The TFP Plotto Machine Output #5

I very deliberately did not edit this. I hoped to keep a sort of desperate, almost stream-of-consciousness kind of feel. And while a couple of elements of the story were derived from real life, and I accessed some feelings that are only too real, I wove them into a work of fiction. I'm okay. Really.


Trigger

Hate is easy. Anyone who tells you it’s a waste of energy or that it just poisons you and tears you down doesn’t know how to do it right.

I spent my life avoiding making waves in the ocean, or even ripples in the puddle. Always tried to keep my head down, get through my studies, get through middle school and high school, get through a chapter in my life that I just wanted to put behind me. That was the order of the day. Keep quiet, get through it.

Somewhere along the line, the bullying started. An unkind word now and then, someone “accidentally” bumping into me and knocking my books to the floor. They saw someone keeping his head down and thought they’d try to get a rise out of him. You know how the all-knowing grownups would always say, “just ignore them and they’ll go away”? Yeah, that’s bullshit. If you ignore them, they keep picking and picking and harassing and escalating until you react. Of course, if you do react, they’re validated and just go at you all the more. There’s no win. There’s no way out of the cycle.

So, over time, a less than stellar day became a bad week. A bad week became a month that I was just hoping and praying to get through in one piece. All the while, I was hoping that ignoring them would make them go away, that they’d find another victim, that the next day would go by without incident and I could get a moment’s peace. And all the while, I never retaliated. I never gave them that validation, that affirmation that they could get a rise out of me. I never stood up for myself.

And thus did I learn to hate. I found that I could soothe my weary and aching soul with fantasies of violence, of inflicting terror on the devils that pursued me every fucking day of my pitiful life. Each night, I broke their bones, spilled their blood, fed on the fear in their eyes as they beheld the creature they had created. Each day, they saw their whipping boy wither and die a little more.

You can try to ignore them for only so long. Eventually, you begin to believe the things they say. Eventually, you begin to think that their cruelty is somehow your fault, that you’ve brought it upon yourself, and that you deserve it. And thus did I learn to hate myself.

Extracurricular activities were pointless. My grades began to slide. I had convinced myself I was just stupid, and there was really no point in trying to better myself anyway. By the time I graduated, I didn’t fit in anywhere except with the others who didn’t fit in anywhere, and I was doing well to be average and unimpressive. By the time I graduated, all I had left was hate. I hated everyone who had ever harassed me, and more than them, I hated the fool looking back at me from every reflective surface I passed. After every bully had gone away and, most likely, forgotten my name, that asshole still followed me.

Hate was all I had left. Hate was food, and water. Hate was the air that filled my lungs and the blood in my veins. I held on to my fantasies of tracking down those I had come to demonize, torturing them, making them feel the constant and unending anguish that was the undercurrent of everything in my life.

Oh, I tried to get past it, through it, over it. Therapists were hacks. I tried different religions. Taoism, Krishna, Christianity, Buddhism, eastern, western, Unitarian….no payoff. Self-help books were shit. Nothing helped me heal. I don’t know how the thought of self-harm first entered my mind. But I thought the jerk in the mirror could do with a little punishment for tormenting me all this time. And I had a nice, sharp pocket knife, so what the hell? What did I have to lose, after all? So I rolled up my sleeve and gave it a go. The first time that steel bit into my skin, the lights went on. Finally, I was getting what I deserved. Finally, here was something that made sense of the chaos inside me. Finally, here was something that I alone could control.

Turns out, inflicting violence on myself just made me think more about inflicting violence on all the old devils from school. It made sense. It was their fault I was like this. They were the real evil. They were the reason I was addicted to cutting myself. I should be punishing them. And in a world saturated with search engines and social media, they’d be easy to track down. Knives, guns, even certain imaginative medical equipment were easy enough to come by. I would be so easy to make a list, work through it, then off myself.

So I started looking them up. One after another, I saw college graduations, accolades, successful careers, happy families. Slowly, I began to realize that maybe these were not demons. Maybe they were people. Maybe they were never evil. Maybe, like me, they were just trying to find their way as they were growing up. Maybe we all just misunderstood each other, and we none of us handled it well.

All this time. All this time I carried this hatred, this rage, this pain. Could it be that I was mistaken? Was it possible they didn’t know what they were doing to me? All that I had been, all that I thought had been done to me, could it really have been a big misunderstanding?

Could I find it within myself to give up the hate that sustained me? Could I surrender? Could I forgive……?

