Bromanoph
01-12-2004, 04:30 PM
revised + added to version of
'an unopened letter that no one will read.'
enjoy.
__________
It was the end of the world, but nobody seemed to care. It happened too fast for anyone to form an opinion. Except, of course, for the lucky survivors – those whose immune systems were somehow strong enough to fight the toxic gas they later dubbed “GP” – God’s Punishment. I was a survivor of that battle-less war, and the only poet left alive, as far as we could tell. Consequently, I was the last woman alive, too…as far as we could tell. Oh, but it was disgusting when it happened! Far beyond the power of language to describe, but, seeing as I am the only one here who can begin to describe it, I will do so:
The Sky opened up one day, spewing a brown-green vomit locust swarm upon an unprotected world. It looked as if the Sky had become fed up with our insolence and tomfoolery and had belched back in one massive, ugly cloud all the junk and spare parts we had thrown into it all through the years of ‘civilized progress’.
Disgusting.
Rancid.
No one knew what it was that was coming for us so suddenly. No one knew how to stop it. Most were dead by the time they knew they were being approached by the steady train of Death.
I remember vividly the very sound of my brother’s breath, running away from his decaying body as he mouthed the truth nobody wanted to accept.
“We had it coming,” he said, “for a long time.”
Breathe out.
My brother… he knew.
He called it a long time ago. Years ago, if You care to know. He had a dream about it. About the end of the World. I guess a lot of us do. Sad thing is, his came true.
The day the world ended was just another normal, ordinary day – except for the inexplicable green tornadoes swirling in a chaotic dance through the universe, but very few saw these and those who did ignored them. Isn’t that what we always do for things we don’t understand? I mean… what is God? I’ve heard it said that God is Love, but would You believe it if You were me, where I am now? Don’t pretend You could say yes. I guess you could claim that your reading of this fairy-tale is due to the “grace of God” in itself, but I will tell you now that is only the stupid persistence of mankind to feel important that drugs your head. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure God is a nice guy, but we ****ed up. What do inventors do with failed blueprints? They trash them. But enough of the pre-amble…let’s get back to the end.
So there was the sky.
It was belching green fire and raining all the tears it had kept inside for so long like a child, almost afraid of its parents’ anger. Finally, I suppose, it became aware of their false sense of power. It slept for a while. The sun did not rise, so as to allow the Sky darkness to help its reflections. In its dreams it saw something beautifully tragic – its revenge.
He would show his parents! He would be the furious deity they sent him to all those fancy schools to be!
A long time before this, a few of us more humble servants realized and accepted the futility of our daily dramas. We refused to pretend any longer that we were more than mere animals who thought they were smarter because they ignored their basic instincts. So we built shelters for the coming storm.
There was three of us, as always.
Myself, Fantincline; my Lover Sebastian and our friend and mentor of sorts, whom we call ‘Houdini.’ Come to think of it, he did say that the world would follow suit and disappear in a cloud of smoke, one day,,, Oh, the things we know now…
Most of my memories of that fateful day are now a cloud themselves…a haze of smoke that clears randomly to bless me with insight. I was high at the time, as I had been for the previous two weeks—not knowing when, but expecting such a thing to happen. I wanted to be ready to greet it with a smile…
At first, when it did, I blamed the hallucinogens, coupled with my lack of sleep. The day before, in a drug-enhanced frenzy, I had illegally spewed my bitter vitriol across the building of downtown New York, prophesizing Doom in mixed messages with white and red spray paint. I stood on the corner, naked except for a potato sack and a plastic set of wings plus halo. I was screaming filth and pornography into the closed ears of the humdrum of everyday.
“Love now”!
I hollered.
“The end is near!”
Like any prophet of the Truth, I was ignored.
Here I was, sharing the secrets of Life and could I arouse the interest of even one? Well, yes – One… but no more. ‘Houdini’ – I never asked for his ‘real’ name. He stopped and offered me a drink from a metal flask. My sore throat and eyes accepted, giggling and gurgling with gratefulness. It was Vodka. Straight. Beautiful.
We talked…
We drank…
We drank…
We drank…
We sang.
“Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so…”
We were generally ignored by the Mass, save the occasional inch-close driveby egging and angry yodeling. We gave up on trying to save a world peopled by the likes of those. Instead, we saluted our mad brilliance and decided to retire to my slummy apartment, wherein I proceeded to introduce him to a shaking, raving Sebastian. My dear, dear Sebastian. With one frantic nod, they approved of one another. Sebastian suggested that I show ‘Houdini’ our prized possessions: mainly our beautifully duct-taped Time Machine and the hole we had dug 20 feet down into the dark ground.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
As was laughingly written on the label of our not-so-secret trap door.
