Street Craps Rules | Craps Verdict Street Craps Rules

Alright folks, buckle up and Charge your batteries. This play's going to smack you all the way back to 1999.
First, a recap. WSB has proven to the world that retail matters. With the power of the hive mind, leveraged options trading, and distinctly fragile market conditions, we've refueled a few businesses that were written off by the street. And we made some money doing it. To no one's surprise, the gaslighting boomers called us manic, irrational, and stupid. They hired CNBC to dismiss us, politicize us, patronize us, or accuse us of cheating. They told us to go back to watching Netflix and let the big boys steer the ship.
Fact is, we all know the GME play was no smooth brained fluke. The strategy formed organically, built on a masterly combination of market technicals, narrative, underlying facts, and community research. A few timely events, and we took off to the stratosphere.
Now it's time to let them know that we can also bring things back down to earth. It's time to prove that us lovely commoners are grounded, sophisticated analysts--or at least, we're fast learning newbs. We are measured in judgement, clear in action, helpful to our communities. And we're having some fun. Retail is not a stupid mob, we are a collective social intelligence.
So there's my heartfelt intro, now onto the play.
Two words, and you're not going to like it:Short. Tesla.
I'll give you a minute.
If you just bought $TSLA and think all stonks only go up, you can skip to the comments, turn caps lock ON, and go nuts. Stonks to infinity means hyperinflation. You're a millionaire, and a burger costs 12k. No thanks. So here's the breakdown.
Table of Contents. (That's right.)

The Gravity. Hive Mind is Uploaded: Retail Options Control the Delta Hedge.
The Mass. All Roads lead to Mars...and Back. Passive Inclusion of $TSLA, the "God Meme".
The Playing Field.
The Trade.
The Risks.
The Endgame. Power to the Players.

Let's goo.

I. The Gravity. The Hive Mind is Uploaded. Retail Options Control the Delta Hedge.

Let's start with what we know. We're all poor and the Hedge Fund managers are rich. If you add together all retail investors, our funds would barely tick on the balance sheet of your local BlackRock. There's a reason they're called the 1%.
So what gives? How can a few Reddit analysts and their YOLO followers trigger cascading rallies across multiple tickers, even moving the very SPY itself?

GME vs SPY, during the Deep Fuckin Squeeze
To grasp the answer, you need to understand one thing about Delta-Hedging. Delta Hedging is what Market Makers do to stay 'risk neutral' while buying or selling options.
It works like this: When a Market Maker sells you a Call option, they also buy more Shares as hedge. That way, if the call ends up being right, they already have the Shares to sell you, and they've made a little profit on the price increase. If they didn't do the Delta Hedge, the Market Maker would have to go out and buy those shares above the Strike Price, then sell them to you at a loss.
There's more to it, but thats all you need to know here.
We saw these dynamics at play with GME. You probably heard the terms Delta Squeeze, Gamma Squeeze, Short Squeeze, etc.
As you recall, the squeeze happened because lots of people started going long GME. The more people went long, the more shares Mr. Market Maker had to buy, which sent the price higher and higher, tempting more and more people to buy in and go long. It's a feedback loop, sparked by a few retail traders at the bottom of the food chain.
As Alex Harfouche, former head of Goldman Sachs' European block trading, keenly points out:

"Basic maths can demonstrate that the massive price moves are not ONLY a function of Reddit retail crowd YOLOing calls turning MMs into delta-hedging chasers. 15% to 20% of daily traded calls become OI (they are day traded) hence have no effect on dynamic delta-hedging. This leaves one explanation to the parabolic moves: when Reddit starts concentrating call buying volumes on some names, some keen observers are using this as a signal and fueling the moves." https://twitter.com/alexharfouche1/status/1355177706292465664

The $TSLA Delta Squeeze has been more prolonged, and MUCH more YUGE, but it follows the same mechanics. The more speculative calls, the more shares Market Makers have to buy up. Price goes up, speculation increases. It's a feedback loop, with little retail at the bottom, deciding everything.
That's the Gravity. Now onto the Mass.

II. The Mass. All Roads lead to Mars...and Back. Passive Inclusion of $TSLA, the "God Meme".

The second turbocharger that sent $TSLA soaring is pure courtesy of boomer mismanagement. They're called passive index funds, like the beloved SP&500. If you're not familiar, these funds track the 'biggest companies' and continuously rebalance their portfolios to hold an weighted distribution of shares.
Once the Delta-Squeeze hit the magic number, $TSLA was signed up to be included in these Passive Funds. This resulted in a astronomical amount of forced buying. For example, the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund, the OG passive index-tracking investment fund, has assets of over $600B. To bring Tesla up to the required 1.6% of its portfolio, Vanguard has to buy about $10B worth of Tesla shares. Just because.
And Vanguard is just the tip of the iceberg. According to Barron’s, “between $5 trillion and $6 trillion are invested in funds indexed to the S&P 500.” Because of arcane indexing algorithms, these funds were forced to buy around 120 million shares of Tesla, worth $80-100B, and divest $80-100B of other holdings, to align their portfolios with the new index composition. That's a whole lot of Buy Pressure.
But that's not it. An additional estimated $6.7 trillion in Active Funds are really just blindly following the S&P500, in a dubious practice called "Closet Indexing". [1] Basically you pretend to be an Active Fund Manager, but just construct a portfolio based on the SP&500 and collect a big management fee. It's the copypaste-from-wikipedia homework of the hedge fund manager world. Def can't go tits up.
So that's the Mass.
It's a whole of lot of money blindly buying up a stock, sending it higher and higher, luring in more and more speculation, despite the fact that the present day business fundamentals absolutely do not correspond. At this point, the bull narrative for Tesla has been whittled down to full reliance on "distant futures" and the cult following of Elon Musk.
I'm not an astrophysicist, but with the Gravity of Retail Driven Delta-Hedge and the Mass of Passive Fund Inclusion, there's a chance that even a small shift in public opinion will trigger cascading downward prices, as the Market Makers reverse and the planetary mass of Passive Inclusion Funds (and all their copycats) desperately rebalance and sell off.
But what do I know, I just eat crayons.

III. The Playing Field.

You might ask yourself--Why would so many Money Managers rely on Passive Indexing, copypasta, or reddit sentiment to do their jobs? Simply put: Because they live on yachts, and think they're too special to interface with the real world. These people have no way of knowing what is actually going on in the lives of everyday people, what we like, what we need, and how we assign value.
Remember: the underlying isn't the Stock Price. The underlying is the business. The actual real world operations associated with the Ticker, how they affect people's lives, and how we the people feel about that. In 2021, Retail will teach everyone this lesson, and many will be butthurt.

Tech Cycle Rolls Over. Courtesy of Trader_ferg, read the tweet. https://twitter.com/trader_ferg/status/1359504988960026627
On a way zoomed out macro level, this all makes sense, and is squarely aligned with the Central Banks mandate to undertake new social & economic reform. Part of this reset is the technological reality that accessible Retail Options trading is a far more granular method of capturing sentiment and valuation. With share trading, all a User can do is "Buy" or "Sell". Not much info for the AI to feed off of. On the other hand, with options, a user can provide a nuanced input about their projected Value and Future Timing of the Business. It's like Photo vs. Video. 4D Chess. A lot more data. All it needs is to be wired together and get a few more big Pumps of The Juice--not to make 'all stonks go up forever', but simply to facilitate the transactional throughput of higher order computing.
This is good: A massive Hive Mind of independent rational agents, feeding the blossoming AI with rich realtime votes on the value and future prospects of a Company. The AI needs this. It does not need a handful of overpaid money-managers who have never peeled a banana to sit on their yachts and pick tickers out of hat, or sleep at the wheel while an intern copies the trades of a 40-year-old indexing algorithm. There's too much risk of mis-pricing the underlying, and too many inefficient middlemen. With our help, the Hive Mind can do it better and cheaper, and the Real Big Boys know that. As the old adage goes, together Apes Strong. 🦍🦍🦍
Data from Options trading is just the beginning. Soon enough, stakeholders from across the world will seamlessly participate in realtime corporate governance, valuation, and ownership of the companies that touch their lives. The World Economic Forum call this the Shareholder Economy.
But that's future talk. Q3 2022. Let's stick to the present situation.

IV. The Trade.

I'll keep this part simple. If you're holding $TSLA, start selling the top. What the actual fuck are shares, anyway. If you're new or looking for a YOLO, Puts on TSLA, all year long.
Exact timing? Sooner than you think, maybe Tuesday.Pick your own risk/reward. Don't get freaky behind Wendy's or pawn off your girlfriend's cat.
690 is not a meme. 420 is probably not a meme. 42 is a meme.
And If you believe in the resonant effects of Mass and Gravity: Puts on SPY down to 369. NASDAQ-100 Puts to 10420.
Paper handed bitches too emo to go short: Buy some Steel, limited edition Air Jordans, or a '99 Cherokee straight 6. Collectibles will print for the next decade.
And if you're here bc you really dgaf and just want to Send A Message, throw puts on all the bois that keep ruining society: FB, Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc. Get creative. Trust your gut. If they don't print, at least you die a hero.
Remember, we don't have money, but we're the ones in charge. It's a spiritual choice. Boom. And guess what else, Dennis? We're not "afraid of a market crash" any more than we're afraid of getting shot at in Fortnite. A game's a game. We're already poor, unemployed, stuck at home in your dysfunctional system, eating shitty cold food from DoorDash. (Another excellent short, btw.)
But Wall Street did teach us one thing: you don't need to lose money, as long as you're on the right side of the trade. We see you. And we're capable of sitting back, crackin' a cold one, and surfing this wave all the way down the mountain. We are rising to the occasion, and putting ourselves on the right side of the trade.
If that was all too complicated, just call it the Reverse Moon. All Stonks go up, therefore All stonks go down. Now it's time for Stonks Go Down, so hop on board and don't worry. This Truck is Fully Powered By Gravity--the cleanest energy--the code is live in the matrix, uploading to your braincells as we speak. 100% self-driving, always have been. Turn off the iPhone and go hug your Mom. In the 5th Dimension, we're already Trillionaires.

V. The Risks

Timing. As far as I can tell, the biggest risk here is timing and scale. The TSLA fundamentals check out: bona fide crap. Price is the only thing that made it to Mars. Market conditions are primed for a steep reversal, It might have even started last week. Product quality is weak, but I can't confirm since I've only seen their cars on Youtube. Big Boys like Ford are coming to bat. Tech multiple is a ponzi.
But we still have no way of knowing how long elevated prices in the sector can last. Usually these things are drawn out like a drugged out bender, until they roll over and quickly collapse. Unfortunately, there are alot of rich fallguys like Chamath and Cathie Wood trying to distract you with Shiny Objects while they show their even richer Masters to the door.
I say fuck it, let's pre-empt, call out the bullshit and get our asses on the right side of this trade before it's too late. I don't want to be the last guy at the party strung out on the couch. I bet you don't either.
But what about the other failed shorts? Yep, lots of hedge fund managers have bled themselves dry trying to go short $TSLA. They neglected to realize the importance of The Vibe, and were generally short TSLA because they didn't believe in the core business or EVs or rocketships or some other arcane boomer technical thing. This time its different. Retail has already cashed the $TSLA stimmy check. Twitter is pwned. We see the smart money moving away, and can call it like we see it. We have learned how the market works, and we've adapted. $GME might not have made us all rich with money, but it made some of us just rich enough to spark confidence in the rest. We can spot the right moves, call them out, and participate in our financial system and economy. Who woulda thought.
But what about More Fed Stimmy? Silly boomer, Fed Stimmy was never about shifting to a paradigm where all stonks go up. It was about a macro return to shareholder economics, an embrace of price volatility, and the necessary technical upgrades to facilitate Big Data sentiment capture from the retail Hive Mind. Didn't you read Larry Fink's 2021 Letter to CEOs? Central Banks have played these games before, Take a look at Japan, or read about the Carry. Weird shit happens. But guess what, Bankers? In reality, you're the subs. I said it before, this is the 5th Dimension. We're gucci; you work for us. Enjoy the yacht and stay out of our treehouse. We don't have all your money, but we have our communities, our friends, our families, and our glorious lossporn. Freedoms so wild you literally could never imagine. Maybe that's why you locked us down, so our lives would suck as much as yours. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
But what about The Future? Get those crayons out of your mouth. Human civilization is not one pre-order deposit away from a Techno-Paradise-Utopia. The Tesla Roadster took $250k deposits 3 years ago and has still delivered nothing. With $250k in 2018, you could've bought 50BTC and sold 'em to Musk for $2.3M last week. You got played, 'Frisco. Sorry not sorry.
The market is about main street, schools, small businesses, food, and homes. Root canals and babysitters. It's about real fucking people, none of whom will ever be rich enough to upload our brains to a network of satellites floating around Mars. Most of us, even the ones who made money with your dumb 2020 stonks, have had a pretty rough year. The future is wonderful, but there's also this little thing called the Present. And it's proving to be of vital importance.
But what about Internet Fame? No one can sustain infinite economic growth by going on Joe Rogan Podcast or shooting off cryptic 3 word tweets. Most of the engagement on elonmusk twitter is spam. The rest is Cringe. Go Check. On top of that, we all know that Twitter is compromised, that Mark Zuckerberg still has no real friends, and that web2 ad-tech social media is a garbage business model that ends up building worthless propaganda machines and echo chambers. I'd rather chill w my cat and horde Uranium. Whoops.
Unexpected Interventions? As we know, the Powers At Be have a lot of levers to pull. Tesla has been propped up by sweetheart government deals and tax credits. In fact that's the only reason they make any money to begin with. Go read about it.
So there's that: the government might do anything. There might be a new crisis and the gov might forces us to close all our bank accounts, wear chicken costumes, and dance in circles. Government intervention is a wild card. But weirdly enough, I think the Big Banks are on our side, ish. They def need to pwn all our trading data, harness our collective brainpower to go full AI, then cut out the previous generation of complacent middle-market fund managers. So who knows. This is all speculation. I don't work for the CIA. We do know that Michael Burry is short. And sequels sell.
China? Had to throw it in there, bc Biden might be pwned by the CCP and we might already be living in a Chinese colony. If that's true, I got no problem. China is cool, I love China, great culture, great people, the food, all of it. And they'll probably fix our roads! Xie xie! :D
But with respect to $TSLA price action and The Trade, the China Factor could work for or against us. I have no idea what China wants from me. Pelosi did buy some $TSLA Leaps, but that might've been a PsyOp. She's got hella deepfake vibes. Again, No idea. Consult your tea leaves.
But who's going to lose? Who will be the bagholders? As you've probably learned, every trade has a winner and loser. Such is life. There will always be bagholders. All I can say is that this time around, it doesn't need to be us.
If it all plays out according to my Tarot Cards, the Bankers will do what they've done best for centuries, and losses will be socialized across all the boomers with $ in passive index funds. People thought it was safe, but neglected to realize that the lazy overpaid fund managers didn't update their models since 1985. Instead, they let a hyped up trojan horse distort their portfolios and stretch the connection between SPY and the Real World, while in the background a tech-enabled Options market became the new Hive Mind of retail sentiment.
The Bagholders will be everyone who was comfortable and complacent enough to actually believe that if you dump all your assets in a passive index fund then durpa durp all stonks go up.Newsflash: It was a meme. We were kidding.

