SLOSH: Final

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Touch without mingling

In the night, my sister comes to me and she tells me to follow her. We move across the night sky and into something reminiscent of a clearing. I realize that this is where she was raped.
“Devon Reznor, Freddy Vernon, and Chuck Johnson” says my sister, breathily and sadly. “Trifecta” she says.
I look at her and I want so much to move forth and hold her close. But it is not the time yet.
“Jill…” I begin, but she cuts me off saying “why did you have to kill Doctor Lars?”
Taken aback, I regain my composure and answer “self defense. He was pummeling the shit out of me!”
“The only reason he was pummeling the shit out of you is because you punched him in the face twice!” She is most certainly upset.
“I was nervous. I wanted answers. Plus I doubt he was even a real person. I probably just made him up.”
My sister slaps me across the face. “You fool!” she shouts. “The difference between what’s real and what isn’t is too hazy in this place. It’s a fine line you can’t walk. You can’t just kill people, real or not!”
I turn back towards her. “I killed my wife. I killed my friend. I guess I just didn’t think one more would matter.” At this her eyes well up with tears. “You bastard. How can you ever think one life doesn’t matter?”
She sucks back the tears for a moment, and there is silence, and I break it, because it is the time, and I lunge for her, and I hold her close and I whisper “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what was done to you, and for what I’ve done to us, and for the way everything is” and she cries and cries into my chest until there are no tears left.

“it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.”
-Victor Hugo

         We look up at the stars and talk about how most of them are dead now. I ask her “how come you can talk to me as if nothing ever happened? Last time I saw you, you were a post traumatic mess.” She smiles a little. “Do you really think that the drooling mess back in that white room and the girl who stands before you are one and the same?”
I must look confused because she continues her explanation. “Do you really think that you, in the form in which I see you now, are the total and complete, real and physical you? You could just as easily be the you that lies in the gutter beneath the bridge with the three men. Or you could be Ray Gin. Fuck, you could be Lucy.”
         My sisters eyes are buoyant but as mine grow somber hers begin to look like searchlights trying to save me from drowning.
“Nice to see you” she says with moon eyes. “Good luck figuring everything out.”

First Crush: Mari Larkson, thrill of young chemicals.
First Lust: Mrs. Lankin, bend over, pick up the eraser again.
First Love: My sister Jill, for warmth.


































CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trapto, Ocu, Leeg

         I wake with start and find myself in the arm chair by the window. Lucy stirs beneath the cover. Sun comes dripping in the cracks in the ceiling and Lucy throws the comforter off and lies there on the bed, completely naked. She spreads her legs and with one hand pulls herself apart. With the other she picks up the razor blade from the bedside table and surgically fits it in, blade out towards those who dare trespass. She stands and walks towards her crumpled dress.. I eye her figure and I say “have we fucked before?” She turns her neck towards me while the rest of her remains about faced. “Glad you finally remembered. That was back when I worked for the society. They do that to all of their agents at some point. Just so happens your wife Morgan was an agent for them and you were her reward.”
This is astounding and yet so obvious now thinking about it.
“They sent you to me right after I killed my wife” I say. “Right?”
She nods. “I wore a black fishnet cardigan.”
My memory is being Sloshed away.
“Come on” she says, zipping up the dress and putting on her earrings. “We have an appointment to make.”