I figure the end of the World is emergency enough to open that hatch…
20 feet down a rickety ladder, we showed Houdini our own magic. Stockpiled in our basement’s basement was enough cans of non-perishable food items and Mr. Noodles to last us a short lifetime, or three. Scattered about in artistic ‘order’ were books, magazines, pictures, poems, a dog bowl –just in case—a self-sufficient garden of assorted vegetables, herbs and grow-able drugs – mainly marijuana, magic mushrooms and the occasional cocaine plant. No outside world. No telephone. No TV. Just a lot of beautiful necessities, luxuries and otherwise not-worth-living-withouts. Music, though, in those crazy days to follow, became our Saviour.
We had decided we would still be romantic, even if there were no other lovers to impress. Thus, we decided to do everything in that pit by the grace of candlelight. [Sorry, I forgot to mention the cartons upon cartons of stolen cigarettes, booze, lighters and—how could I forget?—playing cards. There was also one knife, just in case…of something. We didn’t know why, but who does?
So I guess You can say it was Fate that brought us where we were and me where I am now. [Sorry, I don’t know where that is, or I would tell You. Maybe later I will find some maps.]
You could also call it luck, bad luck, God, ****, everything, nothing or even tra-la-la. Call it what you will, but it’s all the same thing. And, somehow, it exists forever without ever having been born. Bastard. I was I could live forever.
I hated my father. Now I miss him. Go figure.
Enough of me! I’m sorry… I wander and become lost in moments I haven’t forgotten how to live in. Forgive me, where was I?
Oh, right… the beginning of the End.
Since we knew the end was coming soon—we didn’t know it would be the next day!—we ate some of our homegrown mushrooms and tripped down to the corner store owned by the unhappy Arab. Between us, we had 531$ cash. We bought all the cigars we could, to celebrate, and tipped that frowning man somewhere in the range of 429.26$ for his grumpy service. We cautiously told him not to take offence, but to either dig a hole, find a cave or get rich by winning the lottery and giving somebody enough money to build him a one-man rocket and spacesuit in the span of 24 hours. He didn’t take too kindly to our advice and, instead, telephoned the Psych Ward as we howled down the street, back home. What can I say? Some people are unbelievers.
I, on the other hand, at least know why I have no faith.
People like me, that is, all of humanity, do not deserve a Master so gracious as “Our” Lord. We are spineless, starless swine rolling in our own filth and telling each other we are clean.
Oh! Did I forget to mention I was pregnant when Time decided to come to a stuttering halt? I had known it for a long time. I don’t know when it happened, or how, or why… I guess there is no why. I almost forgot, too, until I woke up with something kicking a heartbeat. A very, very small heartbeat against my stomach lining…
My Baby.
My personal Jesus.
Sweet, Sweet Life! Why is Your cyanide so tastelessly tasty to inject?!
Back spasms.
Birth pains.
Dance, You ****ing angel!
I ate all the fruit I could, that night, celebrating the exhilaration of a lived life.
I ate grapes.
Lots of grapes.
I felt like a bloated, purple Queen.
Beauty.
But the bacteria was everywhere the night before that day. I should have known, should have called the bluff of the healthy Universe – what, with everyone coughing and sneezing in some indecipherable, primordial ooze of a language. Ooze, I like that word…
Houdini coughed, explained everything, and snapped me back into the moment.
Drugs.
I told You I get like this.
“Where were You just now?” he inquired, raising one bushy eyebrow.
“Nowhere special.” I replied in a daze.
“Just the end of the world…”
We laughed. That’s a healthy thing to do, as I’ve been told.
I’ve been told a lot of things. Mostly lies.
Why was it all mostly lies? I guess words are just an acceptable lie to cover up the silence… makes sense.
It was perfect: we were as we craved to be. We had no money, no resources, no hopes. We were the happiest ‘men’ alive, as Henry Miller would put it.
We smoked some Ganja. Waved to God. Lit some cigarettes with a failing Calgary Flames lighter. Threw some Jazz on the ratty CD Player. Danced. Kicked. Screamed. Danced!
It was lovely as such times ought to be. We were, after all, saying goodnight and goodbye to the possibility of any of this ever happening again. Stumbling, dazed and weary inside our loving half-circle, half-triangle we finally fell, exhausted, into the arms of drugged sleep.
