I can say, with some authority, that hell is immobility and constant sameness.

I can say, with some authority, that hell is immobility and constant sameness. I can say this because that is the hell I have endured for a long time. I have been forced to lie here, on my back, facing upward, into never ending darkness for that long. There is never any variation, at all, in what I see or hear or feel. I do not even have the comforting thought of being able to go insane. I will always, now and forever, be forced to deal with this monotony, until the reckoning, eons away, when christ comes to redeem mankind.

I was involved in labor relations in the 70’s. It’s a dirty secret that the mafia is involved in Unions. Always have been. But there was a change going through us back then that we might be able to do away with it. We were sick of the pensions always being ripped off. Word got around to the wrong people what we were trying to do however, and I was murdered. I was leaving the job site one evening when I was kidnapped, grabbed from behind and shoved into a car. I was driven to a remote spot where an overpass was under construction. I was blindfolded, a straw was inserted into my mouth and I was told to lie down. My legs and arms were bound and concrete was poured over me, right up to the point of being level with that straw.

I lingered on for some days, before I finally passed away. The road was finished over top of me and my small breathing hole filled up with so much dirt, over time, that my entire lungs, throat, and mouth are now packed with it.

Since then, I have been in a sense of total sensory deprivation.

I see nothing. I hear nothing. I smell nothing. I taste nothing. I feel nothing.

Over and over again.

Forever.

I don’t know if I went to hell and this is my punishment, or if my hell is being stuck in the moment of death for eternity. I do know that I would welcome any change, at all. I would welcome disembowelment and torture. No pain can ever be worse than the total sameness I’ve endure for only god knows how long.

Holy shit, the flowers are vomiting blood.

Holy shit, the flowers are vomiting blood. The daisies have cartoon eyes that are contorted in agony and blood is literally flowing from their mouths. Out of the corner comes a kitten walking upright, wearing full-on metal knight’s gear. Sword and shield and helmet and everything. He’s chopping all of the flowers down and flower-blood is spraying all over him, soaking his fur and staining his armor. He’s screeching and killing. The daisies keep on puking until he cuts them down. At last, as one single vomiting flower is left alive, The kitten-knight drops his sword and falls to all fours. He gives himself a lick-bath and sheds his armor.

Beneath him and off in the corner, the blood is standing inches deep. The soil beneath this all has formed a great big mouth, sucking and slurping at the carnage, swallowing and loving every stalk, petal and stem. The kitten cleans off the last of his fur and stands on his back legs, grabbing his sword and preparing to sever the last standing flower.  The daisy is dry-heaving now, it’s white petals stained totally red. The kitten lifts the sword…

“What do you think?” She asks me, “Isn’t it lovely? I mean when I look at it I can just see that cute little kitten romping through the field and having a good time. It makes me kind of home-sick though. What do you think about it?”  she asks me with her big wide blue eyes. Eyes that are incapable of comprehending the pain she’ll endure in less than two hours. The crowd at the little art gallery is shuffling around us, a small crowd has formed around our little painting of a kitten in a field.

“Well I guess I see the same thing as you, I guess.” I shrug my shoulders at her. No way is this bitch gonna know what I’m really thinking.

“Art’s not really you’re thing is it?” she asks. I imagine her face slit up and disfigured.

“No. Art’s not my thing.”

“Oh sweetie, that’s why I like you. You’ve put up with all of my interests even though they bore you. That’s so sweet!” she says while I picture her with empty eye sockets, black holes with nerves dangling where there ought to be eyes.  “I tell you what, what do you say we go back to my place?”

“I’d like that.” I say.

“Alright then, let’s go.” I take her arm in arm and we walk out of the gallery. On the way out we pass another couple that is staring at a painting of abtract geometric shapes. the woman asks the man “What do you think?” His response: “I think that that circle is trying to fuck that rectangle.”

“Close,” I think to myself. “Close”

Mr. President, if you insist on acting like a spoiled child, we will treat you like one.

“Mr. President, if you insist on acting like a spoiled child, we’ll treat you like one. If you’re not responsible enough to clean up the messes you make, if you think it’s okay to just leave crap like this for someone else to handle, then you are nothing more than a spoiled brat who deserves a spanking. And with god as my witness, if you really were my child, I’d bend you over my knee and then make you go stand in the corner. I mean really, this is completely ridiculous. Let’s just think about this for a second. Would any other grown man, let alone elected official, be able to get away with what you’ve done? Would any small child get away with it for that matter?”

“N-n-no,” he says with his chin touching his chest, unable to look me in the eye.

“That’s right, no. Would you make your mother clean up the sort of stuff you’ve done in here?”

“N-n-n-no.”

“That’s right, no. So what makes you think it’s okay to make me do it, huh? You think because I’m just a cleaning lady that it’s okay to pee on the carpet and scribble on the wall with crayons?”

“No Ms. Alba-Lucia,” he says as he wipes his sniffles on his suit sleeve.

