Louts of the Carroway, Part 1

“This is just what they told me it was like before they got me. Took me really, but got works, too. I’ll do my best. There is a gun to my head after all, ha-ha.”

There is a camera in front of me. Emanating from that camera is a red dot, indicating that the camera is indeed on, and that I am indeed being projected onto its tape. Behind that camera, a piercing light, indicating that the room is far too dark to film without it, and for whatever reason, my face must be shown. To whom? I have no idea, but I surely do hope it’s to newly appointed members of government, hopefully of a powerful country, like the United States. Maybe it will teach them what a difficult job they have, what with having to deal with foreign – ahem – dignitaries all the time. Maybe it will force them to resign on the spot. Any resignation of an American government official counts as a win to me.

I have two red streaks across my lips which remind me of comets, and I can only see them because of the turned-around-already view finder. It’s where they pulled the duct tape off. Just above the camera is a fluffy microphone, which means that they want to hear my beautiful singing voice, ha-ha.

Beside me is a man in all white (and they are all in all white, jumpsuits, I mean) holding a .44 caliber Revolver, an impossibly loud firearm, to my temple. Is it weird that I do asides to myself?

I keep saying they. Well, I don’t know who “THEY” are, so what do you want? Welcome to internal projection, Si. Si is me. Why do I have to remind myself of that? I, without my face, sigh, which sounds a lot like my name. I internally (and eternally) am sigh. Hey, I’m Si. I fucking know, drop it.

One of the they stepped out from behind the light and his shadow stretched along the walls. His god damned mustache, so long and sinister, breaching the rest of the dark in bristles of silver and shimmering brown. I shivered with envy.

“Go,” is all he said. I nodded.

***

Falkum yelled,

“You scaves get back to your huts and your wives – continue to stare up into your ceilings of straw and mud, and continue to heal your wounds with marjoram and eucalyptus. We will continue to do the same, with our plastered ceilings and glass windows, and wounds healed with bandage and injection – I assure you we will, louts of the Carroway, devils of the East!” She laughed and laughed.

Heading East on the Carroway River – a band of four with scarves blanketing their rusted throats, fingers of bitter men and their tongues and eyes, too, tucked into pockets and belts, sticking out and peeling to the skin like leeches. They used to be more than that,  improper parts rubbing into an infested organ, sticking there without interference. Even the strongest gust would not send these once integral parts away from the boots and straps and leather bellies they are now manifestly attached to. Or so they thought (dun, dun, dun).

These women are mean, but the Carroway is meaner.

It is meaner than most women.

It is meaner than Falkum and Skibbet and Melbourne and Moira.

To the right of them, the starved men, the tribes, those with the painted faces. Pieces of hollowed out tusk pierced into their ears and bosoms, tucked up sometimes in places unheard of. The men run along side the poorly made raft, salivating, the lot of them prancing into the water and picking on the four civilized women, splashing and jerking the raft around – sometimes benevolently, sometimes maliciously – and soon the play evolves. Skibbet is scratched. It draws blood. I imagine her snapping her fingers and cocking her head back and forth, “nuh-uh, dude, nuh-uh.”

Melbourne, skinny, blonde, smart, tugged by the ankle until vertical, Moira next to her already flipping, her weight and metal boots sinking into the raft, sort of like a fist through Play-Doh.   The raft tips and I’m sure you can hear Falkum cussing somewhere in there, just a “fuck” and a “cunt” (she really doesn’t mind the word – really!) in a torrent of good ol’ H20.

The foursome plop into the water and scramble around until they peek their precious heads above the water, bodies now sopping, the small amount of gear and gathered food (and the glory parts from aforementioned kills) they do have carried away under the current, into the mouths of the fishes and fresh water urchins – gone forever.

Most of the painted men have already retreated by now from the site of the incident, mistaking it for a pleasant romp on the beach, but there are still these two fucking guys staring Melbourne down. I mean, I get it, blondes are going extinct (is that even true?), but she’s not even the prettiest one. But I guess these guys don’t see a lot of blondes around, so they were obviously gunning it out for her -

“Wait a minute,” said mustache.

“Yeah?”

“You were so poetic before and now you’re just explaining it to me.”

“Oh, well I guess you’re right. So do you want to know what happened or do you want to hear a pretty story?”

A giganto-fucking-fist right into my mouth. If you sing it, it feels better. A … drums and lights and the stadium cheering … a … Gi-ganto Fu-cking-fist, rightintotthesideofmymouthithurtslikehellohmygod. Obviously falsetto.

“Both. And you’re fucking up your tenses.”

“Okay,” as I’m spitting out a tooth.

***

So they were obviously gunning for Melbourne, the pretty blonde Austrian, not to be confused with Australian, because Melbourne, the city, is in Australia. I can see why you guys could get confused by that. Anyway, Melbourne is just standing there, waist deep in the water, getting towered over by these seven foot guys with arms as big as my entire body. Now, when you get to know these girls, what happens next isn’t exactly surprising. It’s the exact opposite, which is to say it’s entirely expected.

Falkum reaches hurriedly down her pants and lets out a scream of (and I’m not sure here, because the way it was explained leads me to believe it’s both) elation and horror,  revealing her pocket pussy, a handgun which can fire up to four bullets. She plants two each in their heads and they all waddle to shore. Wonderfully badass, right? (When they told me that some women use their pussies as equivalents to kangaroo pouches, my mind reeled with probable analogies between human females and marsupials – of any sex.)

“But I wanted those fingers, I wanted those eyes, I wanted the pieces of flesh and rib and bone.”

“And I wanted to be on the front lines, Falkum. I wanted to not be lookin’ for a damn factory, but ‘eer I am, and ‘eer I’ll probably remain. With no shit, now, no less, with these painted fucks mingling around us with their cocks out and fanny’s drippin.”

“Engineer before the factories. Get it right, shit.”

“Looks like your fanny is dripping right now, Skibbet.”

“Fuck your cunt of a mother, Moira.”

When I think of it, not one of the ladies really has any problem using the worst words available.

“I don’t really see how that’s relevant.”

“The mother or the cunt part?” asked Melbourne.

“The mother part.”

“Yeah, the cunt part can stay.”

“Fuck your cunt, Moira,” said Skibbet.

“Dinner first.”

“Fuck your mouth, Moira.”

“I have a feeling that’d be worse for you than it would be for me. I haven’t brushed my teeth in days.”

The painted men were staring at this point, at both the girls and their two best warriors (probably, how would I know if they were actually their best warriors?), probably in shock and trying to figure out what the proper, traditional, most-likely-stupid thing to do would be in that exact situation. I’m sure somewhere in their tenants it says something about a woman killing a man with a handgun small enough to fit in a pussy, albeit a large one.

Still, I doubt intense staring is anywhere in the bylaws, guys. Come on.

The two big guys (I was told, which from now on I won’t be using, because it’s superfluous) looked like two face down seven foot guys streaming down one of the softer parts of an unusually less-than-calm-spot-of-river, which is the extremely roundabout, confusing version of saying, “they looked exactly as they should have, the dead fucks.”

“Looks like it’s just our wits and ourselves, ladies,” said Falkum, and she dashed into the nearby foliage. Skibbet, Melbourne and Moira followed closely.

The painted men stared.

***

The ladies were around my shack already at this point. It’s about two miles south of the painted men enclave and it always struck me odd that they did not get electricity, because half of my work could not have been conducted without it. I wouldn’t have been able to have twenty four monitors or any computers at all. Perhaps they do get electricity and choose to live without it. Perhaps they do have electricity somewhere and use it for things outside of electronics, which seems wasteful, because I am pretty sure that’s where that word stems from.

As a little brief aside to myself, because I am so god damned nervous and panting on the inside, I will now list the date, time, year, my social security number, my name (again – wait, is this an aside aside? For the love of god, off track is my middle name [it's really not]), the total number of women I’ve had sex with, the number of women I’ve had sex with this year, my occupation, the country I am in, the country I was born in, the names of both my mother and father, the name of my all-time favorite dish and the corrupt goings-on of everything:

July5th8:03pm20501002074932SilasPhillipLansingSi for short6, 1,electrical engineer,asemi-remoteislandwithnonameabout900kilometersfromIndiasomewhereinthe NicobarIslandChain, The United States, Dana and Phillip the third,shrimp,lobster,musselsandcuttlefishcombinewithwhitericeandvariousherbsoilandsalt, no bombs no planes no soldiers dying, no scrapes no bruises no mothers cryin’. But lets just say that the Earth sucked us up, even though it really didn’t. It wasn’t a reckoning because God wouldn’t have done that, but really he would have if you read the books. But it wasn’t that – I don’t know what it was – but there was once billions and now there’s not even millions and for once it wasn’t incompetence and for once it wasn’t us. But it wasn’t divine intervention, either. Whatever that is, because they all still died. They didn’t get back up, either. It wasn’t a plague, it was a slaughter. It wasn’t a plague because the symptoms weren’t the same, unless the similarity of death is enough to diagnose disease. But it’s not. Some kind of biological time bomb went off in the human species. Some of our hearts exploded out of our chests, some our brains died from the worst diseases we’ve ever seen – outweighing cancers by tons. It was the rich and poor man’s disease. It was the white and black and brown man’s disease. It took no form and had no name because it was not a singular thing. But some call it a wave. A wave of unknown force and unknown origin. Specific to humanity, so it assumes humanity is the origin. But why would humanity plant a bomb on itself? One that is a bomb in one place and a stabbing in the next and a gun in another and a hanging this time and a strangling that time? We all died, simple as that. Some of us cared, like the ladies, who joined up with the only organization that both simultaneously cared and didn’t care, which is the only type of caring that could possibly happen after a crisis like this – an international organization by the name of SprightsBreath, sprights being mythical creatures associated with liveliness, which is just dandy. They aren’t a government, more like a faction. A splinter-group of once-government. A sub-division of people who actually give a fuck. But it’d be silly to assume that the people in the organization, any of its members, have any choice or freedom or will at all. They are simply pointed in a direction and told a command.

