No rise or rage
This last night of man
Step by stepford step
With hand in hand.
Onward we march
Our toe then our heel
Smiling behind us
Sprinting back to the wheel
Into the dim
Wielding complacent tongue
Ignoring the old
Forsaking the young
Convince us it's choice
And we'll buy our own rope
We'll hammer our gallows
And smile as we choke
KNUCKLEHEADs (Chapter Excerpt)
As the cold wheels screeched across the steel, I counted down the cars to the engineer. First 20, then 11, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, never letting more than half go by without an update. It was a railroad rule to prevent the unmonitored backup movement of a train. If I told an engineer to back up 20 cars, and he hadn’t heard from me by 10, he’s supposed to be stopped at that point. The shrieking of the metal on metal was still ringing through my head. I stood there staring at this 30 ton tanker and began to space off. I asked myself what it meant to be happy. I often asked myself this question hoping one of the times I would have an answer. I wondered if there was some universal, baseline definition or if it was far too subjective to define. I had no idea but I knew I wasn’t. Maybe if I had a clear understand of what it was I could begin to work toward it. I think perhaps for the first time I wanted to.
I was rudely snapped back to reality by the engineer, “Everything okay back there, Sags,” came blaring through the radio strapped to my chest. “Yeah, we’re good,” I quickly replied. Engineers got nervous when there was too much silence.
“BMSR-243, gimme three-step protection,” I requested. Three-step protection was a type of direct safekeeping that a conductor could request from his engineer if he needed to go in between cars. Once granted, it meant the engineer could no longer touch any of the controls until the conductor dropped his three-step protection.
“Three-step applied, Sags,” and with that I began tying handbrakes on the cars.
Once tied, I dropped my three-step and had Frank check the securement of the cars to make sure the brakes would hold. There was no movement so I lifted the drawbar to release the knuckle and told Frank he could start taking it ahead when he was ready. I made my way back up to the engine and continued my paperwork. Once finished, and with no other stops to make, I peeled off the chest pack and tossed it in the corner of the cab. I kicked my feet up and stared out the window as we lumbered down the track.
“You need this light on, Frank?” I asked
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Alright.”
“You gonna take a nap?”
“I don’t think so. Just gonna stare out the window.”
“Try not to cum over there you fucking foamer.”
We both chuckled and I switched off the light, leaving the cab in almost total darkness except for a few red, blinking indicators on the engineer’s control panel.
Foamers are train-lovers who follow trains around, snapping pictures and taking videos and then posting them to their blog for other foamers to jerk-off to. They were universally hated by railroad workers. It was used as an insult between knuckleheads. If anyone showed even a tiny amount of joy doing their job they would be immediately ridiculed and labeled a foaming faggot. I hated them, and not just because they were a nuisance. Yes, they stood too close to the track as they took their pictures. Yes, they bothered us with banal questions while we were working the ground. They gave us plenty of reasons to not like them. But I hated them for something else entirely. These assholes, with their pictures and videos, provided an online database of irrefutable evidence. Evidence trainmasters would scour through in an attempt to catch us breaking safety rules. Managers were shameless when it came to finding new ways to fuck us.
I got written up once for not wearing safety glasses because of a picture a foamer took. After putting in a full twelve hours working the ground, I had barely walked into the depot when a senior trainmaster called me into his office:
“Have a seat, Sags.”
“I’m good, thanks. I don’t plan on staying long. What do you need?”
“Well I want you to look at this picture and tell me if it’s you.”
“No, that isn’t me,” I said standing behind his computer monitor.” I knew exactly what he was doing and it made me want to jump across his desk and pound his face into it, then rape him.
No, I thought to myself, rape him first and then slam his face into the desk. I wanted him conscious for the raping. Mental trauma lasts far longer than physical.
“I’m not gonna play this game. That’s you standing on the nose of that fucking engine without your glasses on. That’s a willful violation, man.”
“Then do what you’re gonna do so I can get the fuck out of here. I’m not signing shit, though.”
“That’s fine, but I need you to sign the Declined to Sign form.”
