Fictional Obituaries of Forgotten People:

Marky Mark:

The slow processional lyrics could barely be made out over the loud speaker: “I see you in my midnight dreams and I’ll see you when I die.”  A haunting atmosphere of melancholy and reflection covered the somber group.

They all sat facing each other, ready to confess, but they couldn’t. Each of them uniquely held a secret that was buried so deep that no face to face crying could pry loose. They all looked at each other, faces made of bolted doors and impassive eyes. 

Who is to say why they all hid their secrets, shame perhaps, guilt maybe. Most of them had killed people in the war, most of them had a vivid loss that couldn’t be brought up. It was down there, down lower than any secret fear. They had felt something different, something the civilian faces around them couldn’t understand. 

The war vets talked about superficial events, what they did since last time, how their family was doing, how their sleep was progressing. Hey all took turns flapping their mouths and burying their confessions. 

It was down there, it was turning around in the black. The waves of the deep creature caused undertows, swirls and whirlpools in their eyes. It flipped and thrashed, and it begged to get out. It had been buried by all the tools the soldiers had. They repressed it, denied it, and justified it to keep the dark creature away.

One of the soldiers was a gentleman named Mark Liscoinski. He was a timid person his whole life, until he was drafted. He was obedient, loyal, and a good boy by all the soldiery virtues. He was also lucky. 

During his tour of duty, he had seen the faces of 13 people he. He had night terrors that each night brought him back to the same vivid battles. Pieces of land fought for with screaming gunfire and relentless anxiety. 

When in the field, he knew he could die at any moment, some stray bullet would have his name on it, some bomb could obliterate his body while he slept. It was an anxiety that never let its grip go. Just going outside, driving to the store or any mundane task was laced with a high-powered sense of emergency.  He had no words to describe it.

Luck may have saved him from dying, it didn’t save him from remembering. He started going to these veteran therapy sessions when he stopped being able to sleep for 2-3 days at a time. The dark creature couldn’t be silenced anymore. 

He knew what the creature looked like without seeing it. The faces of those that he killed, and those that died next to him all whispered their memories into his ears if he closed his eyes for too long. The therapy was a chance to silence the creature.

The therapy helped at first, sleep was a welcomed gift. However, the creature quickly devoured all the well-meaning actions. For every answer to the shame and guilt there was the creature, underneath ripping it to shreds. What pleasant words and grand ideas can match the meaninglessness of war? The more therapy there was, the stronger the creature became, learning how to navigate the battlefield of the mind. 

Group therapy was recommended, maybe the other survivors, the lucky ones might be able to share their tools. The group therapy was about secrets, just more lies to help bury the creature. Talking about it only let it rise to the top for Mark. Some folks seemed to improve and leave but Mark deteriorated. He slipped down further, closer to the reach of the creature that tossed and squirmed deep down in his belly. 

He felt more guilt and shame talking about the war, he felt remorse and anger. They told him it was natural and it too would pass. It never passed and it only got bigger. His sleep was now filled with the faces he had tried hard not to see, their details burned into his skull, right behind the eyes. 

Mark wouldn’t be at the next therapy session.

The creature had finally gotten out the night before the therapy session. The black creature had finally risen, like a leviathan out of a deep memory of tears. It wore the face of a child, its dark bulk shadowed in countless faces, a mass of body parts all clumped together. The child’s face had broken the water line and Mark woke up screaming. 

The creature had risen, it burned with the same vivid memory from the war. A scorching fire that burned like a red-hot poker trying to get out of his head. It thrashed and yelled inside of him, each twist and scrape brought the war back into focus. It stretched through the years back to the same moments that felt more real than anything that came after it. Everything else since was a shadow. The creature tore into Mark, it ripped at the inside of his skull with talons and screams. The dark leviathan was being born. Mark could feel his teeth cracking and grinding, he could feel his eyes being crushed by pressure as white distortion flooded in. 

Mark got his gun, not the one that killed people in the war, this one for killing one specific person. Mark didn’t hesitate, he pulled the trigger like he had been trained to. Thinking to himself: “I wish I had done this sooner.”

His body was found the next day.

Nazi Clown Party:

Perhaps you saw the video going around of the parade. Perhaps you were there and saw it with your own eyeballs. I saw it. I saw the whole thing from my front door. I don’t want to give away my address publicly, but everyone knows where it was. There were thousands of cameras there. Every device was on and pointed at the parade. Every news station, every set of working eyes was super glued to the spectacle that marched down my street.

It wasn’t announced, it wasn’t advertised and certainly didn’t have the street permits for an assembly of this kind.

I heard car horns and some screams and hurried to the door looking outside expecting to find a car crash or a homeless guy stumbling across the street. Nope, it was a parade. The parade was like an army march, everyone walked in step, a drummer was tapping out the processional beat. The boots matched perfectly and the rhythm was strong.

Their faces lined in grease paint. Strange elongated eyes, bulbous frowns and smiles of every variety. Red noses, black noses, noses with little swastikas on them. All of them had white plastered makeup but the mouths had an endless depiction of funhouse warped variety. I didn’t see the swastikas at first, but I wasn’t surprised. They all wore black uniforms with a red band that anyone would recognize. Most of them had little smudges of grease paint on their collars.

They wore white gloves like oversized cartoon hands, floppy black feet that required their goose step rise nearly hip height to clear the toes. This didn’t stop a few of the clowns from intentionally tripping over their oversized stompers. They marched by and saluted each side of the street. They all wore military uniform officer hats but tufts of rainbow hair poofed out from underneath. They smiled, winked and saluted everyone.

