Category: Uncategorized

The Theater

I remember his face well, even if I don’t recall his name. A scrawny boy with black hair and beady eyes, gesturing emphatically as he showed us through his “Operating Theater”. We didn’t call him by his name in there. His name only mattered back at school where he was just another pipsqueak kid; no, there, we called him the Surgeon. That’s the name that remains blotted in my brain. 

He wasn’t a surgeon, of course. He was just a nine year old boy that managed to get his hands on a single cheap medical textbook, but to us he may as well have been. In our eyes, he spent four years in med school and graduated from a residency program with flying colors, that’s how committed we were to the bit. We laced every word in procedural show-level medical terminology. The abandoned shed we were standing in was an operating theater, the old workbench was a gurney, the dead rodents were cadavers donated for teaching purposes. 

Nobody denied him his fantasy. It would be the same as being the obnoxious brat that constantly got into arguments over who was “it” in a game of tag. Nobody wanted to be that person. Instead, We oohed and awed over things that would’ve left us nauseous not moments before. All because no one wanted to be the wuss that ruined the fun for everyone else. Playing in was much more rewarding. 

We all started the game on even playing fields with only the Surgeon having any authority over the rest of us. But soon it became a desperate throttle to distinguish ourselves from the rest. Being the one who dared to stand the closest, asked the best question, was the most eager to fetch a piece of equipment. A girl named Lily had cemented herself as head nurse in less than 15 minutes flat. She held the freshly found cadavers as the surgeon carved into it, pulling each tiny organ out and explaining its purpose in jargon that he didn’t understand. 

My turn to cement myself in the moment was when the surgeon decided he wanted to try his hand at something more bipedal. He puffed his tiny chest out and inflected his voice with a level of confidence that he never possessed in the classroom. Looked out to all of us and asked “Is anyone suffering from an ailment for which I can provide my assistance?”. 

The rest began to look to the floor and retreat from the illusion, but I had something to prove. A nickname that I was eager to transform. Even real surgeons couldn’t change genetics, and I wanted to swap out the same feature my mother had fixed before. The hooked ashkenazi snout that she swapped out in order to snag a man still managed to lodge itself onto my face. Leading me to carry on the same namesake as the most famous wooden liar. Now it would remind them that I possessed a bravery they didn’t. So little Pinocchio’s hand stood straight up and asked for a rhinoplasty. 

Some smiled in shock and awe, but you could watch the fear begin to set into the others. For me, it was still a game, so I climbed my way out of my peers to join the performance. Sat straight with a smile in a broken lawn chair as the surgeon began examining my face. Contorted my expression in any way the four foot doctor asked me to. Turning side to side as he exclaimed “yes, yes, this will work” with the confidence of someone who swapped out features on the daily, even as he frantically searched out the page labeled “noses” in the anatomy book. His gaze passed back and forth from the book and me time and time again, scribbling nonsense on a party napkin. 

When he was finished jotting down the “notes” he commanded Lily to “prepare” me. She stood there confused before he explained enough for her to grab the single use hand sanitizer rag. The cold wet paper passed from one cheek to the other. He got in close and began using a black BIC pen to highlight every possible flaw apparent in my cartilage. The lines showing where he would carve off parts of me. 

He smiled at me as he put the cap back on, and assured me “you’re going to be gorgeous”.  Then I was led over to the workbench. 

I lied down on the splintered table, ignoring the stabbing wood spears as they placed a clear asthma inhaler mask over my face. I counted to 10 and lied as limp as I could pretend to be. Occasionally squinting my eyes open in order to still watch the Surgeon in action. 

My heart only began to race as I caught a glimpse of him ragging off a garden shovel. I listened closely to the random lingo he exchanged between himself and his “helpers”. Two fingers placed against the soft part of my neck when he asked about my vitals. 

My mind was still stuck in the mirage but my body acknowledged the reality. I tried to quell my shaking as he stood over me explaining that he must break the bone in order to remold it.  The fear of pain and the fear of exclusion began to wage war within my intestines. 

I was about to call it off when I felt him standing over me. That didn’t happen. The metal slammed down on me before I could open my mouth. Knocked back into reality with white hot pain shooting straight down the bridge of my nose. I screamed.

On a normal day, the boy standing over me would’ve been able to hold me down. But with the adrenaline shot into me through blunt force trauma, he ended up straight on the floor. I tried to crawl through the crowd, my eyes fixed on the door. The kids soon turned on me. 

I thrashed around splashing blood on the larger boy’s shirts as they held me down. Failing to keep me still and quiet. Began to shove a rag into my mouth as others listened for any sounds of authority. The rest stashed away rodents and gardening tools as if it were cocaine right before a police raid. Only the roughest cover up could be done before they had to let me go. 

My face made some of them lose their lunch. Split skin peeled back to expose the hard pink bag holding my face up. This wasn’t a cat that could be put back in the bag. The hands were taken off and I zipped right out of there. Forgetting the pain until I was back in the view of adults. 

I rammed into the kitchen painted red, ruining the Sunday beers. Ran into Daddy’s arms screaming incoherently with the lower half of my face split down the middle. The next thing I remember is getting taken away in an ambulance. 

I was back to where I started, only this time it was real. A woman in scrubs cleaned me off before stitching me back together. White hard gauze covering the dark purple and red underneath it. It took a while before I stopped breathing through my mouth. 

I stared at the tarnished hospital mirror, poking and prodding at the pain. My mother assured me that it could all be fixed. It wasn’t long until I was given to the same man who gave my mother her features. At the end of the day, I got what I wanted. 

I didn’t learn who the scapegoat was until a few days later when I waltzed into class looking more like Frankenstein than Pinocchio. The surgeon wasn’t seen in the lunchroom after that day and every parent received their gift back. 

I was back in his kitchen within the week. Both of us were staring at each other, making sure to hold our tongues back as our parents battled over facts and figures. We knew the consequences of selling out the others. Mom and Dad walked out indignant and self assured. Pretending not to hear the screams as we pulled out of the driveway. 

The Surgeon repeatedly screamed out the same teary eyed phrase in between lashings, “I just wanted to make her beautiful”.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

Predetermined

The Jones’ lived in a house that was not yet a home. Only purchased a year earlier, work was still needed for it to be truly built in their image. Odds and ends left behind from the previous owners; things left untouched, doing nothing but collecting dust, waiting to be destroyed. The largest of these things was a dark green shed that sat in the left corner of the backyard. The structure was an absolute eyesore. Built for function with no attention paid to style. Years of neglect had turned it from practical to grotesque. Composed of untreated wood and peeling paint, decades without care had left it waterlogged and decayed. Warped boards gave way to rusty nails. Still, it remained, shrouded in the bushes and trees. Blending in with the foliage. They ignored the shed. Kept equipment in the garage. Every once in a while, Mrs. Jones would glance out the back window and it would catch her eye. A reminder that it needed to be torn down, which was always soon forgotten. 

The only thing that ended up bringing the shed back into focus was that tools kept going missing. Simple tools; hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, nails, duct tape and a pair of garden shears. One by one, they all disappeared. Mr. Jones would spend many weekend hours picking apart the house in search of some old piece of equipment. He spent more time rummaging through drawers than actually renovating the place. Nothing ever returned to him either, never found in a position where he could’ve carelessly thrown it. Once it was gone, it was gone. It was as if someone was collecting them slowly over time. Only after he had scoured every inch of his house did he finally decide to check the shed. 

It no longer smelled of moss and mildew. Instead, waves of must and rot permeated the surrounding air. The same smell that radiated off of little Jared after he came back from playing with the neighborhood kids. Small mounds of soil dotted the surroundings, pock marking the ground, patted in as much as possible. An attempt to conceal. A sloppy attempt done by tiny fingers. If you looked closely, you could see maggots clinging to the bits of flesh that peaked out from underneath the mounds. 

 The air was still. Still enough for Mr. Jones to hear the pounding of his own heartbeat. He told himself that there was no reason to worry, but he still braced himself before swinging that rusty door open. 

He found his tools. He also found out about his son’s after school activities. What wasn’t buried outside was scattered across the workbench. Any weak, small, furry creature that found itself within the young child’s clutches ended up subjected to an inspection within that shed.  Mangled mice thrown into a pile at the side of the desk. A strangled squirrel stuck in a leftover vice grip. The neighbor’s missing cat spread out over a towel with its insides carved out. The bloody exact-o knife placed next to it in a cruel imitation of a surgery set up. Little Jared had a very different definition of what it meant to play doctor. 

Mr. Jones, he didn’t scream, he didn’t shout, he just stood there gazing at his son’s handiwork. Anger registered, but no shock. What really sickened his stomach was how little this surprised him. 

A tight pained “What has Jared done?” escaped his mouth as his hands constricted into fists. Not a moment’s doubt about who the culprit was. 

His son’s strange proclivities had reared their ugly heads before. Jared had a habit of getting into trouble. The Jones’ constantly got called to the school in order to deal with his aggression. 