“North, resources.”

“South, factories.”

“East, settlements.”

“More North, technology.”

And so that’s what the ladies are – Scouts of SprightsBreath, going South, looking for a factory. One which they did not have the expertise to get into. A whole new interface. I’ll give you one guess who built that interface. 

***

The Fleshes

Disclaimer: This is a completed rough draft of a project I began working on years ago that I never finished. I had about three pages. Recently, I decided to pick it up again and flesh it out. It’s not even formatted close to correctly, but that’s okay, as it’s a direct conversion from Celtx. It’s hard as shit to read in this format, but that’s okay, too.

In my opinion, I have never written anything weirder or harder in my life. Every character is an anti-hero and unlikable, thus the challenge was to make them identifiable. Hopefully I did.

INT. EDMOND’S CAR – DAY – PRESENT

EDMOND FLESH is driving his car along a relatively deserted plot of land, whistling a happy tune while A MAN in the back seat with an obvious flesh wound in his stomach, bound and gagged, is kicking and screaming. EDMOND’s cell phone rings and he answers it cheerily.

EDMOND:

Hey honey bun! How are you on this most beautiful of days?

SHARON (V.O):

Hello my sweetest heart, just checking in on you – seeing how everything is going.

The man in the backseat is kicking harder now at the glass, attempting to exit the moving vehicle. He is screaming for his life through a couple inches of duct tape.

EDMOND:

Dimple, will you hold on a minute?

Edmond puts the phone on the dashboard and withdraws a fantastically large bowie knife from the glove compartment. He turns around and repeatedly stabs the man while still driving the car. Once the man finally stops squirming, Edmond picks up his cell phone.

SHARON (V.O)

Everything all right, my dearest?

EDMOND:

It couldn’t be any peachier, dimple. Has the baby been giving you trouble lately?

SHARON (V.O)

He’s been a little devil today – he’ll be popping out soon, I can feel it. Have you picked up dinner yet?

EDMOND:

Of course I did, sweet pea. He’s in the backseat right now.

TITLE SCREEN “THE FLESHES”

INT. NATHAN FLESH’S HOUSE – DAY – PRESENT

NATHAN FLESH and his wife, ROBIN FLESH, are sitting on the couch in nice, upper middle class clothing, NATHAN’s arm delicately draped over ROBIN’s shoulder. Both are holding wine glasses full of red liquid. Both are looking into the camera.

NATHAN:

Robin and I met – what is it – two three years ago now, in Italy. We were both on vacation, enjoying our lives independent of one another, and to make one of the longest stories of my life very short, I met her on the beach and courted her to the best of my ability. And here we are.

Nathan and Robin both laugh merrily.

ROBIN:

Nathan was convincingly charming when we first met, but not without his quirks. When he told me he converted to cannibalism on his seventeenth birthday I was initially appalled. I was stunned and scared and didn’t know what to think, really. I mean, this man ate humans – and enjoyed it! How am I supposed to be with someone like that?

NATHAN:

This was before she ever tasted a human liver. People frown on cannibalism, but, really, you haven’t done yourself or your tastebuds a favor until you’ve eaten a human liver with some fresh basil and paprika. Oh, magnifico!

ROBIN:

And just like that I converted. I mean, so what if the man of my dreams happens to eat a little human flesh? I am open to new things. Why dismiss something because society tells me it’s wrong?

NATHAN:

That’s word for word what I told her in Italy. On our first date I took her to my suite and prepared this guy I just killed. She was absolutely crazy over the pancreas and liver, which were both lightly charred, just enough black around the edges. She didn’t care too much for the intestines, though, but they’re an acquired taste, really. Terribly chewy if prepared improperly.

ROBIN:

It was the most romantic night of my life.

Nathan and Robin both smile at the camera and eskimo kiss one another in a cutesy fashion.

INT. EDMOND’S BASEMENT – EARLY EVENING

Edmond is in his basement with a knife in his hand and the man from the car lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Sharon walks down the stairs to examine the situation.

SHARON:

Oh Edmond, you’ve got to be more careful, look at all that blood you’ve wasted. Stop stabbing people in the stomach, he’s leaking like a broken sink.

EDMOND:

Not to fret, Sharon, he’s got plenty of blood to go around. I’m thinking heart, brain, kidneys and intestines tonight?

SHARON:

Oh you know Robin can’t stand the intestines, Ed. Lets save them for another night.

EDMOND:

Silly me, silly me. How forgetful I can be at times. Sometimes I forget I even have a brother, dimple.

SHARON:

You have two brothers, Ed.

Edmond smiles and takes a swift hack with a hatchet at the head of the recently deceased man. The doorbell rings and Sharon runs upstairs.

INT. EDMOND’s ENTRANCE HALLWAY – EVENING

Sharon, Robin and Nathan all enter the house, engaging in small talk and removing their coats. Edmond appears from the stairs with blood all over him.

EDMOND:

Baby brother!

Edmond and Nathan run at one another and hug. Blood is smeared all over Nathan’s hands and shirt. He wipes it and licks his fingers.

NATHAN:

How are you, big brother?

EDMOND:

Absolutely grand, Nathan. Want to see the meal for tonight? Big fella, picked him up by the train. Don’t think anyone’s going to miss him.

NATHAN:

What’s on the menu for tonight? No intestines, right? Because Robin can’t stand intestines.

They all laugh.

EDMOND:

Brains, heart and kidneys. I’m going to wrap them all in skin and then bake them.

NATHAN:

You should wrap it in skin, but instead of baking it you should – get this – broil it. It’ll really capture the natural flavors that way.

EDMOND:

Always knew you had the cooking gene in you, little brother. We should have you over more often.

INT. EDMOND’S DINING ROOM – EVENING

The foursome are sitting at the dinner table in dim lighting, full plates of gore mashed in front of them. They are all eating politely, using the correct silverware for various portions of the meal and all of them have napkins tucked into their necks.

ROBIN:

So when is the baby due again, Sharon? You look like you’re going to explode any second.

SHARON:

If I did that you all would probably just eat me.

NATHAN:

Amen. Can’t let someone as savory as Sharon go to waste.

SHARON:

The baby is due in a couple of weeks, Robin. I feel like a blimp.

ROBIN:

You’re the prettiest zeppelin in the world, Sharon.

SHARON:

You’re the sweetest, Robin. I am a little worried, though, what with all the savory blood exiting my vaginal cavity. I’m not sure if my morals conflict with tasting my own vaginal blood.

EDMOND:

Oh please, Sharon. Even some people who haven’t indulged in our exquisite tastes eat the placenta after birth. You giving a little lick to your own vaginal blood won’t be that bad – but I call first dibs on the placenta.

They all laugh.

SHARON:

Enough about me, we’ve been talking about this baby for eight and a half months for christ sakes. I want to hear about you two – how are you doing on the baby train?

Nathan and Robin simultaneously look up at Sharon, chewing their food slowly. They both swallow and both of their mouths open as if to answer the question – but no syllables come out.

INT. NATHAN FLESH’S HOUSE – DAY

Nathan and Robin are sitting on the same couch in the same clothing with the same reddish liquid. They are speaking and looking into the camera.

NATHAN:

Robin and I have been having some … complications in the bedroom lately.

ROBIN:

It’s not that we can’t make a baby, neither of us is sterile, but…

NATHAN:

I mean, how can anyone expect me to not take bites out of the woman I love when we are making love? She is the most attractive person on the face of the planet to me, I constantly just want to eat her up – and sometimes I do. Once we were making love in some bathroom in Florence and this sudden, overwhelming urge swept over me – and I took this massive bite out of her back. Show them, honey, show them.

Robin stands up, lifts her shirt to reveal a decent sized scar just around the middle of her spine. A chunk of flesh is missing.

ROBIN:

That’s nothing. Nathan, at heart, is just a sweetie, and it shows in the bedroom. The least domineering person I can think of at the moment. He’s a timid, gentle, passionate lover. Once I pretended to go down on him on an empty train ride in Germany, and just bit his legs to smithereens. He didn’t do a damn thing about it, either.

NATHAN:

She thinks she can out-cannibal me, but, really, you should see her pussy.

Nathan and Robin stare into the camera.

INT. EDMOND’S FRONT HALLWAY – EVENING

There is knocking at the door. Knock, knock, knock. Edmond rushes to the door and opens it to see CHARLES, his older brother, standing there menacingly. They say nothing to one another. Charles pushes Edmond out of the way and walks into the house, scratching his beard and observing his surroundings.

CHARLES:

Saw Nathans car outside. Invite your little brother to dinner, but not your big brother. I see how it is, Eddy.

EDMOND:

We just never talk, Charles. I haven’t seen you in months.

CHARLES:

So what are you two up to, huh? Just catching up on the old times, like brothers do?

EDMOND:

Yeah, I guess, they came to congratulate us on the baby.

CHARLES:

The baby, right. My nephew. How soon is he going to…

Charles walks away from the conversation without finishing his thought, sniffing the air and making a face of appalled recognition.

CHARLES:

What the fuck is that smell, Eddy?

Edmond rushes to the kitchen. Charles has already entered the corridor to the kitchen, feasting his eyes upon the gory piles of mushy human served on wonderfully white plates. Nathan is chugging a glass of what looks to be red wine.

CHARLES:

What the fuck is that?

NATHAN:

Charles! Edmond! Why is Charles here?

EDMOND:

Charles! I didn’t invite you in, gosh darn it!

CHARLES:

Edmond, answer my question. What the fuck is that? What the FUCK is that on the plates? Is it …

NATHAN:

Charles, sit down and we’ll have a chat. Clear this up in no time.