I saw about 2000 clowns march past my front door, flag bearers peppered within the march, flowing red, white and black, the spidery right angles towering over the clowns. I watched with my jaw on the ground, as most of us did. For 15 minutes, I watched military marching clowns walk by with an endless variety of makeup, noses, and hair. No two clowns looked alike, except for the uniforms and hats which were identical, black SS style uniforms with stark and slim lines.

By now nearly everyone had taken out a device and was recording the procession. There were a few people, a cluster of nearly 15 that had gotten together and had tried to block the march.

The front row of clowns paused briefly and with a military command removed black hand guns from their jackets.  They all pointed in unison, and waited.

The 15-cluster dispersed. They backed off, the guns had brought it up a lethal level they weren’t ready for. No cops were on the scene yet, sirens could be heard in the background, but not close enough. They continued with their guns drawn and began pointing them at anyone that got near. They squatted and aimed like James Bond, rolling with those oversized boots and flawless acrobatics.

The cops took an additional 30 minutes to get enough reinforcements to confront the clowns and position themselves in front of procession. They barricaded off the street and surrounded the area with helicopters. They barked orders over their megaphones, and lobbed tear gas at the clowns.

The clowns removed gas masks from their jackets, and they threw their fake noses to the ground. They began putting on their gas masks, which were also plastic clown masks. The gas masks even more elongated eyes and smiles, frowns and knobby noses that served as the filter for the gas mask. The clown parade stopped in unison.

They all came to a halt with a single stomp. The drummers started a drum roll, slow at first and turned it up to a break neck beat in about 45 seconds. All the clowns took out hand guns, all the same black guns used to threaten those who got in their way.

They didn’t point them at the police though. They put them to their own heads and as the drum roll hit the crescendo they fired. There was no audible BANG, the clowns all fell over at the same time. Except for the drummers, who in syncopated fashion put their drum down, took a gun out and after a visible snap in posture collapsed next to the rest of the clowns.  Partly due to the drummer’s comical lateness the crowd watched in silence. Like the rest of the surrounding crowd, I watched dumb founded, I simply couldn’t grasp the extent of what was happening. If it wasn’t for all the videos I would have thought it was a shared hallucination or something.

The tear gas had formed a slight fog and the cops waited for some of it to clear. Perhaps they were waiting for the clowns to get back up. It took a few minutes but a voice broke the silence and screamed “The suits are empty!”.

We all approached the bodies, cops yelling at people to stand back and cautiously investigated.  The military uniforms were empty, the masks, boots, gloves and even the guns were left behind. No flesh was found, no bodies, nothing. The guns lay next to the military uniforms and crisp brimmed black Nazi hats. The guns had a little white flag hanging from a stick that hung out of the barrel. It said “BANG”.

When the tear gas fog had finally cleared completely, and the cops got all the uniforms and clowns masks off the street, I went back inside my house. I have no idea where they came from or what sort of supernatural powers were involved in their appearance. I know one thing for sure, I did Nazi that coming.

Mad Melvin:

He had worn out boots, an ego as loud as a duct taped exhaust pipes that smacked sharply over the speed bumps.  He was fireball and knew his time was limited. Born with a high contrast name like “Melvin” people couldn’t hold on to him long enough to wring his neck. They underestimated him just long enough for the combustion to blast him off into some other direction.

As with most fireballs he burned people fast, never really understanding how discretion or secrets work. Stuck on some invisible rail on some invisible train heading at an avalanche speed. Melvin was most people’s definitions a Deathwish junkie. He was only glamourous to angsty teenagers and a handful of voyeurs waiting for him to finally burn up.

“Mad Melvin” was what people called him after he scorched through a town.  Like a bandito on a wanted DEAD or ALIVE poster in some old tyme town where the rules had only guns to dot their lines.

Mad Melvin had just rolled into a quiet town with only two bars and a main street that went no-where. A little watering hole before crossing the mountains, and after that a great plateau of endless possibilities. The quiet town had space for him, there is always an empty spot at these kinds of bars.

 This one was called the “Red Top”. With a glance, you can see the whole town’s history, right up to a dirty dollar nailed to the roof, or the bar or some other symbolic life jacket. The bar here was exactly what Mad Melvin needed, a thirsty relief from a parched ride.

Mad Melvin loved his drink, the kind of love that transcends social barriers, a love that can drink piss booze from a no-where town and smile in satisfaction. Booze was his only love in life, it flowed through him like gasoline, it stoked the fire inside and flashed out of his brain like white lightening.

If booze was a woman, Mad Melvin would have chopped her up and buried her on top of a mountain like any decent serial killer. His inside fire burned everything he loved and booze was no exception.

The drink was ordered and he sat resting as much as he could, the high octane thumping out an urgency that never let him rest too long. He ordered another, shoveled some limp fries down with too much salt and a cough. He then washed the whole soggy mess down with a few more drinks.

By now the fire burned bright and his engine was ready, time to hit the road again and cross the mountains. He paid his tab in dirty crumpled greenbacks and got back on the road. He bolted out of town as fast as he could, he learned that socializing with anyone usually meant more trouble. He had a horizon to get to, he had his mind set to the plateau that lay over the mountains. There was no denying the pull, the fire urged him on. With clenched teeth and bruised fists, he shifted gears and started winding up the mountain.

The switchbacks turned on dimes, his head spun a bit, the fire was hot and the iron machine winced under his commands. The pace of his thoughts didn’t have enough pauses for reason or caution. They simply flecked out like flames hungry for the wind. “Drive on” his thoughts pressed down into him and he pressed down the pedal, in angry obedience. 

