Reflections in a Petri Dish

And so on and so on and so forth.

2008-09-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I suffer from crushing depression. It’s linked to my childhood… my karma; the state of the world vis a vis the state of my mind. The truth is that I don’t know. For me it isn’t so much about feeling low and rotten but more of a listless indifference to participation in events with others. It is why I increasingly spend more and more of my time alone. There are other reasons for this but this is one of them.

It can be accurately assumed that I have experimented with all manner of substances to remedy this condition and until a short while ago I can say that that has proven a miserable failure as well as harmful and destructive on occasion. It can be said that this is why I drank to excess for awhile. Each of these scenarios would require a book to explicate and I’m not going to do that. Doing this is more than I want to do but I do owe the reader an explanation for my absence and it can be correctly said that I listen to my critics as much as my supporters and take both contributions to heart inasmuch as they correspond with what I am aware of internally; something neither my critics or supporters have access to except through what the powers of their observation grant them.

In some cases I can be pretty insightful and I have been blessed with some talent in some areas. I know by virtue of irrefutable evidence of supernatural experience that I am partially awakened. This is a blessing and a curse. It’s like spending too long in a bus station. I know about the towns behind me on my route and I know something of the towns ahead but getting out of the bus station requires information that I don’t completely possess. I know I will be moving on to the next town and according to information that has come to me, that is going to happen sooner rather than later. But… I am where I am now for reasons well understood by my guide and little understood by me.

My primary interest in life is the metaphysical and The Devic Realm. You could say that I live with these things all day long and when I sleep as well. The serenity of my existence; what there is of that- is directly connected to how completely I am contemplating the real as opposed to the unreal. This is one reason that I don’t particularly enjoy writing the Smoking Mirrors blog. I don’t care much about what goes on in the world except for the suffering that occurs and in the majority of cases that is self-inflicted. This I know far, far better than I did before.

So, I enjoy writing at Visible Origami and I enjoy the satisfaction it gives me. Smoking Mirrors is a useful effort I think and like everything in this world… it will experience far more success than Visible Origami because it relates more to what people are familiar with in their every day; what they focus on. For what I think that gets you, you can just read Visible Origami essays.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I have had little success treating my condition until recently when by accident, curiosity or, more likely… invisible assistance, I was moved to try Ketamine. I had known about it for a long time but it just didn’t call out to me. I had been curious about it and liked some of the things I had heard. At the same time, its primary use is as an animal tranquilizer and I didn’t compute that I was going to gain spiritual insight from it. I could not have been more wrong.

For those of you who do not know anything about Ketamine, John Lily of dolphin fame took it consistently for decades and lived (I believe into his 90’s). I know people who knew him personally and well and by all accounts he was a good man and did remarkable work. From what I now know about Ketamine I believe it had no small effect on his efforts.

Big game hunters used to use it to help them lie motionless for hours in the bush. It seems to me that people are affected differently by it depending on their level of awareness. I have been able to experience face to face meetings with spiritual masters that have left the physical plane… the practice of a unique yoga that just showed up… a complete absence of depression and all of its effects… a reversal of any number of bad habits and the complete absence of them… it revolutionized my existence.

The only negative was a lack of motor skills for a couple of hours after using it. There are no other negatives that I have encountered and I certainly did it long and consistently enough to notice. When it comes to using chemicals I would be called a professional simply by the sheer weight of my experiences… not to mention the quantity of items. The real evidence of that is that I am still here and in better shape than most anyone I encounter in my age group. So… I would know.

Everything that I was doing was improved considerably by my use of Ketamine. It is a great friend to me and sorely missed at the moment. What I am about to tell you indicates that I have something of a selfish nature and a childish side to my behavior. I can’t possibly tell you all the details of what happened but I can give you an outline and whether you understand why I have been as I have you will at least have the information to speculate… judge and/or understand.

I can readily get Ketamine from a fellow who can supply me with most anything but who is quite expensive even when compared to others in his line of work. He charges me ten times what I might expect (or wish) to pay given that the item is dirt cheap to begin with. Yes… it’s illegal but so are many things that are none of the government’s business and that matters not a whit to me although I can see where it would affect the cost somewhat.

I left the area where this fellow lives and have tried to acquire it at a reasonable price which led to this person, asnowynightn_nyv@yahoo.com ripping me off for four hundred dollars and then laughing at me about it. I had it sent to me from a trusted source and it has not arrived. I’ve had a number of difficult events happen connected to these events while also passing through several of the most horrendous weeks of my life. This would have happened anyway but I wouldn’t have even noticed it with the Ketamine. So it made me angry and I decided that I wasn’t going to create anything anymore. If that’s how the universe wants to play the game then I’m not in (or is it ‘on’’?) the game any more.

I realize that this looks childish and petulant and I’ve no justification for it except to say that you are not me. Meanwhile… I have consistently labored for a significant portion of my life doing what I do for free and not complaining about it. I have endured some good amount of hardship from being the person who does these things for free and in fact I even have to pay for the opportunity to do it. It actually costs me in coin of the realm and in other costs just to do what I do and I don’t complain about that. I’ve a limit to the abuse and sacrifice that I will accept in the process of doing something for free.

Before anyone decides to tell me that it’s all part of my growth etc or provide me with spiritual platitudes… I’m aware of all that. I write about it all the time. I’m also in certain kinds of danger from myself if I don’t have a few fundamental things which… sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t and only one of them is Ketamine.

In any case… I’m going to go write a Smoking Mirrors after this and link back here so that anyone who wants to see this can see it and take it for what its worth etc. I’m hopeful I will eventually encounter someone who can help me obtain this item at a reasonable fee. I’m hoping one of my readers is a sympathetic veterinarian (grin). I’m certain that someone who reads me knows someone who knows someone and maybe that will lead to something. You can imagine how important this is to me just by the fact that I am writing about it. This may be neither smart nor useful but I’m doing it.

It shouldn’t be that difficult. It’s undetectable in the mail and not a bulky item. Some people like the liquid but I prefer the powder and, as I said… it immediately and effectively removes from me a condition that has plagued me for a long time. I certainly deserve it and it’s got no drawbacks or long term liabilities. Conditions may vary according to the user I am sure but for me it has made life new… rich and rewarding and I just didn’t feel like pounding the pavement (metaphorically) day after day as I have been doing… for less than nothing; at least that is how it looked to me and the grievous difficulty of these last weeks has rather amplified my state. That’s passing now which is a mercy; some sort of temporary astrological smash and grab, I suspect.

Well, let’s go write that Smoking Mirrors post… there’s a lot to talk about.

The Whine

2008-07-27T03:29:00.000-07:00

Chapter Six

I don’t know if things changed after the death of the plumber. It may be that I just became much more aware of certain elements. I understand that the human mind filters out an astonishing amount of sensory data. There’s a condition called ‘accommodation’, where even the sound of a jackhammer outside your window can disappear from your hearing as you go through your day. There’s a lot of accommodation that goes on in a place like New York City. That accommodation is not just sensory but also emotional as well. People become hardened to things. I don’t suppose they have any choice. Rudeness becomes the reflex action for one whose space is too often pressed on and invaded.

I could not live in a city. The whine that magnetizes me is woven into a thunder of fury in these places. I am taken through special preparations when I go somewhere with such a concentration of human misery. It is not simply dealing with the howling cacophony. I have found that the measures I take for the extraction of a predator become far more extreme in such an environment. It’s as if that terrible orchestra is playing through me and there are times when I lose consciousness of myself in the event. Afterwards it appears as if a force of nature had come unhinged. But immediately thereafter I am all concentration and detail.