I look into his eyes, right through those square spectacles and I say “they told me you killed Mari Larkson”. He swallows his coffee.
“Of course they told you that” he says. “Are you at all surprised?”
Of course I’m not at all.
“So then I guess my question is why?” I ask. “Why do they want so badly for me to kill you? Which of course leads me to ask, now that I’m a bit more self-aware, why did they need me to kill my wife? And why did they need me to kill spider?”
He shrugs. “They need a lot of people killed on a very regular basis” he says.
Most important question comes next. I ask him “If killing you makes it easier for me to destroy them why did they ask me to kill you?” He blows on the mug and takes a sip.
“Did she tell you that killing me would make things easier?” he asks, jerking his head at Lucy.
“I never said anything of the sort” says Lucy. “But I know that the two of you are working towards different goals and are pulling each other in opposite directions, and since you’re one and the same, neither of you are getting anywhere. I happen to favor Home’s direction more than yours, and so I am encouraging your death, yes.” She rests her elbows on the table and sips her milkshake. Every now and then she pours a little coffee into it.
“She is right. One of us has to go if we are to achieve anything.”
I know that he is right. While I want to destroy Eco, Cull, Eegerr, to leave them a gory mess upon the pavement, Ray Gin just wants to escape, to leave them to their messy business, just to get away from it all. The opposite forces of both of our actions leads to a taut and unmoving lack of accomplishment.
“So I don’t know what I’m supposed to do” I say. “I’ve sweet talked a lot of babes into letting me fuck them, but I ain’t never sweet talked anyone into letting me kill them.”
Ray Gin leans in. “I’m no bitch of yours Homes Jinn. I am an equal and opposite piece of a whole that has been shattered. I am an unfortunate derivative of your loony ways. I regret my existence but if I die then you won’t regain the power which you brought to me, but rather lose any essence of the part of us that is me altogether!”
Lucy gets heated and throws fresh coffee in Ray Gin’s face. He shrieks as it burns him badly. He wipes it off quickly with the napkin. “You stupid old man!” she screams. “Don’t you realize what’s better for all of us! Can’t you think about anyone but yourself!”
He eyes her, like I do, like an ashamed parent. He bundles up his napkin and places it on the table. He sips his coffee. He calms down.
         “Kaktu café” he mutters. “This place was one of the greatest Slosh houses in town back in the ‘20’s. Of course, it was run by the indigenous people so they called it Leeg. Somewhere across town a place opened up called The Trapto Tank, an underground den for Kitana users. Wanting to represent all sides of the culture, another place opened up right across the way. A place called The Ocu Room.”
He looks down. “Went out of business real quick. You see, you call it what you want. It doesn’t matter what it started as, whether it be medicine or glorious peace keeper, it became nothing more than Slosh. A disgusting, self-absorbed mind control device.”
He is getting himself worked up.
“At least they used it the right way” I say. “It was ceremonial, a piece of their culture.”
Ray Gin laughs. “Don’t be dim” he says. “The Kaktu people were one of the most savage tribes of the region. They slaughtered every third child that came out of the mother’s womb so as not to offend the Man of the River, who did not like women to have more than two children. They would then throw the carcass of the baby into the river and drink Leeg until a Caiman ate it. Then they would slaughter the Caiman, cook it, and eat it, with the baby half digested inside.”
I grimace at this. Lucy looks completely unphased. I turn towards her and say “did you know that?” She taps her ash onto the table. “Yeah” she says. “I did”.
“Things didn’t get any better when Leeg became Ocu” says Ray Gin. “The Ixtansana tribe was one of the most aggressive, animalistic, and male dominated tribes in the world. No other tribe on the Amazon would consort with them they were so bestial. They were nomadic, and they moved through the forests always ready to kill. They never bartered or traded, they slaughtered and took. They lived in the most despicable and excessive way as well.
“When an Ixtansana girl turned ten, it was custom for the girls father to take her virginity. If the girl became pregnant, she became one of her father’s wives. If she did not become pregnant, she was married off to a boy her own age. Boys were not considered old enough for virgins, they were only fitted for girls who had been “taught the way” by their fathers. But as soon as those boys became fathers, if the spirits wished it, they would be lucky enough to have a daughter.”
He smiles very sardonically and sips his coffee.
“Not like the rapist settlers were any better, though. Trapto was abused for it aphrodisiacal properties. And then of course there was the slave trade, thanks to the dreaded Saucy.”
He pours more sugar and cream into his mug. “Everywhere Slosh has been, there’s been savagery, violence and devolution” he asserts this as he slams his mug onto the counter and the coffee goes everywhere. We take no note.
“There’s the beauty of it though” says Lucy. She has lit herself a cigarette and sips it gently. “Have you forgotten already?”
He looks at her with dispassion. “Listen to me, tits. I don’t know where you get off throwing yourself into this whole mess, but if your telling me that you think that Slosh is still beautiful, after all the shit it’s put everyone through, after the way it’s chained us all down, then you are a goddamn poor influence on Homes here.”
She jets the smoke through her nostrils like a mighty and elegant dragon. “The savagery was only there because the beauty was forgotten” she says. “You know that better than anybody.”
Ray Gin suddenly looks defeated. He release his tense fist and muscles and slouches back in the booth. “Can I have a cigarette?” he asks. She places another one between those pouty lips and she lights it up and passes it to him.
He puffs it gently and then says. “I will not give in to death easily. I shant simply resign myself to non-existence. But I do agree, one of us must go”.
I eye him closely. “What’s the solution?” I ask.
He smiles, snubs the barely smoked cigarette in the spilled coffee, which sizzles pleasantly, and then stands. He looks down at me and says “Pistols at dawn of course” and Lucy smiles.

