Author: Barrett

Lucifer Christ is sitting quietly on the center of his couch, staring dreamily contemplating the nature of his neighbors sins. Yes, he thinks, she must be all those terrible things. Yes, undoubtedly I must do something about that wretched woman. And, firmly coming to this conclusion, Lucifer returned to pulsating with fear waiting for some dread nightmare to awaken into his life.

A little background to this scene is sure to illuminate the reason for Lucifer’s fear. The story is like this. Lucifer, who is by trade a cashier at a major box store, returned to his large apartment block one night after a particularly onerous shift. He hazily punched in his floor number, walked off at the generic landing, went to his door, twisted the knob, and walked into what was supposed to be his apartment but was in fact the one directly below his: he had clicked the wrong floor accidentally. Now, Lucifer only opened the door for a split second, immediately realized he was staring into the wrong apartment, quickly shut the door, then went up a flight of stairs to his own apartment where we find him in the paragraph above pulsating with fear. You see, unfortunately, the apartment that Lucifer walked into  by shear accident was some form of murder den. For the split second the door was open Lucifer could see a plastic lined apartment, a few stray body parts littered around the plastic, an enormous quantity of blood, and his cute neighbor Tilda standing in the center of all this with a welders apron around her waist and a hacksaw in her hand. She looked up in surprise when Lucifer entered, probably had time to question why on earth she didn’t lock the door, made direct eye contact with Lucifer, then Lucifer shut the door and scampered off.

Now, of course the rational thing for Lucifer to do in a scene like this would be to run away, run quickly, never come back. Of course alerting the authorities goes without saying a point number one on Lucifer’s action plan. Yet, the human mind is not a perfect organ and one must remember that this is all happening rather quickly and for whatever reason neither alerting the authorities of escaping the premises even enters Lucifer’s mind. No, all he thinks is that what serendipity: the entire city is looking for the infamous murderer and here he finds her by sheer! It’s too bad, Lucifer thinks, since she was rather cute. He giggles to himself that make it is a good thing he never pushed harder for a date; his cowardice pays off. Lucifer is giggling. And, of course, pulsating with fear.

There is no plan in Lucifer’s mind what he should do, resulting in that he just continues to sit in the middle of his couch. There are not room mates coming and going to break his reverie, there is no beep of the telephone to remind Lucifer that he is part of a world external to the last few minutes. Nope, all Lucifer does is sit and shake.

Eventually a certain amount of time passes, say a quarter of an hour. Perhaps if an hour had passed Lucifer would have woken up, but that amount of time does not pass. After this certain amount of time Lucifer hears someone twist his apartments door know. He, unlike the murderer remembered to lock his door, and Lucifer giggles to himself before retching with horror as he hears a mechanical cutting noise and watches his door swing open.

In walks Tilda, carrying a small mechanical power saw in her left hand which must have been used to break through his lock. She is looking very calm and collected, and even has a bit of a jovial look in her eye, as if she is quietly tittering at what an absurd situation this has evolved to.

She walks confidently into Lucifer’s apartment, shutting the door behind her. Really, she is a rather cute girl, round face designed for smiling and a lithe figure that’s perfect for dancing. She is smiling now, as she asks Lucifer “Well, have you ever put me in a tight spot! Do you know what a tight spot you have put me in?” She gives Lucifer no time to answer, which is good since Lucifer’s mouth was agape and the chances that he might have piped in an answer were remote to nil. Tilda carried on, “Here I go and play my little games, and take all the precautions, and a forgettable detail like locking the door completely slips my mind! What are the chances! You really didn’t mean to come into my apartment did you? I saw your face, it was priceless, you certainly didn’t expect to see me playing my games did you? Well?” She suddenly loses her smile, pierces Lucifer with a dontfuckwithme look and waits a solid fifteen seconds for Lucifer to stammer “I…….I……..I was on the wrong floor…….it was an accident……..I was so tired……”.  Giggling Tilda claps her hands, “Oh, an accident! Well, isn’t that just my luck, oh ho ho ho, an accident! What are the chances, what are the chances…” Clapping her hands with enthusiasm Tilda seems to be actually enjoying this rather odd situation when she suddenly stops and begins quickly moving toward Lucifer with the saw revving at a high RPM. With the squeal of a stepped on puppy Lucifer leaps behind his couch yelping “You can’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please of please of fuck, please please don’t kill me. I won’t tell anybody. I didn’t see anything. There was nothing to see. What is it you are talking about? Oh please. I won’t tell anyone anything, oh god oh god oh god please please.” In the face of this barrage of excuses Tilda seems incognizant until Lucifer weepingly mumbles “If you kill me I will go missing and and and then people will find you because you can’t hide from all the attention that me disappearing would happen on the building.” Suddenly, the saw goes off, the killer leaves Tilda’s eyes, and again she seems jovial; a laugh is living just inside her lips. “You know! I think you’ve got a point,” she ponders with enthusiasm, if I do kill you, you will be a head ache! I would have to move from here for sure and I’m so happy here, the land lords are so nice and I’m so fond of my view. Yet, if I don’t kill you then you will go to the police and I’ll be an even bigger mess! No, I think I’m going to have to kill you, unless, hmmm, do you have any ideas? I’m open to suggestions!” Gasping for air Lucifer is crying, “Suggestions, suggestions…of course I have some suggestions…..” Tilda is tapping her foot, looks at her watch and begins to fidget while she waits for Lucifer to respond. “How about,” suggest Lucifer, “If you find something that you could make me do so that if I was to tell anyone that thing which I may or may not have seen I would be in just as much trouble as you?” Tilda lights up like a sun beam, and yelps joyfully “Of course Lucifer, that’s a fantastic idea! Here, you wait here, I’ll be right back! Two seconds. Don’t do anything foolish though, I wouldn’t want to have to eat your mother or anything!” And with that hopefully sarcastic statement Tilda is bounding out the door.

Now, with Tilda gone, Lucifer collapses back into his comfortable spot on the couch and manners of conducting an escape suddenly flood his mind. “Yes,” he thinks, “I could simply run out of this building, go to the police department, and turn Tilda in. Yes, that’s what I will do. Yet…..what if she does do something terrible to my family? She certainly seems crazy, and for her to have not gotten caught yet must mean she is somewhat successful at staying ahead of the law….no, I think the proper thing for me to do is stay here. Maybe I will get a weapon and if the chance arises I’ll kill her! Yes, that’s a good solution! That’s exactly what I’ll do.” Rising from the sofa going towards the kitchen, Lucifer is looking through his drawers when Tilda stumbles back into Lucifer’s apartment with a large bag the size of a human body being dragged behind her. She looks at Lucifer, sees him with the knife in his hand and sweetly asks him “to please put that fucking knife down or I’ll use it to cut you so terribly that your only mode of communication will be breathing patterns!” Lucifer puts the knife down, and stares at Tilda quixotically.

“Well,” Tilda says, “Here’s what’s going to happen. In the bag I have my next toy, and while I was going to have fun playing with him I thought if you were to maybe murder him that would be the sort of action that would keep you from going to the authorities. So if you could do me a favor, and take that knife you just put down, and come over here and just stab the bag a few times? Don’t worry about blood, the bad has a self repairing meniscus so everything should stay in the bag. Just stab it a couple times and I’ll be off and everything will be exactly like it was before! Just let me get out of the way so you don’t stab ME by mistake, ohohohohohohoh!” And with that Tilda shies away, and is staring at the agape Lucifer.

Lucifer is just standing there, very still. His brain is working faster than his heart. He cannot be a murderer! That is a thing so vile, so vile. Yet, then, he will die if he does not kill this man. And this man will die one way or the other. Oh, how tricky. he can’t kill a man, he can’t. Then, then the man is going to die anyway. Oh, fuck it. And without anymore thought then that just listed above Lucifer takes the kitchen knife he’d hoped to pluck between two of Tilda’s ribs and instead plants it solidly into the writhing black bag. The bag shudders viciously, and Lucifer surprises himself by instinctually stabbing the knife a dozen more times until the movement stops.

Springing from the other end of the room with a great big grin on her face Tilda comes and grabs the bag that used to contain a man. “Fantastic work Lucifer,” she gushes, “Everything should be good now! You can’t tell anybody about my games because then it would come out you were a murderer. Here just let me take that knife from you for fingerprints, thanks, and I’ll store the body in such a manner that I’ll be sure to be able to pin it back onto you, so you don’t got telling anybody you hear? Okay. Good, anyway, have a pleasant evening and I’ll see you around the building. Maybe I can borrow your laundry soap, mines almost out. But I’ll talk to you about that later.” Then pulling the corners of the heavy bag with all her strength Tilda takes the great bag out of Lucifer’s apartment.

Looking at the ruined lock in his door Lucifer sighs. “That’s going to be a pretty penny to fix,” he thinks morosely. Then without allowing himself a second thought for all of the events, he stretches out on his couch, turn the TV on, and lets his brain turn off.

Where am I, where am I? A dream I just had, or is it even over, not nightmarish, barely remembered, but infiltrating my soul. Where am I? Is this a dream? How can I know, truly know. I hear a baby screeching, not the cries of normal youth but the retching of pain. I shake my head, wake a little more, and the screech is gone.

I am still not awake, or at least not entirely, but I have the aptitude to unconsciously check my clock, know the time, know it is not time yet for the necessity of full wakefulness, and allow myself to revel in this tertiary environment of awake but still dreaming. I am in control, fantastically constructing cities of l’amour that set Paris to shame with one half of my mind, while with the other half solving the problems of government for the next several decades. I should write all these things down, though I distrust my mind at all times and especially now. Who know what cleverness the universe is radiating on me at this exact moment, what hidden capabilities my mind squirrels away in these recesses of sleep.

But these ideas are lost now, ethereal as they were; it is like atoms: by trying to capture their speed I lost their position, and now, I am left with my hands empty of all that I vainly tried to capture. Just a few grains left, enough to make me feel some real remorse of what I have lost. Even those are casually slipping. May they all leave, I don’t want any haunting of the past, never.

Now, here I am, awake. I have forgotten what beauties I thought, and now, instead, all I feel is a casual apprehension of fear, likely the remnants of my nightmare, if that’s indeed what is was. I shake my head, trying to dispel, but I don’t have the will to lose it entirely. What was it? What was it to shake me so, what winds are there that leaf through my soul, lifting and revealing the crevices that I would wish to never acknowledge? What edible thoughts do I not even know I have eaten, do not even know were in my capabilities to fabricate?

Now, sadly, it is the time to make things happen, to wake up, to drag myself to whatever it is that must happen today. It is not a day of that unfortunate paradigm of work that sucks at us all, stealing our lives to construct unbeautiful things. Rather, it is that mealy day of rest that men absorbed with efficiency have calculated that I need if I want to retain the dismal sense of efficiency they assign to me.