As I’ve said, some other intelligence is resident in me. I can feel the clear and certain understanding of all that I must do and it is automatic. I am also personally detached- even when passionately involved, then and always after. I do not feel responsible. I am not sorry. It is like being the hand of God.

In the nineteenth century in India there was a group of men who worshipped the goddess Kali. She is a particular archetype that symbolizes all consuming Time. She is often depicted as black with a red lolling tongue and a garland of skulls about her neck. In one of her several hands is a cup of blood, in the other a large knife. These men were called Thuggees and they went about the countryside killing in the name of Kali. It was a form of worship. There was a taboo against the spilling of blood so they strangled their victims with silk scarves in which a rupee was fixed. It was said that some of them had magical powers conferred upon them by the goddess. They were very difficult to catch.

In the twelfth century in Persia there was a man named Hassan I Sabbah. He was also called the Old Man of the Mountains. The word ‘assassin’ comes from his name. He would intoxicate his followers with hashish and then lead them into a beautiful garden filled with lovely women and all manner of food and drink. This, he said, waited for them in paradise should any of them die in his service. He once commanded forty of his men to march off a high battlement as an example of the loyalty he enjoyed. He had men in every kingdom in the East. At any time they might strike out and kill the ruler or anyone else. He was feared everywhere. They say he had powers too. That seems to have been true.

There are other examples of curious men, women and groups such as this. I mention them because it seems that this might be the case with me as well. This is what I would like to find out.

After the death of the plumber I returned to my routines, attending school, interacting with my parents in the awkward and formal manner that was our custom. But now I became able to pick out sounds that I had not heard before. I sometimes saw things in a state of hyper reality. I could hear conversations at a distance. I could see things with astonishing clarity. By example; once I was sitting by the pool as a dragonfly buzzed about. It was turquoise with emerald wings. In a particular moment it hovered in the air before me and I saw this dragonfly in its essence. Time stopped and a vast flow of information passed from the dragonfly into me. I ‘knew’ this dragonfly. I could see every feature of its countenance. I could see the spaces between its wing beats. Then, without warning or prelude, I became the dragonfly. The power and freedom that I felt are indescribable. Nothing has ever approached this experience. I had other similar experiences over time but this was the first. I don’t know for how long I was the dragonfly. At some point I was once again sitting by the pool with no idea of how I had been returned to myself. No great time seemed to have passed. It was the same part of the day. It might have been an hour. It might have been seconds. I have learned that time is an extraordinarily subjective and relative thing.

I have come to understand that one of the greatest tragedies in life is the common sense of time shared by people in their routines. It is a prison of increments. At a certain point there is nothing new in their lives. It is just a repetition of patterns.

Very often, I had dreams that would continue from night to night. I cannot say how it is for others. I only know what I have heard and read. By comparison with this information, I would say that my dreams are of another kind altogether. In my dreams the events are as clear and real as they are in my waking state. Sometimes, I am in realms that bear little resemblance to life on this planet. Seldom do I walk in dark places, though it does occur. And always in these rare ‘dark’ dreams, I am hunting someone. Always in these dreams, I will eventually terminate them. What is most unusual about this is that it is always just as it is when I perform the service in my corporeal self. There are the preparations, the search and contact, the inquiry and conversation period and then the finale. Am I working even when I sleep?

I have heard that murderers are often pursued by furies. I have heard that their conscience can give them no peace. Some of them take their own lives. But I always feel as if I am watching something occur and even though I know that I am involved, it never feels that way.

Let me tell you about the next person I killed. With one later exception this was the last time I killed someone that I had previously met and the only other time I was personally involved before the fact. After this they were strangers. I’ve mentioned that I wasn’t very social at my school. I can’t say I had any real friends. There were people that I knew and I did things with them. Early on I recognized the value of fitting in and having the appearance of normalcy. So, no doubt there were people who thought they were friends of mine; people with whom I shared the appearance of camaraderie…but that was just something I did. I went to parties and some school functions. I drank and I smoked and I took drugs because that’s what everyone else did. And there were occasions when I forgot all about how strange I was and got lost in the moment. I never feel that way now and sometimes I miss it. I am always aware of myself and everyone around me. I always know where I am. I always know what I’m going to do next…with the single exception of when The Whine appears. At those times, as I have said, it doesn’t matter what I know. Whatever knows is intimately aware of me. I am in the passenger seat

In my senior year I met a boy named Frank. Frank’s parents were rich too. Frank, unlike most of our associates, was not a smug, overbearing asshole. I could hang out with Frank and not find myself being constantly annoyed. Frank wanted to go to Australia and hang out with the Aborigines. I don’t know if he ever did manage it. He went on to college in California and I didn’t see much of him after that. This isn’t about Frank anyway. I mention Frank by way of introducing Colette. Colette lived near Frank and they had known each other since they were small. So when Frank had a party at his house Colette would usually come over. Frank had a lot of parties because his parents, like mine, were often abroad. In Frank’s house there were enough servants to take care of any mess that might happen. Frank was usually pretty good at not inviting any of the real trouble makers. Like me he didn’t make problems for his parents so they left him pretty much alone.

Colette was a lovely girl. At sixteen she had a haunting beauty, enhanced by a shy introspection. I rarely saw her smile but when she did she could take your breath away. She had raven black hair and blue eyes. I liked Colette and would spend my time with her when I was over at one of Frank’s parties and sometimes we would meet in a park or take a walk in town. It didn’t happen often. I got the impression that her parents kept her close to home. Half the time she couldn’t make it to Frank’s parties even though they lived close by one another. I never knew Colette to have a boyfriend. I believe I might have been the closest thing to that.

The first indication I got that there might be problems in Colette’s life was from a passing comment made by Frank. I had said that she seemed sad most of the time. Frank said, “Yeah, all is not right there.” When I asked him what he meant, he just shrugged and said; “If I knew maybe I could do something about it. Her family is strange.”

As time passed I became very close with Colette, though we did not manage to have sex. She was very conflicted about it and I didn’t press the issue. We would touch each other, intimately on occasion, and it was enough for me most of the time, to sit quietly with her and enjoy her presence. She couldn’t go out much. She said that her father wanted her at home. I finally met her father one night when he came by Frank’s to look for her. Colette and I were sitting on the porch swing overlooking the garden when he came up out of the darkness upon us.

“Ah Colette, there you are.”

Her father was a big man. He’d obviously been an athlete in his day. Now he was carrying an extra 30 pounds and had the florid complexion of a future stroke victim. This latter effect was enhanced by the fact that he had had a few somewhere before he arrived. His hair was curly and unmanageable and he used some sort of pomade to keep it down on his scalp. The face was moon shaped and of a dough like consistency. It was the face of a man who looked fat long before he was fat. He had button eyes and a broad nose. It looked as if it had been pressed back into his face with force. There was not much chin but a great deal of neck. I imagined he would never be comfortable with his collar buttoned underneath his tie. This night he was wearing brushed cotton slacks with a Hawaiian shirt. He wore round glasses with a very thin gold rim and the porch light reflecting from their polished surface made it quite difficult to catch anything from his eyes. I felt Colette jump beside me as he appeared in our view.

“Dad”! She exclaimed. I heard her voice catch. “We’re getting some air from the cigarette smoke.