The Surfer: There never will be a victor will there? You and I are evenly matched, two sides of the same coin. How can I expect to defeat myself? Defeat myself…my secret self.

The Shadow: You’re babbling. Get up we’re not finished.

- The Silver Surfer, issue #64





























CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
How the Beast becomes the thing we need

But yo, it’s got to be accepted
That what? That life is hectic
-The Wu-Tang Clan

         Tetherball was the game they interrupted. Lying there, on the ground, the blue man over me. Suddenly, I am on my feet, he looks down on me and says “we’ve been watching you.”
         We talk in the shadows, behind the soccer field, near the blackberry bush. “I work for a group called the society. Three men run it. Mr. Eco, Mr. Cull, and Mr. Eegerr. The society is named for them. You look like a valuable asset and we are here to ask for your help. In exchange we will fix your life.” He says this like it is equivalent to giving me a pat on the back. I remain silent.
“We know about your poor sister. We know about how she spends her whole life rocking back in forth in a little box of a room. We know about how she can’t even understand you anymore.”
He grins and bears the shiny teeth.
“We can bring her to you. We can make it so you can talk to her again.”
My blood goes up. He has weakened my defense, and yet I still remain silent.
“Or your mother” he says, and I know he has found a nerve to dig. “I’m sure you’d like your mother to come back from the land of inebriation. I’m sure that for once you’d like to come home to a mother who didn’t stink of Jack Daniels and Wild Turkey, who didn’t throw things and cry at night, who wasn’t damp with alcohol every hour of every day.”
I hold back the tears but let out my voice.

“Can you make her stop?” I ask.

         In class that day, after I have agreed to be an agent for the brothers of the society and recess has ended and I am back in my desk the teacher passes out a math test.
         The one that she places on my desk is already completed. I sit there the whole period doodling.
         
         When I arrive home my drunk mother is nowhere to be found. I close the door to my room and I say to the wall “can I see my sister now?”
         The man in the blue suit, my mentor, walks out of the closet. “Not yet” he says. “All in good time.”

         Over the next six months I receive basic tasks.

         Dear Homes Jinn
                   Your first mission is simple but important. We need you to wait a few minutes after class on Tuesday and tell your teacher, Mrs. Bishop, that she is pretty.

Make us proud.

The Eco Cull Eegerr society

Dear brothers of the society,
         I stayed after class and told Mrs. Bishop that she was pretty and she blushed and said thank you. Mission accomplished.

Love,
Homes Jinn

         Dear Homes Jinn,
                   Don’t worry about studying for tomorrows Physics test. We’ve got you covered.

The Eco Cull Eegerr society

Dear Homes Jinn,
         Another agent of ours we’ll be joining your class soon. His name is Robert Studebaker. You are to invite him over to your house for a play date. Once he is at your house, you are to give him Slosh.

Do you understand?

The Eco Cull Eegerr society.

