seen.”
“Seen?”
“Oh yes. Up close and personal. This is no game. It’s life and death every day. One slip up, one wrong move, and the closest predator will pounce on you like a stunned mouse. Are you ready, Madison? Can you be tough? Can you kill without hesitation?”
“Do I have a choice?”
4. X
I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling. The bed posts are hand carved from the ancient totem poles of an Alaskan Intuit tribe. Gaping mouths and wide-eyed birds are stacked atop bent salmon and dark haired men. An ornate headboard fashioned from the temple doors of a long gone Buddhist clan deep in the Wu Tai Shan mountains is inlaid with winding dragons and half naked warriors.
It was a failure. An utter and complete failure. My ego, all it did was trip some alarms, and show my hand too early. Is it all meaningless?
Ecclesiates.
Echo.
Exodus.
X.
It’s all so silly really, so futile and vain. There is a lot I haven’t told her about this place, this slice of reality. And a lot I never will. I am many things to many people. How I ended up here and why I am still here today, well...I can’t talk to her about that. She wouldn’t understand.
My father is a cruel bastard and a game player, a distant voice brought down from the mountains. Absent from the life he created, I give him no respect. I have taken everything that is mine and I will use it to my own advantage. It is already in motion and there is no turning back. Immortality is overrated, but I do so look forward to his wrinkled face again. So I can plant my fist in it.
The wind pushes in a salty breeze and the cursed jasmine comes to me. She is a bitter mistress, and imposing companion, and has been for as long as I can remember. Running my thumbs over my tired eyes, rubbing in circles, the universe explodes across my eyelids. The distant screams, the metal wrenched from bolts and beams, the heat engulfing the charred flesh and smoking bones. It didn’t have to be this way.
Gordon will come for me, I am certain of that now. The look in his eyes, there is no listening for him, no reason or logic. He has the mark now and the story has been told. The evidence has been laid out in front of him like a storybook and he has taken in the myth with the lies. The lengths that they have gone to. They surprise me sometimes, in the name of all that is holy and just. I wonder who has killed the most, the Christians or Islamic?
Stalin, Hitler, or Mao? They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist. I’m not so sure about that. Maybe the greater trick was telling each religion that it had the one true path, the only correct set of laws and morals, and then throwing them all together on a giant ball to duke it out for eternity. How much will they be amazed when they realize they have all been praying to the same god, and that he doesn’t really care.
A chuckle escapes my lips as I nod off to get more rest. I shake my head from side to side as my mind telescopes out from this big, blue marble, out further and further past his house, one of many, to a bag of marbles, rattling around, and a collection of figures, perched on thrones, drifting in clouds and bellowing from on high. This evolution will never take place with such closed-minded thinking, but maybe I can be the one, the tipping point, spontaneous consciousness. One with all.
5. GORDON
Whatever the hell that was, it doesn’t matter. If he thinks he’s going to get off that easy, well, then he’s forgotten the face of his father. The sun is just rising over the squat hut that shields me with darkness. Shadows pass in front of the door and a man comes back in. I close my eyes. Not Zeke.
As the man leans over me he raises a stethoscope and presses it to my chest and nods. He places his hand on my forehead. Leaning over further he pries my eyelids open and that is when I make my move. Slamming my head forward with as much strength as I can muster his nose
“Seen?”
“Oh yes. Up close and personal. This is no game. It’s life and death every day. One slip up, one wrong move, and the closest predator will pounce on you like a stunned mouse. Are you ready, Madison? Can you be tough? Can you kill without hesitation?”
“Do I have a choice?”
4. X
I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling. The bed posts are hand carved from the ancient totem poles of an Alaskan Intuit tribe. Gaping mouths and wide-eyed birds are stacked atop bent salmon and dark haired men. An ornate headboard fashioned from the temple doors of a long gone Buddhist clan deep in the Wu Tai Shan mountains is inlaid with winding dragons and half naked warriors.
It was a failure. An utter and complete failure. My ego, all it did was trip some alarms, and show my hand too early. Is it all meaningless?
Ecclesiates.
Echo.
Exodus.
X.
It’s all so silly really, so futile and vain. There is a lot I haven’t told her about this place, this slice of reality. And a lot I never will. I am many things to many people. How I ended up here and why I am still here today, well...I can’t talk to her about that. She wouldn’t understand.
My father is a cruel bastard and a game player, a distant voice brought down from the mountains. Absent from the life he created, I give him no respect. I have taken everything that is mine and I will use it to my own advantage. It is already in motion and there is no turning back. Immortality is overrated, but I do so look forward to his wrinkled face again. So I can plant my fist in it.
The wind pushes in a salty breeze and the cursed jasmine comes to me. She is a bitter mistress, and imposing companion, and has been for as long as I can remember. Running my thumbs over my tired eyes, rubbing in circles, the universe explodes across my eyelids. The distant screams, the metal wrenched from bolts and beams, the heat engulfing the charred flesh and smoking bones. It didn’t have to be this way.
Gordon will come for me, I am certain of that now. The look in his eyes, there is no listening for him, no reason or logic. He has the mark now and the story has been told. The evidence has been laid out in front of him like a storybook and he has taken in the myth with the lies. The lengths that they have gone to. They surprise me sometimes, in the name of all that is holy and just. I wonder who has killed the most, the Christians or Islamic?
Stalin, Hitler, or Mao? They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist. I’m not so sure about that. Maybe the greater trick was telling each religion that it had the one true path, the only correct set of laws and morals, and then throwing them all together on a giant ball to duke it out for eternity. How much will they be amazed when they realize they have all been praying to the same god, and that he doesn’t really care.
A chuckle escapes my lips as I nod off to get more rest. I shake my head from side to side as my mind telescopes out from this big, blue marble, out further and further past his house, one of many, to a bag of marbles, rattling around, and a collection of figures, perched on thrones, drifting in clouds and bellowing from on high. This evolution will never take place with such closed-minded thinking, but maybe I can be the one, the tipping point, spontaneous consciousness. One with all.
5. GORDON
Whatever the hell that was, it doesn’t matter. If he thinks he’s going to get off that easy, well, then he’s forgotten the face of his father. The sun is just rising over the squat hut that shields me with darkness. Shadows pass in front of the door and a man comes back in. I close my eyes. Not Zeke.
As the man leans over me he raises a stethoscope and presses it to my chest and nods. He places his hand on my forehead. Leaning over further he pries my eyelids open and that is when I make my move. Slamming my head forward with as much strength as I can muster his nose
Similar Books