Now don't get me wrong: Elon Musk is still weird and cool and none of this is a knock on him at all. He is undoubtedly a genius, and probably embraced these ideas years ago. He's told us many times: the future is re-usable rocketships. Up and Down. Up and Down. Volatility. In the long term, Tesla will succeed and fulfill its mission, and the influence of Musk and his companies will go down in history.
But Markets are markets. Trader_ferg says it best:

Multiple contraction overrides perfect mgmt execution. Your views can prove correct, Yet you get killed. Take Cisco in 2000. If you'd invested based on it: -Becoming a mainstay of the internet -Growing revenue strongly for next decade
You'd have been right. Yet still lost >80%.

Remember. Do not get emotional here, this is fundamental trading. Puts on $TSLA won't hurt baby X Æ A-XII. I know you might be a fanboy. It's ok, we forgive you.
The move is technical, and the point is simple: infinite money isn't a thing. All stonks go down. The markets are fragile; Retail Option Traders are in charge. $TSLA is overbought by a delta squeeze & huge passive fund inclusion. And at this precise moment we're rolling, Because we control the narrative.

VI. Endgame. Power to the Players.

So where does this all lead us? What happens to a world where the market is truly just a video game, fed by a mass of independent individuals riding a play up or down, talking strategy, making friends, and having fun? What happens is simple: markets function better, society is improved, and there is Way More Chill™. One day the social hive mind will cut out the Chamaths and Dorseys of the world and autonomously perform market functions: valuing companies and steering corporate governance in a realtime, decentralized, transparent way. There will still be Shadow Kings, but we might stop stressing about Booms and Busts, horribly opaque corporate governance, and endless media-Induced panics. We just want to play. The system might be smart, but we can always move first.
Anyway, started trading last week, so take this with a spoon of salt. Def not financial advice, but if you've read this far, you know that. Full Disclosure: I drive an '87 Chevy 4x4 and it rips. Only simps buy a Tesla.

Sincerely yours,
-0xpectation.

what up

Appendix. Notes, Edits, and Responses:

Simple Palantir (PLTR) Perspective

I keep getting invited to this church called The Enlightened. They won't leave me alone.

I feel like I’m going crazy. I’m paranoid, I can’t sleep, I can’t stand this anymore. I need to tell someone what’s going on.
It started last month, when I was walking to the bus stop to get to work. I don’t drive, not since my car accident about two summers ago. Car got totaled and getting a new one just wasn’t in the cards. Since there was a bus stop less than a mile from my apartment anyway, what was the big deal?
I wouldn’t have run into them if I did have a car though.
A pair of guys were at the stop. Both were probably around my age, both were clean cut, wearing white button ups and ties, and both wore matching blue disposable face masks. One of them was tall and scrawny, a toothpick of a guy, a bag full of papers slung over his shoulder. The other wore glasses and was about my height, and uh, let’s just say I’m not exactly a tall lady, and he was trying to hand out said papers… which were so clearly religious pamphlets.
I thanked Christ my bus was pulling up right then. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a menace. The shorter guy cleared his throat as I passed and was likely about to start his spiel. I cut him off with ‘I have to get on this bus’ before he could even get started. I was not in the mood, I had things to do and I did not want to get preached at.
I practically forgot about them by the time I got to work anyway. I cracked a few jokes about it to my coworkers, we laughed, then we got our heads down and went to work. Wasn’t worth the second thought. By the time I clocked out and got on the bus to go home, I was thinking about dinner and how to extend my groceries a little longer so I could save up for a new laptop.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I got off the bus and those two guys were still there. Tall guy with his bag of pamphlets, shorter guy trying to strike up a conversation with less than interested people passing by. Even if they were still the same guys, I could tell they were disheartened. The tall guy was starting to nod off from where he sat on the bench and even the upbeat short guy was losing steam. I got off the bus just in time to hear a passerby tell him to fuck off and the poor short guy looked like a kicked puppy. I’d bet twenty bucks they hadn’t given away a single pamphlet all day.
“Excuse me, miss?”
I felt bad for them, even if I find what they were doing completely obnoxious. So I slowed down.
“Yeah?”
The short guy’s eyes went wide. I thought it was because he was shook someone actually stopped but it was actually for something else.
“Hey, you passed by this morning!” He reached up and tapped his mask. “I recognize the cats on your face mask. I remember thinking how cute they were.”
I laughed weakly before glancing at him and his buddy. “Have you seriously been here all day?” I asked.
“Yeeeaaahhh… keep telling the minister that we’d probably get better success stories if we weren’t in these monkey suits,” The guy pulled at his shirt collar and mock gagged, “Everyone just thinks we’re Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“Wait, you’re not?” I blurted out. I couldn’t help it, but can you blame me?
The guy chuckled, the area by his eyes crinkling as he no doubt was smiling. “Hell no. We’re a bit different. Hey, it’s about time to give up for the day. Peter and I are gonna go grab a coffee, how do you take yours?”
I snorted. “Just because I’m being nice doesn’t mean I’m gonna listen to whatever crap you want to tell me,” I said.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m just gonna get you a caramel macchiato.”
I sputtered for a moment while Peter gathered up his bag of pamphlets. The short guy held out his hand.
“I’m Sam. Do you want a caramel macchiato or not?”
In the end, I accepted the free drink. It was cold, I didn’t want to seem like a jerk, and I enjoyed it outside with the pair of weird street preachers. Now that they were done with their thing, both had immediately relaxed their wardrobe. Both had ditched their ties, Peter had pushed up his sleeves to show off a fantastic flower themed sleeve tattoo on his right arm, and Sam had untucked a necklace from his shirt that had a bunch of little strange silver charms on it.
Sam sipped at his latte while we made polite conversation. Turned out Peter wasn’t really the chatty type, only offering a ‘mmhmm’ and ‘sure’ every now and then to the conversation, but Sam was the one carrying the conversation. He had to take off the mask to enjoy his drink and he was actually kinda cute, completely inoffensive appearing human being. We didn’t talk religion. We just talked about our days, what we do when we’re not at work or preaching to uninterested people on sidewalks, and by the end of it I figured they weren’t so bad. I only took a pamphlet after Peter offered one the second time, turned out Sam wasn’t the only one who could look like a kicked puppy. I left figuring I’d never see them again, that this was just a funny little coincidence and it’d make a great story.
Now I can’t help but wonder if they had stayed at the bus stop waiting just for me to come back.
The next day I was heading back from work when I heard someone call my name.
“Amy! Amy, wait up!”
It was just Sam, now dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans, still wearing that goofy charm necklace but now wearing a neat custom face mask with little skulls dotted all over it. Under his arm he was lugging along a laptop. I stopped and he caught up, a little bounce in his step as he pulled his mask down to reveal his beaming smile.
He raised the laptop up to me. “For you,” He said.
I stammered and immediately went to reject it. “I can’t accept this-”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Sam laughed, “When you said yesterday you were trying to be a writer but your laptop wouldn’t stop freezing when you tried to do anything on it, I remembered I had my old laptop just chilling in my closet. So what the hell, better put it to better use, right? If it makes you feel better, consider it a loaner until you get one for yourself.” Once again, he presented it.
I won’t say it was like brand new, but it was clearly bought within the last two years. And man, a free laptop. I chewed the inside of my lip before I slowly reached up to take it. “It’s a loaner, then. It’s yours when I get my own. How often do you get new laptops?” I asked.
“Practically every other year,” Sam grinned sheepishly, “I play a lot of video games, and I always want the best. I can afford it.”
“Didn’t think that giving out Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets paid that much,” I said as I continued to examine the laptop.
“Funny,” Sam scoffed. “You didn’t even read that pamphlet, did you?”
I knew I was blushing, I always do when I’m embarrassed. Sam, thankfully, didn’t seem all that offended. “It’s cool. I know you were trying to be polite. I won’t tell Peter, but if you ever see him again, he’ll totally figure out you didn’t. And he’ll be grumpy. He’s pretty passionate about this sorta thing, you know?”
I sighed. “Fine, I’ll read it once I’m home.”
“Great! I gotta get going,” Sam rolled his eyes, “Pamphlets to give out, people to talk to. Ta for now!” With that, he pulled his mask back up and hurried back the direction he came from.
I took my new treasure home and almost immediately booted it up. It ran like a dream compared to my old computer. I was thrilled to bits and resolved to read that pamphlet while I worked on dinner, as my thank you to these pair of weird street preachers.
The pamphlet itself wasn’t too bad. It was white, with a black clip art oil lamp on the front and Times New Roman font reading ‘The Enlightened’. Inside was more basic clip art of people holding hands and it really just gave off the really basic feeling of community and raising each other up. The first line read ‘The age of enlightenment is upon us. The reason behind everything exists with us.’ Sure, I laughed, that sounded cheesy as hell. But I read the whole thing, and it didn’t seem all that nutty off the bat. The whole message can be summed up as how we’re here to lift each other up in this world and that should be our goal in life.
I had just finished boiling the noodles for my spaghetti when I heard a knock at my door. I didn’t think much of it, wondering if it was just a late package as I headed for the door.
I opened the door and there they were. Sam and Peter, back in their clean white shirts and ties, Sam raising his hand to knock again.
We both froze. Sam’s eyes bugged out before he chuckled. “Huh. Funny coincidence. Hi, Amy!”
I cleared my throat. “Hi… how did you find out where I lived?” Get that question out first.
“We didn’t,” Sam shook his head, “We’re just going door to door to see if we can get more pamphlets out and if anyone that took one has any questions. Did you read it?”
He sounded honest, completely innocent of anything creepy. I glanced around the door to make sure there wasn’t about to be like a mob coming in to murder me and steal my stuff. “Yeah, while I was cooking dinner. It’s… interesting?”
I could tell both guys were smiling. Sam pulled his mask down. “Then can we come in? We’ve been already going door to door for like an hour, and we’re supposed to be out until eight. Love to kill some time just chilling with a friend.”
I don’t know why I didn’t say no. They were near strangers. Maybe I felt obligated because of the coffee and the computer to at least give them some of my spaghetti, let them do their little ‘come to god’ thing before finding a way to shoo them out the door.
Honestly? I would’ve taken Jehovah’s Witnesses over this. This was on the same level as Scientology for me, as in it was completely freaking batshit insane.
The Enlightened aren’t a Christian sect, Sam explained as we ate dinner and I tried to remain as open minded as I physically could. They worshiped the Beings, well, not really worshiped. Peter cut in to say it’s more like they respected the Beings, relied on them for guidance. The Beings were here before humans were, and oh, how did humans get here? They were originally fish swimming through space, finally coming to earth and evolving into life as we know it.
Oh, and apparently, the sun is apparently a portal to hell. No. I’m not shitting you. The sun. Is a portal. To hell. It took literally all of my restraint not to bust out laughing at that point. I would’ve thought they were pulling my leg if Sam hadn’t said it all so calmly and matter-of-factly. By the end of our meal, I almost gave Sam his laptop back. This was absolutely ridiculous and I wanted no part of these crazy people.
But before they left, Peter took my hand. He didn’t even ask.
“The Being I rely on most is called Yehunee,” He said, which was the longest sentence he’d said all night, “She can see the future. I’d like to see your future.”
I tried jerking my hand back but Peter had a firm grip. My heart started to pound a bit and I started thinking of how stupid it was to let two strange men into my place when Sam grabbed Peter’s arm.
“Peter, let her go, you’re freaking her out.”
Peter released me before Sam turned to me. “I’m sorry, he was a raised Enlightened and I swear that broke his brain from common sense. Just let him do the reading, it’ll be like a minute, and then we’ll go. We hope to hit a few more doors tonight.”
I sighed. If this was the best way to get them out of here, so be it. I gave Peter my hand back and he stared at my palm so intently it made me want to squirm. I almost expected him to start speaking in tongues.
“… Don’t be afraid of strangers, they’ll mean well and be there for you when you’re in a bind. You’ll find what you love doing is not only an option but a profitable one as well. Look out for hooligans, they won’t try to hurt you but they won’t know their own strength. And by the end of the week, you’ll need your love to keep you going.”
Peter finally released my hand and I sighed with relief. “Right, so you said you had to be going?” I said, practically jogging to the door to escort them out.
“Yup! Thanks for letting us take a break tonight!” Sam grabbed his face mask and headed out, Peter right behind him. “Hope to see you again sometime!”
When I closed the door behind them, I was already thinking about how to get to work without going to that specific bus stop. Thanks, but no thanks.
It was just too uncanny that the next day Peter’s prophecies began to fulfill themselves.
I was picking up my groceries, since I no longer needed to get a laptop I splurged a little, got a few wants along with all my needs. For me that made it all the more humiliating when I reached for my wallet and it wasn’t there.
My face turned tomato red as I dug through my purse before checking all of my pockets, the girl at the register looking less and less impressed by my insistence that it ‘had to be here somewhere’. I wanted to melt into the floor when I confirmed that somehow, one way or another, I’d lost my wallet. God. Damn. It. I could just feel the judgment from everyone witnessing this.
Then I felt someone tap my shoulder and I turned to see the elderly woman in a nice red coat who had been in the line right behind me. I opened my mouth to apologize and she held up a hand. Then she looked at the cashier.
“May I pay for this girl’s groceries?”
I nearly started crying. I almost told her to not bother, but something stopped me. And that something was Peter’s freaking voice in my head saying ‘Don’t be afraid of strangers, they’ll mean well and be there for you when you’re in a bind.’ So instead I thanked her, again and again, while she laughed and said it was hardly a big deal. In this world we’re here to look out for each other, after all.
I didn’t notice until I was about to walk away that this woman had a few pins in the lapel of her coat. The two that stuck out the most were a small fish and a lamp. An oil lamp.
I just thanked her once more before I excused myself out of there. It was a coincidence, of course. I knew of a few Christians that also used fish as a religious symbol, same with the lamp. It was just bizarre.
It was when I was heading home that I got the sudden impression that I needed to duck. I practically dove to the ground, and it was lucky for me that I did that. A glass bottle flew through the air right where my head had been, shattering on the wall behind me. It had come from a black car whizzing by, and judging by how loud and rowdy they sounded, they were probably drunk and just having a good time. The car sped down the street and rounded the corner with a screech of the tires. Like that, they were gone, off to keep on partying and doing whatever a bunch of drunk morons do on a weekday.
‘Look out for hooligans, they won’t try to hurt you but they won’t know their own strength.’
My skin, I swear it crawled as I remember Peter’s third prophecy. I reminded myself that there was just no way he could tell the future. It was just a bizarre coincidence.
I got home, I made dinner, and I crawled into bed.
The next morning I woke up to several missed calls from my boss. He was so apologetic, but it was an emergency, and he recommended I turn on the local news for the full effect.
I won’t be too specific where I work, because I don’t know who’s reading this, but where I had worked had burnt to the ground. It looked like faulty wiring had just taken the building down, thank god no one had been inside when it ignited. But because the kind of work I typically do isn’t really one you can do from home, I was now out of work.
‘By the end of the week, you’ll need your love to keep you going.’
My head swam as I instinctively headed for my new laptop and started scrolling through my email, looking through all the writing jobs that I had been wanting to apply for but never had the time for. Submissions for magazines or anthologies, things like that. I wanted to test something and that something was Peter’s only unfulfilled prophecy.
‘You’ll find what you love doing is not only an option but a profitable one as well.’
Sure enough, by some miracle or whatever, I got an email back from one of the jobs I threw my name in the hat for. They liked what I had to offer and were going to pay me double the rate if I could it done by the end of the week. Which I could, because I had a lot of sudden free time.
Every single prophecy. Every single freaking one. Just as Peter had told.
But I couldn’t shake this nagging feeling that these prophecies were self fulfilling. I felt like I was being played with, and I wasn’t going to accept this at face value.
So. I started by googling the name of the editor of the magazine that had offered me the job. He was pretty internet absent shockingly enough, but I found his Facebook page. It was practically vacant, except for two things-
He was friends with the old lady from the grocery store and a Samuel Sutton. And the one thing he’d liked was The Enlightened Facebook group.
Samuel Sutton didn’t have a picture on his Facebook profile that was of his face, but I recognized the charm necklace he was putting together in one of the public photos. Sadly, The Enlightened Facebook group was not public, at least it wasn’t now. Maybe it had been in the past. I don’t know. Either way I was definitely spooked. I knew I was right to be suspicious.
Of course this is when my internet started cutting in and out on my laptop, making further research from there damn near impossible. So the rest had to be done from my phone, all while I side eyed the innocuous laptop from where it sat on the table, the webcam now covered with duct tape.
I didn’t have any scotch tape and I was starting to feel rightfully paranoid.
I googled The Enlightened and didn’t come up with much other than a webpage clearly designed in the 90’s. I scrolled through the bad website design and I came up with basically nothing new, other than the Enlightened were founded in the late seventies by a man named Ray White, formerly Ray Bram. He’s now ‘forever with the Beings’, aka he’s food for the worms… or whatever the Enlightened do to their dead. I do not want to know.
I blamed my following dreams that night about all the Enlightened crap floating through my brain. I dreamed about floating through space, followed by thousands of others just like me. Not floating… swimming. We saw the beautiful blue orb that grew bigger with every moment, until I realized that the blue orb was a planet. There was a golden light in the distance that also attracted by attention, and although its warm pulled at me, I knew I had to go to that blue planet. So down I went, through the atmosphere, through the clouds, and into the ocean below.
I woke up before I started turning into a person, because I presume I was one of those stupid fucking fish Sam talked about. I hated it.
What I hated more is that Sam just ‘bumped into me’ while I was out for coffee. Nevermind I’d never seen him at that coffee shop before he got me that stupid macchiato that started all this in the first place, and now suddenly he was there, acting like he’d been getting coffee there his damn life.
He perked up when he saw me and waved. “Hey, Amy, you’re usually at work right now, right? Something happen?” He said, sounding so casual and relaxed.
My stomach twisted. “I’m just here to pick up my coffee and go, I’m busy,” I said, trying to hold back the shakes that came from seeing him here. “When do you want the laptop back?”
“When you don’t need it anymore. But hey, if that one’s not working out, I can see if Peter’s willing to give up any of his old machines,” Sam laughed, “But I doubt it. He still has one of his dad’s laptops, the thing’s practically a blunt weapon with how heavy it is.”
“Yeah, I have to go,” I said, almost dropping my coffee with how fast I grabbed it.
“Same, see you again, Amy.”
Sam left just in front of me, and when I left the coffee shop I swear my heart stopped. I dropped my coffee and didn’t even try to pick it up as its contents spilled out all over the sidewalk.
Sam was getting into his car. A black car. Not unlike the black car I saw that night with all the ‘hooligans’ inside. He noticed me staring real quick and managed to pull off confusion pretty frikken’ well.
“You good, Amy? You need a ride? I just have to make a stop back the church, but I can get you home.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “I… I’m good,” I murmured before I walked away, using all my restraint not to bolt down the sidewalk and get away from what was no doubt an actual fucking crazy person. Some sort of deranged stalker hiding behind his bizarre religion to freak me out and try to manipulate me.
I threw the laptop away in the dumpster. I locked my door and all of my windows. I drew the shades, I curled up on the couch and dug out my emergency wine stash. I did not want to be sober anymore.
I don’t think I drunk that much. I don’t know anymore. Because I remember pouring myself a glass and the next thing I was waking up in bed, and I could hear someone in the kitchen. Someone was humming.
I was still wearing the clothes I had been the day before, which was a fucking relief, but I still crept out into the kitchen expecting to see a psycho. Instead, it was just Sam, frying up some eggs and bacon, buttering toast and looking perfectly natural.
“What the fuck?!”
Sam looked up and winced. “Ooooh, that’s how bad the hangover is, huh?” He said.
True, my head was killing me, but I wanted to run. Run like hell. “How the hell- why are you-”
“Did you forget?” Sam walked over, his brow knitting in concern. “You called me last night and asked if I could come over.”
“I don’t have your number,” I said.
“I gave it to you yesterday at the coffee shop. You wrote it down on your hand.”
I was trembling as I raised my hand up.
It was a phone number, in blue ink, my handwriting, in my palm. Like where I write everything that I’m scared of forgetting.
“I didn’t call you,” I said, shaking my head.
“You did, and you sounded… really drunk,” Sam exhaled as he went back to the stove to turn over the bacon. “You were crying about losing your job? I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to come off as insensitive or anything yesterday, I didn’t know about the fire until you told me.”
I bolted for the living room, my head throbbing so bad I wanted to vomit. I picked up my phone and unlocked it, checking my outgoing calls. Sure enough, around eleven I’d made not one, not two, but five fucking phone calls to the number scrawled on my hand.
“I was worried, so I came over. You cried all over my t-shirt, you were upset and I didn’t really know what else to do. So I helped you get to bed and I figured I should stay, just in case you got sick or something. I was worried, Amy.”
I shook my head. “I locked my door though, windows too,” I said.
“Did you?” Sam frowned. “I let myself in after you didn’t answer. I didn’t check the windows though-”
I did. I ran around the apartment like a chicken with its head cut off, checking everything. Windows weren’t locked, my emergency wine bottle was empty even though I can only remember that one glass. My makeup was all ran like I had been crying, like Sam said I was. Everything lined up with what he said had happened, except for my own memories.
When I finally returned to the kitchen, Sam had two eggs, two pieces of toast and a stack of bacon ready on a plate and was pouring a glass of orange juice for me. He still looked worried. “You look a little pale, Amy, are you okay? You look messed up.”
I opened my mouth to respond but instead just ended up running for the sink to vomit. Sam held my hair back and just patted my back while I vomited up was I presume was the oh so lovely mixture of stomach bile and wine.
“You know what? How about you go lay back down, I’ll bring you your breakfast in a bit. You got tums or advil for the pain?”
I shoved Sam away, wiping the puke off my mouth best I could. “I don’t remember calling you. I know I locked the door, I know… I know I did. I threw away your laptop. I didn’t drink that much, what the fuck is going on?” I sounded pathetic I’m sure, but you try sounding great during what felt like the worst hangover of my life.
“You what?” Sam left my side and poked his head into my office before he laughed. “What are you talking about, Amy, my laptop’s right there. Christ, how wasted did you get?”
No. No way. Despite the room spinning around like I was on a carnival ride, I ran to the office. The laptop was still there. Not broken. Not even dirty.
Had I thrown it out after all? I can’t even tell you for sure now. I just sunk to the floor, ready to start crying, while Sam squatted down next to me.
“I… I…” I swallowed. “I need to be alone. Or, I need my mom, she’s not far from here…”
Sam handed me my phone, I’d probably dropped it somewhere along the way during my run around the apartment panic. “Go ahead. I gotta go to church anyway. If you need some support while you’re between jobs, I promise, The Enlightened can give you any help you need,” He said, giving my back a final pat before he got up and left the apartment.
I didn’t end up calling my mom. We’re not that close. I’m not really close to many people, if I’m honest. I lost a lot of my friends after high school when they all took off for college and I hung behind to join the work force. It’s not like they dumped me on purpose, we just lost contact. I wasn’t really close to my coworkers either, I’d chat with them but I never really made plans with them. I’m not lonely, or I don’t think I am. Maybe I am. Maybe that’s why I talked with Sam and Peter that day. I was that pathetic and lonely that I talked with two randos I thought were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This all started a month ago and I keep finding Sam and Peter in my life. Mostly Sam, and never Peter without Sam. I’ve refused all other fortunes from Peter, which clearly upsets him but I don’t know if I care about his feelings. I am getting more writing jobs thanks to that first connection I made with that editor, but I am not using the laptop Sam gave me. That’s currently in a box, that’s in another box, that’s duct taped shut and shoved to the back corner of a closet.
I don’t know how Sam’s wormed his way into my life so efficiently, but now I even find myself calling him on my own. It feels like he’s always been there. Sometimes I even see him in my dreams, laughing or smiling at me, looking at me with fondness and warmth that makes me feel… good about myself. I sometimes wonder how good I felt before I met him, if I felt this good before.
But I don’t know. My brain’s been so turned around. I don’t know how much I can trust myself, if I’m losing my mind. I know I cannot join the Enlightened, even if Sam and Peter are okay at times. It’s nuts, right? It’s all crazy talk. There is no Being in my dreams telling me it’s okay to doubt, but it’s never okay to assume something’s wrong from the get go. His name isn’t Riesis, and I know that those shadows outside my window aren’t people watching me, it’s just trees.
I don’t know anything anymore. I just. Don’t. All I know is that every time Sam asks me to go to the Enlightened Church with him, it’s becoming harder and harder to say no.