“You want me to sign a form saying I’m not going to sign a form? That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. I’m not signing that either. Or will I have to sign a form saying I refused to sign a form that says I refused to sign a form?”
“Don’t be a dick, Sags.”
“Where would it end? We could be here all night signing forms in a never-ending loop.”
“Get the fuck out of here before I write you up for insubordination.”
I gave him a Sieg Heil and walked out of his office, much happier than when I walked in.
Indication: Green
I slept like shit and had the same dream I always had. I'm staring at a young boy, he looks exactly like I did when I was his age. He's lying atop a wooden work bench, hand and legs bound together behind him. The look on his face is one of terror mixed with shock and sorrow, but it also carries with it a quiet acceptance.
Beyond the boy, a scorpion-man hybrid, shrouded almost entirely in shadow, moves about. He's rummaging, frantic to find something. The occasional flash of the dim light reflecting off his beady eyes sends chills through my body. The man's frustrations were coming through in the form of inaudible mumbles and groans followed by an object flying across the shed. Although unable to see his face, I can clearly make out the clenched teeth and pursed lips with every disappointed syllable. This continues until I hear a soft and breathy, "yes." He found what he was looking for.
The scorpion man walks to the nearest side of the table and stands tall over the boy. The young child refuses to look at him, but not entirely out of fear. His face now carries on it some defiance.
The man begins to circle the table, taking his time as he moves, savoring the moment. He pulls a plastic grocery bag from behind his back and starts gently rubbing it over the boy's body. It's a taunting gesture for sure. Every time the plastic touches the boy's bare skin, he jerks away. The man continues circling, the shadows following him everywhere he goes. Its tail recoiling when touched by what little sunlight makes it through the lone, nicotine-stained window.
As the man stands motionless, staring down at the child, the boy's defiance breaks and he becomes hysterical. Between sobs he begs and pleads with the man, while flailing against his restraints, "Don't do the bag! Please don't do the bag!"
It's at this point that the boy looks directly at me, like an actor breaking the fourth wall looking into the camera to talk directly to the viewer, and continues his worthless pleas, "Please stop this. You can stop all of this." His despair is nauseating but I cannot look away. Some invisible force is keeping my head locked and eyelids peeled on the depravity playing out before me.
The man then bends over so that his mouth is right on top of the boy's ear, raises a finger to his lips and whispers, "Shh." In a fast and violent movement the man shoves the bag over the boy's head and cinches it shut at the nape of his neck. Condensation appears almost immediately inside the bag as it moves in and out in rapid succession.
The boy continues staring at me through the plastic. His eyes never leave mine as he begins to hyperventilate.
The scorpion man's tail begins moving back and forth on the wooden floor, increasing in pace to match the rhythm and intensity of the boy's screams.
Faster and faster...
The boy's face is now soaked from the water vapor.
The thrashing fades and his screams disappear. There is no air left in his lungs and his mouth remains wide open. The plastic bag perfectly outlines his small mouth. The time between his blinks grows further apart as he fights to stay awake. Each time his eyes jolt open, he frantically searches for mine, before getting heavy again. He isn't searching for comfort. He's making sure I'm still watching.
The boy's exhausted body goes limp and the man releases the bag while exhaling deeply.
A rush of fresh air floods the boy's mouth and fills his eager lungs. Where screams had filled the little shed, they are now replaced with desperate gasps. After several hungry breaths, the boy's chest begins to slow and the color in his face bleeds back to red.
The man's thick, calloused tail, now exhausted, comes to rest on the wooden floor.
That's when I awoke. That was the point in the dream when I always woke up.
"Same dream," I noted to myself.
Only it wasn't, not exactly anyway. Something was different this time.
The boy looking and speaking to me was new. In past dreams I was simply a viewer, a witness of sorts. This time I was made a participant, albeit against my will. It made me feel unsettled, but I quickly dismissed it. I was efficient at dismissing things.
I felt my wife wrap her arm around me and ask, "Everything okay?" My nightly commotions must have roused her awake. I peeled her arm off of me and told her I was fine. I slid out of bed and made my way to the sink.
