The Gomorrah Mirror
Gomorrah’s Peace
By Benajah CC Joseph
@benajahjoseph
https://bnsthrnxpt.wordpress.com
Voice – The narrator is the protagonist (perhaps older) which will indicate to the audience that he makes it out alive. We find out by the end that his father will be murdered.
Figurative language- Southern style comments and Jewish influence. Yiddish is used some.
Character – Lenny, Dad, Narrator, Ethiopian guide, Haile Selassie, Jamaican warlord, woman 1-3, Mom, the Devil in various forms and his followers/ Rastafarians/assassin
Setting – Ethiopia in several distinctive places-The well-guarded Axum and the jungle/Deep South/ in Hell/ on bus/at school/ temple/Baptist church/island.
Plot – The plot is that the “new Sampson” has to save the world from an evil metaphysical presence while not getting arrested for flagrant use of drugs and some random violence as well as “called for violence”.
Word choice- To offset the southern accent use of very big words used kind of unnecessarily. Ethiopian guide uses some local words in very African accent, seems to use movie quotations a lot. Literary allusions by the father.
These characters need to be fleshed out and some of the historical wording needs to match with the intelligence and sobriety of the people talking...mainly the protagonist
Characters:
Lenny
Dad
Guide
Emperor Selassie
Jamaican warlord named Bob Brillo
Women named Kelly Ontangua,Assiga
Mom
The Devil as many characters
Assassin
Protagonist
Act 1-
The obvious sounds of cooking meat, cutting to a group of men cooking meat
looking very serious and wealthy to the burning off of a man’s nose (maybe a slave
in Egypt or African slave in American south or in modern Northern Africa during a
coup). This as the narrator in a very specific Southern accent of Shelby Foote but
very young says…
Narrator:
The first instant of my conversion was to the searing hiss of “the Christians are
right.!.?!”
Scene: A young man looks up from where he is hiding. A man creeps up behind him.
The vegetation is lush and both the men look scared. A short scene of the man
killing an entire room of men with an antler that morphs into Samson's jawbone of
an ass and a very gritty recreation of the Biblical story. This morphs from Sampson
drinking from a stream to the young narrator.
Narrator:
“I'm sick and I am sure I will be again. I bear enough strength to endure many things
but straight shot reality, fuck no. Sick to me may be a shade different from your run
of the mill doper, for while the smack and all of it are bad, the slurring assault of my
conscience and occasional visits from hashem are driving me insane, or may have
already. The deal right now is the Charleston police are racing toward me on boats
and I have killed this dude…and its 330 am…and there is an Egyptian who is
definitely trying to kill me…on this island.”
Scene: During this introduction a choreographed, colleges look at the life of a
privileged Southerner who is seen to: hide a yarmulke in the back pocket of his
jeans, shoot a baby deer, put a dip in his mouth, can be seen at a local cross-burning,
first having sex with a black girl then hitting an almost identical looking black boy
with the thin side of a tennis racket, kissing the Pope's ring, singing at a Baptist
church Hallelujah, drinking beer in camouflage at a deer camp, holding a baby,
holding a puppy, blowing on a duck call ect ect
Addition Note:
(I would like to quickly create the duality or even multi-faceted humanity that exists
in the main character but frankly in all of us. I don’t want to be crazy obvious but
sometimes that’s a good way to introduce a side issue, the nebulous religious
leanings of an obvious Jewish main character)
Narrator:
“I would say this is the first time, but its not quite so cut and dry as that I would tell
you I am exceptionally observant and that all of this is in His plan but dude half the
time I don’t believe in anything but my grinding teeth. I have been put down too far
to fully trust my senses yet every day from sun up to down I have been given some
sort of power. Its not available to me at night and I have spoken to a man in Addis
Ababa who says it is a reduction or evolution of the Judges power from the Torah. I
am an expiation of Sampson he says. Sampson slept with hookers and had long hair
so we’re two for two but there the similarities end and problematic to all of that is
that I have been assured in “visions that touch me”, that Jesus was in fact the real
deal. Dude.
Scene 1
Dad:
“Are you out of your mind?”
Scene: A bus in what is obviously Africa, but specific characteristics label the area as
Ethiopia. On the back of the bus sits an middle aged man with a paunch and a fake
leg. Looking not but just a little dazed and looks like high-school aged
Narrator:
It seemed if I wasn’t saying this to my father then it was being said to me. The
fundamentalist Christian right wing perspective was fucking aggravating. We were
Jews but I didn’t say this.
I have been assured by the rabbis that I speak with, that all men doubt and that
perhaps my father will come back from this tragic no, fatal mistake.
He wanted to take the bus in from Mortinqou in the Northern part of the Ethiopia
down to the Kriska and Kiola kibbutz or the Ethiopian equivalent to read some
historical documents about the Council of Trent.
Scene: Aside from the bus to a typical frater
Lenny:
“Why Ethiopia?”
Me:
“Well it was the longest ruling royal system in the world until 1936 when, everyone
killed everyone else and the remains that we are in today. The Hebrew tradition in
Ethiopia is tied to the very soul of the country and it was this and this alone that I
came for.”