Jared’s eighth birthday party ended with him breaking Jenny Greenberg’s nose with a gardening shovel left out in the lawn. Neither child admitted to a motive. The Jones’s had another medical bill to pay and belt marks were left on Jared’s back as a reminder. The marks stayed there, shifting colors, for months on end. 

The head of the household no longer knew what to do with his own son. What possible punishment was appropriate for a kid that turned the backyard shed into a death factory for small furry creatures? His wife shared in his befuddlement, although she appeared more horrified and heartbroken.

After giving his wife a peek inside their son’s makeshift vivisection clinic, he went inside to find little Jared crouched in front of the TV set. Watching saturday morning cartoons, like a normal boy, like he hadn’t turned their backyard into a mortuary. He dragged the boy by the hair into his bedroom and lashed Jared’s back until it was nearly bloody. Words spewed out of his mouth in a flash of heat, “twisted”, “degenerate”, “psychotic”, “sick”. None of it could be absorbed. A cacophony of anger that didn’t stop until he caught a glance of his wife squinting at him in disgust.

The Mrs. didn’t mind corporal punishment. A child needs to understand that actions have consequences. What she didn’t appreciate was her husband yelling his lungs out at the kid. Nor the look of anger on his face. The idea of a grown man screaming at an eight year old sickened her. In her mind, every action that a parent took had to be intentional, well thought out, logical. Frustrated displays of emotion were selfish. The kid should be totally aware of the fact that even the violence was for their own good. So previously, Mr. Jones had always retained a degree of composure, even when he was striking his son. That was the compromise they came to.

Mrs. Jones believed that in order to properly exercise authority, you had to remain in control. Never let the people under you feel as though you don’t have everything handled. Never let them believe that they can shake you. But even she had to admit to a degree of fear after looking upon that shed. She wouldn’t let her husband show that to Jared though. So she sent the boy off to his room while the two of them continued their spat. 

Even the ever-composed Mrs. Jones showed cracks in her demeanor as she shoved her son into his room. Her voice tensing up. Stating that they would keep him there until they “figured out what to do with you”.

They bickered about what needed to be done. Jared listened through the cracks as his parents tore into one another, tore into him. His father was fuming, he wanted to lock the boy up in that shed until he feared he might rot in there like the things he had killed. The mother, well, she had the wherewithal to admit when a situation was beyond her ability. She figured that maybe a good child psychologist could sort the boy out. First, the marks would have to heal. She let her husband have at him for the time being, but she insisted that he contain his activities to those that wouldn’t leave evidence. 

Mr. Jones dragged Jared back to the shed. Told him to clean up the mess he had made. Deadlines were established. He had three weeks to make the place spotless. When the boy wasn’t at school, he spent every waking hour scrubbing the room raw. Scraping dried blood off of mossy wood, placing rotten corpses into garbage bags, attempting to get rid of the scent of decay. The bleach caused his eyes to well up. Hands were rubbed dry and prone to cuts. Knees scraped up on the floor boards. A mind filled with dread. Worrying about what would happen if his father wasn’t satisfied with the state of the place. Pangs of fear and rage displayed clearly on his face as he scrubbed and scrubbed.  

Time passed, and soon the father would perform his inspection. Making sure that he had rid the shed of any trace of its past.  The boy had spent the last hour frantically running a cloth over every surface one last time, making sure every ounce of blood or bile was gone from the room. Working until the last second.  When he could finally hear his father’s work boots clonking their way through the backyard, slowly making their way towards the shed.

Mr. Jones opened the door and started marching around the room, examining each area for any signs of impropriety. After every surface proved sanitized, he caught the eyes of little Jared and gave him a nod of approval.  Then he let out a “Wait, boy” as he grabbed the kid by his shirt collar. He turned his son around, lifted the boy’s shirt and began examining his back the same way as he had just done to the bloody countertops. When it was clear that there were no visible marks, he turned the kid around.

A hand was placed on the boy’s shoulder as his father expressed approval “Come on boy, your mother’s in the car, we’ve got a surprise for you”. 

As they exited the shed, Mr. Jones turned back for a moment, reached his hands into his pocket and pulled out a padlock. Then placed it into the door, locking away Jared’s corner of the world.

Ice cream was the story that got Jared into the car.  No hesitation. Assuming his father had been proud of the shed, he carved his buck-toothed mouth into a smile and climbed into the car with unrestrained joy. Snap a photo, in that moment and you’ve got a picture perfect glimpse of childhood innocence. Wait ten minutes and the fear begins to set in. Both parents sat in the front of the car, stone silent as each turn proved an unfamiliar path to the kid. Jared kept asking where they were going. First in curiosity, then in panic. Mom and Dad remained still. 

A pit began to form in the boy’s stomach as the car began to slow down in a section of the town designed for office buildings and medical facilities. He began to scream when they started to park the car. 

The Jones’ had to drag their son out of the vehicle. Jared burrowed himself into the back seat. Fingers clawed, nails dug into the upholstery as if it were the only life raft in the middle of the ocean. Each parent grabbing an ankle. He flailed his legs around in an attempt to get free from their grip. They pulled him out like a sack of potatoes. When Jared’s struggle proved fruitless, he finally gave in. 

Jared was placed in a room with a stranger sitting across from him. An older man, gazing through him, who spoke to Jared with an heir of clinical kindness. A false mixture of concern and friendliness. Question after question came rattling through his wrinkled mouth; the kid didn’t bite. He didn’t have any respect for the aging gentlemen condescending to him in the corner, but he had resigned to his fate. Deciding that the only way to wiggle free from the situation was to remain incredibly vague, he answered each question with as little detail as possible, yes sir, no sir. The balding head in the corner saw through his act. Realizing that he was making no progress, he switched his methods, cut to the chase.

“What were you doing in your parents’ shed?” the psychiatrist leaned forward in his recliner. Those were the first words that actually managed to catch Jared’s attention.

The boy stared at the floor as he meekly muttered out “I don’t know why it’s such a big deal? They were just animals, I said I was sorry”. 

“What wasn’t such a big deal” 

“I was just examining them.” Jared moused out. 

“How were you examining them?” 

“You know, looking inside” he stated as his eyes darted around the room. 

“Did you kill them?”
“You have to, in order to look”

“Do you like killing animals?”

The boy shrugged “a little”

It went on for a little while, the man asked a pointed question and then the boy would respond in a meager way. But instead of the man getting angry or upset like Jared was used to, he feigned approval. 

 He smiled at the boy, “You’re really young, how did you manage to catch all of those critters?”. 

Jared’s eyes lit up “Well, my friend had these cages . . .”

They met weekly from that day on. Jared began to enjoy his meetings. The man let Jared ramble on about his kills, always engaged and never expressing judgment. Jared offered the man his ammunition willingly, never seeing the danger that he was in. It wasn’t until the tests and examinations that the boy had realized the trap that was set for him. Like the squirrels seeing the bars trapping them, only after they had finished munching on the nuts. 

He tried his best to wiggle his way free. Answering every question in the way that was expected of him. Trying to appear as normal as possible. But deep down, he was aware of how pointless this was. The gate had already closed around him. 

Jared completely closed himself off after that day. Car rides became more difficult.  The meetings with the strange man continued weekly but Jared became more defiant, less willing to chat with the man that he now saw as a traitor.

Things changed. His father no longer hit him. The belt was replaced with silence. The parents exchanged more words about the boy than with him. 

The Jones’s waited for the psychiatrists to come to a consensus. Figure out what was wrong with their son. Decide what needed to be done about him. Fix him, so that the two of them wouldn’t find themselves culpable for the person he would become. Nothing ruins a family’s parent’s reputation quite like raising the next Ted Bundy. They told themselves that this man was the solution but they held their breath everytime the phone rang. Stuck still in fear, waiting on the day that they would get their answers. Nothing fared better when they got the call. 

The two of them were sat down on the same sofa where Jared had his weekly chats. They looked up at the man who charged them 150 dollars a week to talk to their boy. Waiting for him to tell them what needed to be done in order to fix their kid. Instead, they were met with disappointment. All that money only to be told that Jared was a lost cause. That their son’s actions only served as signals of what was to come. Jared’s lack of empathy, his fascination with ripping things apart, his violent tendencies, these would only intensify as he matured. 

The man got very abstract. Moving the conversation away from their own kid and instead  focusing on various psychological studies that he felt were somehow connected to their son’s behavior. He started prattling on and on about some Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1972, a man by the name of Walter Mischel led a child psychology experiment on delayed gratification. 32 children between the ages of three to five were placed in a room with a marshmallow. They were told that they could eat the marshmallow now or wait for the researcher to return in order to get another. Kids were then divided up by those that were able to resist the marshmallow and those that couldn’t. The children’s lives were then analyzed over the course of about forty years. The groups only became more distinctive as they grew in age. Those that managed to resist the marshmallow were able to attain more success in nearly every arena of life. Better SAT scores, lower BMI’s, achieved higher levels of education, possessed more wealth and had better job security throughout their lives. The ones that weren’t able to resist faded into poverty and obesity.