Nathan and Edmond look at one another. Charles examines a plate more closely and realizes it it human flesh. He vomits.

NATHAN:

Oh, not during dinner, Charles. God dammit.

EDMOND:

Wow, that is disgusting. Dinner ruined.

Charles finishes vomiting and looks up around him, to his brothers, to their wives and finally to the gore on the table. He wipes his mouth and looks towards the door. He bulldozes his way past Edmond, knocking him to the floor and running out the front door.

EDMOND:

Nathan, get him. I’ll get the gun.

EXT. EDMOND’S STREET – EVENING

Charles runs out of Edmond’s house, sprinting down the street. Nathan follows closely behind, both of them running full speed down the narrow suburban road. They run and continue running for about fifteen seconds. Edmond is seen in the distance zooming down the street behind them, wielding a shotgun and picking up speed. Charles looks back and continues running for his life.

EDMOND:

Charles! Stop and we’ll talk about this!

Charles doesn’t stop. Edmond does stop, Nathan still chasing Charles. Edmond aims the shotgun and fires. Nathan falls, Edmond keeps going.

EDMOND:

Nathan!

NATHAN:

Edmond, you shot me! You shot me in the fucking leg!

Edmond reaches down and examines the wound. It’s superficial, as only one pellet barely grazed Nathan’s right thigh. He sticks two fingers in and licks the blood. Nathan pushes him off. They both look up to see the small figurine of their brother dashing off into the night.

INT. EDMOND’S KITCHEN – EVENING

Robin is seen addressing Nathan’s wound, licking her fingers every once a while to a get a nice taste of blood. Edmond and Sharon are sitting, looking solemn and enraged.

NATHAN:

Well that was bad.

EDMOND:

Really, Nathan? That was bad? Our stuck-up, cock-sure, fire-breathing older brother with a stick up his ass finding out about all this is bad? I had no fucking idea.

NATHAN:

That is some angry sarcasm, Ed. You know, it’s so like you to pull a Dick Cheney.

EDMOND:

You could have moved out of the way when I was firing a god damned shotgun in the middle of the street. Seemed kind of like a given.

NATHAN:

Doesn’t matter. Petty squabbles for petty men. What are we going to do? Actually, the better question is what is Charles going to do? Call the police? Kill us himself? Tie us up and give us some speech on morality that will help us forever change our ways?

EDMOND:

We could just leave.

NATHAN:

I’d rather not.

SHARON:

We’re not leaving, Edmond. We’ve built a life here. This is our home, for god sakes.

EDMOND:

So? Maybe I’m just reaching, but I don’t see anyone coming up with anything else.

ROBIN:

Let’s just kill him.

NATHAN:

Oh, that’s good, hun. Just kill our own brother, just like that. Pow-pow. Aren’t our activities morally questionable enough?

EDMOND:

When did morals come into this? Don’t we have – you know – like, uh, aren’t, we, you know, like, on a different spectrum of morality because of our lifestyles?

SHARON:

Of course. We know we’re not doing anything bad – we’re still palatable – oh, that’s a bad word for it – we’re still … worldly, relate-able. We can still be part of a country club is what I’m saying.

EDMOND:

Exactly! The same rules don’t apply to us. To others it’s like – uh, you know – black and white, or grey – and to us, it’s blue and orange. Just a whole different compass – uh – canvas. At least, because of what we do, it’s like – we’re fine, we’re fine.

NATHAN:

I think you’re reaching a little.

EDMOND:

Yeah.

ROBIN:

So let’s kill him.

NATHAN:

Oh fuck! That’s out the window, Robin. No. We’re not just killing Charles because he knows. He could do nothing. He could keep quiet for the rest of his life for all we know.

Robin:

Or he could walk in here and kill us all, fulfilling whatever vengeful wrath he has in mind for such “criminal deviancy.”

Sharon:

This is all a load of shit. We’re not killing Charles, Robin. And we’re not leaving, Edmond. And we’re going to stop all the moral psychobabble, Nathan, because what we’re doing is perfectly sane and fine. Population growth is a problem. We’re not killing anyone respectable, or with a family – just drifters and people who have already given up on life.

EXT. LONESOME ROAD – DAY – PRESENT

THE MAN from the beginning is walking along a dirt path with a suitcase in his hand. He is weeping and speaking in Spanish. His clothes are dirty and he is beaten and bruised. He looks quite homeless.

MAN:

Why, God, why? Why did you place me in the middle of the desert after I was just beaten by deranged psychopaths who mistook me for a drug runner? Why, oh why, God, have you forsaken me, so? How will my poor mother dying from brain cancer ever recover without my financial support? How will I ever coach my little league team and teach them that winning isn’t everything?

He pulls out a picture of his family from his wallet.

Man:

My family! My poor little girl and poor, sweet boy! My loving and voluptuous wife! Will I ever see them again? Will I ever see my pretty little girl?

A car pulls alongside the man. Edmond walks out of the car and clubs the man in the head with a wrench.

INT. EDMOND’S KITCHEN – EVENING

Edmond:

Could we please just look over our options here? He could call the cops, he could turn himself into his own personal militia and drive us out with ammunition and pitchforks. And what can we do? Well, we could run or we can fight, and I think one of those options has a better survival rate than the other.

Sharon:

Well very informative, Edmond. I’m sure your pessimism will drive us straight out of this mess.
Nathan:

Your blatant protest of all our comments isn’t getting us anywhere either, Sharon.

Edmond:

Don’t talk to my wife like that, Nathan.

NATHAN:

She’s shooting down everything we’re saying and offering no advice of her own.

Sharon:

I’m just confused as to why we’re fighting amongst ourselves when we have a bigger problem, like a stark, raving lunatic about to barge into our doors.

Nathan:

Unfounded accusation!

Sharon:

Intolerable zeal at protecting that unfounded accusation!

Nathan:

Well aren’t you just so meta, Sharon! You totally know what situation you’re in right now, how to handle it, and how to comment on it ceaselessly!

Sharon:

Stop being a meta-phile, Nathan.

Nathan:

Meta-phile? I’m not a god damned meta-phile! A metaphile is a person who rapes meta people and hipsters. If anything, I’m a meta-phobe.

Edmond:

You’re afraid of being meta?

Robin:

That is ridiculously meta.

Nathan shivers.

INT. CHARLE’S APARTMENT – EVENING – PRESENT

CHARLES stumbles into his apartment after just running home, learning that his two brothers and their wives are cannibals. He is out of breath and sweating. He sits down at his desk, takes out a pack of cigarettes and begins smoking. He picks up the phone and dials a number.

CHARLES:

Terrence? Terry? Okay, okay, good. Can you meet me in an hour? Here. Where’s here? Oh, my place, at my place. In an hour.

Charles hangs up the phone. He looks towards his closet door and blows out a large puff of smoke.

INT. CHARLES’ APARTMENT COMPLEX – EVENING

TERRENCE HOLLENDAY, an accomplice of Charles, is knocking on Charles’ door. Charles is heard screaming noises of sexual ecstasy from inside his apartment. A bed is squeaking and rattling endlessly.

Terry:

Charles!

CHARLES (V.O.):

Terry! I’ll be right there.

A loud thud comes from the bedroom. After the thud, there is more rustling and shuffling around. Charles comes to the door, opens it and then shuts it nervously.

Terry:

That wasn’t suspicious at all, just so you know. Can I come in?

Charles:

No.

TERRY:

That’s not suspicious, either.

CHARLES:

Terry, I need your help, okay? My siblings have gotten themselves into some pretty bad shit. They’re idiots. They’re abominations. They’re …

Terry:

A rag-tag gang of ruffians that need to be taught a lesson?

Charles:

Look, I need a favor. We need to make a deal. An important deal and we need to figure out all the stipulations right now. A plan. A ten to five year plan. To fifteen year plan. I need your help and your services. Mainly your services, a willing disposition doesn’t have to be a part of it.

TERRY:

This seems like a terrible idea. You know, Charlie, you’re a swell guy. I’ve never suspected you of anything but good will and ice cream cones, honest.

Charles:

All you have to do is cut some people up. I mean – fuck – you’re doing that all the time anyway, aren’t you? Cutting people up? You cut away like a fucking crazy man, I’ve seen you.

Terry:

That situation was also bad etiquette.

Charles:

Look, let’s talk about this over coffee. What do you say? Yeah?

Terry:

Fine, Charles. You have one hour.

INT. EDMOND’S HOUSE – EVENING

The foursome are squatted around the same table, barely moved.

Edmond:

Okay. Is that it? Are we agreed? Is that the plan?

Nathan:

Yes.

Sharon:

Yup.

Robin:

I like it.

EDMOND:

Okay, so we bum-rush Charles’ apartment, we tie him up, we explain to him in great detail the six tenets of Cannibalism, try to make him convert and if he doesn’t we knock him out and take him back here for further questioning until he has successfully succumb to our brainwashing.

Sharon:

Perfect.

EXT. EDMOND’S DRIVEWAY – EVENING

Edmond is seen in front of the group with rope slung over his shoulder and the shotgun from before in hand. Sharon is directly behind him, wearing a giant flapper hat and a sleek red dress, obviously changing from before. She has a pistol in her hand. Nathan and Robin are behind them, with wrenches and duct tape on their belt buckles. They also have pistols. They all get in the vehicle and it speeds away.

EXT. CHARLES’ APARTMENT COMPLEX – EVENING

The foursome are sitting in the car in front of the building discussing the final preparations for their plan.

Edmond:

Wait, how do we even know he’s here? Doesn’t it seem more likely that he didn’t come back here so we couldn’t find him?

Sharon:

Well we should try anyway. Kicking down flimsy apartment doors isn’t exactly hard.

Nathan:

No, but it is illegal and I’d rather not end up in prison for the rest of my life.