Narrator soliloquy: ( A collage of Ethiopian history)
“The history is remarkable but I could have studied all this from my king sized bed or
a deer stand for that matter. Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa
and one of the oldest in the world. What are believed to be the oldest remains of a
human ancestor ever found, which have been dated as being some five million years
old, were discovered in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. This beats the discovery of
“Lucy”;, a 3.2 million year old skeleton, who was unearthed in the same area in 1974.
I wasn’t born then and I am glad, my uncle Benny was born in 1975 and the music
he listens to is so wack. Fuck Tool. Ha. Anyway, I came with my dad despite having
a million other things to do because I want him to return to sanity and give up this
thing but so far I have been thwarted, maybe because I have stayed inordinately
high from Atlanta on…”
.
The dad drones on…sounding much like Ben Stein with a southern accent. The
father is a PhD in History and regurgitates this stuff ad nauseum.
DAD:
“The Greek historian Herodotus, of the fifth century BC, describes ancient Ethiopia
in his writings, while the Bible’s Old Testament records the Queen of Sheba’s visit to
Jerusalem where "she proved Solomon with hard questions.. Matters clearly went
further than that because legend asserts that King Menelik - the founder of the
Ethiopian Empire - was the son of the Queen and Solomon.”
Scene: The protagonist in anti-hero style looked at him over his glasses; he had the smallest of smirks on his already shadowed jowly face. He thinks what he said was risqué I realize in a startled jump into his mind. Already today I kicked a 13-year- old kids knee plumb in and…well it
had been a wild morning. The realization that we were so different again waivered
just at the crux of dismissal and epiphany in my scowling mind.
Me:
“Dad, I am trying to read my email and listen to this new shit Future dropped.”
Narrator considers: Its possible he did not try to translate my kind of jumbled speech or he is ignoring me. This morning I got up at three and got on the back of a goddamned scooter and
went to find some more, or better, rather, weed and some sort of opioid or heroin,
whatever. Yeah I found none of that but I have been in oscillating states of absolute
torpidity and blaring paralysis since I was plied with some sort of local sucked up,
fucked up African loo-loo root drug about 2 hours and 37 minutes earlier.
Did I say that out loud?
Scene:The teeth continued to be sucked on as punctuation points to his continued diatribe
on Ethiopia.
Me to Lenny: (sitting in rocking chairs on a porch of an Antebellum-stye plantation)
“Remains of the Queen of Sheba’s palace can still be seen today in Axum, in the
province of Tigray, northern Ethiopia were we are now trying to tie up some
religious loose end. Axum is also home to many other extensive historical sites,
including the home of the Ark of the Covenant, brought there from Jerusalem by
Menelik.
Something about what he said next stuck with me.
Dad to Me: (again the series of images that link to what they are saying)
Dad:
“Missionaries from Egypt and Syria reached Ethiopia in the fourth century and
introduced Christianity. In the seventh century, the rise of Islam meant Ethiopia was
then isolated from European Christianity. The Portuguese re-established contact
with Ethiopia in the 1500’s primarily to strengthen their control over the Indian
Ocean and to convert Ethiopia to Roman Catholicism. A century of religious conflict
followed resulting in the expulsion of all foreign missionaries in the 1630s.
This period of bitter conflict contributed to Ethiopian hostility towards foreign
Christians and Europeans which persisted until the twentieth century and was a
factor in Ethiopia’;s isolation until the middle of the nineteenth century.
From the 1700s, for roughly 100 years, there was no central power in Ethiopia. This
“Era of the Princes” ; was characterized by the turmoil caused by local rulers
competing against each other. In 1869, however, Emperor Tewodros brought many
of the princes together, and was a significant unifying force. He was succeeded by
Emperor Yohannes, who built upon the efforts made by Tewodros, as well as
beating off invasion attempts by the Dervish and the Sudanese.”
Scene:The father leaned forward and put his hand on young mans shoulder. The young man looks at the hand as if in total shock that his Dad had took his shoulder in an very loving way. One gets the impression that the relationship had problems and the relationship was not outwardly expressed.
Dad to me: ( shows a huge battle scene)
“This Emperor Menelik II
reigned from 1889 to 1913, fending off the encroachment of European powers. Italy
posed the greatest threat, having begun to colonize part of what would become its
future colony of Eritrea in the mid 1880s. In 1896 Ethiopia defeated Italy at the
Battle of Adwa, which remains famous today as the first victory of an African nation
over a colonial power.”
Protagonist chimed in at this point knowing the history of Rastafarianism from one too many late bong nights with Eloise Hellenic Pointe watching the History channel.
Me: (As this is being said small clips of the royal family from beginning of rule to colonization by the Italians):
“In 1910, no in 1916, the Christian nobility deposed the sitting king, Lij Lyasu
because of his Muslim sympathies and made his predecessor’s, King Menelik's’,
daughter, Zewditu, Empress. Her cousin, Ras Tafari Makonnen, was appointed
regent and successor to the throne.”
Internal dialogue from younger protagonist to self:
“I knew I had said that out loud but at once I was not 100 if it made sense. I sat back
kind of feeling like I may vomit and then for the briefest instant I thought I had just
eaten a literal piece of shit, wet and…I swallowed a little vomit and looked around
for someone to tell that to and make it really, really timely and funny but…fucking
Ethiopians.”
Dad(as this is being said several photos of the father as a younger man with obvious station and money)
“This is the important part son. Zewditu died in 1930, after which the regent -
adopting the name Haile Selassie - became Emperor.”