It is the day of rest though, and why spoil a lovely morning, light filtering in attractive patterns from the sun through space, diffracted by the atmosphere and my window into a fantastical pattern on my bed sheet. Beautiful. What will I do today? What will I do with this life? Why is it, that I am alive. I am hungry also.  I want to be more alive then I truly am; I fear death. I fear the absence of existence. Who am I. Where am I going. Why, why, why, why, why, why.

Cluster fuck shit, I don’t want to go there, forget! New things. I propel myself from bed, and the momentum carries not just my body but my thoughts to a new place, a different place, and I decide that of all the ethereal images flying through my mind, the most manageable, the most real, is my hunger, and on this here, this day where it is given that I have time at my beck and call I decide to make breakfast. The breakfast I dream about on those long drives to work with nothing but a coffee. I go to the kitchen and become lost in my task, thinking about nothing substantial but using all my processing power, every megabyte of ram I have, to make the most virtuoso breakfast I can with those supplies given at my hand: things are imperfect, I appreciate the fact I do not have ideal circumstances: there are not the right food stuffs, and indeed my ability to shape them into something remarkable is vaporous at best; but I will try, and even if what I create is imperfect at least it is something, something to put my name too, something to say YES, I created this: even, if after all this, perhaps to eat it, digest it, then to learn from it, to perhaps make something more perfect next time. While my thoughts devolve unconsciously into streams of colors (or are they flowers?) I begin my breakfast, and decide that yes, it is something to be proud of, it is something that I am pleased with.

Astonishingly quickly I gorge; devouring my construct, eliminating its beauty, turning it into a pulp in my stomach indecipherable from any other edible substance: its beauty is lost, forever, the cleverness of my hands will never be known. With remorse I wish that someone had seen me in action creating something of substance, to share in what is now lost, to reaffirm my abilities of creation. Banal, these thoughts, I know my truth, but what is truth without benchmark, without people to compare to, to sit on someone’s shoulders and feel tall?

What now? Do I have any responsibilities today? Of course. But fuck them, can I escape? Will I suffer if I do the nothing that I want? I should write something beautiful, something to give me fame, fortune and respect. But not today, I am not in the mood. Conditions are un-ideal and I appreciate the constancy of this reality. I should visit my mother but I am simply inert; she can wait till a time where I am not where I am now. I should go for a run, maybe around the lush lake just a few minutes from my apartment, but no, no, I can escape that too. This is the day of rest prescribed to me, and I will munch on my antidote in the vein that it was given. I will do nothing. Utterly nothing. I will continue sitting here, on this couch (when did I cycle from the table to this couch?) and revel in revelation, enjoying the solitary thoughts that flit through my mind, the casual entertainment of life passing outside my windows, the joy of being in my pajamas and not having anyone watching.

Thoughts percolate through my mind. Dissolving in that barrier between substance and nothing. This is OK. I can feel the war in my subconscious, attempting to create; always, every thought a battle with the nothing; every subtle flicker of light in the back of my mind a victory against the emptiness of the universe. Why do I squander such virtuous gifts? Why is it I do not use the light of my mind to shine brightness on the darkness of the soul. To construct magical spells of vision to help enchant a disenchanted reality. I could. Yes. But, when, why, and why is it every time I try, tease that my brain is, every time I try to document the beauty of my thoughts, the cleverness of my mind, they dissipate: hide, or become the nothing themselves; to realize that they were never there in the first place, to realize that all I was doing was giving myself illusions of brilliance to hide from the truth: my lack of genius.

No, much better to continue hiding in the revolutions of my brain. To continue resting here, doing nothing, but endlessly imagining. To simply be alive, and appreciative that the vast majority of the universe does not have the benefit of life, and the vast majority of those things experiencing life do not appreciate consciousness. And here I am. Winner of the genetic lottery: the sum total of infinite. And I casually wish for more. Shame on me: to not appreciate what I have: to take it for granted. Life is here, happening, in me. Yes, perhaps, perhaps there is more to life than simply existing, perhaps I could create universes different than this one presented to me, but for today, on this day of rest, on this day where I can do anything, doing nothing is enough.

I come back from being alone, by myself, where I was. I have left there. Where am I now, the place I used to be, the place I am supposed to be. My home. Yes. Here I am. And what now? To make a life, to be the man I am supposed to be; yes, life has been postponed long enough. Yes. Here we are, at the start, a normal start, a fantastic start, lets fly together, let’s see reality, let’s be that subtle voice that I hope, pray and know is somewhere in all of us.

We go somewhere, to the place that I am. Here we are. Are we ready?

Start.

Screaming.

Screaming.

Shrieking.

Screaming.

Is that my own voice I hear?

Is that anyone I know?

I casually touch my lips to mouth. Feel their faint glue and know that it is not me screaming. When was the last time I have talked? It has been long, maybe.

Screaming.

Where is it. Is this a vague sense of adrenaline striking my frigid system? I see a girl, young, lying, screaming, with a man on top of her. We are in the middle of a busy street. If the street was alone and this man was on a screaming girl it would be rape. But, all these others. She must be on drugs. Poor angel. Can that be true? Could this sin be capitulating before my vision, before the aghast averted sights of all this multitude? Better to think not. Drugs. Sinner. She deserves her terror. Or so I tell myself; tell myself while secretly reveling; tell myself while I feel a wind in the listless fields of my shadowed mind: this is life happening, something to differentiate today from all other days. Or so I tell myself.

Screaming, screaming, it’s still here, I can hear it! But the women, that screaming nymphet, she has passed long gone, that was days ago, was it even real or even a dream, is this nothing but a color on my subconscious, but I feel it! I feel it! I feel it! Like a slot machine in my mind endlessly looping but never lining up this fucking shriek! Leave here!

What am I supposed to be doing. What am I supposed to be doing. Maybe. I’m trying to start a car but it’s not getting there. All these cars around me and I can’t get mine to start. Are they looking at me! Stop looking at me! Stop it, I’m better then all of you! Look at me, look at me, mortals, losers, I fly, you drive in your stupid little cars but I have wings and I’m flying all over you and you are nothing, little ants in my quickly rescinding vision, ignored as I stare to the heavens, but in my heart, yes, my true heart, all I feel is fear of falling and the enormous work it is to stay aloft. To stay flying. And now, that I am here at heaven, horribly, what would a fall feel like. This height has given me momentum in a direction dangerous. Horrible. Where am I. Screaming. Where is it.

 

As we come off of a rugged road, more pot hole then road really, my guide is telling me the facts about the men I am about to meet: “Each of them, all of them, have killed. Each of them, all of them, have raped; many times, when there was not enough women to rape, they raped the children, even the males. These men, they are hungry, they are animals; in all the world, I doubt their equal exists. Me, personally, I will not look at them, I will not shake their hands. I just hope that god exists, to put these men through hell, through a hell designed just for them because regular hell is not good enough.”

I am a journalist, I am going to meet the rebels in Eastern Congo. I have met men called terrible before, and while I process those words given by my guide I don’t let them effect my perception of who these men will be. Inside, I question who to compare them too. Will they be like the radical revolutionaries hiding behind cloth during the Baathist uprising in Iraq? Will they be like the scared children unwillingly holding the banner during the failed Green Revolution in Iran? Or, will they be like the seasoned professionals maintaining the instability of the FARC rebels in Columbia. I don’t know. In many ways, I don’t really care, I won’t deny that this job has lost much of its romance, much of its luster. That I go with a formula designed to catch special words that will get me that perfect soundbite for my employers, who will then say to me a job well done and let me go home. I just want this to be over with.

We are getting close, apparently, to the rebels head quarters. I go about getting my game face on; I review my list of questions, and am determined to do my job adequately. The car stops at two sentries, stone faced, cold, who do not easily let my car through. I don’t know if there is truly any problem, or if these men just enjoy the power of making a foreigner wait at their beck and call. Regardless, after a certain amount of waiting we are allowed to drive into the compound.

The compound is the center of a small village. There is everything you would expect to see: a football pitch filled with players and spectators, a bar with a few doughty adherents, a restaurant with many talkative faces and the streets, the streets filled with beaming faces, thoughtful faces, playful faces: all going towards some destination. There is nothing to suggest this scene is anything but another village, except for the lack of women and children. Even the heavy amount of weapons present does not seep extraneous when compared to the normal village in this part of the world.

My car pulls up in front of what must to have been the chieftains palace, garnering many curious looks from the people of the vicinity. When I get out, I am the center of attention, not so different from any other isolate village. I can feel the look of all those collected, perhaps sans my driver, follow me to the door of the chiefs palace. I come to the door and there is a sentry at duty. I tell him my business, and his curiosity is radiating, is infectious; I know these men fit every definition of evil, but still, while we address each other, I pull a joke or two. I see his eyes become enraptured with pleasure, and evil while I wonder the number of rapes this man has taken part in I still feel myself enjoying his presence. Monstrous humanity, give me strength against your wiles.

The guard, my friend, takes me to the rebel leader. I meet him, and unlike any of my expectations he is not a bit out of the norm. He is perhaps dressed a little better, but still in rags by Western standards. He does not surround himself by luxury, or, indeed, by work, but rather he sits in a circle of confidents chatting away the day much like any other big man in a small village. The sentry raises the fact of my presence to the rebel leader and he quickly turns around and his eyes are filled with the most sincere pleasure.

This man. This man. He is the man responsible for war crimes that would see him brought to the Hague. For condoning the raping of women by such a long line of men that the women defecate out of their vaginas. For ordering the burning of thatch huts with entire families left inside, while the doors are barricaded shut from the inside. He is accused of eating human flesh. He is accused of enjoying the eating of human flesh. Regardless, he is responsible for the maintenance of a state of anarchy in this particularly dark corner of the world which still results in the indirect death of over forty thousand a month. The man is a monster.

And he comes towards me, eyes brimming heart felt good cheer, hand out to shake my equally outstretched hand with a vehemence bordering on the insane. He wishes me a “Good morning, sir! And how are you today? Welcome, welcome, you are most welcome. We are sincerely honored to have your presence here, and hope to make your stay as pleasurable as possible.” His English is good, there are rumors he was trained by American’s, that they thought he was useful during the long dead cold war. Who knows, it could be true.

I am jocular. My job is to push aside the trappings and meet the man, to outlay an honest vision of this man’s humanity, of his peoples humanity, and I intent to fulfill my quest. He makes me comfortable, and tells me he will be ready for my questions after a quick lunch. He invited me to join him, and while I tell him it would be my pleasure I have just eaten, and would appreciate the time to prepare myself for the interview. He affably communicates his understanding, and I am left alone with my computer to work on my notes.

While I wait, my sentry friend comes from behind me and sits in a chair in front of me. He doesn’t talk, understanding my need for silence, yet his presence is there. I look up at him, and I stop. I see him. This man. I think of the stories he could tell me, of the way he must see the world. I then, unbidden from my lips, breaking a very definite ethos which I am beholden too, I ask him if I can ask a few questions.

“Of course.”

“What’s it like being a rebel.”

“Am I allowed to talk to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Being a rebel is my life, it is all I know, it is what I have been doing since I was a young boy.”