18 hours later, our glazed doughnut eyes opened groggily to pandemonium. Panic and chaos! But at this point, we didn’t know that the end was near. The only thing we knew was that we didn’t want to know why or where we were. It just so happened that we had climbed down without acknowledging emergency, into our cavern of hope in a mad world. We had eaten many chocolate bars. We had smoked many cigars. The place was a mess.
****canyado?
We struggled up the creaking ladder – one after the other, tumbling half-laughing into the bathroom to take turns confronting the disheveled monster in the mirror. We didn’t know what to make of it. We had walked outside into what looked like the set from a B-rated, black and white 1950’s science fiction movie. The world was upside down. The street and even the door we assumed we had just walked out of were all rubble. Ashes and pieces of glass everywhere, creating a pastime of defeating Death and infection for any of us spared from the Wrath of the Sky.
Our first question escaped three sets of lips simultaneously,
“What the ****?!”
We exploded into colourful laughter, then came down and melted into tears.
A dusty dog poked his burnt face out from under the rubber remains of a
once-car, growling.
We moved back inside. Slowly... Gently...
then ran for cover on turbo into the well of our sanctuary from this
mad world.
At first, we thought it was the drugs.
Days after that horrible, horrible trip, we ventured to venture.
Outside again, to see what it was really like...
We had been mistaken.
It wasn't the drugs. We were wide-eyed and sober, now.
This was bad.
Houdini brought the knife, just in case the dog was real.
He was.
So were his rabies.
This was too much.
Too soon.
Too real.
I fainted.
I woke up a week later. A week.
I had gone into a coma, and since the hospital was now nothing more
than a badly broken 'H'...
there was nothing my two worried men could do.
It still couldn't make sense to me that we were the sole survivors,
somehow...
You'd think that maybe Fate would have gotten better at cards
and would have drawn more likely heroes, but no.
Here we were, three drifting, drugged-up lunatics alive
where everything else was dead.
Our neighbourhood looked like the surface of the moon.
Dry, cratered. No water to be found anywhere.
Oddly enough, the only building left standing in our direct vicinity
was an open 24-hours 7-11, missing only the slurpee machine that had
turned the floor into a would-be child's paradise.
There were no children here.
We had not seen another living thing for days.
The radio offered no comfort.. unless you like pre-recorded talk
programs about penguins and their mating habits.
I didn't.
There were a few more ridiculous looking buildings, half standing.
Most of them failing, making the Leaning Tower of Piza seem like
nothing special at all.
What I found disturbingly hilarious was that the Credit Union still
stood, perfectly untouched - virginal, even. The windows were free of
fingerprints and smudges from chocolate-covered hands. I knew that
even though all the people of the World were ashes, the machines were
still rolling. Time was still trudging on. Ticking away inside that
ugly building, day in, day out -- adding interest rates to the already
formidably immeasurable debt of the Mass.
Maybe we needed this. As a way to get away... from money, from greed,
from War.
What would we have left to fight for if we let the trees stand? the
oil sit? the water dance? the earth replenish...
But, alas, we blame our imperfections on an apple and avoid
acknowledging another avoidable disaster.
This is Life.
Other than the 7-11 and the Credit Union, the only other building we
could make out was the Angry Arab's Convenience Store. How convenient.
Little did we know that he had received a vision from God [Allah,
sorry...] the night before the bomb fell. Allah forwarned him about
the upcoming attack. That night, he picked up his things, payed a
hooker to go with him and took off for the Mountains. So that means
there were 5 of us... An angry Arab, a hooker, a dreamer, a
street-prophet and a wanna-be magician.
This is the world we live in.
Since there was no one to stop us - since there was no one to do
anything - we smashed the windows with a very conveniently placed
bumper, a little dented from impact and sleeping, from the gutter. We
proceeded to reap our booty and looted that unhappy man for the 429.26$
that had kept him alive, as if that were a blessing...
So be it.
We were Kings and Queens of this cowardly new world - wondering what
was next and how long the chick peas and kidney beans would last us.
We hauled our treasure back to the Batcave like leprous pirates,
encumbered by the weight of our gold. By the time we fell down the
ladder, it was night and we had to fight all the demons and monsters of
the darkness to light the candles, pretending we were knights of the
round table. Obviously we weren't.
We had nothing to protect us from the onslaught of Time, and we had
forgotten all about tables, in our rushed preparations. Our table was
a dirt floor, but it performed majestically.
