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ALL THE MUSIC AND ARTWORK ON THIS WEBSITE IS DISPLAYED UNDER A
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
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WELCOME HOME
She had a wonderful time at the beach that steamy, perfect August day, even though her boyfriend never showed. It didn’t
matter, however: For now she could brazenly ogle all the other, more attractive men walking up and down the shore, giggling
and making lewd comments amongst her friends without throwing him into one of his irritating fits. This, along with baking
under the glorious sun for nearly four hours and imaging what one of these sexy boys with their abs and pelvic muscles might
feel like inside of her, conspired to produce an ache in her groin that was undeniable. In fact, her engine ran so hot and high
that she had to close her legs to conceal a growing damp spot.
She went home faithful. Her man was not perfect, but he was special. Her momma (God rest her) told her when that special
someone came along, she would know, and to sink her claws into him and never let anything tear them apart.
Once back home, she listened to the messages on her machine. He had left one, saying he would be over within the hour. She
peeled off her purple bikini with the green trim and tossed it on the bathroom floor. God, how her body ached for release,
almost junkie-like in its jones for a fix. She glanced around her room at the reminders of him, various tokens of his affections
over the last year and seven months. The framed pictures of the seasons, the perfume, jewelry and romantic knick-knacks were
nice and all, but she focused her attention on two white teddy bears, linked together by a red ribbon with white letters on it,
which read TOGETHER FOREVER.
She couldn’t agree more. There was not doubt that they would ever not be. There was no way life was worth living if not for his
loving embrace. Her eyes slid over a picture of the two of them from last summer, sitting on the steps in front of his house.
Both smiled broadly for the camera, hers a little sly, his a little goofy, and this she attributed to her hand being perched so high
up on his inner thigh.
She sat naked and wet on the bed with her legs spread in order to allow her inflamed cavity to cool. She fingered the ankle
chain he bought for her last January, to mark the anniversary of their first year together. Casually, she ran her finely tapered
fingers over her calf, up her thigh and around the soft curve of her hip, beneath the swell of her small, firm breast until the
velvet-brown nipple hardened. She thought of the couple she had been watching for a brief time on the beach, their perfect
bodies shiny with sweat and sun block. So obviously in love they were, not making any overt sexual moves toward one another,
but she could tell, the way their eyes met, their fingers touched, her own gaze traversing over the hint of nipple through the
girl’s bikini, the bulge in her man’s dark green Speedo. And the way they spread the sun block over each other, all slow and
deliberate, brought about her first twitch of excitement in an already hormone-infested afternoon. Her blood throbbed noisome
in her ears, beating in perfect tandem with the anxious pressure that was driving her insane from the pussy up.
She smelled his cologne over the tangy smell of seawater in her lank, reddish-brown hair. It came from the letter on her pillow.
She already could imagine what it said, but she didn’t unfold it just yet. She stretched languidly, feeling as if somehow she had
trapped a small part of the sun’s intensity inside her. He would appreciate her honey-brown tan, the heat of her skin to his
touch, her breasts two white dream oases in the middle of her burning flesh.
Moaning softly in the back of her throat without realizing it, she decided it was time to get ready. She was tempted to touch
herself, although she never had before. Momma (God rest her) said only dirty whores did that sort of thing, not good Christian
girls brought up with a healthy dose of shame for their bodies. She would save it to unleash upon her true love, simply because
he was the one.
She had never been quite so horny in all her seventeen years, and she imagined that one touch from his finger could very well
blow her mind, and that when he was inside she would just cum and cum until she was unconscious.
She turned on the shower, careful to keep the water on the cool side. She stepped in, nipples wrinkling immediately from the
water spattering her body. She sighed long and loud as the unrelenting fire within traced its force along her spine, making the
muscles in her crotch quiver spasmodically. She ran a soapy sponge along her legs in slow, circular motions, avoiding her
tender loins and continuing on to her taut belly, nearly swooning from the electricity prickling her chest when she scraped the
nipples. Just the thought of his thickness penetrating her, filling her insides made her want to burst, every part of her, every
cell, every microbe crying out in naked lust, for satisfaction taken to the utmost perverse extreme.
She left the shower running as she darted into her room, still soaking wet. She threw herself onto the bed and thought briefly,
sorry momma, and plunged three fingers into her sticky depths. She cried out and shivered with white-hot pleasure, knowing
exactly where to pinch, where to push, feeling guilty as she licked at the top of the throbbing tit she held in her hand. She
positioned herself in front of the mirror so she could see her hand pushing down on her vagina as she thrust it up in the air.
She then rolled over and straddled the brass bedpost, worshipping the cool metal feeling as she slid along its unyielding
length. A glance backwards into the mirror afforded her a view of the perky, heart-shaped ass that was the envy of all her
friends. She imagined throwing herself into the middle of that beautiful couple from the beach as her boyfriend watched,
becoming more turned on by the sight of his rage than his hard-on, while she let the stranger do her from behind and his sexy
girlfriend straddled her face.
In minutes, it was over. She came loudly, curled up on the bed and shuddering weakly like some dying animal, watching her
cream dry to a glaze on the bedpost. She was relieved at having doused some of the inferno, so at least now she could finish
getting ready without humping anything else. He would be arriving soon, and she had no time for any more bullshit, if she
wanted to look just right.
She got back in the shower and rinsed off. The chuckling sound the water made as it went down the drain reminded her of the
noises her boyfriend made sometimes when he was going down on her. She shaved her legs and armpits but left the pubic
thatch, since he had commented once how much a healthy bush turned him on. She wasn’t crazy about it, but his small wishes
meant a lot to her so she left it.
Now she stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, blow-drying her entire body. She dashed a little of her favorite perfume,
called Man’s Ruin, on various erogenous zones: Behind her knees, on her neck, between her breasts, on each earlobe. She
put on a very brief, very thin white bikini, knowing how hot it would be against the beautiful shade of brown her skin had
become. She put on only lip gloss, so that her mouth resembled nothing more than another pair of wet lips for him to probe,
and thinking all the while of his body and the joy it would bring her, she felt the fires being lit all over again.
She looked at the digital clock on her nightstand, all ready for him and now waxing quite anxious. He was just about due. She
glanced in the full length, inspecting her perfection. Her dark pubic hair and aureoles were faintly visible. She cocked her hip
at the mirror and smiled at her reflection appreciatively. She had outdone herself this time, and she was proud.
There was one more thing she needed to do. She turned on her computer and set up her private web cam. Some of her more
desperate girlfriends offered her cash if they could see her man naked. She could almost imagine them, a little overweight, a
little ugly, holding their vibrators and wishing just once they could be her. She secretly believed a couple of them were actually
more interested in seeing her in the buff, but she never let on and the attention flattered her. So, she decided to throw them a
bone, even if no man ever did, and let them watch via the Internet. She saw a digital image of herself and her bed flash across
the screen, and satisfied, she turned the monitor off in case her lover did not approve. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him,
and today, to paraphrase a popular song, all eyes would be on her.
She stretched out on her bed and waited with agonizing patience for him to arrive. She touched the letter on her pillow, letting
the scent intoxicate her, flooding her mind with paisley tinged, pornographic dreams. She opened it.
My passion for you knows no bounds. You hold the key to well being in my life, and I love you now more than ever. I’d never
truly known happiness until I met you. You are my one and only, and I hope that wherever my life takes me and whatever I might
experience, that you will be there by my side to share it.
I LOVE YOU!
She could have cried he made her so happy. She ground her pelvis into the bed unconsciously, grinning from ear to ear.
There was an abrupt thump on the front door and her heart leapt into her throat. She grew hotter, wetter with each passing
second, adrenalin pounding through her system so that her limbs trembled and her vision swam.
She heard a sound like breaking glass, someone fumbling with the latch, then the shuffle of feet about to ascend the stairs. Her
momma’s voice (God rest her) in her head, saying you’ll know, you’ll know.
She opened her eyes and her legs as the fragrance of his cologne overwhelmed her. The door swung open.
Hey honey, she whispers, because that’s all her constricted throat allows. He’s smiling, not saying anything. She stands,
thrusting her breasts out proudly, running her hands up the length of her thighs. You like?
His head rolls and she interprets this as a nod.
She beckons his vague form coyly. She can feel her juices begin to flow again in earnest. How could she have even
contemplated some loathsome tryst with a strange couple, let alone another man, when she had this amazing, wonderful,
thoughtful, gorgeous apparition before her? With barely an effort, she tears the bikini top away and her breasts bounce free.
She hoped the girls were tuning in.
He then shambled towards her, his dead purple cock protruding from his ruined jeans, his head nearly severed from the
accident, a horrible car accident the night before. It hung down from a ropy piece of meat at a lunatic angle, dripping blood and
brains. He tried to smile and, much like the Republican Party, it was an insipid affront to Man and Nature.
She loves him so much she wants to tell him how they were meant to be together forever, as she had always known, but the
blood has squeezed the muscles in her throat and all she can say is welcome home, and she blissfully took him in her arms.
She had a wonderful time at the beach that steamy, perfect August day, even though her boyfriend never showed. It didn’t
matter, however: For now she could brazenly ogle all the other, more attractive men walking up and down the shore, giggling
and making lewd comments amongst her friends without throwing him into one of his irritating fits. This, along with baking
under the glorious sun for nearly four hours and imaging what one of these sexy boys with their abs and pelvic muscles might
feel like inside of her, conspired to produce an ache in her groin that was undeniable. In fact, her engine ran so hot and high
that she had to close her legs to conceal a growing damp spot.
She went home faithful. Her man was not perfect, but he was special. Her momma (God rest her) told her when that special
someone came along, she would know, and to sink her claws into him and never let anything tear them apart.