Sharon:

Oh, now kicking in apartment doors is an immediate death sentence.

Edmond:

Stop. Lets just have a quick look inside. We all know the plan, we’ll be fine. If he’s not there, we’ll just wait inside until he comes home.

Robin:

The rope still seems superfluous to me. We have guns for fuck sakes. Four of us, one of him. Do you really think we’ll need a rope to get him out?

Edmond:

What does it matter if I have it? If it’s not needed, I won’t use it.

Sharon:

I really thought we went over this better.

Edmond:

We went over it fine.

Nathan:

Guys – three o’clock.

Charles and Terrence are seen walking back from the coffee place and they stop in front of the apartment doors. The four all turn to look at them.

Charles:

You drive a hard bargain, Terry, but the money is worth it to me. My family is full of stubborn fools and they’re not going to go about changing any time soon. You know I wish there were another way.

Terry:

I know, Charles. Although I consider these to be the most fucked up circumstances of my life. Rest assured that the money is worth it to me, too.

They both smile, nod and shake hands. Charles bolts into his apartment, while Terry begins to jog slowly towards his car.

Edmond:

He hired a hit man. Son of a bitch.

Nathan:

This is so like Charles.

Edmond:

Okay, new plan. Nathan, you take the car and follow him. We’ll stay here and deal with Charles.

Nathan:

You want me to follow a professional assassin? Well, I think your idea well has run dry for today.

Edmond:

My bet is he’s going to our house. If he doesn’t – if he goes to someplace else, well, kill him anyway. Don’t need that shit along with everything else. You two ready?

Robin and Sharon nod.

Edmond:

And we’re off.

Edmond, Sharon and Robin exit their sedan. They look around to see an empty lot, with even fewer passerby’s on the street. They walk up to the apartment building door sneakily and wait around the edges for someone to come out. Nathan, meanwhile, jumps in the drivers seat and takes off, following closely behind Terrence. An unsuspecting old man wanders out of the building. The threesome quietly saunter in behind him.

Edmond:

What are the chances of an old man being there at this time of night?

Sharon:

Lucky break.

Robin:

I’m really glad my metaphobic husband isn’t here right now.

INT. CHARLES’ APARTMENT BUILDING – EVENING

The three creep up the stairs. The building is mainly empty. They encounter no one on their way up the stairs. They sit outside of Charles’ room for a moment, pressing their ears up against the door. Noises of sexual fury are bursting from the room. The only voice they hear is Charles.

EDMOND (WHISPERING):

I didn’t see anybody walk in with him. Fucking one of his neighbors, you think?

Robin:

No idea. Does it matter?

Edmond:

Well it does, yeah.

Robin:

No it doesn’t.

Robin stands up and kicks the door. It flings open to reveal Charles fucking a corpse on his bed. He looks up startled and Sharon and Edmond point their guns at him, while Robin throws up. Edmond and Sharon look disgusted.

Edmond:

Charles! That’s disgusting!

Sharon vomits.

Charles:

Sharon! Not while…

Charles points to his obvious love-making with a dead person. Edmond vomits.

Charles:

You three are just fucking disgusting!

INT. EDMOND’S CAR – EVENING

Nathan is in hot pursuit of Terrence, Charles’s accomplice. They drive until they reach the hospital, where Terrence pulls into the parking lot. He gets out of his car and goes through the double doors of the building. Nathan stays parked behind Terrence’s car and pulls out his cell phone.

Nathan:

Charles, he stopped at the hospital. Probably for a quick twenty five grand kill or something. He’s probably pulling some old ladies chord right now and belting out like a shadow.

INTERCUT with Charles’ Apartment

Edmond:

Nathan, we’ve got some other problems. Charles is a necrophiliac.

Nathan:

Oh god, that’s disgusting! Not really relevant, though. Are you trying to ruin my already shitty time?

Edmond:

Keep following him. Don’t kill him there.

Nathan:

Obviously. I just wanted to give you a heads up. Bye.

Edmond (V.O.):

Bye.

Nathan sits nervously in his car until Terrence rushes back into his, with an unknown item stuffed into his shirt. Nathan continues his hot pursuit.

EXT. EDMOND’S HOUSE – EVENING

Terrence pulls up beside Edmond’s house. He pulls out a pen and notepad and writes something down. He rips out the page and places it on the seat next to him. He then pulls out a pure white shoebox from out of his jacket. He picks up the note, opens the box and places the note inside. He closes the box, breathes and gets out of the car.

INT. EDMOND’S CAR – EVENING

Nathan is parked a couple blocks away, Edmond’s house barely in view. He calls Edmond again.

Nathan:

Edmond. He’s at your place right now and when he left the hospital he had something under his shirt. I think it’s a bomb.

INTERCUT with Charles’ apartment

Edmond:

Nathan – listen to me. You probably have some time. He’s not going to kill himself and I’m sure the bomb, if it is one, is rigged to explode when we all get home. Get in there and make me proud. Okay? You’re safe.

Nathan:

Okay. Okay.

INT. CHARLES’ APARTMENT – EVENING

The threesome are there pointing there guns at Charles, who is clothed and sitting in a chair.

Edmond:

We really didn’t need the rope. Good call, Robin.

Charles:

Who the fuck is Nathan following, Edmond? What bomb?

Edmond:

Oh, yeah. You’ve always been a clever one, older brother. Sneaky, sneaky. What bomb. God you’re so good.

Sharon:

You’re a real jerk, you know that, Charles?

Robin:

A no-good, plain-rotten, dumb-fucking, whore-biting, rooster-driving, intellectually infertile nitwit.

Edmond:

I’m not sure a lot of those made sense.

Robin:

They wouldn’t, to a yellow-toothed, pig-bellied, snout-faced, sun-burnt, worm-hooked idiot head such as yourself.

Edmond:

I’m not sure why we’re feuding.

Sharon:

Charles! Call off your goon. Tell him to stop the bomb.

CHARLES:

What the fuck are you people saying? There is no bomb. There is no goon.

EDMOND:

Look, look, look. Just shut up. We’re here to convert you, or kill you, or to just make sure you shut up about this. Seems like finding you with a corpse kind of evens the playing field, huh?

CHARLES:

You were going to kill me?

Edmond:

You were going to kill us! Don’t seem so fucking innocent.

CHARLES:

I wasn’t going to kill you! It’s not a bomb, Edmond. It’s not a bomb.

Edmond:

Then what is it, Charlie?

INT. EDMOND’S KITCHEN – EVENING

Terrence is standing in the kitchen looking over family photo’s. He sees Charles in a couple and smirks. The relatively sleek white shoebox is dead center on the kitchen table. He walks over to the front door, only for the door to be kicked in, smacking him in the head. He falls to the ground. Nathan emerges, steps in, shuts the door with his foot and kicks Terrence in the head. He whips out a pistol and plants a bullet in Terrence’s skull.

INT. EDMOND’S HALLWAY – EVENING

Nathan drags the body to the edge of the basement stairs, where he rolls it down. It thuds and thumps.

INT. EDMOND’S KITCHEN – EVENING

Nathan approaches the white box slowly. He puts his pistol on the table next to him and touches the corners of the box. He winces to himself while opening it. Inside is the note on top of a human heart. The note reads, “I’m sorry for the way I acted. I thought of a way to repay all of you. Call me and we’ll talk. We’ve all got our secrets, brothers, but I still love you. We’re family. Signed, Terrence, on Behalf of Charles Flesh.” Nathan stares at the note, beads of sweat circulating around his forehead.
EXT. EDMOND’S DRIVEWAY – EVENING

Edmond, Robin, Sharon and Charles all walk up to the driveway, where Nathan is sitting. He is eating the heart and sobbing, the note fluttering in the wind before them.

Edmond:

Looks like he figured it out.

Charles looks around and notices Terrence’s vehicle.

CHARLES:

Where’s Terrence?

Nathan:

Oh, Terrence? Terrence. I shot him in the head and I threw him down the basement stairs.

Edmond:

Fucking Christ, Nathan.

Charles:

Well, Nathan, there goes the food supply I selflessly set up for you.

Nathan:

Selflessly? Who was that guy, Harry Whittington?

Robin:

That didn’t even make sense for fucks sake!

Nathan:

Well I shot him in the face.

CHARLES:

No, you idiot. He was the only working pathologist in Rudger County. He was smuggling organs for me.

Nathan:

Yeah, I figured that much out. Thank you, Charles. A little fucking late.

Edmond:

You god damned idiot, Nathan.

NATHAN:

You could have called me! We were constantly calling one another in this little episode of ours.

Sharon:

Ha! You fucking hypocrite! The metaphobes always end up being the metafags!

Nathan:

I’m not a metafag! We just alluded to other situations by calling one another, and the rate of our exchange was briskly paced – like an episode!

Robin:

Oh! Such a closet metafag!

Edmond:

We should just stop talking at the risk of going through some meta-timewarp where we turn inside out and become ourselves.

Charles:

Have you guys looked at the dangers of ingesting human flesh? Are you sure it’s not fucking with your brain?

Edmond:

Says the necrophiliac. Ha!

Edmond, Robin, Nathan and Sharon all laugh.

Charles:

I fuck corpses, therefore you are not brain damaged. Perfect logic!

CREDITS ROLL

Muffs in the Oven, P. 1

I’d like to tell everyone this story. It’s about how bad everything has gotten here in South America. It’s about the cat problem.

I was one foot in. The hut smelt of burning flesh and rotting meat, and, inquisitively enough, charred rutabaga. Why anyone would eat a rutabaga charred, or eat a rutabaga on their own free will, is unbeknownst to an omnivore but closer to carnivore such as myself. There was a lady in the chair, breathing heavily with deep cackles in her lungs, and bits of flesh forcefully exiting after each exhalation. Is it rutabaga? Is it some blended mystery meat concoction? No, can’t be blended – not blended, because they’re bits of flesh. Someone needs to learn to chew. Someone needs to develop the proper acids to break down her foods.