Scene: Lenny and me at a dope house in an obvious drug related party.
Me to Lenny:
“His reign was interrupted in 1936 when Italian forces briefly invaded and occupied
Ethiopia. Haile Selassie then appealed to the League of Nations, but that appeal fell
on deaf ears and he fled to exile in the UK, where he spent five years until the
Ethiopian patriotic resistance forces with the help of the British defeated the Italians
and he returned to his throne. Haile Selassie then reigned until 1974 when he was
deposed and a provisional council of soldiers, or “the Derg”, meaning committee, as
they loved to self-refer…anyway they seized power and installed a government
which was socialist in name and military in style. Fifty-nine members of the Royal
Family and ministers and generals from the Imperial Government were summarily
executed. Haile Selassie himself was strangled in the basement of his palace in
August 1975.”
Me:
“The year uncle Benny was born.”
Father looks at son. The obvious distaste for stupid statements is reinforced. Young absolute jackass and had just eaten my own feces.
Narrator
“He always looked like he felt sorry for me”
Protagonist stands up in the rocking bus to pretend to look out the
window and put the last piece of weak opium or strong hash in to my mouth, yeah I
was eating it. The vomit taste lingered like anise.
Me to Lenny: (sitting in a duck blind)
“Major Mengistu Haile Mariam assumed power as head of state and Derg chairman
after having his two predecessors killed. His years in office were marked by a
totalitarian style government and the country's massive militarization financed and
supplied by the Soviet Union and assisted by Cuba.”
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG- a temporary lull in the conversation as the
top of the blind is flipped open and ducks come raining down, one managing to break
the narrators nose.
Scene: Pans out from the broken nose Think Owen Wilson…younger.
Dad:
“The brutality of the regime over a period of 17 years - aided by droughts and famine
- hastened the Derg’s collapse. Insurrections occurred throughout Ethiopia, particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea.”
The father stopped talking to to eat a Vienna sausage he had brought from the states.
Narrator breaking the 4th wall to audience:
“ I don’t know much but I know those things are toxic and certainly ain't kosher.”
Dad:
“In 1991, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia was set up from the EPRDF and
other political parties in the country with an 87 strong Council of Representatives
and a transitional constitution. Meanwhile, in May 1991, The Eritrean People’s
Liberation front, also called ELF which is funny...led by Isaias Afworki assumed control of Eritrea after 30 years of struggle and established a provisional government. This ran Eritrea until
April 1993 when Eritreans voted for independence in a UN monitored referendum.”
Dad leaning forward looking very annoyed
“You have something in your teeth son. You have some dip in your teeth, son.” Not knowing that it is hash.
Lurching forward I pretended I had been thinking about his 3rd to last sentence. Of
course I have shit in my teeth because it is a dense fibrous yet gelatinous substance
with the consistency of very old cookie dough. Lunch.
“We gon to go to stop to lunch or…”, it kind of drooled out of my throat. He ignored
me.
“In Ethiopia, President Meles Zenawi and members of the TGE pledged to oversee
the formation of a multi-party democracy. The election for a 548 member
constituent assembly was held in June 1994. This assembly adopted the constitution
of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in December 1994. Elections for the
first parliament were held in 1995 and the government has been consistent since
then.”
“Dad.” He looked slightly annoyed.
“Right now, we are supposed to be a vacation?”
The son talks on, “You have been talking over this damn 1952 Jalopy bus’s environment
slaying engine for an hour. If you are going to give a tour of the shittiest place on
Earth, then record it, Ill market it and we can sell the shit on ITunes for other
ridiculous fools looking for religious succor in darkest Africa.”
Narrator: (setting is horrible strip club in Addis Ababa) As he says this on the scene are
“Slouchy. You look for slouchy and fresh shoes to get drugs in Africa. To get hookers
you get disease or that’s what I have been told. I have been as carful as possible. I’m
gonna leave it at that. Staying low key isn’t that hard. I went to some different bar
areas and settled on a titty bar with full nudity and AK 47’s around the door like
porcupine bristles. I find the more firepower around the bullshit that involves me
and worse people than me…the better. I stay strapped in the states. Yeah I am not a
gangster but I fuck with all these people who live to fuck other people, so I try to
keep it honest. Here its business so I gotta keep it business. Straight.
Scene 2: The history of Ethiopia is continued this time with a much more serious
slant to it. Ancient ceremonies, atrocities and valiant battles can be pictured as this
quote from the Balt Jewish Times is quoted.
Baltimore Jewish Times read in a strong Jersey accent:
“Once they were kings. A half million strong, they matched their faith with fervor and
out-matched the Muslim and Christian tribesmen around them to rule the mountain
highlands around Lake Tana. They called themselves Beta Israel—the house of
Israel—and used the Torah to guide their prayers and memories of the heights of
Jerusalem as they lived in their thatched huts in Ethiopia.
But their neighbors called them Falashas—the alien ones, the invaders. And even three
hundred years of rule, even the black features that matched those of all the people
around them did not make the Jews of Ethiopia secure governors of their destiny in
Africa” (“Falashas: The Forgotten Jews,” Baltimore Jewish Times, 9 November 1979).
Operation Solomon was the salvation of the remnant of an old Jewish settlement in
Ethiopia. For centuries, the world Jewish community was not even aware of the
existence of the Jewish community of Ethiopia in the northern province of Gondar.
