A teenager down the street has answered your Facebook post regarding a long term babysitting job at your house. You and your spouse have a night and morning of long needed luxury planned in a local hotel. Boy-howdy do you need it! Now, these kids of yours are pretty special. I know, I know. Everyone thinks their kids are special but the uniqueness of this pair is undeniable. Twins. Both scored perfect on the WISC-V and the Woodcock Johnson III. Their physical beauty confirmed by that modeling contract you just signed last month. After an experience at a playground this weekend, they have together expressed interest and participation in charitable activities for less privileged children in your community. As I said, these are special kids. Back to that babysitting candidate... Lisa is 16 years old. As teenagers go, Lisa’s online persona appears as vanilla as one of those soggy cookies you find in her grandma’s banana pudding. The hair, the clothes, the selfies, and Instagram stories. She looks no more radical or dangerous than any of your nieces or nephews. Her parents give a similar impression of average late thirty-something banality. The ski trips, birthday parties, dinner pics, and open garage door get-togethers. Dad sells cars. Mom’s a hairdresser. These folks seem safe—one might say harmless. And they are just down the street. Perfection. But wait… There’s something else here. What’s this religious affiliation? Second Book of the Zook "In the year 2019, preordained by the prophet Zookeophira… a set of twins will appear on the planet Earth. They will be like diamonds in the dust, comets in the blackness of night. They will appear kind of heart and sharp of wit. They are imposters and implements of the Dark Lord. The Beast has sent them to deceive you. They must be destroyed. The key saving our people from the coming destruction of this planet is the ritual murder of this evil double seed!" On second thought, you should probably go with that trucker’s pimple-faced band geek living another block over… right? It’s obvious, right? Now to squeeze this analogy into the real world. Here are some names you might recognize. Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. Rick Perry. Mike Pence – Vice President of the USA Mike Pompeo – US Secretary of State Rick Perry – US Energy Secretary These three men sit on the cabinet of the current “President” of Donald J. Trump. Pence, second in line if Mr. Trump were to resign, suffer conviction of impeachment, or sadly die while in office. Mike Pompeo travels the world as the United States preeminent diplomat to rest of the world. Rick Perry, among other frightening duties sets the policies concerning the storage of nuclear waste. What characteristic aside a cabinet position do these gentlemen share? All three believe with whole hearted gusto in a theological event call The Rapture. I’m sure you’ve heard of it and have a vague pop cultural understanding of it but allow me a brief history and significance of this idea. In 1827, in Dublin, a group of Christians interested primarily in prophecy contained within the Bible met on a semi regular basis to celebrate the Lords Supper. As leaders and speakers popped up in the group the ideas concerning pre-tribulation bubbled to the top of the group’s focus. One of the more learned and outspoken members of this group, one John Nelson Darby, concocted the idea of The Rapture from a couple of seeming disconnected passages. One from 1 Thessalonians and one from the Gospel of Matthew. In the interest of equal time with Zookeophira: 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 ASV “15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord (παρουσίαν Parousia),[31] will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Matthew 24:37-40 NIV “37As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming (παρουσία Parousia)[32] of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming (παρουσία Parousia)[33] of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left.” Mr Darby and his associates decoded the words “catching away” (or “caught up”) and a few other discombobulated salads of verbs and nouns to a farfetched conclusion even the most ardent heretics of old would find laughable. The risen Jesus swoops down to our world right before a time called The Great Tribulation (when the Anti-Christ, probably either Barack Obama or the current Catholic Pope, rules the planet) and gathers all the true believers up to Heaven or some celestial tent city then the rest of us suffer all manner of tortures and disasters before Yahweh Junior finally opens his last can of whoop-ass and the credits roll on the Universe. By 1860, the term “The Rapture” had arrived in the United States. Since then, the theology of The Rapture has become a mainstay of prophetic literature and lectures across the evangelical landscape. Most of these dive into ludicrous numerological and coded messages which twist the melons of anyone listening with any sincere attempt to understand the explanations. Needless to say this notion of a Second Coming followed by a second Second Coming is not espoused by the majority of Christians in the States or anywhere. Yet, here we live in a United States where at very least three of Russian Asset in Chief’s cabinet members believe with everything they hold that dear that this scenario is preordained and awaiting us right around the next temple construction site. Seriously. Mike Pompeo is even reported to have mentioned The Rapture in meetings at CIA when he was in charge of that fine institution of conivery. Mike Pence was instrumental in moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a cornerstone of modern end times prophecy. I want you to pause for just a moment and ruminate on this. The second in line to the leadership of the Free World not only believes in a Star Wars style end to the Universe but he feels obligated—as many Christian evangelicals do in their voting decisions—to make it all happen in the name of the Lard. Think about what this means. This is the sort of stuff that Christians fear and yet scoff at when they hear of other death cults like ISIS trampling the Middle East in search of their own Middle Earth-esque end of creation. It’s scorned and stamped out by decree. Now, let me qualify my description of your kids… I know your kids. Let me give you a slightly more objective description of these jewels. Outside their newest discovery of social altruism, they have been accused of selfishness in school. They once called a black girl a mud person. Someone accused one of them of theft of a trinket. Teachers have complained of rudeness. Since the birth of their burgeoning modeling career, they’ve been called conceited by their peers. Your kids aren’t perfect. But that’s no reason for those of us around you to look the other way if you allow this Lisa bitch access to them. The United States is not perfect… but seriously… you guys are letting Pence and Pompeo babysit your kids.