 The point is that some things are intrinsic. The kids in that experiment, the amount of willpower that they maintained throughout their entire life could be predicted within a single observational study that they performed as toddlers. We aren’t all as malleable as we pretend to be. There is a rigidity in character that is set up from birth. Good people stay good, and wicked people remain wicked. Change is rare and usually the result of a major brain injury. People can be laid out and picked apart from infancy. 

 The psychiatrist then connected the experiment back to Jared. Taking the boy’s future and laying it out right in front of them. Maybe he could mend his ways but most likely not. Most likely his actions would only become more sinister. His life would consist of  a series of increasingly antisocial behavior that would progress into larger and larger issues. Bouncing from juvenile facility to juvenile facility until he aged into an adult penitentiary. Until he did something worthy of the state sticking a needle into his vein and calling it a day. 

Conduct Disorder, that’s what the psychiatrist called it. A label slapped onto those too young to be considered full blown psychopaths. 

Both of them felt as though they had been bisected.

Jared was their only son. The culmination of all their hard work. Children are the hope that things could get better. That there was a possibility of improvement. This man was calmly extinguishing that hope like it was nothing more than snuffing out a candle. A seventy pound hole was being carved into both of their chests.

The psychiatrist watched their faces change from shock, to horror, to dismay. Waiting for the perfect moment. When it was clear that his words had pulled each of them apart he proposed a solution. 

There was more sympathy in the doctor’s eyes now, as he told the Jones’ that they weren’t at fault. Jared wasn’t either. The boy was sick. Nobody determined his personality. Nobody decided what his impulses and demeanor would be. His lack of empathy was bestowed upon him by nature. He didn’t decide to be born with a defective mind, and therefore there was no point in blaming him for his actions. Just a curse of nature. Similar to being born with childhood dementia. It wasn’t insanity in the legal sense of the word, but as far as the medical community was concerned, Jared’s mind was a degenerative disease. 

He told them other’s would suffer, that their boy would suffer when the consequences of having a mind like his finally caught up to him. He told them it wasn’t a crime to eliminate the damage. Cut it out at its root and create less suffering in the world. 

He needed to be contained before he stopped being just a four foot tall buck toothed kid. Before he grew into something monstrous. One shot in the arm was all it would take to keep him cute forever. It would take less from them. One signature each, the same as giving permission for a class field trip. 

Still, it was their only son, their bundle of joy, their reason to wake up every morning and continue through the draining labor of life. Something to cherish, treat with methodical care, not toss away like a rabid animal. They left the office with a feigned indignation. 

 Composure was maintained within the psychiatrist’s office, but the second the car door slammed shut, they both began weeping. 

The two of them continued on with their normal life. Forcing down the words they had heard. Pretending that nothing had changed. Tried their best to pretend that nothing had changed. That didn’t work. Mainly because Jared remained the same. Calls would come in telling them that he had been beating up the younger boys. He bit his mother when she tried to send him to bed. One day, they caught him walking back home with the Finnigan’s eight week old puppy clenched tightly in his arms. 

Every transgression brought the doctor’s words back into focus. Even rage became a performance. Mr. Jones would muster up whatever fire he could in order to spit his fury back at his kid, but delivering that paternal discipline felt forced. Knowledge of his son’s condition had stripped even his anger from him. After all, this was just Jared’s nature. 

One thought kept trickling back into their brains. All of this could be solved with a simple signature. An acknowledgement of their child’s sickness. 

Mrs. Jones was the first one to bring it up. The night after finding a kill kit packed away behind a dresser in Jared’s room. A knife, hammer, pair of rubber gloves and a tiny saw neatly  packed into a bundle of cloth and secured together with twine. She presented the idea as an act of sympathy. Combing through all of the things that could happen to people if they allowed his life to continue. What the punishments would be for him once he was caught. Assuring that there would be no sympathy remaining for him as he grew to adulthood. At least the needle would leave them with their dignity. Instead of waiting years to watch their son end up wasting away in a prison cell. It was what was best for the community, and best for their kid. Jared may have only been a child, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let his own nature rot him from the inside out. 

Mr. Jones stepped in line, and the following week they were once again sitting in that same psychiatrist’s office. This time accompanied by legal representation and staring at a slew of documents in front of them. They both pushed away any idea of what this meant and quickly jotted each of their names down while choking back tears. 

Two months would pass until the date of the execution. They spent their remaining days with Jared absolutely spoiling the psychopath. Entertaining every whim the boy had. Even his darker interests no longer drew the ire of his parents. His tools and traps were returned to him. His dad removed the padlock on the shed door. Jared was still young enough to remain oblivious. Too distracted with toys and a newfound sense of freedom to truly notice what was happening. 

Jared didn’t realize anything was wrong until the night before they took him away. At the dinner table with all of his favorite food laid out for him. A mess of junk food placed delicately on the table as if it were a thanksgiving feast. Pancakes stacked up high next to a pile of ribs across from pizza, oreo ice cream and a candy covered platter. A full on last supper for the brat. At first, Jared was delighted. But he noticed that his mom couldn’t look at him for two seconds without choking back tears. Jared wasn’t stupid. Somewhere deep inside himself he knew that his parent’s change of heart was too good to be true. Everytime his parents treated him as if they were his yes men, a sinking feeling would bubble up inside of him. His mind was seethed with a growing paranoia.

 He laid awake at night waiting to hear the sound of his parent’s door slam shut and lock behind him. Tiptoed out into the house and stood outside of his parent’s room. Keeping his feet away from the doorframe, he placed his ear to the door and listened carefully for the whispers of his parents. 

He heard them quietly sobbing at the mention of his name. Convincing each other that they had made the right decision. Siking themselves up. Preparing to kill their son. A dagger of fear pierced through his heart.

The boy stayed quiet. Quiet enough to hear his own heart racing. His ears focused in on any sounds coming from his parent’s bedroom. Waiting until he could hear the faint sound of his father’s snores and when he was sure that both of his parents were sound asleep, he sprung from his bed and grabbed his tools. Trying to remain as quiet as possible, he started rummaging through drawers until he felt the cold smooth metal of his father’s padlock. In a blind panic, he retreated to the one place where he felt the most comfortable, that old shed. 

Mr. and Mrs. Jones woke up to find Jared missing. Mrs. Jones took a moment to notice how empty the house felt without him. A pang of sorrow reached her as she contemplated the fact that this feeling would last forever. Whatever happened, by the end of the day the boy would be gone forever. Either dying in a hospital or on the streets weeks later. 

The shed was the first place they checked after checking the house. After pulling on the door handle a couple of times, Mr. Jones realized it was locked. He put two and two together, coming to the conclusion that his son must have barricaded himself in. Started calling out his son’s name, trying to coax him out with false promises. 

At first, the son remained silent. A vain attempt at not giving away his location. The same way a normal kid would stand still when obviously caught in a game of hide and seek. But the father kept yelling back till the vocal cords grew hoarse and the words panged with more and more frustration. 

“If you don’t come out, we’ll have to get in” were the last words his father yelled before retreating to the garage, his mother keeping watch over the only exit. 

Mr. Jones came back holding an ax and began swinging at the door in front of him. The wet boards caved in further with each blow. Soon he could see his son huddled up in the corner, clutching a knife. An image that only added vigor to his thrashing. In a couple of minutes the hole was big enough for Mr. Jones to crawl through. Further peeling back the wood as he barged his way through. 

Jared resembled the trapped animals that he had tormented, right as he reached his hand into the cage. Cowered up in a stance of frightened violence but too tiny to really make a difference. It wasn’t long before his dad was looming over him. Jared took his hunting knife and began frantically slashing. It didn’t look like the methodical cuts that he left on his prey. The movements had more resemblance to a cornered cat swiping his claws at a much larger predator, clumsy and fruitless. 

The kid managed to wedge a couple of deep cuts into his dad before being thrown to the ground and losing grip on his blade. Hyped up on adrenaline, Mr. Jones wouldn’t feel the sting until they had already dragged their child to the hospital, kicking and screaming. Until a nurse had already plunged a heavy sedative into the boy. 

Jared’s fight switched focus from the outer world to the inner. You could see the boy struggling to stay conscious. Bobbing his head back and forth as an effort to hold it upright. Straining his eyes in order to keep them from closing. His thoughts slowed and his grip loosened but he continued to fight. Fight falling into a sleep that he knew he would never wake up from. 

The drugs won in the end. Within ten minutes he slumped over and lost consciousness. His mother carried him into the waiting area and began filling out paperwork as his dad got stitched up. She hesitated as she looked at him in his slumber. Jared’s calm, tiny, unfinished face made her want to drag him out of that building, make sure none of these doctors could ever get their hands on him. For a second, she believed everything could be better if they just got away from everyone. Stuck him in the middle of a desert somewhere alone where he couldn’t hurt anyone and they couldn’t hurt him. Then her husband came back covered in frankenstein stitching. A reminder of the damage Jared was capable of.