It was near the half way point of the pass when the road got slick. Fishtails and a few slower turns cooled his heels a bit. He still managed to whizz and whip around the long-haul trucks with their slow meandering. Infuriating as they were, he loved the high-powered relief of blowing past some heavy honking lazy driver. He shouted “See ya later sucker” with a grin and an upshifted to 5^th gear.

Mad Melvin wasn’t watching the road when he hit the ice, he was listening to Dead or Alive. He felt the machine underneath him loose its footing, the ice slick was in the shadow of the mountain and hard as steel. The balding tires had nothing to grip to as the steering wheel became non-responsive.

Panic flared, and the horizon began moving across the windshield.  It was 3-4 turns on the narrow mountain road before Mad Melvin realized this was the end. He was toast, he saw himself going over the edge in his mind, his car exploding at the bottom and his bleeding face kissing the wreckage. The flash was only a brief second and the car turned around one more time.

The fire in his brain exploded, it pressed down harder than ever and “Drive on” commanded him. With a cosmic “Fuck it!” he pushed the pedal to the floor and the car traveled a few more feet in a nauseated spin. The car connected with the road again and the tires screamed. The engine cried one last time and like a bullet from a gun the tires fired the car off in the direction it was facing.

Off he went, right over the edge, just like he imagined. The car was facing the cliff when the tires hit the pavement. Off the rails, with tires spinning in the air and a wide eyed Mad Melvin screaming out the fire in his brain.

On the way down the song continued from an unconcerned recording “You spin me right round baby, right round….” Mad Melvin had a second or two to grasp the song lyrics, like a love song to the flame, he threw his head back laughing maniacal tears. “Baby here I come!” he shouted as he became a twisted fireball at the bottom of a valley.

Failed Phoenix:

The sidewalks needed some attention, little lagged creases jutted up from root growth. The sidewalks weren’t even in a straight line, just a wandering doodle of construction. Winding around trees failing pitifully at avoiding their knobby territory. The sidewalks reflected the kind of meaninglessness that the rest of the town grew from, like a rotten seed that shouldn’t have been given nutrients.

The buildings were the main suppliers of the decaying slime that fed the town. The structures were built on convoluted zoning laws that played a shell game. This game was about avoiding liability, each swath of land was nagged into the dust by planning commissioners, developers and investors. The lines of the map were fuzzy, and rarely did an issue settle for long. If there was an angle for someone else to be liable for the state of rottenness of the town, then the zoning laws were the front line.

The same battle of hot potato was echoed in the construction of the buildings. The buildings were visibly sub-standard. Every contractor of any trustworthiness had moved on to greener pastures and left the decaying town long ago. All that remained were the slimeballs, those that finished cheap and skipped town before the lean, or the sink, or the wonky craftwork was discovered. Leaving behind a twisted and legal time bomb of liability. It was not uncommon for a house or a condo complex or a duplex to collapse at least once a year, not that anyone had enough money to pursue any retribution.

The people that lived in the acrid rot also had their own flavor of twistedness. They meandered much like the sidewalks and their words were as fuzzy as the angles of their house. They gibbered about plans and schemes that never seemed to happen, just fantasized about enough to prevent any actual action. The plans and schemes abandoned for newer distractions, loose ends that weaved itself into a half-formed net or cocoon. 

The people of this town loved their plans, they exalted all the ideas that oozed out of their heads, dressed them up in hats and curtains. Decorations like Christmas wrapping paper piled high up like a moat that prevented anyone from doing anything other than more planning and more scheming. New business ideas rotted out from underneath hopeful entrepreneurs, their plans in limbo while a new rezoning survey was completed. Of course once the survey was finished any forthright business person would have moved on, leaving only the dreamy eyed failures of the town.

The township tries to hold a festival once a year. The incompetence of its organization is a voyeuristic pastime of some of the denizens. The theme of the festival is different every year, once there was a fish festival and the refrigeration of the fish was overlooked. Once there was a car show for fancy cars but a windstorm blew through and twisted branches broke a dozen windows. No out-of-town car enthusiast would ever bring their pride and joy back to that town. There was even a pie festival that over 100 people got food poisoning from an apple worm infestation.

Some people don’t live in this town for long, some simply pass through. There is no doubt though that everyone at one time or another sees the crooked windows and off-angled bridges. Trees that are rolling dice on which spot of dirt to throw themselves at. People that gaze outside with wet eyes, dreaming of a future that they can never reach. Their twisted brains growing out of the twisted houses, built from the rot of a town it used to be. Their memories reminding them that someone else was probably responsible for their crooked house and their crooked sidewalks.

There is some who suspect that this town is every town, like an intersection or a destination that all towns travel too. When a town is rebuilt, upgraded or created it begins its slow march down the doodle sidewalks of decay, slowly losing the shine and glamour of creation. This explanation of course does not change the grimy faces that can be seen from the dirty windows. Their eyes looking outside, seeing something altogether different, as their brains percolate with the dissolving chemicals of age.

The place is also fairly resistant to any washing, cleaning or scour. This is not a metaphysical observation but rather the cumulative mis-management  of drainage. The main road of the town is also the lowest part of the town, functioning in part like a giant drainage hole. All the surrounding houses sluffing their waste out like a bird.

Birds have no control of their bowels, a singular hole functions as their waste. The cloaca is uniformly used for procreation as well. This allegory seems also true for the town as the slime that flows also serves to perpetuate the decomposing town. A great chemical soup incapable of finishing itself off. It sits there, a deathless creature, unable to die, as each of its parts is slowly and haphazardly replaced.

No phoenix resurrection here, that is just a fantasy are for other towns with people that have straight sidewalks.