Every Man Digs His Own Grave

Half an hour after the sun rose, I unlocked the front doors to the store and turned the sign to read OPEN. In the silence, the flipping pages of my paperback copy of Peyton Place were deafening. It was cool now, but the signature July heat would settle in a matter of hours. They predicted triple digits for the next few weeks.
I looked out the window at Hannah’s Diner across the street. I could see my wife Lorelei bustling along the lunch counter with a fresh pot of coffee, topping off the early birds’ steaming mugs. I smiled faintly. We both had dawn schedules. If I didn’t have my own customers to deal with, I probably would’ve been over there myself.
The bell chimed abruptly. Heavy shoes clacked on the tile as they walked towards the counter. Without looking up I tried to guess if it was Dr. Cook or Mr. Dugan. Dugan was probably just starting with Ms. McCabe for her funeral, so I assumed the former.
“Mornin’, Rex.” Dr. Cook’s voice rang out. I was right. I looked up at him in his white coat and eyeglasses, the black medical bag clutched in his hand. He’d been the town doctor for as long as I could remember. “Mornin’, Dr. Cook.” I replied. I instinctively reached towards the display case of cigarettes. “Pall Mall’s, the usual?”
Cook shook his head. “None for me today. I finally decided I’m gonna quit. I’ve been breathin’ smoke in the patients’ faces for who knows how long, I figure if I’m ever gonna stop it should be now. I will take a bottle of Coke, though.”
I grabbed one from the cooler by the register and rang him up. “That’s very good thinking, Dr. Cook. Did Ms. McCabe last night finally push you over?”
He nodded. “Rest her soul, the poor woman. I thought those things were supposed to be clean. It’s all over the papers now, how tobacco and menthol and all that jazz rots your insides. I’ll bet when Dugan finally cuts her open her lungs’ll look like overcooked pot roast.”
Cook stiffened. “Say, speaking of, that bastard hasn’t been here yet today, has he?” He asked.
I took the dollar he handed me. “Nope. You’re the first one here.”
He sighed as I gave him his change. “Well, when you see him, tell him it won’t do no good telling everyone I killed her or somethin’. That old joke wasn’t funny the first hundred times he told it.”
As if on cue, the bell rang. “It don’t matter, it’s still funny to me.”
Dugan, the town’s undertaker, stood in the doorway. He was dressed in his usual natty black suit dotted with formaldehyde stains. The gold chain he always wore around his neck glinted in the sunlight.
Dugan glided across the room towards him, skin sallow and pale. “Thanks for Ms. McCabe last night, doc. I was afraid I wasn’t gonna be able to pay the mortgage this month.”
Cook grimaced. Both of them knew how much he hated being called “doc”. He snatched his Coke bottle off the counter and began walking towards the door. “See ya later, Rex.”
Dugan stopped and put a thin hand on his shoulder. “No, listen doc, I mean it. That’s what, three in the past month? If you keep it up I’ll be able to buy so much embalmin’ fluid and coffins I could bury this whole town come Judgement Day.”
Cook shoved him brutally to the side, almost knocking him into the lotto display. As he opened the door, he turned. “And if you keep it up, no one that comes through your door’ll die a virgin, alive or not.” Dugan’s face twisted into a mask of anger. The doctor was far down the street before he could retort.
I already had his Malboros on the counter waiting. He threw a couple bucks at me and took one out, fishing his lighter from his pocket. The awkward silence was getting to me, so I blurted out, “Dr. Cook bought a Coke today instead of his Pall Malls. Said he’s trying to quit for the health of his patients.”
Dugan took a long drag and held the cigarette out, blowing smoke from between his lips. “Rex, I ain’t gotta worry ‘bout nothin’ like that. My patients are already gone. They don’t give no lip if I smoke in front of ‘em. Tar and black lung and all that nonsense. Buncha crap if you ask me. Doc’s just trying to look good.”
As I put coins in the register, he continued. “I don’t get him. He thinks that just ‘cause he went to medical school everyone should feed him with a silver spoon. Acts all high-and-mighty. It gets real tirin’, it does. Someone should teach him a lesson.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Dugan. He never bothered me all that much.”
He took another drag. “If there’s one person’s grave I’d dance on if they died, it’d be him. He’s been deliverin’ his failures to me for twenty-odd years now. It’s about time he came through my door in a box.”
He walked towards the exit but stopped and turned. “He makes me question my practice, he does. You can draft wills, and hope everythin’ is taken care of after you’re gone, but it don’t matter. The only person that can make sure it’s just the way you want it is you, and you sure ain’t gonna be there to stop it if somethin’ goes wrong. If idiots like him are all that’s left after I’ve croaked, is it worth it? Every man digs his own grave. You just gotta hope the living will see you through.”
I said nothing. I never knew how to respond when he went off on tangents like that. He stepped through the door with a smile. “You have a nice day now, Rex.”
That night, I told Lorelei about the encounter in the store. She dropped dumplings into simmering broth with two spoons. “I just don’t understand why those two to hate each other so much.”
I sat in the chair by the kitchen door, crossing my arms. “Every mornin’ at open, day in and day out, even since when papa still had the store. Dr. Cook comes in for his Pall Malls, and Mr. Dugan comes in for his Malboros. They snipe at each other for a minute or two and then go about their day. It has to get old after a while. I know it does for me.”
Our dog, a pit-bull mix named Tallulah, stretched on the rug by my feet. She sat up and turned to look at me for a pet. I smiled and scratched her behind the ears. I looked down at her swollen belly. She was expecting pups in the next few weeks.
“They were in Mama’s grade durin’ school.” Lorelei said, stirring the dumplings. “Dr. Cook got a big scholarship and went off to the city and Mr. Dugan just waited for his daddy to die so he could take over the practice. It’s not unlike you, Rex.”
I shot her a fake outraged look. She smiled. “Sorry. Mama said they even hated each other back then. Dr. Cook always got the grades while Mr. Dugan sat in the back, starin’ daggers at his head. He knew Dr. Cook’d never have to work to be successful. It’d just always come easy to him.”
“Well, that’s no reason to hate a man. Just because he’s a better student than you.” I replied, getting up and moving to the table. Lorelei ladled the broth and dumplings into bowls.
“Since when is life fair?” she asked. We sat down to eat, Tallulah staring longingly from the rug.
The next two weeks passed as normal. Every day it was like clockwork. Dr. Cook came in to buy Coke, Mr. Dugan came in while he was leaving with just enough time to get an insult. On a few off days, Cook came earlier or Dugan came later, meaning they didn’t meet.
Wednesday morning started like any normal day. I opened the store at 6:30 and sat down with my book. It was Valley of the Dolls this time, as I had finished Peyton Place a few days earlier.
I heard that familiar chime and looked up to Dr. Cook walking towards the counter, a slight smile on the corner of his lips.
“Good morning, Dr…” I started to say, but before I could finish, he pulled out a handful of coins and threw them on the counter.
“Mornin’, Rex. Gimme all of your Malboros, if you please.”
I stared at him, my finger slipping from my page in the book. “Dr. Cook, I thought you said you were layin’ off the cigarettes. Besides, that ain’t your normal brand. Even if it was, what about you kickin’ the habit?”
He looked impatient and tapped his fingers on the counter. “Just hand ‘em all over. This should teach that rotten crabapple to make jokes about my business.”
I reached for a single pack.
“I said all of them, Rex. Every last one.”
I started to protest but shut my mouth. Selling all the Malboros at 33 cents a pack wasn’t bad. Who was I to pass up a profit?
I pulled all the cigarette packs with the familiar red triangle off the shelf and laid them on the counter. “That’ll be…$6.60.” I said, carefully counting out the rough ball that Dr. Cook had given me. The whole time, his eyes flitted from me to the door, sweat dripping down. I knew who he was waiting for.
I finished and told him he had $0.50 extra. “That’s fine, Rex. Keep the change and put ‘em all in my pack.” I nodded and slid the small pile off the counter and into the bag. Just as I reached across to give it to him, the bell chimed again. I winced.
“And just what are you up to today, doc?” Dugan’s voice rang out.
Dr. Cook turned to look at him. “Don’t mind me, Dugan. I’m just savin’ your life.”
Dugan looked confused for a moment, then looked at the bag in the doctor’s hand. His eyes shifted from the contents to the wall behind the register, clearly seeing the empty space where his normal brand usually sat.
“It’s for your own good, you know. Those little cancer sticks’ll sneak up on ya. You’ll be takin’ off your condom after finishing with Alice Spaulding and fall right over dead before you know it. Think of it as a favor.” Cook grinned.
Dugan’s hands curled into fists. “You son of a bitch. Listen here, I can do what I want. Just because you got your fancy medical degree don’t mean you’re the bee all and end all on what’s good for me and what ain’t.”
Cook clutched the bag tighter to his chest. “It’s a free country, ain’t it? And if I want to buy this here store’s complete stock of a certain brand of cigarette, who’s gonna stop me?”
A vein throbbed in Dugan’s forehead. He opened his mouth to say something but Cook cut him off. “Thought so. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got Mr. Newman to attend to. He has a nasty fever, you know.” He pushed past Dugan, shoving him with his shoulder, before disappearing down the street.
I tried to pick my book up again and look nonchalant, but Dugan’s eyes narrowed in my direction. “You knew what he was gonna do, an’ you didn’t stop it?” He demanded, nearly charging up to the counter in his fury.
I smiled apologetically. “I know it’s a pain for you, Mr. Dugan. But when I make a sale, I can’t pass it up.”
Dugan shook his head. At least he realized it wasn’t my fault. “That’s the damndest thing I ever saw. Spendin’ over five dollars to swindle a man out of his earthy pleasures. Doc is gonna get what’s comin’ to him, and soon. You’ll see.”
He settled on some Parliaments instead, not even waiting before he got out of the store to light one up. After the first puff, his face soured like he’d just put a worm in his mouth. “It just ain’t the same. It tastes like campfire ash.” He flicked it in the bin outside and was gone.
Dugan was missing from the store for the remainder of the week. Cook still came in and bought his Coke, grinning with triumph.
I closed the store on Sundays to spend the last day of the weekend relaxing with Lorelei. However, I got a call from Dugan late Saturday night asking me to deliver a case of beer to his house. Apparently he was going on a trip that would last a few days and wanted to have a cold one the second he got back. Since he was a regular customer, I agreed. The extra $5.00 he threw in as a delivery charge didn’t hurt, either.
Since it was such a beautiful Sunday morning, I decided to walk instead of drive. I kissed Lorelei goodbye and grabbed the case of Pabst, heading out for the two mile trek to Dugan’s.
The sun shone through the branches of the trees, casting shadows on the road. About ten minutes in, I found myself passing Cook’s house. He was standing in the driveway, fiddling with the van he used to visit patients way out in the sticks.
“Mornin’, Dr. Cook.” I called. His head whipped in my direction.
“Rex.” He sounded angry. “What are you doin’ out so early on a Sunday?”
I held up the Pabst. “Mr. Dugan’s paying extra for me to deliver this to him on my off-day.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, when you see him, tell him this ain’t over. I woke up this mornin’ to find this waitin’ for me.” He pointed to the left rear tire of the van, which was flat. A portion of the rubber was shredded, as if it had been slashed with a knife. “I’ll admit buyin’ all those cigarettes wasn’t the nicest move, but I didn’t damage his property or nothin’ like that.” Cook threw the tire iron he had been holding down to the ground.
“Well, I’ll tell him so when I do.” I said.
Cook frowned. “You better. He ain’t gonna be happy.”
I said my goodbyes and left, feeling his eyes on me as I walked away. Another fifteen minutes later, I arrived at Dugan’s. It served both as his home and place of work. It was a monstrous, gothic thing with a tower on the right side and a gabled roof. I walked up the to the front door and knocked loudly. No one answered. I yelled his name loudly.
“Rex? That you?” someone called from behind me. I turned to see Dugan stepping out of the trees on the other side of the road. His hands were covered in dirt and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. That gaudy gold chain around his neck glinted as much as ever. “Bring it right over here, if you please.”
I nodded and crossed. Just as I went to hand him the Pabst, he shook his head. “Wait. You gotta see this.” He said with a bit of excitement.
Truth be told I just wanted to go home so Lorelei and I could sit on the porch, but he was paying me good for this excursion, so I humored him. “Sure. Show me the way.”
We walked down a short path through the trees that let out into a clearing. “Sorry if I’m keepin’ you from the missus, but I don’t show this patch of land to just anybody.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but once I saw what lay in front of me, I had my answer.
A ramshackle graveyard spread lazily over half a small clearing. Misshapen tombstones that looked hand-carved marked depressions in the grass where it had never quite grown back. There were at least twelve in total, but a few were bleached white by the sun or knocked over in pieces, so it was hard to tell.
“Uh…is this the place where you bury the folks who can’t afford a place at the county churchyard?” I asked.
He laughed. “No, it ain’t that. It’s the family plot. The Dugans’ve owned the undertakin’ businesses in this town for nigh on a hundred years now. This land’s been with us almost that long. Whenever one of us kicks the bucket we’re buried out here with all the rest.”
I looked over and saw a shovel leaning against a nearby tree. A few feet away was a freshly filled-in hole. He looked over and laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s just Spot is all. That dog was getting’ old, you know. We got him just when Gordon started first grade. Oh, Dorothy didn’t want him in the house. Too rowdy, he’d break all her fine china. And he did! God bless her soul. She’s buried right over there.”
He pointed to her grave twenty feet away. Dugan’s wife had been dead for six years now, and his son Gordon was off in college.
“Yep, this is the place I’ll rest my bones when the time comes. I jus’ hope that Gordon has enough mind for tradition to bury me here. He finds it mighty ghastly, living across the way from where all his ancestors lie. But what does he know? Young people these days. I’d sooner be cremated and have my ashes stirred into the cake batter at the church ladies’ Sunday luncheon than be put in a hole any other place.”
The sun disappeared behind some clouds, causing the light in the clearing to fade. “I gotta finish up now, Rex. Thanks for bringin’ the beer all this way. It’ll be mighty nice to drink one after gettin’ back from my sister’s up in Riverside. I’m leavin’ as soon as this hole is dug. Just leave it on the porch. The money should be there too.”
I nodded and turned to leave when I stopped. “Did you pop the tire on Dr. Cook’s van?” I asked. “I passed him on the way over here. He was madder than all hell.”
Dugan smiled evilly. “That I did. Teach him a lesson for buyin’ all my cigarettes. God forbid he’d have to blow some of precious salary on a purchase such as that.”
I dropped the beer on the porch and started for home again. I was just passing Cook’s house when he burst through the front door, running towards me at full speed.
“Rex! Thank God you’re back. Mr. Newman’s fever got worse durin’ the night. He stopped breathin’ a few minutes ago. That fuckin’ bastard popped the tire on my van and I can’t get there in time by walkin’. Can you give me a ride? His life is at stake!”
I nodded and we set off, practically running down the road. Five minutes later, we rounded the corner and started towards the driveway. I saw that Lorelei was pulling out, backing up down the path. She stuck her head out the window and slammed on the brakes when she saw us.
“My goodness, Rex, what’s the rush? I was just goin’ to the post office. Why’s Dr. Cook with you?”
I explained the situation to her while trying to catch my breath. Her face went white. “Oh my, that is serious. Get in, Dr. Cook. I’ll take you there myself right away.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am.” He said, jumping in the passenger seat. They sped off, sending a cloud of dust in their wake.
I waited for the next hour or so on the porch, scratching Tallulah’s ear and watching the road. I must have dozed off, because I woke up to the sound of tires on the gravel. I jumped up and ran to the car. Dr. Cook and Lorelei climbed out. Both of their faces were grave. Cook’s eyes were red.
He threw his bag down on the ground, hard. “He didn’t make it. I got there too late. Mr. Newman hadn’t breathed in fifteen minutes by the time we got there. I tried usin’ the defibrillator, but it didn’t work.”