The miracle of Operation Solomon is only now being fully understood; an ancient
Jewish community has been brought back from the edge of government-imposed
exile and starvation.
But once they were kings. . .and some say they wielded great power…
Its 330 am and I have two full hours before I can count on even being functional,
meanwhile I killed someone else and it wasn’t self defense. Sometimes my night
activities bleed into the days and other times I go weeks without waking up during
daylight hours.
Change this into dialogue--------
Startlingly neer a time until the veil was torn was the question of experience versus revelation realized as one coin, two sides, but the veil has now been torn and what we knew then, all now know.
Degrees, all valiant variegates of the infernal questions that plague, all were present, standing row on row ad infinitum…ad nauseam before him and about him. These poising’s forming a link must be contemplated, must be formulated, must be quiescent enough to distinguish betwixt who he was and the glory of it all in his evident metamorphoses, though he never really changed…everything else did in life’s gradient glandular way. Primed and pumping regularly or disproportional and aberrant. in which they are perceived, like how we die-slowly and then all at once. He had no capacity for change; his turgid spirit distended with effort to pump its element into the soul, was failing. Not for lack of effort, for lack of a receptive target, the soulish nature of his soul was startling; believing its own shit, believed it had a lock on the rabid full-bodied love of life– stonily stood by death calling it valiant and glorious, stood glibly by rape calling it amore and fitting, stood by godlessness and invested in that vacuum as progress. Such a soul that the golden tincture of the dauntlessness of the vital flow was spun through a washing cycle and returned to the well-spring; bastardized beyond asomatous recognition…like blending a flower in a black hole and then replanting it. Well it just wouldn’t take and the strain sunk into the bridgework between two worlds. Sunk in and metastasized into the fantastical spaces where God reaches man and man wrestles with God, to what end he could never say for it all went absolutely unnoticed by earthly eyes. Problem was and remains that the supernal refutation doesn’t just go away, entropy works here in reverse. Nuclear waste and alien serum can be buried but not made to disappear. God washed with humanity is…well abomination is puppy love.
Around him, when the light hit his eyes in the club or music came to close to its source within him, some special folks could always see the incongruity that he produced in the known world. Human vision can always pick out the anomaly, the perfectly straight line or the glint of metal in nature. He was eight dimensions in a 3D world and the sloshing of warped vitiate was eroding his inner man.
Despite every fiber of his being speaking to the appositional knowledge that he always knew he would amount to something, the rigors of being him and the barrage of uncertainty or downright hatred from his contemporaries left him in serious doubt as to the validity of any of it. To believe others, to believe himself, to look at history as a life-worth barometer; all of it seemed pretty weak, insubstantial and alleged. Yet he walked with his head down, overindulged at every occasion and cut his upper thighs and licked at the blood.
Mama I’m in love with him, oh how many mother-teenaged Juliet talks begin this way. A Great man once said,“There is something depressing about it and it’s not really about dogs. Except for some superficial bow-wow stuff at the start, the dogs all represent human types which is where it gets into real trouble. Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy blond cocker spaniel with absolutely nothing on the brain. She’s great looking but, let’s be honest, incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind, an oily jail bird out for a piece of tail or whatever he can get. No, he’s a self confessed chicken thief; an all around sleaze ball. What’s the function of a film of this kind? Essentially it’s a primer about love and marriage directed at very young people, imprinting on their little psyches that smooth talking delinquents recently escaped from the local pound are a good match for nice girls in sheltered homes. When in ten years the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house their hormones will be racing and no one will understand why. Films like this program women to adore jerks.”
This may be true and when Marlie-Alex said this to her mother regarding Devin James Boudreaux, her father sitting in the hunting room down the hall could only think how much he hated Walt Damned Disney. Devin wasn't a bad kid, but his family was poor and he had very little hope of ever getting out of his older brothers hand me down tennis shoes. Sneakers he thought to himself, only coloreds, boys playing sports and hospital doctors should be wearing tennis shoes and none of them should be calling em sneakers. Sneakers… damnation.
Devin
When the weight of the world was felt he let it linger, the grit into his shoulder, rawity and servitude, pressure then stepped out from beneath it. The greatest successes are, in terms of character, always the greatest losers he loved to say, for even if they make it back to normalcy, to quantify it, they have gone farther than a fair to middlin’ personality staying right there. Oh you have a job, oh you have a kid, a dog, have erected an adult Lego set around it all…and…I mean who fucking doesn’t. Let’s give that same Joe Blow a sociopathic tendency and a terrible smack habit and see how he fairs, odds are he’ll step in front of a train or eat some high powered rat poison because his character is weak. This isn’t demonizing suicide , for I believe that’s a legitimate option for those who possess a depth to see beyond this carnal plane, circumstance be damned. But don’t do it because you’re stuck, do it cause you aint and want to be more free. Character hasn’t a thing to do with not stealing or cheating at cards, or fingering the girl passed out from drink, it has nothing to do with the obsession for blood or dope, whether or not you like to sleep with boys or girls or cattle for that matter. It is the capacity for change. If entropy be our fate then the moral, psychic, or spiritual gains against it be our salvation.