...
'an unopened letter that no one will read.'
enjoy.
__________
It was the end of the world, but nobody seemed to care. It happened too fast for anyone to form an opinion. Except, of course, for the lucky survivors – those whose immune systems were somehow strong enough to fight the toxic gas they later dubbed “GP” – God’s Punishment. I was a survivor of that battle-less war, and the only poet left alive, as far as we could tell. Consequently, I was the last woman alive, too…as far as we could tell. Oh, but it was disgusting when it happened! Far beyond the power of language to describe, but, seeing as I am the only one here who can begin to describe it, I will do so:
The Sky opened up one day, spewing a brown-green vomit locust swarm upon an unprotected world. It looked as if the Sky had become fed up with our insolence and tomfoolery and had belched back in one massive, ugly cloud all the junk and spare parts we had thrown into it all through the years of ‘civilized progress’.
Disgusting.
Rancid.
No one knew what it was that was coming for us so suddenly. No one knew how to stop it. Most were dead by the time they knew they were being approached by the steady train of Death.
I remember vividly the very sound of my brother’s breath, running away from his decaying body as he mouthed the truth nobody wanted to accept.
“We had it coming,” he said, “for a long time.”
Breathe out.
My brother… he knew.
He called it a long time ago. Years ago, if You care to know. He had a dream about it. About the end of the World. I guess a lot of us do. Sad thing is, his came true.
The day the world ended was just another normal, ordinary day – except for the inexplicable green tornadoes swirling in a chaotic dance through the universe, but very few saw these and those who did ignored them. Isn’t that what we always do for things we don’t understand? I mean… what is God? I’ve heard it said that God is Love, but would You believe it if You were me, where I am now? Don’t pretend You could say yes. I guess you could claim that your reading of this fairy-tale is due to the “grace of God” in itself, but I will tell you now that is only the stupid persistence of mankind to feel important that drugs your head. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure God is a nice guy, but we ****ed up. What do inventors do with failed blueprints? They trash them. But enough of the pre-amble…let’s get back to the end.
So there was the sky.
It was belching green fire and raining all the tears it had kept inside for so long like a child, almost afraid of its parents’ anger. Finally, I suppose, it became aware of their false sense of power. It slept for a while. The sun did not rise, so as to allow the Sky darkness to help its reflections. In its dreams it saw something beautifully tragic – its revenge.
He would show his parents! He would be the furious deity they sent him to all those fancy schools to be!
A long time before this, a few of us more humble servants realized and accepted the futility of our daily dramas. We refused to pretend any longer that we were more than mere animals who thought they were smarter because they ignored their basic instincts. So we built shelters for the coming storm.
There was three of us, as always.
Myself, Fantincline; my Lover Sebastian and our friend and mentor of sorts, whom we call ‘Houdini.’ Come to think of it, he did say that the world would follow suit and disappear in a cloud of smoke, one day,,, Oh, the things we know now…
Most of my memories of that fateful day are now a cloud themselves…a haze of smoke that clears randomly to bless me with insight. I was high at the time, as I had been for the previous two weeks—not knowing when, but expecting such a thing to happen. I wanted to be ready to greet it with a smile…
At first, when it did, I blamed the hallucinogens, coupled with my lack of sleep. The day before, in a drug-enhanced frenzy, I had illegally spewed my bitter vitriol across the building of downtown New York, prophesizing Doom in mixed messages with white and red spray paint. I stood on the corner, naked except for a potato sack and a plastic set of wings plus halo. I was screaming filth and pornography into the closed ears of the humdrum of everyday.
“Love now”!
I hollered.
“The end is near!”
Like any prophet of the Truth, I was ignored.
Here I was, sharing the secrets of Life and could I arouse the interest of even one? Well, yes – One… but no more. ‘Houdini’ – I never asked for his ‘real’ name. He stopped and offered me a drink from a metal flask. My sore throat and eyes accepted, giggling and gurgling with gratefulness. It was Vodka. Straight. Beautiful.
We talked…
We drank…
We drank…
We drank…
We sang.
“Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so…”
We were generally ignored by the Mass, save the occasional inch-close driveby egging and angry yodeling. We gave up on trying to save a world peopled by the likes of those. Instead, we saluted our mad brilliance and decided to retire to my slummy apartment, wherein I proceeded to introduce him to a shaking, raving Sebastian. My dear, dear Sebastian. With one frantic nod, they approved of one another. Sebastian suggested that I show ‘Houdini’ our prized possessions: mainly our beautifully duct-taped Time Machine and the hole we had dug 20 feet down into the dark ground.
