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The Problem With Thinking Matter 2: When Faced With Mortality |
| Written by Cody James Brinkman | |
| Thursday, 27 December 2007 | |
Reverend Olwells walked up to the pulpit. The crowd was thirsty, thirsty for his word, thirsty for his help. His spiritual dictations got them through the day. With everyone dead or dying, it was hard to console anyone, but he tried his best. A new chant had arisen this week. “Might makes right, might makes right!” they chanted together. “My brothers! My Sisters! My Children! Fathers, Mothers!” He beamed out to the crowd and they surged with exuberance. “This is the day! This is the time! We are the children left behind, are we not?” He posed the question to the crowd. And they responded, “We are the children left behind! We must catch up!” “Yes as the disease ravages across this nation, and all other nations! Revelations is over my children! Indeed, be the first to admit you were left behind! You live in the end, but are we to live a life of eternal fire and agony? Are we to be damned? No! No, I say no. We have missed the boat but we will catch up, won’t we?” he had the masses riveted “We are the children left behind! We must catch up! Might makes right, might makes right” the crowd swelled into itself. “In this time we must do all we can to re-connect with the father” he said softly “Believe it or not there are still those among us that deny gods awesome power! In the end of days when men fall by the masses and no ones future is certain, they layin the dirt and thumb their teeth to god!” “They are the ones who will stay behind! If they want hell let them have it!” the crowd was getting more and more excited every time Olwell pounded the pulpit with his fist, every time he pulled out the gold cross from around his neck. For two hours Olwell told the crowd that they had once been horrible sinners, which they had obviously done wrong some way or another. He told them that Jesus has already returned and everyone still on earth was damned. He told them they had missed the antichrist, failed to see through his lies. He told them a piece of the antichrist lived inside of them, each and every one of them. But they can still regain their father’s love, he said. They will do this by doing his bidding. He told them to kill. Jonah Caulk turned of his T.V and Olwells. It was only a matter of time, he thought to himself. Only a matter of time before those crazy bastards really started killing each other, before one of them killed him. Olwell had a following of terror. Everyone was scared shitless, epidemic can do that. Who would have thought when we invented penicillin that all those viruses would grow to overcome them. Who would have thought, in all of our wisdom and technology, we could be wrong. Jonah walked outside to his front balcony. The filthy streets were crowded with filthy people, buying filthy things and going to their filthy homes. Across the street a bent over old women came out of her house. “Seymour!” she yelled at the top of her scratched lungs. “Seymour!” she called again. From the balcony Jonah could see Seymour. Two houses down from the old women was a small alleyway, then a bar.The side door from the bar led into the alleyway. On the stoop of the sidedoor, sitting in all his glorious squalor was Seymour. “Seymore!” she cried “Seymour!” she took another step, looked up and down the street, then she looked up at Jonah. “Jonah!” she called to him “Have you seen Seymour?” Jonah looked to the alleyway. Seymour had heard the women and he looked up at Jonah beseechingly. “No Ms. Astler I haven’t seen him.” He lied. The bent old women called some more, hobbled around a few more times, and went in the house. Jonah looked again at Seymour. He went down stairs and outside. He looked up and down the street, and then over at the Astler house, Ms. Astler was not in sight. Jonah walked over to the alleyway where Seymour was hiding. “What the hell are you up too Seymour?” Jonah said when Seymour looked up with frightened eyes “I can’t look a her anymore. She’s crazy Jonah.” He said “Aww, come one now, what’s she saying now?” Jonah asked “She doesn’t want me going out, doesn’t want me seeing my friends, my girlfriends,damn Olwell talks through my stereo and looks at me through my T.V. every day.You know Alex Felling died the other day? He woke up one morning, he felt a little sick, he went to the doctor, doctor says ‘well Alex, you got it’, Alex was dead the next day.” He went on “And did you know yesterday Katherine Snipe was diagnosed too…I wonder if she’s dead yet.” Jonah winced at this. He and Katherine went out for a little while back in high school. He wondered if he should go to her funeral, probably not. “When am I gonna get it? When you gonna get it Jonah? Who’s next?” he was hysterical.Everywhere was the same story. Things were chaotic as is, life is crazy enough,the last thing one wanted to hear was that only three miles away the first death had come, because it was only a matter of time before it was right inyour own backyard. And everyday brought more violence. When it was declared once and for all that humans could stop killing each other, because we were all dead anyway, we decided to kill each other over who knew why we were dying. We decided to kill each other over who would go down in history as the great savior, the deliverer from disease. Jonah didn’t care why everyone was dropping off like flies. Didn’t feel there was any good in getting worked up over it, of course he had never gotten worked up over anything. He wasn’t dead yet, and tomorrow he may be. Jonah pictured a long comfortable nap. It might even be nice. Seymour on the other hand, couldn’t handle it. When he cursed the sinners, he found that the saints had no answers either. When he found himself among the sinners,he found he wanted the saints again. Seymour needed meaning in everything, and he needed to feel whole, and he wasn’t even close to obtaining his elusive comfort. For the past month Seymour had seen nothing but death. “Comeon, let’s get a drink” said Jonah “No no no I can’t go in there again.” Said Seymour. And her proceeded to tell Jonah how earlier, during Olwells speech, he told a man sitting next to him that Olwell was a ‘ ******* cockroach, one crazy bug bastard’ the man was a devote follower of Olwell, as it turned out. The man stood up and started yelling,“might makes right!” at Seymour. Three or four other guys in the bar had started yelling it too, and soon it looked like a fight would break out. The owner of the place liked Seymour, so he pretended to be angry and grabbed Seymour by the scruff of his shirt. He took him to the side door and told him not to come back until the Olwell supporters were gone. ‘They’re all gonna kill’em selves you know…an they wouldn’t mind takin a couple of us heathens with’em.’ “Well maybe they’re gone, I’ll go inside and look” Jonah said. He went inside and looked around, the bar must have cleared out since Seymour had left, because there were only three patrons inside. Jonah walked up to thebarkeep. “Hey…”he said in a low voice “those guys that almost killed Seymour still here?” “Nah,They got all riled up about heathens and naysayer, you know all that **** they like to talk, they started talking about my ‘clientele’, and decided this shithole ain’t as holy as the shithole down the street, so the lot left.” The barkeep said “good riddance” he added So Jonah and Seymour went inside to have a drink. On the T.V. was nothing but propaganda. It seemed every other commercial was Olwells cracked face telling you to ‘catch up, my children’, and the sickest part was that every time Olwell was on T.V. you could almost feel the people in the homes around you thirst for blood. You could hear his rhetoric echo of the city walls, crawl down the street. Jonah,Seymour, and the barkeep Anderson were the minority now. Far off in the distance they heard a popping sound. They paid no mind. Anderson thought it was about time we got what we deserved. ‘You can only beat a dog so much till it bites you back’ he said ‘It’s only natural’. Seymour was angry and scared. Anderson wasn’t surprised. And Jonah just didn’t care anymore. The rest of the world thought there was someone to blame, and that they should be punished. In thedistance the popping grew louder. Half an hour later they smelled smoke in the distance and heard the cry of a women. Then a low grumbling came. It started and swelled like a wave, getting louder and louder. Soon it was added to the din of their street. Then the grumbling cleared up, and the footsteps grew louder, and the popping sounded like gunshots, and the smoke clouded the window outside. All around they could hear, ‘ MIGHT MAKES RIGHT, MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!’ The door to the bar burst open. A large man stepped inside and pointed. The color drained from Seymour’s face. “There he is, that’s the one who called the Reverend a cockroach!” He yelled. The cleansing had begun.Copyright 2008 Cody James Brinkman |
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