Chapter 1

My backstory is uniquely mine but hardly original.

 

The predictability factor is exactly ten or any number that the reader chooses as being the highest.

 

Defying logical satisfaction is a hallmark of unpredictability.

 

So is defying convention only in certain instances.

 

A balance of acceptance and resistance is like a balanced meal.

 

It’s necessary for survival.

 

So much for the ice cream and cola.

 

Use sparingly, the wellness chart will and still dictates.

 

Apologist fuckhead!

 

Tool for the machine!

 

Some would rant and some would rave.

 

Some would actually, truly rage against the machine.

 

It was more a calling than a choice.

 

Think of the message your parents, your teachers, and your preachers drilled into your head at an early age.

 

You can’t always get what you want, commented the stones that rolled.

 

Not what I ever wanted.

 

I’m a wuss like that.

 

Being lily-livered is a trait I never cherished.

 

It’s not really a trait, but more like a death sentence.

 

Welcome to the current order of events.

 

Five questions are subsequently posed due to this so-called “situation”.

 

I call it a “s**t sandwich” and rightly so.

 

Question the first: Who am I?

 

Answer: It’s not imperative to the progression of the discourse.

 

I could be your next-door neighbor.

 

I could be your third cousin twice-removed.

 

I could be the pervert who had a crush on you back in secondary school.

 

The point is that you don’t know and I don’t even know anymore.

 

Nobody will ever know.

 

Question the second: What am I?

 

Answer: I am the reincarnation of James Dean.

 

This is in my head, of course!

 

In reality, I am a rebel or a renegade or a reactionary.

 

Whatever word you choose from the thesaurus, I fit into the mold that’s associated with such a term.

 

Charles De Gaulle would likely send a knowing glance in my direction.

 

I had the vision.

 

I founded the resistance.

 

More or less, it really found me.

 

Where I am right now, social class is moot.

 

Ethnicity is left by the wayside.

 

Age is canceled out.

 

Gender, sexual preference, and other determining factors are just guffawed out of existence.

 

They’ve never mattered at all.

 

Follow this list: two eyes, two ears, nose with two nostrils, two arms, two hands with ten fingers, two legs, two feet with ten toes.

 

If you have these basic features, prepare to be singled out.

 

Your replacement shall be brisk and direct.

 

F*****g impostors!

 

Backside baboons!

 

Is this a claim of science fiction?

 

The answer is far from precisely correct.

 

It’s neither fiction nor science.

 

It’s reality in the form of camouflage.

 

They hide and we cannot seek them out.

 

Question the third: When am I?

 

Odd question to ask, isn’t it?

 

Wrong question is the correct answer.

 

I’m not something in time, just something that takes up space.

 

Well, that’s technically incorrect since I am part of the space-time continuum.

 

Therefore, I take up both time and space.

 

Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m wrong.

 

I am not an expert at the game of quantum mechanics.

 

I was born at one time: 3:43am on the seventh of July to be exact.

 

Consider me the luckiest m**********r alive because I need it right now.

 

The year of my birth doesn’t matter.

 

It has never mattered.

 

Life now is just about survival.

 

It was always about survival.

 

I’m not sure when I realized the little facts on this rocky marble ever really mattered.

 

Since I’m in this new position, why would I care about it anyway?

 

Refer two statements beforehand for my answer.

 

My heart is telling you that, not my mind.

 

Those two are at odds with each other.

 

Always at odds over things great and small.

 

My nihilism triumphs over all sentiments I make from here out.

 

I am trapped in a confined space.

 

The tone of this tripe suggests madness.

 

Paranoia, even.

 

Your thinking is fraught with level lines.

 

There are no crinkles like in a completed and graded math assignment.

 

Can anybody sympathize with my plight?

 

No f*****g way in the here and now!

 

Escape is futile, those robots in the flying cube would say.

 

Jumpin’ Jiminy, I’m repeating myself!

 

When I am dazed and confused like a Richard Linklater film, my s**t tends to slip.

 

Your s**t would be mangled as well.

 

Mind-sucking fucknuts!

 

Jelly-oozing crack smokers!

 

Gimme a second!

 

I should’ve listened to the wellness chart.

 

Rule number 1: Mind your business and your business only!

 

Rule number 2: Just follow the rules!

 

Rule number 3: Live and let live!

 

All these rules are to be followed without consequence.

 

In my mind, this makes as much sense as a stack of Canuck copper.

 

Or a statistical simulation analysis.

 

In other words, it’s not much, King Midas!

 

The golden touch won’t work here!

 

Again, I am ranting without much thought.

 

I am raging without much thought.

 

I want you to think about a pumpkin being smashed.

 

Despite all my rage, I think you understand my point.

 

He’s one of them.

 

He may be one of them now.

 

He could have been one of them from the outset.

 

Moment by moment, my sanity slips a little further south.