He sat on the hood of the car, hanging his head in his hands. “This is all his fault. Dugan. Twenty-five years now and I’ve never lost a patient that didn’t have to be. If that cocksucker hadn’t popped the tire on my van I coulda been there ten minutes sooner. He’d be talkin’ to his wife right now. He should be.”
His voice broke. Though he managed to hold back the tears, his face got redder. I couldn’t think of much to say. I put my arm around Lorelei. “My god, that’s awful. I wonder what Mr. Dugan’ll say when he gets back from his trip in a few days.”
Cook froze for a moment. I thought he was heaving for a sob, but instead he wiped his eyes and stood up. He was looking at something in the distance, as if deep in thought. Just as suddenly as it had come, he snapped out of it. “Well, I guess I outta be goin’ home now. Thanks for your help today, you two. If you ever need anything at all, just give a holler.”
As he walked away, I could have sworn I saw a smile at the corner of his lips.
“He sure got over that mighty quick.” Lorelei said as we walked back towards the house.
I wasn’t sure what day Dugan would be back, so when I opened the store that week I only expected to see Cook early in the morning. But I didn’t see him, either. I waited there with the water bottle on the counter for four days straight, but there was no sign. I assumed he was still pretty broken up about Mr. Newman’s death and was taking a few much-needed days off.
I closed the store at 7:30 every night. If I didn’t have a customer between 6:45 and 7:15, sometimes I shuttered early. Thursday evening was shaping up to be just that. I put my book back on the shelf under the counter and went around to start turning the lights off.
I reached down to pick up a soda that had fallen behind the fridge when the door burst open, banging hard against the wall beside it. I dropped the soda, sending the bottle crashing to the floor.
“Now, what’s the meaning of…” I turned around to say, but stopped. Dugan stood in the doorway. His suit was crumpled like a tissue, marred by dark stains. His face was as red as a ripe tomato. His hair stuck up this way and that like he’d just gotten out of bed. When he spoke, his voice hoarse.
“Rex, I need you to gimme every last drop of cleanin’ supplies you have in this here store.”
I looked at him for a moment, dumbfounded. “Uh, Mr. Dugan, I’m not sure if I’m at liberty to do that. The other folks in this town might…”
He came running up and stood within a foot of me. “You don’t understand. I need it all and I need it now. Do you know what that jackass doctor did to me?”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine. Now, I can sell you maybe half of it, but…”
He continued like I hadn’t spoken. “After I left town Sunday evenin’ he slithered like a water moccasin over to my property and chopped down the power line. With an axe. Ain’t nobody there to report the power’s gone out. D’ya know how I make sure that all of my customers get their grandmas and grandfathers and great aunts and all the rest back lookin’ as nice as their wedding day?”
I gulped. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“I put ‘em in freezers. Ones that must be kept with a chill to preserve ‘em. Now, tell me, if your power’s gone out and your freezer don’t work, what happens to all your ice cream and bags of Birdseye Vegetable Medley after all that cold is taken away? And it’s a hundred degrees for three days straight?”
I felt the color drain from my face.
“I opened my front door half an hour past and it was like I’d walked right into the Devil’s ballsack. I went down to the basement and you wouldn’t believe what I saw. Flies everywhere, like the room was made out of honey. Black liquid drippin’ out of the doors of the freezers. I near fainted, it smelled so bad.”
I didn’t need to be told anything more. I went over to the cleaning section and started handing him bottles of Clorox and Pine-Sol.
“He’s done it. He’s really done it. I passed the doc on my way over here. You wouldn’t believe the smile he gave me. Like he’d just heard the whole town came down with scarlet fever. I popped that damn tire on his van, but how was I s‘possed to know what happened to Mr. Newman? He’s gone and ruined my entire livelihood. I’ll never hear the end of this. Folks’ll start crossing the county line to get other business. They’ll whisper. They’ll point. I’ll have to deliver Mrs. Jameson to her family in a fucking paint can now. I won’t have it. I won’t take it for one second longer.”
As I rang him up, I saw that awful gleam enter his eye again. It glowed almost as brightly as the gold chain around his neck. He hoisted the bag up and turned to leave. As he slipped out the door, he grinned again. “Doc’ll never know what hit him. Maybe I’ll just have a new body for the graveyard soon.”
With that, I was left alone in the store.
I spent the rest of the night with a pit in my stomach, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. This was getting out of control. Had Dugan threatened Cook with murder? I’d hated many a person in my lifetime but I’d never hated them so much I wanted them dead. Lorelei must have sensed that I was troubled, because she leaned over and put an arm around me. I sighed and fell asleep soon after.
I was terrified to open the store Friday morning. I didn’t want Dugan to walk through the front doors, blood dripping off his hands, and ask for some garbage bags. Or Cook, for that matter. But I didn’t have to worry. Neither showed up all day. Late that afternoon, I was almost falling asleep. The bell chiming on the door woke me up. It was Josie Larkin, daughter of a farmer that lived outside of town.
“Hello, Mr. Clark!” she chirped, walking over to the refrigerated section and grabbing a bottle of Fanta.
“Good afternoon, Josie. What are you up to on this fine day? Did your father give you the day off?”
She popped the cap off with an opener from her pocket. “Yep. Daddy’s cuttin’ wheat all day and said he didn’t need any help. So I went walkin’ in town and ran into Mr. Dugan. He came up and asked if I’d make a special delivery for him. Said he’d give me ten dollars for doin’ it.”
I nearly froze as she handed me her money. “Did he now? What…uh, what kind of delivery?”
She grabbed the change and stuffed it in her pocket. “Sorry, Mr. Clark, I can’t tell you that. He had me sworn to secrecy. I can’t tell nobody. I just popped in here to get a drink before I drive over. It was hard work loading it all into the truck. Made me real thirsty.”
She started towards the door. “What? What did you load into the truck?” I called, but she just waved.
“You have a nice day now!” Josie bounded down the steps and jumped into her father’s pickup. The bed was covered loosely in tarp and rope. As she started the engine and drove away, the tarp flew up a moment and I saw it.
The back was full of gas cans.
I drove home from the store at 7:30 in a daze. Lorelei greeted me at the door. “My god, what’s wrong with you? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I mumbled something and slumped down in a chair at the table. She glared at me, closing the door of the fridge. “Rex Clark, you ain’t gonna get a single bite to eat until you tell me what’s got you all riled up.”
I told her about the gas cans. She shook her head. “You don’t really think Mr. Dugan is thinkin’ about torching Dr. Cook’s house, do you? That seems like a bit much of a reaction.”
I hadn’t told her about the power cut. But I wanted to believe it. I wanted to tell myself that Dugan had a perfectly harmless explanation and it would all be over. So I nodded. “You’re probably right. Maybe he’s just plannin’ on having a bonfire or something.”
I buried my head deeper in the sand as the night wore on. Tallulah disappeared for a few while but came back later, barking happily. Lorelei looked down at her. “I thought for sure those pups were comin’ today. Looks like she might’ve gone off to try and find a good place for later.”
After supper, we went to the bedroom. I hadn’t thought about the cans for hours. Soon after we were done, I slipped off into a dreamless sleep.
I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to the acrid smell of smoke. I coughed and sat up in bed. Lorelei called my name from the living room. I rushed down the hall to find the front door wide open, with her standing on the lawn. I stepped out and looked up.
Black smoke was rising from a mile away, floating above the treetops in black clouds. I knew where it was coming from. There was the distant sound of fire trucks blaring their horns. I walked down the steps and wrapped my arms around Lorelei. She gulped. “Well, I guess that wasn’t too much of a step up, was it?”
I decided to close the store that day. I drove there myself half an hour later to flip the sign and write a note of explanation. On my way back I almost stopped at the sheriff’s to tell him what I saw, but I knew there wouldn’t be any proof. Dugan would’ve taken every precaution so that he wouldn’t be caught.
Saturday passed in a relative blur. Lorelei and I spent the afternoon and evening chopping wood and putting it in the shed for winter. Though the day started out sunny, clouds rapidly overtook it, growing darker with each passing hour. When the wind started to pick up and there was that electric feeling in the air, I knew we were in for a storm.
We finished around 8:00, just as the rain was really starting to pick up. Lorelei went into the house to change her clothes while I put the tools away. Just as went to walk up the porch steps, I saw Cook passing slowly by on the road in his van. One new tire stood out in contrast to the three old dusty ones. A pit formed in my stomach.
He turned his head and saw me, slamming on the breaks. I ran over. “Dr. Cook, I think I know where you’re goin’. I just want to say that before you…” but I stopped.
His eyes were unfocused, staring off into space. I saw a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam lying on the passenger seat, next to his medical bag, which was spilled over. His hair was scorched in some places and I could see burns on his arms.
His laugh was low and solemn, almost as slurred as his words. “Rex. I shoulda known that bastard would do somethin’ like this. That…that there house was in my family ‘most as long as his family’s been puttin’ people in the ground. My great-grandaddy built it with his own two hands. We’ve added onto it for years. Me n’ my sister were born in the guestroom. My mother died in the upstairs bedroom. All them mem’ries. And you know what? It all gone. Gone. Reduced to cinders. All because he couldn’ have his Malboros. My house looks like his lungs now. All black and ashy. Well, I got somethin’ for him. Somethin’ reeeeal nice.”
I shook my head. “Dr. Cook, wait, you can’t…” but before I could stop him, he slammed on the gas. The car thundered down the road, raising a dust cloud in its wake.
I stumbled back to the house. Night was falling rapidly, almost as fast as the rain was picking up outside. I went through the door and sprawled onto the couch, hanging my head in my hands. I had no idea what to do. As the rain beat harder and harder on the roof, I sat there lost in thought.
My stupor was interrupted by the back door opening and Lorelei stepping through, a panicked look on her face. “Oh, Rex! I can’t find Tallulah anywhere!” she cried.
Her yells broke me from my daze. What was I doing? I needed to stop this. “Lorie, I know that sounds bad, but I got somethin’ to tell you, Dr. Cook…” but she cut me off.
“Look at it outside! It’s rainin’ harder than hell and she’s got her pups! If we don’t find her soon they could be drowned! What if she’s holed up under a tree somewhere? Have you seen her since this afternoon?”
I tried to bring up the van again, but she ran towards the back door. “I’ll go look in the yard!” I almost protested but stopped. I looked out the window at the spot where Cook’s van had resided twenty minutes before. An idea formed in my mind.
“Yeah, you do that! I’ll jump in the car and go out lookin’ for her!” I grabbed my keys off the peg by the door and rushed into the storm.
I felt bad about lying to Lorelei where I was going. I really did care about Tallulah and her pups. But I had to stop Cook before he did something terrible.
I raced down the street as quick as I could. The wipers were on their highest setting and I still had trouble seeing out the windshield. Puddles had already started forming on the road, sending up large sprays of water whenever I went through them.
I was going so fast I nearly sped right by Dugan’s. But I slammed on the brakes just in time, almost running into Cook’s van parked in the driveway. The storm clouds loomed over the gothic house, making it look like a haunted mansion. I climbed out of my car and started towards the house. It was full dark by then, and I was soaked to the bone by the driving rain. As I passed the van, I saw that the driver’s door was wide open.
I mounted the steps, pounding on the front door. “Dr. Cook! Mr. Dugan!” I cried. “It’s me, Rex Clark from the store? Don’t…”
The door swung inward lazily. It was already open. No one answered my calls as it stopped, hitting the wall beside. I could see through the short, dusty front hallway and into the lighted kitchen beyond. A large pool of blood covered the tiles, seeping through the arch and staining the wood floor.
I moaned in horror and turned around, faltering down the porch steps. I was too late. If I hadn’t wasted those ten minutes doing nothing, this all could’ve been prevented. But now there was a man dead, and it was all my…
My train of thought came to a stop when something caught in my headlights. The car was positioned at an angle, sending two bright jets into the woods across the road. The first thing I saw was Cook’s medical bag lying in the ditch. The second was the figure in the trees.
I recognized the natty black suit right away.
I stumbled forward, collapsing against the hood of the car. Dugan was rapidly disappearing down the path towards the graveyard. Something was clutched in his right hand. I followed it down to the ground, where a dark shape was being dragged through the mud. The beams lit up the rain as it fell, making it shine like liquid gold.
I managed to let out a hoarse cry, barely audible over the wind. Dugan froze in his tracks. I realized too late that I didn’t want to see. But I didn’t look away. The first thing I saw when he turned around was the blood coming out of his mouth. It was pinkish and diluted from the rain, but I could tell what it was all the same. His hair was plastered to his head, greasy tangles taught against his face. The suit was stuck to him as well, emphasizing his skeletal frame. The large thing he dragged down the path was covered in muck and grime.
His bloodshot eyes settled on me for a moment. They seemed to glow in the lights. A few seconds passed before his mouth split open in a grin. It was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen, like putting your head underwater and seeing a shark baring its teeth at you from the depths. As I watched, he put one finger up to his bloody lips, like this was an inside joke that only him and I knew about.
He let it drop and turned around, dragging the body towards the graveyard again.
The next few minutes are lost to me. I vaguely recall getting in the car and driving in the direction of home. I know I hit a few potholes and bumped a thing or two along the way, because the car was covered in dents in the morning.
At some point, I stumbled through the front door to find Lorelei sitting by the stove, petting Tallulah’s head. Eight puppies were lined up along her stomach.
“She was behind the stove the whole time! Look at them, Rex! Couldn’t you just eat ‘em…” but she stopped when she saw my face. “Holy hell, what happened?”
But I ignored her as I stumbled into the kitchen to call the police.
Sheriff Winscott came to get me the next morning. Lorelei kissed me as she put Tallulah’s dish out. I climbed into the passenger seat and we were off down the road.
Winscott shook his head. “I knew somethin’ like this was bound to happen. Those two have been snipin’ at each other for many long years now. You can’t hate someone for that long without wantin’ to kill ‘em at some point.”
I said nothing. Five minutes later, we pulled into the driveway. Cook’s van was still parked, the cab flooded with water from the previous night’s storm.
Winscott stepped out, breathing in some early morning air. “Now, I want you to go over exactly what you saw last night.”
I shivered, but nodded. “Okay. Well, I parked over there and started going towards the house, and…” but I stopped when I saw the two officers carrying a sheeted body out the front door. The arms flopped to the side as they took it towards the ambulance. The sleeves of its jacket weren’t black, but white.
“What was that you were sayin’?” Winscott asked, jotting something down in his notebook. But I kept watching as they loaded the body into the back. One of the officers stumbled, causing the sheet to slip down from the face.
Dr. Cook’s lifeless eyes stared back at me.
“Two blood pools in the house. Both bastards must’ve shot or stabbed each other or somethin’. Doc was dead in there, body in the kitchen. But we can’t find Dugan’s…” Winscott was droning, but I took off running, towards the path that lead into the woods.
“Hey! Where are you goin’?” He called, but I ignored him. I swatted branches out of my way as I looked down at the ground. No footprints in the mud. Just drag marks.
I burst into the clearing. The sun graced the treetops, lighting the whole space with early-morning rays. Something gleamed off to my left. Ten feet away, right next to Dorothy Dugan’s grave, was a freshly filled-in hole. The shovel still stuck out of the wet dirt. I walked to it, staring down at the glinting object at the head of the resting place.
It was Dugan’s gold chain.