Plutonium Television:

The zip and zolt of the device was barely audible. The noise didn’t wake the single occupant room. The device jumped up in bright colors, flashes of explosions and a familiar voice:

“Tonight is the beginning of season 23 of Plutonium Television. We will be doing a quick recap of last season. The planet x-75 was destroyed with a total of 86 billion votes. There was no loss of human life, only the beautiful fireworks of an inner mantle and magma core plasma flowers. “

“In the great wideness of space there only Plutonium Television, broadcasting from the center of the universe, which we all know is everywhere!”

The announcer continued their rhetorical monologue, describing the pretense of the show. A left-over novelty of democracy, voting has taken a more recreational turn. The planet with the most votes from viewers gets destroyed by no less than 100,000 nuclear type 7 Plutonium bombs. The planets often involving colonies, a hated species or sometimes nothing at all, just glorious gas giants with vibrant death throws.

The occupant of the room rolled over and blinked twice at the device, the onboard facial recognition turned the volume up and brightened the colors.

“The first planet up for a vote is inhabited by the lost space colonists from the ancient seed ship Aegis-Minor. The colonists have lost all their technology and are deep in the feudal era. They have no idea of life outside their planet and are beginning to mine iron and tin in greater amounts. “

“The prediction models show an 80% chance of lv3 atrocity within the next 4 years with a dark age following, a great candidate for annihilation.  The total population of 63 million human beings.”

The occupant began to grin, this season of Plutonium Television was juicy, they had always avoided populated planets due to controversy. This season was different, and the option to destroy a populated planet certainly held its allure. Like the previous season it always paid to listen to all the options.

“The second planet up for a vote is the beautiful crystal planet of Segra-Beta, a giant terrestrial planet rich in the rare crystal Xenic-Phosphate.  This planet is slated for mining and its destruction would result in a catastrophic loss of profit for those fat cats of Sepius 7, HA HA! Can you imagine the jumpers from the grant tower on Sepius 7? Remember viewers there may be some competition with this planet from corporate interest so don’t let this planet slip away!”

The occupant cheered the screen and snorted a little as they clapped their hands. Seeing corporate fat cats jumping from the grand tower while their precious crystals go boom-boom sounded exhilarating.

By now the viewer ship of the feed for Plutonium Television was sky rocketing. The citizens of Sepius 7 were already being interviewed on different live feeds, defiantly rejecting they would jump. The controversy of planets had begun, everyone was tuning in.

“The third planet on the chopping block is Xingtain-4 a heavily populated terrestrial planet. It is rumored to be the original planet that was once called Earth by human beings. How amazing is that, to blow a hole right in the middle of history? Those human beings would never know what hit them!”

The occupant of the room was nearly salivating at the options, wringing their fingers in wormy excitement. Oh the joy of erasing the past with a blooming nuclear fireball that the stars would be jealous of. 

This was the beginning of the season so over the next 4 months all the planets would be on every feed all over the universe, broadcasting every fear, outrage and indulgence. There would be plenty of time to decide which doom would make the biggest blast.

“Of course, as always, without hesitation the planet Pluto, where the entire Plutonium Television crew works and lives. That’s right, we have our lives on the line! We have survived 23 seasons and we beg you blow us up. We will be interviewing the sullen and tragic geniuses of our weapon crew as well as the analytics team responsible for choosing planets. “

The tone of the announcer changed to a low monotone. Everyone was used to the dog and pony show they put on, the same deal each time. They always emphasized themselves, it was a great for promotion and really hit the mourners and moral folks. They never got higher than 1% of the vote, people wanted the entertainment and moral consideration dissolved into a non-voter.

The occupant began to lose interest when the monotone started and the facial recognition switched the feed channel and brightened the colors again, they had hit the next level of tolerance. The occupant thought wistfully at the destruction of the crystals on Segra-Beta and wondered how man fat cats would make the big jump.

Pig Pile:

It was 5:03am when I looked at the clock, the neighbor’s alarm had been ringing for a few minutes. I looked out the back window and squinted in irritation at the darkness blaring out a high-volume repetition. Maybe they were getting robbed, maybe the alarm was tripped by a creature. The slow gears in my head started moving and I was debating calling the police, checking next door or looking for ear plugs. However, before I decided the alarm stopped and I shuffled off to bed.

As sleep returned I thought of the type of creature that would set off an alarm, a rat or squirrel perhaps. Some small rodent that had chewed on the wrong wire, pushed in a window or door that was not completely closed, a dark opportunist with a nose for human food.

As dreams go these questions can devolve into a stranger imagination and there was never a truer time than this night.

As the dreamtime house creaked in the shadows of the dark, I could hear the scampering feet of little clawed feet. Their thoughtful caution waiting for any sound or clue. The small creature listened for any movement, was anyone awake? The shadow of the moon was dripping into the kitchen window, the cat door had been easy and there had been no response from the house. Access was easy.

The stone floor echoed the little claws as they lightly chimed out their panic. So many unknowns, where is the cat? Where is the food? The little creature found a good corner to watch and wait. Sniffing the air, listening to the creaky old house. The kitchen was musty, compost was rotten in the sink, it had been forgotten for at least a few days.

The little creature rushed from doorway to doorway, pausing at each threshold to listen and watch. There was no cat, the food bowl was empty and the smell of feline was stale. The beds were empty and the sheets had only slight smells. No one was living here.

The small creature relaxed a little and began searching the kitchen again for food stuffs. A little investigation produced a cereal box with ample delicacy. The little clawed hands holding highly processed human food, utterly enjoyable sugars that made the risky venture worth it. The creature stopped to listen to the darkness again, making sure the clawed scratching of the cereal box didn’t wake something.