He chuckled, artificially. “We do have to look out for our lungs.” This was someone who immediately made me uncomfortable. It had nothing to do with his daughter sitting beside me. It was obvious that all we had been doing was sitting. Yet I felt an intense scrutiny upon me, so much so that the hairs on my arm stood up.

“You’re a friend of Colette’s?” He asked me. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”

“This is Bill”, Colette replied. “He’s a friend of Frank’s from school.

“How ya doin Bill.”? He extended his hand and I took it. The hand was slightly moist as if it had recently held a drink, which I don’t doubt it had. Otherwise it was fleshy and cool, much like he was, with the warm bonhomie overlaying the reduced temperature beneath. “I’m Mitch, Colette’s daddy.”

I can still vividly remember that night and the exchange between us. I may have mentioned how very good my memory is. I remember clearly the growing unease I felt under his eyes. This was mixed with a definite but undefined impatience and the sense that he was more intoxicated than he appeared to be. He was wearing some kind of cologne that seemed to emphasize the alcohol in the air.

“Well now Colette”, his head swiveled toward her. “Your mom’s been looking for you. She finally sent me out into the neighborhood.”

There was no question that Colette was very uneasy. I could feel her conflicted state. At this time in my life I had very little understanding of the complexities of human emotion. Everything that I did know had come to me through books and the few things that I had experienced so far. Books can give a very accurate description of many conditions. What books cannot do is transmit visceral experience. I’ve learned an enormous amount from books but when it comes to the knowledge of life itself, I only know so much. Even though I had already killed and had sex, I was still an uncertain youth. So much occurred within me that I had not had the time needed for integration. Later I would be able to read volumes from the feelings that moved in the air around me. On this occasion, I could feel but I could not interpret. I remembered Frank’s words. “All is not right there.”

Colette was quiet for a moment and then she said, “I thought Mother went to her card game?”

Mitch nodded in a diffident manner, the light flashing from his glasses and dancing on the rims, “That she did Sweetie but something she had at dinner apparently backed up on her and she had to come straight home. She’s been sick several times already and she wants you to come and look after her.” He shrugged, “you know how useless I am in these situations.”

I felt it stronger now and I could identify it. There was fear coming off of Colette, fear and something else I could not identify. There was a sour smell hovering beneath the sweetness of Colette, a feral scent. I felt myself shift in my seat.

Mitch had his hand extended toward her and in this same moment turned to me and said. “I’m sorry to be taking Colette away from you. Perhaps she can return if her mother recovers a bit.” He smiled without warmth and I could feel his will draw Colette from her seat. She turned to me as she arose. I will never forget the look in her eyes. The sense of utter loss struck me to the core. I was rendered mute by the impact of her eyes on mine. I must have mumbled something as I also got to my feet. Once Colette was standing it was no time at all before Mitch had her down the porch stairs and they were away.

I could hear their voices trailing. Then, just moments later, that condition of paranormal hearing kicked in. I could hear them as if they were but a few feet away. This was not so developed then as it is now. I heard as if the words were ocean waves coming to the shore. There would be a brief moment of clear audio and then it would recede to incomprehensible murmurs; ebb and flow.

“Honey, you know how I feel I…”

“is wrong Dad. I’m breaking up inside I...”

“only for tonight, you’re my…”

Then she was softly weeping, no words following, just the sense of desolate resignation and from him an odious, comforting drone of meaningless endearments.

As I listened a terrible anger uncoiled in my chest. I had not apprehended the entirety of the outrage. Indeed at that time I am not sure I connected the reality of the event coming or the events preceding. It was more a sense of danger and violation without aspect. I felt a blanketing evil without definable form. I felt this evil touching me and burning me. The Whine began to sound. I was on my feet before I knew it and I found myself descending those same steps they had taken minutes before. It is strange that I did not know where Colette lived. We had always arranged our meetings over the telephone and I was dissuaded from ever picking her up but I could track their progress as a trained animal could track a scent. As I went, I felt myself morphing from within. It reminded me of the transformation of a werewolf in films I had seen. I could almost feel myself drop to the ground; my body extending and moving into a tireless, tracking lope, though no such thing actually occurred.

The air rippled with the echo of their voices as I turned into the street. I continued for several blocks until I found myself outside a metal gate that barred entrance to the driveway and house beyond. I could see a portion of the house from where I stood, it was a large Tudor mansion; the downstairs lights were leaking through the windows and pushing the shadows back from the lawn. Without thought I reached to the top rail of the gate and vaulted over it with no effort at all. I landed in a crouch in the driveway on the further side and moved toward the house.

I felt then, as I have often felt in future times, a sense of personal invisibility. There is a force that keeps my form hidden until it is meant to be revealed. We shall see in coming events how this has allowed me access to locations that would have been denied me were I not in possession of this power. Soon I was at the house and as I came around to the back, I found myself confronted by a large Belgian shepherd. He stood motionless in front of me. The light from the house made his eyes glow red. As is so often the case with me in these moments, I felt no alarm, no fear. We stood quietly for a brief interval and then I extended my hand. The dog moved forward passing under my touch and brushed against my leg and then stopped. I scratched his back and looked up at the second story of the house.

The moment is difficult to describe. Through my hand I felt the dog’s thoughts pass into me. It appears that there is a place where the animal kingdom and the human realm touch, a place where information can be exchanged. There was a sympathetic transfer between us concerning Colette. The dog was Mitch’s dog, a dog trained for the protection of the house and its occupants. Had I been anyone else, our meeting would have had another result entirely. I could feel in the dog’s mind that the dog saw me as a larger, bigger, smarter dog. I was higher up in the pecking order and the puppy aspect of the dog responded to the alpha male status of my being. The dog did not see me as human at all. I cannot put into words what the dog thought of me. I can remember exactly in my mind how it was and feel exactly what the dog felt but I cannot express it in words. It would be the same if I were to attempt to describe an alien landscape where the colors and shapes bore no resemblance to anything on Earth. There is quite simply, nothing to relate it to by comparison.

The dog trotted off into the night. I did not see the dog again. I continued around the house and then stopped at the next corner. From above me I could hear the conversation between Colette and her father. I could hear the murmur of his voice and her gentle weeping. I could feel in my mind Mitch’s excitement at her tears. I could hear the rustle of clothing and the soft abrasion of skin on skin.

The rage that now began to emerge in my chest was so much greater than I had felt before. I could hardly contain it. I felt a new intelligence move within me and take the rage in hand. It turned me about and led me past the swimming pool, the cabana and then quickly up the trunk of a large maple tree and into the branches above. I could hear the sound of that dark activity taking place in the room across the way. There was a low light in the room and I could see into it from my vantage point now several meters above it. There were the combined forms of Colette and her father. Her father’s body moved rhythmically above her. I could see Colette’s despairing face as she turned her head to the window. It seemed then and it seems now that our eyes actually met, though she could not have seen me from that distance, into the trees and through the covering darkness of the night. A mute plea of awful desperation passed across the space between us. I turned my head and disappeared within myself for a time.

When I returned the room was dark. I knew that Colette was still there, no longer weeping but staring into the darkness above her head. Her father had departed and gone to his den. I could see him in my mind, drinking a Scotch and remembering the pleasure of his recent conquest. His fingers stroked the blotter on his desk. I could hear a film projector whirring. I could feel the part of him that was engaged in the activity upon the screen. None of the perceptions that I possessed in such moments has ever seemed strange to me. I have never found myself in an objective state, analyzing the how and the why of it all. They are just a part of me. I could just as well look at my hand and wonder how it came to be upon my wrist. No one makes such speculations. It is just a natural extension of the arm. Just as we accept that we can see. We have always seen. There is no miracle there.