Dear Brothers of the society,
         Robert didn’t like the Slosh at first but he got into it after a couple bottles. We ran out real quick and he asked where he could get some more. I said that I didn’t know.

Best regards,
Homes Jinn

         Dear Homes Jinn,
                   Don’t worry about Robert’s supply of Slosh, we’ve got it covered. As for you, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Please send us another letter naming your worst enemy.
Your brothers,
The Eco Cull Eegerr society

         Dear brothers of the society,
                   I guess my worst enemy would be Lars Benson. He’s a really smart guy, but he treats me like I’m dirt.

Sincerely Homes Jinn

         Dear Homes Jinn,
                   We’ve got it covered.

Sincerely,
The Eco Cull Eegerr society

         Dear society,
                   What did you guys do? Lars Benson hasn’t been at school for a month! No one knows what’s up.

Homes Jinn

         Dear Homes Jinn,
                   Does it matter? He’s gone. And how much better do you feel.
         We have another mission for you. Tomorrow a girl named Daina Bridges, a classmate of yours, will be making her way across the monkey bars. You are to grab her feet and pull her down.

She must fall and she must cry.

Sincerely,
The Eco Cull Eegerr society.

         Dear society,
                   I did it and I feel really bad. I don’t know why you guys made me do that, she really hurt herself, she had to see the nurse and she was crying and yelling at me and calling me a “mean jerk”. I don’t understand.

Homes Jinn

         Dear Homes Jinn, loyal agent,
                   Don’t worry your pretty little head about it. Just enjoy all the Slosh we’ve sent you.

Your friends at,
The Eco Cull Eegerr society
















































Chapter Nineteen
The Grand Duel

Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses! Draw your sword!"
And they killed the mountain-people,
So they won their just reward.

Now they stood beside the treasure,
On the mountain, dark and red.
Turned the stone and looked beneath it...
"Peace on Earth" was all it said.
- Lambert Potter

         Orange and full of premonition, the sun comes up on the horizon like a bully, like an assertive alpha dog. It spreads it fingers across the darkness and pinches it out.
         The sea is making little waves, little tugs of the moon. They smack against the soaked sand.
         I stand, facing Ray Gin.
         He faces me.
         Lucy stands behind me smoking a cigarette.
         I stay where I am, he makes his way over to us.
“Here we are” he says. “Shall we begin?”
Lucy reaches under he skirt and pulls out her two revolvers. She gives each of us one and says. “Ten steps and then turn”. She pulls the switchblade out of her bra and snaps it open. Click! “And if any of you try to cheat, if one of you flips early or tries to dodge the other, I’ll pitch this blade into neck before you can blink!”
We turn, back to back, and something feels right about the touch. Then we begin, slowly moving forward to our eventual fates, counting the seconds with our pulse “one, two, three”.
         This is the Grand Duel. The internal battle in this maze of reality and obsolescence, of knowledge and obscurity. “four, five, six,”.
I turn my face to the sun, for a moment. My feet keep moving. If this be the end, may it be fitting.
         “seven, eight, nine”.
One thought to have before the reckoning. I brace myself for certain acme, a zenith of this state.
“Ten”.
         I pivot and pull. We turn in unison and our inexperienced hands kick back as the gun barks forth a flash.