She was undeterred by my presence in her hut, as she must have been impressed that I was standing there at all, after all the muck and bullshit before it,  in the heart of the labyrinthine wood. I moved my flashlight towards her face, old yellow eyes, void of any sparkle or charm, lacking in depth and character, all yellow and sickly red, a grimly compliment to her mattered face of ridges, canyons on their own, the depths of ancient strife.

A syllable passed from her lips, long and exasperated, wispy, as if she were mimicking the wind -

“Hhhhhhhhhhh…”

One arm raises to point to the ground below, a dead mother and a solemn kitten helplessly suckling on her long dry teet. A mouthful of blood every time, as there was a hole in the mother’s torso that revealed the broken wooden deck beneath it.

“It is within me.”

It is within me. That’s what she said.

“They are within me.”

“What is it? Who are they?”

“I saved them, oh yes, I saved them. They were going to be all alone and it would have been too much for my heart to bare to leave them to the disastrous world as it has always been. Nature could not take its course, for I, a product of nature, interfered with nature and delayed original purpose, destiny itself. Stepping into life, I granted them a path anew, and I opened up my doors and gates to them, unlocking the locks that have never been opened, not by man or woman, but perhaps once cunningly granted access to by a selfish, cunning thief – may he rot always in the ground I stuck him in.”

I moved the light again to her face.

“Who are you?”

“Does it matter? And who are you? Barging into my hut as if it’s a place of your own, asking me to speak in riddles.”

“I didn’t ever ask you to speak in riddles.”

“Then who did, then? Then who did?”

“Perhaps the people over there?”

“Foolish invader turns out to be clever – and I am glad he can, like me, see the people in the corner, the much too dark corner.”

There are no people in the corner. The corner is black and empty.

“But can he see why I did this world harm, and why my own selflessness came to be a burden? Can he see how I rid the inhabitants of the other mother’s den to enter my den to once again sloppily exit my den? Can he see my den at all? Will I allow him to be in my den, like all the others stuck there?”

“Who are the people in the corner?”

“Much like us, wanderer, they are spirits lost in a realm of mortal few. They are the molten wisps of jagged rock, the forging fires of steel and stone, the molecular underpinnings in the smallest insect. They are the one and the one is them.”

“No more riddles. I’m afraid I can’t understand a word you’re saying, miss.”

“A pleasantry in the midst of all these trees, and a dying old hag in the midst of her own dying house. No more riddles, although the people in the corner have already ordered me to speak in them. For the sake of this conversation, I’ll join in again in the mortal world. For you, invader, wanderer, whom I owe nothing to, I grant you my purpose. My speech.”

“How very kind of you, old hag in the midst of her dying house.”

“Ha! And now you speak in riddles after questing to cease mine.”

“I’m looking for Sylvia Monroe. This is her address, or so I was told.”

“You were told correctly, wanderer, invader. I am Sylvia Monroe.”

“I doubt that, hag.”

“And why do you doubt it highly, stranger?”

“Sylvia Monroe is thirty three.”

“Aye, Sylvia Monroe was thirty three. She was thirty three like I am sixty seven, and like you are thirty three.”

“I’m not thirty three.”

“Then neither is Sylvia Monroe.”

“Wonderful logic. I’ll risk leaving this den with no recollection or information at all, if only not to have nightmares for the rest of my life.”

“How far have you come to present yourself before me?”

“What does it matter? How is that relevant?”

“A wasted trip to leave only for your dreams?”

“I wasn’t speaking literally of my dreams.”

“Aye, neither am I, wanderer, neither am I.”

“Have you ever been clinically examined?”

“What does it matter? What could clinics and doctors tell me of my condition that I have not already figured out?”

“Schizophrenia is not a doing of your own.”

“I was not speaking of my mind, but of my body.”

“What is wrong with your body?”

“Infection, wanderer. An infection because of the inhabitants of my den.”

“Which are?”

“Felis Catus, felis catus, felis catus. The den of remarkably unlucky ones, who entered my crevice by my hand, with no help from the ones in the corner, who died there and have left me this way. But the mother had tried to start the fires of birth, but they were just not warm enough, just not ripe enough to walk along the dusty sands and oily shores. But it is cold here at night – so unimaginably cold – and I wanted to keep them warm and safe, and I wanted them to be able to taste the nectar of possibility, far and away from the sinister and the wicked and the corrupt. So they entered, and so they are there now, eating away and dead all because of my good intention. Decay has set in. Felis Catus, Felis Catus, Felis Catus. I killed the mother with a shoe and left one of her as a sacrifice to the ones in the corner. They were pleased. I was instructed to keep her corpse there and only there until the light of creation is unraveled as black.”

I pointed the flashlight to her crotch. Her legs were gaping and her skirt revealed all – a foul, more than ungodly green and black and grey erupting from her crotch. Blood trickled down her leg, too, intermixing with all the grey. Infection and disease like I’ve never seen.

“They were stillborn, wanderer. I just thought they needed more time.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I stepped out of the hut and threw up my Sunday’s breakfast. It was not an active thought. After everything I had just seen it felt appropriate for my body to do so, without interference from my brain. Much to my simultaneous delight and disgust, the only thing my fucked up brain could muster, phonetically anyway, was,

“Muffs in the oven.”

God damn, this problem is worse than I had ever thought. The outcry of the general public’s hardship with the current feline hazard, even outside of this severe and truthfully disgusting instance, has been problematic in bringing in any diplomatic solutions. Although I admit, any semblance of a diplomatic solution is put to shame by the outweighing moral and ethical issues that are lumped aside with exterminating genetically engineered animals, some of them priceless artifacts of scientific knowledge, already probably devoured or trampled or worse. Our hands bringing death would only spill more blood on every surface.

The Southern American Jaguar, specifically two subspecies of Southern American Jaguar, P. onca peruviana and P. onca goldmani, have been extensively hunted for their coats and their teeth and their little eye balls ever since folks decided that they weren’t the fearsome Gods of the underworld, but were just large house cats with the strongest jaw imaginable, even among cats that will eat your face.

Ten years ago every single tiger species became extinct in the wild. Tigers are now docile, bred solely in captivity. You can’t shoot them anymore, but you can gawk at them through chain fences and wonder, “Why would we ever kill such a wonderful creature?”

The same cannot be said for the jaguars. Since the invasive – and god willing, planted – population of the house cats two years ago in South America, Felis Catus has become the main prey of both humans and jaguars alike. From Bolivia to Nicaragua to Brazil – all the way up to parts of Central America, Mexico, and even Arizona and New Mexico, the number of jaguars in the wild, unlike every other big cat on the globe, has been sky rocketing. Since their food source is increasingly abundant ( approximately six million cats released on first record, after having two consecutive breaches on our holding facilities at GreyTech, which means two consecutive scrambles to run the numbers counting the amount of property stolen)  and breeds regularly, it’s no surprise that the jaguars are engaging in semi-cannibalism. They are flourishing. And they’re killing the fuck out of everybody.

They took all of our cats and now all of our cats are gone. To be specific, Sylvia Monroe took all of our cats. Her and her squadron of philistine juggernauts and golden boy prodigies and half-baked sailors who only eat tuna sandwiches. She freed them in the center of the Floresta Amazônica. It was an act of terrorism and the consequences of such an act are to this day being felt all across the world.

I am one of the co-author’s of Project Felidae. My co-author, Gadsby Schmidt and I were both promoted simultaneously to run a state of the art facility in some unregistered, or close to unregistered, county in Arizona, which provided us not only with the most recent and beneficial technologies for our area of research, but also with complete and total anonymity from the public.  This obscurity from the public was decisive when running genetic experiments on felines, or with any type of animal, as the outcry from such procedures are generally settled only in court and with slipshod lawyers salivating at the power and benefit of prosecuting a three billion dollar a year agency. But I’ve argued to this day, even after our holding facilities were breached by Sylvia Monroe and her gang of miracle activists, that the tests we were running were important, at least to the cats of the world, and in the long run, humanity itself.

We can alter their gene sequences to artificially render their aging processes. We can say fuck all to their genetic code and increase their lifespan ten fold. We haven’t broken the process of aging completely in cats, but the ones that survive the tests live to their fifties. Since the extinction of every tiger species in the wild, and most of the leopard and cheetah and lynx and bobcat subspecies in the wild, we’ve also been studying ways to clone this extremely rare DNA to release big cats into their natural habitats in the future. Without a live specimen, this is easier said than done, but a genetic copy of one of these animals is just around the bend as far as I’m concerned. Even with me out of the game, the cloning world has grown wonderfully provocative and obtuse in the delivery of their messages, if only because cloning sheep and chickens has gone so out of style. Last week a baby black rhino, one of the last in the world, was born on television. If they weren’t born blind, and could somehow watch t.v., that poor baby rhino would have seen a lump of bright purple obesity with a unicorn horn as orange as my mother’s incorrectly cooked spaghetti. Not only can they clone it, they can change everything about it that it should have been. Cutting and copying and slicing genes these days is about as easy as finding a hooker in Thailand.

The labyrinthine wood. It’s the area just before Sylvia Monroe’s supposed cottage in the Floresta Amazônica and I call it that because of a memory. A memory of an old friend, an old idiot friend, who nonetheless brought me great joy.

“I’m more comfortable believing in God. Can we just drop it for now? We’re in the rain forest of all places, staring into a wild maze of trees and shrubs, all perfectly lit up by God’s light, which peaks into the trees so wonderfully and elegantly, like nothing else, exquisitely unique, a created sensation you get just by looking at that perfect light, transposed to you by the holy being himself – and you want to argue with me about his existence?”