Mf Doom 2

I wrote a post last week about MF DOOM. I'm not going to reference that much here but if you wanted to catch up feel free: https://www.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/lbfhtmf_doom/
This isn't much of a conspiracy post but there isn't many places online that I can truly express my thoughts and feelings with like minded enough people. This particular sub is a little strange but last week I thought, what the heck, there's at least a few people that would listen and maybe join in on the discussion. I was surprised that not only did my post get upvoted, I saw a lot of different kinds of discussion happening. There was a few references people had made that interested me, so I journeyed through those references in the following days. What happened next I wasn't really expecting.
Someone had mentioned in the comments that the interview mentioned in the song I had highlighted was an Alex Collier interview from 1995:
https://youtu.be/pM9GPFwWgnA
That particular evening I was in a rut. One of those ruts you feel inside your DNA. The kind of rut that your subconscious, or higher self knows how to move through but you're just sitting there; Stuck in your conscious meat suit slowly decaying and you can't really do anything about it. I watched the video. A lot of what Alex Collier had said spoke to me. He also affirmed a lot of internal research I was doing, which was a nice feeling for a change. I was browsing /pol/ just to see what was happening and had a very higher ground feeling to make a post, so I did. What started out slow turned into probably one of the nicest experiences I've ever had online (been online since 97'). It almost felt eerily coordinated. Every feeling I had, along side the knowledge that I was seeking, arrived in a giant flurry in one of 4chans most disruptive boards. Here's the link if you're interested:
https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/307119240/#307136699
I've been learning in the past 7 days, when you shine your own light, people feel safe to come out too, regardless of where you are. I did that for DOOM, I did that on /pol/ and I'm doing it again. I think this board is the closest to matching my vibration, even though this particular post wouldn't really belong in any kind of filing index (Think old school library drawer indexes). I personally find /conspiracy to be quite boring actually, as the theories lately are all click bait with very little due diligence... I digress.
I found navigating through my inner storm and feeling the need to express my inner connection, it guided me down a wonderful, dare I say, life altering path. I'm digging it so far and will continue to learn and move forward with it.
Okay. Back to DOOM.
As I move forward as consciousness having a human experience, I find MF DOOM always has lyrics there for me when I've leveled up, so to speak. There are very few artists I've been influenced by where I feel like I am a student. When I listen to DOOM, I feel the need to learn his songs word for word because whether I know it or not consciously, I know he's waiting for me (Actually had a dream about him and he was talking to me... I already know it's strange). I feel like DOOM laid out many keys, that will help me as an entity and I am honored to learn... Again, I digress.
I wanted to lay out some of these keys for 'us' and maybe we can chat about them, if you're up for it. I've had such an incredible time learning from all of you, like DOOM, I was hoping maybe if I kick off some lyrics, we could make something out of it. So, without further ado, here are a handful of songs / lyrics that I feel are relevant to start off a discussion. Maybe some of you could help me with my studies, breaking some of this stuff down.