I dropped from the tree to the ground and moved toward the house. I felt myself fill with determination and purpose. The anger was there but it was a controlled flame. It might flash, it might roar for a moment like the fire inside an incinerator, but it was contained. Riding above the anger was a keen sense of purpose, a sense of distances and the passages across them, a sense of the nature of the event to come.

The majority of my clients have no question concerning their activities. It is this, I believe, that contributes to their passing more than any other factor. It may be that the soul of the client questions. I am of the belief that no matter how evil anyone might be, there can never be a time when the light of the soul is not present; if the soul, as we understand it, exists. Even if the contact is as remote as the distance between the stars in space, the connection is there, the soul is there, if the soul exists. It must be so. There is no animation, no life except that this connection exists.

I am of two minds always when I consider these things. There is what I know, or have reasoned to be possible and there is what I have read and heard. Often there is a disparity between them. Much of what I have read and heard seems like nonsense to me. The meaning given to words in the common parlance often applies fantastic and distant meaning to things that are void of ordinary substance. If it’s not made of dirt and blood; plastic, metal… something the senses can touch… then it is too often the fruit of an undisciplined imagination. This world abounds in superstition and rumor. It is what makes the gods of religion seem so absurd. We live in a world of blind men groping elephants.

When I think of Jesus and other teachers of humanity I think of this. I believe that they have some deep and profound knowledge of something that is the source of their boundless compassion and understanding. I do not possess this knowledge. It may be that it is not germane to my work and might even be a hindrance. I am another aspect of the whole. We are all aspects of the whole. This is something that I do understand and even in the fire of reclaiming the client to another place it is something that I know. Even in the rage that might flower in awesome aspect, I know this. I am returning the client to the whole, for the good of the whole. How could anyone argue with that?

When I am in my state, when I am in this transcendence there seems to be no barrier that can stand before me. Doors, bars, locks, alarms all give way or fail to start at my touch. It is not that I tear the door from its hinges; although I assure you I can. There is seldom any warning of my approach unless it is necessary to the entire scenario of the client’s transition. Does some as yet unknown energy pass from my hand to the schematic of the doors essence? I could not tell you. I remember thinking once how like the classic profile of the boogeyman I am. The boogeyman can get in anywhere. The boogeyman can’t be stopped. The boogeyman can’t be killed. The boogeyman is going to kill you. The boogeyman is not going to kill you though before he scares the living shit out of you and he is going to kill you in some unpleasant way; some way that you are not going to like at all. I laughed out loud the first time I thought of this. You see, I do not think of myself as the boogeyman at all. I am not Michael Myers come fresh from the institution, or Jason in the hockey mask. It is the pure unstoppable, automaton feature of these imaginary beings that I believe is their most frightening aspect. And I have to ask myself, do these cartoon monsters come from some real persons and events that travel in parallel with ordinary life? Are they somewhat based on me? Am I one more manifestation of a group of men (are there women too?) who have come down the ages, men of whom the passing years have whispered? The evidence of these men’s passing exists…but the men themselves have never been seen by one who has survived. Is it from the activities of men like myself that the legends of the boogeyman and werewolves and vampires have come? I can assure you that some of the scenes I leave behind are very reminiscent of the tales told of these mythic creatures.

Very soon I was standing behind this man in his study. The light from the projector flickered. Colette was on the screen, Colette at the age of 12 perhaps, nude and frightened, staring in hopeful desperation into the camera lens.

I said, “I suppose it’s a big part of it, the fear.”

Mitch spun around in his chair; his face was a mix of outrage, anger and fear.

“What are you doing in my house?” He demanded. “Scout!” he called. I knew it was the dog he was calling.

“Scout won’t come.” I said. Now there was more fear in his eyes. He moved suddenly toward his desk and pulled open a drawer.

I grasped his wrist, arresting his progress completely. He struggled to free himself but only succeeded in moving his body around his wrist. His wrist did not move. I pulled him to his feet and led him out of the door. Sensing that he was about to scream, I spun him about and closed his mouth with my hand. I walked him down the hallway and opened the door that I knew led to the basement.

We entered into a combination family playroom and work shop. There was a pool table and a bar, a pinball machine and a home entertainment center with a large comfortable sectional arranged around it. A connecting door led to the workroom. It was the work room I was interested in so I led Mitch into that area and proceeded to duct tape him to the captains’ chair that sat at a long worktable. During this process Mitch began screaming at me. I was no longer concerned with the noise factor as I knew that the entire basement area was soundproofed from the levels above; so began my first actual interrogation.

I asked Mitch about why he felt that he had the right to behave as he did. He proceeded from telling me it was none of my business, to the fact that he could not help himself and as he saw me choosing tools and laying them on the table before me, to saying that he needed help, that he would get help and then begging for his life.

I told him that this was the time for him to consider his real reasons for his actions because he would have no further opportunity to talk to anyone.

“What are you going to do!” he screamed, struggling so violently that he tipped the chair over. I caught it on the way down and righted it.

“I am going to introduce you to yourself and then I am going to set you free. I am hoping before you go that you will see how wrong your actions were and will not take their seeds with you.”

“What? What? What are you talking about?” he looked at me in a crafty way then and said. “You’re just a kid. You can’t intend to hurt me. This is like a lesson right? This is something you got up to with my daughter. You want me to stop? I’ll stop.”

I looked at him and nodded. “You will indeed stop. Your daughter knows nothing about this though. I’m not even sure why I’m doing it. But I am sure it needs to be done.”

“What are you going to do? You’re crazy…” and then he began screaming for help as loudly as he could manage.

I said, “You know the screaming isn’t going to help. You made sure of that when you had it remodeled, just before you started bringing Colette down here. And Colette isn’t the only one is she?”

At this he looked into my eyes and said, “Who are you? How do you know these things?” I could see that he was becoming very unsettled about possibilities he had never considered before. At the same time, a train of images…a series of vignettes about this man’s life were passing through my mind. I had to stop in my preparations in order to follow them. I saw this man’s life rush before me and for a time I was unaware of my surroundings, unaware of anything but the passing of the images.

How can I describe what I saw? I cannot. When it was done though, I knew something about mankind in an area other than any I had been familiar with before. Nothing like this had happened with the plumber. I saw for the first time that there were aliens living under the human skin. There were life forms for which no moral limiter existed; men in whom conscience had never been known. In all of what I saw there was no sign of remorse. There was no thought that wrong had been done. There was only fear for what might happen and a desperate searching for release, for some saving event. Release he would have…

I don’t think it is necessary for me to go into the graphic details of what happened next, nothing would be gained except an appeal to the darker, prurient nature of certain readers. I have no way of knowing if such people will ever read this but I can militate against that feature of my confessional.

He was found the next day but not by Colette. I called her that morning and we went off for a breakfast in town.