 

A subtle person, becoming involved in a complication that has to do with mistaken judgement and suspicion, makes the supreme sacrifice in carrying out an undertaking.

After speaking to her sister, Lidia started to recall the past years of her suffering.

She has been a very delicate spirit, looking for true in her life, knowing that her judgment was extremely damaged in what was real between good and evil. This all came with complications of just wanting to find happiness and rid the darkness that had been with her since childhood.

Thinking back, she remembers the complications it created with her family and friends nearly driving her to suicide. She dreamed about the river and the beauty of its currents just taking her away, but instead found strength in the river’s beauty and power, becoming one with this powerful entity. As her suspicions grew with others, she had decided to sacrifice finding the truth at that time. The river gave her direction to where she is today, entering back into the keepers arms.
--- merged: Feb 10, 2013 at 6:47 PM ---



AlterMoose this was very powerful and awesome. Brought some intense feeling to the surface. To me that is what writing is about, bringing your audience into the story.

 

Farces of Good and Evil: Part Five.


Hell’s boiler room. Don’t try to make sense of the steel, glass and brass. Escher certainly couldn’t. He finally found his way to Heaven where he belonged but took a strangely circuitous rout that did justice to his art, if not to his sense of direction. For Isabel, wading in six inches of warm, iron-flecked water, it was a whole new world of untidy filled with steam.

“Don’t tell me you live here, Jezebel! It looks like Hell”

“Well, technically, everything here is Hell, but there’s the punishment zones … everybody knows abou tthem, but then there are the residential zones for demons, lesser damned, consorts, cohorts and minions and, of course, Satan himself. Then there’s here, the machinery that keeps the whole thing going. Hell’s boiler room, though on occasion, Satan does use it t take the overflow of damned, or on special occasion, ‘Consign’ Moloch when he’s been especially unhelpful.”

“How come Moloch would be unhelpful?”

“Well, he was a perfectly normal God for thousands of years, until the followers of Yaweh overran his followers, then badmouthed him, saying he was an associate of Evil. He’s still asleep, is he?”

Isabel gave him a prod with her toe. He bubbled from his mouth a bit but was otherwize unresponsive.

“OK, as gods go, he’s a bit limited in the omnipotency department. He’s especially, er. Challenged in the omniscience department. To be blunt, even the most retarded human would not stand a chance of winning against him in the ‘Mr-Knows-Bugger-All Entity of the Year” awards - Strange qualification for Godhead but there you go.

Isabel narrowed her eyes “Getting pissy and Flooding the place out could have trumped that. Noah's the one we shuold be worshipping.”

“Winners write the history, isn’t it.” Said Jezebel. “Lets get him up and running then deal with Satan”

“’Kay.” Isabel hesitated, “Will it work here?”

“C’mon, we’ve just got to try. Back to back now, but not too close to begin with”

It was strange how they could feel each others’ proximity. “Awake, ye” They chanted, and the brass seemed to begin to melt. Further apart Awake ye!“. It seemed obvious to them to adjust, as if there were a tuning of their position that hit a sweet spot.

Screaming. Moloch had sucked in a rasping breath, started, bulge eyed at nothing and everything in particular, and was hollering. Jezebel strode to him, grabbed his chin and said,

“You’re Home now … look you’re home.”

Now a good move. Moloch’s screamed more loudly.

“Shut. UP! You don’t have to like it, but here you are and quit your yammering”

“Yef Miftreff”

“NO” thundered Jezebel, looking at … whoops her eyes sliding in my, the author’s direction, “You’ve been pissing a lot of people off with those Fs. Let your S be S. Okay?”

“I can do that, Milady”

“Mind you do.”

“Y ... very well.”

“C’mon, Isabel, Hellevator this way”, and, bordered by inscrutable walls of clanking and pumping brass, they arrived at the gate. Jezebel pushed the ‘up’ button, and a distant rumble because a roar, closer and closer then stopped. The gate opened and the two women walked in to join a crowd of tormentees. Demons were scattered amongst them, whistling tunelessly. Gate closed and Hellevator ascended.

Isabel glanced over to Jezebel “what’s ..”

“Shhh” Jezebel shook her head.

On exiting, She explained “What with population explosions there has been overcrowding on account of more deaths on Earth. We can no longer accomodate the damned in the designated areas, we have to use whatever space we have.”

They were now walking along a seemingly endless corridor lined with ornately patterned red flock paper. Isabel fancied she saw scenes from her childhood depicted in it. She continued her questioning.