Once back home, she listened to the messages on her machine. He had left one, saying he would be over within the hour. She
peeled off her purple bikini with the green trim and tossed it on the bathroom floor. God, how her body ached for release,
almost junkie-like in its jones for a fix. She glanced around her room at the reminders of him, various tokens of his affections
over the last year and seven months. The framed pictures of the seasons, the perfume, jewelry and romantic knick-knacks were
nice and all, but she focused her attention on two white teddy bears, linked together by a red ribbon with white letters on it,
which read TOGETHER FOREVER.
She couldn’t agree more. There was not doubt that they would ever not be. There was no way life was worth living if not for his
loving embrace. Her eyes slid over a picture of the two of them from last summer, sitting on the steps in front of his house.
Both smiled broadly for the camera, hers a little sly, his a little goofy, and this she attributed to her hand being perched so high
up on his inner thigh.
She sat naked and wet on the bed with her legs spread in order to allow her inflamed cavity to cool. She fingered the ankle
chain he bought for her last January, to mark the anniversary of their first year together. Casually, she ran her finely tapered
fingers over her calf, up her thigh and around the soft curve of her hip, beneath the swell of her small, firm breast until the
velvet-brown nipple hardened. She thought of the couple she had been watching for a brief time on the beach, their perfect
bodies shiny with sweat and sun block. So obviously in love they were, not making any overt sexual moves toward one another,
but she could tell, the way their eyes met, their fingers touched, her own gaze traversing over the hint of nipple through the
girl’s bikini, the bulge in her man’s dark green Speedo. And the way they spread the sun block over each other, all slow and
deliberate, brought about her first twitch of excitement in an already hormone-infested afternoon. Her blood throbbed noisome
in her ears, beating in perfect tandem with the anxious pressure that was driving her insane from the pussy up.
She smelled his cologne over the tangy smell of seawater in her lank, reddish-brown hair. It came from the letter on her pillow.
She already could imagine what it said, but she didn’t unfold it just yet. She stretched languidly, feeling as if somehow she had
trapped a small part of the sun’s intensity inside her. He would appreciate her honey-brown tan, the heat of her skin to his
touch, her breasts two white dream oases in the middle of her burning flesh.
Moaning softly in the back of her throat without realizing it, she decided it was time to get ready. She was tempted to touch
herself, although she never had before. Momma (God rest her) said only dirty whores did that sort of thing, not good Christian
girls brought up with a healthy dose of shame for their bodies. She would save it to unleash upon her true love, simply because
he was the one.
She had never been quite so horny in all her seventeen years, and she imagined that one touch from his finger could very well
blow her mind, and that when he was inside she would just cum and cum until she was unconscious.
She turned on the shower, careful to keep the water on the cool side. She stepped in, nipples wrinkling immediately from the
water spattering her body. She sighed long and loud as the unrelenting fire within traced its force along her spine, making the
muscles in her crotch quiver spasmodically. She ran a soapy sponge along her legs in slow, circular motions, avoiding her
tender loins and continuing on to her taut belly, nearly swooning from the electricity prickling her chest when she scraped the
nipples. Just the thought of his thickness penetrating her, filling her insides made her want to burst, every part of her, every
cell, every microbe crying out in naked lust, for satisfaction taken to the utmost perverse extreme.
She left the shower running as she darted into her room, still soaking wet. She threw herself onto the bed and thought briefly,
sorry momma, and plunged three fingers into her sticky depths. She cried out and shivered with white-hot pleasure, knowing
exactly where to pinch, where to push, feeling guilty as she licked at the top of the throbbing tit she held in her hand. She
positioned herself in front of the mirror so she could see her hand pushing down on her vagina as she thrust it up in the air.
She then rolled over and straddled the brass bedpost, worshipping the cool metal feeling as she slid along its unyielding
length. A glance backwards into the mirror afforded her a view of the perky, heart-shaped ass that was the envy of all her
friends. She imagined throwing herself into the middle of that beautiful couple from the beach as her boyfriend watched,
becoming more turned on by the sight of his rage than his hard-on, while she let the stranger do her from behind and his sexy
girlfriend straddled her face.
In minutes, it was over. She came loudly, curled up on the bed and shuddering weakly like some dying animal, watching her
cream dry to a glaze on the bedpost. She was relieved at having doused some of the inferno, so at least now she could finish
getting ready without humping anything else. He would be arriving soon, and she had no time for any more bullshit, if she
wanted to look just right.
She got back in the shower and rinsed off. The chuckling sound the water made as it went down the drain reminded her of the
noises her boyfriend made sometimes when he was going down on her. She shaved her legs and armpits but left the pubic
thatch, since he had commented once how much a healthy bush turned him on. She wasn’t crazy about it, but his small wishes
meant a lot to her so she left it.
Now she stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom, blow-drying her entire body. She dashed a little of her favorite perfume,
called Man’s Ruin, on various erogenous zones: Behind her knees, on her neck, between her breasts, on each earlobe. She
put on a very brief, very thin white bikini, knowing how hot it would be against the beautiful shade of brown her skin had
become. She put on only lip gloss, so that her mouth resembled nothing more than another pair of wet lips for him to probe,
and thinking all the while of his body and the joy it would bring her, she felt the fires being lit all over again.
She looked at the digital clock on her nightstand, all ready for him and now waxing quite anxious. He was just about due. She
glanced in the full length, inspecting her perfection. Her dark pubic hair and aureoles were faintly visible. She cocked her hip
at the mirror and smiled at her reflection appreciatively. She had outdone herself this time, and she was proud.
There was one more thing she needed to do. She turned on her computer and set up her private web cam. Some of her more
desperate girlfriends offered her cash if they could see her man naked. She could almost imagine them, a little overweight, a
little ugly, holding their vibrators and wishing just once they could be her. She secretly believed a couple of them were actually
more interested in seeing her in the buff, but she never let on and the attention flattered her. So, she decided to throw them a
bone, even if no man ever did, and let them watch via the Internet. She saw a digital image of herself and her bed flash across
the screen, and satisfied, she turned the monitor off in case her lover did not approve. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him,
and today, to paraphrase a popular song, all eyes would be on her.
She stretched out on her bed and waited with agonizing patience for him to arrive. She touched the letter on her pillow, letting
the scent intoxicate her, flooding her mind with paisley tinged, pornographic dreams. She opened it.
My passion for you knows no bounds. You hold the key to well being in my life, and I love you now more than ever. I’d never
truly known happiness until I met you. You are my one and only, and I hope that wherever my life takes me and whatever I might
experience, that you will be there by my side to share it.
I LOVE YOU!
She could have cried he made her so happy. She ground her pelvis into the bed unconsciously, grinning from ear to ear.
There was an abrupt thump on the front door and her heart leapt into her throat. She grew hotter, wetter with each passing
second, adrenalin pounding through her system so that her limbs trembled and her vision swam.
She heard a sound like breaking glass, someone fumbling with the latch, then the shuffle of feet about to ascend the stairs. Her
momma’s voice (God rest her) in her head, saying you’ll know, you’ll know.
She opened her eyes and her legs as the fragrance of his cologne overwhelmed her. The door swung open.
Hey honey, she whispers, because that’s all her constricted throat allows. He’s smiling, not saying anything. She stands,
thrusting her breasts out proudly, running her hands up the length of her thighs. You like?
His head rolls and she interprets this as a nod.
She beckons his vague form coyly. She can feel her juices begin to flow again in earnest. How could she have even
contemplated some loathsome tryst with a strange couple, let alone another man, when she had this amazing, wonderful,
thoughtful, gorgeous apparition before her? With barely an effort, she tears the bikini top away and her breasts bounce free.
She hoped the girls were tuning in.
He then shambled towards her, his dead purple cock protruding from his ruined jeans, his head nearly severed from the
accident, a horrible car accident the night before. It hung down from a ropy piece of meat at a lunatic angle, dripping blood and
brains. He tried to smile and, much like the Republican Party, it was an insipid affront to Man and Nature.
She loves him so much she wants to tell him how they were meant to be together forever, as she had always known, but the
blood has squeezed the muscles in her throat and all she can say is welcome home, and she blissfully took him in her arms.
MICHAEL LOMBARDI
Means to an End
There is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly
comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.
You are nothing until you are nothing.
Dawn. Muted gray twilight. The sound of heavy rain
spattering the world like the unstaunched wounds of God.
His eyes snapped open. The mournful fire engine howl had
insinuated itself into his dream as a woman screaming.
Crying-screaming. Hands over ears, eyes crushed shut
screeching.
He tried to stand but did so too quickly. He fell back on the
bed, brain spinning and flickering. What time was it?
What day? He glanced at the clock on the night table. No
good. The blood red digital numerals flashed mindlessly at
3:42.
He switched on the TV. A talk show was on. What a
surprise. That’s all he ever saw these days. The country
could not seem to get enough insight regarding the sordid
affairs of the poor, the hopeless, and the stupid. On the
three channels that came in today (the cable had been out
for going on three days), were various talk shows and the
screen sizzled whenever lightning flashed, distorting the
image of some triple-chinned heifer bawling in his ear.
Here was one with the ever popular out of control teenage
girls, another showing a poor bucktooth slob forced into a
shotgun wedding, and the third featured two enormous fat
women in bikinis fighting in a wading pool filled with
tapioca. This was all for the love of some skinny black
dude in a wheelchair who bounced up and down with
unrestrained excitement.
Fuck TV and all its shameless promotion of mostly bullshit
and the endless hype bordering on outright propaganda. A
friend of his sometime back told him that the programming
was nothing more than a slick advertising delivery system,
designed to keep viewers pining away for shit they did not
really need. Why did he think there were so many repeats?
Being a casual viewer, he could recall bits of programs
here and there that he had seen months, even years ago.
This affirmed his belief that as long as the show was
popular enough to sustain a certain rate of advertising
sales, it could run on forever, or at least until the show’s
target audience grew up and died.
He went to the bathroom and caught a glimpse of his
reflection. He saw a stranger gazing back, a mere hint of
his former self. Not so much physical as mental, although
he knew he’d seen better days. His personality had shifted.