I have wondered why so many of my clients have been guilty of crimes against young people. Quite a portion of them are in some way connected to acts of sexual battery and other torments of the young. I get the impression that a large majority of the world’s ills stem from just such behavior. The world is teeming with those victimized in an unprotected state. Later these victims go on to carry out similar acts upon others. It is like some infection that passes plague-like through all cultures and nations. Long ago perhaps there were some few evils that occurred for the first time in the dawn of the world. They were then passed on in an ever widening circle until no person was left untouched in some way by them. Maybe my job is to eliminate the Typhoid Mary’s from whose minds the idea of such activities broadcast into the minds of the unknowing and unwary.

Perhaps all crimes connect somehow to the crime of savaging innocence. I have often noted how epidemic this behavior is among the wealthy and powerful. In many large cities of the world, men and women in high positions in government and law enforcement engage in secret bacchanals with children of every age. On occasion large scandals will manifest and a few small fish will be thrown into the pot while the more powerful malefactors escape to continue as before. Only a few years ago there was such a thing that ran from Omaha to the White House. Once again, a few small fish …and the more powerful, to this day, continue. I know this.

In my studies of the hidden side of life I encountered the process where seed impressions are deposited into the virgin subconscious for the purpose of creating the physical manifestations of an idea contained in the seed. This virgin matter, this fresh parchment of innocence is pierced; inscribed upon, parted, split or what have you. Then this virgin matter makes of itself the form that the seed contains the promise of within itself. It is one of the essential processes of applied magic. Could it be that in the infernal realms of the human mind some parody of this is carried out in the actual rape and violation of the physical body of virgin kids? Is this a sacrament of the low orders? Whatever the case may be, such practices are far more prevalent than the world suspects.

The newspapers described it as a horrific torture murder. The police said the scene was indescribable; the work of a twisted, demented, psychopathic personality. I can see how it would look that way. But these men do not know what I know…nor do they know the purpose of that which Mitch endured. They do not know that evil needs be wrung from the bones of a man…or evil may replicate further. When I am near completion of an event, I can see the evil crouching, waiting…with nowhere left to hide or to go. In that moment I can take the evil into my hands and fill my hands with fire and burn that evil to nothing away. I do not know where this fire comes from, or where it goes after. It disappears with the fuel…and in every case, I have been able to hold this evil forth before the eyes of the client…no matter how close to death they may be, enough of their attention remains for this. There is a mystical transfiguration that occurs in that moment that I will not even attempt to desecrate by way of explanation with words.

I listen to a woman on the radio. I read her column in the newspaper. It’s a big city paper. Her name is Natalie Parmer. You may have heard of her, she’s a syndicated columnist, not in a big way yet but on her way. She says many uncanny things. Lately it has seemed as if she was speaking directly to me…and lately I have been thinking that I should speak to her as well. Oh, I don’t think I would go to see her but I might write her. Lately it has been growing in my mind that I might send her what I have written so far. It seems that she knows something, something about me. It is as if she were talking to me alone. Maybe I will send her these writings and see if there is something she can tell me. She may not even know that she possesses answers, yet those answers may be in her.

The Whine

2008-07-05T06:39:00.001-07:00

Chapter Five

Euphonious Richard Wrathsmelter; CEO of World Commerce Bank, majority owner of Titan Oil and complete or majority owner of various international media, rolled over on the black satin sheets of his enormous custom made bed and stared upward at the baroque cacophony of his bedroom ceiling. The lids of his eyes lay in their customary half closed position, giving them the appearance of lizard’s eyes. This was a genetic trait in the Wrathsmelter line, occasionally skipping a generation here and there. Euphonious had them in full. He also possessed the rough shock of thick sandy hair, the wide jaw and cherubic lips that were all Wrathsmelter traits. At seventy he maintained the body of a man two decades younger; a wide barrel house frame precisely six feet and one inch long, also a Wrathsmelter standard.

Euphonious did not have to look at the clock to know that it was within minutes of 6:00 AM. It was the time at which he had awakened throughout his adult life, no matter when he had gone to bed.

He let his left hand move across the surface of the bed until it contacted another body some eighteen inches away. Idly, he let his fingers play over the softness of it. A smile of remembered pleasure briefly danced across his face. No time for any more of that now. It was a new day and, as always, there was much to do; an empire to maintain, fortunes to make and to ruin.

Euphonious turned his head and looked for a moment on the sleeping form of the young boy. The boy had been procured for him by the same service that attended to all of his sensual needs. They delivered and Euphonious enjoyed and paid the bill. The boy’s enjoyment wasn’t a consideration but it was understood by Euphonious that it must be as great as his own. It was his considered belief that everyone enjoyed things as he did, while they were in his company. He believed that his will to pleasure over arched all other individual impetus and that the pleasure transferred, just as he believed in any business encounter that his will would guide the intentions of all others, whether it was known or not, whether it was resisted or not.

In his life he had never met with any resistance that lasted. He had been disciplined in his youth but that was long ago and not a thing that he resented upon reflection. Such things had contributed to the man he was today. Over time, there had been many who had sought to oppose him, had hated him. He dealt with them as his father had dealt with the Second World War widows who assumed that the World Commerce Bank would show understanding concerning the mortgages on the homes of fallen soldiers. Foreclosures were the cream in the Wrathsmelter coffee.

On those occasions when the overwhelming influence of the Wrathsmelter name, fortune and alliances were not enough to dissuade some importunate competitor or ideological zealot, there would be recourse to other methods of suasion. Euphonious was a practical man and unfettered by any ghost of conscience. What was necessary was done. Many bodies lined the tracks upon which the Wrathsmelter train traveled and many, many more bodies rested in far-flung locations, brought to the long dirt nap by Wrathsmelter policies or Wrathsmelter actions.

Ten years previous, over five thousand people died in Malaysia, poisoned by an industrial accident. Thousands more were injured and disabled. Many thousands of birth defects followed. Wrathsmelter lawyers exonerated the corporation of all responsibilities, proving by convolution and baksheesh that the fault lay with the country’s environmental regulatory agency. In its usual manner Wrathsmelter Inc. made a generous donation to the people of the locality, none of which ever found its way to a single recipient.

In the mind of Euphonious Wrathsmelter these people were ciphers. At the time he had even reflected upon the event as ‘coincidentally auspicious birth control’ to a small group of aides. Euphonious was a monster of Leviathan proportion, made all the more so by the fact that he considered himself a reasonable man upon whom hard choices were often forced. His catch phrase, “the greatest good for the greatest number of people” seemed to cover every possible event. When he smiled and his brilliant white teeth flashed over the voluptuous lips, he seemed to be part televangelist, part avuncular elder statesman and part Lucifer. As fearsome as he could be he also had that special ability to put people at their ease. All the calculated ministrations of the true sociopath were at his command.

Tinkling chimes drew Wrathsmelter out his reverie and his eyes moved toward the door some fifty feet from the bed. The door opened and in came his manservant Loki, bearing a silver coffee service and a large quantity of newspapers that he placed on a nearby table. It was Wrathsmelter’s daily custom to scan the news media in various formats for one hour over his coffee upon arising. For this purpose a large plasma screen TV also hung on the wall opposite the table.

“Good morning Sir.” Loki whispered as he arranged the items on the table.

“And a good morning to you, Loki.” Wrathsmelter replied as he escaped the bed and moved naked toward the leather armchair that awaited him.

Finishing his activities Loki looked pointedly at the bed’s remaining occupant. “Shall I remove the charm?” Wrathsmelter always referred to his temporary love interests as ‘charms’. This was a carry over from his childhood when Charms was the name of his favorite sweet.

“Yes, of course Loki.” Wrathsmelter did not even turn his head as he switched on the television.