 

My focus must be maintained.

 

Question the fourth: Where am I?

 

The smashing pumpkin would know.

 

Imagine any pet for instance.

 

A mouse, a snake, a cat, a dog, even those human carpet monkeys called children.

 

A mouse in a cardboard box.

 

A snake in a lighted box made of plywood.

 

A mouse inside that lighted box.

 

A mouse inside the cockles of the snake in the lighted box.

 

A cat in a kennel awaiting surgical claw removal.

 

A dog on a leash awaiting the scrotal cut.

 

The kid reading this pile of detritus might drive a sharp object into their eye sockets to imitate a violent sequence in a Manga book because that last sentence distressed them to the core of their being.

 

And yet they wouldn’t feel sorry for me, would they?

 

Because human life is a dime per dozen, right?

 

I don’t know the exact dimensions of my prison nor am I geologically inclined enough to know what kind of stone makes these prison walls.

 

All I have over head is a single light shining its meager luminosity in all direction from above.

Directly above, in fact.

 

It’s a slightly unique take on the typical situation in these typical times.

 

You may notice the blatant plagiarism now, but it won’t matter if this memoir is reduced to particles that are finer than black mold spores.

 

Point is, there is no connection here to any kind of interrogation scenario.

 

There is no table.

 

There are no metal chairs.

 

There is no fat guy in suspenders or a staunch-faced being in a black trench coat, his eyes covered black sunglasses.

 

It’s just a simple 60-watt light bulb, a cheap cot, a ratty pillow, a moth-eaten blanket, a toilet and sink bolted into the rear wall.

 

I’m your run-of-the-mill prisoner in your run-of-the-mill prison cell.

 

Now, you can see why I’m paranoid and nihilistic.

 

Well, I shouldn’t be surprised a single iota.

 

I am your run-of-the-mill pessimist.

 

Every human is inherently guilty from the outset.

 

Every human being is tainted with the nature and the mistakes of their forebears.

 

I really think it is environmental because we humans have thrived in an inhospitable universe.

 

The conditions were just enough, just right to get us by.

 

It makes me wonder, truly and deeply wonder, if there is a God out there after all.

 

And if a God truly existed, could it have had, at the very least, a shred of decency to create life forms that didn’t pray on one another?

 

Considering these antagonistic musings, why should I even care about my plight since I don’t seem to believe in the concept of innocence?

 

Because such thoughts run counter to my most basic drive.

 

The drive to survive.

 

I want to live and I want to feel.

 

Well, I can do that in this master bedroom closet of a cell.

 

I feel the stone walls each day with my hands and the stone walls with my feet.

 

I can move back and forth in my confined space.

 

Who said living and feeling need to have any kind of comfort factor?

 

This is life at its finest when you’ve been condemned by a being greater than yourself.

 

And so this begs the final question.

 

Question the fifth: Why am I here?

 

Unless I’m at a three-road intersection in the Arizona desert, I can’t reckon that question as talking about any kind of physical location.

 

Neither in the physical, but maybe in the abstract.

 

I’ve already explained the existential factors and the metaphysical factors, but I don’t think those factors really are the impetus for the construction of this memoir.

 

I guess I’m contradicting my bedrock beliefs.

 

Life means nothing, but yet I’m bitching about my plight in this journal.

The virus of humankind deserves some kind of vaccine, some kind of eradication, but I have the urge to live to the fullest extent and not have my movements restricted by some kind of tall stone box.

 

There are no innocents, but I don’t believe I’ve committed a crime worthy enough to earn this Turkish-style, Midnight Express kind of prison sentence.

 

Even the concept of originality is equitable to the concept of innocence by the theme of falsehood, but here I am acting like the survivor of some horrible instance of ethnic cleansing but I don’t have the aid of a digital recorder or a digital video camera.

 

All I have are the old methods.

 

The methods of refined graphite and pressed tree pulp.

 

We, the denizens of the blue marble floating in outer space, are original only through our experiences, but not really the themes.

 

Like this journal.

 

The themes mused upon in these pages have better expounded upon by those who have almost magical abilities to spin prose together into something emotional, but it gut-wrenchingly severe or blindingly optimistic.

 

These sentences and paragraphs shall not garner that kind of catharsis, but I guarantee you the emotions I feel right now are real.

 

Depression, sadness, anger, rage, the typical concoction of prison-induced and parental-induced madness.

 

Of course, I’ve mined my own fair share of the ore of desperation.

 

In the concept of original sin, humans are born with a stain that never gets washed away, really.

 

Infant baptism, be damned I guess.

 

Not only are we born with genetic imperfections, we are subject to the sins they’ve committed even if we weren’t the ones who committed them.

 

If you are of my father’s ilk, then you’d believe that the outcomes of sins like alcoholism, incest, pedophilia, bad language will be visited on the descendents even until the fifth generation.