         The smoke clears and the echoes die. I look at him. He stands strong, unwounded. Surely it is in me. Surely I am bleeding out my life, I just don’t feel it yet. I look down. I am unwounded. I search my arms, my legs, my chest and abdomen, my head. Nothing is hit.
Lucy sees this and cocks her head, slightly confused. She totters out to halfway between both of us and bends down. She picks up a deformed looking piece of metal. It looks like the planet Saturn, two semi-spheres held together but a flat oval.
“I should’ve guessed” says Lucy. “Your bullets collided in the air. It was stupid of us to think that two halves of the same whole could destroy each other.”
Ray Gin moves forward. He aims the revolver at my head from a short distance. He fires, blammo! but nothing happens. I look down a bit and see that my arm is out, my revolver smoking.
“It’ll keep happening. There’s no way to stop it” says Lucy.
I look down and see a shape similar to the one Lucy holds in her hand, only this one is orange and glowing.
Ray Gin screams. He flips the gun so that his hand is on the barrel and he clocks me across the skull with the barrel. I fall down, dizzy. I sit up slowly and I see Ray Gin sitting up as well. I must have knocked him over, clocking him with my barrel as he did it to me. This is a futile duel.
“One of us must die!” screams Ray Gin. His face is red with anger.
“Why!?” shouts a great voice, and I know immediately who it is. It comes from behind me and it is soothing and yet exhilarating.
“That is just what they want you to think. You are so desperate to escape that you have not stopped to think if death is really the only way out.”
The Great Leader steps forward, mighty and resounding. At his side on all fours crawls Jackie, in her hospital gown with a collar around her neck and the Great Leader holding her leash. He pulls her forward as he paces around us.
“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps two halves should not seek to destroy each other but rather to amalgamate, to become one again. It is by fusing together that we exemplify our strengths”.
         I stand slowly and I move towards Ray Gin. He looks unwilling to be near me and he crabwalks away.
         He comes to his feet and puts up his fists.
“Don’t come near me! I’ll beat the shit out of you!” he threatens.
“Come on Ray” I say, trying to placate him.
“This isn’t going to get us anywhere”.
I reach forward slowly and place my hand over one of his fists. They slowly seep together, molding into one hand. I move closer to him. We pull together like magnets. Our bodies touch and lose their separateness. Our blood combines, our bones mesh. Finally our faces touch and with in seconds I am looking out the back of his head which then pulls into me and disappears.
The Great Leader lets out a hearty laugh. Lucy gasps. “But now he’s inside of you!” she says, startled. “Now you are one!”
The Great Leader opens his arms, his right hand still maintaining a firm grip on Jackie’s leash. “Join me my brother and my sister! Come with me to take apart the grand façade!”
I feel empowered, I feel like I am whole again, and the world goes spinning out of focus.

I fall to the ground convulsing.

         Gruesome horror. This must be a punishment from the society. Now I must bear the consequences of my sins and Ray Gins’.

“I am Ray Gin!” I scream. Things you could never dream of dreaming about in your worst nightmares appear to me.

         I see an infant being sliced open with a boeing knife as it screams and screams. I see my sister being raped twice each by Devon Reznor, Freddy Vernon, and Chuck Johnson.  I see my mother’s body, full of acid, sizzling away and bleeding. I see slaves piled into the hull of ship, naked and starving, scared and alone, screaming for their God”.

I shiver and burn. I let out the wail of a banshee and I bring my hands to my face.

And everything goes out. The noise stops, I feel myself stop shaking, and I know the terror has receded. I bring my hands away from my face, but still I see nothing. The world is black around me. I feel warm and comfortable. I realize I am lying down on a sofa or pillows or something soft. My face feels wet. I hear a pencil tapping on a clip board.
“Where am I?” I ask to the darkness.
“You’re in my office, we’re having a session” comes the voice of my psychologist.
I move my head from side to side. I can’t see him anywhere.
“Why can’t I see?” I ask.
I hear a burdened sigh come from my shrink. “Well” he says. “I’m not quite sure why you did it, but you just clawed your eyes out.”
















































CHAPTER TWENTY
The Void

Hello darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again.
-Simon and Garfunkel

         There is nothing in this blindness. I am an outcast with bleeding sockets where my deep green windows used to be. I lie like the filthy wreck I am, in a void. No feeling, no smells, no tastes, or sounds, and certainly nothing to look at.
         So I have nowhere to go but back and back and back…
         …into myself.