“I feel … I feel what you’re talking about! I feel … yes, a sensory organ, maybe, perhaps … my … my … my eyes! … and they’re seeing … oh … they’re seeing light! Reflecting off of objects! And the objects themselves are … are … are … reflecting light! By God! It’s God! My witness to a spectacular sight is testimony to the one true God! Cass, you know you sound ridiculous right now, don’t you? Invoking the magical wrath of God into me because you saw a pretty picture? Really?”

“Look, can we just drop it?”

“You know we can’t talk unless we disagree, or else we’re just going to be spewing the same pseudo-talk nonsense as the rest of the population.”

“I think your need to be loathed by everyone and everything around you is becoming a little cheesy. Who cares if other people are talking about it? What, other people aren’t talking about God right now? God is all of a sudden a new topic?”

“Not new, but like I said, we disagree. If we didn’t, we’d be agreeing, and what else is there to say to a person who likes everything you like? If they like everything you like, no matter what, they may as well be you, and you may as well be having a conversation with yourself.”

“So you still want to talk about God.”

“You’re a creationist. What else is there to talk about with you people?”

“Everything, as I was trying to demonstrate earlier by telling you to stop the conversation that you’re now bringing up again.”

“Those words were a poignant analysis of your own remarkable situational awareness.”

“Those words were a crock of shit.”

“Now, now, I’m the one that’s supposed to be using the bad words.”

“And I’m the one that’s supposed to be nice.”

“I think that’s a common misconception. I am burning in hell according to you.”

“And I am rotting in the ground according to you.”

“So I grant you eternal nothingness, and you grant me eternal hell fire and torture and suffering, and we’re supposed to pretend those two are equivalents?”

“God gave you a perfect human body and perfect human thoughts and the choice whether or not to accept him using your own logic…”

“Perfect human body? Those words are a crock of shit. Our hips are still angled like we walk on all fours, so when now bi-pedal women have babies they are screaming and moaning all over the damn place because of our insufficient design. I mean, shit, we eat and breathe out of the same fucking tube, the light receptors in our eyes are placed just behind a crucial nerve, our teeth, for thousands of years at least, rotted to the bone and slaughtered our hearts. Energy storage cannot adapt appropriately to food availability, cranial nerves innervate portions of the body, fetal development of the face allows for cleft pallets and deafness. What’s perfect about our bodies, again?”

“Well if it’s evolution, you’ve got to admit that it did a pretty lousy job.”

“It has, and it usually only does a job good enough for the environment it’s placed in. Not to mention that the lingering genetic preferences of our fishy and four legged ancestors bog us down, sometimes even kill us. So which ever way you slice it – that we’re all here because we’re the perfect children of God, or because God inserted the algorithmic tendencies of evolution into natural processes – God did a pretty bad job. He obviously saw our construction. He obviously implemented evolution as is to lead to the apex of all species on the planet, humanity, in order to spread his good word.”

“Well I don’t believe in evolution, so all this pedantic wish-wash about it certainly isn’t helping me change my position.”

“Don’t ever change your position, or we couldn’t be friends anymore.”

“This is the most one-sided friendship of my life. For someone so afraid to talk to himself, you sure love your own voice. Your eloquence almost matches your bravado.”

“Your life long vendetta against the forces of reason and logic are growing out of hand, Cass.”

“Oh, shut your damn mouth. I’m done with this conversation.”

“I would be too, if I was making the points that you’re making.”

“Shut your damn mouth.”

“Sure. But you’ve got to keep that pretty god-loving mouth flapping, or else we’re going to be deathly bored.”

“Snakes and monkeys and jaguars not enough business for you?”

“Not at all. My only vice is human interaction. It’s a shame you are the human, but nonetheless, you are.”

“Why’d they pair us up, you think?”

“They’re just helping.”

“And how are they helping?”

“Relocation, obviously.”

“To the middle of the rain forest? A bit over pre-cautious for something like this, yeah?”

“Wrong. The backlash could be enormous. Advocacy groups can cripple corporations, even one like mine – fuck, what am I saying, especially one like mine. You, on the other hand, Cass, got the short end of the stick. You don’t even work for GreyTech or have anything to do with Project Felidae. You simply outsource product and you’re still picked up by boogeymen telling you to lay low. Looks like some journalist got his hands on your name, which means your name got flashed all over the news and it didn’t look pretty. Nuh-uh. Not at all. You looked like little miss Satan herself to some sad sap family watching the five o’clock news over frozen dinners.”

“I probably did, working for a company dedicated to helping animals breathe can be a real career stopper.”

“If said company is partnered with another company that only does genetic modification on animals, then, yes, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

“So, what, we can’t be found in South America?”

“Less press, more poverty, less chance of anyone recognizing us. No lawyers or agents or cops are going to bother us down to here, but that’s the point. It’s a relocation program.”

“But why us? Together? No reason for us to be stuck in South America together.”

“I don’t see the connection either, honestly. Funds, maybe.”

“Maybe. Plausible.”

“Either way, doesn’t really matter. We are now tied into the same lace.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Me either, really, it just sounded right.”

“I know that you’re a vampire for human interaction, but could we stop this feast, only to appreciate the labyrinthine wood in front of us?”

The crunch in the leaves, even after it has rained, is satisfying to the nth degree. The sunlight, much like Cass had mentioned, is particularly beautiful a day after it has rained – astutely tan and radiant beyond belief – poking in and out of trailing vines, conforming and contorting with every step. The trees and their slanted, thin branches, the light peaking out from in between them, the dances they do, the way it leaps beyond our very understanding and imagination – an astoundingly powerful realization. That just by looking at trees, in the right structure, at the right place, at the right time of day, you can be stunned into submission and captivated by the power of life all over again – you can appreciate the experience of being alive just by looking at some trees and the shapes they make, in one unique instance of time and space, and light and balance.

Cass and I walked all the way from our hotel on the outskirts of a city named Furgis, into a dense overgrowth of life with a complexity that has yet to be revealed to us in full splendor. We walked and we spoke and we listened and we were there for no reason at all. It was just two days later after we took that walk in the labyrinthine wood when Sylvia Monroe unleashed her stolen cargo of somewhere between six million animals, all Felis Catus, in the dead center of the Amazon.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A Golden Calf

That is exactly what we become – the scorching of a precious element on a bull’s back. As it writhes there, kicking on the rocks and the grime below it to relieve itself of hardship, it only tears the skin and only allows for the tub of molten flaxen mineral once poured onto its back to rub in deeper, drooping down its spinal column up to its head and seething the hairs off and prickling soon at its airways, its precious lungs.

It weighed close to four thousand pounds at last record, and was the biggest bull any of us had ever seen. They had put it in a pen, roughly about its own size, so it could not move about and only bend its neck when it needed water or food.

When they found this bull, on the outskirts of town, a small boy was dangling on its horn. He was not dead, even as the bull continued to thrash his limp body this way and that. The bull was only attempting to alleviate the ninety pound parasitic adventurer it had confidently stuck to itself earlier that day.

It had pierced the boys abdomen. Given the diameter of the wound, and the area it had been stuck, it is likely the boy would have died sooner of thirst than blood loss if he was never peeled off at all. But he was.

The boy had been prodding it and joking with it, telling the bull he was going to eat him one day – and all the little babies that bull may have had. The boy told the bull that is what bulls are here for, and that is what little boys are here for: to eat big, mean bulls.

There was a fluttering of the wind, and the boys shirt kicked up. And then the big, mean bull didn’t care so much about the little boy, so he stuck him, and wiggled around to alleviate himself, as the little boys blood was getting all mucked into his eyes.

Marco was the first to find the bull and he told me it was the strangest thing he had ever seen. The boy was just banging this way and that, conscious, alive, breathing, kicking his fragile legs into the bulls back. So Marco did the only thing one could do – and cautiously approached the bull, and took the hands of the little boy and slowly pulled him off.

The boy bled out and Marco did nothing to save him, really. He just placed him on the ground and put his hands on the wound and lied to the poor thing, told him everything was going to be okay.

“Am I going to see my mother again?”

This boy’s mother had died during childbirth. He had never seen his mother. He was delirious.

Marco said,

“Everything will be okay, you’ll see your mama again.”

Both were lies.

So soon after Marco had lied to the boy, the police came and hauled the bull off, but did not shoot it, and placed it in a pen that could fit one bull and one bull only. One day, that pen would reveal to have a door that opened to a bright, shining stadium. But before the bull got its moment of glory, it was shackled down, all the while breathing in the rays of light it hadn’t seen for days.

It was also revealed to the bull, as it was being shackled down, that there was a wooden slot above its head, which opened to a cauldron of some foreign material. The cauldron contained gold, and it was heated preliminarily by lamps and clumps of burning coal stuck to its sides. They had successfully enraged the gold to a bubble.

And so the gold was poured onto the bulls back. The chains were released and the bull sprinted into the sun, only to flop on its side and kick and wail in pain, helplessly rendering the substance permanent. It clung to the bull so longingly, like a burnt, kindling sweater threaded in roasted straw. The stadium around me cheered. I did not cheer.

A matador appeared, only to prod the dying animal as the mollified texture bled into its rib cage, and spinal column, and throat. The gold had fused with dust.

The fight was over, and the bull was dead.

I looked to my side, Marco crying in his seat. The rest of the stadium was filled with applause. Only Marco and I had lacked the proper mechanical parts needed to fulfill a vengeful soul. They were all cheering for the death of that little boy, I had thought.

“Marco, it is just a bull.”

He looked up at me and smiled, with tears still in his eyes and a lump still in his throat.

“It is just a bull as it was just a boy. And the boy died just like the bull.”

“The boy had molten gold poured onto his back in front of thousands of screaming simpletons?”