Loki moved toward the bed and scooped the young boy up in his massive arms, laying him over his left shoulder like a sack of grain. The boy was not dead but deeply asleep. It was part of the event for Wrathsmelter’s children to be dosed with specific narcotics. This provided a greater flexibility on their part and simultaneously enhanced and deadened the sensory input of certain painful moments that were unavoidable in the process of their encounter with Euphonious. The present chemical blend was the result of trial and error. It had actually resulted in the deaths of two boys in the initial exploratory efforts. It was remarkable in the amount of energy it gave its recipient…as well as a heightening of the tactile sense. However, after the conclusion of the night’s ritual it left the consumer exhausted.

“Will that be all Sir?” Loki stood at bedside with his huge right hand covering the entirety of the boys’ calves.

“For the moment, Loki”

Loki turned and moved silently across the room to its opposite end and then through a parting of the walls which closed softly behind him. An ingenious craftsman had designed this exit which dropped back from the corner molding and then slid aside to reveal a staircase that descended to a hidden basement room. This room was Loki’s lair. Another exit from the room led through a similar construct into the basement proper. Had Loki wanted privacy, or even known what it was, he’d have been delighted.

Wrathsmelter watched Loki move away. He nodded his head in recognition of the foresight that had caused him to arrange for his release from prison, well in advance of the conclusion of his sentence. Wrathsmelter had encountered Loki during a tour of Greenhaven Penitentiary in upstate New York. This was during an ostensible fact finding mission on prison conditions, which was nothing of the kind. Wrathsmelter was a member of the Board of Prisons, a seemingly charitable extension of his persona into community service. In fact, Wrathsmelter recruited from the prison system and had a number of ex-convicts in his employ. The terrible irony was that Wrathsmelter was made to look good to powerful New York liberal interests, when in fact he employed these men to continue in their former professions. The visit on which he found Loki was in reality part of an inquiry into the feasibility of entering the private prison industry. Accountants and tame industry experts had accompanied Wrathsmelter. Later, there were news items concerning Wrathsmelter’s ongoing interest in prison rehabilitation and reform. A year later, ground was being broken on the first of a series Wrathsmelter prison complexes due in various states. Wrathsmelter intended to apply the McDonald’s formula to the prison industry.

“After a long time, seeking changes that the states have been unable to provide, I have found, once again, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. It is past time for business to apply itself more pervasively in the area of social concerns.” is what Wrathsmelter said afterwards.

He spotted Loki working in the kitchen area of the prison. Their eyes had met and there was that transfer of understanding that passes between men of shared perversions. After that Wrathsmelter had noticed his size. Loki was a freak. He was nearly seven feet tall and weighed over three hundred pounds, all proportionally distributed on a hulking apelike form. Loki was an example of that genetic type who never had to exercise to achieve a great muscular profile. He was born that way, a nightmare rarely seen in modern times. He was truly simian in aspect with a huge shelf of forehead thrust forward over deep set feral eyes. He had a wide flat nose with the nostrils prominently exposed and huge bulbous lips through which large horsy teeth protruded. The jaw was extended and flat and gave him the appearance of a demented Jay Leno.

Wrathsmelter had gone to considerable expense in the remaking of Loki. There had been the large cash payouts for his release, plastic surgery for a cleft palate and over a year of laborious training to bring Loki to the point that he could manage Wrathsmelter’s morning needs as well as certain other singular duties. To the casual observer it was another example of Wrathsmelter’s philanthropic bent. Not hardly.

Loki was in prison for the rape and murder of several young boys he had encountered while they were camping in the Adirondacks. He had dispatched a scoutmaster as well. It took over three years for Wrathsmelter to negotiate his release from prison where he was serving life without the possibility of parole. First there was the necessity of finding new evidence, combined with the discovery of legal mistakes at his trial. Then there was the new trial at which Loki was found to be mentally incompetent. Then there was the remanding to the state mental institution and the application of cutting edge psychiatric techniques and finally, the cure and the release into Wrathsmelter’s custody. There was in fact, no cure. Loki was still Loki and ever would be. But now he was Wrathsmelter’s Loki, someone who could be relied on to serve his master and who could be perfectly contained by the gifts of the master’s leavings. Add to this Loki’s formidable abilities as a bodyguard and his willingness to do anything that was asked of him and you had, as Wrathsmelter would put it; “A damn good investment.”

The man who had previously done Loki’s job had not shared Loki’s predispositions. There had come a time when he considered what it might profit him to give up his master for financial reward. The emissary of a rival interest had approached him, the emissary of a man who would have some greater portion of the goods controlled by Wrathsmelter. Wrathsmelter’s predilections were not unknown in certain circles. Invariably these things find their way to the attention of others. A man of real power can always protect himself against such ineffectual efforts as those presented by law enforcement and the press. That is, unless that man be truly compromised and the videotape or the several redoubtable witnesses and the victim be accessible to the right and equally powerful interests.

This man came close to pulling it off. It was only due to Wrathsmelter’s policy of checks and balances that discovery of this man’s intentions had precluded the damning event. Wrathsmelter had everyone who worked for him watched. He even had the watchers watched to some degree. Wrathsmelter operated in all things like the true paranoid. So, for the entire careful step by step, it was in the end, to no avail. The man suddenly vanished without a trace and that was the end of the matter.It was through the same hidden door where Loki had recently disappeared that Loki’s predecessor had gone one final time long years ago.

Enemies of Wrathsmelter thought they had some measure of the man. They did not know him at all. No man is capable of measuring the bottomless depths of those who bear no resemblance to humanity beyond the appearance of form. There are those who move among us that are as alien to our understanding as is a lawnmower to an Amazonian headhunter. We can know that someone is evil but in some cases we can never know to what degree unless we ourselves become like them.

As Wrathsmelter poured over the newspapers before him and separately interpreted the companion traffic from the TV, a third part of his mind wondered at the extraordinary fate that had granted him so much opportunity to fulfill his every ambition and appetite over and over again. He paused for a moment and looked up at the carved ceiling as a radiant smile broke out upon his face.

Camouflage

The Whine; Chapter Four

2008-05-21T16:36:00.000-07:00

Chapter Four

I am definitely getting too old for this shit. Today I saw what was left of a ten year old kid after someone got through with him and also after the rats and whatever else had gotten into him. They weren’t through with him. We had disturbed this recycling of the formerly animate, presently transitive.

You don’t know what it’s like. You think you do but unless you’ve been right up on it you haven’t got a clue. It’s not just the sight of it, or the smell of it; there’s a lot more to the full environmental effect. As they say in the real estate game, “location, location, location.” There is a particular horror to be found in the one remaining red sock; in the missing eyeballs…you notice where the sweet spots are, the spots that the vermin hit first. You wonder about the wounds…what/who caused which wounds? ...Pre-mortem? ....Post-mortem?

Later you’ve got the full graphic effect whenever you close your eyes. And you know that there are people who will pay a lot of money for the photographs. You know that there are people who will cum hard over the idea and the image. You know there are people that wished someone had videotaped the event and maybe videotaped the feeding afterwards. You know these people. You’ve met them in the course of your business day.

Other people get to talk to the postman and the sales clerk. Sometimes I meet these people too but it’s not a happy time. Sometimes they are no longer speaking except in forensic tongues.