“Do you like it.”

“You know, I am not going to be the normal soliloquy, the voice you would expect to hear. I’m not going to tell you what it is that I know, because what I know is a mixture of ignorance and idealism. What I know is that I want to move to the west, everybody wants to move to the west, for their life to be like some fucking Hollywood movie, which is an unreality. What I believe are those things which I’ve come to see are being realistic. Life has been hard to me, but the lives of many others are not so less difficult. Me, I have done things you consider barbarous, yes, I’ve raped women, cut throats, thrown babies against walls until they wail no more. And what of it? You know what, I was brought into this rebellion when I was twelve years old, brought in by an older brother who himself was brought in by an uncle. You think morality was a problem? It was us against them, we do not have your nice forms of media to humanize our enemies. We do not know that they can talk just as lusciously as  you or me, rather, we are taught that they are the people who butchered our people. And, then, when we do our raiding we are drunk, we are high, we are full of blood lust, we are peer pressured, we are anarchic, we are out of control. It is the wild night time and we are alive, a part of the night, we are the night. So, oh yes, those things you hear, from your chair, that you call us monsters for, of rightfully so because we are monsters, but, in context, oh that evil word context, our actions make sense. I hate myself when I wake up every day; but, every night, when I am the night, I exist! I can do anything. And I tell you that my innocence was never allowed to happen, that I was made a monster, and me, just as I was brought here, bring new  lambs here, to slaughter their innocence. To poor blood on them until they are stained and no longer god’s creatures.  Until they have nothing in existence, like me, except the blood. Always the blood. And really, those worst crimes we are accused of, I don’t even see, that boy that starves to death in fear of me I will never know, never meet, whose death I will never mourn. You ask me if I like it. Fuck you. I am a man. I have killed innocents. I am the damned. I hate myself. I hate myself. But! I am me. I have made my decisions and I will live by them. I am the damned. And fuck you, I am myself, I don’t want to die, and that means I must continue living. And truly, beneath this scarred interior monologue which never rises to the surface is the voice of an innocent. I have never been educated enough, and have been manipulated too much, in the evils that I interact with. I kill like I have always killed. I play football like I have always played football. My sense of morality is finished, if it was ever really there. I see you come, and I crack a smile, feeling that same curiosity that any villager would feel at seeing a foreigner. And that is the truth: I am just another villager, just: I happen to be a killer. And I am sorry, if it makes a difference. But then I am not. I believe, somewhere in my soul, that these people I killed, it was either us or them. I am a survivor, no killer. Survivor.”

And of course that last conversation didn’t happen, rather, I just stared benignly at my sentry, who sat there staring innocently at me. But, as I wait for the rebel chief I do feel the difference here between the other rebellions I have witnessed. Here, there are no motivations for the fighters. They don’t believe in what they do, don’t even really care, it is just their lives. I think of the evil these men have done in their childlike innocence. Yes, they know they’re in trouble, but do they comprehend the enormity of their actions? How could they. If live is all about perspective, what is it these men would compare their lives to?

The sentry smiles at me. Not a crocodile smile, just a good natured grin. He is an innocent. He is innocent. For all the terror he has done, I forgive him, because in his heart he is not an evil man. He is like anyone else, just going from situation to situation blindly; just managing the crevices of life in a god, not understanding but attempting perfection to the best of his ability. I smile back at him.

Blackened ash lifting in delicate spires touching the sky, visible against the black night only from the bright halo of flames delicately criss crossing  a tortured city. Is the wail of suffering audible above the caucophony of bullets and rage, or is it just that a scene of such terror triggers a cry in my own mind.  People are suffering in front of my eyes. People are dying in every direction. The taste of ash is on my tongue.

What is happening? The war was over, has been over for months. Grass has been growing green in the parks and children have been filling the streets with the sound of laughter as they played without fear. That was this morning, just this morning. My own son and daughter are with my wife and I looking out the window of our flat. They should not be here, I will send them to bed soon, yet, this is their country, these are their people. We missed the war, we will not miss whatever beast arises here before my eyes, they have a right to put a name to that fear which I am sure must be in their hearts. Both my children are being held close by my wife, I put my arms around all three of them providing what comfort I have. I can feel the silent tears streaming down my sons face.

The crackle of gunfire is still in the distance, not immediate. Should we run? My family looks to me to take command. Their safety is in my hands. Who is winning the city? Who is even fighting? The power is out, the internet is out and cellphone coverage is out. Loud cries on megaphones shout revolution and religion, but then many of their banners are in flames. My family and I arrived back soon after the war, I felt that my homeland needed me, needed people like me to take her from such a dark future into something brighter. I wanted to help make a country that my children would only know as a land of happiness, a place of peace. If the current crisis is from a remnant of the old regime coming to take back what they feel they lost they would be brutal with us, people like me, the opportunists, the stooges. Should we run. Should we run. Run where? Where is safe? Are the noises coming closer? I want to know what is happening. How can life move so fast. Things will be alright. I need a clear head. Watching this is helping nothing. There is a fire spreading to the freshly named parliament hill.

Straightening up, I call my wife my daughter and my son by their names to look at me. I tell them that we have of course planned for things like this to happen, we will follow our preparations and if we act smartly of course everything will be fine. We must be brave. To my wife I tell her to pack essentials, if we get a window of opportunity to flee we will take it. I don’t expect such an opportunity to come, I don’t tell her this, but it is smart to be prepared. It is reassuring to me as well to see the bags there, a concrete plan of action that we choose not to take, a power when so much of what is happening in front of us is bigger then we can control, we are just a leaf in a gale and it is lucks grace that will spare us, just as it is lucks bleak fate to take us low. My wife silently begins packing. To my son I tell him to make sure all of our curtains are blacked out, and to place as much furniture as possible to block our street exposure. We have practiced this, I squeeze his shoulder and he takes a deep breath to dispel his fear and begins his tasks. To my daughter I tell her to knock on all of our neighbors doors, to make sure they are doing as we are and following the emergency preparations we agreed on. Every family in our building is involved in the reconstruction effort. Everyone has something to lose. My daughter runs quickly and silently. I look to the window, parliament is on fire, the wail of screaming is now no illusion. The night burns brighter, closer.

Let me get in control of myself. Let me get in control. We planned for this. It is true we planned for this. Of course what we never said in these plans was that we were so small in a darkness so vast, we are insignificant, just a  building, even just one family that may just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some hate us, people I have never met hate my children, hate my wife, hate me. I need to be brave. I need to be strong. There is nothing to fear, only life and the destiny that I cannot control. I will play chess with my maker. Today, I pray, even if it has been so long that I last prayed, that fortune will smile down on me and mine. Tonight does not have to be a nightmare, tomorrow can rise with these memories nothing but  a bad dream. I clench and unclench my hand. I clench and unclench my hand. There is nothing to do but wait to see if we are an island of peace of a part of the fierce torrent of violence.

My family comes back, their tasks completed. Some neighbors come in, it seems by reacting first they have decided to make my home headquarters. That is fine. Safety in numbers, they might as well congregate here rather than anywhere else. There is the sick smell of panic in the air. I am no leader, but someone has to say something before the fear in all of our hearts bubbles to the surface. I quietly ask them if they have made all their preparations, as we planned previously. Everyone nods. Is the downstairs foyer and fire escape secured? Yes. Well, alright then, everyone might as well make themselves comfortable: the night may be long.

Everyone’s eyes are riveted to the window at my back. More flames licking the city, so close. Was that a gunshot on our block? The individual please of mercy and cries of aguish begin to come towards us: please, there are no bad people here—please, there are children. The faceless mob ebbs and flows. The night is filled with the thunder of gunshots. There is no way to know the fate of those pleaing, of those crying. The chaos comes closer. Down a side street a few men run by carrying weapons. My son sees it and huddles closer to hit mother. Everyone in my apartment seems to huddle closer together. The tides are not in our favor, so much of the night is left. So much time for terror to breed, to take advantage of the private blanket of darkness. Fate, today, is not with us.

There are many children in the building. So many wanted as I want to create a land that their children would be proud of. Second guessing feels of naïvete and stupidity will not have time to rise in my head now. We planned as well as we could. I tell the other adults that it seems like maybe tonight luck is not with us. It was meant to be just a little bit light hearted, it falls flat. I sigh. I look at each of my neighbors in the eyes. I say we need to protect the children. They all agree, which breaks the last barrier in my mind that this nightmare may come to a happy ending. We have a room in one of my neighbors apartments where the door can be covered by a bookshelf. The room itself is in a top corner of the building as far away from the street as possible. It is not a perfect hideaway, but, well, we don’t always get the pleasure of perfect solutions. In our minds when we all talked about the need for a room such as this we tried to be serious, yet, we never thought we would truly need this. Fear creeps up my heart, back down, back down, I must be strong. Others depend on me. We put all the children in the room. We leave a few women with them to keep the children calm and comforted. The room is completely full. I have already hugged my wife and children, I was lucky that my wife was able to stay with the children. I have done the best I can for their safety.

My neighbors come back to my apartment. Everyone in the building is either in my apartment or the hideaway. Some of my neighbors have weapons, ranging from hand guns to knives to kitchen mallets. My own hands are empty. I must master my own fear. The street is slowing filling with a trickle of combatants. There seems to be a silence in my mind, across the street I can see a flat level with mine having the doors kicked in. There are no people in the flat, did they have a plan like ours? The throw a Molotov cocktail in the parlor and quickly go into the next room. We cover the last sliver of our parlor window that is still exposed, look towards the open door that leads to the buildings stair case and count time to the beat of our own hearts.

Nothing happens. Screams trickle through every crack. Fire spreads, but the brick buildings are strong. We do not talk. We do not look at each other. Nothing happens. Hope quietly asks to be allowed into my heart, and I slam the door in its face. There will be no hope until the sun shines and the streets are empty. Nothing happens. My mind is filled with a huge vacancy. For some  reason the feel of walking on thick green grass fills my mind. Where was I that the grass was just like that? The sort of grass that makes you want to lie in it and just stare at the sky, to count the clouds. We hear a commotion in the stair well. Screaming. The mob has come. Our preparations do nothing. The noise of heavy feet running up the stairs fills our ears. We do not look at each other we look at the door.

My flat was on the fourth floor. We hear doors being kicked open below us. They are coming. They are coming. One of my neighbors becomes brave, walks to the door, walks to the railing of the stair case and bellows ‘there are no enemies here. We are all good people. Please, we are brothers. We are brothers. It does nothing, there is not even a response. These are not men streaming through my building, they are not even monsters, they have drunk from the flames of the night and are drunk on their own passion. If only they hates us, to be killed by someone for a reason would mean something, I shake the thought from my mind. I will not allow myself pity, we must be brave, we must think of our children.