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Michael Shermer appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast this week and within minutes he explained his approach to driving in LA. He knows the speed limit on a particular highway is 65 mph yet he drives a consistent 75 to 79 mph. He knows this is a safe speed—safe from police intervention. It’s the culture of that stretch of road. When Shermer turns off the main road near his house, he must make a left turn across traffic, requiring a yellow arrow. He doesn’t wait for the yellow arrow. He knows “no one is watching.” At that specific place in the world, the rule does not apply. No one is there to stop him and likely no one cares.
We all experience and engage in these sorts of discretions. We know the rule and we know the world in which that rule resides. The two things have no relationship to one another except when that relationship flashes through our mind at the moment we reach that place in the world. Otherwise, the rule and the action live on different planes. Different dimensions. These miniscule pairings represent the most common forms of anarchism. There are no rules, no laws, no statutes until you fear them. Until you succumb to the fear of the consequence of infraction, legislated restrictions mean nothing. I’m glad I found you. You’re glad? Yeah, I called you but some stranger answered and hung up. I sold my phone. Sold it? Yeah, pretty cheap. Why would you—? I don’t read anymore. You don’t read? No. What does that mean? It means I can’t stand all the garbage. Oh. You should stop too. Stop reading? That’s what I said. I can’t stop reading. Sure you can. The world is—. The world is shit and you know it. You’re just being dramatic. Dramatic is wailing and flailing which is kind of what you’re doing. Oh shit. O shit yourself. You can’t be serious. I am serious; I don’t even listen that much, anymore, either. What are you talking about? I play foreign films on my television without the subtitles. Huh? I don’t even watch it, just let Russian fill my apartment while I clean or draw or sleep. Russian? Or French or Scandinavian or whatever; anything I don’t speak. Are you okay? Am I okay; what the fuck does that mean? Are feeling okay? I feel great. Uh-huh. You should try it. I’m worried about you. There are other things to worry about. Like what? I thought you said you couldn’t stop reading?
She told me someone barged into a daycare yesterday and stabbed a bunch of infants. I told her these sorts of things are why I don’t keep up with the news. She said a bag of hands fell out of a trash truck upstate. She said a fat guy in Jersey jumped five stories and landed on his daughter’s car, killing her too. She showed me a video of a car crash victim whose face hung like burst balloon from her tomato paste skull. She told me someone bombed a wedding in Syria, killed 45 children. She looked up a guy who ran over his ex-wife in her driveway so many times that the car was out of fuel when they found her. There was a school bus that broke through the rail on a mountain road in Colombia. A bunch of cheerleaders burned in a van. An entire bottom floor of a hospital filled with elderly women died in a flood because someone forgot they were there. Eighty year old lady raped and murdered in LA. By her sixteen year old grandson. And his school chums. A small prop plane burst into flames shortly after takeoff and dropped on a church. After purchasing a $2 million insurance policy on them, a dad killed his wife and three children by driving them off a pier. A bus driver in Kansas City found a head. A teacher in Miami found a foot. A worker fell into a hog pit in Iowa. They ate him. The President threatened shoot a bunch of Mexicans. I told her this is why I don’t read the news.
Buoy lights burst radial flame across the water. The flashes of it lapping against my chest betrayed the dark blood leaking from the wound. A ship of inconceivable size transformed the waters into powerful swells and valleys. I worried someone might spot me but I finally recognized a figure so high in the darkness, it had no features, no details. Just a silhouette. A black cutout leaning over a rail. The swells lifted me high and away from it and it disappeared into the void. I wanted to grab the buoy but she had told me to let them pass. She would find me. I cannot imagine how but she did find me. She dragged me into the boys’ tiny vessel, bobbing under the glitter of the stars, the real pain just beginning to set in.