Besides, it was normal enough to block out the doubt. Fluorescent lighting, bad magazines and pamphlets spread out on plain coffee tables, stiff neutral colored couches eased the guilt. The office made the experience feel no different than taking her boy to get his teeth cleaned. A comforting sort of boredom, the kind designed to make people forget that these would be their last moments on earth. Convincing their mind that they would exit the building up until the needle was staring them in the face. A salving balm put over the finality, sanitizing and sterilizing the nature of death. Every soothing nod of approval conditioned her to just keep saying yes. She jotted her name down with tears in her eyes, choking back the nagging pain in her heart. Soon a doctor came around to grab Jared. 

The Joneses walked alongside the stretcher that Jared was placed on. Followed him into a white hospital room where his anesthetized body was moved from the stretcher to a generic hospital bed. Well, not a bed, but a dark blue cushion covered with a layer of sanitized paper. The kind that existed in nearly every pediatrician’s office. 

The doctor performed his job bureaucratically. His movements formed into a routine that made it seem like he had done this a million times before. Measuring the boy’s vitals before preparing the needle. Careful to make sure that no air bubbles got into the syringe. Jared’s limp arm was turned over and an injection point was located. He swabbed the arm with an alcoholic napkin before sticking the needle in and lowering the liquid in. 

It only took a minute for the boy to die. Both of his parents sobbed over him as his heart stopped beating. The doctor’s gave them a moment. Waited for the crying to subside before transporting the corpse to a mortuary. 

The parents drove home in silence, alone. Holes burnt into both of their hearts. The shed was nagging them when they got home. Still standing there with a splintery hole carved into it. The thing was gone within a week. They planned to erect a gazebo in its place. In the following weeks, they looked at each other differently. Constantly getting into fights in order to drown out the emptiness. Through the violence they realized that they were still young, that it wasn’t too late to start over. Create another baby to fill the void. Hopefully the new child wouldn’t be born defective. Then they could put the whole mess behind them. They told themselves that they did the right thing, but secretly they questioned it every day. They could have saved dozens or they could have saved nobody, who’s to say. 

Frost

My mother didn’t want to pay alimony. So on New Year’s Eve, while I was in the shower, she stole his phone. The water didn’t drown out the impending argument. I stayed in there for as long as possible. Eventually, I had to admit that this wasn’t going to end anytime soon. I dried off. 

The first thing I heard when I stepped out was, “Emily, call the police!”.

 That wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t say anything when he choked her, and I wasn’t about to start now. Still, I could barely hear my own thoughts. So I got dressed as quickly as possible and fled. 

This had become routine at this point. If it got too heated, and it was early enough for me to get out, there was always a place I could hide.

 There were four houses in my neighborhood that were home to kids that I could reasonably call friends. Two to the left and two to the right, three girls, one boy. Usually someone would take me in and if they didn’t, well, at least I could walk around. 

This was a ridiculous plan for three reasons. 

  1. It was New Year’s Eve. There was absolutely no way that anyone was available.
  2. The temperature outside was negative 25 degrees fahrenheit that day.
  3. My hair was soaking wet.

By the time I had left the cul de sac, I was already crunching. My long brown hair mixed with white chunks of ice, resembling the dirt and car exhaust filled snow on the street. Still, I don’t think I realized the how cold it really was. No wind, no clouds, only a clear blue sky and a bright sun shining down masking the true extent of the bitterness. The only noise I could hear was the sound of my own teeth clattering. 

I must have looked crazed to anyone who opened the door that day. Covered head to toe in ice and shaking like a sick chihuahua. I wasn’t getting anything that night, except for sad, pitiful glances. 

Hypothermia comes in five stages. The first stage happens when your body drops below 95 degrees fahrenheit.  In temperatures below negative 30 degrees, if improperly dressed, it only takes about ten minutes for your core temperature to drop down to this level. I never learned how long it would take if you were also covered in ice. 

The first signs are barely noticeable. Your hypothalamus works extra hard to bring your body up to a regular temperature. You start to shiver uncontrollably. Your heart rate increases. Heat is circulated to your core, causing your hands and feet to get cold. 

I should have gone home. I nearly did. Got as far as the steps to my front door before the screaming got to me. Most of it just sounded like barking. A man and a woman, each straining their vocal chords to the absolute extreme. Trying to cover up the other’s voice. Every once in a while there was a word or phrase that was sharper than the rest of the noise, and managed to break through. “Videos”, “Veronica”, “Ivan”, “Invasion of privacy”, “Whore”, “ I could have you arrested”, “Amicable”, “Lawyers”, “Bleed you dry”. Then the sound of someone breaking something, probably my father.

Compared to that, the sound of my own teeth clacking together seemed manageable. White noise. The only place that would be open was Lux’s, a 24 hour diner, which was about a mile away from my house. I figured I’d be able to warm up with a cup of coffee.

I stumbled down the stairs.

 Ataxia, or a lack of coordination, is one of the early signs of hypothermia. As blood from the brain is routed to more crucial areas necessary to keep the body alive. Your motor functions become impaired. 

The walk back up the street was slower, less vigilant. I took my time. Tried to preserve as much warm air from under my coat as possible. Inching my way along. 

Three blocks away from my house and the world got quiet. It wasn’t loud before. I didn’t even notice the sound until it was gone. Like when the radiator shuts off. In all my life I had never experienced such silence. My eyes began to feel heavy.

When core temperature drops below 90 degrees fahrenheit, you enter the second stage of hypothermia. This is when the condition has shifted from being considered mild to moderate. Shivering stops, heart rate drops. Brain function starts to slow down. Breathing becomes slow and shallow. You start to feel tired.

Walking was getting more difficult as my muscles started to tense. I didn’t care. I still felt the chill but it didn’t bother me anymore. The cold had numbed me. There wasn’t a care in the world. My sister’s xanax had nothing on what I felt right there. I later learned that this was another symptom, apathy. Just kept walking, until I couldn’t anymore.

I collapsed in a field about eight blocks away from my house. Still conscious, but barely. Walking seemed so difficult. Lying there felt so easy. There was a house in view. I could see a blue door not a hundred steps away. Too far. Everything was shutting down. My blood was barely flowing. All I wanted was sleep. Fading, fading, then burning. 

The body’s last defense against the cold is to dilate the blood vessels, in an attempt to get as much blood as possible circulating through. This causes you to feel unbearably hot. 

It made no sense. I was lying in a snowbank, and suddenly, my skin was on fire. Something was cooking me. Something was cooking me from the inside and it was under my clothes. I needed to get them off me. 

My gloves were first. I frantically shed them, exposing my already half frostbite hands to the elements. Then I pulled my coat off.  Then my sweater. Then black.

When core temperature dips below 82.4 degrees fahrenheit, you enter the third stage of hypothermia. Your case is now considered severe. You lose consciousness. 

I was going to die. I was dying there. Christopher McCandless died in the Alaskan wilderness, 3,400 miles from where he grew up, and I was dying in a field, not fifteen minutes from my house. You lose vitals at 75 degrees. Resuscitation becomes impossible at 59. Already halfway down the drop, lying in a snow bank in nothing but jeans and a training bra, it was just a matter of time. I was plummeting fast, 81, 80, 79, 78, 77. 

I awoke in the hospital. Heat compresses placed on my limbs and salt water injected into me. My parents were already berating me for going out in this temperature. 

It turns out the people that lived in the blue door house owned a dog.  It must have been quite a shock. You step outside to let your dogs take a piss, only to find an unconscious, half naked, blue child. Still, it saved my life.

The clock struck 12. 

The Mercurian

First, I want to apologize. This message will not be nearly as eloquent or informative as the one you got from Kurt Waldheim. Though there is no way of knowing if you can tell the difference. I don’t know how much of this you will be able to understand. The details are going to be a bit fuzzy. Please understand, these descriptions are of a world that I have never seen, and that my family hasn’t seen for twelve generations. 

When we first found your planet, we named it Eden. The name was from a tale in a book that guided our species for most of its existence. The book was called the Bible. It used to be our explanation for how we came into being. We’re a species that created and destroyed with purpose and therefore we believed that everything was created and destroyed with purpose.  The book was waning in influence when we first found you. 

There was a place called the Garden of Eden in that book. A version of our world free of pain, suffering and hunger. The story goes that the first two people lived in this perfect place, free of all the vices that plague us. One day they ate a fruit they weren’t allowed to. They became wicked, and were cast into the planet that we came from. It was a ridiculous story, but we believed it for thousands of years. Our species has a renowned talent for lying and for believing lies. 

Even after we no longer believed, we still searched for that garden. We scoured all 197 million square miles of our planet, and when that failed, we tried to build it. The problem was that everyone had a different version of what they thought the garden should be.

We destroyed each other. Then we built something that could destroy us completely. We slowed down after that. That was when we started looking past our planet. We only made it so far. 

You must understand how much of our story revolves around muscle and tissue and decay. I don’t know if time writes lines on your face like it does ours. Each one of us has about a hundred years before we turn back into dust; sometimes more, sometimes less.  

Another thing that you need to know about our species is that we don’t want to be alone. Even though we didn’t last long, our stuff did. 

It was called the Voyager 1. A metallic box that contained images and sounds from our home planet. We sent “Hello” in fifty five different languages. We sent math equations, DNA strands, landscapes, human anatomy, animals, food and music. We fired them out into your direction, and five hundred and twenty six years later, you answered back. 