Devin was such a person, capable but reticent, like the land he leaped from; willing to be made willing but unsure of what it looked like and confused because she loved him for who he was and yet spoke almost exclusively of who they would be. Am and could. Is and would. The consideration of it gave him a headache and most days like today he walked into his momma’s room and ate some of her confusion pills to help out.
In the long line of druggies and drunks that came afor him Devin could be considered a lightweight but the depth of his soul could be seen in his iris’s and when he was high, everyone knew. There is a sadness that can be seen in extraordinarily brilliant eyes when their owners are fucked up. Though speech and mannerisms and function be the same…something is off. The human eye is capable of picking up on the slightest thing out of place. Devin was always kind of out of place and disliked for it.
Marlie-Alex
I have been crazy. Psychosis scared everyone. For me it was just another day, another wave, frenetic diffidence of sense and time. I imagine suicide is Godly, not God is suicide, for that marker is now 8 months past but that the hammer thumbed back day to day by the best of us is allowed by the Godly to ‘molon labe’.
With our initial interview over I looked at her through clear Brooks Brothers lenses, then over them. “OK.”
She looked cold, they all did. The face sheet said arrested for arson. “Did it.” lipped LeBlanc through the black screen worn so with the repetition of caress from hands damned. Willing twernt a word gave much ’tention he hummed to himself, spitting smarmily and with all the aplomb of the entitled stupid. LeBlanc picked up on the eye fucking they were doing, as cops will do. “She done cud herself all up, what dem girls call ye…uhh…hell yeah cudders.”
“What like a cow, she a little bit, that don’t fly. Chewing the cud, don’t make not a dern bit a cotton-picken sense.”
Berietta heard it all, even the caustic thoughts and rough eye licks. Though one of “her Kind” she prayed to God regularly, “Lord a hand grenade, an RPG, a sharp pencil!” Berr realized she was probably gonna start rightly going insane rather quickly…pretty…pretty crazy. This left her released of the occupation of most humans which was to obsess about self. It was much like a Changeling or werewolf, her consciousness was a’leavin and someone else was a’coming. She knew they wouldn’t kill her and briefly wondered who she really was, a gosh dern shame not to know who a soul was. One that would fall down like ancient stones but that no academicians and alien theorists would discuss or write on, cause no one cared.
Bradley
Bradley-Block held the analyst head under the water again. Perhaps a minute, who really counted anymore, it was all available on an app. He hated to count. Maslow, Freud, White, James, Jung, Glaser, Spitzer, Tanner, Glaser, Pinel, Beck, Amen, Ablow, Frankl ad nauseum. His lists were long enough not to be considered comprehensive or boring but with enough syllables to make sure that this fucker believed he was going to die. He had killed before and it was always a spin on the roulette wheel of others lives to see if he would add to that lauded number.
In the Frame of a life depth is illusory. An illusion based on the capacity to explain or create what depth feels like and the apparition is applauded, sent to the psych ward or believed to be an intrinsic flaw or qualifier in great intellect. There may very well be some retards or neurologically damaged folks who are within the bounds of testing for normalcy or perhaps not..Perhaps the testing is the proof we should all recognize that we are scared, scared to death of one another.
Moore says, “If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.” The fact that Scooby Doo uncovered daily that monsters are in fact men is amazing, because to this day only a portion of us believe that despite definitive and human long evidence. Everyday she looked in the mirror she was horrified by the realization that she was exactly the same as every other day. Weight was neither gained nor lost, black eyes came and went without notice or affect and her for keeping secrets was immeasurable. At some point she became unaware, like the secrets didnt exist, she worried if she was in a state of anti-grace or Enantiodromia. Who could say, who could qualify what was hidden from all. Dividends she felt was being paid to her for a secret touches that place betwixt the spiritual heart and ones taint.
Devin
Devin was such a person, capable but reticent, like the land he leaped from...willing to be made willing but unsure of what it looked like and confused because she loved him for who he was and yet spoke almost exclusively of who they would be. Am and could. Is and would. The consideration of it gave him a headache and most days like today he walked into his momma’s room and ate some of her confusion pills to help out.
In the long line of druggies and drunks that came afor him Devin could be considered a lightweight but the depth of his soul could be seen in his irises and when he was high, everyone knew. There is a sadness that can be seen in extraordinarily brilliant eyes when their owners are fucked up. though speech and mannerisms and function be the same…something is off. The human eye is capable of picking up on the slightest thing out of place.
Bradley-Block, for that was his full first name loved the intricate feeling of loving an intricate feeling. sure as ever that no one had ever so much as looked at the still cold black pool that was his impression of the world at large or the minutia in general. Unfortunately for Bradley he heard voices and saw visions and was seen and heard in turn by these same entities. Tonight they were discussing his best friend, discussing whether or not he was up to snuff for some type of job. Bends was a sick sick boy and though Bradley wasn’t in the slightest bit religious he instinctively knew that at least one of these creatures talking was an angel, after all it had wings and was shiny.
MICHAEL: Hosanna, Bless the Lord. Praises to Elohim, in the Highest. Is he ready Lord? Is the wheat ripened and the man of your choosing prepared
for his task, for his deluge into evil?
FATHER: All is hand for the Sons glory. Your work continues.
PETER: What preparation does this goy have, this one, infested with evil as he is, a
man unto himself, loved by none, for no one, no family, no ecclesiastica, no
no family. He is double-souled, sinking into himself with leprosy.
