Zack's Dead, Baby, Zack's Dead

I was in Mexico, the summer of 2004, on an assignment for my NRA chapter. We figured if we could express the importance of gun ownership to potential immigrants before they entered the country our work was half done.

My spiritual guide and translator Marcos, recommended a little out of the way place for me to catch a real American styled steak made from Mexican beef. Sounded damn good after the week I had had. It seems that the rest of world lacks the intellectual capacity for understanding the importance of being locked and loaded.

The "diner" turned out to be a tent in the middle of nowhere, deep in Chiapas. There was a single man inside, frying a large, tasty, slab of cow.

"Sit," he said in Spanish, or so I gathered by his hand gestures.

I did, looking about me at the bland walls of what appeared to be your average camping domicile.

Without even asking me what I prefered or how I wanted my steak cooked, the old man slid it towards me on a wooden plate. I looked at it, then him, watching as his slow smile creased the already wrinkled visage.

"Steak sauce?" I ask, slowly, hoping he knew enough English to understand.

He gestured for me to wait a moment, you know that one, the finger in the air, and he dug out a little piece of pottery with a bit of leather tied to the top as a cap. It wasn't ornate or decorated in any way, and I assumed its contents would prove likewise. Offering me the bottle, I took it and removed the leather. Instantly I was hit with the force of a thousand herbs and spices, most of them I doubt have been classified by modern man. This was an esoteric steak sauce.

I poured out a small taste, but the old man urged me to use more and more. Dousing the steaming meat with this dark colored flavoring, I knew something was amiss. Why so much sauce? Did the august chef realize that his meat was dry? I stopped pouring and shook my head no, as my companion continued to urged me on. He smiled wickedly as he passed me a knife and fork.

"This knife is dirty, so you have..." what was the point? I knew there was no one else here to clean the dishes. So I simply wiped the knife on my shirt.

I cut, and carefully raised a dripping bite to my mouth. What happened next was magical: this was the best damn steak I had ever tasted.

"Fucking A right!" I exclaimed, and could read the delite in the old man's face. I finished the entire steak, sauce covering my mouth.

Stretching my legs out on the floor of the tent, I began to relax, and nodded a thank you to the chef. He smiled politely, and then, I don't know what. His face became contorted, his smile grew to a monstrous grin with fangs growing larger by the second. The body of the man disappeared and that grin opened wide. I could feel myself being lifted from the floor, and something pulling me inside the mouth. I was all at once horrorfied, mystified, and a third fied that has yet to be entered into our lexicon.

The open mouth accepted me and I found myself in a vaccum of time, or as I call it, Sucktime. I was surrounded by images from my past. I saw myself as a child, kicking a can down a dirt road. There I was in grade school being made fun of for wetting my pants. Then, in high school, my first heavy petting experience. I marveled at some of the images, shirked from others, all the while I was floating uncontrolably through Sucktime.

Then without warning, it stopped. I was without body or form, but where was I? It was a room, quiet and well kept. Light was scarce, but there was enough for me to make out four figures, huddled together crying. Could I move my formless self? Yes, I could, I could float my conscious, and that's how I approached the four...and a casket.

"He was too young," a familiar female voice cried.

"Oh, we hardly knew yea," a familiar male voice somberly stated.

"What?" A second male voice.

"Figuratively speaking."

I knew these voices, I recognized them so well it frightened me. It was my family, my mother, father, brother and his wife! "My God!" I cried (as a vapor you have no voice, so you're talking to yourself mostly)"Don't let it be!"

"Zack tried so hard to make it," my mother continued. "He just wasn't focused enough. The world of competitive bodybuilding takes focus."

"Bodybuilder? I thought he was working as a gun lobbyist?" Josh, my brother, asks.

"He was, before that he tried his hand at writing," my dad says. "That just wasn't for him."

The family sobbed a little more, and I watched it all from my bird's eye view. Contemplating these things they said. Yes, it was true that I attempted to become a competitive bodybuilder, but that sport frowns on cigarrettes and alcoholism. As a writer I didn't do half bad, I sold an,...um, erotic art piece to a magazine in Germany that seemed to fly well. What was all this "didn't make it" and "no focus" malarky.

I was interrupted in this train as I recognized three faces entering the scene. My friends John, Aaron and Jim who had some girl on his arm. To them I floated next.

"So you were there when it happened?" John asks Jim.

"Yeah," Jim starts. "Zack was trying to be cool and funny making fat people jokes, when all of a sudden he grabbed his chest and started talking about pain. I thought it was part of the routine."

"He was always joking like that," Aaron says.

"Live by the gun, die by the gun," John comments before yawning.

The three stood some distance away from my huddled family.

"So, Angela," Aaron started. "What do you do for a living?"

"Oh, I work with Jim at the capitol."

"Did you ever meet Zack?"

"No, I just came to support Jim in this dark hour."

Jim nodded, oh so sorrowfully, and I knew what was really up: Jim brought a date to my funeral.

Josh, my brother and Megan his wife approached the three and they all exchanged greetings and words of condolence.

"Zack would have appreciated knowing you guys came," Josh said.

"I'm going to miss the guy," John starts. "What ever happened to his writing?"

"I think there are some shoe boxes full of the stuff in our basement."

"He was pretty good, it was all different and out there though," Aaron comments. "Remember how he always made up word?"

Megan nods. "Yeah, he said Shakespeare did it and it was a sign of genius."

The randomnimity of their comments left me stuporgasted.

"I would really like to take a look at some of his stuff," Aaron, that sly weasel, rejoins.

"Wouldn't be a problem," Josh shrugs. "You can have it all if you like."

"Speaking of which," Jim begins. "Your brother had a hat, this one he bought in London."

"Oh right."

"Where's that?"

"Somewhere in his things," Josh explains. "You want it?"

"Sure."

"I'll find it for you."

Josh and Megan nod a good-bye and walk away.

"What kind of a hat is it?" Angela asks.

"A driving cap."

"Why do you want it?"

Jim looks at her eyes, smiles so lovingly and says: "Because I thought it would look good on you."

She melts and the two take to making out, hard style, right there at my funeral.

John and Aaron look on approvingly and begin to talk amongst themselves. I float away from them, the casket and my family. This was too much, by way of some peyotal accident I had ended up in the future as a vapor. I wanted to go home, I wanted to leave the Sucktime forever. As I floated away I came nearer to laughter. Two female chuckles were growing louder. Before I knew it I was staring at Kate and Katie two former loves of my life.

"Ewww! I know! He always thought he was Don Juan or something!" Kate laughs.

Katie agrees. "You'd sleep with him and come away with a blanket of his chest hair all over you."

"Did you see how bald he was!" Kate exclaims. "Josh said he thought it was because he was always wearing that stupid driving cap!"

This was horrible and I had to leave. There was one thing, though, I knew I had to do before I departed. The casket had been surrounded by my family, but now it was clearly visible. I got my float on, and peered down at me.

Bald, bloated gut and a plasatic complexion. I didn't need this, why would an old steak magician send me to this place! "God Damn you!" I cried, "I want to be forever gone from this place!"

No sooner had I finished the words than I was sucked back out of that room and into blackness.

I don't know how long I was out, but when I came too I was laying on the bare ground. The tent, and my wallet, had magically disappeared.

Never again could I find the old man. Whenever I asked my guide/translator he would just point to the sky. For many days after I left that place, I contemplated that future I had glimpsed. What was I supposed to learn from it? What did it all mean?

The first thing I did when I returned to the states was wrote a new will, demanding I be cremated, while wearing my driving cap.