“Well,” my neighbor says, “should we try to kick these sons of bitches out?” Grimly we file out of my apartment and take the positions we plotted months ago placed between my floor and the top floor where the children were. We touch each other lightly and unconsciously whenever we go past each other. My position is midway between my apartment and the children’s room. I have a small hand gun that I practiced with just for a purpose like this. Amazing how we did so much preparation for something we never thought would happen. Men are filing up the stairs, I have never fired at a living creature before. I see someone in a clear line of sight waving a Molotov cocktail. I fire, at the same time as a few on my neighbors fire. We shouldn’t waste shots, though we have enough ammo. It’s just a bad habit, a bad habit that the instructor at the gun range was so adamant we were aware of. I curse myself for wasting the shot, and see the man I fired at lying on the ground. Is he dead? Was it my shot that killed him? Why is there no emotion in my heart. I ready my gun again.

More and more people people stream up the stairs, many with Kalashnikovs. We fire back as best we can, but my neighbors are being killed in front of my eyes. We keep firing. I do not have a perception of time. Nothing exists except the struggle to again and again raise me gun, to keep is steady, to keep it loaded, to shoot at anyone walking upwards, anyone I can, How many are left. I must raise my gun again. There is no noise, no silence, just the raising of my gun. How is it such a small device can have such power. How terrible a device of such death was ever created, the power of an army should never take such a deceptively small shape. I am lying on the ground, how long have I been here for. There is blood coming from me, is it my blood? I cannot tell. I feel my gun still in my hand but it is becoming increasingly heavy. Soon boots are running past me higher, I should shoot. Then, the boots are running back down in fewer numbers. How is it time is passing. Are winning or are we losing? Time is so fast, or is it so slow, I cannot tell.

Someone shakes my shoulder, is he going to shoot me. I look up into the eyes of death and am greeted by a neighbor. He shouts that I’m alive but bleeding quickly. I am lifted and brought to someones kitchen and laid on the table. I am so close to passing out. Someone in my ear, is it my wife? Someone, she whispers don’t worry, tonight we have won.

 

the annihilation of all those things

that used to be important to me

 

1. I)

So where are we? A setting, is that what is required? This initial birth of writing needs to build something, to start, to be a start, the start. Where are we? Where is it that we will journey through together, hope to discover together? Truly, where we are, it is meaningless, just the disguise in which our theme will hide below, yet it is a disguise which must be communicated, the window through which any possibility of discovery this story might transmit will be seen through.

Where we are, or at least that setting which I will attempt to depict to you, is the seaside. The ships are old, we are at a great port, there is a tangible feel of that great age of discovery and exploration, that here: these ships, they will be the next Columbus, they are the brave, inhabited by the adventurers. Perhaps it is four hundred years, perhaps five hundred years ago, it does not make a difference.

Into the chaos of this hopeful scene walks a young boy we will call Trevor Nobody. He is young, no more than a child, but from the absurd strut to his walk we can see he is a mixture of hope and worry, precociously attempting something new but feeling the mountain of his inexperience, realizing that he is out of his element. What wonder, youth, to do things for the first time, and with the grin of the aged and wizened we watch young Trevor experience an aspect of life for the very first time.

He is wanting to be a cabin boy. In fact, he has a long history, a history that would need its own story to explain and perhaps it will be written one day. But this is not the place; so, suffice to say, poor little Trevor Nobody, his life has not been easy, and what we are witnessing is the dual action of the fact he is desperate, since Trevor has nothing in life and destitutions ignoble wings flutter over him, and then he is hopeful: here, in the bowels of the great ships, many men have come to greatness: perhaps Trevor Nobody can be one of them.

Now, this next part is important to communicate, though it may seem tangential to Trevor: there is one ship in the harbor more important than the rest, a legend made out of wood and fabric: the Ave. Crewed by the best of any ship, built no larger than the other ships yet with a detail that shows art in its every plank, and captained by the most lionized man of any ocean, maybe who has ever lived: Captain Trouver Infinite.

Just to have the Ave in port is an honor, just to witness her subtle beauty, to see for first hand that the legends are not just the Big Fish of drunken sailors but real, here, in front of us, materialized in fabric and wood. However, poor Trevor Nobody, he has no idea, to him all the ships are legends. Has he ever even seen a ship before? The large eyes of his scream no, he is like a man from a land of plains for the first time seeing a mountain; to him, every mountain is so large that he does not even know to crane his head to differentiate Goliath from David. Awed little boy, today is your lucky day, of course, of course, you will become the cabin boy on the Ave.

How does this remarkable reality happen? Well, it is a story, it need not be realistic, and the explanation could simply be that there was an opening position. But, sometimes it is more meaningful to have a touch of destiny in these spectacular types of situations, so what instead will say is this. Trevor was going from ship to ship, applying with all his will to find a position and having no luck. Why not? Well, he is green, and perhaps more maliciously not very pretty, and then he is not the only boy dreaming of grandeur in the high seas, trying to escape the bleakness of poverty, the destitution of ignorance, and the hatred of the masses. No, sadly, as perhaps even now in the present, whenever that might be, there is an endless plethora of young boys suffering sadly, hoping for a better life that most will never get to experience. All we can say is that there must be something to Trevor Nobody, something that I am sure he has not revealed to either author or reader yet, but something that the grandiose man who will at a later date will be revealed to be Captain Trouver Infinite sees. He walks quickly down the pier towards his ship, the palpable awe of all on the docks giving him a palpable halo visible to all except Trevor Nobody, who is staring at his feet as he walks, trying to mentally leap past the dejection of all of the rejections he’s stumbled through. It would appear that Trouver is going to pass him without a second thought, some great thought weighing on his noble mind, when just as he pulls level with Trevor he stops, stops gracefully which should be impossible such was his momentum but he has done this. He quickly looks at Trevor, a quiet merriment suddenly sparkling in his eyes, then tells Trevor to come to his ship, the Ave, they need a new cabin boy. With that remark and no more Trouver continues walking with that same strange momentum as before, again at the unstoppable speed as if he had not stopped for Trevor, as if his invitation had been nothing but a fantasy, and a fantasy is what Trevor would think it was if not for the envious eyes of all the sailors around him. To be a cabin boy on a ship like the Ave is an honor equitable to being a captain on any other ship. Trevor Nobody pulls himself together a bit, ignorantly mentally slaps himself on the back for a job well done, then heads towards the Ave for a  future that he at this point he could not even begin to understand.

—

Now, on the Ave, we are going to have time sped up for awhile, have Trevor go through a certain number of important experiences in the blink of an eye. To take the bilgerstein of his metamorphosis from child to man as nothing to write much about, though truly it is important to this story. To preface this cyclone of entropy let me say that Captain Trouver Infinite is a fine reader of men, since the transition from ignorant waif to confident young man that Trevor undergoes is dazzling. He works hard on the Ave, he takes to the chores given to him with a natural preponderance that belies the apparent weakness of his body, he becomes the adopted child of the entire crew: a boy who through his natural cheerfulness and genuineness of spirit ingratiates himself in the heart of every grizzled sailor. And oh, how Trevor Nobody is loving it all, loving doing work he finds meaningful, sharing many a happy moment with these, the men whom he has come to admire and lionize. Truly, these men are worth lionizing, Captain Trouver is not the sort to employ the usual mariner, those part pirate part mercenary who sail simply to escape the gallows, no, these men, the men of the Ave, they sail because it is in their blood, because it is what god or destiny or whatever made them best at, and these men are just the sort who want to do nothing in life but what it was that they are fated to do.

And what is it that those of the Ave do? Well, much like other merchant ships they sail port to port to pay the bills, but that is all that this is for, just to maintain the financial resources for the true mission of this ship. And the true mission, what of it? It is unknown to the sailors, something only known to Captain Trouver Infinite, but it is something wonderful for sure, something worth scouring the world for. If a man like the good Captain believes with all his heart that what he chases is worth devoting his life to, then who are ignorant men such as the sailors to question. The men don’t ask the Captain what it is they are chasing, they simply have a blind trust, a trust that indeed the captain deserves because he has not only given these men good lives, but he cares about them. He runs the sort of ship as if every sailor was his own son, as if all men were deserving of his love and admiration. The captain himself, though he is always cheerful, intelligent and jocular with his men, he is also insulated, always in his Cabin, always by himself: insomniac, lights on at all hours, the shadows just visible through tinted windows of endless charts, endless parchments, endless books lining every wall, taking up every table; and then, always, the Captain wraith like moving between them all, almost dancing, trying viciously and elegantly to discover something from all these enigmas displayed before him that the sailors could only guess at.

Captain Trouver talks to Trevor Nobody much like he talks to any of his other sailors, for of course Trouver is the captain and Trevor just the lowliest of all, a cabin boy, and the chance for them to interact truly does not occur often. Yet, to say that Trevor idolizes Captain Trouver is an understatement, since all the men of the Ave idolize the Captain; rather, Trevor worships Captain Trouver: the man who changed his life, the man who saw not the pitiful wretch that he was but instead the extraordinary man he had the potential to be; the man who gave Trevor the opportunity of a lifetime: the man who saved him.

Now, maybe, there should be an explanation of what makes Captain Trouver Infinite so worthy of the adoration he universally garners. He is a man not famous for the wealth he has created, though many of his sailors became rich under his watch, nor is he famous for the distances he has travelled, though in many of the most exotic places on earth there is a Trouver Island or an Ave Mountain, nor is he famous for his daring exploits, though as a captain in the King’s navy he is credited with single handedly changing the course of many a battle, no, what he is famous for is something more abstract, something which one only realized upon hearing the soft commanding lilt of his voice, upon seeing the peaceful eagle that resides in his eyes: here is a man not cut from the fabric of humanity but rather of the deities who live in clouds, and here, in the incarnation of Captain Trouver Infinite, is a man who will discover what it is to live, who will discover the meaning of life, discover utopianirvanaperfection, and, to follow him is to hope to share in heaven when he eventually reveals it.