DAVID: Lord Master Holy One Righteous One must we put what is so precious to
us in the hands of a landless Gentile?
Enter JESUS: Peter am I striving against you still? David have I not broken down the middle wall of partition? Have I not taken care of your nature, your endless questionings, your genealogical murmurings? This one is as precious to me as all of you sitting here with me today? Is Stephen here with you? Is John? Is Isaac here? Some would still wrestle with my choice? Is it not mine, has it not been written in the Book of Life? Am I not GOD? I came for the world little ones. I came for the world generally and for this one particularly. Paul knows this well and Noah and Elijah. When a tool is built a job is in the craftsman mind and a finished work in his heart. He is a tool for Me, for us, my Church, my bride of which you are a part. This one has been formed now he is being filled and soon he shall be poured out. Kenosis of an evil, dexiotites for the ecclesia.
Ben and Bradley were circling evils. Like opposing magnets it was almost as if they couldn’t be too close but because of the opposing forces were always aware that they were being pushed and neither of them cared to be pushed. Devin was without a doubt more evil than either of them, but in a more subversive and less overt manner. He poisoned, he lied almost constantly, he sent letters with legal and medical information to people with no business reading it and only a portion of it true. He burned things and spiked peoples drinks with hallucinogens. Devin was a biter an abuser of kids/dogs, song bird shooter and elderly abductor. To Bradley watching him was like watching a unicorn and hearing the God of the universe speaking of him in such glowing terms was surly a wonderful golden thread added to the tapestry of boring brown. He read Anton Levay’s book and it backed up every single thing that he realized was true. Up was down, good was bad, evil was purity and Hedonism was the way to heaven.
Marlie-Alex
How it happened meant little to them. How, who the fuck cares about how. Most are possessed of the obsession to believe the finder and the seeker are the same when “how” they are different can only be answered with the source code question of “How”. As she sat in the process group, processing the iron deficiency in her nails and leaping to substantive conclusions with regards to her organs or at least an organ, she considered the intrinsic truths circling how, like fins lurching and retreating into the shadows. How, how indeed. She only cared about now and her know was back in Rhymesville and she was cooped up in this shithole all because of a fire.
The fire had been an accident, drugs, yes there were drugs and strippers, well of course there were strippers, was she drunk and whipping about a blow torch when her lover had thrown a punch and the room erupted in flame. She was blamed and never would say anything more than it was an accident. Of course Marlie didn’t believe that. she knew she had been judged, judged by fire.
Devin had opened windows at either side of the house to allow for a slipstream of air, a current to move through as he began lighting things. He wanted to kill some of them.
The word for Church is derived from the Old English and Germanic roots in the form of the word ‘kirke’. Strongly and with no small bit of irony kirke is derived from the Babylonian godess Circe and means circle. So church, stemming form the Old English could be construed as a circle of Pagan worshippers worshipping the Sun or Sun Goddess. Yes, Pagans were the church before Christians.
The Psychiatrist
Well that was me and I had the good pleasure of knowing all three boys and the young girl. I am a Jew and a Christian but no more one than the other, which I found out during the time of trial was unacceptable as a living sacrifice to the god of the Universe. Not Hell but hell on earth was my portion to eat and everything I thought I knew acted against me. It was Devin in all his wretchedness that saved us, unchanging-like Elohim Himself, the world closed in like water around him, like to universe to the sun. He was never required to change because everything else did. Everyone is dying now and the beasts’ men are closing in on us but I will finish my scribble, knowing firmly it will burn like all else for we are all in the shadow of the New Jerusalem. Blotting out the sun, it comes down and we will all be with Him then, Him who for a time forsook us and left us in the hands of a sociopathic man after His own heart.
In the end it was very hard to differentiate between good and bad, fleshly and survival. Most of the world was gone, either dead or raptured, tribulation was being vigorously applied and the Spirit of God had left this place in a rush of wind and a cold stale reverberating illness was left, hovering over the death-waters, land and remaining-life. Left-behind…no sir, we were being proofed, smelted, refined “so as with fire” and every step was the hardest one we’d ever taken. Being able to become invisible was enough to even it out.
The first nuclear bomb had fallen in India. From there who really cared. After 3.5 years of peace Israel was being smothered and by the World Unity League, which was the sown together dead parts of NATO, EU, WTO and the UN and headed up by the New Roman Catholic Church. The Great Quake, the Deluge and Isons Impact had made most of the Earth uninhabitable and temperature was either 100 plus or -40. Animals were bigger, more aggressive and alien to our sensibilities, as they seemed to adore human flesh.
The three of them were established. Bonafide as Christians at an early age yet everyone saw it as part of the script not a part of the reality. Reading lines not a pulse. Praying in the mirror. At different times in their lives, the landscape foreign or their reaction to it foreign, they were carted off to see me in Mornwoe the Parish Seat some 30 miles out of Rhymesville. The notes on their first visits and all subsequent visits are now lost but the memories are as indelible to me as the smell of a Paw-paw plants, somehow attractive rotten meat.