 I don’t know how much of the golden record you understood. I belong to the species that it depicts, and it doesn’t even make sense to me. I can’t imagine what you thought of it. 

I’m sorry. We never did figure out what any of the lines, shapes and waveforms you sent back to us meant. But we still heard you, and that made us want to listen.

We were shocked by how similar your planet was to ours, with fresh water, oxygen, foliage, oceans and mountains. Your planet is truly beautiful. I’m sorry that none of us will ever get to see it.  We were all in awe when those grainy satellite images came in. We immediately assumed it was better simply because it was not here. We wanted desperately to meet you. 

In most of the lies we told about space, the distance problem is solved. Space travel is as simple as a plane trip or a cruise if you break the laws of physics. Sadly, that only existed in our fiction. Truth is, we never even came close to reaching 299,792,458 meters per second. Even that speed feels like an eternity when you account for the distance between the two of us.

Our species survives through reproduction. A man and a woman will come together and create another one of us. It will spend nine months inside the woman and come out unfinished. The man and woman will have to care for it until it reaches maturity. This process takes about  two decades, more or less. When the man and woman whither away and die, their replacements will continue on. Those replacements will find another of our species and make replacements of our own. So the cycle continues. 

People tend to like the first part of the process, but hate the rest of it. We are biologically wired to enjoy the first part of the process. It dominated a good amount of our time and effort. Men, in particular, devoted a good amount of time into convincing women to start the process. Some started the process by force and we created laws to punish those men. Women enjoyed it too, but they had to be wary because the consequences were more dire for them. The rest of the process was painful, difficult and time consuming. We eventually invented ways to do the first part of the process without actually creating a replacement. It changed things a little bit, though not as much as you’d think.

We explained this all on the Voyager. Although, I haven’t the slightest idea how much you understood.

Even if we couldn’t reach you then, eventually our copies would be able to. That was the concept that led the Mercurian to be built. It was the largest public project humankind had ever undertaken. Billions of dollars and millions of hours were spent building this vessel. The Mercurian shared its name with a planet from our solar system and a god that we no longer worshiped. He was the messenger god, and the Mercurian was built to deliver you the message of our species. The Mercurian, the spiritual successor the Voyager 1, made us the new golden record. Each person was designed to be their own message in a bottle. 

I wonder if that phrase makes sense to you.

It was built to be a self-sustaining vessel home for over 50,000 of us. It needed to last over 2,000 years in the vacuum of space. The end product had enough luxuries to keep our species entertained and educated as well. Then all we had to do was send the breeding population out into the cosmos.

We sent 500 people, 250 men, 250 women. Married couples were prioritized. The few single people allowed to board were evenly split among genders. Everyone was between the ages of 18 and 36, though there was not a single woman over 30. Women lose their ability to make replacements quicker than men. Men needed to be between six to thirteen percent body fat and women had to be between fourteen to sixteen percent. Every founding inhabitant of the Mercurian was seen as someone of significant value to mankind. We sent up scientists, athletes, artists, inventors and models. Scientists, inventors and artists were known for what their minds can create while models and athletes were known for their physical perfection. 

Every person that originally left our planet on this vessel did so willingly. This meant that the Mercurian was populated by the most important people on earth, and the most desperate to leave it. This group of rich, talented and beautiful people who all thought that 196 million square miles wasn’t enough decided to shove their descendants in 50. 

How did they not expect us to tear each other apart?

In a lot of ways, The Mercurian was a garden of Eden in its own right. No struggle, no pain, nobody worrying about their next meal, or where they would take shelter. Production wasn’t an issue. The only purpose left was to go forth and multiply. We did this once with mice. 

A long time before I was born, a scientist named John B. Calhoun stuck mice in a perfect enclosed environment. They were free of disease, predation and scarcity. Nevertheless, they were contained. When this was done to members of our own species, we called it imprisonment. Imprisonment was seen as a punishment that was only fitting for the worst of us, though others ended up there too. The mice all stopped breeding and killed each other.

Poor little mice, there was nowhere for them to explore. 

It was okay for a while, heavenly even. The first few generations were able to remain rooted to Earth and fueled by their objective. They were God’s chosen people, leading their tribe out of Israel. Most of the original members continued working to the best of their ability, within the confines of the ship. Children took on the practices of their parents or developed practices of their own. Everyone bred. 

We used to get messages from our home planet. Updates from earth. They started out frequent. The first generation was able to keep in touch with the people they left behind. Then distance once again became a problem. It took longer and longer for messages to be received.

 Still, we did receive messages. Even if every new piece of information was already 50 years out of date. Even if every picture of a baby being born was likely already dead before the photo even reached our eyes. It was still something.

Then they stopped altogether. 

Even if you could comprehend everything sent to you by the Voyager 1, there was still so much we left out. We never told you about the organisms that used our bodies to spread from person to person and then killed us when they were done. We never told you about the bombs we built that were capable of destroying the entire planet. We didn’t tell you that our main source of energy was slowly heating the planet up. We didn’t tell you that we clustered into groups we called nations and that those groups would regularly decide to kill a different one. We never told you how likely it was that our species would suffer a violent and brutal death by our own hand.

It was around this time that we realized we were trapped in a box. 

We were all too interconnected. There was no escaping each other. There wasn’t much keeping us united either. Everything was already prewritten. No large goals or struggle that required us to get along. Creation felt like arranging furniture on the Titanic. Sorry, that’s another saying you won’t understand.

It took me a while to understand why humans were cast out of the Garden of Eden. I always wondered why God would tempt us with something that would doom us to sin. Now, I understand. The fruit from the tree of knowledge didn’t make our species sinful. Our willingness to eat the apple proved to god what we already were. We wouldn’t have survived in paradise. The original sin was want. In order to want, there’s always got to be something just out of reach. Otherwise, all that’s left is just an inevitable slow crawl to death.

Our species is not a hive mind, though yours may be. Every man can only experience life through their own eyes, they only think their own thoughts. We collaborate and communicate throughout our whole lives, but despite all of that, each one of us is alone. I hope that this will help you understand that a purpose that will not be fulfilled until long after you are gone, and takes no individual effort on your part, is not much of a purpose at all. The only reason to keep existing was something chosen by people that were long dead before we were even born. It didn’t require anything from us either.

We clung to that hollow purpose more than ever before. It was all we had. The entirety of communal life on The Mercurian became razor focused on being and breeding the best representations of the human species.

Our species is exceptionally good at finding ways to separate one another. Inventing ways to determine which of us were good or bad, worthy or unworthy, pure or degenerate.

On a ship comprised of what were supposed to be the most beautiful, creative and intelligent people, we still found ways to attempt to cull the herd. Ideas spread like viruses. Ideas of what society should be, how to best represent humanity, how we should structure ourselves. Some of them were old favorites. It wasn’t long before IQ tests were determining every aspect of your life. Then it was beauty. Then virtue. We invented disease where there were none. Anything to create division. 

I hope you don’t know what it’s like to live like this. Where every action, every word, every facial expression has the potential to out you as a deviant. Always feeling that you don’t belong, that you are less than those around you. A need to hide an ever present infection, lest you be found out and cast aside. I hope your species is better than that.

Every relationship you have just increases the potential that you will be caught. 

None of us are happy with being cast aside. We didn’t all handle it the same way. Some of us avoided everything, some of us were much more active. The more active found a purpose in destroying our Garden of Eden. It didn’t matter if they died in the process, so long as they took a few others with them. The lengths that people would go to in order to produce a copy of themselves became particularly nefarious. Men forced women into motherhood and those mothers would abandon their child. 

The population dwindled. The fighting increased.

We divided ourselves into groups. Each group convinced that the other was nothing but degenerates that needed to be cleansed from the ship. Then they attacked each other until one faction emerged victorious. The others were either killed or lived the remainder of their life in solitude. After they had cast away the heathens they began to divide and turn on each other once again. Mothers began to see the flaws that they had others killed for in their own children. They were not kinder to their kin. 

Sometimes the only choices you have are fight or flight. I fled. If I were a mouse I would be called a Beautiful One. They had a word for humans like me but it wasn’t as flattering. I locked myself into my chamber and watched as my species resorted to a divide and conquer method of suicide. I only ever left to fulfill my basic needs.

Then it got really quiet.

Everyday, I roam the halls of the Mercurian, looking to see if there is anyone left. It’s been a year now. So far, all I have found are bodies. I buried them in the planters, as is tradition. They will break down and provide the food for a colony that is no longer here. 

I don’t know if I am the last remaining member of my species. I don’t even know if I’m the last person living on the Mercurian. It is possible that there are a few stragglers spread out throughout the ship. It doesn’t matter though. If they are alive, they are probably like me. Pent up in their apartments, avoiding social interaction by any means necessary. They won’t breed either, and our species will die out with us.

It’s possible that we are earth’s forgotten science project, left to fester and rot. They might all be fine down there on that big blue marble. But most likely not. Most likely, they ate each other as well. 