“But nobody was getting tormented, they were just ‘going up’ and demons were whistling. Nothing tormenting about that.”

“That for an Eternity?”

“Oh. Hmmm. Then surely, isn’t that ‘cruel and unusual’ even by Hell’s standards?”

“It’s not tormenting unless it’s tailor made. That Hellevator has been designated ‘Sixteenth level of Hell for Gropers, Stalkers and passive aggressive wind-breakers”

“That still strikes me as plain wrong”, said Isabel.

“If you want to see ‘plain wrong’, take a peek at Heaven. At least we’ve got the excuse that people are supposed to not enjoy themselves. Unlike in Heaven where, also overcrowded, the ‘Saved’ have to get up ridiculously early in the Celestial morning to reserve their place on a cloud. As usual, the German dead beat everybody to it. Angels are now forming into small brass bands and playing holy music to a Landler beat and replacing ‘hallelujah’ with ‘yah yah yah yah”. Some of the saved have been trying to smuggle themselves in here, and because our security is geared only to keeping people IN, then we’re stuffed.”

By now they were through the entrance to Satan’s Chamber.

“Bloody Hell!” cried Isabel “So he really does have horns and a beard and all that stuff!”

Satan was drooling “ …. Harmony and tend sheep that the little lambs may gambol joy of he who leadeth them bleat baa baa and donkeys lots of donkeys. Donkeys is good because they is donkeys and the balance is delicate and more donkeys and more sheep. And YES another lamb”

“Jezebel, my Stan was never this lame but still, it sounds like him. Could there have been a swap?”

Jezebel scratched her head. “Well, come to think of it, your bloke’s ‘muahahahaha’s sounded irritatingly familiar, too. Anyhoo …”

“Whoah .. What’s with ‘anyhoo’?”

“I like to keep current with vernacular. Let’s get back to back now.”

“What are we going to chant?”

“ ‘Avaunt ye’, sounds good as a catch all invocation, let’s work with that.”

And they did. They’d begun to get the hang of fine-tuning their proximity, and soon they were ‘Avaunt ye’ing with that ‘We’re so occult’ look plastered over their faces and …

Satan woke.

His voice was like a newly erupted volcano “WHOSOEVER IS IT THAT ME DISTURBETH MY REST … WHOSO BE’ST THAT”

“Stop! Stop! It’s just us”

“Oh,” said Satan. “I’m not feeling that good.”

“You’ve been in a babbling trance, these last few hours.”

“I know. Every ugly word of it, forcing itself from my lips while I sat here helpless to that drivel.” He waved his hand and a flagon of wine appeared. He downed it in one. “Ahhhh that’s better. Good to be myself again.“

“Good,” said Jezebel. “Okay, Isabel … now back to your Stan. I’m wearing out shoe leather here.” The two women turned.

“Hang on,” said Satan “Stan? What Stan?”

“Oh he’s a white wizard. He’d gone down with something like what you had. We’re off to revive him.”

“Wait just one freaking minute … stop when I’m talking … Stan … that Stan? White Wizard Stan? So suddenly you’re with the good guys? Eh? EH?? NO WAY.”

“What? What? I’m not going over to his side, You’ve got it all wrong and I don’t like your tone. I’m just off with Isabel to revive him.” Jezebel’s body, invisible beneath her red dress, would have been seen to be toned like the brass in Hell’s Boiler Room. Every fibre stiff, like an attack dog at the moment of scenting the prey. In a slow flash, she realised that he had been reading her wrong, almost in the same way that Isabel’s man had been reading her wrong.

“NO WAY … if he’s out of action, he’s out of action … this is our chance” Wheedled Satan.

“Our? I’ve had enough of this. ‘Our’ is bigger, far bigger than us. I’m done.”


“Hang on,” said Satan. “You can’t do that - you’re my Consort”

Jezebel exploded, “Oh yes I can, and I’m not.”

She retrieved her metal breast cups and chain mail thong fro somewhere and threw them over her shoulder. They landed, clattering, in a heap at Satan’s feet.

Satan went quiet and his brow furrowed until the tips of his horns nearly touched one another. “Of course you must do what you deem best,” he said. His face darkened like the forboding storm. “But with these items I gave you to wear, you have thrown ten times ten thousand years of comfort over your shoulder. Ten times Ten … all that you have … lost.”

Isabel glanced over at Jezebel. Jezebel’s face was stone, her jaw like a bear trap, the look in her eyes like Boudica’s chariot-knives. She grabbed Isabel by the elbow and motioned her not to stop.

They continued walking.