Marlie
Petite, pre-naturally sexual, sly, defiant, angry, glib, a tremendous liar, an abuser of substances, frequent arrests by Sheriff, perfect school attendance, sleeping disturbances that made her afraid of sleep-almost superstitiously so, a rabid appetite, green eyes and black hair with freckles, from a good family-gentlemen farmers, perfect manners, chewed tobacco, blatant and radical racist, reader of Science Fiction and fantasy exclusively which she masturbated to with vegetables that she gave to the poor. Our initial interview in which she laid out her insanity as an offensive action against the world, not defending herself at all was like a cool drink of Dr. Pepper, fresh out of the can. All i could think about was how to get this precious person back into my office and into my fold for good.
Devin jumped very frequently from mild annoyance to a small determined resignation that damn he was gonna have to kill someone, similar to a decision to buy a sweet tea. He picked up Marlie from the state run rehab near Mandeville, called Fountainbleu. Giant gates led through the grounds, perfectly manicured by the prisoners from a satalite camp outta Angola. the buildings were red brick in dire need of a pressure washer and the swimming pool was empty. To Devin it looked like a boys camp, but of course he had never been to one so it was a movie creation and all he ever watched was horror and 80’s musicals. the idea of a boys camp put him in a bad mood right off. he firmly believed that girls were simple little thangs that were barely capable of saying no. Never in his life had he heard a no when trying to get in a girls britches, he wondered briefly what rape was. Really looked like. Really sounded like. He couldn't fathom it. Why would any good ol boy have to rape someone when all you had to do was just take it, just get in there and show em what a man was all about. Bradley was in the back seat fiddlin with something and it annoyed him to no end that he “driving miss daisy” like some nigger. All around the huge ground clumps of people could be seen walking and smoking, in various light greys and blues, some sort of smocks or moo-moo dresses he reckoned. Fountainbleu was multi-purpose facility, housing the disabled, loons and the druggies. He related its history to Bradley as he drove around the back, early and looking for Marlie to be saying goodbye to whatever boy-toy she had picked up while here.
“Fontblue was originally designed to house Governor Jimsons youngest son back in 1856, the boy had a damn near impossible case of the slobber and moans and back then it twernt the thing to have a son at couldn’t act right. His wife was a sweet lady though and wanted to keep him in the state but not in BR. Jimson up and built this here place as a kind of boys camp. Looks like a boys camp dont it. Kind of fun and lots a room to run around and whatnot. That swimming pool I imagine was a great tado back en. Well the boy up and got snake bit and they had to remove a leg. Jimson decided with the help of some slick New Orleanians to make this a proper handicapped facility. Ship em in from outta state, collect money from other states and keep our own retards and cripples here.”
He looked in the mirror and smiled, knowing full well that Bradley had a cousin that he humped who was some sort of “slow”. He reckoned hed catch a rise outta him and was hoping for it as he wanted to fight with something. Kicking ass while invisible was right up there with beer, SEC football and shooting a big buck.
The young soul beyond elevation and bereft of thought, sought out violence in place of dreams. The story of his time in temperance, lacking resolve, ever trying to lick at the blood that caressed his fingertips was my brother. He was the tie that bound Everyman to his unique shadow, the ministerial meniscus that seems to long so for its own demise like so many he had to die for anyone to know that he was love. The very stuff of it. Asked once what made him the Devil he just smiled in absolution. He just grinned and told me he had love songs in his head. His eyes shown and with an air of chagrin, he said he was to save the world. I swore with his passing to tie some phrases together. To give him some purpose in life, rather than death. As I put pen to paper, an owl called in the screaming silence… prince of the night and I knew I could never articulate the roots of any life much less one so simple. It is beyond utterance. For the smallness of words, the frailty of speech were the seeds of his sadness. His love for us was Gagged Divinity. His love of those feelings in ones chest that claim all but touch and sight. Flesh to flesh. Eyes feasting for return, for something familiar. He was a hero, an invisible love hero.
So here it is, the story of words…hoping to be found, to be unobtrusively orchestrated into an ode to my brother.
On a warm September night, unseasonably warm, the wealthy young soldier on furlough came home to a quite distressing affair. A rabid dog, or a dog at least, had attacked his wife and she was quite dead. These things happen, seemed to the sentiment among his neighbors and the case was quickly dismissed by the authorities. The dog was never found, determination of ownership uncertain.
The matter may have been put to rest if the husband had not made the incident the focus of his existence. Having been the first to see the ravaged remains, the Corpsman did what most grieving husbands do…he had bloody disjointed sex with the deceased. The act was quick and terrible, both gleaming with bodily fluids and serenaded by the one piece noise machine; all the while being objectified by the neighborhood dog walker…little Graham Tallen. The tears in his eyes were little diamonds of joy, his face flushed with amorous longing
With the resolve and patience of a good southern soldier Francis waited until his better half was buried to start his obsessive revenge. Within a week he had murdered every dog in the community and put Graham out of business. In the wake of this development, the young entrepreneur decided on a duel course of action. First, to catch the man who took his job, then to teach everyone he knew about the glorious art of love.
So Graham went work. To determine the killer, the young sleuth snuck out night after night dressed in his mothers fur, knee pads and socks taped to his head. Striking out in his pursuits and stirring up the neighborhood rumor mill with stories of a bear, Graham finally asked his mother. Mrs. Tallen told him that more than likely it was their neighbor, the soldier that had lost his wife in the “accident.” To Graham, who knew better than his mother the love that this man had…real love, the connecting kind, this sounded like utter nonsense.