Gazillion Ear: Assorted Lyrics

https://youtu.be/uPcF_xUF7mc
Grillin' stare, yeah ya boy had drama
Got em on a mental plane, avoided bad karma
Once sold a inbred skinhead a nigga joke
Plus a brand new chrome smokin' with the triggers broke
I thought I told em firing pins was separate
He find out later when he tries to go an rep it
Took a Jehovah money for a Arabic Torah
Charged in advance, translate it and ignored it sorta
One monkey don't stop no slaughta
Sick slick, hid in a book
The only way they find it if it's spittin in a hook
Listen, don't look now, keep walkin'
Traded three beans for this cow, cheap talkin'
Hawk men, stalkin', hit a weed, hawkin' often
Cough into a coffin, might as well scoff the pork then
He's like Wharf, some say stronger though
Off the top J strong bow, play along bro
Wear a mask like yo off the Gong Show
Flow slow as Mongo, Don Juan thong pro
For ya info when he's not practicin' Jim Crow
A actress and some nympho bimbo
Half cocked and half baked
Used to keep a full stock of work half rocked and half shaked
My mistake, silent track agreement
For more G's than lines and cracks in the cement
In any event it's fake like wrestlin'
Get em like Keak da Sneak on mescaline
Ahem, elixir for the dry throat
Tried to hit the high note. Villain's just a itsy bitsy zygote
By remote, send in the meat wagon
Braggin' MC's packed in with they feets draggin'
Villain, his agenda is clear
Endin' this year with dividends to spare, here
It's not meant for the scene
Went through the celin' after enterin' his center bein'
A new meanin' to sales through the roof
Guaranteed raw and saw his truth is truth, proof
We need some more oil for the machines to burn, learn
Jiminy crickets, he gets lucky like winnin' free tickets off simply lyrics
One mans waste is another mans soap
Sons fan base, know the brotha man's dope
A real weirdo, with a bug rear flow
And the way his hair grow was ugly as a scarecrow
He wears a mask so the charge won't grab
On a rooftop with a large stone slab
Heads up, talk white and thought niggerous
Refuse to walk tight and got his off the figure'ish
How he handle the money was strictly Dan Stucky
Monkey hustle, man on fire
Later for the date than the hadron collider
And cost more, if it's seemin' like a style
DOOM leave the competition steamin' like a pile
Smile, ding!
Sparkling jewels, in effect like alternate side of the street parkin' rules
Fools, the roach is never dead
Live for a week, then dehydrate with a severed head. Instead..It was depicted as Flik did
Split, the wick's lit

Great Things:
https://youtu.be/Ck1VM0DbPvo
Just put your mind to it, you'll go mad far
Like the plasma in reactors when you're headed to the stars
Let it be tomorrow, it starts on the inside
Use intuition and conscience as a guide, glide
Choose a target, however immaculate
Focus till it manifest pin-point accurate
That's a sure bet, and Villain's no gambler
Freeze frame a thought like it's caught on camera
Advice is free of charge, just pay attention
A donation as they say in this dimension
A game-winning strategy: support your favorite charity
Playing with polarity could drain a whole battery
Beware of apathy and procrastination
And put the plan in full effect for instant activation
Just a few jewels that's hidden in plain sight
Ain't nothing else to it but to do it, but do it rightAight?

Cellz Pt.1 Feat Charles Bukowski
https://youtu.be/QbP_p_hHrtU
Born like this, into this
As the chalk faces smile, as Mrs. Death laughs
As political landscapes dissolve
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
We are born like this, into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charged so much, it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this, walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Castrated, debauched, disinherited, because of this
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive God
The fingers reach for the bottle, the pill, the powderWe are born into this sorrowful deadliness
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs, land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shape the earth
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The rotting bodies of men and animals stink in the dark wind
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that, the sun hidden thereAwaiting the next chapter...

Cellz Pt.2:
https://youtu.be/M4LJOXqLK1o
DOOM from the realm of Al-Qayyum. Smelly gel fume
Separating cell womb to Mele Mel, boom!
Revelations in braille, respiration, inhaleView nations fail, shaking of a snake tail
Make due, blazing swords, traze the haze, praise the Lord
Saving grace. Lace your broad, she say she bored
A crazy straw, ink and stale-dried paraffin
Candy corn crap rappers pale by comparison
Chiefin beefin' bein' off deep ends, divine bright shines even
Dimes quiet as minds by design, mighty fine
Slight rewind, tightly bind, blind lead blind
Need minds now, that was this is then
Listenin' to sizzlin' officialtons whisperin' him again
Major vets spaded through the vest with a bayonet
Save your breath, gave a F, pay your debt, they forget
Make 'em sweat bullets, crime pays no benefits
Then it gets wilder with more childish degenerates
Yodel at your uncle flows, my motorcycle trunk fullsfrom 2, 1 to 1, loose crumbs to chunks in bundles
Hands down, better than what your mans used to get
Standin' around for where the translucent lucid spit
Missin wheel, you don't listen, you a feel head
Sittin' in the kitchen, pissin', twitchin', kissin' steel lead
Crime pays no dental nor medical
Unless you catch retirement, county, state or federal
Ya heard like roaring waters in a seashell
If a tree fell, ya couldn't tell from 3 cell
Be real careful, they tellin' by the earful
Kids doin' skid bids, acting out is terrible

Strange Ways:
https://youtu.be/T_3wjvGiWTU
Wreak havoc, beep beep it's mad traffic
Sleek and lavish people speaking leaking to the maverick
He see as just another felony drug arrest
Any day could be the one he pick the wrong thug to test
Slug through the vest... Shot in the street
For pulling heat on a father whose baby's gotta eat
And when they get hungry, it ain't shit funny
Paid to interfere with how a brother get his money
Now, who's the real thugs, killers and gangsters?
Set the revolution, let the things bust and thank us
When the smoke clear, you can see the sky again
There will be the chopped off heads of Leviathan
They pray four times a day, they pray five
Who ways is strange when it's time to survive
Some will go of they own free will to die
Others take them with you when they blow sky high
What's the difference? All you get is lost children
While the bosses sit up behind the desks
It cost billions to blast humans in half, into calves and arms
Only one side is allowed to have bombs
It's like making a soldier drop his weapon
Shooting him, and telling him to get to stepping
Obviously, they came to portion up his fortune
Sounds to me like that old robbery/extortion

"GMO"
https://youtu.be/tV1sRLYksNM
here they go, feminizing men again
Then pretend they don't know when we know it, xenoestrogen
Exorcise the jinnKeynote lecture with a spin
Meant to get c-notes from end to end
Whoever use canola oil ya soul'll boil
For a longer time than it take a diet cola to spoil
Uh, I get what you're sellin'Swellin' from alien microfilaments, it's Morgellons
Even if you're gellin'
What's that in your melon? And what the hell is they sprayin'? No tellin'
Barium strontium, aluminumWell drink responsibly, get the truth from DOOM and 'em
Can't trust the tap water much less the kettle
Double entendre to the phrase test your mettle
The rest'll settle, just to get fed well
As the livin' dead infect the red cell
Don't drink the milk, it's spoiled
The blood and stuff in it make it stink, that's why it's boiled
Snake oil sales from doorbell doctors who slip Mickey's
And trick you to strip to get jipped quickly
Kick me, you know it's gettin' worse
No help bein' upset, ya startin' to curse first
Better off with a good sense of humor
Research to know what's the truth instead of rumor
Ya partner DOOM is who'll rideOr either do or die like farmer suicide, chew your pride
Might as well start 'em out in pro boxin'
Than force-feedin' them toddler food laced with excitotoxins
They did it like the funky worm
Enough to make a junkie squirm, mice making monkey sperm
Or rice infused with diarrhea drugsWonder why it's here, well shrug, hells yeah it's bugged
And it gets bugged'er by the minute
Question: will the frankenfoods kill us?
Or turn us into thangs off Thriller, or dang gorillas?
Breeds of a needless variety
In the name of greed we get a seedless society
Flounder genes in your tomatoes
Cod in your potatoes, playin' God, retarded'er than Play-Doh
And as the juice gets sweeter
No use in bein' cute if you's a useless eater
Make it hard to keep your mattress clean
That was mean, little froggies with sex changes from atrazine
And aspartame in gum, Splenda is plenty fun
Left many strung, agenda 21Or have your third eye cry or your side blown
Well right on, forgot to sign the guide stone
Yours truly all caps DOOMSue him if you’re gloomy, or boo'em to your tomb
Slicko, it's like robitussin but toxic
She take it to feel better, but there's more to the concoction
She'll peep it
Got a lot, can you keep it?
Got these keys to the cuffs
To unlock all these secrets
Yes I'm professin', yes teachin'
With the villain, strategic
Got these apples and peaches
The size of Kelly and Regis
You won't believe till you see it
And with them come these allergies
Underage with doubles DsAw, man, ya killing me
Literally

There are more lyrics that I love but I feel they would be out of step for this sub, I fear any more and I would be exiled to /mfdoom.