He thought it to be a slight, temporary condition, but as
the weeks wore into months, he slowly came to realize it
might be permanent. Once and always, happy, outgoing,
energetic, grievously swapped for loneliness, paranoia,
and isolation.
Dear God. When was she coming back?
A lonely blast of thunder boomed his only reply.
Judging from the current staccato program, he figured it
was time for work. Did the shit-shower-shave. The day
seemed to be going backwards; instead of getting brighter,
the day had darkened perceptibly, the rain increasing its
assault upon his corner of the planet.
It was a miracle that his clothes had been laid out the
night before, then remembered they were the ones he
wore yesterday. His wedding photo loomed up at him from
the shadows behind the flashing clock. Only then did
memory return.
She was never coming back. Ever. Even if the dead rose, it
would be something against her will. She wanted to be
dead long before he became a part of her life.
He did not cry, having long since spent the last of his tears
over her suicide. He stared out the window into the
morning blackness and knotted his tie. Streetlamps
flashed on up and down the avenue, illuminating the
scattered people walking stooped over like blades of grass
beneath the weight of the storm. A line of headlights
inched their way along the street.
Seven minutes later, he was at the front door, strapped
into his raincoat and hat, wearing his all climate boots. He
lingered for a moment, almost as if waiting for the ritual
goodbye kiss that would never come. Instead, one last
glance at the picture across the room became his solemn,
daily farewell.
The light from the dim, dusty overheads cast the hallway
in shadows. He squinted at his watch in the creeping
gloom.
Funny. It had also stopped at 3:42.
His uneasiness grew. He really needed to know the correct
time, right down to the last nanosecond, if possible.
He heard his breath in the empty corridor. Normally, he
could hear the banter of the TV from other apartments,
snatches of morning conversation, but today it seemed the
entire floor was still in bed. He imagined a thirty-story
tomb.
Unease was rapidly molting into alarm. He nearly ran for
the elevator as thunder rocked the building. The lights
dimmed. He wanted to pound on the doors of the other
apartments, realizing how much he missed the noise, the
comforting normalcy of others parked in front of the TV,
passing their lives away. He resisted a horrific urge to look
behind himself, for the hairs on the back of his neck stood
on end. He punched the button and the little arrow
pointing down lit up crimson.
His mouth was dry, breath coming in tight gasps. He swore
and lunged for the stairwell. Twenty-six flights. At least
they were down.
No sooner had he wrenched the door open, some old man,
an ancient man, stumbled out. Bald and desiccated, with
large pouches under his rheumy eyes, he could have been
a hundred, hundred twenty.
In his agitated state, he yelped in shock. The old man
seized him by the collar in a vise grip and growled in his
face, breath the foul stench of life rotting.
“It’s death out there.” Then he let go and fell flat on his
face.
With a trembling hand, he reached over and turned the
old man on his side. He was not breathing.
Not caring that his cry had gone unnoticed, he leapt over
the body and plummeted down the sepulchral stairwell. He
did not think of where the old man had come from, or if
there might be more like him lurking on one of the
landings further below. He just needed to get out. When
he reached the ground floor, he caught himself on the
railing, gasping and praying his heart would not burst. He
slammed the door to the lobby open and was almost able
to breathe an instant sigh of relief. People hurrying
through the rain, faces obscured by hats, newspapers,
umbrellas. Cabs crawled by, horns blatting. He could hear
the tires sucking up traction from the oily street, the swish
of windshield wipers.
Just another day in the big city.
He felt much like an asshole for breaking into a panic and
leaving the old man, who was obviously in need of some
medical assistance, at best. This had to be the strangest
morning since the one he woke up and found his wife dead
beside him, with blue foam around her mouth and nose,
eyes rolled back to show the whites. She had not gone
quietly, it seemed, as evidenced by the contorted state her
limbs were in, but he had slept right through it. The
strange suicide note was folded on his bedside table so he
would be sure not to miss it. He read it at least a hundred
times, trying to make sense of such a senseless act. How
could she desert him? And in such a disturbing way?
He cleared his throat noisily, turned, and went back inside.
No reason to dwell upon it now. In his haste and panic, he
forgot all about the correct time. The empty lobby echoed
his footfalls. He wondered distantly where the security
guard was, punched the button, shaking his head at his
own stupidity.
He looked outside. The rain ripped the ground with
torrential force. Not a single soul blew by the whole time
he was waiting for the elevator, which startled him with its
obligatory ping!
Maybe today would be a good day to call in sick. Despite all
that had happened in the last two months, his attendance
had always been exemplary. Once inside the car he
decided it. Ring for an ambulance, if someone had not, for
some strange reason, done so already. Then whip up a
nice big breakfast and ride the storm out with a good book.
These prospects, along with a tall glass of orange juice
spiked with vodka, cheered him considerably. He stepped
off the elevator, fully expecting to see the old man just
where he left him, maybe with a few of his neighbors
standing by, wringing their hands and shaking their heads.
It was deserted. He stopped dead. Fear traipsed back in
through his bowels like some obnoxious female relative
you could never get rid of. Maybe the guy had recovered
enough to make his way back to his own apartment,
although he swears never having seen him on this floor.
Would a neighbor go to such lengths as to drag him into
the apartment and call 911? About as likely as the
cancellation of all four hundred plus talk/reality shows at
the same time.
He could not refute what he had seen. The old guy had
certainly spoken to him, touched him before he collapsed.
The all too nauseating stench of dying breath had been as
real as the hand in front of his face. Even in his panic, he
could have sworn that the old geezer had just bought the
farm.
The question he found he kept asking himself repeatedly
with mounting fright: Am I losing my fucking mind?
He forced himself to walk steadily to his apartment, though
his racing pulse tempted him to do otherwise. He had not
craved a drink in the morning for quite some time. He was
cold all over, despite a sweating brow. The flickering lights
cast the floor in an ethereal glow.
You don’t know for sure he was dead, a voice piped up
inside.
No, he did not, but as he passed the spot on the floor
where the old man had fallen, he saw a few dried particles
of something in the dark carpet that might have been
flesh. The fucker sure looked dead, but he’d vanished.
A sudden mortar blast of thunder sent him hurtling the
rest of the way back to his place, flinging his briefcase
away as he fumbled for his key. Small sounds escaped his
throat and he could almost feel the great, all-consuming
evil at his back, no longer the image of his dead wife but
embodied in the visage of grandpa and his hooked claws
for hands.
He swept into the darkened apartment, tears rolling freely
down his face. He locked the door and stripped off all of his
clothes. With shaking hands, he poured himself a tumbler
full of brandy. The bottle slipped from his grasp and
shattered on the kitchen tiles. He downed half the glass
and fell, coughing sputtering, cutting his hands on the
glass. Through the tears, he saw that the storm outside
had become a kind of tropical typhoon. He had never seen
anything like it.
After a few minutes, he had calmed down enough to drag
himself into the recliner, fresh drink in one hand, and his
beloved wife’s well-worn suicide note in the other:
Dearest Anthony,
First off, don’t wonder why. It was just something I had to
do. I had been waiting throughout adolescence to kill
myself, and the anticipation of what lie in wait for me on
the other side had become to much too stand. I would have
asked you to join me, but then you might have tried to stop
me. I just couldn’t have that. The calling from beyond grew
louder with each passing day and I could no longer ignore
it.
I suppose my inability to have children had something to
do with it, and the routine my life had become. You knew I
had been a wild kid. I really was part of a coven when I was
sixteen, and we made numerous offerings to the Elder
Gods who lie dead but dreaming and who should not be
named, in the hopes of invoking cataclysm. I think I was
always born to live fast and die young, only I put it off for
too many years and I grew stagnant, as if my time had
already passed me by.
But please don’t ever think for a moment that it was you,
baby. You were the most wonderful, the most kind, the
most patient person in all my life. You loved me and
understood my dark side like no other man. And as I write
this by candlelight and look upon your sweet, sleeping
face, I know the only regret I have is leaving you behind.
But it may only be temporary. I want to still be relatively
young and healthy when I go in order to be adequately
equipped to handle whatever may come to me in the void.
I’m excited. Who knows what it will be like? How can
anyone with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge not
want to take that final step into the greatest mystery of all
time?
You have everything of mine, my darling, and now I must
say goodbye. I’m certain that we will meet again in the
next life because I love you so much, and a tie like that
cannot be broken, even in death. I believe that in some
other time, some other place, we will end up together until
time runs out.
Love always, and forever,
Your wife,
Dianna
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Instead of the old confusion and sadness it once brought,
the letter now calmed him down. It was almost as if she
watched over him, urging him to be strong, for his stay on
earth was almost complete.
The sky outside was the color of midnight. Rain sluiced
down in sheets harder than he thought possible. At this
rate, the streets were certain to flood by coffee break. He
drank his drink, heard hailstones battering the building,
punctuating the low, moaning wind which echoed through
the hallway with monstrous, bestial anguish.
He turned on the TV and got nothing but solid static on
every channel.
Now this worried him. More than the supra-violent storm
shaking the building, more than the old man’s
disappearance, or the single sentence uttered.
Even more so than his lovely Dianna’s bizarre suicidal
wish.
The fucking TV was dead, so something was very wrong.
When sponsor’s ads didn’t come flying forth ordering,
cajoling, begging, seducing you to CONSUME MASS
QUANTITIES like a good American, then you knew, deep
down, the world was going straight to Hell. He recalled the
shirts and hats with that proclamation at some trendy
record store in the mall. It must mean mass quantities of
everything, indiscriminately, at the expense of the rest of
the world. Truly the American way.
Then he went to the window and saw it. He now
understood why this short early morning (Afternoon?
Midnight? Who knows?) had moved from one strange little
incident to the next.
The tsunami was Judgment Day, super-sized. The slippery,
multi-tentacled thing beyond it, lit only during brief flashes
of lightning, was a blasphemy the size of a mountain
range. He saw holes with giant teeth and yellow eyes the
size of football fields scattered across it in no discernible
pattern. It was the World Eater, and it had gone unfed for
far too long.