The terrier chomped on the clasp of the leash while Mrs Garrison repeated her accusations. Again she demanded Vulcan stop shitting in her yard. Again she suspected him of pissing on her flower beds. Again, she demanded that I silence his bark when the trash truck arrived on Tuesdays. Again she declared Vulcan a menace, declared his entire breed a menace. Again the crusted pebble of mucus skewered by that one long nose hair rattled in her nostril like the unhitched hook of speeding truck’s dangling cargo strap. Again that errant twitch in the muscles of her flapping cheek. Again I glimpsed the smear of powder red lipstick on her front dentures. The terrier still chomped on the clasp. I sensed Vulcan’s anxiety though he stood statuesque as ever, his paws flat, his face averted from the horror of this woman and her pet. As if the terrier had just picked a pair of cuffs, when the clasp fell from the leash, she dashed from the path with her tiny appendages scissoring across the grass at a surprising clip. Vulcan made chase without hesitation. Just as I trained him. Mrs Garrison screamed. I felt no need to track them myself. I could see the state of the race through the morphing shape of her face. She reached for me, grabbed my shirt, screaming for me to do something. I waited a few seconds more before I called out Vulcan’s name. He stifled a frustrated whimper when he returned to my side. Mrs Garrison never found that dog. She held a mock funeral three months later. Vulcan cannot travel that edge of the park without a glance at the terrier’s last trajectory.
With the increasing weight of the air she breathed, she saw the fire in the black distance marching like a demonic caravan along the ridge line. The wind spoke of the fire’s intended path and she knew they had to veer west or turn back. Turning back provided several possibilities but most of them ended badly. She had no idea how many men were combing the forest from the direction of the camp or if there were any at all. Only three miles west, the craggy hills meant a slower pace than they needed to make the river by dawn. Sam had warned of the unexpected in the forest and how risky this plan could be in light of the unrest in the valley. He had warned her and she had insulted him. She wished he were here now to roll his eyes and solve the problem. She wished the children’s legs could move faster. She wished she had a weapon.
They huddled among the oaks at the west side of the park. There’s a citrus colored streetlight on that corner where they divided the Roman candles between them in even numbers. Some of them made these quick defensive looks over their shoulders like they were a clutch of birds. I was walking Almo under the same color glow at the opposite end of the block and I would say that I was thinking about nothing but that’s not true. Those fleeting seconds before the explosion, I was without a doubt thinking about how I was going to explain to my daughter’s fiancé how I named the dog after a character in an ancient Roman poem. And then my hearing went and there were parts of those kids dropping out of the sky like heavy confetti. Almo jolted stiff-legged from the sound and vibration of it. My hearing went away, replaced by that high frequency thing. Some of the fireworks were still shooting from the black middle of this mess. It was a mess. I hate that it happened. They just wanted to have fun. They just wanted to be kids. Now they’re just memories of kids. I say I hate it. More like I hate that it happened to me but the rest of it is too sad to ponder at length. Too sad.
She’s dead. Or dying. No. She is dead. And she will always be dead. She will never grow old. She will never disappoint or be disappointed. Not with her looks or her age. She will always be this young. The heartache of wrinkles and blemishes will never find her. Heartbreak will never slow her down. Hate for her enemies will never guide her. She will never compete for all those frivolous things that consume other girls. She will never know betrayal. She will never receive retributions for whatever variety of innocent mistakes. She is dead. She is dead and now I will carry all her potential with me. I am certain this burden will always be mine. I am her now, in some unavoidable capacity. The blood is on my hands and her lost potential is bound to me forever. She is dead now and forever.
Ya know, even though my Dad seemed as though he could turn on us, he never did. Always fair. Always willing to listen. Reasonably reliable. I will miss him and his face. I hate that I think of how his face changed overnight. At dinner he’s my dad. At lunch he’s an old man. It scares me. I know how that sounds but you know what I mean. Then I think about other things. Things that don’t weigh as much. I love him. I always lapse into a sense of him still being around. Not in any incorporeal sense but you know, like he's in the neighborhood. More in the way I speak about him. Like, I love my dad.
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April 2024
Chrysalis, a growing collection of very short fiction.
That Night Filled Mountain
episodes post daily. Paperback editions are available. My newest novel River of Blood is available on Amazon or Apple Books. Unless noted, all pics credited to Skitz O'Fuel.
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