their demise, Bond wished death upon the world, that it exist nevermore.

 

 

Threads: Fake Phonies

"Sting got lucky with that girl's name being Roxanne." 

I sighed knowing Grits was about to say something stupid. 

"If her name been like Mary-Sue-Elizabeth - no way to make that work!"

 I declined to argue the alleged point and simply remarked, "That's OK. The Police are your favorite band!"

 "Not no more. This girl posted about how they's a bunch of frauds so I hates them now."

 "If that's all it took to dissuade you then you must have been phony too." 

"Least I ain't a FAKE phony like you!"

 I rolled my eyes to Heaven but got no response.

 

Threads: Butterfly Effect Illusion

I stopped at the gas station a mile from her house. Any excuse to stall. What does one say after doing the unforgivable? 

As I got gas, I heard BAM! 

A fatal car wreck at the intersection - and she was the victim.

"If only I had gone directly to her house!"

Guilt delayed my arrival. I asked the God app for answers. 

It said had I gone there directly the same thing would have happened. Like magnets that repel, the universe would not allow me near her until I was ready - my truly bad choice.

 

Threads: Bonded In Hell

 "Bloody damn emails! Come at you like a machine gun!"

Bond was in a particularly bad mood after seeing his coworker "ghosts" in the elevator that morning."If that's what I'm to become I might as well be dead." 

As furiously as his brain and imagination could work, he found no way out of the British class structure - which threatened to suffocate the life out of him. 

At night, Bond recounted his life. 

"Is *this* what I've been protecting the whole of my career?"

Threads: Identity Loss

 "As your lover describes you, so you are." 

The international assassin known simply as "Goupil", made famous by the (censored) printing of his diaries, was taken with this quote which hounded him for life. 

After he'd killed his girlfriend ("My one true love"), he saw himself as nothing but a killer, drowning in guilt. And in that vein, killing became his identity. 

Later attempting Mormonism, activism, and therapy, he never knew his girlfriend survived. 

"Judge not, lest you judge yourself." 

Threads: Consciousness Of Guilt

 

Bartender Bobby was a Houston legend. Long flowing hair and a sweet smile drew admirers (and tips!) from both sexes.

But he never let anyone in his life, a blank canvas upon which others could project their fantasy. In Bobby's mind, he had nothing to offer anyway.

Then murder happened at the club. He'd be investigated, revealed as a fraud. No more kudos or high living, just a future day laborer.

Distracted, Bobby crashed on Houston's notorious freeways. At the wake, no one knew whom he was.