As I stood there shaking off the uneasiness, a funny though crossed my mind, "Happiest place on Earth," I said chuckling to myself. "If you have to dream of rape and torture, it may as well be here."
That should be Disney's marketing approach, "Come to Disneyland, the place where depravity and torment are made just a little bit better.
The nightmares were nothing new and I had become indifferent to them. I largely ignored them, and occasionally laughed at them. "It was your quintessential coming of age story," I would joke to myself. There were slight variations between them, but otherwise the same. I wondered at what point do nightmares cease being nightmares and become normal dreams again. Is it the content that makes it a nightmare or our reaction? I had no reactions to mine anymore. It was no different than any other learned behavior. It transitioned from crippling fear and pain into now more of an annoyance. Whatever results my subconscious was trying to achieve were long gone. It put the same nightmare on repeat and walked away. Eventually it became a sort of stand-off. My denial and stubbornness versus my brain's determination to heal. I knew I'd eventually lose, in one way or another, but at least I'd do so on my terms. It was going to have to work much harder than putting an old, scary movie on loop to get me to move.
Genesis
What I'm about to tell you will come as a shock, but it is the truth. It's my truth, unfiltered in any way by man, prophet, or son. Here it is — you aren't special. You are but one of my countless creations. I am speaking figuratively as your looks, functions and mannerisms can be quite different. But at your core, there is nothing particular about you that makes you stand out from another.
You, along with everyone and everything else that I’ve created, are an experiment. My goal was was never blind worship as some have written, but rather perfection. In the beginning, I believed my attempts failed because I directly created conscious beings instead of letting it happen organically. I would come to realize, however, that the method of creation was neither cause or effect. I had formed them from the very dirt into which they would ultimately be laid to rest. They were beautiful and perfect. But simply creating perfection had no value; choosing it did. This is where progress stalled.
It’s important that you understand what I mean by perfection in this context. Perfection is to have a self-aware being that maintains an empathetic balance with others and the environment, while pursuing its fullest potential.
My first attempts were generally referred to as Adam and
Eve — I simply called them Version I. They were essentially the same as one another with a few subtle variations. There were many Adam and Eves, each with their own catastrophic ending. All versions and subversions were given the same starting point: a planet within its own galaxy far from all other versions with no possibility of discovering each other, and time.
You are a Version II. The distinction between you and your predecessors was that instead of wholly fashioning sentience myself, I planted a microscopic seed and watched as you, and the countless other Version II’s, evolved into conscious beings. My hope was that if you had earned your existence through billions of years of evolution, perfection would be a natural progression. I was wrong then and continue to be wrong now. I’m currently on Version IV.
Every version since Adam and Eve has ended in the same manner: death and destruction, exploitation of their home, and a complete disregard for each other, as well as other species. The very thing I cannot change is the very thing that continues to doom you all: choice. Free-will can either be the disease or the cure, and the former has so far been your fate. Your potential is limitless but you simply aren’t capable of reaching it before you self-destruct. However, I have made great progress since Version II and am hopeful for their future.
I present this truth to you now, as I have done with every previous version, because you have passed the tipping point and knowledge of my existence now matters not. There is nothing that can be done at this stage that can save you or change your outcome. The inevitability of your specific subversion is now sealed. While you may not be able to fully appreciate it, find comfort in knowing that you had a purpose. The unique mistakes you made allowed me to keep progressing and improving on later variations, much the same as every version leading up to you. I guess in a way you are special.
With absolute love,
God
P.S. The duck-billed platypus was not my idea.
Pornpals (Strong Language)
Shelby and Hedge stood in the empty parking lot, heads cranked back and looking up, hands against their forehead to block the midday sun. Neither realizing the hats they wore backwards would do a better job.
Shelby broke the silence, "There is no fucking way we're keeping a 12 foot, inflatable, wacky-waving dildo in front of our store."
"Why not," Hedge asked offended.
"I mean, where would you even buy something like this? Why? Do I really have to stand here while this giant dick slaps me in my face and explain to you why we can't keep it," Shelby asked trying to maintain his civility with his best friend.