It seems like it was easier when I started. I’m going in reverse. They say the more you’re at it, the less you really notice anything but the evidence. They say you crap out in the beginning or you harden up. I don’t remember feeling the way I do now back then. Yeah, I was shocked, angry and I occasionally got sick but it didn’t stay with me like it does now.

I had a bad incident two years ago and I can trace the change from that time. Somebody hit me in the head with a crowbar and fractured my skull. They say I hung on the edge of the final departure for over a week while I was in the coma. I was told my heart stopped twice. It took some time getting out and about after that. Now I’ve got this neat lightening bolt scar that dances from my left eyebrow up into the hairline. I’ve got another across the occipital lobe. The first blow was such a nice shot that the guy just had to add one more on my way down.

My partner put one through his liver about the time he was winding up for the coup de grace. I suppose I’m lucky. They always say things about how I’m ‘lucky to be alive.’ I don’t know that it’s all that good to be alive here though. I don’t know that it isn’t better somewhere else outside the sight line of this planetary space. After I see things like I saw today I am of the opinion that it has got to be better somewhere else.

Maybe we’ll find the guy that did this and maybe we won’t. You can’t make it an all or nothing kind of thing. I’ve found that some things never get resolved. In this world justice does not always triumph and the good do not prosper any more than the evil. Quite often the evil prosper very well.

I’ve kicked this around in my head a lot of late. I know that there is a balance to it all because I see that balance in many instances in my work. I see it in the symmetry of the planets and I understand that if you go really small it’s the same thing. And I understand that the space between the atoms is, relatively speaking, the same as the distance between the planets, or the stars. Whatever, it’s a lot of distance, relatively.

Yeah, I know that there is some kind of a balance, some presence of Justice. But the more I think about it all, I think that a lot of it must be handled somewhere else, because we don’t see a lot of it here.

Things have been very different for me since I got hit on the head. I’m not the same as I used to be. I used to be pretty tight except for a certain period about six years ago. I knew what I was doing and where I was going and what I would probably do once I got there. Now I have to think about it. It’s because of all the new stuff that wasn’t there before. Now I hear things and sometimes I see things, mostly peripherally. I hear ringing tones on occasion that vary in pitch and sometimes I hear other things. The doctors said this is an after effect of the clubbing; “auditory hallucinations” he called them. The visual things are not identifiable because they are always to the side and if I turn to look at them they’re gone. That parts not too bad. It’s the things I see sometimes when I close my eyes that make me very uncomfortable. It’s the dreams I have that are every bit as real as real life. Of course I have to be careful who I talk to about these things or I would be out of a job. They don’t really interfere with what I’m doing. The real effect is that they make me more insecure about who I am. They make me wonder if I’m okay. At least I don’t have the headaches some people get after severe head trauma. At least I’m still here only I’m less sure of that than I was.

I’m a detective with the Manhattan PD. Except for a short time traveling after I got out of the Army I’ve been in police work. That’s ten years now and I’m thirty-two and probably look forty since my hair turned snow white in the hospital after the attack. Around the station house they refer to me as Andy Warhol but not generally in my hearing since I am none too fond of bad artist cocksuckers. I guess that’s not very PC of me and that would be fitting since I am none too PC anyway. Most of us aren’t these days since it usually means bullshit and extra work. There was a lot more understanding, more give and take, before it all got forced on us. We’ve got a fine victim industry going in these United States these days.

It used to be that a victim was someone with an empty purse, a bleeding body part or a missing car. We’ve expanded on that in the true spirit of American entrepreneurship. Now a victim is anyone who perceives themselves to be, or is perceived to be a victim because of; one’s sex, one’s color, one’s physical height, one’s age, one’s religion or lack of religion, one’s mental state, one’s addiction, one’s predilection or one’s victim-abled status. These are all criteria to determine the nature of the offense. We’ve got a handbook down at the station, about the size of something James Minchner might have written. Unfortunately they didn’t include a codebook to go with it since it is written entirely in perceived, victim-assistive language and no one can figure it out. This is okay because this is handled by the people for whom this entire new area of offense was created; personal victim lawyers. These are more or less the same people who adopted the old crime industry and made it their own. They always know immediately if an offense has been committed; but I digress.

People call me Whitey now which is funny sometimes, like when a black officer wants my attention and some of them still laugh and I do too of course. And probably I should say that I’m not down on cocksuckers or cocksucking as an art form either, I just don’t like Andy Warhol. He represents everything I don’t like about the things I don’t like about New York. I’m routinely amazed when people use words like ‘cocksucker’ as a pejorative; don’t they like blowjobs? Well, I guess Clinton showed us that maybe a lot of people don’t. Anyway, my real name is Peter Reilly and I do like blowjobs, getting them that is and pretty much all the facets of Vanilla sex, only maybe I would call it French Vanilla in my case but I haven’t had much sex in awhile and I’ll get to that in good time; not the sex, I don’t know when that’s going to show up, but the “how come I haven’t had much sex.” part of it.

So I’ve been in police work for some while. Once I thought that it would be all of what I did and that I would eventually be old, stout and consistently drunk like the bulk of my associates with Irish forebears in the department.

My father lived in Belfast and finally had all that he could take of ‘the troubles’ and British Justice; emigrating in the 60’s through the good offices of an uncle who helped people find things that fell off of trucks down at the wharf. He taught my father how to find things and my father did pretty well with it. Several years later he met my mother at a parish dance and I was the sole issue of that strong but all too brief passion. Two years after I arrived my father himself fell off of a truck and sustained fatal injuries a great deal more severe than one would expect in a fall from a truck that was not even moving at the time. During that period there was a rash of injuries suffered by Irish dock workers; the uncle broke both of his legs when he somehow managed to interpose himself between a brick wall and a moving car. Apparently things falling from trucks had become a growth industry that sparked a competitive rivalry between my father’s group and another group concerning the boundaries of relative enterprise. This was all sorted out shortly thereafter and the number of accidents reduced to the usual attrition. My father, unfortunately, did not benefit from this, having already moved on to other areas of enterprise unknown to me or to anyone in a position to tell.

I’ve heard it said that this is what led me to police work. I would dispute that. I trained as a policeman by default in the military and that led me, by default, to a position in law enforcement. It turned out that I was good at it so I kept doing it. I don’t see any Freudian mystery outworking itself in this regard.

There are a great many days when I wonder what I may be doing next; today being one of them. There is no excuse for dead children, not in my worldview. It may be that this is just a part of life’s ancient sorrow. One can die at any age but when one is hastened to it through violent outrage and when one is ten years old…it becomes something beyond my ability to understand. As I said, I am getting too old for this shit.

A woman I knew briefly, in the biblical sense, told me I had laughing eyes. She said they danced and reflected starlight. She was something of a poetess and thereby prone to exaggeration. I expect it is out of vanity that I remember her words. I’ve a wide rugged face as befits a man of my heritage. My nose is straight and my chin is square. On a good day I’m just over 5’ 10’ and weigh one hundred and seventy pounds. This hasn’t changed more than a pound or two since I was sixteen, except during my hospital time when I lost forty pounds and had to more or less learn to walk all over again. My sense of equilibrium had been vastly altered by the headshots. Apparently I had to develop new neural pathways. I’ve never understood this and I don’t think the doctors did either. There are worse roads to travel. I consider myself lucky, if, being ‘here’ is lucky.