It was 3 minutes of enjoyable indulgence on the human’s food before the splat was heard. A thick weight falling on the bathroom floor with a wet slap. Something was inside the bathroom. The creature froze and listened, it’s heartbeat raced and it dropped the nut cluster it had been nibbling on.

The sound from the bathroom continued as if something was sliding on the floor, an inch by inch dragging. It paused a moment as the creak of the bathroom door opened. The small creature’s eyes were peeled as it gazed upon a mass that was barely illuminated by the kitchen moonlight windows.

A pile of hair about the size of a small dog inched and dragged its mass across the floor by some unknown mechanism. It was a homunculus of drain hair, brush hair, tooth paste scum and shreds of twisted toilet paper. Little soap scum hair-knots made up the majority of its body, if it could be called such.

The hair mass started moving towards the creature, as if it could see the frozen rodent in the dark. The rat panicked and darted for the cat door, but it was too late.

The mass of hair licked out like a frog’s tongue, a line of fibers and slime stretched out in an instant, stretching the distant. It wrapped around the rodent’s body and held it firm. The small creature thrashed and chewed at the hair-thing. All its struggle only entangled it further and the soap scum hair knots pulled itself towards the rodent until it covered the struggling rat completely.

Like a boa constrictor it squeezed the rodent until it stopped moving. Then began it drag it down the hall. It passed the bathroom and the bedroom, it came to a stair case leading down. It started the decent with a flop as it dragged the rodent’s body slowly over each step. Flop, flop, flop all the way down in a methodical and slow procession. The hair-thing had wrapped the rodent up like a spider, encasing the rodent except for the tail which slapped carelessly down the stairs adding an echo to the flop down each step.

When the hair-thing and the rodent body reached the bottom, the moonlight revealed a larger hair-mass. It had a few legs and arms sticking out, intermixed vacuum dust and disposable bags. Clogged drain hair acted as mortar and fibers from clothes wove around the mass. It was made of 2-3 human beings, long since decomposed. There was a cat tail and some small bones tied in with human hair by knots and a moist slime from a kitchen garbage disposal. This homunculus was piled high with the people who once lived in the house, all of the bones and half-flesh sticking out of its center like a pin cushion.

The hair-thing brought the rodent body to the hair-mass, paused and pressed itself under a rotten fold in the mass. The rodent body lay like an offering to the mass. For a moment, it seemed as though the hair-mass was considering the value of the creature, measuring the rodent’s short haired body and scrawny limbs.

Then with a quick motion formed a makeshift mouth and swallowed the body, adding its mass of hair and bones to its own. The offering was accepted and the hair-mass quivered a moment in satisfaction. It quickly shuffled itself off to a hidden corner and waited for another living thing to join its knots of bones and hair.

Frogs in a Jacuzzi:

Throughout history there have been conflicts, struggles, slavery, oppression and all sorts of way of dying from other human beings including child birth. Nearly every banner of human identity has fallen under the subjugation of another banner, institution or warlord. Even the most powerful imperial nations like the French or English once had recent ancestors that were chained as property to other human beings. Vercingetorix’s bones for example were dug up via art for the sake of a French national identity when nationalism was beginning. He was a Gaul general that defied the Roman conquest of what is now France and the surrounding area, he lost, and then the indigenous Frenchies became slaves to the Romans for quite a while.

There are countless of such examples of this in the deep pages of history. Even back in the days of spears and bows, many preferred death over slavery. They fought for the dignity of not being chained as property. Slavery had been an institution of productivity for countless years. It wasn’t until we found more productive ways to do things with human bodies. The plow, the engine, and the gun allowed us the dignity that a lot of us enjoy today. Some may tell you that some wars were fought for slavery or some higher principle but war is senseless and I would argue that any moral perspective of war is a futile attempt to gloss over the meaninglessness of war.

We still gladly rent out our brains and bodies for work, of course with the dignity of choice. Some having less choice than others, creating a new landscape of injustice and a new conversation, asking the question: Is this new injustice worse than death?

Why would anything be compared to dying, can’t things just be terrible and go on forever? I would like to assert that a moral death is the exit door, it is the escape hatch and as society having one decent escape plan is rather comforting.

Assisted suicide patients often find it comforting to have their suicide pills nearby, knowing that if the pain of life becomes too much you can always exit stage left. Slavery does not allow such an escape, you are property you must spend considerably more effort to die, or so I have heard.

You see, human beings are machines, we are programed to live, to survive at almost any cost. In a larger sense we are also programmed to procreate and multiple ourselves as much as we can when times are good. In fact every extension of human technology has increased the limit of the world population. The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones, the new game started and the new players found an oily crown dripping in pollution and industry. We became fruitful and multiplied under the new crown.

I find it very unlikely that society would ever be able to undo their biological programming. We need an exit button within reach and thanks to technology we have nuclear missiles. We have the promise of mutually assured destruction that will end the whole show if ever we find ourselves in a fate worse than death. One of my favorite pessimists Kurt Vonnegut called nuclear bombs the human Kool-Aid if we ever get to the point where our fate is worse than death. For example: If you are on fire, death is preferable, or so I have heard.

Whether you are Russian or North Korean, bombs work just as good. Until some cultural identity comes up with a way to become immune to nuclear bombs we all share the same fate when the bombs fall. We all turn into shadows and dust when humanity drinks the nuclear Kool-Aid.

I will back up a second. Despite Kurt Vonnegut’s figure of speech about Kool-Aid I would like to add a superficial correction. The Kool-Aid reference was in regards to the Jones Massacre of 1978 where a bunch of religious cult members ingested poison rather than face the authorities when the hammer came down. They preferred death rather than incarceration or trial. It was in fact Flavor-Aid that they consumed, not Kool-Aid.