Why hadn’t he seen this one coming?
He blinked a couple of times, then doubled over laughing
and pointing at the creature like some cheap special
effect, even though he knew damn well it was not. The
tidal wave crushed cars and structures and people like
garbage, and the monstrous bellowing reached a
crescendo with the growing rumble of the wave. He saw
that he was higher up than its crest, but so what? All that
water would smash him flat. His last coherent thought was:
Where’s Moses when you need him? Before the rumble
grew to a rock-solid roar inside his head and the impact of
what he had seen, something no human should ever look
upon, hit home and his mind snapped.
He went and lay down on the bed, the one he used to
share with his wife, the one she died in, as now so would
he. He waited for the end to come. He was unafraid in his
madness, and despite the shaking of the world, he was
able to shut it out and take solace in the continuous throb
of his heart, transported to a peaceful, sentient place
beyond the reaches of time and space where he was no
longer alone.
Thank you H.P. Lovecraft
There is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly
comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living.
You are nothing until you are nothing.
Dawn. Muted gray twilight. The sound of heavy rain
spattering the world like the unstaunched wounds of God.
His eyes snapped open. The mournful fire engine howl had
insinuated itself into his dream as a woman screaming.
Crying-screaming. Hands over ears, eyes crushed shut
screeching.
He tried to stand but did so too quickly. He fell back on the
bed, brain spinning and flickering. What time was it?
What day? He glanced at the clock on the night table. No
good. The blood red digital numerals flashed mindlessly at
3:42.
He switched on the TV. A talk show was on. What a
surprise. That’s all he ever saw these days. The country
could not seem to get enough insight regarding the sordid
affairs of the poor, the hopeless, and the stupid. On the
three channels that came in today (the cable had been out
for going on three days), were various talk shows and the
screen sizzled whenever lightning flashed, distorting the
image of some triple-chinned heifer bawling in his ear.
Here was one with the ever popular out of control teenage
girls, another showing a poor bucktooth slob forced into a
shotgun wedding, and the third featured two enormous fat
women in bikinis fighting in a wading pool filled with
tapioca. This was all for the love of some skinny black
dude in a wheelchair who bounced up and down with
unrestrained excitement.
Fuck TV and all its shameless promotion of mostly bullshit
and the endless hype bordering on outright propaganda. A
friend of his sometime back told him that the programming
was nothing more than a slick advertising delivery system,
designed to keep viewers pining away for shit they did not
really need. Why did he think there were so many repeats?
Being a casual viewer, he could recall bits of programs
here and there that he had seen months, even years ago.
This affirmed his belief that as long as the show was
popular enough to sustain a certain rate of advertising
sales, it could run on forever, or at least until the show’s
target audience grew up and died.
He went to the bathroom and caught a glimpse of his
reflection. He saw a stranger gazing back, a mere hint of
his former self. Not so much physical as mental, although
he knew he’d seen better days. His personality had shifted.
He thought it to be a slight, temporary condition, but as
the weeks wore into months, he slowly came to realize it
might be permanent. Once and always, happy, outgoing,
energetic, grievously swapped for loneliness, paranoia,
and isolation.
Dear God. When was she coming back?
A lonely blast of thunder boomed his only reply.
Judging from the current staccato program, he figured it
was time for work. Did the shit-shower-shave. The day
seemed to be going backwards; instead of getting brighter,
the day had darkened perceptibly, the rain increasing its
assault upon his corner of the planet.
It was a miracle that his clothes had been laid out the
night before, then remembered they were the ones he
wore yesterday. His wedding photo loomed up at him from
the shadows behind the flashing clock. Only then did
memory return.
She was never coming back. Ever. Even if the dead rose, it
would be something against her will. She wanted to be
dead long before he became a part of her life.
He did not cry, having long since spent the last of his tears
over her suicide. He stared out the window into the
morning blackness and knotted his tie. Streetlamps
flashed on up and down the avenue, illuminating the
scattered people walking stooped over like blades of grass
beneath the weight of the storm. A line of headlights
inched their way along the street.
Seven minutes later, he was at the front door, strapped
into his raincoat and hat, wearing his all climate boots. He
lingered for a moment, almost as if waiting for the ritual
goodbye kiss that would never come. Instead, one last
glance at the picture across the room became his solemn,
daily farewell.
The light from the dim, dusty overheads cast the hallway
in shadows. He squinted at his watch in the creeping
gloom.
Funny. It had also stopped at 3:42.
His uneasiness grew. He really needed to know the correct
time, right down to the last nanosecond, if possible.
He heard his breath in the empty corridor. Normally, he
could hear the banter of the TV from other apartments,
snatches of morning conversation, but today it seemed the
entire floor was still in bed. He imagined a thirty-story
tomb.
Unease was rapidly molting into alarm. He nearly ran for
the elevator as thunder rocked the building. The lights
dimmed. He wanted to pound on the doors of the other
apartments, realizing how much he missed the noise, the
comforting normalcy of others parked in front of the TV,
passing their lives away. He resisted a horrific urge to look
behind himself, for the hairs on the back of his neck stood
on end. He punched the button and the little arrow
pointing down lit up crimson.
His mouth was dry, breath coming in tight gasps. He swore
and lunged for the stairwell. Twenty-six flights. At least
they were down.
No sooner had he wrenched the door open, some old man,
an ancient man, stumbled out. Bald and desiccated, with
large pouches under his rheumy eyes, he could have been
a hundred, hundred twenty.
In his agitated state, he yelped in shock. The old man
seized him by the collar in a vise grip and growled in his
face, breath the foul stench of life rotting.
“It’s death out there.” Then he let go and fell flat on his
face.
With a trembling hand, he reached over and turned the
old man on his side. He was not breathing.
Not caring that his cry had gone unnoticed, he leapt over
the body and plummeted down the sepulchral stairwell. He
did not think of where the old man had come from, or if
there might be more like him lurking on one of the
landings further below. He just needed to get out. When
he reached the ground floor, he caught himself on the
railing, gasping and praying his heart would not burst. He
slammed the door to the lobby open and was almost able
to breathe an instant sigh of relief. People hurrying
through the rain, faces obscured by hats, newspapers,
umbrellas. Cabs crawled by, horns blatting. He could hear
the tires sucking up traction from the oily street, the swish
of windshield wipers.
Just another day in the big city.
He felt much like an asshole for breaking into a panic and
leaving the old man, who was obviously in need of some
medical assistance, at best. This had to be the strangest
morning since the one he woke up and found his wife dead
beside him, with blue foam around her mouth and nose,
eyes rolled back to show the whites. She had not gone
quietly, it seemed, as evidenced by the contorted state her
limbs were in, but he had slept right through it. The
strange suicide note was folded on his bedside table so he
would be sure not to miss it. He read it at least a hundred
times, trying to make sense of such a senseless act. How
could she desert him? And in such a disturbing way?
He cleared his throat noisily, turned, and went back inside.
No reason to dwell upon it now. In his haste and panic, he
forgot all about the correct time. The empty lobby echoed
his footfalls. He wondered distantly where the security
guard was, punched the button, shaking his head at his
own stupidity.
He looked outside. The rain ripped the ground with
torrential force. Not a single soul blew by the whole time
he was waiting for the elevator, which startled him with its
obligatory ping!
Maybe today would be a good day to call in sick. Despite all
that had happened in the last two months, his attendance
had always been exemplary. Once inside the car he
decided it. Ring for an ambulance, if someone had not, for
some strange reason, done so already. Then whip up a
nice big breakfast and ride the storm out with a good book.
These prospects, along with a tall glass of orange juice
spiked with vodka, cheered him considerably. He stepped
off the elevator, fully expecting to see the old man just
where he left him, maybe with a few of his neighbors
standing by, wringing their hands and shaking their heads.
It was deserted. He stopped dead. Fear traipsed back in
through his bowels like some obnoxious female relative
you could never get rid of. Maybe the guy had recovered
enough to make his way back to his own apartment,
although he swears never having seen him on this floor.
Would a neighbor go to such lengths as to drag him into
the apartment and call 911? About as likely as the
cancellation of all four hundred plus talk/reality shows at
the same time.
He could not refute what he had seen. The old guy had
certainly spoken to him, touched him before he collapsed.
The all too nauseating stench of dying breath had been as
real as the hand in front of his face. Even in his panic, he
could have sworn that the old geezer had just bought the
farm.
The question he found he kept asking himself repeatedly
with mounting fright: Am I losing my fucking mind?
He forced himself to walk steadily to his apartment, though
his racing pulse tempted him to do otherwise. He had not
craved a drink in the morning for quite some time. He was
cold all over, despite a sweating brow. The flickering lights
cast the floor in an ethereal glow.
You don’t know for sure he was dead, a voice piped up
inside.
No, he did not, but as he passed the spot on the floor
where the old man had fallen, he saw a few dried particles
of something in the dark carpet that might have been
flesh. The fucker sure looked dead, but he’d vanished.
A sudden mortar blast of thunder sent him hurtling the
rest of the way back to his place, flinging his briefcase
away as he fumbled for his key. Small sounds escaped his
throat and he could almost feel the great, all-consuming
evil at his back, no longer the image of his dead wife but
embodied in the visage of grandpa and his hooked claws
for hands.
He swept into the darkened apartment, tears rolling freely
down his face. He locked the door and stripped off all of his
clothes. With shaking hands, he poured himself a tumbler
full of brandy. The bottle slipped from his grasp and
shattered on the kitchen tiles. He downed half the glass
and fell, coughing sputtering, cutting his hands on the
glass. Through the tears, he saw that the storm outside
had become a kind of tropical typhoon. He had never seen
anything like it.