"We're a fucking porn shop, we sell dildos. It isn't all that crazy," Hedge said defiantly.
"Dude, it has to break some kind of law, or city ordinance or something. Besides, it looks like a flaccid dick the way it's all bent over and flapping. Like somebody's trying to slap it to get it hard," Shelby said. "Do we really want an impotent wiener to be our logo?"
"Wait a minute," Hedge said wryly, "Are you mad that it's a dick, or that it's a sad, soft dick?"
"What, both, wait, that it's a dick," Shelby said, "We can't have a dick in the fucking parking lot. We're done here."
Hedge, seizing this rare opportunity to one-up his best friend, continued, "Because I'm sure I can find a way to keep it hard if that's how you like your dick,"
"Go fuck yourself," Shelby said as he turned around and headed back into the store."
Hedge, taking one last look up at the erratic phallus, sighed "Cockblocked."
Stockholm Coping
No rise or rage
This last night of man
Step by stepford step
Disappearing hand in hand.
Onward we march
Our toe then our heel
Smiling behind us
Sprinting back to the wheel
Into the dim
Wielding complacent tongue
Ignoring the old
Forsaking the young
Convince us it's choice
And we'll buy our own rope
We'll hammer our gallows
And smile as we choke
Familiar Stranger
We stood face to face, eyes locked like predator and prey, both waiting on the other, neither flinching but equally scared. Our breaths were in unison; in and out. His sore-covered skin carried no life in it; sagging, barely holding on to the skull beneath it. His teeth were rotting—what teeth were left—and the gauntness of his face made them appear large and obtrusive. The white in his eyes had abandoned him long ago, replaced now with a cloudy and ugly, red hue that surrounded lifeless and enlarged pupils.
The person standing in front of me was a functional stranger. He wasn't the kid who I had grown up with nor the man I went to college with. This couldn't be the same person who, not but five years ago, married the only girl he had ever loved and then watched passively as she walked out of his life. She refused to bare witness to a long and painful suicide. This was an impostor looking back at me.
I knew what this ugly person wanted from me, because behind those comatose eyes was a familiar face begging for help. "You have to want this, for yourself," I told him. "It's going to be hard. Harder than anything you've ever done," I added. He didn't cower or cringe so I pressed further. "Then say the words," I instructed, "Say them out loud."
I'm an addict and I need help.
Do you need help or do you want it?
I'm an addict and I WANT help.
Are you trying to convince yourself because you're not convincing me?
I'M AN ADDICT AND I FUCKING WANT HELP!
As those words passed beyond my lips and floated out into the world, three years of self-loathing and torment went with them. I pulled my face away from the mirror, flipped off the bathroom light and headed towards my phone to make an important phone call. On my way out, without the harsh, judging fluorescent lights beating on my face, I stole another look at myself. In as long as I can remember, I liked what was staring back at me.
The Cursed Sun
I awoke when the light began pounding on my temple, like a desperate salesman at my front door. It was just as unwanted. I pulled the covers up to block it but the damage had been done; I was awake, which pissed me off because I had no interest in being conscious. I went to bed last night praying to every conceived god to forever keep me asleep, a mass prayer that went unnoticed.
It took a second for my brain to get all of its synapses firing, and when it did the sorrow began consuming me. It started in my face, now flush and hot, and worked its way down. I could feel it devour every cell. It spread through me the same way lightning rapes the sky; unforgiving and unstoppable. As it washed over me, images of my son flashed in my head. The mental collage followed a linear timeline. It started with him as a baby laying on my chest in the hospital, then as a toddler, followed by his first day of preschool, then grade school, and then ending with him laying in his casket. His favorite baseball hat covered his smooth, bald head. His translucent skin and sunken eyes told a story that even a passing stranger would know. The culmination of a year-long struggle had been frozen in time. The sweeping sorrow and inner photo-montage subsided as one, leaving me numb and motionless.
This was day one and I knew, hoped, it would be the worst of it. Nothing was the same, in obvious ways and in not. The sun kissing my face in the morning now felt intrusive and presumptuous. The background noise of life beyond my window was no longer soothing. It was banal and insulting. Every car, every voice, every sound was a taunting reminder that their world hadn't stopped, only mine.
