Kikero

Watergate was ruining my life. I was tired of writing about it, and more tired that I wasn’t the one who broke the story. I was a small fish stuck in smallish Omaha. I was desperate for any carrot attached to a stick. That’s when I got the call and met Kikero.

     A small town some distance outside of Omaha, I’d rather not say which, had recently forced their mayor to resign, mob elected a nobody, and allowed that nobody to run the town under martial law.

What was going on? This sounded like the story that would catapult me to prime time. Afterwards, Kikero told me that the less I was to speak of this, the easier my days would go. I’m at the end of my life now, and God made me to be a journalist… so at last I’m journaling. Damn the consequences.

     I drove into the town. It seemed nice enough. I pulled up to a gas station to ask the owner how I could get in touch with this new mayor. The owner was sobbing as he gave me directions.

     

I found Kikero at his desk, rather violently scribbling notes on some old scroll-like page. When I caught his eyes he stood and shook my hand like a gentleman. I noticed how short he was then; must’ve been five foot even. He tip his cowboy cap at me as he introduced himself. Kikero. I told him I was from the daily over in Omaha. He asked how I heard about him. I lied smiling.

     He told me, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you the whole truth, far more than you need or want. In return for that knowledge you won’t report this story.”

     I lied.  He replied, “Walk with me.”

     We walked. 

“A long time ago I made the worst decision someone like me could make. I chose the wrong side. I knew it as soon as I’d done it. Sometime later I heard a rumor that at the end of my time there was a chance, the smallest chance imaginable, but a chance nonetheless, that I would be forgiven.” Kikero smiled at me as he looked up into my eyes. “So, since then I’ve been taking odd jobs all over the world waiting for the end; for grace.”

     We entered a barn. Inside were thousands of glass vials filled with what looked like water. “There are only so many tears allowed in the world at one time. Problem is, as soon as they hit the ground they don’t count anymore. So I’ve been holding onto them, in this barn. Trying to limit the circulation.” He sighed, “Last week someone snuck in and broke many years worth of progress. I’ve been working hard to get things back to the way they were; scratching that number back down.” Tears began pouring down my face. Kikero snatched an empty glass from his pockets and held it under my cheek. 

     

“Thanks. This will help.”

By the Grace of Ba'al

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I work nights from my computer lab at home. I live alone with my dog Spudnik. We take a fifteen minute walk each work night at 3am. I find the deep night atmosphere peaceful. A week ago, I saw something that makes me fear the dark. Sputnik and I were rounding a corner on the far edge of the elementary school's field. Sput likes to do his business around there. I saw that night, in the deep distance, leaning between two buildings, something horrible. He wore a suit and tie, smoked a cigarette. But the form of his face was perverse to me. He looked to be a goat. Horns and all.

I told myself I had imagined it, that somehow the angle of shadows caused me to see something that couldn't have been there. Still, Sputnik and I avoided the school entirely.

I couldn't sleep. Never. Every time I closed my eyes I saw it. Him.

We modern men don't believe in fear. We've all watched enough movies to think it hype. So I told myself I would bury this sleeples nightmare.

We found him last night just where he was last week. I tell you no lie. We approached him. As I neared I braved a whisper, “Who are you?”

He spit his cigarette out, answered, “I was a soldier in the Roman legion. We were set to smash Hannibal’s army. They were weak, having lost half their men crossing the alps. This we told ourselves. We formed a vertical front, ten men wide. Our line was incredible,100,000 long. We thought we would ram our enemy’s lines with so much momentum that nothing would stop us. We would roll right over them with all their elephant madness.

“We were wrong. Somehow, they devastated us. They let us keep our formation, but slaughtered the lines in front, one by one. We crept forward to our deaths. You could hear the gnashing sounds of our comrades meeting their end. They all screamed. What was it that was so terrible that caused these men of valor to scream like innocents? Who was this Hannibal? What sort of monstrous god is this Baal that leads him? And to what torment was he leading us?

“A rumor spread through our ranks that they were eating those in front: killing us by ripping our jugulars out with their teeth. My friend who stood beside me, began digging into the earth desperately with his bare hands. He was trying to dig a whole deep enough to cover his head. He chose suffocation over dreaded destiny.

“You ask me who I am? I am fear. And I never die, child. I wait for you.”

I bore all my courage to summon forth one more question, “Soldier, why have you become a goat?”

“I eat the world. Everything in it.”

I ran. I ran, but I did glance back. I saw him biting my Sputnik into pieces.

I Have No Idea, but Helena Does!

      At that moment Helena realized she could do anything she wanted. Her only adversary was time. Time and all the rules of physics and whatnot. Even those might have some leeway, if looked into. The question was now, of all the things in the world to do, what would she choose.