—

Something needs to happen to make Trevor Nobody and Captain Trouver bond; giving them some form of a relationship is important to how this story will evolve. Maybe we could have one of them almost die and saved by the other, maybe Trevor likes to sing softly beautiful songs and one day the good Captain will hear him. I do not know yet, it is not revealed to me, but something must happen. I think what will happen is this: There is a terrible storm, the first true storm that Trevor has ever seen on the ocean. Lightning electrifies the air with crackling intensity, rain turns the air into a second ocean, and the waves are throwing the Ave through the ocean much like a feather through a hurricane. The storm is terrible enough that the sailors are grim, always a sailor must have weighing on his heart the possibility that nature will finally take back that gift of life she has bequeathed, yet, the men are not in a panic: Captain Trouver Infinite is at the helm, steady as a statue, calmly and clearly calling out correct commands. Trevor is simply trying to stay out of the way, to fresh to such intensity as this to be anything but a burden underfoot when, suddenly, he sees with a horrifying clarity a rope snap: flinging a sailor friend into the water, he is lost forever, and his downfall seems like a doom for the entire Ave as the lost tension of the rope sends the entire balance of the ship helter-skelter. Captain Trouver opens his mouth to command someone to climb the mast to secure a replacement rope, feeling in his heart a sick malaise as the unavoidable risk that this person must assume, a sickness that every leader must make peace with, when he is forced to shut his mouth: Trevor is ably climbing the mast, ably handling the wild convolutions of the waves, little Trevor Nobody, baby to everyone, the most precious child to all the men, and there he is: at risk! Like in the eye of a hurricane the chaos of the ocean is quiet, if only because the terror biting into the heart of all the men is so voracious an emotion that the senses of hearing and touch disappear around the horror of sight: oh, Trevor, you will fall, you will fall, screams in the heart of all the men, already tears brightening their rain soaked eyes as they begin to mourn, when, miraculously, Trevor manages to tie down the crazed rope. He is coming back down! Despair turns to hope turns to ash in the mouth of every sailor as the newly found hope is dashed: Trevor is blown from the ramparts and is falling, falling for an eternity: oh, if he lands in the water he is doomed forever and there he is, oh god oh god heading for the water. And with the slowness only made possible by the shock that mental pain plagues our mind with we see a staggering scene unfold: yes, Trevor falling, oh yes, into the sea, but, from another angle: hope, if only in its barest form. Captain Trouver, leaving the wheel to another helmsman, rope tied around his waist: he is in the water, he is trying to find Trevor: does his rope snap? Have we lost both of them? No! There he is, he is holding the sputtering body of another: Trevor. We bring him back in the sailors and us, and here, on the deck of the Ave, returned unharmed: both Trouver and Trevor. They stare at each other a moment, words unneeded so perfect has their shared suffering attuned their shared mentality, and, then, Captain Trouver stands up to return to the wheel, Trevor Nobody gets back to not being a pest underfoot, and the rest of the crew return to trying to master this bitch storm while being unable to shake the feel that they have just seen a miracle.

—

After this event of shared horror, that needed common bond between Trevor Nobody and Captain Trouver exists. It is something that is not talked about, not even truly there as a reality to either of them, just an invisible closeness whose reality from the perspective of the omniscient heavens is indisputable. Now that this shared link exists, we can get into the difficult matter of the impending downfall of Captain Trouver Infinite.

—

Downfall! Yes, but let this be a story in itself. How will it all happen: in a manner that this narrator feels as colors, but doesn’t know entirely what to paint. Lets discover this together.

The Ave has been at sea for a long enough time now for Trevor Nobody to feel as one of the men, very much at the bottom of the ladder but certainly sharing the same structure. He’s loving his life, feels that there is meaning in what he does, and ever since the bravery he exhibited during thegreatstorm, and his miraculous rescue by Captain Trouver, the other sailors of the ship have a sincere respect for Trevor Nobody in addition to their affection. Maybe for Trevor life would be good if things on the Ave could just continue as normal, nothing change, just blissful day after blissful day. But, sadly, such is not the lot for any in life, things change, fall apart, need to be reconstructed and in many ways this is where the wonder in life comes from; then, in many ways, this perpetual reconstruction is where much of the misery in life comes from too: alas, poor Trevor will not escape the endless grinding wheel no matter how much he might wish it, and the breach in his perfection, and indeed the breach through the brand of perfection through which the Ave was sailing, happened one day at the approach of a port that Captain Trouver and the Ave had never come to before.

To say this port was perfect sounds impossible, but for the allegory at work in this short writing it is easier to throw reality out the window and say, simply, that this port, this city, this isolated jewel in a desert of cacophony, is truly perfect. We will even call it Eden. And the men of the Ave can feel this, they know it to be true. Here, here is the place where a man can find nirvana. Here, here, is why they followed Captain Trouver: their messiah has led them through the wasteland of life and brought them to the holy land. The quartermaster of the Ave opens every cask of rum, uncorks every bottle of wine, and sets free every flagon of ale: the men will obviously stay here: it is time for the greatest celebration a man can have: that time when finally, finally, a man discovers that the feasts that only seem plausible to live in his mind have an earthly synonym. The party is beyond anything experienced by any of the men before, and toast after toast is dedicated to Captain Trouver Infinite: their leader: their savior.

Yet, where is the good Captain, for he is not with the men. The men believe that the Captain is trying to sacrifice the merriment of the party so that his presence would not act as an inhibitor of responsibility, but this is not the case. No, we find Captain Trouver in his room, by himself. He is sitting, a half full glass of wine in his left hand, his right hand unconsciously tapping his right knee, and a pensive peaceful gaze playing powerfully in his eyes. He is sad, but at peace with his sadness, a necessary part of life that he understands completely. Simply, he has come to a decision, and he came to this decision as both a captain and a man, and one thinks that maybe this is not the first time that he has had to come to this decision.

He leaves his cabin to go to the party, which by this point is at the point where a man cannot be held responsible for his actions, and Captain Trouver stands at the mast and announces quietly that he wishes to make a speech. Why make a speech of such import when his men are obviously in such a state of debauchery? Perhaps simply because the Captain must speak his mind while the spirit of the moment resides on his tongue. Perhaps the glass of wine we saw in his hand was not the first, and the Captain himself is a bit fucked. But, really, it is stupid timing, and if the Captain had chosen a better timing likely the same conclusion would have resulted, but one thinks that conclusion could have been reached with less antipathy. Regardless, this is the timing he has decided.

Quietly the Captain demands attention, perhaps feeling embarrassment of calling attention to himself, for though he is larger than life he is a humble man. Gradually, word spreads from those closest to the Captain to those farthest away, and assembled on the deck the captain is ready to begin his speech. The speech goes something like this:

“Men” Said the captain, and this initial syllable is not followed by anything but a deafening thunder of applause. The Captain waits, solemn faced, perhaps sobering to the reality that the emotion and action he wished to communicate will not be as simple as the preplanned speech of his mind.

“Men, my men, sailors of the Ave, men who have shared your lives with me, risked your lives with me, and, I would hope, have lived a wonderful life with me. I tell you truly, with utter honesty: I have never before come to a port like this: a place so perfect as to make one forget that Eden is only a legend.” Thunderous applause. “I tell you, men, that it is my firm belief that you depart from this ship here, to make a life at this port. While I hope that the Ave has been a home for you that has allowed you to live a life which you find satisfying and rewarding, I think there is something to which cries to the soul of man, something which every man searches for: perfection. I think that many of you might find that perfection can be found at this port, this Eden.” More thunderous applause. “However, I tell you, that for myself, I cannot stay here. I look with envy, even jealousy, at the potential you all share in finding a shared perfection together here, but it is not a perfection I can partake in. The litany of my life has been decided, and it is not here that I will rest, if indeed I will ever rest.” The applause has stopped, and an atmosphere of silent confusion reigns. “My men, my noble men, I know that a place perfect like this has been placed as a planned port firmly in each of your fantasy. This, this place is your dream, and I tell you with the admiration brought on by envy that it is a good dream, I see your natural peace, the natural way you would fit into this dream that has been made real. Yet, I tell you, and I pray you see this as no disservice to your own dream, that this dream you share is not shared universally by our crew, for it is not shared by me. Yes, I dream, of course I dream, but what those dreams are is immaterial: I will not be sated here, if ever I can be sated, and, therefore, I must carry on. If any of you wish to come with me, you may, however, I hope and pray that just because your dream is not shared by me you do not take this as any indicator on the happiness that you can find in the perfection of your own dream, and will be able to live in your re-found Eden with the bliss of nirvana. I, myself, will leave this perfection. If any wish to come with me, they may, but I hope to leave here alone. I will depart at sunrise. Thank-you, thank-you for everything….” And here, for a few agonizing moments Captain Trouver thanked his crew for such undeniably fantastic service but the ears of each crew member was frozen: Captain Trouver: leaving; Captain Trouver having a different dream of perfection; in the heart of each man an anarchic confusion bloomed, and upon the departure of Captain Trouver to his cabin the crews emotion was as driest kindling waiting for just the most basic spark to instigate an unimaginable blaze of whatever color that first spark happened to be.

Oh, it was foolish for Captain Trouver to leave. Such are the dark voices that eat at all our logic, taint any purity with the possibility of deceit, and soon a spark was born, a malignant whisper flowering, flowing from ear to ear to ear: Captain Trouver was trying to unload the crew of the Ave, that a man as wise as him would be foolish to pass up such splendor as the present port was brimming with, and, therefore, there must be even something greater that he wanted. Yes, all men agreed that the Captain was a great man, but wasn’t it the great men who were the most devious, the most likely to have risen to such heights by unfairly standing on the backs of the subjugated?

Soon, the men were arguing such virulence that it need not be regaled here. What can be said are the results. About half the men chose to stay in the port, chose to take the Captain’s advice and attempt to live the glorious life that it seemed god had firmly gifted into their lap. Then, the other half, what they did maybe there would be regret after a terrible hangover, but their actions were irredeemable and impossible to turn back time on. They drunkenly, in a mob, elected the loudest voice of malcontent against the Captain’s to be their leader, and what he proposed and what ultimately fell to pass was this: to wrestle the Ave away from Captain Trouver Infinite, to take his maps, to discover where it was that Captain Trouver was personally heading, and then to go there themselves. There was no hatred or disrespect for the Captain, just a feeling that they were fighting against a legend and it was time to make a legend out of themselves. It would seem that the Captain must have suspected that such a possibility as his exile would come to pass since when then men barged into his chamber he was in travelling clothes with a small trunk. The men placed the captain in a large dinghy with a sail, enough supplies to hold out until he could either go back to the port or scavenge food, and departed in the Ave. Captain Trouver stared quixotically at the Ave as she left, maybe even a bit of a grin illuminating his face, then set about rigging the sail to push his new ship forever forward. Of course, because such is the way this story though this came as an enormous shock to Captain Trouver, Trevor Nobody was underneath the sails ready to join Captain Trouver on his quest to find nothing.

 

1. II)

Now of course there is the temptation to speed time up, gloss over these initials momentsmemories of Captain Trouver (if he can still be called a Captain) sailing with Trevor Nobody (who really has always been a Somebody). Yet, then, if every emotion towards expediency was allowed, this story would be nothing more enlightening then a proverb: everything is perfection, all of reality is perfect; and, while this is the point of this story, it is the hope that with the added flesh of story on this thematic skeleton a foreign principle might by analogous metaphor be given some subtle scent of sublime truth. So, let us slow down time, deal with the relatively arbitrary, and maybe even enjoy this scene, enjoy the language as it flows to meet our senses just as we might enjoy a sunset or a first blooming flower: for their meaningless but real beauty; perhaps, also, a truth may be revealed.

—

Captain Trouver stares at Trevor nobody as he climbs from out of the stowed rigging on what we shall still call the Ave, for every ship that Captain Trouver controls is always called the Ave. This could be the time to tell you that the last ship, which we will never see or hear from again, was not the first Ave, and we doubt she shall be the last: the Captain seems to revolve: to rise to great heights, to fall to bitter depths, and then to rise again, and certain constants are always shared: the brilliance of the good Captain: his ship the Ave: the finding of perfection and the abandonment of the captain; then, of course, the cycle repeats. However, this time, an anomaly has emerged, and as Trevor dusts himself off and gabs away about his reasoning for staying with the captain, words which are very important to him yet we care not about, Captain Trouver Infinite is mentally attempting to deal with this off balancing alien to his equilibrium.