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY
As was laughingly written on the label of our not-so-secret trap door.
I figure the end of the World is emergency enough to open that hatch…
20 feet down a rickety ladder, we showed Houdini our own magic. Stockpiled in our basement’s basement was enough cans of non-perishable food items and Mr. Noodles to last us a short lifetime, or three. Scattered about in artistic ‘order’ were books, magazines, pictures, poems, a dog bowl –just in case—a self-sufficient garden of assorted vegetables, herbs and grow-able drugs – mainly marijuana, magic mushrooms and the occasional cocaine plant. No outside world. No telephone. No TV. Just a lot of beautiful necessities, luxuries and otherwise not-worth-living-withouts. Music, though, in those crazy days to follow, became our Saviour.
We had decided we would still be romantic, even if there were no other lovers to impress. Thus, we decided to do everything in that pit by the grace of candlelight. [Sorry, I forgot to mention the cartons upon cartons of stolen cigarettes, booze, lighters and—how could I forget?—playing cards. There was also one knife, just in case…of something. We didn’t know why, but who does?
So I guess You can say it was Fate that brought us where we were and me where I am now. [Sorry, I don’t know where that is, or I would tell You. Maybe later I will find some maps.]
You could also call it luck, bad luck, God, ****, everything, nothing or even tra-la-la. Call it what you will, but it’s all the same thing. And, somehow, it exists forever without ever having been born. Bastard. I was I could live forever.
I hated my father. Now I miss him. Go figure.
Enough of me! I’m sorry… I wander and become lost in moments I haven’t forgotten how to live in. Forgive me, where was I?
Oh, right… the beginning of the End.
Since we knew the end was coming soon—we didn’t know it would be the next day!—we ate some of our homegrown mushrooms and tripped down to the corner store owned by the unhappy Arab. Between us, we had 531$ cash. We bought all the cigars we could, to celebrate, and tipped that frowning man somewhere in the range of 429.26$ for his grumpy service. We cautiously told him not to take offence, but to either dig a hole, find a cave or get rich by winning the lottery and giving somebody enough money to build him a one-man rocket and spacesuit in the span of 24 hours. He didn’t take too kindly to our advice and, instead, telephoned the Psych Ward as we howled down the street, back home. What can I say? Some people are unbelievers.
I, on the other hand, at least know why I have no faith.
People like me, that is, all of humanity, do not deserve a Master so gracious as “Our” Lord. We are spineless, starless swine rolling in our own filth and telling each other we are clean.
Oh! Did I forget to mention I was pregnant when Time decided to come to a stuttering halt? I had known it for a long time. I don’t know when it happened, or how, or why… I guess there is no why. I almost forgot, too, until I woke up with something kicking a heartbeat. A very, very small heartbeat against my stomach lining…
My Baby.
My personal Jesus.
Sweet, Sweet Life! Why is Your cyanide so tastelessly tasty to inject?!
Back spasms.
Birth pains.
Dance, You ****ing angel!
I ate all the fruit I could, that night, celebrating the exhilaration of a lived life.
I ate grapes.
Lots of grapes.
I felt like a bloated, purple Queen.
Beauty.
But the bacteria was everywhere the night before that day. I should have known, should have called the bluff of the healthy Universe – what, with everyone coughing and sneezing in some indecipherable, primordial ooze of a language. Ooze, I like that word…
Houdini coughed, explained everything, and snapped me back into the moment.
Drugs.
I told You I get like this.
“Where were You just now?” he inquired, raising one bushy eyebrow.
“Nowhere special.” I replied in a daze.
“Just the end of the world…”
We laughed. That’s a healthy thing to do, as I’ve been told.
I’ve been told a lot of things. Mostly lies.
Why was it all mostly lies? I guess words are just an acceptable lie to cover up the silence… makes sense.
It was perfect: we were as we craved to be. We had no money, no resources, no hopes. We were the happiest ‘men’ alive, as Henry Miller would put it.
We smoked some Ganja. Waved to God. Lit some cigarettes with a failing Calgary Flames lighter. Threw some Jazz on the ratty CD Player. Danced. Kicked. Screamed. Danced!
It was lovely as such times ought to be. We were, after all, saying goodnight and goodbye to the possibility of any of this ever happening again. Stumbling, dazed and weary inside our loving half-circle, half-triangle we finally fell, exhausted, into the arms of drugged sleep.