After a few minutes, he had calmed down enough to drag
himself into the recliner, fresh drink in one hand, and his
beloved wife’s well-worn suicide note in the other:
Dearest Anthony,
First off, don’t wonder why. It was just something I had to
do. I had been waiting throughout adolescence to kill
myself, and the anticipation of what lie in wait for me on
the other side had become to much too stand. I would have
asked you to join me, but then you might have tried to stop
me. I just couldn’t have that. The calling from beyond grew
louder with each passing day and I could no longer ignore
it.
I suppose my inability to have children had something to
do with it, and the routine my life had become. You knew I
had been a wild kid. I really was part of a coven when I was
sixteen, and we made numerous offerings to the Elder
Gods who lie dead but dreaming and who should not be
named, in the hopes of invoking cataclysm. I think I was
always born to live fast and die young, only I put it off for
too many years and I grew stagnant, as if my time had
already passed me by.
But please don’t ever think for a moment that it was you,
baby. You were the most wonderful, the most kind, the
most patient person in all my life. You loved me and
understood my dark side like no other man. And as I write
this by candlelight and look upon your sweet, sleeping
face, I know the only regret I have is leaving you behind.
But it may only be temporary. I want to still be relatively
young and healthy when I go in order to be adequately
equipped to handle whatever may come to me in the void.
I’m excited. Who knows what it will be like? How can
anyone with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge not
want to take that final step into the greatest mystery of all
time?
You have everything of mine, my darling, and now I must
say goodbye. I’m certain that we will meet again in the
next life because I love you so much, and a tie like that
cannot be broken, even in death. I believe that in some
other time, some other place, we will end up together until
time runs out.
Love always, and forever,
Your wife,
Dianna
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Instead of the old confusion and sadness it once brought,
the letter now calmed him down. It was almost as if she
watched over him, urging him to be strong, for his stay on
earth was almost complete.
The sky outside was the color of midnight. Rain sluiced
down in sheets harder than he thought possible. At this
rate, the streets were certain to flood by coffee break. He
drank his drink, heard hailstones battering the building,
punctuating the low, moaning wind which echoed through
the hallway with monstrous, bestial anguish.
He turned on the TV and got nothing but solid static on
every channel.
Now this worried him. More than the supra-violent storm
shaking the building, more than the old man’s
disappearance, or the single sentence uttered.
Even more so than his lovely Dianna’s bizarre suicidal
wish.
The fucking TV was dead, so something was very wrong.
When sponsor’s ads didn’t come flying forth ordering,
cajoling, begging, seducing you to CONSUME MASS
QUANTITIES like a good American, then you knew, deep
down, the world was going straight to Hell. He recalled the
shirts and hats with that proclamation at some trendy
record store in the mall. It must mean mass quantities of
everything, indiscriminately, at the expense of the rest of
the world. Truly the American way.
Then he went to the window and saw it. He now
understood why this short early morning (Afternoon?
Midnight? Who knows?) had moved from one strange little
incident to the next.
The tsunami was Judgment Day, super-sized. The slippery,
multi-tentacled thing beyond it, lit only during brief flashes
of lightning, was a blasphemy the size of a mountain
range. He saw holes with giant teeth and yellow eyes the
size of football fields scattered across it in no discernible
pattern. It was the World Eater, and it had gone unfed for
far too long.
Why hadn’t he seen this one coming?
He blinked a couple of times, then doubled over laughing
and pointing at the creature like some cheap special
effect, even though he knew damn well it was not. The
tidal wave crushed cars and structures and people like
garbage, and the monstrous bellowing reached a
crescendo with the growing rumble of the wave. He saw
that he was higher up than its crest, but so what? All that
water would smash him flat. His last coherent thought was:
Where’s Moses when you need him? Before the rumble
grew to a rock-solid roar inside his head and the impact of
what he had seen, something no human should ever look
upon, hit home and his mind snapped.
He went and lay down on the bed, the one he used to
share with his wife, the one she died in, as now so would
he. He waited for the end to come. He was unafraid in his
madness, and despite the shaking of the world, he was
able to shut it out and take solace in the continuous throb
of his heart, transported to a peaceful, sentient place
beyond the reaches of time and space where he was no
longer alone.
Thank you H.P. Lovecraft
Nothing Ever Happens Down Here
Of all the intergalactic genocides it had committed over the aeons, it
would seem ironic that the nameless mechanical being with the
demonoid head would end its infinite voyage of destruction with a
rather young, uninteresting island of mass decay that was the planet
Earth.
After the initial chaos wrought in the northern hemisphere, beneath
the gossamer lights of the Aurora Borealis, the ignorant, yet
moderately resourceful inhabitants began to retaliate, as will any
race in a futile attempt at survival. Their weaponry was strong and
accurate, but even the mightiest of these detonated uselessly on its
hide, and it batted down the winged machines which dove through
the sky. There were countless legions of ground troops, representing
all of her nations, with high-powered anti aircraft guns, massive,
mortar belching vehicles on grinding treads, and scores of ships
patrolling the great oceans, both above and below the surface. It fed
upon the great bursts of electricity designed to destroy its memory
banks, and spewed the nerve gas back down with a thrust of its jet
boosters. Its relationship in size to the average human was 40x.
They screamed and bled as they died, as had all beings from across
the stars, in some form or another. For most of its existence, it took
no pleasure, nor did it entertain the notion of a being more powerful
than itself. But as time wore on, it had learned to do both, thoroughly
convinced that somewhere, beyond the immeasurable gulfs of time
and space, something great and cosmic and all-knowing held sway. A
God had created all life that had ever been, and all that would ever
be. Since there were no knowledge of its origins, and the ruminations
within the demonoid head approached those of a randomly
programmed hard drive, it could only know what it was told to know.
Perhaps the Grand Messiah would have some answers. Then it would
reach out and slay Him, assuming the role of Un-God for eternity.
He would be found. The machine had only forever to spare and
countless creations and sub-creations to be undone along the way.
When at last God was slain it would create in its own likeness beings
to consume whole galaxies and rent holes in the fabric of time and
untold dimensions of existence.
Upon descending to primitive worlds, it had been regarded as some
messenger of the Higher Power to His disciples. When the peaceful
lizard people of a green jungle planet a million light years away beheld
the titanic sight of the unknown, inviolable, metallic beast landing
amidst a cloud of smoke, they fell at its feet in complete supplication.
They muttered hissing prayers in their forked tongues, surrounding it
with useless gifts. They gazed in rapturous wonder at its shining hide
in the glow of a hundred small fires. The horizon behind it was
covered in thick, steamy jungle darkness, and the sky above a low,
starless black.
Once the news of the arrival of God spread, thousands of lizard
people deserted the reaches of the planet’s lone continent to see the
visitor from the sky. The strangely obscured demon head encased in
the bubble, nodding benevolently this way and that did not frighten
the savages, as it was wont to do, but it did not matter. When its
survey mechanism computed that nearly all of the planet’s
inhabitants, as well as the leaders, surrounded it, it powered up its
thrusters and rose slowly from the ground in a bluish glow. As the
masses surged forward, capering and squealing, the arm appendages
rose and sent blazing bolts of plasma from its palms, lighting up the
humid darkness. It was not unlike the electric light produced on the
earth when the moisture falls.
The lizard men nearest were struck down in their throes of religious
ecstasy, spasming and bubbling as their bodies burst. The rest
scattered about in surprise and primal terror as the crackling lights of
doom set them on fire. The uncompromising, methodical intensity of
the attack soon set most of the jungles ablaze. It soared over the
screeching, dying creatures, cutting them down with a swath of light
that measured a quarter of a mile across.
Earth was a minor irritation compared to the obliteration of the shape
shifters. They had been intelligent beings composed of radioactive
gases and colored dust, residing on a beautiful lavender and gold
world called Tiov-Starkma, an undiscovered world beyond Earth’s
solar system. Their cities were so vast and sprawling that had the
killing beast been capable of feeling, it might have realized a
daunting task before it. The structures dwarfed the demon by nearly
tenfold. They had long realized the fatal intentions of their tiny visitor
and issued a warning, which boomed across the shimmering
landscape, shaking the awe-inspiring mega cities. In the silent world,
it seemed to be the voice of the Creator resounding in its head.
Their overconfidence made the machine/demon wary. It was the first
and only time in all its interplanetary massacres that a race first
thought it better for the intruder to go away before they risked
retaliation. Were they a race of patient, yet extremely powerful
entities capable of crushing the beast in one fell swoop? Or was this
a clever ruse? It reminded itself that it was the lone immortal, the
universe’s mysteriously spawned messenger of death, a Grim Reaper
of the celestial stars, and of course its choice was the only one it
could make: To destroy until it could destroy no more.
Its solitary journey had allowed it the ability to develop its intelligence,
to become an adaptable A.I. capable of unprogrammed thought. Often
it fathomed if its existence had been some gross misconception, an
accident or some lunatic’s failed creation. Then it confirmed that
nothing so efficient and flawless in the annihilation of all things could
be deemed a failure.
The being hovered silently between two monoliths, which reached
hundreds of feet in the air. It believed that some great ruler presided
over all things, not as an abstract thought, but as a tangible form that
could be reached and thus have the life crushed from it. It reasoned
this way because it was after all still just random memory, and its
circuits did not allow for a leap of faith.
A final warning came, and the visitor turned its upper torso and
leveled a gleaming triangular tower to its left. The shape shifters sped
towards it from all directions, beautiful spectrums of light and form,
anger and fear, firing great, crackling silver balls of unknown origins
from oblong funnels. When they made contact with the thing’s hide,
the age-old data banks bristled with static, turning obstructed and
distorted. Unfortunately for the shape shifters, these only served to
put the machine’s sensors into the electronic version of violent
retaliation. It brought up its weapons, those that had exterminated
countless creatures since time immemorial, and let the bolts sizzle,
levels set at the highest level of destruction.