We all suffer this human condition of staying alive and wondering if the nuclear button is about to be pushed. This inclusive fate may suggest that we are all equal, we are not equal. Some of us human beings need a lot of help and have a lot of problems due to the boiling pot of circumstance. Some of us are abandoned Chinese children, some of us are starving, some of us are old and infirm, and some of us are just sick of the whole thing up to our eyeballs in disgust at the choices of those in power.  Equality is one of the biggest jokes, right next to free speech.

Freedom of speech is one of those absolutes like the Ten Commandments. It is horribly devoid of any nuances or sense of wisdom. The 1^st amendment should have a correction that says “Unless the government or the people don’t like it.” There is nothing about rights that are enforceable as a powerless human being. You simply have to trust the government will let you say what you want. They may change their mind, and there is nothing you can do about it. They are not rights, they are temporary privileges. Unless this is a fate worse than death for you, then the motto is: “Give me liberty or give me death…”

Discretion of speech is how you survive, cut your thoughts, curate your ideas, slim down to a sleek concept that people can consume in a quantifiable amount. You have to serenade the public, you must woo them. If you don’t, then no one will participate in your culture and your culture will be forgotten. Without participation, culture dies. We live in a world where you can’t kill ideas anymore by killing groups of people. Killing others or censoring others doesn’t remove the ideas.

You can say anything regardless of your rights but few will tolerate your ideas if it isn’t part of the political game being played. Fewer still will tolerate you if you symbolize a current enemy. If you fly the flag you will get the bullets. Yet for some people censorship is a fate worse than death.

If you are one of those people that disagree with censorship let me reassure you of something: Censorship doesn’t work, words can change meaning with each telling, there is no end to the words that can be invited nor the meaning poured into them, to be clear: Censorship in its most profound glory is impotent against the human imagination.

I would now like to draw attention to the title of this essay. Frogs are fairly tolerant creatures and if you put them in a pot of water you can incrementally increase the heat to a boiling and lethal temperature. They have no idea, their biological programing is blind to the increase of temperature, and they simply tolerate their fate. I have never done this to a frog, it is only a figure of speech.

Like with slavery, and free speech you can incrementally enslave people via school to jail pipelines or censorship of ideas, gradually removing, increasing or augmenting the authority wielded to make a pot of boiling oppression. All you need is to inch up on the definitions and absolutes until there is only the right way and wrong way.

Is being a frog in the Jacuzzi a fate worse than death? Well it seems to be a deeply personal question but as long as society has the ability to answer the question with mutually assured nuclear destruction we have at least some degree of freedom. If only our little fingers can reach the button in time.

N95:

The ashes rained down with the burning of the forests today. Like most people I gazed up at the red sun that was faded by the orange overcast. No shadows, just a glow that reminded me that a fire somewhere was howling over the char and carbon of a place I went to recently.

I went to Eagle Creek trail less than a month ago and now it’s on fire. I walked those trails with friends, looking over the vistas of my favorite shade of green. It is a slight neon, a dappled and luminous color. It reflected a bit of sunlight between shadows of larger trees.

We hiked 10 miles round trip and up about 1900 feet in elevation and past a watering hole called the Punch Bowl. This place was not an easy hike but everyone there was kind, generous and delighted to be next to the cool water of mountain run off. The Punch Bowl seemed to be a popular place for afternoon sit downs with half cooled beer that had to be carried via a cooler over roots and stones. The difficulty seemed well worth it, however we were going further on the trail but the imagination of sitting and enjoying the rest of the afternoon at the Punch Bowl was a pleasure in its own way.

Eagle Creek trail was rough and sometimes rocky. We were heading to a point called High Bridge, it supposedly overlooked a delightful scenery that was worth the steep trail. We brought some snacks and some water. There were a few other hikers walking the same path. Some of us hurried past them rather than being stuck at their slower pace, a quick “pardon me” and “right behind you” and people moved to one side for us to pass.

Everyone was polite, everyone said “hello” and “beautiful morning”, we were all there to enjoy the beauty of the forest and the brisk hike with our friends. We even devised a system that the person at the front of our line would say “hello” the second would say “how”, the third “are, fourth “you”, fifth “doing?”… and so on. A few stunned groups and a reckless laugh from all of us at our own shenanigans set the mood to a playful and light day. No worries or traffic, no jobs or  burdens, at least for the hike.

When we reached High Bridge we were ready to cool off, our shirts were damp with sweat and our legs sore. We found a half-walked trail down to a mountain pond. Down about 300 feet the trail went to a small waterfall where the echoes of shouts would bounce about on the stone sides. Some other hikers were just leaving so we had the whole place to ourselves.

We opened our pack and ate sweet cookies, nuts, water and some chocolate. Nearby chipmunks squeaked and scavenged pieces of nuts and cookies that we threw at them. Their brown little bodies hurried and darted around, storing the nuts in hidden places before returning for more. They didn’t fear us and came rather close to eating from our hands. It was clear this was a place of peace.

Some of us looked at the water and felt the invitation, we stripped down to our underwear and tried to wade into the calm mountain pond. I was the second one in and the cold water held the tension of my breath in quick gasping urgency. I tried to force myself deeper but could not get past my middle chest, the cold water was too much. However, the experience was refreshing and I spent the rest of the time relaxing by the water’s edge, trying a few more times to go deeper.

One of us fell asleep for a few minutes with a half-eaten cookie resting on his chest, he awoke to a chipmunk stealing the cookie and scurrying off. Yet others spent time skipping rocks over the tranquil water. A decent 5-6 bounce or a spiral of small bounces invoked cheers from the rest of us. I am not very skilled at such a throw, I still tried and after a few solid splooshes went back to cheering the more graceful of our company.