Give him what he wants

I still don’t know why I did what I did to Michael. I’ve thought it over every way I can, turning the memory upside down and inside out until it felt like I was going insane. At the time a part of me thought it was just a bit of fun. I meant no harm. I was nineteen and hanging around outside of school waiting for my girlfriend to get out when I spotted the guy in the parking lot. He must have been there to pick up his younger sister. Like a lot of us, he wasn’t able to make it to university, or even just get a job in the city, so he was stuck at home like the rest of us. But growing up he’d been a real pain in the ass, a special kind of dweeb born out of insecurity and petty jealousy. He hated everyone. He hated the smart kids most of all, but that didn’t stop him from saving some choice words for the rest of us. All of us kids were just trying to have a good time. Smoke a little dope, get a little drunk, feel each other up… Michael would rock up to our usual haunts with the police in tow and then act high-and-mighty about it the next day.
He had thrived in a controlled schoolyard environment. But on that day, looking at him sat in his car, it dawned on me we weren’t in a schoolyard anymore. It was the real world. And in the real world there are consequences for your actions. Acting like an asshole, pissing people off… well it’s liable to get you a slap around the head. I could see him eyeing me when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew what he was thinking as I sat there smoking. Had I turned out to be everything he hoped? Some loser with no future and no ambition? It made me angry to think of him judging me when he’d turned out no better. His sly little glances only got worse when Dave and Andy wandered past and I called them over for a chat.
He must’ve known we were laughing at him. He must’ve heard us chant his old nickname and clutch our stomachs in faux-laughter. We were doing it for his pleasure. I could see him squirm. It wasn’t meant to go further than that. I just wanted to give him something to think about. I knew he’d spend that night tossing and turning, as furious at us as were at him. But then Andy started throwing beer bottles and I should have stopped him. It was a silly thing to do. Too loud. Too angry. Too stupid. But before I’d even thought of what to say to Andy, Michael was up and out of his car and filming us with his phone.
“Please leave the premises!” he cried, his voice a little shaky. “This is a place for learning! Not for drunken yobs to pick up underage girls.”
We shouted our own replies, about his sister, his mother… Michael called us losers. We called him pathetic. If we’d left it at that, maybe it would have been fine. But it went on until Michael cried something a little too close to home.
“I hope your dads are fuckin’ proud!”
Those words hit a sensitive spot for Dave. Before I had time to think of what any of it might mean to him, the young mechanic was already charging forward. I figured he’d just hit Michael, but he slapped the boy hard around the back of his head, hard enough to daze, and then hoisted the little Michael up into the air with ease. Andy ran over and grabbed the boy’s ankles to stop him kicking, and we were all howling with laughter and excitement, just waiting to see where this was going to go.
“Time out corner!” Dave cried. “Michael you’re going in the time out corner! Just like in Mrs Ketchum’s class!”
Michael was calling us every name under the sun, but when he heard Dave tell me to pop the trunk his tone changed. In the few steps it took for Andy to cover the distance, Michael went from screaming to shouting to pleading to begging and then right back to raging. I later found out he was claustrophobic, something to do with his own dad being a real piece of work. But we didn’t know at the time. We just wanted to scare him a little…
We shoved Michael into that trunk like he was a cardboard box that wouldn’t fit. It took three attempts to slam the hatch shut. First time his ankle got in the way and that must’ve hurt, but Michael was still determined to make his way out. Second time it was his wrist, and Michael’s voice started to falter. Third time we caught his fingers, and Michael started screaming like an injured dog. I often think about him pulling his hand back into the dark. I think about it because it was the moment he gave in and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. At times I blame him for letting us do it… mostly I just hate myself for putting him in that place.
After his hand slithered into the shadows, we finally managed to close the trunk for good and shut out Michael’s hysterical crying. And then we sat, drinking beer, while Michael screamed and howled. It was a ragged desperate kind of shriek that went on rising forever like a violin crescendo, finding new and dangerous notes of despair. You ever heard a dog scream? It had that kind of animalistic quality to it. Andy would later say it was like an opera singer with his hand caught in a wood chipper. I can’t say for certain if it bothered the others as much as me, but after only a few minutes it felt like I was carrying a lead weight in my stomach. We talked and laughed and joked, but I don’t remember what about. Even as I nodded and replied, I found all my thoughts returning to the muffled cries of the young man trapped in the trunk beneath my legs.
By the time he stopped, my girlfriend was coming out the doors, and Dave and Andy said their goodbyes. Two more beers were sent arcing through the air to shatter into a thousand pieces and they were gone like we’d done nothing more interesting than just chat about the weather. I waited for them to turn the corner—my girlfriend had stopped to chat to some of her own friends and I knew I had a few minutes—and I finally opened the damn trunk. By now my stomach was in my ass, that’s how fucking bad I felt. I may have even started mumbling some kind of response. God… maybe even an apology.
But no one was there to hear it. Michael was gone. He’d torn the shit out of the fabric in my car, gouged these long claw marks into it like a pissed off cat. I touched every inch of that trunk like I was trying to find the magician’s secret hatch. By the time my girlfriend made it to my side, I’d pulled what was left of the fabric away and was getting ready to crawl under just to take a look.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.
“N-n-nothing,” I stammered. “He must have… he must have…”
He must have what? I never finished the sentence. I rationalised it, you see. Told myself he’d gotten out, that was all. Even as I rolled past the lot and I saw Michael’s sister staring at his car, looking around for her older brother, I just kept telling myself he’d gotten out and was probably running to the police ready to file assault charges.
Course, that wasn’t true at all. From what I understand, Michael’s sister had to go back in and call her parents, who in turn called the police. I woke up the next morning to Michael’s smiling spotty face on the gazette, the picture cribbed from one of our school photos. It must have been taken at a school play with me standing just a few places over. I was nearly sick with guilt at, and I tried to pretend that my mind was playing tricks on me. Not that it stopped me going over my car with a fine-toothed comb. I’m hardly CSI, but there were a few blond hairs in the back that I’m sure he must have shed. And the scuff marks… they were never imaginary. They were real. 100% authentic. I called Dave and Andy and they confirmed what we’d done, not that they saw it with the same significance.
“Oh he musta got out is all,” Andy said. “For all we know he wandered out and straight into some serial rapist’s van. I don’t know what you’re so worried about. Is he in your basement chained up?”
“No,” I answered.
“Is he dead and buried in your garden?”
“No.”
“Did you chop him up and feed him to his family at a town barbeque?”
“No.”
“Good well chill the fuck out,” Andy said. “We played a mean prank is all. Not my proudest moment, sure. But hardly worth going to the police over.”
I convinced myself of this because it made a kind of sense. We really had just played a mean prank. We hadn’t killed anyone, or raped anyone, or stuck knives into them like they were a pin cushion. But in the background of my mind, I learned a new mantra. It was one I pictured myself saying to the police, to the press, to Michael’s weeping family. It was like a prayer that I started muttering in quiet moments between chores and work. A prayer that’s still with me. A nervous tick that I repeat incessantly in hushed breaths even though I don’t always know what it means.
I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean no harm.
They should’ve carved those words into my skin the day I was born. It’d save people who meet me a lot of time. Lied to my old man and got my little brother in trouble? I didn’t mean no harm. Hid my speeding tickets from my parents until the debt collectors came and took the car? I didn’t mean no harm. Got caught driving home after too many drinks? I didn’t mean no harm. Lost my first real girlfriend after I got drunk one night and sent some messages to her sister on Facebook? I didn’t mean no harm! Hell, I got a daughter I don’t see anymore after I overslept one night and didn’t manage to change her. Her mother turned up one Sunday morning to pick her up and found her watching cartoons in a shit-soaked diaper while I slept off an apocalyptic hangover. Last thing I remembered, I’d put her down to sleep and had a couple of beers.
I didn’t mean no harm.
They never found Michael. They looked and looked and, yes, they even looked at us. A few people had seen us messing around with him—some from passing cars, some from tall windows—and the police found out. Our faces were in the local papers, and some wider-reaching ones too, but it never amounted to anything because the police didn’t have a body. His parents made a few public pleas, my car was taken and searched top to bottom. They have it at a police impound where I ought to have picked it up, but never did. A psychiatrist would probably tell you that’s guilt. But fuck… there’s a good chance I left the car to rot because I just couldn’t be bothered. I’m not sure I even know myself anymore.
First time I saw Michael after the incident I was wandering out of a bar and feeling a little mean, which happens a lot when I drink alone. I had a half-bottle of beer in my hand when I passed this homeless guy sitting outside. He was new, probably a drifter, and just looking at him put all these cruel thoughts into my head. I often think cruel things, and I was ready getting ready to ignore these ones like normal, except this homeless man, he calls out and asks for a swig of the beer. And I look at this guy and all these pictures come rushing into my head. Pictures like sawdust soaking up vomit and piss. Pictures like my boss talking down to me after I used the wrong mop in the canteen. Pictures like the way the admin ladies look at me when I smile at them in the smoking area. And then there was this guy, sitting there with a blanket on his knees, absent-mindedly tilting his head side-to-side while waiting for an answer.
“Sure,” I said, and I threw the beer at him so hard it conked him right on the skull. There was a little peep there for a second, a split-second cry of pain that was cut short. It made me laugh. It really did. I hadn’t meant to hit him, just scare him. But the outcome made me giggle anyway. I was already walking away, feeling a little better, when someone else called out to me, and the sound of their voice made my blood freeze solid in my veins.
“Alex,” it said. “Psst! Hey! Alex!”
It was Michael, and I turned feeling as if the whole world was about to snap shut on me like a Venus flytrap. I nearly passed out, just crumpled to the floor then and there. I’d spent too many years telling myself that boy had disappeared on his life, just done a runner off into the horizon to go live in Mexico or Sweden or who-fucking-cares.
“Over here!”
It was coming from the homeless man. I got closer and tried looking for the voice, but all I saw was some smelly old guy, blood trickling down from his temple.
“Down here! Under the blanket.”
I pulled it aside and saw a can of lager—open but empty—resting between the man’s legs.
“That’s it! Right here!”
A finger rose up out of the empty can and wiggled at me like he was saying hello. Michael giggled.
“You found me!”
“What the fuck…?” I said. “Michael? Michael is that you?”
“You bet!” he cried. “Look, I need a favour and I think you owe me given…”
“How the fuck… what is this? A magic trick?” I reached down and took the can and held it up, turning it over and over and even shaking it thinking something would rattle. But nothing did.
“This is not a trick, Alex.”
A veiny eye bulged against the ring-pull and glared at me.
“Been a long time!” Michael said, chirpy in a way he’d never been in real life. “You gonna do me this favour or not? I mean… I don’t want to point fingers or nothing, but who’s fault is it that I’m in here, eh?”
“Uh…”
“Oh you aren’t so fuckin’ witty now, are you?” he laughed. “I didn’t mean no harm,” he added, mocking me with a faux-dumb tone. “You say that in your sleep, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
“Jesus Al, I know I called you dumb but we both know you’re better than all this uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, crap. Come on, use your big boy words!”
I held the can up to my ear and rattled it once more.
“STOP IT!”
He screamed with the authority of a drill sergeant and I dropped the can without thinking.
“Fuck. Shit. Sorry,” I mumbled. “Sorry Mike.” I picked the can up and focused on the ring pull. A single brown eye was looking at me and I felt myself shrink before the withering gaze.
“You gonna help or you just gonna keep trying to make me sea-sick?” he asked.
“Course I will,” I said, nodding. “Anything. Anything at all. You know people are looking for you, right?”
“Did I ask for your fucking advice Alex?” he snapped. “If I ever need to know how to get rid of pubic lice I’ll speak to you ASAP, kay? For now, I just need help. A tiny bit of help. That’s all.”
“Sorry.”
“Look, I think even you can manage this. Just put the can down and, you see that homeless guy? The one you knocked out like a real Good Samaritan?”
“Yeah.”
“Put his finger in the hole.”
“What?”
“The hole in the can,” he said. “Any finger. Doesn’t matter. Just do it.”
I nodded and carefully put the can back where I’d found it. I held the old man’s wrist with one hand and gingerly pinched a single finger with the other, sliding it into the can like I was slipping a wedding band on.
“That’s it,” Michael said. “Up to the knuckle if you can.”
I pushed the finger in as far as it could go without the metal cutting the old man’s skin. I was so close to the poor guy I could smell the coppery trail of blood that ran down his scalp. The realisation made me feel like a real piece of shit. I hadn’t meant to hit him, just scare him. Chance and bad luck meant the bottle had hit him. That was all.
I didn’t mean no harm.
“Oh goody,” Michael giggled after I’d wedged the finger in there good and proper. “Oh and Alex, I have one more favour to ask you.”
“Anything,” I nodded.
“Don’t look away.”
When it was over the can looked like a spent bullet, all frayed around the edges like a blooming flower. And the man was… well, he woke up when the first finger bent backwards at the knuckle. And he looked at me like I was a doctor about to explain some strange amputation. He wasn’t angry at me, he just wanted to know and somehow that made me feel even worse. I’ll never know exactly what happened to him, anatomically speaking. To put it simply that old homeless guy, he got sucked into that can, and not fast like explosive decompression either. It was real slow going, painful too, given the noises he made. And the way he ran around screaming and hollering while his arm was just torn to shreds, that’s something I’ll never forget. As a kid I watched this old horror film and a guy got sucked out into space through this tiny little hole over the space of minutes and it was just like that, only it weren’t cheap rubber and latex skin getting pulped into goo.
By the time it reached his elbow I was trying to help pull it off. Somehow, he was awake the whole time, joints cracking and snapping, bones and muscle sloughing off like melting wax. How no one came to help us I’ll never know. I screamed for help so long my throat turned raw, and I was spitting up blood for days.
Just before the end, the man went quiet and he looked at me like he was a cancer patient that just knew what was coming. The can was up to his shoulder and, without warning, he just slipped on in there. Pop! and the mess flew up into the air and only the can was left behind. You could see the inside plain as day, and there was blood and goo and even a tooth, but there wasn’t a whole human stewing around in there. More like half-a-glass’s worth, but not a whole man.
“Michael?” I whispered.
But no one answered.
They were gone.
-
“Give him what he wants,” Dave said, droning into the phone like a braindead drunk.
“Give who?” I asked.
“You know. We put him in there and he never left.”
“Dave,” I said. “Where are you? Do you need help?”
“Just give him what he wants Al,” he replied. “He’ll ask for a lot, but we owe it to him.”
Click.
The line went dead and I was already putting my coat on before another minute had passed. Dave and I hadn’t spoken in years. Hell, it had been a good four years since I’d heard any voices in cans, whatever that was. A dream, I figured, even if I did drive past some very scared looking cops outside the bar the next day. It was just a dream, I told myself. Yet I knew what Dave was talking about, and that scared the hell out of me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the garage Dave owned hadn’t opened all day. A string of angry voicemails were left waiting on his phone and the flashing red buzzer lit up the small reception desk with Godly patience. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. I saw it through the front window with my hands cupped around my face. Dave and his family lived above that place in a small flat, and I had to break a small window around back to get inside. Dave was sat against a wall on the cold shop floor, his chin slumped down over his chest and his legs splayed out in a V. I tried the lights, but they didn’t work, and glass crunched under foot along the way. Someone had done a real number on the place. Rubber and metal lay strewn about the floor in twisted bits and pieces. Whoever owned the car Dave had been working on would be pissed. It was smashed all to hell with panels wrenched off and embedded in the shop walls and floors. The drive shaft was sticking through the back windshield and the roof had been curled back like a sardine can. It looked like it had gone through a vivisection, especially given how liquefied flesh dripped off the twisted frame like vines on an old wreck.
When I moved around to check under the hood, I saw a dense labyrinth of finely machined parts I guessed to be the engine block. Fingers jutted out of every shadowy crevice, and delicate mechanisms were choked with hair and skin. I thought of the old man and the can and felt my gorge rise. Something about the scene looked familiar and I was wondering what that was when a flash of colour caught my eye. I backed away to get a better look and, angling my light, I saw a small red shoe dangling from the bumper by a lace. It was the kind of thing a girl of eight or nine would wear, and it was dripping with blood.