 

Maybe longer or shorter, I’m not sure at this point in the game.

 

That’s if you consider life a game where you always lose.

 

Life is then a two-headed coin.

 

That begs the question, when wasn’t life a two-headed coin?

 

I can’t say for sure because I’ve always seen life as a two-headed coin.

 

As far back as I can remember anyway.

 

It goes to show the two possible outcomes of my belief system.

 

Choice #1: Either God does not exist and we are subject to the whims of a sadistic universe.

 

Choice #2: Or God does exist and this being has a penchant for sadism in the extreme.

 

You may accuse me of setting up a false dichotomy because my belief system has garnered some kind of merit.

 

Or you may reject that prior assertion and admit the true reality, according to the Christian lens.

 

That ever so lovely Christian worldview.

 

We are products of special creation that must bow to the whims of a sadistic, murderous deity.

 

Since we are the inheritors of original since and since we sin in our own right because our forebears declared war on that supernatural beast, we deserve to be burned in an ethereal foil of the Kilauea volcano.

 

The volcano that never ceases producing the sulfurous stench and the molten rock.

 

Why don’t the alls around me just melt away?

 

Why don’t I just melt right now so I’m spared this agonizing wait, this never-ending inability to be decisive.

 

I’ve ask for that to occur, and it still hasn’t happened.

 

The prayer is unanswered, there the conclusion is drawn.

 

There is no God.

 

And yet a part of me still feels like this rationally unjust punishment is wholly deserved emotionally.

 

And if I consider this unjust prison sentence a punishment, then there must be some kind of punisher.

 

Well, there is a punisher, maybe even two punishers.

 

There is the possibility of an ethereal punisher since I know atheists cans keep grudges and even blame others related to the initial offender.

 

It doesn’t mater if you’re an upstanding member of society.

 

If your father was a drug dealer, then you are the child of a drug dealer.

 

And you get to carry all that lovely baggage, free of charge.

 

I guess it’s the unintended consequence of irrefutable facts, or it could’ve been intended if the irrational hatred ran deep enough.

 

Point is, whether or not it was wanted, original sin exists in many minds especially if somebody was deeply afflicted.

 

And yet, I’ve babbled.

 

I’ve not made my actual point, but I’m near it now.

 

The earthly punisher does exist.

 

I committed an unforgivable crime in their eyes.

 

You may have heaved an ultimate sigh of relief there.

 

I guess I should give a partial answer, anyway.

 

I saw something egregious.

 

Therefore, I committed the egregious act.

 

The circumstances really don’t matter honestly because I’m here now, and likely for my natural duration.

 

Until the mortal coil has been shuffled off.

That’s if I haven’t been given the death penalty.

 

That’s what I’ve been slapped with.

 

At least that’s what a prison guard told me in passing.

 

Anybody who violates their code of secrecy is liable for death.

 

It doesn’t matter if you never knew of their existence, possession is still nine-tenths of the law.

 

And possession of memories is eternal.

 

They cannot be easily erased.

 

Like a dirty video that’s been posted on the Internet.

 

The only true method of deletion is by destroying the mortal coil.

 

And if they don’t destroy it quickly, they’ll starve me to death, slowly and painfully.

 

Which is what they’re doing, I think.

 

All I get is a daily ration of bread and a daily ration of water.

 

A half-loaf of French bread and a Thermos of water.

 

I’ve lost so much weight, and my teeth are starting to fall out.

 

On occasion, my captors have thrown a single lemon wedge into the Thermos as if to make the ultimate point.

 

You should have stayed home!

 

You should have stayed happy!

 

You were living the average American life like everybody else and you couldn’t hack it!

 

You couldn’t drink yourself into a stupor like any other average American alcoholic!

 

You’re an absolute fuckwit!

 

You’re a miserable waste even to the standards set forth by your own species!

 

And now I’m wasting away like a sailor floating on a makeshift raft being tipped and tossed on the open sea.

 

Except I’m trapped in a prison cell because my combative and nihilistic attitude wouldn’t allow me to stay put, to stay silent.

 

Intentionally-induced scurvy, what will those nice prison guards think of next?

 

I guess I’ll find out momentarily.

 

I can hear their footfall now.

 

I guess I can say from now, I answered the five basic questions.

 

Who?

 

What?

 

When?

Where?

 

Why?

 

And yet, I’ve really said nothing.

 

Even on the verge of death, I’m still an a*****e.

 

At least I’ve said so much thus far.

 

Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

 

If a tomorrow even exists for me at all.

Reviews

[Kaylor Mason]

Wow--that was quite a write. To be honest, I didn't read this whole thing (I'm on a time limit with this computer; public terminal) but from what I did read, all I can say is that's one heck of a--strong attitude, for lack of a better term. I'd say you've captured true nihilism pretty well here.

[Ed Hart]

i can think of no higher praise than absolute genius