“We all are just like that bull. We are all just like that boy. We will kick for a way out. We will ask for simple pleasures which couldn’t possibly come true only because they put our minds at ease. And I imagine heaven to be much like that gold on the bull’s back, and I imagine getting there is much the same process.”

As Sponges Buckets Do, 1

He walks into my office like it is his – with the grin of a stupid, proud deceiver, a smug, callous sociopath, a broken, irreverent fool – an honest to goodness jerk. Bag slung over his shoulder, slouching like he is telling good posture to fuck off and take a step back, yellow teeth and a cigarette between his lips.

“No smoking, Mr. Martinak.”

“It’s not lit, is it?”

He wouldn’t cut his hair even though everyone who loved him told him to, and he wouldn’t change his ways even though it shackled the souls around him. Every little thought he ever mustered was no more significant than the meanderings of a monkey. It was nothing but undeniable that he would not make this easy for me, but it was equivalently undeniable that he was an immaculate candidate for this exercise.  He had lost his family due to greed and lost his loves due to anger, and vengeance and pity.

His friends were only his friends because he called them such.

His willingness to partake in this experiment that will eradicate most of what he would probably refer to as “being alive” is the only acceptably intelligent thing he has ever accomplished, although if you told him this he would fight it with great fervor.

He sits down and throws his bag to the floor, papers spilling out of it and pens dribbling ink all the way down. He doesn’t care that it isn’t his place, because to him it ought to be.That is just how these people work. Idiots and morons are generally also assholes.

I shake his hand – the grip of an eleven year old with melanoma - but to him I’m sure he finds it strong, debilitating the party on the receiving end of his devastatingly powerful hands. He pretends as if he is pleasant.

“So today is finally the day, isn’t it, Dr. Ebanhart?”

“Today is finally the day, Nik. It sure is. Do you want to hear how the procedure will go again?”

“Yes. Go easy on me this time.”

“It has been done many times, successfully, and I assure you there are little pockets of people floating around all over the place, enjoying their stay in eternal nothingness that feels like eternal somethingness, at least for now, at least until the eventual heat death of the universe – then, of course, as I’m sure someone of your statistically high intelligence will note, not anyone or anything will feel a thing, regardless of your giddiness to partake. First, we’ll strap you to the God helmet. It has solenoids, little coils that, for the purpose of this experiment, will be placed just above your ears and temporal lobes, and which will simulate magnetic activity. They’re generally used as magnetic stabilizers, in this case they will be used as weak-acting electromagnets. I will be on the computer in the lab, controlling these solenoids remotely, one at a time, around your temporal lobes, and then together to active pattern recognition within your amygdala. You, during all this, will be sitting in my comfy chair, inside a Faraday Cage, which blocks out all EMF emissions and potentially toxic radiation. It is, for all intents and purposes, an acoustic chamber that blocks out all magnetic radiation except for the Earth’s magnetic field. From there what you feel is not up to me, but instead up to the neurobiology within your brain. Interhemispheric intrusions, one side of the brain ‘over-loading’ and blocking receptors in the other half is a likely side effect, as well as visual distortions, weakness of the extremities, euphoric ‘visitor’ experiences. It could be anything that you feel while on a potent hallucinogen and more. Essentially, you will feel out of body, but that is not our goal today, Mr. Martinak. It is to actually make you be out of body.”

“Is that it?”

“Not even close, Mr. Martinak. That is the first stage of the experiment. From there, we’ll induce a steady dose of Galantamine, a nootropic drug which will, more often than not, place you within your own experience and allow you to control it. It is a lucid dream enhancer. The combination of both the electromagnets and the Galantamine will pull you further away from reality – you’ll be asleep, but you’ll feel awake. Your body will be shut down, but you’ll see yourself floating above it – acting any way you wish.”

“Is that it?”

“No. Surgical removal of the most activated and subjectively ‘important’ parts of your brain is entirely necessary to ensure your burdens go away. We’ll be scanning your brain from across the lab. We need to keep the parts of you which rationalize and think, but we have to do away with the receptors and synapses responsible for pain and suffering and an all around ‘bad time,’ as you so often eloquently put it.”

“This is the part I never got – you’re going to … take out parts of my brain? And do what with them exactly?”

“We transfer them – usually safely – to a translucent neurological capsule, which is also aerial and flutters around with your designation. Your motor control reflexes will still be, primarily, online.”

“And that’s what I’ll be? I’ll be a little invisible capsule?”

“The parts of yourself which you seem to cherish so highly will. Your body and the rest of your brain will be stored here.”

He didn’t look me in the eyes at all for the duration of the conversation. I’m sure he was over-thinking the amount of suffering this would cause no one, and I’m sure he would miss dearly parts of him that he had grown attached to for no specific reason. It is such with sociopaths and psychopaths that they will miss their biology very much, even when they have signed it away forever and ever.

When he first came in, Nik Martinak was immensely rude and entitled. He is still both those attributes, as I’m sure he will be when he’s not bothering anybody being close to nothing.

I place him in the Faraday cage, in my favorite chair, purple and plump with pillows with pictures of puppies on them, with the Emily Dickinson poem, “The Brain is Wider than the Sky,” being blared in the background by my assistant – a small little Asian woman that stands around five four, but with a brain the size of Pluto. I only use the smallest, now non-planet to metaphorically refer to her brain because it is still much bigger than other brains, don’t you think? So far as we know, so far as we know.

“The Brain is wider than the Sky

For put them side by side

The one the other will contain

With ease and You beside

The Brain is deeper than the sea

For hold them Blue to Blue

The one the other will absorb–

As Sponges Buckets do

The Brain is just the weight of God–

For Heft them Pound for Pound

And they will differ if they do

As Syllable from Sound.”

Things I Could Have, Or the Wonders of Self-Diagnosis

Lets assume that tomorrow my test results come back and I have a bacteria or a parasite that has been slowly eating away at my intestines or colon or kidneys. That would be the good news. Then I can, as my good friend Alex Fryer tells me, kill it with fire. 

If not, then I most likely have a long list of disorders that probably won’t kill me, but will surely make living a little less desirable and that I can simply do little about.

Or I could have a long list of disorders that will kill me that I simply can do little about.

Unless it is the first option, and antibiotics are administered, then I am going to be paying for it for the rest of my life. Or, at the least, a good portion of it.

I suppose it is some form of karmic justice that I get a disease or disorder within my intestines or colon, given the amount of time I’ve spent shitting on people throughout my life.

That being said, karma does not exist, and I don’t deserve this. But what does deserve mean? Most people don’t deserve what they get, be it starvation or a disease or loads of wealth. We just get what we get, and we’re supposed to say to one another when something terribly debilitating happens, “Just put another foot forward.”

Hopefully you are not talking to a footless person when giving this advice.

If you are, I recommend, “Slouch on over and keep going.” If they happen to have a bionic foot, say, “Well, you’re just as or even better off than people with feet … what’s the problem?”

Someone once told me that I’m supposed to be happy, cheerful – radiant – throughout the course of a sickness. That laughter is the best medicine, and that being in the presence of humor will make everything pass quicker. I haven’t found this to be a particularly good set of advice, mainly because I’ve found humor in very little the past two weeks. Really, how can things be funny when you’re reeling over and clenching your fists because of the pain in your stomach, or laying flat on your back with nausea so overwhelming that your every sense and synapse seem to be shouting, “Dizzily, dazily, doom.” Or when you’re hunched over a porcelain pot called a toilet (are they made out of porcelain?) and the shit that’s coming out of you is yellower than Big Bird’s pseudo-coat.

I think we should stop calling it healthcare. I think we should start calling it, Health, if you’re rich and lucky enough to have doctors that give a fuck about your condition, because if they don’t, they don’t, and that sucks for you, champ.

If it’s Crohn’s, which, for some odd reason I’m betting it is, this is the list of food that I will have to effectively rid of in my life:

• alcohol (mixed drinks, beer, wine)
• butter, mayonnaise, margarine, oils
• carbonated beverages
• coffee, tea, chocolate
• corn husks
• dairy products (if lactose intolerant)
• fatty foods (fried foods)
• foods high in fiber
• gas-producing foods (lentils, beans, legumes, cabbage, broccoli, onions)
• nuts and seeds (peanut butter, other nut butters)
• raw fruits
• raw vegetables
• red meat and pork
• spicy foods
• whole grains and bran

This leaves me with a whole lot of options, as you can see.

It could also be IBD, or inflammatory bowel disease, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. If it isn’t that, it could also be ulcerative colitis. There could be abscesses within my colon or anal passageway, and I could have fistulas up the wah-zoo. If you don’t know what a fistula is, don’t look it up.

 

Basically, I’m fucked. But so is everyone else, really, I just got fucked a little earlier than other people. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do, at a time like this? Lighten up all with empathy and say, “Well you bastards are going to suffer one day, too. But I probably won’t be around to see it.

Twisted by Knaves, Chapter 1

A grove up ahead, after this lovely wooden bridge, which will probably fall underneath my weight, or trap me into it because of the wispy leathers of my boot, with fog streaming through it and on top of it and below it, seeping into the ground. White muck that sticks to Corsum’s face. The men behind him, barely audible, with guns pressed into their bellies.

He’s running as fast as he can – Remington 870 held out before him, one of the oldest guns in the world, chugging up and down after every step. They’re long strides. Tarnish begins congesting the innards of his broken boot, roots and soil and smut and pebbles crushing the underside of his sole. Chlorophyll fuses with the bleeding of his cuts, and his trashed tendons look more festive than ever.

The men behind him, shouting and jovial: by God how could they be this happy? They’re just chasing on and on, with boldness and courage and admirable determination – really, a kind I’ll never have, even when I’m running for my life.

I can’t hear them panting for relief like me. I can’t hear them wondering if they’re ever going to catch me. They know they’re going to catch me. 