I realize that this letter hasn’t painted my species in the best light. Please, don’t cast judgment on us simply because of how we went extinct. There is no such thing as a good ending.

 I was taught that even the universe, in all its divine and beautiful glory, will eventually collapse under the weight of its own expansion.

It is true that we were violent and jealous and spiteful. But we made things. Beautiful things, things that connected us all. Things that will reach out into the universe endlessly and make their impact on beings that our species couldn’t even fathom. 

In 300 years, when this ship crash lands on your planet, long after every human being that ever existed is dead, please enjoy the things we made. Remember the hands that built them.

Goodbye, Eden

Tzatziki

The fridge is nearly empty and James lies to me, saying that he’s no longer hungry. I would make fish, but the plastics in the water affect male fertility and James keeps yammering on about how much he wants to be a dad once we get out of this situation. I find a tub of yogurt in the side door and tortilla chips in the pantry. I figure I can make some tzatziki dip. 

The lemon juice is from a bottle and is most likely nothing more than a mixture of citric acid and water. We nabbed the salt and pepper from a diner we went to three months ago and that’s reflected in the quality. Fresh garlic is substituted for powder. There’s no dill so I pour in a greek seasoning packet that I found in the back of the pantry. We do without the mint entirely as any meager substitute I could find would have added too much sweetness and ruined the taste entirely. There’s nothing more I can do and I bring the bowl to the table in the living room.

James dips a tortilla chip into the bowl of poorly seasoned yogurt and takes a taste. He tells me that it’s not bad given the lack of ingredients. I put on a somber smile.

“I love you” he says

“I love you too,” I reply.

Pontious

You may want to condemn my actions. Paint me as a cruel vindictive man who used a local tragedy for political gain. Say that if you were in my position, there’s no way in hell you would’ve done what I had done. I doubt that. The reality of the situation is, I was just doing my job.

Hymn and haw all you want, but you weren’t there when they found the bodies. Three little boys tied up and thrown in a bog. You didn’t have to stare at half decomposed children every day for months on end. Only a monster could do a thing like that, and nobody wants a monster walking amongst them. The town wanted vengeance, the cops wanted vengeance, I wanted vengeance. How could you not after seeing what I saw? People were getting antsy after days without a culprit, you can’t imagine how bad it got after months. Nearly every time I left my house, someone was screaming bloody murder at me. I didn’t blame them, I would’ve done the same.

By the time the boy’s name was mentioned, we would’ve jumped at any lead we got. We weren’t surprised; none of us liked the kid very much. He was a mouthy shock jock with no respect for authority. We all thought we had our guy, evidence be damned. 

The prick mouthed off in the interrogation room. Treated being accused of triple homicide like a giant joke. I’m not gonna lie, it felt pretty good to charge the little fuckface. That was before I really started to put a case together. 

I spent twelve hours a day combing through whatever possible evidence I could find on the kid and I was still coming up short. It took me longer than I would like to admit, but I eventually realized that the boy couldn’t have done it. At that point, however, the entire town wanted him dead. What was I supposed to do, stop prosecution? It wasn’t like there were any other leads.

In order to achieve anything in life, sometimes you’ll have to make a few sacrifices; and sometimes, those sacrifices are people. That may seem harsh, but in my line of work the only thing that matters is the audience. If the crowd wants peace, you give them peace, and if the crowd wants blood, you give them blood. There’s a few things they won’t tell you in law school. Keeping the people happy is the most important part of being a prosecutor. 

I clammered together whatever evidence I could and presented my case. Convincing the jury wasn’t difficult, the entire town was itching to get the boy behind bars long before the kids went missing. Convincing myself was harder. The only evidence I could pull up were some vague eye witness testimonies, a knife dumped in a lake that couldn’t be traced back to the original crime scene, assertions of witchcraft, and character assassinations. Now there will be another kid killed senselessly in this town. 

You may find my actions abhorrent, but anyone in my position would’ve done the same. The entire county would’ve been in a frenzy, no prosecuting attorney wants to be the guy that failed to convict a child murderer. So I did my job, passed the buck to the jury. I figured that if the evidence was that flimsy, there was no way a jury would convict him. I was wrong. The boy was found guilty before he was even taken in for questioning. The reading of the verdict was merely a formality. 

But none of that was my fault. It’s the jury’s job to examine the evidence, I just presented the case. They were the ones who killed that kid, not me. I just did my job. It’s a shame, but these things can’t be avoided. As much as we’d like to ignore it, the simple fact is that false convictions happen. No heroic actions or perfect system could avoid it, and it isn’t my fault that a case like this ended up at my doorstep.

I did the best I could under the circumstances I was given. It’s not any more of a tragedy just because of my involvement. The best thing to do now is just to forget it. Move on to my next case, or focus on running for office. Start with a clean slate. I wash my hands of it.

Billboards

No matter what people, the government, or the profiteers say, I will always believe that my actions were righteous. Nobody was hurt and nothing of actual value was lost. You can talk to me all day about personal property, but as far as I’m concerned, that property stops becoming personal when you’re shoving it into everyone’s eyeballs.

There is no escaping consumerism. From the second you wake up in the morning, to the moment you go to sleep, someone is trying to sell you something. Entire industries exist just to ensure that any second of contemplation or enjoyment you possibly could have in your day is filled by an advertisement of some sort. Think about how many areas that advertisements have crept their way into: movies,  television, Youtube, magazines, podcasts, iPhone apps, radio stations and sports stadiums. Even when you’re driving, the point at which you are supposed to be the most focused on the safety of yourself and others, they still manage to shove advertisements into your eyeballs in the form of billboards, one of the most disgusting aspects of the modern economy.

Whoever invented the billboard should be shot. They do nothing but distract drivers and uglify the highways. They all appeal to the most depraved and degenerate aspects of humanity. The streets are littered with advertisements for fast food, strip clubs and sleazy attorneys. It’s rare to find anything of value advertised on the side of the road. Like a Vegas casino, these signs are designed for the explicit purpose of wrapping people back into their vices.

We all know the stereotypes. Americans are all fat, lazy and stupid. The truth is that everyone is inclined to laziness; America just caters to those perversions. This country will shove addictive substances down your throat and then blame you for your dependence.

These companies will do anything to get you to part with your hard earned cash. They are not above addiction, so long as they think they can get away with it.  They got me hooked young. My parents would always come home late, drained of all their energy. They rarely ever cooked. Instead, on their way home, they would pull into the nearest drive thru and pick up some fast food for me to eat. By the age of thirteen I qualified as morbidly obese.  I didn’t realize how many years of my life I would have to give up to erase the mistakes of my parents negligence. And how many times a day I would have to fight the temptation to indulge my habit. 

One day, after scarfing down an entire quart of ice cream in front of my television, I decided to start going to overeaters anonymous meetings. The room was filled with people disgusted at their own existence. Engorged bodies created by the American system of consumption, desperately trying to break free. Working endlessly only to be pulled back in by the comforts of decadence. It was sickening to watch people who had worked diligently to get past their addiction only to be pulled back in by a conveniently placed McDonald’s at a weak point in their life. Good, hardworking people succumbing to their addictions and slowly killing themselves. And I was no different than the rest of them.

It took me three years to finally lose the weight. Every small victory was only achieved through tortuous work. At every meal I had to fight with myself in order to not just give in. Meanwhile, everywhere I go the world is telling me to give up and eat a fucking cheeseburger. Imagine trying to get sober while having a heroin dealer conveniently on every corner. It’s no wonder that 90% of people that lose weight eventually gain it all back. Actual success isn’t profitable. I’d have called it my own personal hell if so many people weren’t wallowing in there with me. 

As bleak as it was, the system worked. That week I managed to keep to my diet instead of shamefully shovelling oreos down my mouth. Overeaters anonymous became a weekly occurrence. The only problem was the drive back. 

People don’t tend to notice billboards. The experience of having advertisements constantly thrown into your face is such a routine occurrence that it becomes nothing more than white noise. But after listening to someone screaming about losing their foot to diabetes, the last thing you want to see are pictures of thin, smiling models gorging themselves on the same food that makes your life miserable. Driving home from overeaters anonymous, every fast food ad feels like a slap in the face. It was on those drives back that I began to focus on how much crap is being shoved down our throats. 

I began to hate driving. Every highway drive was filled with constant reminders of how long I had fallen prey to my vices, and how it was encouraged by our culture of easy gratification. There was a real rage building up inside me. For a while, the anger was subdued by a strict, intense workout schedule and a regimented diet. But eight months and seventy five pounds later, the fury still festered within me, and it soon became unbearable. 

At every overeaters anonymous meeting there is a certain amount of misery that is to be expected. Over time, you become desensitized to people’s problems. Even though we had the weight of profitability working against us, there’s no denying that these are our own problems; blaming the outside world won’t fix your issues. We knew the consequences of what we were doing and all of our problems we brought upon ourselves. The same can’t be said about a child. 