At last, Trevor stops lecturing, and we must say it was a very nice lecture, a lecture which fully encapsulates the deep love and respect which led to the logic of Trevor staying with Trouver and makes Trouver appreciate Trevor not as an added weight but as a treasure which warrants to be treasured. After the speech, which leaves Trevor a bit red in the face because of embarrassment and lack of oxygen Trouver Infinite tells him that he is happy to have someone so passionate join him on his voyage, but that he is worried that he will disappoint Trevor. His journey is not, as his former crewmates claim, one to find ever unimagined riches, rather, he will just continue doing as he has always done, going from port to port, fishing here and there, perhaps, if the opportunity arises of gaining new crew or a bigger Ave, he will take it, but, then again, perhaps not. Trouver is looking at Trevor with his eyes seeming to say I fear to disappoint you, that I live a life that most would deem unsatisfying, and Trevor seems to understand this, tells him that of course he is free to leave, would leave and will leave whenever he wants, if a life such as that which the Captain chooses to live is the sort of perfect life he deems appropriate, then maybe Trevor will have much to learn by attempting to live such a way as well. And such is the way their shared journey commences.

As a first order of business was food. While those hearty mutineers left Captain Trouver with some food stuff in addition to what he presciently brought with him, with the addition of course of Trevor this food would be reduced all the quicker and besides, what sort of a responsible man is sated with the barest adequacy of stores: Captain Trouver wanted to be amply furnished with supplies in the event of who knows what. Trevor and Trouver went to land to collect tools to make fishing rods. They went to sea and gained many a fish. They traded some of these fish with locals or merchants for any other goods they needed. Everything was done orderly. Everything made a certain sort of sense, yet, everything was different then it was but such a short time ago. How had this new universe supplanted the old, when the old had been everything?

Trevor was sometimes melancholic, not for himself since he found the quiet actions of daily life meaningful, yet rather for Captain Trouver, who he felt must be dispirited for his grave loss of position in the world. One day Trevor, in the midst of a particularly dark brood, said that he wished the very worst for those who had remained aboard the old Ave. Captain Trouver sounded surprised, and asked why would he wish such bad thoughts onto men who had always been so good to him, to which Trevor replied “They cast you out, their leader. They are mutineers, traitors, dark scum who broke the laws of their sworn morality in their betrayal of you.” Yes, Captain Trouver admitted, they had cast him out, but had he himself not in many ways cast them aside, or at least tried to, insisting that they stay in Eden while he left to continue his endless journey? And besides, had not each of those men given many a proof of their devotion to morality and proven many a time their goodness of spirit. No, adamantly though thoughtfully stated Captain Trouver, these men were merely hazarding the moral labyrinth which confronts each of our souls and getting through it to the best of their ability. Of course, inevitably there would be errors of judgment, indeed, perhaps it was an error of himself, Captain Trouver, which had led to so much of the friction: if he had just worded his speech better, had given it better timing. But if, if, if is meaningless, all that there can be is the metamorphosis of those past mistakes into the knowledge of wisdom, and perhaps all these difficulties faced by everyone would serve to make everyone wiser. He himself, he had no feeling of animosity against his old crew. Nor did he feel any antipathy against his present situation. What was, was. What is, is. And either way, he was the same man; either way, he would appreciate, enjoy, wallow in those beauties of life which chose to reveal themselves regardless if he was the Captain of the most famous ship on the seas or but the humble rower of a dinghy.

“But,” Argued Trevor, “Did you not spend your life trying to become a great Captain? Is it not all your work undone, all those past milestones meaningless?” And here, here, we have a point, stated Captain Trouver: yes, yes, all that work is undone, but what work was it? All life was but a voyage whose goal was the moment. A beautiful future was hoped for, striven for even, but the idea was never that the future would be better than the present; just, that, it would be something worth going towards, a port on the horizon to head a ship towards but what actually counted was what was happening on the ship itself: keeping every rope taunt, every crewman happy, the whole affair safe, orderly and at peace. Yes, getting to be the most famed captain in the world was a majestic port which he had set sail for, but just as when he had set course for Eden and had carried on leaving his crew, he was unsaddened, perhaps even ecstatic, by leaving that metaphysical port of departing from being the greatest captain in the world; for him, that was never a goal, just an arbitrary sight to head his life towards while he enjoyed the quiet invisible beauty of everything. “Then,” belied Trevor, “What do we head for now?” Maybe that tree, said Captain Trouver, but then again maybe that pinpoint of light on the distance, or maybe myself being a father, or maybe a farmer of plantain; it makes no difference, when I get there things will be as they are now, just as I can bring in sweet air at any point in my life I can breathe in the sweetness of the world around me. To spend a life staring at a wall would be a life just as valid as  becoming the greatest Captain in the world, yet, momentum, that deity, has more say then we would give her reason, and she pushes us forward in our first baby steps as an infant, before we understand who we are, before we have given any resonance to the question of what we want. Yes, we could stop, but stopping in itself would then be a goal, it would be a refutation of the wonder inherent to that movement that can infuse us when we first awaken to consciousness. No, what happens is not that we stop, what happens is that when we awaken men assume that this motion that they find themselves a part of must have meaning, must be something more resonant then being a part of a system where through fluke or folly everyone goes from age 10 to age 11, grade 1 to grade 2, child to youth to man, and, therefore, they must go from movement to the goal that this movement is heading towards. What that may be is up to personal interpretation, but, said Captain Trouver, who was saying all of this while staring at a flame on some shore somewhere (it makes no difference but that the flame gives him a look in the eye that one hopes you can imagine), I refute all this. I will not try to be a great man. I will not try to be a rich man. I will not try to be a success. All of this suggests a changing of who I am, and transfiguration from that man who I was to the man I should be. Fine, if that is what you want, but that is not what I will allow myself to want. I will not be so weak as to pretend, even if I believe it, that life is about stepping stones, goals, and finding meaning. No, to me, said Captain Trouver Infinite, me, a man who does not believe in a benevolent god, who believes when I die I will be nothing but dirt, to me this brief flash of life, this interlude of consciousness between the immortal contractions which the molecules which form my earthly form have found themselves and will find themselves, this time is about an appreciation: to see the universe in her perfection, and out of all glorious creations many dimensions, be one of those few conscious beings able to actually stare with the awe that the universe deserves. I will not distract myself from the sublime masterpiece with thinking of such mundane thoughts as who I want to be, what is wrong with my life now, what perfection would look like: no: all I will be is a man with eyes wide open staring in silent awe at the world around me. What I do with that awe is meaningless, it has led me to be the greatest captain in the world, then, it has led me to this, and maybe it will lead me to many more things. I tell you, Trevor, that before this last mutiny there were other ships I commanded, deeds I have done: always, it seems, even by accident, I have through thoughtlessness brought men to where they believed their dreams resided, perhaps this is what has made me a legend, and I believe in the happiness these men find there and am happy for their ecstasy but it is not for me, no, I must always walk away, continuing floating with this speed I awakened to find myself at, perhaps having a certain gravitational force which might attract things to me but that is not my intent, perhaps have a certain magnetism which attracts me to the extraordinary but that is not my intent. The only intent I have, again, and again, again, is to keep my eyes open, and when they shut, they will be shut, but for now they will be open and that is all that I have. And Trevor, I tell you, I cannot change for you, or more correctly I will not change for you. You are welcome to join me, I hope you join me. I believe my beliefs are worth believing. But, I will not advocate: I will not pontificate: I will simple be.

Well, Trevor was looking at the fire during this advocating speech which pontificated a belief and there is always something of when a man in alone with another, when there is not that corruptive influence of others to corrode the honesty of the words from a man’s mouth to a listeners ear with his corruptive presence, and here, by the fire, there was only the words of Captain Trouver Infinite and the ears of Trevor Nobody listening. Perhaps there is universal truth, or at least personal truth, and if we could communicate purely we would understand each other perfectly, maybe even be each other, but such is not the way of communication, flawed form for a flawed perfection, but, this day, Trevor understood perfectly enough to realize a certain reality which perhaps he was already predisposed to yet had just never taken the time to think through. He listened to the words with his ears. His brain processed them in analogies which made sense to his personal personality. And his heart accepted the warmth generated by the personal resonance found in these words as truth. “Yes,” said Trevor Nobody, “I will travel with you forever. I will try to be at bliss forever.”

–

So was it all so easy as this? Of course not. But, then, it was not so different from this as might have been possible. Trevor was used to the accepted idea that there were supposed to be goals, aims, a point to life. How simplistic to think the point of life was just in living! But, then, Trevor Nobody had spent much time aboard the Ave with Captain Trouver Infinite, and then, maybe he was one of those sorts of people who was genetically predisposed to such natural thought anyway, maybe those sort of people do exist. Maybe this was all more easy then it had to be, more easy then it would be with most people. What ended up happening was, from a written perspective, fantastic: many adventures together where these men only built on the name of Captain Trouver Infinite and the Ave, adding only a third canon to this mighty litany with the inclusion of Trevor Nobody; here was the things of legend, the thing to tell children at night in order to inspire them to dreams of grandeur and glory. Yet, for themselves, there was only the mundane day to day of taking in nirvana’s bliss out of every moment, and, when the lights of their lives eventually winked out much as the sun at the end of a particularly normal day, there was no sadness in their hearts, just the appreciation that they had seen the entirety of that day.

 

I’m going to shoot you in the head.

 

How strange that something that sounds so melodramatic can have such consequences. Did he actually practice that line? Is that really the best he could come up with. Why are these the thoughts crowding my brain as this man steps into my office holding a gun.

 

Well, sir, while I’ve had that said to me before, usually there’s no real gun. How can I help you.

 

You can help me by dying.

 

Really, that’s no way to talk, if you’re going to shoot me, shoot me, just don’t let me listen to such terrible one liners. Before you pull the trigger I would love some explanation of why, here, death is going to strike me; but the chaos of the world is collapsing and I have some semblance of peace. I suppose that maybe it is ok if you don’t tell me why you are here to kill me, really, all that will happen is that if I ask, I  have to hear a bunch of shit. Shoot, stranger, I have been at peace forever, and there is no fear in me.

 

I have no idea who you are, this is the first office I walked into. I have sat outside your office, I know there is no rush, as I also know that my gun will make a noise loud enough to attract others who will then come to arrest me. Before I do that, I will kill myself.

 

Well, honestly that makes no sense. But then again, I suppose the person being irrational enough to perform a completely random murder can’t be claimed to be wholly logical. But really, if you’re depressed, we can talk about it, if somehow we can’t talk through it, then I see no reason, logical or illogical, for you to take me with you. Yeah, it’s heartless of me to say, but you have no right to take my life, and you do, however tenuously, have the right to take your own life. I will not interfere in your ability to control your own destiny as long as you do not take away my ability to control mine.