“Oh, it’s okay sweetie don’t cry. Just try to be more responsible okay? You’re a grown man. Act like it!”

“I will,” he says.

________________________________________________________________

But then of course the day dream ends and he walks in the room for real. He asks me the usual polite questions, I never bother to tell him about how hellish it is to clean up after him. What a pig. On my way out he asks me where his new issue of Mad Magazine is. I tell him it’s under the report on foreign intelligence filed by the joint chiefs. What a simpleton. I can’t believe they posted this job as requiring a four year degree.

Perhaps I will take up those Iranians on their offer to turn spy.

It really is a lovely planet.

It really is a lovely planet. It’s a shame that many of them don’t get to see it from out here. They can’t appreciate how insignificant they are. Indeed, in our dealings, most of them seem to think that they are of some great significance. It is ironic that my people have lost that perspective. We have forgotten what it is like to have a home. To have a sky and a sun and a moon. We have only had vast empty starfields for a long time, and nowhere for our people to rest. We have forgotten what it is like to matter.

So we move, looking for a potential home. This one could work. It feels right. It feels like home. It feels like a fresh start and a second chance.

It feels…

It feels…

It feels scary. If we fuck this one up then that’s it. No-more. We’ve been drifting for 150 years. We’re almost out of supplies. It’s smaller than the old one, with less water. But it’s still got beaches and forests, rivers and deserts and skies and clouds. It’s got oxygen.

We may have given up on god when the old world collapsed. We may have to bring him back to our hearts for this one. We may need him for our last chance.

I’d never met an actual circus announcer before.

I’d never met an actual circus announcer before. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not, but when I saw him standing there, with the spotlight falling on him, the cigarette smoke swirling around his tailcoats and the sawdust on the floor, I felt proud for him. I was glad he got to do what he wanted to do with his life. I saw him grab the overhead mic and his voice boomed into it.

“Sammy Joan, The Bearded LADY” he cries out as the opening processional marches around him. He announces the strong man, the acrobats, the elephants and lions. The clowns come by in their little cars and circle him. Everyone laughs as they stumble out of the tiny contraption, falling over each other in huge pratfalls. At last the laughter dies down and he holds the microphone out away from his face.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” he says and then takes a deep breath, “THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!”

The spotlight dims and he drops his arms. As the light fades out I can see him light up a cigar and walk off into the darkness.

__________

Behind all of this, the doctors have given up on the crash cart and his heart monitor is making that steady loud whine that only means one thing. The attending doctor calls it. Time of death: 11:19 a.m. They slowly walk away from the table. A nurse pulls a sheet up and over his face. A new intern spots me behind the window that looks into the operating room.

“Hey,” he says, “You alright? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Every day,” I reply.

He doesn’t know what to make of my reply, whether I’m joking or not. I’m not. One of the older nurses grabs him and leads him away, explaining me to him as they toss their bloodied surgical aprons in the bio-hazard bin.

I’ve tried to explain death to them all before, that when you die you become the thing that you loved most about the world.

A hospital was both the ideal and worst choice for a person of my abilities.

Let’s follow the fireball as it travels through the building shall we?

Let’s follow the fireball as it travels through the building shall we? It begins at the roof, in an air vent where I’ve rigged a combination of heavy flammable gasses and hoses to force it in to the vents. I’ve had seven tanks pumping the gas into the system for the past ten minutes. Earlier I shut off the air conditioning. The worker bees have been sweltering for the past half hour and when I turn on the system again they’ll be so happy to have air that they’ll ignore the smell. Not that it matters, there’s so much of the shit waiting to hit the fan that they won’t have time to react.

Okay, he should be arriving back from lunch and sitting at his desk right now. Time to start the show. I dislodge the brick that’s preventing the main ventilation fan from turning and then shut off my hoses that go into the main air intake. I toss a match into the fan and then jump off the side of the building.

Gravity is pulling me down slightly faster than the gas is falling and burning through the building. I get to see the people see me and then get burnt alive. A few seconds later I see him. The moment only last hundredths of a second but my brain slows it all into slow motion.

He sees me. I see him. I flip him off. He burns to death.

I throw open my chute and fall safely down to the street below. Change is imminent now.

When you’re about to die, your life does NOT flash before your eyes.

When you’re about to die, your life does NOT flash before your eyes. Not your complete life anyway. It’s more of a blooper reel. My low-lights included many things that I regret deeply. There was the time when, as a very young kid, I stayed up real late crying that I wanted to die, and I kept it up until my mom made me come stay in the bed with her. I only did it because I wanted the attention and after that night I never did it again. That’s only one though. There were many, dozens, of moments of physical intimidation where I did nothing to stand up for myself. There were the moments in high school, watching my ex-girlfriend fuck her new boyfriend at the prom after party, watching him squeeze her tits, seeing me and telling me to fuck off.  And I just hang my head low and walk away.