It’s usually not surprising to see a fat kid with the way these companies target children. Preying on those that are too young to know any better is just easier. Plus, if you can get a child hooked on your poison, then you’ve got yourself a lifetime customer. Children typically live in a state of bliss, though. The consequences won’t rear their heads for decades to come, so they are unaware of how awful what has been done to them truly is. So even though their bodies have been slowly morphed into a pile of mush, they still manage to maintain their spirit. Not this kid though. He couldn’t have been any older than twelve and he looked as broken down as the rest of us adults.  I remember being that age, I remember the self loathing, I remember wondering why everyone else could keep the weight off while I continue to fail. I know how bitter that can make a person.

I left that meeting with tears in my eyes only to be taunted by those same fucking billboards. Every billboard I passed on the highway boiled my blood. I began thinking of all the years that had been taken from me, taken from so many people, so many people driven to death. They get you before you’re ever truly aware of the dangers, and once you fully understand what you’re doing, you’re already hooked. This isn’t just true for fast food either. Between fast food, gambling, strippers, prescription medication, online shopping, cigarettes, alcohol and plastic surgery, nearly everyone is addicted to something. We all spin our wheels until we finally break down. We blame ourselves for the failings that we were pushed into. 

My anger had me driving faster and faster, seeing red the whole way. Suddenly, everything went clear, and it was just me, the open road, and two golden arches egging me on. I couldn’t stop staring at that behemoth of gluttony. In those few seconds, I decided that something needed to be done. 

The first thing I did when I got home was pack my car with whatever items in my garage I felt could do the most damage. A crowbar, hammer, bottles of black spray paint and an old baseball bat were logged into the trunk of my car. Then all that was left to do was wait.

At midnight, I began looking for billboards to destroy. Initially, it seemed pointless. Most of these eyesores were absolute monoliths. A single thick concrete pole hoisting a giant sign up sixty feet tall in order to scream their asinine message to the world. You take one look at those fuckers and you know there’s no way you’ll get anywhere close to touching them before falling to your death. It was as though I was an ant screaming at a God. But I kept driving. 

The farther you get from the city, the more manageable the task becomes. The signs get shorter and more climbable.  Plus, there are less eyeballs that you have to avoid. I passed by cornfield after cornfield until I found a target that even I could muster. The billboard was just a large piece of stretched canvas barely six feet off the ground.

I pulled the car over, grabbed the bat and started swinging. Within minutes the canvas was torn to shreds. Whilst slashing through the canvas, I came to a realization. I thought to myself , “Fuck ice cream, fuck pizza, fuck cupcakes, burgers and pie; no amount of food could ever be as satisfying as what I’m doing in this moment”. There was no sense of shame in my actions, no sickness or self hatred present after I was done. Instead, there was a sense of pride in my work.

Most of my life I had spent floating through the motions, doing the bare minimum amount of work to survive. My free time was typically spent consuming rather than actually doing anything with a purpose. That’s how I ballooned up to three hundred pounds in the first place. Work was always something I did in order to afford my life. Even the rigid workout schedule that I had stuck to throughout the last six months was only done in pursuit of weight loss rather than enjoyment. This was different. I looked out in awe of what I had done. To me, there was nothing more beautiful. 

After that first night I was hooked. Instead of spending my weekends sitting on the couch and gorging myself on food, I would go out hunting these goliaths. I grew tired of the small ones pretty quickly. I even enrolled in climbing lessons just so I could get my hands on bigger prey. My workouts became training sessions. I was working on my body for more than health and aesthetics, I was sculpting it into a tool of destruction. I finally had something to work towards.

I filled my trunk with carabiners, rope and weapons. You’ve always got to make sure you’ve got the right weapon for your target. If you’re going for canvas or poster board, then you’re going to want something that can tear the thing to shreds. For those purposes I usually go with a crowbar or machete. But if your target is something harder, like vinyl or the glass plating on electronic billboards, then you’re going to want to focus your attention on sheer blunt force. A baseball bat or hammer will usually do the trick. When you come across something you simply can’t break, then it’s time to grab the spray paint. 

You can try therapy, meditation, yoga, or even plain old exercise, but if you ask me, there is nothing more cathartic than my late night vandalism runs. Every moment I spent in the act was spent in some kind of rush. From the hunting, to the climbing, to the final kill. I never thought of myself as particularly violent, but every strike I delivered added to my new sense of clarity; and I chased that high. Blow after exhilarating blow I would drive my hammer straight into the vinyl until there was nothing left to beat. You could get lost in it. So lost that you forget that what you’re doing is highly illegal. 

Like I said, Billboards tend to function as nothing more than background noise. The buzz of a hungry mosquito before it feeds off your blood. If you kill them quietly enough, it will take awhile before anyone notices they’re missing. Yes, there were definitely people that saw the battered carcasses of these preachers of quick consumption. But it was rare for anyone to care enough to take the time to report it, and these types of things were usually blamed on bored local teenagers. Nobody was searching for a grown man with an office job. 

At first, I was relieved that nobody noticed me. It meant that I had one less thing to worry about. That relief turned to irritation as the weeks turned to months. It’s normal to want recognition for your work. I never needed that in my job because I didn’t care about the work aside from a paycheck but this was different. Considering the amount of hours that I put into destroying these things, I was looking for someone to at least acknowledge what was going on. I felt like I was a powerful vigilante, but in reality I was insignificant. 

These advertising giants didn’t care about the billboard. I had spent far more time thinking about those things then the people who had put them up in the first place. They were relics of the past. Their focus was directed at the vast collection of noise that is the internet. If I really wanted to speak to these corporate powerhouses, I had to get online. 

Everyone, from the most prolific serial killers to the kids stealing cookies out of the cookie jar, will get sloppy if they go unrecognized for too long. At that point I thought I was immune to punishment. I started to document every kill. Starting with an iPhone, but eventually investing money into a high quality camera and spotlights. Once I was satisfied with my photos, I blasted that shit onto every social media platform I could think of. I wanted to spread the word.

 It didn’t work. Nothing, no engagement, no traction, nobody listening. I knew that if I wanted to be heard, I would have to make a deal with the devil. I bought advertising space. Soon, people began to hear me.

My message started gaining popularity. Within a matter of months, my work became the new favorite iconography of the four year revolutionary. Kids were having my destruction printed on to posters to show how enlightened they were. None of this bothered me until people started monetizing it. Plastering my images onto sweatshop T-shirts, coffee mugs and stickers. Consumable products bought by people in order to feel like they’re sticking it to the man. That struck a nerve, but I eventually became comfortable with the commodification of my art. After all, what was I going to do, sue them? The only reason I hadn’t been thrown in jail yet was my ability to remain anonymous. You can’t exactly get a copyright on vandalism. Plus, it may have only been edgy teenagers and low-level profiteers, but at least someone was listening to me. My sentiments weren’t the same once the brands got a hold of it. 

After years of screaming into the void and waiting on a response, I finally got my wish.  There were no cops, no lawyers, no cease and desist. No proof that these companies had felt any of the harm I tried so hard to inflict. Nothing more than an ad campaign. And just like that, my revenge fantasy had crumbled. 

I had gotten used to the vapidity of social media. But even I didn’t like to spend a lot of time in the cesspool that is Twitter. However, no amount of trashy twitter threads could prepare me for the Wendy’s twitter page retweeting one of my pictures of a shredded McDonald’s billboard with the caption “Buck the system, Eat at Wendy’s”. I sat looking at that horrible reappropriation for close to twenty minutes, hoping I had imagined it. I would be able to laugh at the irony of it all, if it wasn’t for how blatantly sleazy it was. 

Wendy’s had set off a trend. It started with other brands sharing my images in order to bash their competitors, purposefully missing the point under the guise of humor. The kind of humor that corrodes everything to the point of meaninglessness. A certain self awareness that allows people to let their guard down just enough for brands to cram their message a little further down your throat. Eventually, this got to the point where brands were commissioning billboards to look like I had demolished them, personal stylizations and all. 

The entire thing made me nauseous. They knew not to challenge a threatening idea, but rather to declaw it. Turning it into nothing more than a sideshow. I wasn’t going to let that happen this time, and I was willing to put my wellbeing at risk for my message. I turned myself in.

They wouldn’t bite. No charges were pressed. Why allow a joke to be turned into a martyr? Eventually, I had to admit that they won. 

Boots

Edited with the help of Max Syzmczak.

For the record, yes; I used to strip. Say what you will about it, but after you’ve written the essays, applied for the scholarships, and gotten a part time job, the student loan debt is still whittling away at you. That’s when you’ll realize that the only way you’ll be able to afford that Principles of Public Policy class is to climb on a pole and let the creeps throw money at you. So, I bought myself a pair of sky high black leather boots, and every weekend I spent forty minutes driving to the least sleazy place I could find.

If you’re going to strip, then the first thing you have to learn is how to walk in heels. The trick is to pull your abdominal muscles and walk with the balls of your feet first, otherwise you’ll trip all over yourself.  It’s tricky, but once you’re capable of looking sexy in a pair of glorified stilts, looking out to see all the droolers gawking at you, you’ll understand how to command an audience.