About an hour later we packed up and headed back, it was a quick hike on the return as most of the journey was now downhill. We stopped and watched a few minutes at some of the scenic locations, investigated a lost trail and continued our hellos to each hiker heading the opposite direction. It was elating, and the fatigue had only sharpened our appreciation for the forest.

I try to think back on these moments now as I look outside. The glaring red sun above reminding me that the lush memory is now ablaze and floating like the shadows over the currents of air. It stirs me in some way to find more trails and see more forests, they may all be ash and dust before I am old and if their beauty is witnessed only one more time I am willing to bear the sorrow to the grave in company of the forest.

For now, I am going to put on my N95 face mask and avoid the outside, my eyes sting with tears and ash.

Snail Lady:

No way they would ever believe me. I have been working in the ER for 15 years and have never seen a woman give birth to a silicone snail the size of a small dog. I wish I could have snapped a picture but in the moment, you just kind of roll with the absurd nature of the situation.

Let me start at the beginning which seems as good a place as any. I was on my second shift and was grinding out the night. She came in with her stomach held in one hand and was peeing all over the ER.  She must have been on something because she peed probably 14 times in the hour that we had her waiting. She claimed an alien had impregnated her and was about to burst. Just by looking at her, she didn’t look 9 months she looked like 4 months…maybe. We had her sit and wait with everyone else, another crazy on the left side of the waiting room.

The pee was unbearable, I am not sure what this lady was drinking or taking but it was rank, full on toxic assault. After the first few times I looked at the receptionist and nodded, she needed to go, for our benefit not hers. I prepped a room and rushed her in. I took her blood pressure and listened to an insane story about aliens coming down in her sleep, paralyzing her and putting something inside her, something from a world beyond ours. She raved the whole time, like one long unbroken sentence, barley taking time to breath.

I have dealt with crazies before; mental health is very serious. I remained calm and didn’t validate the delusion. Her blood pressure was very high, her pupils unresponsive and dilated.

We put her legs up and began an investigation. Yup, it was a silicone snail the size of a small dog, with a bright green neck and head and a purple shell with soft and rubbery indents.  She most likely put the large toy there herself. It had turned a few times so it could be removed from a straight angle. We gave her some anti-anxiety and pain pills, a few alprazolam down the hatch and we waited for her to calm down.

The snail-toy-thing was bagged and began its process to the incinerator. The lady calmed down considerably and began telling us again her story. She was wide eyed and absolutely convinced aliens had come from some other dimension or planet to her. She described how they impregnated her, with something called an Egg Implanter. She spent a solid half an hour describing this device, it reminded me from my halfhearted listening to be a large bird with an elephant’s trunk and the clawed feet had wired webbing on them. The trunk would lay eggs on the ground. The eggs had small little legs that could crawl quite slowly into the paralyzed recipient’s body. The body of the bird was covered in a sheen, a hardened skin that creaked as it moved.

She was so certain of the description and begged us to believe her. We just said our medically responsible lines and processed her as quickly as possible. We got her a script for some low-grade pain meds and a contact for an after-care specialist who would be willing to listen and help.

Her eyes looked betrayed, she knew we didn’t believe her. She left with slouched shoulders and a defeated look. There was nothing I could have said, she was probably one of the more rationale crazies I have seen in the ER and I wished her on the best.

The world is filled with these people, I have seen them in every variety. A countless parade of delusion and unending fractured brains. People have painted themselves into desperate dead-end alleys of conclusions. They don’t know what is real, they haven’t been taught or can’t tell the difference between their thoughts and the world around them. More accurately; they are chemically unable to prove themselves wrong.

I have seen good, moral and upstanding people deluded their whole lives. Some call it religion, but then again if I was helping the snail lady 2000 years ago she could have been giving birth to the next Jesus Christ. I am fairly disillusioned due to my profession, yet I have seen other ER nurses balls deep in a belief in heaven or some other afterlife in order to retain some stability through double shifts and the parade of bleeding and dying human beings. I don’t begrudge them nor anyone with badly sorted brain chemicals, they were never asked to be born in the first place.

The reflective ER nurse filled out incident form for the lady with the silicone snail. Thinking about religion, aliens and crazy ER experiences. They spaced out, lost in thought for a few minutes. A green glow began to fill the room. The nurse tried to move but could not. The green glow grew brighter and laid a blanket of muffled silence on the room. No other human beings could see the green glow. The eyes of the nurse dilated and if they could be viewed by another human would appear as though they were pleading or terrified, some combination of facing something both familiar and threatening.

The glow brightened into a flash and when the green spots dimmed a large bird with an elephants truck stood in front of the nurse, a large creaking creature with metal wires webbing the feet.  An audible belch and a convulsive motion produced a large egg from the trunk appendage and then the bird-thing vanished with a horizontal white line that blinked like a television being turned off.

The egg sprouted 3 little double jointed slimy legs and began crawling towards the ER nurse. The nurse was unable to think or react, all the chemical reactions and neurons in their brain were frozen. They could only witness with vivid accuracy as the creature painfully ripped into them and seated itself within an available cavity that would not be lethal to the host.

The silicone creature released a flood of chemicals into the creature and wiped the memory as best it could. These things aren’t perfect so sometimes a dream or memory slips through.

Eyes on the Prize: 

It’s calm under the waves of the blue of my oblivion. –Fiona Apple 

If ever there was such peace to be had it was in the eyes of Lucy. She had all tranquility of a mountain lake. She was starting a new job at a chemical lab under the Alba Tech Corporation. She applied for it 3 months ago and after a considerable number of interviews had finally got her badge and was taking a seat in her first orientation.