At the exact moment when you know it’s coming, your death that is, your brain does this little pre-show where it tells you what to expect. Mine told me that it was gonna review those moments where I tapped out and quit. The times where I hit the bottom of the barrell. I realized that I fucking lived at the bottom of the barrell. The good times never came. And as I saw my ex-girlfriends face, contorted in orgasm and her new boyfriend having the time of his life, I saw the exact moment when I resigned myself to the whims of others, and their approval, forever more mattered more to me than my own. That moment saved my life.

I reached down, way deep down and found the fight inside myself. I kicked out with both legs and shoved the rapist off of me. His knife left a big tear in my throat but did not cut any major arteries. He stumbled backwards with this confused look on his face. I took that opportunity to run. I ran as fast as I could and went straight to the apartment of that ex girlfriend.

I knocked on the door where her new boyfriend was now her old husband. She answered the door and recognized me. She was more shocked at the blood on my throat than at seeing me for the first time in 5 years. I went in and kissed her before she could say anything. She did not pull away. She did not touch.

“You’re bleeding.” she says.

“Yes. And it’s about time you shared.” I say this and then go straight to the hospital.

It’s almost like this Wicca shit doesn’t even work.

It’s almost like this Wicca shit doesn’t even work. I’ve spent so much money on goddamned candles and incense and all other kind of whatnot. The worst was the dagger and silver plates, not cheap. Not to mention the cuts and other injuries sustained from sacrificing cats and shit. I just don’t undertand, I got all the instructions from one of those girls who dyes her hair black and listens to metal. I mean, she would know right?

I hope so, because this is the third time I’ve been to her and she keeps giving me more and more things to do. Now, apparently, I need to stand north of the pentagram and the candles and turn around three times counter-clockwise and then dump the chicken blood on my head. She only tells me what I’m doing wrong afterwards. She’s not that great with directions. Sometimes I wonder if she’s leading me wrong on purpose. I Don’t know why she would do that though. I apologized for calling her a witchy cunt at the prom in front of everyone.

So anyway, here we go. Candles: lit. Pentagram: drawn. Chicken: ungh, ungh, decapitated. Standing: North. Turn: three times to the left.

Okay, all done. Now I need to find my EPT to see if the damn ceremony worked this time. Getting unpregnant should not be this hard.

Fantasyland is a lost cause.

Fantasyland is a lost cause. They’ve got it surrounded with lots of guards and whatever is going on in there, whatever they’ve got planned, it’s probably too late for us to do anything about it.  They’ve raised the drawbridge into the castle and they have the highest vantage point in the park. They’ve got the high ground and they can keep us under surveilance. We have to move at night and try to stay hidden. Whatever they’re planning in there, it’s probably not going to be good for us.

Our only plan is to try and use the underground tunnels to sneak into the castle and see what they’re up to. We’ve seen them using the character costumes as uniforms of a sort. We found a stash of them hidden in an area behind the Jungle Cruise. Mickeys are the leaders, followed by Goofys and Donalds. We stole the costumes and are going to attempt to get into the castle and see what’s going on in there, in Fantasyland.

The men we are fighting against are other survivors like ourselves, they simply had access to weapons and more people. When they first showed up we tried to make peace with them, we sent a group to talk to them. Those people we sent have never been back and it’s been a couple of days since then. They’ve killed anyone they’ve run across in the park during the day. When they’re not riding a ride of course. We see them riding The Haunted Mansion over and over all day.  They love that one for some reason. We’ve managed to avoid capture by moving at night and staying hidden in the shops during the day. We’ve seen them moving large boxes up through mainstreet and into the castle.  great big heavy boxes that need four men to move them, armed guards usually follow the boxes. Whatever they are up to in Fantasyland, it can’t be pretty and it can’t be good for us.

So our only choice is to sneak into the castle somehow and see if there is anything we can do about it. If not, then we will try to get out without being found out. We’re going in the morning. I’m a mickey. My wife is a Goofy and her brother is a Donald. Let’s hope the three caballeros can do something about this.

He should have dropped into the water.

He should have dropped into the water. He wa supposed to just fall off the little cliff and into the pool below. I mean, he wasn’t supposed to do it immediately. He was supposed to walk around for a second, flailing his arms. But after a few seconds, he was supposed to fall into the water and put himself out. He didn’t though. He kept walking to the edge like he was going to, but he would stop right at the edge and stagger backwards. After about 40 seconds of this he just fell down.

The other actors weren’t really sure what to do. I guess they all though he was just hamming it up. After some seconds though some guys rushed out from the side of the upper stage and put him out with fire extinguishers. Paramedics came and took him away.

What none of us in the audience could see was a thin piece of fireproof rope that was tied to his waist. It was the harness from his previous stunt. He was in a hurry to make it up there and it got caught on one of the props.

We were ushered out of the little open-air auditorium and given a bunch of free stuff by the park management. We got to ride all the rides without waiting in line the rest of the day, we ate for free and we got a thousand dollars in certificates to use on merchandise. Sadly, the show never re-opened and I’ll never know if the good guys won in the end.