This dead kid had been missing for about a month. We already knew about him since the day he didn’t come back from school and his parents called him in missing. Missing kids are the only time we break the twenty-four hour rule. Usually when someone goes missing we wait at least that long before we give it any interest. You have to understand that when someone goes missing it’s a much bigger issue to those affected than it is to a cop. People go missing all the time and usually they show up again. Kids go missing all the time too, more so than adults on the average and they too usually show up again, well before twenty-four hours have passed. Still, we go on the lookout for kids pretty quick, especially if they’re pre-pubescent and they go to parochial school and they never went missing before, like little Johnny Carson.

I caught this case along with my partner Max Bloomberg, who is an orthodox Jew and the butt of no end of station house humor. He takes it all in good stride, recognizing just how incongruous he is in the general mélange of the force. He belongs to some sort of mystical sect, not your usual Hassid and he’s got some weird views on why things are the way things are. Max is one who has been somewhat advantaged by the PC virus, as I call it. He’s allowed to keep Kosher in that he gets the Sabbath off, no matter what and he gets to wear a yarmulke to work. This isn’t such a big deal, now that he’s in plainclothes and when you see some of the guys in their Bermuda golf outfits. I guess the only real standout is that strange fedora of his. I know he wore the yarmulke under his cap when he was in uniform.

He’s been my partner for going on four years now, ever since he came into homicide. I’d come into homicide about a year before that and still hold the record for the quickest ascent ever because of a pretty spectacular piece of work concerning a bank robbery which was blind luck really and that was followed by another serendipitous event when I nailed a national fugitive that I spotted in a topless bar where I never would have been except for I was drinking a lot at the time. That was a dicey period for me and thanks to unknown fortune I kept that going only in the off hours until it just sort of dribbled away. It’s more than passing odd that I would have had all these career changing events just as I was about to slide off the short end of the pier. Why that was I don’t want to talk about right now. For whatever it’s worth, here I am now. If this is where my luck brought me today then I’m not sure what kind of luck it is.

Max is stereotype in appearance all the way, curly black hair, hooked Semitic nose, big brooding, melancholy eyes that watch you all the way. He’s 5’9” and goes about one fifty with all his clothes on. I like Max, he’s easy and he’s smart and he also saved my life. More than that, he never brings it up and doesn’t want to hear about it. He’s happily married to a diminutive woman named Sarah with magnetic brown eyes and a wonderful tumble of brown curls that ring her oval face. You can find her picture in the dictionary next to the word ‘sweet’. I’ve been to their house for dinner a few times but I try to avoid that. They’re a great family but I really don’t like the food. They’ve got two kids, a boy of ten named Hersh and a daughter who’s six named Esther. I feel like I’m in an old linotype photo when I go there to eat. They’re warm and friendly and all around good people but culturally miles away from anything I understand, especially when they break into that secret language as they are prone to now and again.

Two hours after Johnny didn’t make it home, officers were going round the neighborhood and tracking his movements. The only thing we found out was that he didn’t stop at the corner store for his after school candy bar so we knew something of the parameters in which he went missing.

It was two days later that we got a call from a ninety-three year old lady who spends every good weather day sitting in the window of her ground floor apartment. She’d seen it on the news and then called the police.

Ms. Ceauseziew told us that she had seen Johnny walking on the other side of the street when a…and I’m quoting here, “dark green 1998 Toyota 4runner with tinted windows” pulled up alongside him. Ms. Ceauseziew saw no action but when the 4runner pulled away there was no Johnny on the sidewalk. There was a ‘B’ and a ‘9’ in the license plate, which was from New York and the spare tire was in a silver metal case on the rear door. I hope I can see and remember things like that when I reach ninety-three, God willing.

Besides looking out of her window all day, Ms Ceauseziew watches cop shows along with every crime drama movie she can get from the local video store. She’s what we would call, ‘a trained observer’

Max was still shaking his head a block away as we looked for further witnesses. “Only in New York.” he muttered. You might wonder why two homicide detectives were looking for a little boy who was only missing at the time but it’s our nature to pitch in when we can and our duties permit.

When we processed this information on the 4runner we found out that a similar vehicle had been seen before in two other locations where children had gone missing, one of them in Yonkers upstate. In the Yonkers disappearance someone has gotten a brief look at the driver. This time the details were not as specific as those provided by Ms. Ceauseziew. The man had brown or blond hair, was between thirty and fifty years old and may or may not have been wearing sunglasses. He may have been Spanish, or Italian, or Greek and he might have had a moustache, or maybe not. This made Max shake his head even more. “I can’t wait to get this guy in a line-up.” Max said. By now we more or less knew the kid was dead. In the last two months an eight-year-old Hispanic kid in Washington Heights and an eleven year old black kid from Brownsville had also turned up. Both of those bodies had been sexually molested and found in dumpsters. “I imagine there’s more than that.” Max had said. “They don’t always find the bodies in the trash.”

We got no leads on the 4runner and we looked at a lot of 4runners. Toyota is a very popular make and there were hundreds, thousands of 4runners out there and the plates could have been fake… of course.

Do I sound like a depressed personality? Doing what I do, living where I live, it comes with the territory. I want to get into something else but I’ve got this idea that I make a difference. I know that I do not make a difference and I think it is this lying to myself that causes the depression. I don’t want to face reality. Max tells me that reality is a personal construct and that reality is measured by its level of integration with the whole; not that that is really reality. He says there are millions of overlapping bubbles and that reality, morality, truth and every other relative intangible has meaning only in relation to its environment. Then he says that every environment you can imagine is present here. Then he goes on further to say that all of this is irrelevant in the larger sense since our environment, our sense of self and every focus of our attention is an illusion. Only God is real and the point of life is to discover that. So, if I weren’t depressed from the things I mentioned before, the shit Max tells me guarantees it. See, I’d said that I felt like I had no effect on anything, that nothing I did mattered and here comes Max to tell me, “as a matter of fact, you are correct Sir.”

I’m alone and often despondent and the world is getting crazier and less explainable every day. Take that 9/11 thing. If you work for the police department it didn’t take very long to figure out that this was not a terror attack planned and carried out by a small rag-tag group of Stone Age Arabs. Besides hearing the recordings of firemen who reported that the fires were all but out and couldn’t have caused the towers to fall, there’s the way the buildings fell and the fact that no skyscraper in history ever came down from a fire, much less two of them and another building that didn’t even get hit by anything. And no way do these buildings come down straight down and all at once and… shit, you don’t want to know. Most people don’t want to know… And if you talk about any of these things too loud where anyone can hear you; if you are a cop, well… let’s just say it’s not a good career move. But we all know. We all know this was some kind of an inside job. I met the guy who found Mohammed Atta’s passport on the street. Somehow it had fallen unharmed from the planes explosion into the side of the tower when nothing else survived. He didn’t want to talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about it. It’s going to happen again.

Besides our regular jobs we now have to be practicing brown-shirts in the interest of Homeland Security; report all suspicious behavior… in New York City? You got to be joking. Max is lucky. Max has God. Everything works out. Everything is perfect, according to Max. Everything is meaningful, nothing means anything. Everything is important and nothing is important; Zen and the art of Jewish police work with one hand clapping. It would usually piss me off to hear this kind of thing but for some reason it sounds funny when Max says it and somehow that puts it all into perspective, if that makes any sense. Max says you can either laugh about it or cry about it. We generally tend to laugh about it, though not today. There’s nothing funny about what we found today. It seems like every cop in all of the other divisions wants to work in Homicide. What do they think that consists of? “Go figure.” as Max would say.