It detected a shrill keening sound and saw its cleansing fire hit home
among the massing shifters. They dissolved into harmless, indistinct
puffs of dust, while others broke apart and slipped below the golden
ground. They floated away sadly into the atmosphere as the cities,
which had stood undisturbed for a hundred thousand years toppled in
cyclopean ruins.
It was as the machine expected. There was naught that could be done
to stop the galactic tsunami of death that followed it, and those still
cowering in their weak, pathetic worlds had only to wait, blissfully
ignorant, for their time to arrive.
The nameless mechanical demon often perused its memory banks to
recall distant slayings of a far off past, visualized with the utmost
clarity only godlike technology could provide. Like the undersea
beings of the water planet Miru, whose scaly skin split as easily as the
humans when not in their protective armor. When the weapons
struck the bottomless oceans, it turned the mermaid-like creatures’
dwellings into watery graves. Their corpses floated among the waves,
boiling until they burst. The giants of the enormous planet Claxon VI,
possessor of its own bright sun ten thousand times the size of the
Earth on the other side of a tainted black hole. These beings were
incredibly slow of wit, stumbling about as they were blinded by the
demon’s light, their howls loud enough to crack the surface beneath
their feet. When they fell the sound was like thunder, and their blood
ran in rivers, filling up the lowlands. When viewed from space, the
dead planet’s overall color had turned a slightly darker shade of
scarlet. It recalled the faint musical chimes of the crystal star G’narl
Soggoth, on the barest rim of the Outer Gates. From the void, all one
observed of the jagged, translucent body was a vague, violet outline,
as though it remained in perpetual solar eclipse. The mechanical
demon had almost allowed itself to be lulled into submission by the
enchanting sound, the only defense of this fragile race. It noted a
general symptom of a system disruption before closing it off and
shattering the star from the inside out. It recalled the nightmarish
metal world of Sarrac Vox, its inhabitants a unique kind of
reproducing cyborg. It was the only planet ever encountered that
followed no age-old, predetermined orbit. It appeared to drift through
space leisurely, with no discernible destination. These lifeless beings
brought forth some of the greatest and most terrible weapons of mass
destruction the mechanical beast had ever encountered. Rockets
emitted deadly poison gas when detonated, great wide lasers cut
swaths through borg and beast alike, immense spiked globes released
pure nuclear energy on impact. To the machine, these did no good:
The head, encased in the invisible, unbreakable alloy, was immune to
the gas, the lasers deflecting harmlessly off its mirrored hide to strike
down combatants below, and the spiked globes offered no more than
flimsy puffs of air. It had blasted many machines apart piece by piece,
slowly, and methodically, then carved out the metal core of the
abominable world so a chain reaction of mighty explosions ensued,
reducing it to a whirling ball of space junk as the demon went on its
way. Then, the nearly unidentifiable beings of the black desert planet
Qai, forever shrouded in silvery dusk. These were great, oozing
masses of bacteria and pestilence, with no definitive shape other
than that of quivering yellow blobs. They cruised their airspace in
metal capsules built for one, over the small, humped, hill-like
structures that were their domiciles.
It had been one of the messiest slaughters of all, its memory banks
assured.
Such a long, inexhaustible list of death, of conquered races and
fallen cities, all dispatched with evil, machinating efficiency. The
machine again became entranced with the synaptic response of an
all-knowing God. How could beings, millions of light years removed,
retain such similar habits and characteristics without some unknown,
superior cosmic link? The similarities were too uncanny to be
coincidental. Witness the flow of lifeblood from Earth’s humans: Its
shade was the same color of red as that which spilled from the fatal
wounds of the ivory people on the planet Valtar ten million light years
away. The fierce religious beliefs of the star Thraax, likened to that of
the ancient warrior insects of the planet Ochredus, surrounded by
black volcanic sand on the lip of a white hole the size of a thousand
Jupiters. Or the deformed inhabitants of the tiny asteroid Dominus,
made up of the bright killing flames as those on inSaiin, forever
whirling a million trillion light years away from the center of the
expanding universe.
Was there something out there with an answer? A meaning?
More importantly, might it be discovered, then eliminated, and then
replaced?
It was conceivable that the greatest secret in the universe, binding
the faith of men and alien alike, might very well be unknowable. That
time, in all its patience, may run out before the machine did, and it
could be possible, that once the beings whose faith were wiped out,
so too would the memory, the existence of the Creator.
It was then that the nameless, mechanical maniac sensed a change
amidst the wholesale destruction of Earth. From beneath the ground
came a great and distant hum, like a gigantic tuning fork tapped in
the bowels of the world, rocking the dying planet on its axis. The
metal beast turned slowly within a cloud of dense black smoke and
saw the creeping yellow shape stretched across the horizon as far as
the eye could see. Before the light engulfed them, the burning cities,
the dead, and dying, and then all was gone, a sterile, empty plain left
in its wake.
The Angel of Death confidently swung it’s weapons around and
rained down plasma bolts upon its all encompassing form, as it had
47, 294 times in the past, upon victims large and small. It was
unaware of the primates of Earth possessing such technology, but the
wave of beautiful, golden light had been sent by the shape shifters’
last dying thinkers, seeking vengeance for the slaughter of their
intelligent, peace-loving race. It was also the last hope for saving
what was left of the universe.
The plasma bolts, destroyers of creatures of the galaxies for a
hundred thousand millennia, passed harmlessly through the sweeping
wave. Unable to calculate efficiently, the machine watched in
complete confusion, unable to comprehend the feeling of mortal
terror that struck. It knew in a nanosecond retreat from this
adversary meant it would be followed, and stopping meant a
surrender to certain death. The mortals of earth could in no way have
conceived something so great. It had to be the wrath of an angry god,
provoked by this unknown abomination stalking and undoing the
Creations which he had labored over in forgotten eons.
The immeasurable tide was purging the Earth, wiping clean the
flames, the suffering, the dying, and leaving behind nothing. The
world was barren and lifeless once more, but ripe and fertile for the
Hand of Rebirth to pass over it. It was a regrettable, but necessary
decision to sacrifice the Earth in order to spare other life forms and
she would have a season of rest before beginning anew the cycle of
life. Earthly humanity meant so little to so many of her nations and
the inhabitants therein anyway.
As the nameless mechanical demon was consumed, it felt a sensation
of white-hot circuitry overload, memory banks shorted out, dissolved,
obliterated. It experienced the equal of intense, blinding pain as its
chassis melted, sight slowly diminishing within the wave of golden
infinity, and it thought with its last spark of life that to know God was
to perish beneath His enormous power. The demonoid head within the
supposedly unbreakable alloy ruptured and split open. Cognitive
processes dwindled to zero as it was crumpled, broken, and swept
from the atmosphere of the newborn planet to drift forever amongst
the stars, an empty husk that had once upon a time pondered the
reality of God and its own unique and terrifying existence.
Of all the intergalactic genocides it had committed over the aeons, it
would seem ironic that the nameless mechanical being with the
demonoid head would end its infinite voyage of destruction with a
rather young, uninteresting island of mass decay that was the planet
Earth.
After the initial chaos wrought in the northern hemisphere, beneath
the gossamer lights of the Aurora Borealis, the ignorant, yet
moderately resourceful inhabitants began to retaliate, as will any
race in a futile attempt at survival. Their weaponry was strong and
accurate, but even the mightiest of these detonated uselessly on its
hide, and it batted down the winged machines which dove through
the sky. There were countless legions of ground troops, representing
all of her nations, with high-powered anti aircraft guns, massive,
mortar belching vehicles on grinding treads, and scores of ships
patrolling the great oceans, both above and below the surface. It fed
upon the great bursts of electricity designed to destroy its memory
banks, and spewed the nerve gas back down with a thrust of its jet
boosters. Its relationship in size to the average human was 40x.
They screamed and bled as they died, as had all beings from across
the stars, in some form or another. For most of its existence, it took
no pleasure, nor did it entertain the notion of a being more powerful
than itself. But as time wore on, it had learned to do both, thoroughly
convinced that somewhere, beyond the immeasurable gulfs of time
and space, something great and cosmic and all-knowing held sway. A
God had created all life that had ever been, and all that would ever
be. Since there were no knowledge of its origins, and the ruminations
within the demonoid head approached those of a randomly
programmed hard drive, it could only know what it was told to know.
Perhaps the Grand Messiah would have some answers. Then it would
reach out and slay Him, assuming the role of Un-God for eternity.
He would be found. The machine had only forever to spare and
countless creations and sub-creations to be undone along the way.
When at last God was slain it would create in its own likeness beings
to consume whole galaxies and rent holes in the fabric of time and
untold dimensions of existence.
Upon descending to primitive worlds, it had been regarded as some
messenger of the Higher Power to His disciples. When the peaceful
lizard people of a green jungle planet a million light years away beheld
the titanic sight of the unknown, inviolable, metallic beast landing
amidst a cloud of smoke, they fell at its feet in complete supplication.
They muttered hissing prayers in their forked tongues, surrounding it
with useless gifts. They gazed in rapturous wonder at its shining hide
in the glow of a hundred small fires. The horizon behind it was
covered in thick, steamy jungle darkness, and the sky above a low,
starless black.
Once the news of the arrival of God spread, thousands of lizard
people deserted the reaches of the planet’s lone continent to see the
visitor from the sky. The strangely obscured demon head encased in
the bubble, nodding benevolently this way and that did not frighten
the savages, as it was wont to do, but it did not matter. When its
survey mechanism computed that nearly all of the planet’s
inhabitants, as well as the leaders, surrounded it, it powered up its
thrusters and rose slowly from the ground in a bluish glow. As the
masses surged forward, capering and squealing, the arm appendages
rose and sent blazing bolts of plasma from its palms, lighting up the
humid darkness. It was not unlike the electric light produced on the
earth when the moisture falls.