 

As far as she knew the job was testing blood samples for new drugs for the public market. The rigor of the interviews had given an anticipation and a sense of importance. She was eager for the challenge and as she sat down in front a large screen with a few other new-hires she paused briefly to collect herself.  

The video described in detail what was allowed and not allowed while on clock or in your personal life. You couldn’t discuss any work topics at home, you couldn’t discuss the following ideas at work:

 

Religion/any metaphysical conversation

Politics/Management

History/news

Sex/relationships/gender identity

Art/Cultural traditions

 

The video detailed examples of things and how they could be avoided in the work place. Your social media feeds had to be sterilized, none of the topics could be discussed anywhere on any record. The video showed specific instructions on how to avoid conversation, how to de-escalate if someone does and how to report them.

 

You could be fired for not reporting a transgression, you would be monitored via your home devices for the first 2 years of employment. Random sampling from feeds would be used for compliance after the 2 year probationary period was over. This of course was to preserve the integrity of the company, its dedication to unbiased research.

 

After a few hours there was a break period for refreshments. There was also an explicit notification at the end of the video that allowed anyone who felt uncomfortable with the requirements to communicate any dissatisfaction with their onboarding representative after the complete orientation.

 

The intermission was pleasant, the food was fresh and the air comfortable. Lucy was at first taken back by the harsh requirements of working in such a place. It would mean a very intentional self-censorship. She wondered for a few minutes, hunger compelled her and the thought fell into the cool oblivion in her head and peace returned as her blood sugar enjoyed some delicious pineapple. Nothing to worry about.

 

The orientation resumed.

 

Another two hours of information was piled high into Lucy’s brain. Alba Tech really took care of its employees. Every consideration was made from benefits to retirement, they paid enough for money to not be an issue, besides the work hours were mandatory and it was explicitly communicated that the deadline for research took precedence over personal lives. You could afford any hobby but the blackout days on the schedule were non-negotiable. If the company needed you and you couldn’t show up it was generously implied that you would be fired, removed or limited.

 

This wasn’t an orientation it was a wedding.

 

Under no uncertain terms the job was paramount. Lucy’s brain sent red flags up in fireworks. Brilliant red and blue warning signs oozed into her thoughts. They were slow and weren’t able to get to the front of brain fast enough. The paperwork was all done and Lucy was a full-fledged employee before the first warning sign exploded.  Too late to turn back, too late to undo the paperwork. She wanted this after all, she applied for it, and she needed a job. So many reasons, the fireworks were ignored and her job started 2 weeks later after complete background checks.

 

Alba tech researched all kinds of chemicals and Lucy’s job was tedious, mundane a non-creative job. She found herself day dreaming after the first couple months. The ribbons of ideas floating through the hallways and between secure doors and locked up information. The spindles of imagination wrapped around door handles and ignored rationale barriers of impossibility. Her day dreams searched under all the tables and listened to small talk between employees.

 

The day dream grew month by month and once during an all night shift when some emergency or another was happening, the day dream crept out of her eyes looking for something it shouldn’t. It found a door it couldn’t get under, it couldn’t see through. It was marked as an archive, but the door handle said it was more important. Day dreams are notorious for finding little details that give them reasons to continue investigations. This day dream had been bored and this mystery was a banquet of delight.

 

The day dream squeezed in a chance when an employee cautiously approached it. Lucy was sleeping, she had nodded off a few moments due to being up for so long, nearly 37 hours straight. The day dream and turned into a shadow, a common phenomenon for Lucy and found way inside the mystery door. The employee looked over both their shoulders, took out a key and hurried into the room. The shadow inched in and began to scour the room.

 

The room was a chemical storage room. The storage was used to hold all kinds of exotic substances, the catalog was accessible from a nearby computer. The large variety of contents was used as a sales catalog for government implementation.  Some were for pacifying a group and some for making a group more prone to spending certain types of things. News and media had already fine-tuned control by this point but there was still a healthy market of direct manipulation.

 

The employee logged on the computer and was browsing for a specific chemical. The shadow watched from behind, careful and silent it loomed in the back. Shadows don’t have eyes, but if they did they would have been peeled and focused. No detail was left unremembered by the shadow from Lucy’s eyes.

 

The employee was looking for a specific chemical that prevented suicide. A Japanese head of state was interested in exploring any solutions to help with Japan’s suicide epidemic. It had been climbing year after year and new measures were required. Suicide had to be stopped. This was seen in the emails the employee was looking through, looking for something that had the precise requirements. The shadow watched and indulged in learning such a hidden secret.

 

For a while the employee poured over read outs and tables of information, narrowing it down to a few select chemicals. The shadow felt a tug, time to return to Lucy’s eyes. Lucy awoke and a little worried that someone saw her sleeping on the job. No one was around and she went right back to working.

 

A few days later the Alba Tech company required its employees to have a yearly vitamin shot, for their own good. There was a monetary compensation for the frantic deadline work. Everyone at the company was grateful for having such a thoughtful company reward their hard work. They trusted Alba tech and took their vitamin shots without any issue.

 

It was later that night after the vitamin shots and compensation that the shadow was able to tell Lucy what it saw in the mystery room. It takes a while for shadows to be able to tell people things and urgency is often omitted. Lucy wondered what other chemicals could be stored in the room, what other contrivances would be purchasable to leaders of the world. The day dream had plenty of wonderful delights over the next few years. Lucy never wondered what kind of chemicals were in the vitamins, there were no fireworks to warn her.