 

Why does everything have to devolve into some form of dialogue? I am not killing you in cold blood, yet you can see my hand does not waver. I am in no rush, so we can talk as long as you want, as long as you have the appreciation that you will be dead soon; keep the talk honest and fluid because if your conversation is pleading and tripe all that will happen is that we will both die all the quicker and, now,  that I have such few poignant seconds left, I seek to enjoy every last one of them.

 

You make no sense: if you want to live, then continue on living. You can walk out of here, I won’t tell anyone, and you can consider yourself doing a job well done since you will have greatly increased the vibrant colors of life for me.

 

Sorry, I genuinely am, you seem like a nice man, but I have to kill myself, and I have to take you with me.

 

Why?! Why. Are you lonely, then we shall be friends. If you’re angry, then vent your rage to me and we will think of solutions. If you’re forlorn I will help fill you. If you’ve lost love, we will find it again. Life is vibrant and fantastic. Let’s both treat this as a wake-up call, let’s both act like we were just born and begin life anew.

 

Your arguments are sound, they have swirled through my head for days months years. If I was feeling any of those emotions in the simplistic sense you describe, I would succumb. Sadly and unfortunately for both you and me, it is none of those emotions. What I feel is sated, that I have lived life long enough. That if life is wine, and you only get one cup, then I have had mine and all I know is that it was wonderful and I have a long life ahead of me without wine. Why should I continue living? Why should I dilute the equation of my life? It can go no higher, why watch it go lower? Why watch the fantastic memories I have fade and crumble, the romance of my life to fizzle. I am Cinderella, and the glass shoe just fit, the dress has yet to turn to the leaves of a pumpkin, and I am going to end the entire charade before I even knew of it’s fallacy.

 

Oh, weak man, who has read the first chapter of a book yet fears that the book might be a tragedy, what do you know of life. For all you know, you know nothing. What know you of life being a glass of wine? Drink your glass and ask for another. Finish your fairy tale and realize that you hadn’t even gone near the climax. You are afraid of diluting perfection! You know nothing of perfection. If a man is a compendium of ups and downs, you’ve had mild ups which make these mild downs seem so depressing. Fight! Have a great swing up! Have a bottle of wine, a case, a truck, and it will still flow and perfection will still weave it’s tapestries. You, an author who seeks to write a book, and has written one letter and fears how to follow up on it. Give up on the attempt? Disgusting. Weak. And worse yet, you seek to kill me. You are a creature of logic on a foundation of misguided romance. If you want to die now, and deem it happiness, go ahead. But that is not the case. All you have is pleasure? Well then suffer to make the past happiness so much more poignant. Suffer to hit a bottom, get to the point where you are a contrast to who you are now, where you walk into my office, and go all the wine has been sucked out of me, help me live and everything will seem sunnier then the night where I’ve been living. But beyond all this, all this you purport on yourself, it is your choice, and it should be your choice. Yet: what is also your choice, and should not be your choice, is this idea you have stuck in the supposed last moments of your mind to kill me. Why? Why am I a part of a plan. Let me live, and you can at least die knowing that your death has provided someone with happiness.

 

My last friend, it is not as even maybe I have described as having lived a life of too much happiness, that was just a verbal dart missing the mark; close yes, but not true, and I worry that perhaps it is simply not in my ability to tell the whole truth. I am chipping at the edge of a masterwork, I know it, and my inability to express myself is troubling. I truly hope that when all is revealed, my actions will make sense, that my death will not be in vain, and even more so your life, which yes I do regard as precious, will not be in vain also.

Let me first tell you, prisoner, that you will not leave here alive. You know this, I am sure, even as I am sure you are resigned to this. The actions you have committed recently showed a disregard for life that even the most reckless man would find dangerous. You are going to die, and, because you have a certain number of followers who are seeking to deify you we will not give you the pleasure of a show trial where you can espouse your beliefs. We are not even going to torture you, so that we can give to your public a perfect body, one that has been peacefully executed following the most humane practices found within our legal demagogues.

However, you have information we need. Information that I am sure you realize we want from you, just as I am sure you have no intention of telling us what that information is. But trust me, you will tell us. I have been doing this job for a lengthy enough period of time, and I realize that everyone eventually crumbles, that the regime we are to put you through, beginning very shortly, does not leave any room for heroism. We are going to tear you apart. No, we will not torture you, but what is the benefit of torture. Make you scream. Maybe make some man in the capital who you said some nasty things about get a bit of a grin. But really, it’s not effective for the sort of information we want from you. No, we have a bit of a different method.

You will, of course, have noticed you’re gagged. We don’t want you to talk, I have no interest for your ravings; words have this funny fallibility of falling from our mouths even before our brains register their import. Of course, sometimes this is helpful, letting us get information before you have even realized its true import, but usually we cannot separate this from the babble of a mind in pain. Even worse, typically when you can speak all you give us is a plentitude of begging. I am a hard man. This is my job. This is what I do with my life. I do not need a man telling me I am a monster, in no more that I will call you a monster. We are simply enemies on opposing sides, and by that same extreme logic which led you to the deeds that brought you here, to this chair, to this unfortunate circumstance in which you will very quickly lose the pleasure of existence, this logic is going to let me destroy everything on earth that is important to you.

There is paper in front of you and a pen. You will write all the information you think would be valuable to us, your enemies. Ah, please, don’t smirk, I don’t want to embitter you, and this is a serious affair. I have no wish of being anything other than deathly serious, because lives are involved; yes, in the plural. The other lives? I have been instructed to tell you that if you get angry you are allowed to hit me, even kill me if you so desire; the information is so critical that you can give us that we wish for you to vent all your anger, let it be purged from your system, and if killing me will make you feel better than those persons above me by a logic I agree with think that the life of a man such as myself is no great cost. Of course, I will simply be replaced by another, whom you are more than welcome to dispatch with as well, who will then also be replaced, ad infinitum. Please, make use of this recourse. Do not bottle your anger. To be as close to calm is of benefit not just to us, but to you as well: do you not wish to confront the last moments of your life with a degree of clarity that lets you make the best actions possible? Of course, right now, I am sure that you think this course will be to say no information, to take those punishments we pile on you with the nobility and bravery of Hercules, I am sure, even, that you hope to die the sort of death of William Wallace or any of the other sort of past hero who you justifiably associate yourself with: you hope to become a martyr. But please, do not insult our intelligence, you are not the first man who sat in this chair with those same aspirations. This is why we want you to be as coherently logical as possible: because we believe that any rational man after viewing the scene presented to them would give us any information he might have. Ignoble yes, we are sorry, we cannot let you be the hero to your followers that you want to be, and indeed truly we are sorry, because we don’t want anything from you but your information and if there was some way we could find a chivalrous path for you to give us our needed information, then perfect: everyone’s life is easier.

So why will you tell us what we want? Well, because as before it is lives involved: not just yours, not just mine, not just my replacements. We have, here in the prison, indeed in the cells lining the very hall your cell borders, the entirety on earth of your loved ones. Your mother and father. Your wife and mistress. Your two young boys. Even your pet dog. Now, let me outline what our procedure is, and trust me that this is in fact the procedure, this is following the book, this is following the designs that years of scientific research and indeed endless experience has taught us. What we are going to do, first, is cut something small off of each of your loved ones. Something recognizably theirs, so indisputably you will know that we are in fact very serious when we say your loved ones are in our custody, and that we can take a free hand with them. Maybe the finger with a wedding wing from your wife, maybe the nose with a small mole on it from one of your sons, I don’t know, that is not my job, it is the job of your loved ones overseers and I do not concern myself with their work. However, if they have done their job correctly, then they have already chosen the body part, have already given thought to what body part you will most recognize. These men are very proficient, you will have no disbelief, no way to deny yourself to a blissful ignorance of delusion.

However, from your mistress we will not take a small body part. We have found that one of the largest prolonging factors of situations such as this is that the prisoner does not believe we are capable of the extremes we claim. This is logical, since in many ways what we are going to do to your loved ones is monstrous, and if we were to do these things outside of the very specific parameters’ to which the necessity for your information has brought us, the entirety of this organization would be recognized as sadists. Yet, we are here within these parameters. And we will do these things we claim, and will claim to do, to your loved ones: we have to have that information. Therefore, we are going to cut off your mistresses head, and bring it here to you. A normal response to this on your part is horror, this is typically where me, myself, am at greatest danger because when we break the illusion that there are certain unbreakable rules, which we dispel very adamantly by breaking them, typically rage is a normal response. Why rage? We don’t know entirely, but we think it is very much to do with that infantile response to an impossible situation. You thought that we would play within certain confines of fairness. That we could torture you, make you scream, cut you into little pieces, violate every dignity which you hold claim to, because you, in your heart, know that you are guilty of the crimes we claim you’ve committed. Whether these things are truly crimes is a different question in your mind, the fact that you violated them had a known price in your mind, and you were prepared to pay it. Are prepared to pay it. But, you thought that since you were the one committing it you would be the sole person held to account, and that is where you are wrong. We can do these terrible things to your loved ones. We can do these terrible things to your loved ones. We can do these terrible things to your loved ones. Why? Because we created this system of society, we know how to get away with a half dozen disappearances. Maybe we will claim they are interred for life in prison, in absolute solitary confinement. Maybe we can even have one of our friends with the newspapers do a fake interview with some of your loved ones, keep perpetuating the myth of our benevolence. The fact here is that getting away with the atrocities we will commit to your loved ones is no great work. And then, of course, you must know why we would choose to commit such sins: you are to prepared to suffer, you will never tell us what we need to know. Therefore, you leave us no choice. And the arrival of your mistresses head will be the proof of the promise of the absolute extremes we are willing to go to in the attainment of those words which live so casually in your mind.

After the arrival of a distinguishing body part from your parents, your wife, your two sons, your dog, and of course the head of your mistress, then we will start a timer of thirty minutes. You can see where it will be, on the digital screen directly over my left shoulder, by the door. Every thirty minutes we will do something terrible to your family members. We will tell you what we are going to do before hand. It is up to you to rationalize at what point you make the entire macabre opera cease, because, of course, as long as you are writing on the sheet of paper the punishment to your loved ones will be paused, and if you write what we deem enough, and you can trust that we have very strict standards for what is enough, then we will let your loved ones go. It is just up to you at what level of mental and physical decay they undergo before release. Write now, and they will be able to leave completely uninjured.

No, please don’t try to say anything. It is a part of our program that the entirety of the procedure is laid out to you before you are allowed to write your information on the sheet. And let me absolutely tell you now that the information we want is the only thing we want on that sheet of paper. We don’t want any questions, we don’t want any denials, we don’t want any anger. If you are frustrated, hit me, don’t waste the paper. Every time you write something on the paper that is not to do with the information you can give us we will lower the time on the digital screen, the punishment clock, by two minutes.