     Her first thought was to name herself as ruler of a new township. New Thebes had a certain ring to it. Secondly, a darker thought emerged. She could do a take on the early stages of the film Fight Club, and go to therapist after therapist lying about her life. What jolly fun could be had making up devastating after devastating backstory?! Helena would never know. She ruled against it.

     Next up Helena pondered on priests. They're interesting folk, right? Choosing God over women, that's gotta put a man in a strange place. Maybe she'd comb the world over for an honest priest that could really tell her why he does what he does. What with all the hoopla these days over resigning popes and molestation scandals, that sordid ground seemed a bit fragile, so again Helena turned her thoughts elsewhere.

     Then I thought,' Helena thought, 'I could spark a war between alcoholics and chain smokers, but what fun is in that? Everybody dies one way or another. Why be judgmental for someone who picks their poison?'  Helena really did have these thoughts. Promise.

     Finally, Helena landed on snaping duck necks. She knew it wasn't the best idea she'd ever had, but she was getting tired of thinking. 'I was getting tired of thinking,' Helena recalled.

     This is where I intervened. I happened to be walking my dog that day, and I see this obese woman nearly drowning herself trying to get at some little ducklings. They were quite little fellas. Now, of course, Helena had no real chance of getting ahold of those mallards, because she was a slow, lumbering landlubber of a woman. These ducklings had already learned the ways of the world in their short lives, and staying alive was something each of those little critters was keen to do. And do well.

     I asked Helena if she needed any help. Helena thought no, then said, “No.” Then I invited her over for some tea (I’m a writer, you see, so we like to drink tea or brandy – I’m the tea type, so that tells you the type of writer I am… aka, not the any good at it type). I’m starting to think that Helena might be a good subject to write about, so I ask her why she was out trying to string little avian necks. She says, “Of all the thoughts I had today…” She pauses to take a swig of tea, “That one seemed like the best.” I asked her why she thought she had to think to do something today at all.
     She answered, “Well, I suddenly realized I could do anything I wanted.”

The Human Experience

I attempt here to tell a story of lovely Jude. I will try to tell the facts alone.

Jude’s Mother and Father are the nicest people. So nice. They raise their only boy to be a sensation. His instructors are Brahms, Bach, and Galileo. Jude is the beloved, and he knows it.

When he is twelve he asks why God made the animals. Mother says he created the animals to show his creativity and his love. Jude asks how love was embodied in the centipede. Mother says that we know God is loving because he cares even for creepy critters like centipedes. Jude asks how God could love the animals, but make them kill each other. (Jude, Mother and Father are all vegans.) Mother says that in the beginning all the animals were calm and friendly to one another. She adds, “God made all the animals equal. They all had their special skills, and they could all talk. That’s why Eve wasn’t surprised when the serpent spoke to her.”

“You see,” she continues, “It was man’s sin that did it. That’s what made the animals go mute.” Jude never forgots this.

On Jude’s twentieth birthday he asks his first girlfriend to marry him. She blushes, then declines. Jude is sad. He walks the streets wondering how this world could be so simultaneously alive and dead.

Jude is a beautiful creature. His long black locks highlight his sky blue eyes. He takes care of his body and his resume. Mother and Father teach him to never underestimate the power of a manicured smile.

At age twenty-nine Jude falls in love again. He loves everything about the girl: her puffy cheeks, her rainbow colored socks, her affection for dolphins. The quirks all add up to the very definition of love. She left him.

Jude takes a walk.

He walks by a pond. School is out for some happy ducklings. Jude stands there. They’re so cute. They come up to him. They do not fear him at all. An old, mean memory returns to him. His first girlfriend loved meat and hated Jude’s resistance to omnivorism. She wanted him to suffer for his faith.

Pinkies, she explains, are what ugly baby rats are called. They are blind, naked pink things with four legs. Often they are fed to snakes. When a pinky is dropped into the cage of an already satiated snake, the pinky, alone and cold, cuddles up to the serpent. The snake lets pinky warm itself against her smooth skin. Pinky sleeps with its enemy. It bonds to her, as it should to its mother. A day or two or three later, when the snake decides she’s ready to engorge herself once more, she consumes pinky whole.

The littlest duckling quacks. Jude weeps badly. He moans aloud. He breaks its little neck. He breaks all their little necks.

That’s the story. That’s all of it. I was Jude’s second girlfriend.

There is too much pain in the world.

And So Lenin Went Underground

Let me assure you, beyond any doubt, businesses are people. 

How else can you explain the wars? 

 –Norman Kingston

Panic became them. As lawsuit after lawsuit trickled in and pounded from the bottom up, desperate times had come.