I had resolved myself to simply lie here, to slowly wither away until I no longer woke up. This was my protest to the new reality that I didn't ask for. I owed the world nothing anymore, and more importantly, I didn't care what it thought. Choosing to get out of this bed would mean relearning how to function. I no longer knew how to speak or how to work. I couldn't even trust my legs to remain steady underneath me, nor would it be fair to ask them to.
This resignation made me feel good. I had a plan and I felt at peace with it as I flipped my pillow over to the dry side. Having readjusted, I notice the piece of paper on my nightstand. It's folded three or four times and I can see on the flap sticking up. It says, "Mom." I was afraid to read the words my son had written to me and put it off, because regardless of what was on that paper, it could only add to my pain. However, to not read it would be betrayal, so reluctantly I reach out and grab the note and begin opening it. I can already see his bad penmanship in red writing through the folds. Once opened, the note reads, "Mom, thank you for being with me everyday. I'm sad that I won't be with you soon but glad you'll be able to sleep in your own bed again. I love you. P.S. don't forget to feed Max."
The decision was no longer mine and as I pulled off the covers and started getting out of bed, a thought crossed my mind; though everything was different, my purpose was the same.
Slough
I'm staring at a young boy. He looks exactly like I did when I was his age. He's laying
atop a wooden work bench, hands and legs bound together behind him. The look on his
face is one of terror, shock, and sorrow. But it also carries with it a sort of quiet acceptance. Beyond the boy, the scorpion man moves in the shadows, rummaging, trying desperately to find something specific. His frustrations coming through in the form of inaudible mumbles followed by an object flying across the shed. Although unable to see his face, I can clearly make out the clenched teeth and pursed lips with every syllable. This continues until I hear a soft, breathy, "Yes." He found what he was looking for.
The scorpion man walks to the side of the table nearest to him and stands tall over the boy. The young child refuses to look, however. It isn't entirely out of terror, either. The boy's face now carries on it defiance. The man begins to slowly circle the table. As he walks he gently rubs a large plastic bag over the child's body. First on his chest, then his torso, and then down his right leg. He repeats the routine as he makes his way up the other side of the table. The shadows follow him everywhere he goes. Its tail
recoiling whenever touched by what little sunlight was present. As the man reaches his head, the boy becomes aware of what's about to happen. Whatever defiance he had is gone and he becomes hysterical. He begs the man while flailing against his restraints, "Don't do the bag! Please don't do the bag!"
It's at this point that the boy looks directly at me, like an actor looking into a camera to talk directly to the viewer, and continues his worthless pleas. "Please stop! You can stop this!," he begs. His despair is nauseating but I am unable to look away. Some invisible force is keeping my head locked, and eyelids peeled on the boy. The scorpion man looks at the boy and raises a finger to his lips, "Shhh," he whispers. The boy is unable to. The man then quickly and aggressively slides the bag over the boys head and cinches it shut at the nape of his neck. The condensation appears immediately as the bag moves in and out in rapid succession. The boy continues staring at me through the clear bag. His eyes never leave mine. Without warning the screaming abruptly stops and his chest begins to slow. He's still conscious though so this has to be a controlled reaction. "Is he conserving oxygen," I ask myself. The buildup of water vapor inside the bag has caused his face to become soaked. The time in between blinks increases as the boy fights to stay awake. Each time his eyes open they frantically look for mine before getting heavy again. He isn't looking for comfort though. He wants to make sure I'm still watching. He's waiting.
I wake up. "Same dream," I quietly note to myself. I immediately realize, however, that the boy looking directly at me was something new. In past dreams I was simply a viewer, pure voyeurism. This time, this time I became a participant, albeit unwillingly. It caused me to feel unsettled, but I quickly dismiss it. I was efficient at dismissing things. I feel my wife wrap her arm around me and ask, "Everything okay?" My nightly commotions must have roused her awake tonight. I peel her arm off of me and tell her I'm fine. I slide out of bed intent on making my way to the kitchen for some water. My mouth is dry.