I thought of Dave’s wife, of his kids… of what he’d said on the phone.
“Dave, what did you do?”
“What I had to.”
I looked and Dave was staring right at me, blood filling his mouth. He looked so pale in my light I didn’t know if he was just close to death or an actual talking corpse.
“What happened here?” I asked. “It’s like a bomb went off.”
He stared for a while longer and then lifted his arm, pointing to the car.
“I think his back is broken.”
That voice was like acid in my veins. It definitely wasn’t Dave who’d spoken. He was still staring at me like a drunk on the side of the road, his glassy eyes vacant of all thought.
“Over here Alex,” Michael said, and I followed the voice to the engine block. “Woo hoo.” A small finger wiggled at me out of a black cylinder. “Yes that’s right. Look, I need your help. I know it’s a lot to ask of someone like you, but you gotta admit, you kinda owe me.”
“Sure,” I mumbled. I was dumbstruck by the strangeness, sure. But looking back I can also remember a kind of haze, a crippling guilt so powerful it was like standing on the surface of the sun, like there was enough power in Michael to snap me in two like a bundle of raw spaghetti. “Anything you want.”
“Good,” Michael said. “That’s what I like to hear. What I need is for you to grab Dave, pull him over, and just pop him down against the engine.”
“Anything,” I repeated.
“You’re a good guy you know that Alex?” Michael said. “Just try not to fuck it up.”
I half-expected Dave to put up a fight, but as I stepped over, he just looked at me like we had a job to do. Not really thinking, I gave his shoulder a tug and he fell over. His head hit the floor with a loud crack! Poor fucker. His eyes rolled around like I’d turned his brains to omelette.
“Don’t worry,” Michael cooed. “There was nothing important in there anyway.”
“I deserve it,” Dave slurred. “Shouldn’t have hesitated when it came to my little girl. That was selfish.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Michael agreed.
“So selfish,” Dave groaned as his eyelids fluttered and his breathing slowed.
It was hard work dragging him, but I got him there. I had to prop him up awkwardly against the slab of metal like it was some kind of upright pillow. It was a clumsy job, but good enough. A single thumb emerged from the darkness and gently rubbed a trickle of drool from Dave’s lip.
“Alex?” Michael said. “I think you know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I nodded. “I won’t look away.”
And I didn’t.
-
I didn’t have a shit childhood but it sure had its moments. Despite a father with anger issues and a mother with gin in her veins, it wasn’t too bad. The only time where I felt truly singled out for cruel and unusual punishment was the time my cousin locked me in an airing cupboard. I’d had a wicked time with night terrors growing up and it was no secret among the family. I think he thought it’d be funny, or that maybe he’d find something out about me. I don’t know. Looking back it was the first time I ever understood what real cruelty was. It was a small space he crammed me into. God no bigger than the inside of your standard washing machine. And dark, obviously. Pitch black all around me. And you gotta understand that to a kid the universe ain’t ordered and sensible. Shit just fuckin’ happens all the time.
Old dude you liked who gave you candy every weekend? He’s dead sorry. Come home to a crying mother? No one’ll tell you why. Wake up one day and your old man don’t go to work no more? He won’t say what happened, but everyone’s crying and it soon turns to fighting. Do you know what a pro-mo-shun is? Well your best friend’s dad just got one, so now you’ll never see him again. Ever.
The universe is chaos.
You will suffer.
Without warning.
Enjoy.
To me and you being locked in a room or a cupboard probably ain’t a big deal. Kick the door down. Scream. Cry. Holler. Shout. Bide your time. Do what you gotta do. But I didn’t know that. I was six and strange things happened to me all the time. How was I to know my Aunt would hear and come open the door in just ten minutes? I didn’t know someone would come for me. I didn’t even know whether this was part of the fucking plan. For all I knew I was right where my parents wanted me, and my suffering was the desired outcome.
You’d think I’d be scared of dying in there. But as I screamed so hard that my lungs turned ragged, well… it wasn’t dying I was thinking about. It was living. It was spending my whole life trapped in the dark, in the cold and lonely outskirts of existence where no one would come to get me. How long does a person live? Eighty, ninety, a hundred years? To a kid it doesn’t matter. It’s all the time you got and when you’re six you have a lot of time. And there I was in a space so small I couldn’t stand or lie down or lift my elbows more than a few inches from my side.
By the time my Aunt arrived I’d broken two fingers and dislocated a shoulder. Panic can do that to you. I remember her looking so sad and worried and confused. She asked me why I’d done it, let myself get so crazy, but I wouldn’t say. If she didn’t know already, she’d never understand. I only did what I did because of something that, deep down, all kids know. But then they grow up and forget. Or at least you’re supposed to.
You’re never alone in the dark. There’s always something waiting for you in there.
You’re not meant to remember that fact as an adult. It’s meant to burn away until it’s just ash. But something about Michael had set the thought ablaze in me again… maybe it was when I locked him in the trunk. Maybe it was when he first came back. But as time ticked on I was starting to feel like I could just about glimpse something in the corner of my eye. Like I had a taste of the truth and it was hurting me… physically hurting me like a knife in my skull being twisted around by a great big greasy fist. Sometimes I’d find myself staring at shadows and trying to look beyond the dark into the place beyond, the place I’d seen first-hand as a kid, the place that Michael had slipped into… or more-likely dragged.
“I didn’t expect her to grow up like that.”
Andy was sat next to me, his feet up on the dashboard with a cigarette between his lips. Trying not to make him look, I pulled up my sleeve and wiped away the blood collecting in the corner of my eyes. I’d been staring at the footwell for the last hour or so, refusing to blink. If Andy had thought me crazy, he didn’t say. Truth is he didn’t look so hot either. He’d had a wife once upon a time. A real battle axe. Dave and I used to joke that if it weren’t for the fact we saw the two of them in the same room, we would think Mrs Andy was just her husband in a wig. But Andy liked her. He did. He liked her a lot. And by the time we finally saw fit to contact each other, I was pretty sure Andy had already given his beloved over to Michael.
“She’s looking good,” he smiled, biting the tip of his tongue like a cherry pip.
I looked at the young woman walking down the street and I shrugged. I hadn’t had thoughts like that for a long time.
“Looks like him. You can see the family resemblance,” I said.
“Do you think he can see us? Do you think he sees everything we do?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not sure he’s even human anymore.”
“Well you better hope he is,” Andy scowled. “Otherwise this plan is shot to shit. She’s a pretty thing though. Couple of ways we could show him we’re serious.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I replied. “We need to show him what he can lose if he doesn’t leave us alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean let’s try and scare him, yeah? Not piss him off even more than he already is.”
“Whatever! Now come on and get ready” Andy said, sitting upright and slapping his thighs with excitement. “Here she comes.”
Something about this experience was wearing on me. The last few weeks had started to smudge together. I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten out of Dave’s place. It was like my brain had purged all those events from my memory and yet sometimes if I closed my eyes I’d see skin-coloured wax melting through a sieve. It made me ill every time. But it wasn’t just that rolling around inside my head, making me nervous. It was Andy. He had a nasty little look in his eye.
The girl was on her way home from college. She was all grown up since I’d last seen her standing outside her school, looking around for her missing brother. She looked like she’d grown up on the straight and narrow, and I could see a satchel bouncing around by her hips that was full of thick-looking text books. It was fucking bizarre but right before we snatched her, right before Andy lunged outta the car to hug her waist and throw her against the door, I remember thinking,
Good for her… getting an education.
And then Andy punched her so hard her head snapped back against the car window and she went out cold, sliding onto the floor.
“Got the little bitch,” Andy growled as he bundled her into the car. “Come on! Move it! Fuckin’ move! We can’t just sit here forever!”
I turned the keys and pulled outta the alley we’d been hidden in. When I looked in the rearview mirror I could see Andy staring down at Michael’s sister.
He looked insane.
-
“Don’t,” I said, and I gently pulled Andy’s hand away from the girl’s hair. He’d spent the last few minutes caressing her head a bowling ball.
“Isn’t the whole point to scare him?” he asked, flashing me a toothy grin.
“It’s me you’re scaring right now,” I said. “Just… just wait…”
“For what? She wakes up and starts crying ‘Michael Michael come save me!’?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, wiping another trickle of blood away from the corner of my eye. We were sat in our old locker room. The school had been shut down years ago and all its students sent to another place a few towns over. There was no electricity, so we had to bring our own lights. They cast harsh shadows that plucked away at my consciousness like the aura of a migraine. “Please just sit down,” I said. “And stop pacing.”
“How the fuck is this my fault?” Andy screamed, and he probably didn’t mean the words entirely for my benefit. For a brief moment he unravelled and punched a locker door so hard, and so often, that he left an impression of his knuckles as bloody dents. Only when the locker collapsed backwards did he seem to finally register where he was and who he was with, and he sucked a long breath between his teeth while trying to soothe his sore fist. Muttering furiously, he walked over to a nearby sink and washed the blood away.
“I gave him what he asked for,” he said when he finally came back. “Did everything he wanted. Not just Bethel either. The dogs. The cat. The chickens out back. Even the fucking ficus had to go. If it lived, it went.”
I just nodded.
“It wasn’t enough,” he growled.
“It never will be.”
The girl was awake and she was looking right at me. Her voice had made me think of how funeral homes smell, like it was the kinda thing that’d talk to you as you turned to mush in a crypt somewhere.
“Oh boy!” Andy cried, stepping towards her like a boxer in the ring. “Here we go sweetheart!”
He grabbed her chin with one hand, and he looked ready to crush her head in a single move. Big guy, our Andy. But for some reason I wasn’t too worried about that. It was the girl. How long had she been listening to us? And the way she looked… she didn’t seem right. Even as Andy lifted an arm and sent an open-handed slap barrelling towards her, she never looked away from me. She barely even flinched.
“Michael!” he roared, turning to every corner of the room. “We have your fucking sister! We have her and we’re not afraid to hurt her cause we ain’t got nothing left to lose! Anything we do now pal, it’s on you!” His voice was hoarse like a soldier screaming bloody murder. Like this was a battlefield and he was getting ready to face off against a final foe. Like he had it all figured out.
But I was starting to get the funny feeling we hadn’t found a winning strategy at all.
“That’s not true,” she said.
“Where’s your brother?” Andy roared, hitting her again. “Tell him to come out! Tell him to come out and face me like a fucking man!”
“What’s not true?” I asked, my words frightened whispers.
“You have plenty left to lose,” she answered. “Alex,” she smiled, her mouth all crooked from where Andy’s gorilla-fist was crushing her cheeks in his palm. “Could you do me a favour? Please?”
Andy looked at me for a moment like he thought I’d planned some kinda ambush, and her and I were in league.
“Don’t answer her,” he said. “What the fuck is going on!?”
“Don’t look away,” she said. “It’s important to him that you watch.”
“I won’t,” I whispered, and I think it was right about then that Andy’s bluster failed. I’m sure I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes before the hand reached out of the girl’s mouth and grabbed his wrist. Andy cried for me. He cried a lot. Towards the end he cried for his mother, for Bethel too. But the girl, she never cried. What happened to her was probably just as bad as what happened to him, worse even. Bodies aren’t meant to do that. But whatever hold Michael had over her, it was strong. I guess it must be so dark inside a person…
By the end she looked like a clay statue of a girl that had been squished by a toddler’s fist, those chubby fingers gripping so hard that some parts squeezed out in funny trickles, while other bits split apart and crumbled. I remember looking into her chest cavity when it was over, looking at the way the shadows made it look so big and vacant. I’m pretty sure her head had been split open in places, but it was hard to know what was her, and what were just the dripping remains of Andy.
I was captivated by the raw destruction of the scene. I must have stayed there for an hour, just looking down at her. Sometimes I’d catch a sound, a little bit like a crying man. It sounded like Andy but it didn’t always come from the gaping hole made out of the girl’s collarbones. Sometimes it came from the lockers behind me.
If I listen carefully, I can still hear him screaming in the dark.
-
“Don’t do that again,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“Don’t try to threaten or intimidate or outwit me.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ve seen what’s on the other side.”
I nodded.
“It’s not good,” he added. “You’re not meant to have a body here. Makes you… indigestible. It’s been a real struggle, Al. You owe me for what you did, more than just a single lifetime because thanks to you I’m not going anywhere, am I?”
“No…”
“It was a rhetorical question, Al.”
“Sorry.”
“You should be,” he said.
“Are you okay?”
The words pulled me away. I’d been staring at my feet the whole time, my eyes drawn to the patch of shadow beneath my seat. The train shuddered gently as it traced the railway’s curve, the lights flickering weakly. I could feel the air growing heavy.
“What’s your name?”
The woman sat beside me and smiled. She was old and spoke with a sympathetic authority.
“Alex,” I said.
“How are you feeling Alex?”
“Not good,” I answered, and to my surprise I burst out crying. “Not good at all.”
“I’m Beatrice,” the old woman said. “But you can call me Bee.”
“Thank you Bee.”
“Do you have anywhere safe to stay, Alex?”
I nodded, wiping the snot from my nose.
“Are you going there now?”
The few other passengers aboard were looking at Bee like she’d just approached a hungry lion. They’d spent the journey doing everything to avoid me, treating me like your typical lunatic. I never tried to hide anything, never tried to hide who I was or what was going to happen. But they always thought I was talking to the voices in my head. They didn’t know I was speaking to the shadows. They didn’t know how real it was.
“Do you need any help getting home?” Bee asked. “Is there anyone I could call for you?”
“I have no one,” I said, feeling my heart break a little at the admission. When I looked up at Bee, I saw the tunnel fast approaching. I reached out and grabbed Bee’s hand so tight it must have hurt. She looked so worried, so concerned. Her eyes darted around looking for what had scared me. When she realised what had scared me, she looked relieved.
“Oh it’s okay,” she said. “Are you claustrophobic? I’ll be here the whole time but don’t you worry. The darkness always passes.”
The train entered the tunnel. There were a few gasps, one even from Bee who must’ve wondered, just like all the others, why the shadow that enveloped us was so devastatingly black. That was the last noise any of them made. There were no screams. Only a whoosh of displaced air, like I’d stood next to a speeding truck on the highway. Something enormous had just passed me by, and it took all my strength not to scream.
There were other things too. Smaller predators floating behind in a shoal, scavenging what little remained. They would ignore me if I stayed perfectly still, so said Michael. When the light returned there was there was hardly a sign that there’d ever been anyone else aboard. The sole exception being the severed hand of Bee that remained clutched in my fist. Even in plain daylight I couldn’t bring myself to let go. I just kept holding it, hoping and willing the past few minutes could somehow reverse and undo themselves. I didn’t want to be this person. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s suffering.
“But you are,” Michael said, and when I looked back down he was there. “You are very responsible. None of it could happen without you. You think that things would be like this if it had just been Dave or Andy on top of that car? No, Alex. It was you. You remembered what lives in the dark, and they remembered you.”
I let go of Bee’s hand and it fell to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s too late for that Alex. You carry this darkness around like luggage. And the holes you make are getting bigger every day. A lot of those people are still in one piece. Do you know what that means? They’re alive. And there’s no time here. No death. No entropy. They will always be alive. And the things that live here just love flesh. Can’t eat it, but they sure do love to play with it. Something alive, something whole, that’s like Christmas. They spent a long time playing with me. But I’m not sure ol’ Bee will be able to strike up a deal like I did. No escape for her.”
“I should kill myself,” I whispered.
“You can,” Michael said. “But where do you think you’ll go?”
“Hell?” I asked.
“Oh Alex,” he laughed. “Hell implies another option. But this is all there is. Just an abyss. The abyss. And the things that live in it. You don’t have a lot of time in the light, nobody does. But that’s why it’s so important you put it to the best use. And, as we’ve already discussed, everything you have really belongs to me, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Good,” and I could hear the smile in Michael’s voice. “There’s another stop soon. Just a few more people, then we’ll move on. Gotta change it up Al. We don’t want to draw too much attention. After all, there’s so much more you can give me.”

side bets in street craps video

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Shooting Craps Learning How to Fade - YouTube

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