It was explained to me once that the situation for the cigarette industry was that of a coon on a coon-dog in the middle of a lake. And that coon is drowning him… “JUST DROWNING HIM!”

The question of who was the coon dog was still a question left to be determined. It couldn’t be the thousands of people dying from their product. They were customers. The government was sure ready to act like an agent of punishment, but toppling the men in black would send the economy into a tornado, possibly rerouting the American public into poverty. Poverty does not beget revitalized sales.

The eye of this dying person, this colossal business, looked then to alcohol for its redemption.

If alcohol could become Public Enemy #1, then maybe Marlboro Man could ride into Jerusalem on Joe Camel himself.

This war was not the first of its kind. The first war went through congress. On paper, for many years, it was a raging success. Prohibition meant no man was allowed to even sniff of spirits. Somehow, alcohol still won that round. Moonshine, liquor sneaks in bowling balls… the embargo renaissanced the sin of imbibing as cool and countercultural.

The new war began with generous donations to A.A. This led to the traditional fair: billboards, newspaper ads, general old school marketing. They followed this up with New Found Films Company. NFF, over the course of nine years, released seventeen wide-spread released flicks featuring heroes who said no to alcohol, and villains who were bitterly controlled by it.

Alcohol fought back. They fed the government into their hands. Besides getting mandatory “SMOKING KILLS” stickers on every pack sold, they banned its use under almost every public roof in America. They also bribed the MPAA to slap “Rated R” tags on any flick that even thought about smoking.

But the deathblow came in the form of football. That’s where the tremendous foresight was had. Alcohol linked its fate to that of football usurping all other means of entertainment as America’s beloved addiction. Where went football, so went alcohol.

Cigarettes were a dying breed. The war was over.

…Or so we thought.

A dying coon is a dangerous animal. If alcohol was to be the good ol’ boy of America, there was a chance yet to be the villain.

And so they took it away. No more Wal-Mart. No more grocery stores. No chain market would get their greedy fingers on man’s most precious stick anymore. It was time for Mom & Pop industries, in every seedy corner of every town, to rise. Cigarettes were to become the beacon light of hipsters, environmentalists, independent farmers, anti-government paranoids, druggies, gang members, the unemployed, the unemployable, street rats, down-on-their-luckers. The 99%.

It’s your play now.

I See Father Jim and He See Me Too

So I’m at the joint, and I’m walking out of the place minding my own business when who do I see? The ol’ black and white himself! Father Jim. And this is the part that really got me going nuts inside, cause I see him smoking a Tom and Jerry. The priest! I know, right! Anyhows, this gets me thinking that I just can’t pass up an opportunity like this. When do guys like us get to see stuff like this, right? So, I gotta say something, I gotta move my lips somehow. But I ain’t got no sunny idea what I should do at a time like this. So, I think to myself, I think, “Yo Joe, ask him something that he’d answer differently if he was wearing his priest gear like normal times.” This don’t help much, but it’s the only thing I got, so I walk up to him and I says, “Yo Father, I gotta question you: why you a Catholic?” He drops his Tom and Jerry, all suave like, you see, and then he answers. He says something like this, he says:

I’m Italian. My grandparents grew up in Bologna. That’s in Italy. They ate pasta, drank wine, and confessed all their sins to their Father. They did that because their fathers did that. And the fathers of their fathers did that too. It’s always been like this. And before we called ourselves Italian, we were Roman. God knows everything, right? (I say to this, I say, “Yessir!”) He knows your story, he knows my story. He knows everybody’s story. But that’s not all he knows. He knows all the stories that could have been. He also knows what could have never been. When he sent Jesus down into our streets, into our stories, he could have put Jesus with the yellows, the blacks, the reds, whomever. And whenever. But he chose to put himself in the middle of the Roman Empire, at the height of the Caesars.  All this he planned. He chose. He picked my people, my Fathers, to nail him to that dead tree. You ask me why I’m a Catholic. I don’t believe I have a choice in the matter.

Next day, I was walking out the joint, same as always, chomping down on some fries I was taking with me to Wilma, and I see a bum half lying there, half sitting. He asked me for some change. I gave him a ten and the rest of my fries. His feet looked real bad like, so I took off my shoes and gave ‘em up to him too. That’s when they started calling me Shoeless Joe. I figure I don’t have a choice in the matter.

This Season is Over

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     I know that look. I’m trapped. This always happens, what my dreadful mother called, ‘the angle of repose’. Goodness, I can’t stand it. Her eyes are kind, but wary in case a bulwark must be raised in haste.