“That cannot be the case mother.” Said the wise and precocious boy-man fully aware of his loved ones lack of personal knowledge. Without informing her beyond the scope of the conversation, he described the love he claimed to have information about.
“Mother, he went to war for America…would you do that? He was a hero, he loved this country. He loved dogs too Mom, I remember him petting all of ’em when he would jog by. “
“Well, Graham sometimes things aren’t always as clear as they might first seem. The man was a warrior, a soldier and often when men come back from battles, they have changed. They are accustomed to violence and see it as a way of resolving problems.”
“Mom, its not just that, I knew him much better than you.”
The hand, that had before been deftly placing wildflowers in an arrangement, stopped.
Her face concerned, “How is it that you know this man so well? Has he done something to you.”
Seeing the conversation was heading in an unexpected direction, he decided to leave quickly, under his breath claiming that the man had taught him about true love.
The next part of his plan was better thought out. Being out of a job had put a damper on his eight year old extravagant cost of living and he determined to rectify this through teaching…teaching love. The very next day he went to work again, bringing his compatriots together behind the Carlson’s guesthouse. Graham was intensively strategic about this, determining that he needed to offer a service to those that needed and deserved it. Graham the teacher.
Jerod
The little light spoke to him in clicks and blips, some sort of Morse code developed in the rainy night in which he stood transfixed, visage upward wet and seeking transfiguration. It played out a story beyond his own frail experience…of a face of abject regret that thru stains and halos developed a soundtrack only heard by him. The light though traditional and common had a voice that should have been heard and announced by better people than he. It was an aria, declaring a beautiful truth of a cause no one would ever understand… unless he told it. Unless he wrote it. Unless he could grasp its yonderness, its beyond and hold on…hold until his shaking hand could scratch it out. The rain was in his eyes now and the glow seemed farther away, harder to listen to. Then he was force-fed back into the maw of the sooted sky, the windswept candy wrapper, the grit in the crook of his arm, his breathless sucking, the stillness of his blood; back into the violated womb of normalcy. His Negro girlfriend was standing, legs splayed in resolute fashion awaiting him, always waiting for him like a good n..NO. He hated himself for thinking that, for those words that bit at his redundant vernacular, at the existence of that thought…but it was so descriptive as to not require much else. It enveloped everything and nothing and for this he loved it. He kissed her chin and her nose, took her by the elbow and said quite valiantly, he thought, “Let all these things that stray in thought and mind be gone and shall we dine?” The Cuban restaurant was cool bordering on cold as they entered. The stark contrast of the lights on skin, belayed lack of emotive response. Individuals whom in any other light would have been glib, were not here. Untreatably balancing the here and now with sustenance, the spork to the bitten nail. Waiting to wait. The eating went on without incident save their similar yet mutually exclusive expressions of something unsaid…
He couldn’t wait to get home and become invisible.
The lessons learned behind the Carlson’s guest house began and ended on that first day, at least formally, though Graham out of some sense of entitlement kept receiving payments from his class. When asked later, to describe the payments the tutored would dismiss it viciously, then after moments of alien remembrance, mention some sort of abstractions with an all too casual wave of their hand. Grahams first day as a teacher, not his last. For it was Graham that realized invisibility and taught the others.
The neighborhood, Blistering Oaks, was the type of subdivision that caused ‘division’ to be apropos. On the lofty shores of the Pearl River she sat; stately, sad, and alone overlooking the city…picking her teeth. The children were well cared for and developed into the usual menagerie of attainment. Into this well of knighted upwardly mobile rabbits came Grahams Brigade. They were not a formal gang even in the most untraditional fashion. Nor as in some was there any one incident that united them or drew from them any common denominator. Not all were Grahams initial students, nor were even aware of the necrophilia influence. Simply said it was just a bad bunch…all bad, no redeeming qualities, save maybe well dressed and the invisibility thing. The rapes that were to later distinguish them into a grouping of sorts…a mob of aware and approving individual parts were only dreams at this junction, just magnanimous and effortless dangles of space and time.
Stuart
Stuart was not bright, nor prolific in any arena save physical manifestations. He could not stop himself from doing anJames
Jeremy Allen James could neither conceptualize tomorrow nor cared to. The intent of every moment of every day was to find ways to make it last forever. Sleep was the enemy, the bane of his driven verve. He began to have sex with dolls before his penis could achieve erection. Ejaculating blood and verjuice from friction wounds on the sides of his member, his lovers… the dolls of his sister and their hard plastic inner thighs. In the beginning this was enough to satiate the whirling peculiarities and verities that he stewed in, but as he grew his lust kept up. James spent long hours deliberating the minutiae of peoples expressions. He strove to catch things that related to sex or violence…for he instinctively knew that these were related. He saw it daily, in everything he laid his eyes upon. Lust. Punching and Fucking at once. The grandfather he lived with, Dr. Blain Daughtry James, had never taken a wife, but had live-in girlfriends whom he inseminated and had children with. James never knew his mother or his father and it was often supposed that the doctor was in fact his dad.
He tried everything, the area where most people say no was just grayish to him and he loved grey. He had a mustache and had been raping his mother's maid by 11...before he learned to be invisible. On the night Graham described what he had seen, Stuart felt as if someone had given him a life supply of candy. On his own he never could have even conceived of such a wonderful thing…bloody hugging and rubbing. He was the last to learn how to disappear and the first to die as a result.