The lizard men nearest were struck down in their throes of religious
ecstasy, spasming and bubbling as their bodies burst. The rest
scattered about in surprise and primal terror as the crackling lights of
doom set them on fire. The uncompromising, methodical intensity of
the attack soon set most of the jungles ablaze. It soared over the
screeching, dying creatures, cutting them down with a swath of light
that measured a quarter of a mile across.
Earth was a minor irritation compared to the obliteration of the shape
shifters. They had been intelligent beings composed of radioactive
gases and colored dust, residing on a beautiful lavender and gold
world called Tiov-Starkma, an undiscovered world beyond Earth’s
solar system. Their cities were so vast and sprawling that had the
killing beast been capable of feeling, it might have realized a
daunting task before it. The structures dwarfed the demon by nearly
tenfold. They had long realized the fatal intentions of their tiny visitor
and issued a warning, which boomed across the shimmering
landscape, shaking the awe-inspiring mega cities. In the silent world,
it seemed to be the voice of the Creator resounding in its head.
Their overconfidence made the machine/demon wary. It was the first
and only time in all its interplanetary massacres that a race first
thought it better for the intruder to go away before they risked
retaliation. Were they a race of patient, yet extremely powerful
entities capable of crushing the beast in one fell swoop? Or was this
a clever ruse? It reminded itself that it was the lone immortal, the
universe’s mysteriously spawned messenger of death, a Grim Reaper
of the celestial stars, and of course its choice was the only one it
could make: To destroy until it could destroy no more.
Its solitary journey had allowed it the ability to develop its intelligence,
to become an adaptable A.I. capable of unprogrammed thought. Often
it fathomed if its existence had been some gross misconception, an
accident or some lunatic’s failed creation. Then it confirmed that
nothing so efficient and flawless in the annihilation of all things could
be deemed a failure.
The being hovered silently between two monoliths, which reached
hundreds of feet in the air. It believed that some great ruler presided
over all things, not as an abstract thought, but as a tangible form that
could be reached and thus have the life crushed from it. It reasoned
this way because it was after all still just random memory, and its
circuits did not allow for a leap of faith.
A final warning came, and the visitor turned its upper torso and
leveled a gleaming triangular tower to its left. The shape shifters sped
towards it from all directions, beautiful spectrums of light and form,
anger and fear, firing great, crackling silver balls of unknown origins
from oblong funnels. When they made contact with the thing’s hide,
the age-old data banks bristled with static, turning obstructed and
distorted. Unfortunately for the shape shifters, these only served to
put the machine’s sensors into the electronic version of violent
retaliation. It brought up its weapons, those that had exterminated
countless creatures since time immemorial, and let the bolts sizzle,
levels set at the highest level of destruction.
It detected a shrill keening sound and saw its cleansing fire hit home
among the massing shifters. They dissolved into harmless, indistinct
puffs of dust, while others broke apart and slipped below the golden
ground. They floated away sadly into the atmosphere as the cities,
which had stood undisturbed for a hundred thousand years toppled in
cyclopean ruins.
It was as the machine expected. There was naught that could be done
to stop the galactic tsunami of death that followed it, and those still
cowering in their weak, pathetic worlds had only to wait, blissfully
ignorant, for their time to arrive.
The nameless mechanical demon often perused its memory banks to
recall distant slayings of a far off past, visualized with the utmost
clarity only godlike technology could provide. Like the undersea
beings of the water planet Miru, whose scaly skin split as easily as the
humans when not in their protective armor. When the weapons
struck the bottomless oceans, it turned the mermaid-like creatures’
dwellings into watery graves. Their corpses floated among the waves,
boiling until they burst. The giants of the enormous planet Claxon VI,
possessor of its own bright sun ten thousand times the size of the
Earth on the other side of a tainted black hole. These beings were
incredibly slow of wit, stumbling about as they were blinded by the
demon’s light, their howls loud enough to crack the surface beneath
their feet. When they fell the sound was like thunder, and their blood
ran in rivers, filling up the lowlands. When viewed from space, the
dead planet’s overall color had turned a slightly darker shade of
scarlet. It recalled the faint musical chimes of the crystal star G’narl
Soggoth, on the barest rim of the Outer Gates. From the void, all one
observed of the jagged, translucent body was a vague, violet outline,
as though it remained in perpetual solar eclipse. The mechanical
demon had almost allowed itself to be lulled into submission by the
enchanting sound, the only defense of this fragile race. It noted a
general symptom of a system disruption before closing it off and
shattering the star from the inside out. It recalled the nightmarish
metal world of Sarrac Vox, its inhabitants a unique kind of
reproducing cyborg. It was the only planet ever encountered that
followed no age-old, predetermined orbit. It appeared to drift through
space leisurely, with no discernible destination. These lifeless beings
brought forth some of the greatest and most terrible weapons of mass
destruction the mechanical beast had ever encountered. Rockets
emitted deadly poison gas when detonated, great wide lasers cut
swaths through borg and beast alike, immense spiked globes released
pure nuclear energy on impact. To the machine, these did no good:
The head, encased in the invisible, unbreakable alloy, was immune to
the gas, the lasers deflecting harmlessly off its mirrored hide to strike
down combatants below, and the spiked globes offered no more than
flimsy puffs of air. It had blasted many machines apart piece by piece,
slowly, and methodically, then carved out the metal core of the
abominable world so a chain reaction of mighty explosions ensued,
reducing it to a whirling ball of space junk as the demon went on its
way. Then, the nearly unidentifiable beings of the black desert planet
Qai, forever shrouded in silvery dusk. These were great, oozing
masses of bacteria and pestilence, with no definitive shape other
than that of quivering yellow blobs. They cruised their airspace in
metal capsules built for one, over the small, humped, hill-like
structures that were their domiciles.
It had been one of the messiest slaughters of all, its memory banks
assured.
Such a long, inexhaustible list of death, of conquered races and
fallen cities, all dispatched with evil, machinating efficiency. The
machine again became entranced with the synaptic response of an
all-knowing God. How could beings, millions of light years removed,
retain such similar habits and characteristics without some unknown,
superior cosmic link? The similarities were too uncanny to be
coincidental. Witness the flow of lifeblood from Earth’s humans: Its
shade was the same color of red as that which spilled from the fatal
wounds of the ivory people on the planet Valtar ten million light years
away. The fierce religious beliefs of the star Thraax, likened to that of
the ancient warrior insects of the planet Ochredus, surrounded by
black volcanic sand on the lip of a white hole the size of a thousand
Jupiters. Or the deformed inhabitants of the tiny asteroid Dominus,
made up of the bright killing flames as those on inSaiin, forever
whirling a million trillion light years away from the center of the
expanding universe.
Was there something out there with an answer? A meaning?
More importantly, might it be discovered, then eliminated, and then
replaced?
It was conceivable that the greatest secret in the universe, binding
the faith of men and alien alike, might very well be unknowable. That
time, in all its patience, may run out before the machine did, and it
could be possible, that once the beings whose faith were wiped out,
so too would the memory, the existence of the Creator.
It was then that the nameless, mechanical maniac sensed a change
amidst the wholesale destruction of Earth. From beneath the ground
came a great and distant hum, like a gigantic tuning fork tapped in
the bowels of the world, rocking the dying planet on its axis. The
metal beast turned slowly within a cloud of dense black smoke and
saw the creeping yellow shape stretched across the horizon as far as
the eye could see. Before the light engulfed them, the burning cities,
the dead, and dying, and then all was gone, a sterile, empty plain left
in its wake.
The Angel of Death confidently swung it’s weapons around and
rained down plasma bolts upon its all encompassing form, as it had
47, 294 times in the past, upon victims large and small. It was
unaware of the primates of Earth possessing such technology, but the
wave of beautiful, golden light had been sent by the shape shifters’
last dying thinkers, seeking vengeance for the slaughter of their
intelligent, peace-loving race. It was also the last hope for saving
what was left of the universe.
The plasma bolts, destroyers of creatures of the galaxies for a
hundred thousand millennia, passed harmlessly through the sweeping
wave. Unable to calculate efficiently, the machine watched in
complete confusion, unable to comprehend the feeling of mortal
terror that struck. It knew in a nanosecond retreat from this
adversary meant it would be followed, and stopping meant a
surrender to certain death. The mortals of earth could in no way have
conceived something so great. It had to be the wrath of an angry god,
provoked by this unknown abomination stalking and undoing the
Creations which he had labored over in forgotten eons.
The immeasurable tide was purging the Earth, wiping clean the
flames, the suffering, the dying, and leaving behind nothing. The
world was barren and lifeless once more, but ripe and fertile for the
Hand of Rebirth to pass over it. It was a regrettable, but necessary
decision to sacrifice the Earth in order to spare other life forms and
she would have a season of rest before beginning anew the cycle of
life. Earthly humanity meant so little to so many of her nations and
the inhabitants therein anyway.
As the nameless mechanical demon was consumed, it felt a sensation
of white-hot circuitry overload, memory banks shorted out, dissolved,
obliterated. It experienced the equal of intense, blinding pain as its
chassis melted, sight slowly diminishing within the wave of golden
infinity, and it thought with its last spark of life that to know God was
to perish beneath His enormous power. The demonoid head within the
supposedly unbreakable alloy ruptured and split open. Cognitive
processes dwindled to zero as it was crumpled, broken, and swept
from the atmosphere of the newborn planet to drift forever amongst
the stars, an empty husk that had once upon a time pondered the
reality of God and its own unique and terrifying existence.
been such a good boy. They declined to press charges on him, but the
Gowers’ family did not: They sued the Feldheims’ for everything they
had, which was considerably more than they could afford to lose. Jeff
gained little sympathy even though he was sorry and truly horrified by
what he had done (After all, he still wanted to get laid). He walked
stiffly in his gray suit, ribs taped and left arm in a sling. His face had
broken out worse, since he still refused to use the Xen. His eyes were
glazed and sorrow-filled, sunken into the dark hollows of their
sockets. The Feldheims’ were planning to sue the auto manufacturer
for the defective airbags. Eventually everyone would get paid, and
since Jeff was a first timer, he would probably get off easy:
Community service for a few hours a week, perhaps unable to get a
license until he turned twenty-one. He could return to school as soon
as he was well enough, but there might be some repercussions: Jen’s
mom went up to school and demanded he lose his senior privileges
(graduation, prom, senior trip…shit he cared nothing for). Worse still,
nothing could protect him from her older brother Tommy Gowers. He
was on the basketball team and would happily admit he had chunks of
dudes just like Jeff floating in his toilet. He caught up to him on the
last day in court and told him right in front of his parents: “You’re
gonna suffer for as long as she does, fuckface. Count on it.” Jen was
only a week from her seventeenth birthday.