“Perhaps he went into the woods, boys.”

“Scared little sheep.”

“‘z’really worth it, ‘brother? Doezn’t know no better, the frightened lamb. z’already shat himself, yee? Found’da scared goats’ piss ‘n shit, didn’ we? Wha’s tha’ point of scarin’ him further?”

“Not my choice. Got a job to do, got a job to do.”

Corsum keeps running. He looks back hurriedly, only to notice the men crossing the bridge, sprinting, guns that shine in the sun, all polished and new and hell-bent on becoming free and leaving their pocketed chambers, minuscule geometries of metal casing and black powder salivating to enter a nervous system.

They held their guns just like Corsum. The only difference is that they all had assault rifles, top of the line, and that they were all mountainous – great expanses of men – with broad shoulders and lungs that worked. They were a specialized team of three, gathered to hunt down singular targets and interrogate them. Whether or not the prisoner died was up to the prisoner.

They looked like haggard, blood-stained lions when they crossed the bridge up the hill into the fauna-full, white-washed wilderness.

Generally their captives were snipers, men known for killing more than a couple dozen on the battlefield, known for wiping out entire squads without being detected. Sometimes it was generals or colonels or privates that were on their way up the ladder. Today, is was an astrophysicist named Kepler Corsum.

He had invented the world’s first anti-gravity exoskeleton. Given the giant strain on a human body in anti-gravity conditions, Corsum was hired by the military of the North American States to research and function within a team of other scientists to develop the worlds first, fully functional, capable and accessible anti-gravity exoskeleton. He was never told what for, or why they needed it. He didn’t ask.

It provides the body with valuable supplementary support, as well as dosing out needed drugs that reinforce joint and muscle strength, that keep the heart healthy and the blood flowing.  The drugs are administered through the pores, gently rinsing a liquid-gelatin substance that seeps into your skin over the course of a day.

Corsum has a cigarette behind his ear. His lungs look like a jar of molasses.

Weaving in and out of the trees. Fog thicker than the hull of a ship. Finally in the god damned grove, finally in the god damned forest. Finally I can get away – they won’t be able to see me!

Corsum looks backward again – only to see pillars of white. He smiles – pillars of white.

“Corsum, get on your fuckin’ knees! We’ve got’cha!”

They didn’t really have him. They were forty five feet away, but it was a smart bluff. They knew what kind of state he was in – they knew he was just dragging on, barely alive, barely even sane anymore after a full day of running, and sweating and panting, and shitting and pissing on the run. They knew a little boy who always wanted to play in the stars couldn’t keep up. They didn’t know a little boy who always wanted to play in the stars could keep up this long. The three were positively impressed. Impressed and tired enough to snake their way out of it.

Corsum got down on his knees, as instructed.

“You’ve got me, all right.” They all heard where he was, but they couldn’t see him – not yet. As they approached,

thirty five

twenty five

fifteen – and from the haze they walked, their guns snarling with curled chambers and holes like Swiss cheese poked into them. My antique shotgun is resting on the floor next to me – good god, it’s old – and the only rounds I have are pumped into it. Good god, what was I thinking running? What was I doing escaping … oh, what are their names? I look up, names patched into their vests, guns in my eyes, in my mouth and my ear - 

‘Miriman,’ yes, yes, he looks like the one that’ll finally do it – the one that’ll end me. Short red hair and a bright orange five o’clock shadow. Blue eyes like the gel that squirts out daily for the exo. 

‘Cross,’ yes, yes, he looks like the one who doesn’t want to be here. We all know that guy, don’t we? He can realistically be happier than anyone in the hypothetical room, but his face is just sour and pushed together and like its stuck there for the rest of eternity. Lemon face, lemon face. Then again, we are in the midst of a war, so maybe he doesn’t actually want to be here. 

‘O’Russel,’ yes, yes, he looks charismatic and like a talker and like a fiery Scotsman. I didn’t know you were allowed to have a beard in the military, but he sports his well. It’s full and bushy and has sticks in it from sleeping on the ground all too often. 

“Corsum,” Miriam says, taking his gun out of Kepler’s face and sticking it into the ground. He leans himself on it and peers at his companions.

“Please, please, don’t kill me.”

“We’re not going to kill you, not unless you want us to or make us. We’re wonderful euthanizers,” says Miriam.

“I do not want to die.”

“Then don’t. Come with us. We’re here to pick you up, obviously, but you’ve been a fast little rabbit, a tenacious little fawn,” says Cross.

“‘A fast little sheepey ‘ave you been, boy-o!”

“I’ll come with you. In shackles or not. In chains or not. With my eyes blind-folded or not. I’ll come with you. But please, just tell me what for. Why do the States want me? What war crimes have I committed except for being born on the wrong side?”

“No idea, boy-who-plays-with-stars,” says Miriam, “They tell us names, locations, birth-dates, physical prowess. Whole she-bang. They don’t tell us what you’ve done wrong, and, really, should they? Is it any of our business? Do I care what you’ve done? Wouldn’t I be more likely to kill you if you’ve done something bad, unbeknownst to either of us?”

Corsum stands up with his hands on his head. O’Russel moves to the shotgun, trickily placed, as it looks neat, picturesque, in a fresh patch of grass covered in evening dew. He picks it up and slings it over his shoulder.

“You’s ‘betta’ ‘move, sheepey. You’s betta’ move.”

***

“Aaaaaaaaaah, this is just how life is. Its just how life is.” 

Bolli, this girl I’ve known forever that has taught me everything I know, is on the screen today. I like her. I like the way her face looks when she’s smiling. She has pretty curves and dimples and a pointed nose. I like when she pops onto the screen and starts talking. 

Just floating there like her and I always are, staring into each other’s eyes – but she definitely isn’t feeling what I’m feeling. She talks to me like a student, and I talk to her like a teacher I’ll never know but desperately want to fuck. Still, if we were built to fuck up close and in contact like beasts, the filthy dirt walkers, then why would we have tubes that carry our seed and do most everything for us? I must resist temptation to destroy everything around me in a vent of frustration. It would not be Christ like – it would not be in the light of the isolated one.

But how can I? She’s so fit compared to me. She’s so strong and she doesn’t look malnourished. Her organs like her. Her muscles like her. My organs and muscles deteriorate every day and night. I can feel them. They’re going.

I’ll be dead by the time I’m twenty-two. But why am I whining? Twenty two is old for a human. I’ve lived a long, prosperous life up here – but what can I say? My exoskeleton’s falling apart and I don’t have the technical expertise to fix it, which means my joints and muscles and organs are being reinforced to handle my native environment and every other humans native environment, which means they’ll all give up in less than a year from the pressure (sometimes I fantasize about a life on the ground and a life among the trees, without floating about, planted like seeds, even If I know how stupid and impossible that sounds). 

My medicine isn’t working, and convincing me to step on a treadmill would be like teaching an exoskeleton the salsa. 

It means Bolli, when she’s not talking to me or giving lectures on her screen, is in the gym, making her muscles not rapidly deteriorate and accepting her position as one of us in up in the cloud. Brave woman, that’s for sure – and she’s 28! Ancient! 

She’s making sure her heart still works. She’s taking her medicine and she’s fixing up her exoskeleton every now and then to make sure it’s in prime working order. 

“Why do you think life is so … solitary … Bolli? Why do you think it was made this way?”

“Aaaaaaaaah, this is just how life is. It’s just how life is. I don’t know, Gama, I don’t know. That’s a tough question to answer. We’re here because … this is how its always been. There’s never been anything different.”

I knew it. I had guessed it all along. Everyone is like this, just like me. Suspended, weightless, animate and surrounded by white and plastic and metal. This is just how life is. I knew there was a simple explanation. Occam’s Razor. Of course, of course. You couldn’t have this many intelligent, reasonable beings walking around where everything can kill you in a split second, right? 

“What are we supposed to get from being stuck here?”

“Well that one you know I can’t answer, Gama.”

“And why don’t the doors open? And why don’t the windows crack? Why can I see everything out there, like tiny little things, if this is how it always was?”

“Don’t you see, Gama? We have always been this way to protect ourselves from that. It is just how we as creatures were designed. Some others were designed to roam, we were designed to float and strap ourselves to chairs whenever we want to sit. It’s just how life is. Isn’t it incredible that we get to observe, though, Gama?”

“No, Bolli, I don’t know if you’re right about that.”

***

The transmission cut out – Bolli was alone. She floats to her seat and straps in, holding one leg over the other, one hand resting gently underneath her chin. The thinking woman’s position. She peers out of the window, as Gama always peers out his window, to see nothing but opaque clouds and barely visible treetops, with clouds on top of them, too, nestling on the mountain backs like dreamy layers of cotton froth.  That’s what she thought she could see.

There was a tower that blinks red every three seconds. She unbuckles herself. She floats to the hatch, turns it, and the door opens.

***

Gama is thrusting his nether regions into the wall ferociously, into a long, cylindrical tube that transports his sperm directly into the vagina of an almost anonymous, healthy woman. He met her once on the screen, where he got to select her from a list of women he could breed with through a wonderfully exciting question and answer process. The women on the list were  decided by an algorithmic process based on a number of questions.  Some of the questions were,

“Do you find it depressing being a chosen person?” 

“Describe your ideal partner!” 

“Do you want to leave your home?” 

“Are you suicidal?” 

She was on the other side, with the tube shoved directly into her uterus, eating a candy bar. Gama, on the other end, was still humping the socket in the wall, with his head held high and one hand holding the Holy Bible. He was quoting it just as it was written – shouting it, even:

“And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.’ And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds, and all the living men in his image, as man is bid to wonder in cloud. 

Then God said, ‘Let the land be stalked with metals that harbor the precious dominion of mankind. Allow them not to suffer roots and stalks and dirt. And God saw that it was good.” 

***