The next thing you’ll have to learn is how to hide your identity. Search for a club far away from campus, wear a wig, create a fake name, tell your friends a story about a sick grandpa who you visit every weekend in order to excuse your absence. Then, realize that no matter how careful you are, even though you’re wearing a platinum blonde wig and nobody there knows you as anything other than Candy Johnson, some fucker can still ruin your life simply by snapping a photo.

Nowadays, I’m sitting at a desk, on the phone, begging for campaign donations rather than shaking my ass for dollar bills. I traded my Pleasers in for a pair of dress shoes. All that time spent studying, canvassing, and stripping so that I could afford to study and canvas paid off. But none of that matters anymore; now, my fate is in the hands of the general public.

Appearances matter. The Nixon – Kennedy debates were the first presidential debates to appear on television. There are plenty of people that swear that Nixon’s refusal to wear makeup cost him the election. The sweat that visibly dripped down Nixon’s face made him look like an absolute fool compared to the calm and composed Kennedy. People pretend to be rational creatures but we are still influenced by the most frivolous things. Height also matters. Most people think we’ve moved past that kind of animalistic thinking; we haven’t. It’s a known fact that during an election the tallest guy usually wins. It doesn’t matter that I’ve  given most of my adult life to this institution. Next to all these men, I look like nothing more than an inexperienced child.

If you’re a woman running for office, the biggest hurdle you’re going to have to jump through is optics. No matter how much of a feminist most men pretend to be, they still have trouble looking at us as anything other than a sex object or an old maid. I have people meticulously pouring over my clothes in an attempt to make me look like anything but a woman. Tailors sew me suits with the express purpose of hiding the curves that helped pay my way into this profession. But no matter how your suit is tailored, or how “tasteful” your make-up is, there’s no changing your height. All these stylists and tailors poking and prodding can only ever make you look like a caricature of a man, and nobody wants to stand behind an inferior product. 

Still even the professionals fuck up from time to time. God forbid you’re button up is slightly too tight while discussing farm subsidies on the morning news, lest you get a bunch of weasel brained internet boys leering over your tits. At that point, I figured I may as well drop the act. 

I spent the next day rummaging through my closet, only to pull out that old shoe box; I swore I would never come back to. Inside lie the same black high heeled boots that paid my way through college. Inside the box, they lack the power that they possessed so many years ago. They look like nothing but a few patches of scuffed up leather attached to a worn out wooden heel. 

So you send them to a shoe worker to repair the heel and get them shined back to their former glory. After you’re done, you’ll remember why you decided to restore them in the first place. They scream for attention. 

I tried the boots back on, this time sporting a suit instead of a lingerie set.  A pair of strikingly high heels will change more about a person’s appearance than simply height.  They open up your shoulders and force you to arch your back more, as well as elongate your legs.  Wearing those matte black platform boots, I looked like an empress elevated above everyone.

Right before I was set to go on the debate stage, I popped those puppies on my feet. They had the effect I wanted. No longer did I disappear into my competitors. All it took was a change of footwear, and I was no longer seen as a caricature of my male counterparts. 

It did invite controversy though. Apparently there aren’t enough problems in need of addressing, and reporters are forced to turn their attention to my shoe choices. Getting attention from the pearl clutchers is not necessarily a bad thing. You are, however, taking a gamble. It is impossible to determine whether or not the general public is going to take your side or the peanut galleries’. Luckily, it was easy to spin this.

What happened was some sex work liberation movement latched on to my stripper boots as a symbol of solidarity. I ran with it. After all, half the country spends a great deal of time looking at porn stars; this wasn’t stretching it too far. Me going on talk radio, stating that prostitution should be legalized caused an uproar, but it didn’t matter whether or not the media liked or hated me. What mattered was that I got their attention. 

One thing they won’t teach you in your media studies class is that you always have to  keep the pundits talking. It doesn’t matter if they’re declaring you a saint, or calling for you to be burned on the cross. The attention’s good. You see, as strong as a hate mob can seem, it’s not sustainable. Outrage burns out quickly, people will find the next thing to get their panties in a twist over, and who’s  gonna be left are those that thought you had a point. The media will be screaming bloody murder at you, but your poll numbers will continue to rise.

I wore those boots everywhere, and although they killed my ankles, it was worth it to not have to play the ridiculous posterity game anymore. The shorter my skirt and tighter my top was, the better I did in the polls. As they say, sex sells, so why not give the people what they want? Hell, even most of the people that hated me were secretly jacking off to me.

This was all timed out perfectly. When I started this brigade, I had a full six months before the election. Enough time for the angry mob to burn themselves out while I slowly gained supporters. The only problem came when some jizz bag with a cell phone camera decided he wanted his day in the sun.

In the end my trusty heels ended up being my downfall. It started as nothing but an internet rumor. Some scumbag that used to frequent the strip club I worked for managed to sneak a photo past the bouncers. He posted it to Reddit. Keeping himself anonymous while opening up my past; typical creep. The photo was a grainy mess plus I was fifteen years younger in a platinum blond wig. But the shoes managed to be crystal clear, and it was hard to deny that they had a striking resemblance to the ones I wore on the campaign trail. The media began to pick up the story and slowly the picture became common knowledge.

That’s how I lost control of the narrative. People no longer saw me as a politician playing stripper but as a stripper playing politician. Suddenly, a bunch of those men that thought voting for me was progressive lost interest. It doesn’t matter how open minded you claim to be, you still aren’t going to put your vote towards a dumb slut. 

I was angry. I knew the chances of me getting elected was pretty much ruined at this point, but I still had to keep up appearances. There was no way in hell that I was going to give those puritan dirtbags the satisfaction of forcing me to drop out. Still, I was hemorrhaging cash.  Every scumbag donor was pulling their campaign donations and I needed a way to keep the lights on. 

 I accepted a television interview specifically for the purpose of finally addressing the scandal. At this point I was burning the candle at both ends. Barely sleeping, and worse, barely lying. I wasn’t able to keep my wits about me and smooze the trust fund babies quite as well as I used to. Especially now that most of these men had more to say about my ass than my policies. Part of me knew that this would do nothing but further tank my campaign, but I was desperate and hoping that I would be able to find some way to spin this. Boy, was I wrong.

Most reporters don’t phase me. Most don’t want to phase me. This is not to say that the majority of reporters are idiots; in fact, a lot of them are more intelligent than me. It’s just that they are bound to the same polyethylene politeness that I am. An ever expanding chart of ratings, public opinions, and chances of getting any follow up interviews; that keeps a constant monitor on their tongue. Only ever allowing themselves to dance around the issues that make the politician or public uncomfortable. But the chances of anyone ever wanting an interview with me after the election were slim, and the public wanted my head on a spike. I was easy prey.

For the first couple of questions, I held my own. It’s customary for the reporter to throw you a couple of softballs before going in for the kill. But all things considered, I thought that I was handling things pretty well. I even managed to keep my composure through the first round of the firing squad.

The reporter softened her voice and face in the same manner that they always tend to do when they are about to invoke children;  “What kind of message do you think that these tapes send to young girls?”. It took me a second to come up with the politically correct response. As soon as I found it I matched her tone “ I think that this shows little girls that no matter how they choose to make money, so long as it’s legal, and doesn’t hurt anyone, they still deserve to pursue their dreams and aspirations”. I had survived the dreaded “think of the children” question. I breathed a sigh of relief and made the fatal mistake of letting my guard down.

After wearing me down she went straight for the jugular. She dropped the demeaning tone, going back to the phony aggressive tone of a typical reporter; “How can you claim to hold any integrity when you have openly sold your body to strangers?”. And that’s how she broke me  “Integrity?”  I laughed, “ Who in this goddamn profession has any integrity? This entire system is set up to see how many people will buy what you are selling. Every word out of every politician’s mouth is tailored and calculated in order to be the best thing possible to say in order to attract the most amount of voters while not pissing off any of our donors. If I’ve sold myself to anyone it’s the people that spend money on my campaign and that’s true of any politician you have ever spoken to!”. At that point, I was basically throwing money away. I drew my attention to the reporter “ And even you are under constant pressure to keep those ratings up, but god forbid you piss off those advertisers, right?”. The reporter didn’t interrupt me. Despite insulting her, there was no way she could deny that this was television gold. I kept talking. “ My god, you shouldn’t be questioning my integrity because I used to strip in college, you should be questioning my integrity because of my current profession”. That was the point when I realized I was fucked. “Well congratulations” I said “ You’ve successfully gotten me to hang myself”. The interview concluded quickly after that. 

The majority of my donors had pulled their campaign contributions pretty quickly after that. I had fully suspected my spot in the polls to take a nosedive. Turns out I was wrong, and actually went up about four points after that interview.

I withdrew my campaign. Even with the public’s support, my funding had been slashed in half. I was forced to admit that there was no way I was going to win. Some other bozo in a necktie claimed the spot that year. 

 Americans aren’t as dumb as we assume thay are. They know the system’s rigged, that every politician is basically reading off a series of cheap talking points. They know that the country has been bought and sold. That there is nothing they can do about it. At least I was being honest when I told them that I was a giant grifter. An honest liar, that’s what the people want. The donors were not as forgiving.