Now, one week and six days of Xen-free acne, Jeff relented. His face
had ruptured hideously and at an alarming rate, accompanied by an
itch of extraordinary magnitude. The dreams had gotten more
fragmented, but overall much worse. Stark terror displaced
exhilaration, and often he found himself on the opposing end of the
fun and destruction in which he had once so gleefully taken part. He
smothered his face in the stuff and bade the cleansing burn to return
and make him handsome once more. He was sorry he had stopped
using it and would most certainly not do so again. He loved his mom
and dad. As well as all the poor people in the world, good and bad.
Death was no proof that evil people received what was coming to
them after a lifetime of ill-gotten gains and deceit. The void was no
threat to them, suffering in the afterlife no deterrent.
He saw men in business suits on the TV, laughing at him, taunting
him. A baker's dozen, sitting around a titanic marble table as though
it were the Last Supper. There were thirteen of them, ranging in age
from early thirties to mid-sixties. Capped teeth, blow-dried hair, power
suits, and manicures abounded. Stacks of cash, gold bars and
contracts occupied the desktop along with plates of half-eaten food.
Behind them hung a giant banner, emblazoned with a majestic eagle
and the words CORRUPTUS IN EXTREMIS beneath it. Jeff wondered
who these men were, and why they had chosen to pick on him, out of
all the people out there in TV Land.
What are you going to do, you fucking poor ass little white boy? Most
Americans have the attention spans of cocker spaniels on speed and
that makes it so much easier for them to swallow the copious
amounts of bullshit we feed them as they rush rush rush to make that
dollar, or sign away their rights on the dotted line. You are poor and
alone. If you go out and blow up a federal building, empty or
otherwise, you are a terrorist. If you exercise your right to freedom of
assembly, you will be hounded by the police, your message ignored by
the media. You will have no forum from which to spout your
propaganda because we own the airwaves. You will want to buy
things with money you do not have. You will live a life of debt unless
you can gamble your way to making ends meet, with the lottery or the
stock market. You will put what little money you have on a horse that
comes in dead last. You will watch our programs and purchase our
products, our services. Our stable of artists and athletes, whose
careers we have in contractual stranglehold, and whose creativity
and excellence buys our cars and feeds our spawn, will keep you
diverted. You will sit down, you will shut up, and you will like it. Your
dreams of an unprofitable, better world for all are just that:
Impossible dreams. You see, Jeffrey, you are nobody. A miniscule part
of a specifically targeted, free-spending, age demographic. Just
another number, a faceless cog in some giant machine you can never
hope to understand. You will be crushed if you do not get out of the
way. And you ARE in the way, you ignorant little shit. You fucked up
tremendously. You put a young consumer into a coma. The loss of a
nearly bottomless well of spending ability is such a disappointment.
She fell for every fad completely and without fail. How are you going
to fuck her now, buddy boy? How is she going to take her parents’
cash and buy into every kind of overblown hype, trend and
fashionable look when she is in a FUCKING COMA, you stupid
bastard? Not to mention her ability to eventually reproduce more
spoiled brats to carry on the tradition of whining, and pointing and
spending! Do you understand what you have done? Your attitude,
your line of thinking, and your whole way of life we do not appreciate
at all. Fortunately, these problems have a way of fixing themselves. If
not, who shall look upon you with any sympathy after the machine
swallows you down and shits you out with the reputation of an
insurgent, an assassin?
Or whatever we choose?
But I didn’t do anything—
Oh, but you have. Our propaganda is normally foolproof. Make no
mistake about it, Jeffrey. You are an accident. One of the few to
whom the process did not take. You will not become a danger to
anyone but yourself. Do not forget that your existence is futile. You
will fall into line. You will submit. Or you will disappear.
So sayeth the Thirteen Corporate Apostles, Disciples of Capitalist
Supremacy.
They collapsed into laughter, shouted curses and threats. The TV
grew larger, filling up all he could see, before reaching a crescendo
of light and sound. Jeff squirmed under his bed but could not escape
the din. When he thought his brain would snap, the TV went dark.
And now a word from our sponsors.
Gowers’ family did not: They sued the Feldheims’ for everything they
had, which was considerably more than they could afford to lose. Jeff
gained little sympathy even though he was sorry and truly horrified by
what he had done (After all, he still wanted to get laid). He walked
stiffly in his gray suit, ribs taped and left arm in a sling. His face had
broken out worse, since he still refused to use the Xen. His eyes were
glazed and sorrow-filled, sunken into the dark hollows of their
sockets. The Feldheims’ were planning to sue the auto manufacturer
for the defective airbags. Eventually everyone would get paid, and
since Jeff was a first timer, he would probably get off easy:
Community service for a few hours a week, perhaps unable to get a
license until he turned twenty-one. He could return to school as soon
as he was well enough, but there might be some repercussions: Jen’s
mom went up to school and demanded he lose his senior privileges
(graduation, prom, senior trip…shit he cared nothing for). Worse still,
nothing could protect him from her older brother Tommy Gowers. He
was on the basketball team and would happily admit he had chunks of
dudes just like Jeff floating in his toilet. He caught up to him on the
last day in court and told him right in front of his parents: “You’re
gonna suffer for as long as she does, fuckface. Count on it.” Jen was
only a week from her seventeenth birthday.
Now, one week and six days of Xen-free acne, Jeff relented. His face
had ruptured hideously and at an alarming rate, accompanied by an
itch of extraordinary magnitude. The dreams had gotten more
fragmented, but overall much worse. Stark terror displaced
exhilaration, and often he found himself on the opposing end of the
fun and destruction in which he had once so gleefully taken part. He
smothered his face in the stuff and bade the cleansing burn to return
and make him handsome once more. He was sorry he had stopped
using it and would most certainly not do so again. He loved his mom
and dad. As well as all the poor people in the world, good and bad.
Death was no proof that evil people received what was coming to
them after a lifetime of ill-gotten gains and deceit. The void was no
threat to them, suffering in the afterlife no deterrent.
He saw men in business suits on the TV, laughing at him, taunting
him. A baker's dozen, sitting around a titanic marble table as though
it were the Last Supper. There were thirteen of them, ranging in age
from early thirties to mid-sixties. Capped teeth, blow-dried hair, power
suits, and manicures abounded. Stacks of cash, gold bars and
contracts occupied the desktop along with plates of half-eaten food.
Behind them hung a giant banner, emblazoned with a majestic eagle
and the words CORRUPTUS IN EXTREMIS beneath it. Jeff wondered
who these men were, and why they had chosen to pick on him, out of
all the people out there in TV Land.
What are you going to do, you fucking poor ass little white boy? Most
Americans have the attention spans of cocker spaniels on speed and
that makes it so much easier for them to swallow the copious
amounts of bullshit we feed them as they rush rush rush to make that
dollar, or sign away their rights on the dotted line. You are poor and
alone. If you go out and blow up a federal building, empty or
otherwise, you are a terrorist. If you exercise your right to freedom of
assembly, you will be hounded by the police, your message ignored by
the media. You will have no forum from which to spout your
propaganda because we own the airwaves. You will want to buy
things with money you do not have. You will live a life of debt unless
you can gamble your way to making ends meet, with the lottery or the
stock market. You will put what little money you have on a horse that
comes in dead last. You will watch our programs and purchase our
products, our services. Our stable of artists and athletes, whose
careers we have in contractual stranglehold, and whose creativity
and excellence buys our cars and feeds our spawn, will keep you
diverted. You will sit down, you will shut up, and you will like it. Your
dreams of an unprofitable, better world for all are just that:
Impossible dreams. You see, Jeffrey, you are nobody. A miniscule part
of a specifically targeted, free-spending, age demographic. Just
another number, a faceless cog in some giant machine you can never
hope to understand. You will be crushed if you do not get out of the
way. And you ARE in the way, you ignorant little shit. You fucked up
tremendously. You put a young consumer into a coma. The loss of a
nearly bottomless well of spending ability is such a disappointment.
She fell for every fad completely and without fail. How are you going
to fuck her now, buddy boy? How is she going to take her parents’
cash and buy into every kind of overblown hype, trend and
fashionable look when she is in a FUCKING COMA, you stupid
bastard? Not to mention her ability to eventually reproduce more
spoiled brats to carry on the tradition of whining, and pointing and
spending! Do you understand what you have done? Your attitude,
your line of thinking, and your whole way of life we do not appreciate
at all. Fortunately, these problems have a way of fixing themselves. If
not, who shall look upon you with any sympathy after the machine
swallows you down and shits you out with the reputation of an
insurgent, an assassin?
Or whatever we choose?
But I didn’t do anything—
Oh, but you have. Our propaganda is normally foolproof. Make no
mistake about it, Jeffrey. You are an accident. One of the few to
whom the process did not take. You will not become a danger to
anyone but yourself. Do not forget that your existence is futile. You
will fall into line. You will submit. Or you will disappear.
So sayeth the Thirteen Corporate Apostles, Disciples of Capitalist
Supremacy.
They collapsed into laughter, shouted curses and threats. The TV
grew larger, filling up all he could see, before reaching a crescendo
of light and sound. Jeff squirmed under his bed but could not escape
the din. When he thought his brain would snap, the TV went dark.
And now a word from our sponsors.