18 hours later, our glazed doughnut eyes opened groggily to pandemonium. Panic and chaos! But at this point, we didn’t know that the end was near. The only thing we knew was that we didn’t want to know why or where we were. It just so happened that we had climbed down without acknowledging emergency, into our cavern of hope in a mad world. We had eaten many chocolate bars. We had smoked many cigars. The place was a mess.
****canyado?
We struggled up the creaking ladder – one after the other, tumbling half-laughing into the bathroom to take turns confronting the disheveled monster in the mirror. We didn’t know what to make of it. We had walked outside into what looked like the set from a B-rated, black and white 1950’s science fiction movie. The world was upside down. The street and even the door we assumed we had just walked out of were all rubble. Ashes and pieces of glass everywhere, creating a pastime of defeating Death and infection for any of us spared from the Wrath of the Sky.
Our first question escaped three sets of lips simultaneously,
“What the ****?!”
We exploded into colourful laughter, then came down and melted into tears.
A dusty dog poked his burnt face out from under the rubber remains of a
once-car, growling.
We moved back inside. Slowly... Gently...
then ran for cover on turbo into the well of our sanctuary from this
mad world.
At first, we thought it was the drugs.
Days after that horrible, horrible trip, we ventured to venture.
Outside again, to see what it was really like...
We had been mistaken.
It wasn't the drugs. We were wide-eyed and sober, now.
This was bad.
Houdini brought the knife, just in case the dog was real.
He was.
So were his rabies.
This was too much.
Too soon.
Too real.
I fainted.
I woke up a week later. A week.
I had gone into a coma, and since the hospital was now nothing more
than a badly broken 'H'...
there was nothing my two worried men could do.
It still couldn't make sense to me that we were the sole survivors,
somehow...
You'd think that maybe Fate would have gotten better at cards
and would have drawn more likely heroes, but no.
Here we were, three drifting, drugged-up lunatics alive
where everything else was dead.
Our neighbourhood looked like the surface of the moon.
Dry, cratered. No water to be found anywhere.
Oddly enough, the only building left standing in our direct vicinity
was an open 24-hours 7-11, missing only the slurpee machine that had
turned the floor into a would-be child's paradise.
There were no children here.
We had not seen another living thing for days.
The radio offered no comfort.. unless you like pre-recorded talk
programs about penguins and their mating habits.
I didn't.
There were a few more ridiculous looking buildings, half standing.
Most of them failing, making the Leaning Tower of Piza seem like
nothing special at all.
What I found disturbingly hilarious was that the Credit Union still
stood, perfectly untouched - virginal, even. The windows were free of
fingerprints and smudges from chocolate-covered hands. I knew that
even though all the people of the World were ashes, the machines were
still rolling. Time was still trudging on. Ticking away inside that
ugly building, day in, day out -- adding interest rates to the already
formidably immeasurable debt of the Mass.
Maybe we needed this. As a way to get away... from money, from greed,
from War.
What would we have left to fight for if we let the trees stand? the
oil sit? the water dance? the earth replenish...
But, alas, we blame our imperfections on an apple and avoid
acknowledging another avoidable disaster.
This is Life.
Other than the 7-11 and the Credit Union, the only other building we
could make out was the Angry Arab's Convenience Store. How convenient.
Little did we know that he had received a vision from God [Allah,
sorry...] the night before the bomb fell. Allah forwarned him about
the upcoming attack. That night, he picked up his things, payed a
hooker to go with him and took off for the Mountains. So that means
there were 5 of us... An angry Arab, a hooker, a dreamer, a
street-prophet and a wanna-be magician.
This is the world we live in.
Since there was no one to stop us - since there was no one to do
anything - we smashed the windows with a very conveniently placed
bumper, a little dented from impact and sleeping, from the gutter. We
proceeded to reap our booty and looted that unhappy man for the 429.26$
that had kept him alive, as if that were a blessing...
So be it.
We were Kings and Queens of this cowardly new world - wondering what
was next and how long the chick peas and kidney beans would last us.
We hauled our treasure back to the Batcave like leprous pirates,
encumbered by the weight of our gold. By the time we fell down the
ladder, it was night and we had to fight all the demons and monsters of
the darkness to light the candles, pretending we were knights of the
round table. Obviously we weren't.
We had nothing to protect us from the onslaught of Time, and we had
forgotten all about tables, in our rushed preparations. Our table was
a dirt floor, but it performed majestically.
...