     Now’s the time, Damian, you gotta come clean. I am agog. Mouth open; nothing comes out.

     “You can say it,” she says, “I’m here. Nothing’s going to change.” I don’t believe her.

     Okay, here it goes… “I’m seeing a therapist.”

     “That’s it. Just that. Okay. What for?”

     “Actually… I’m currently seeing three different…”

     This makes her uneasy. She writhes subtly in her seat, “Three therapists… a week?”

     “Yeah… Well, truth be told, almost every week I see a fourth, but it’s always different because there’s a whole slew of physicians that do introductory sessions for free. It’s kinda like any other business plan; get you addicted for free and then punch up the cost once you’re hooked. So, I’ve been meandering on the fourth because I really can’t afford another. I tried some of those group sessions, but the fix of it is that I just don’t get anything out of those. I don’t really want to hear what other psychos have to yammer about.”

     “Psychos?”

     “Sorry.” Awkward silence. “No offense.”

     “Three therapists?”

     “Well, yeah, like I said, I’ve been trying to find a way to get a fourth.”

     “Okay. Four therapists… anything more to say?”

     At this I get indignant. “Hey, you don’t know what’s wrong with me! I could have been raped!”

     Scowl. “You weren’t raped.”

     “That’s not the point.”

     “Then what is, Damian?” Her hands reach across the table for mine. I have to memorize my story. My life. My life, my story; not the place for false anger.
     “I… I have a problem.” My eyes well up. Right on cue. I’m in the zone, peering into her eyes without blinking, without turning away, without remorse. I’m in character now. I will play the part. I will be the best emotionally deranged therapy junky there ever was. I will play the part, telling myself that this isn’t me. “I go there to make up stories. Currently, I have cancer of the eye, I have homicidal thoughts, and I gave my kidney to my brother who then drank himself to death.”

     Silence. She takes her hand away from mine. “But you don’t have a brother.”

     “I don’t have eye cancer either.”

     “Do you want to kill me?”

     “Why would I? Oh, right... I don’t really struggle with that.”

     “You’re just a pathological liar.”
     “No. I know I’m lying. I enjoy the fable.”

     “I have to go.” 

     She leaves.

     Sigh.

     Lying never gets me in trouble. I grimace as a wave of self-hatred seeps in. She’d still be here if I kept lying.

The Rise and Fall of New Thebes

Amidst my wanderings, I, Antonius Block, found a history written in chalk on black earth. The testament is the last record of a self-crowned king. The community around this king, upon his devastation, worked tirelessly to erase all record of his wonder. Moments after I scribbled it onto paper, it was obliterated.

Here it reads:

     We called him Alex at first. The girls liked him, but he had no girlfriend. He was taller than me. I think maybe he would have stayed an average kid, but he took World History with Mrs. Polybius.

     Alexander and the rest of her students were taught something different one day. Mrs. Polybius taught them about how one Pharaoh tried to make a giant pyramid for himself, but he messed up. He built it wrong. They call it the bent pyramid. This inspired Alexander to believe in something great. I don’t know why. But I know Alexander’s imagination grew into fact for the rest of us.

     Alexander was good at basketball. Now he needed to be great. He trained everyday. I helped. He also needed everyone to believe that what he did was more important than everything else. He ran and was elected the first sixth grader to be voted president. Hanna Barca told me that she loved Alexander even before then.

     Alexander got them all to vote basketball as the school sport. He did do that. He also wanted to have the school change its name to something Egyptian. He liked Egypt. He wanted to be Egypt. But the school resisted him. I went out with him and we made the sandbox into one big pyramid. All the school came out to see what Alexander had done.

     Alexander was a star when basketball season started. He was impressive on the court. But he was impressiver after the game. He spoke to the crowd. Every time. Somehow he found the microphone. Every time. He said things like, “You saw victory today. Tomorrow, you’ll see more.” You’d believe him too.

     Alexander said the next year would be bigger. He was right. He got the presidency again. The team was unbeatable. We destroyed Carthage at tournament. Alexander was MVP. They made a pyramid statue to honor the perfect season. The PTA paid for it.

     But Alexander wanted too much. He wanted more crowd involvement. This year, he got them all to take pictures of the opposing players crying when they lost. The pictures were blown up and posted across campus. We counted victories by tears. Marcus Anthony was so excited, he spray-painted WELCOME TO NEW THEBES on the walls.

     They blamed Alexander. They said he was breeding hate. I don’t even know what that means. 
     Hanna Barca says it’s unfair. He left Jackson Middle School. I don’t know what happened to him. He wanted to be great, but they wouldn’t let him. I guess because he couldn’t build a really good pyramid, he just left us bent. Just like that one Pharaoh.