Now, for your comprehension, let me tell you what the first round of punishments will be. For your mother to be placed in boiling water for five minutes. For your father to be placed in a false situation where he believes he is killing your children, his grand children. For your wife, the first round of punishment will be sand paper scraping the skin from the entirety of her body. For your first son it will be the application of that sand paper to your wife. For your other son it will dipping his left leg in the juices of meat, then putting it in a chamber where your dog, who has been kept hungry, will feed on it. We will not give you any sound or visuals of any of this happening. You will know that we are doing this to them, the head of your mistress will prove our seriousness.

Now, I am going to click this button, this one right in front of me on this table we both share. When I press it, the order will be given to take the head of your mistress and the distinguishable body part of all of your loved ones and bring them here for your viewing. The button will also start the thirty minute clock, counting down to the commencement of the first punishment which I have already described. Now, you have a choice. You can either start writing now and save any horror from befalling the people you love, or you can sit back, do nothing, make pretensions to bravery for a cause which will be forgotten in a year, and let a suffering that is unimaginable befall those you care most about. How will you choose?

There is no glass left in the window. When was there last glass? Was it yesterday? Was yesterday just yesterday? There is no glass, and there were never curtains, and there is light lighting the entire room, and there is light burning all of us in the room, nowhere to go. Watching help;ess;y. I don’t want to be here. Where else is there for me to go?

There is no glass left in the window. It didn’t survive the first shrieking flash, the collapse of the interior ministry just over on the hill; it’s doubtful that if there was glass it would do much, how could it hide the flames licking the skyline, the screams drifting disconnected from everywhere. My own head. The wails of mourning.

I’m waiting. Sitting underneath a wooden table. My wife next to me. Kids cradled between us, I can feel their shaking fear, I have felt it since the bombing started, I feel myself being strong and not shaking for them, I don’t want this, I don’t want this. I must be a man. I must be a man. I must be a man.

Another flash of light followed by a shriek of sound. Our building rattles. I think I gasp but I can’t be sure. I look at my wife and her eyes are full of fear. Where else is there for us to go but here? To go on the streets. Never. We could use the table to block the window, but then what if our shaky building has a missile strike close, we need to have something protect us from any of our own hidden projectiles biding their time as a brick in our wall. My children are still shaking. Is it even worse now? Like lightning another flash of light. Farther away, it takes a delayed moment for the sound to touch us, like lightning followed by thunder. But so much worse. So much more powerful. Was that parliament? What will we wake up to tomorrow? Will there be a tomorrow for us? I look at my wife and see her fear.

Another flash of light. Another flash of light. Time is becoming meaningless. All the moments are the same. Another flash of light, followed by the anticipation of more flashes of light. The inbetween time one of darkness except the shadows of fire, silent of the unholy thunder but rift with pain. Fear in the air everywhere. The people in the apartment above us, below us, to the right of us, to the left of us. Are they all okay? I can feel their fear, and I am sure they know mine. My children’s. There is no glass left in the window. There is nothing separating us from the outside, we are a part of the landscape, we are in the war field. Humane bombs killing those people I love, tactical strikes to free us of a dictatorship making my wife live with terror, making my children know that the world can be a bad place. Making them have to touch something in their hearts, realize something, have something ripped out of their innocence. This is not right. How could this be right. This is a city. This is my home. The place I was from. Why would some other place decide to do this? To sit down and have all their important people decide that the action they want is to contort places like my apartment, my city, into a place that rips the innocence out of children.

My children have stopped shaking. Have they gone to sleep? There has not been a sonic boom for awhile. They are not shaking. They have gone to sleep. My wife whispers do I know how long it has been since the last strike, I shake my head. We wait. We wait lifetimes for another flash of light, another clap of thunder. All we see is fire, hear is screams wailing to the innermost crevices of my mind. We wait. We wait. We wait. The sky no longer a starless black mess of the illumination of smoke. We begin to see tendrils of grayness streaking about the infernal red blackness. We wait longer. We wait. It is over, for at least a little while. What do we do now? What is there to do now? Make tea? Go about our day? How will we ever begin to live another day knowing that the night could be pierced with the destruction of our lives? How will my children ever get a good nights rest when they have to fear the bombs might fall again?

Sitting in the restaurant the guy is there with his girl, picture of maybe not love but they seem pretty happy. His hand is near hers, not right on top but there is that casualness between the two of them that says they’re comfortable with each other in a way that can’t be faked. Chatting about nothing too important, they fit a lovely scene: two lovely creatures enjoying a night out together at a popular restaurant. Good on society for letting such little niceties happen.

The food comes, yadda yadda yadda. There should be a story here. There needs to be a scene first. Are these details of a scene not enough? Man with a girl, girl with a man, some nice restaurant, they seem like a nice couple. Sure, they have a background, yeah, the restaurant is located somewhere. But what does that have to do with the story. Not a thing.

The guy and his girl are really having a nice time. Couple drinks, good food, nice conversation. Good night. A few more drinks. Not drunk, but not sober. They’re both in that delightful fuzzy buzzed state where you can experience the true language of words mixed with body mixed with atmosphere. Do they even know the words they say, or are they just pure pieces of emotion lapping up with an intensifying gravity all that the world around them that swirls into their sphere.

A new man, let’s call him the drunk, he’s over on the other side of the restaurant. He’s not delightfully buzzed, he’s fucking tanked. Quiet, sure, but one feels it’s more because he’s so out of it that its yet to occur to be a drunken asshole. Years of hard living give him the look of fifty five even if he’s just twenty five: life has been hard, brutish and potentially short. He keeps drinking, he has the manic feel of someone who learned to ignore his limits long ago. Maybe money is no problem, depravity is not separate from wealth. Clearly he is spending real money on himself. He’s even dressed right, sharp, nice shirt: fashionable.

As the night goes on the drunk begins to pay attention to our man. Yeah, each drink seems to focus his attention a little more towards the table of our lovely couple, and what began as a curious glance quickly evolves into a sneer before becoming a full on glower. The drunk is ignoring his food, snapping at the waiter if he has any questions, one feels that if the drunk was a wild animal there would be foam in his mouth. Maybe there is even a bit of foam. Alright, alright, alright, he’s bursting at the seams.

Finally, he either builds up his bravery or finally has one drink too many. He stumbles over to the table where the man and the girl are just for the first time noticing him. Does the man recognize the drunk, or is that simply the recognition of a threat to himself and the girl he’s with.

The drunk comes up to the couples table. He doesn’t look at the man, but shoves his face towards the girl and angrily asks her ‘You know the truth about this piece of shit guy you got at your table? You go out in public with a piece of shit like that, or he lie to you. That how he get his women? You being lied to. Tell me, you pretty girl, you know who this piece of shit it?’

Of course caught unawares, and of course with a drink or two in her the girl handles the pressure of a manic questioning her smoothly. ‘Sir, I’ve known this man for many years, he’s a good man, and I would respect it if you left the table.’ The man puts his hand on the drunks arm and says ‘Excuse me sir, you must have me confused with someone else, I don’t know any Tommys…’ The drunk slams his hand off yelling now loudly ‘Keep your fucking hands off me Tommy, you piece of shit,’ and now everyone in the restaurant, fork between plate and mouth freezes to look at the commotion. Many have the look of positive apprehension that maybe they’re going to get some enterainment.

The girl asks the drunk again to please leave, that the man’s name is not Tommy it’s Freddy and they are trying to enjoy a nice night out together. The drunk gives a loud laugh, gives a look around suddenly being aware that others can hear him and decides to not care. What can these people do to him, hell, an audience is just what he was looking for. “Hey, hey everybody. I got something you should hear,” he slurs in a booming voice. “You see this guy here, maybe some of you know him. He goes by Freddy or something now. But, you know, if you know him I feel like I got to make sure you know the truth about this guy. This guy’s name isn’t Freddy, it’s Thomas Pelligrew and he’s a criminal. He doesn’t take care of his friends. He’s a piece of shit.” Freddy, which is what we might as well call the man because ‘the man’ is starting to grate on the narrative, stands up to the drunk and with a mixture of embarrassment and anger says directly to the drunk ‘Sir, I don’t know you, you must have me confused with someone else. No matter what you are being rude and you are not handling yourself properly in a restaurant. Maybe you’re a little drunk, which is fine, but you should be in control of yourself or you are going to get yourself in trouble. Now, please, go back to your table.’ Giggling the drunk puts his face right up to Freddy’s and with a voice loud enough that spit flies into Freddy’s face yells ‘Oh, go fuck yourself Tommy, like I could forget you or you could forget me. Think you can fucking walk into thin air, the past doesn’t disappear. Am I drunk, of course I’m drunk. You know what my life’s been like since  you decided to be all noble and walk away with all of our money. Fuck you,’ he stumbles backwards and yells as loud as he can ‘this guy, Tommy, fucking stored cocaine in his ass. He smuggled drugs from Mexico to Florida so many times that the cartel gave him a share. He stole money from his friends. This guy, Tommy or Freddy or whatever is a piece of…” the maitre de grabs the drunk with the help of two waiters and starts to drag the drunk outside. The drunk is screaming ‘He store cocaine is his ass, you like that you motherfucker, you like to have your fucking little secrets brought out. This guy stole from his friends. This guy is the guy you’d be embarrassed to be…” His voice becomes drowned out as he is kicked out of the restaurant.

With a collective awkwardness the patrons of the restaurant pointedly don’t look at Freddy and get back to their own conversations, their own dinners. With an angry air the maitre de comes back and apologizes over and over again to Freddy and his date. Of course dinner is on the house, have a drink, things like this don’t happen in a restaurant like this, the drunk was drunk, he was obviously confused, is there anything the restaurant can do to make things better? With a confused air Freddy excuses the maitre de and sits back down with his date. They spend a moment staring at each other, trying to decide if it makes sense to leave the conversation where they left off, to ignore this entire craziness or to confront it. After a few seconds Freddy cracks a smile, ‘What a pleasant fellow!’ he crackles with a persuasive attitude of good cheer. The girl cracks a bit of a fragile grin, ‘Freddy, it’s not true is it? Any of it? You being involved with dealing drugs or anything?’ Freddy cracks a grin, a real grin we think, “Doll, if you think I was making money from international cartels I’d still be working sixty hours a week? I’ve never seen that person before in my life. A guy drunk like that, I’d be surprised if he remembers that he went out to eat tonight, he certainly wasn’t in the type of mind that he could differentiate me from Hitler and a dinosaur. Don’t worry about it. Let’s laugh about it, and enjoy dinner. Okay?’ He cracks that grin, which really is a winning grin, and the girl eventually flashes it back at him. The conversation gets running again, gaining speed that soon they’re past the speed bumps and the night moves on. It turns into a pretty good night.

After dropping his date off Freddy walks back to his apartment. His head is clear from the walk, and he has a stiff expression on his face. He walks past his apartment and keeps walking, trying to clear his head, maybe trying to work through some problems. He leans against a bus stop, stares blankly into space for a few moments then with a split second force punches the bus stop as hard as he can. Just once. Then, he walks back to his apartment.