         “Hi Mari” I say, because there’s nothing but her. “Hi” she says. She is ten years old again, the same as she was the last time I saw her. I lift my hand up to touch her cheek and I see that my hand is smaller, younger.
“Take time with that hand” she says smiling. “It wants to grow”. I touch her and I feel like all the pain is sucked out.
And now there’s Seneca, she sits in front of me, cross legged and just as Godly as she was when I saw her on that single night of joy. I say “I’m sorry Seneca, I couldn’t help it, they told me who you are, and where you live, and how old you are and…” she puts her hand out to still my panic.
“Just forget about it” she says. And I do, and she is nothing but a first name that I met one night.
Rachel Cline is suddenly on top of me, riding me, and she says “you’re a good fuck”. I smile up at her and say. “You were the best.” Her face goes wide into a laugh and then tight into an orgasm. Her furious ride subsides into gentle lovemaking, and she is Morgan, passionately and piously conceiving with her husband.
“Morgan, honey” I say. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Just fill me up with a child” she says. “Just give me a baby.”
I do and as we lay there, in the void, naked and close I say to her “thank you for the eye patch. I’m sorry for fucking everything up. I’m sorry for letting Madeline disappear, I’m so so sorry. But it’s okay Morgan. I’m going to get her back! I’m going after her!”
“Why’d you kill me?” she says abruptly.
I pull her close and kiss her forehead.
“No easy answer to that, sugar” I say.
She stands up and flips around. She holds a knife out towards me and she is the prep fuck who I battered in the moonlight. “What you did to me is your Beast” he says, and I refuse to believe him.
“Come at me!” I say, leaping to my feet. He moves close, swinging the blade in every which direction.
“You can’t beat him” says a voice, speaking to the Prep fuck.
We turn our heads and we see Doctor Lars, bloody and slashed up like I left him.
“I fought this guy before, he knows how to kill, don’t even try.” The prep fuck lowers the knife and what Doctor Lars has said makes me see the Beast, and it’s not in what I’ve done but in what I am.
The Prep fuck looks up at me with a tear in his eye. “We’re all in the same boat in this place, so just stop fighting you bastard!”
I fall back to the ground, and I am paralyzed and surrounded by doctors. “We’re good” one says and he moves a scalpel to my forehead. I swat the doctors and they disappear. I leap up to my feet.
I stand in a forest surround by the Ixtansana tribe. They hiss and growl and bare their teeth at me. I see a father grab his naked daughter by the hair and pull her inside a tent.
I run, I run like the wind, through puddles, and bugs, and plants, until I trip and tumble into a clearing by the river.
A Kaktu holds forth a palm frond with a chunk of meat on it.
I scream and dive into the river. The river is purple and I know that I am swimming in Slosh. I scream but this time no noise comes forth, as the Slosh pours in, filling my lungs and my stomach, encompassing me, body, mind and soul.
         I feel like a bucket, filled to the brim. I am nothing, and I sink like a stone to the bottom.
         Something breaks the atmosphere above me and I see a puffy cheeked Lucy swinging her arms through the water and projecting herself towards me. She comes within my reach, she puts out her hand, and I grab it, and I move up, and up and up, and back to life again.











CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Up and up and up and back to life again.

“Is it in me” I ask, and they all look at me as though I am God. “Does it flow from me?” I ask.
“I was told that it came from the Vatovat weed, but that’s not true is it?”
“Is it?”
“None of it is true. The Kaktu, the Ixtansana, Leeg, Ocu, Trapto. I made it all up didn’t I?
“Slosh doesn’t really exist does it? It’s just my excuse. There’s no sap that flows from any Vatovat weed, there’s no substance that flows through my blood. I have simply developed a way to harness the energy of the world around me.
“My question is, if not from me, if not from the Vatovat weed, if not from Slosh, if not from the society, if not from everything I’ve been through, everything that at one time or another felt real and important, where does it flow from?”

         And the answer comes teetering like music through the air into my mind.

         It flows from nostalgic smells. From cat eye glances and strawberry juice. It flows from dirty pictures and lollipops. From pale or pitch black skin. From tongue rings. It flows from frustration and sleepy mornings. From sloppy joints and bitter drinks. From apathetic coke heads and sluts. It flows from listless mattresses, all sweaty and reminiscent. From flavored condoms and cigarettes. From alleyways. It flows from the G-Spot and other mysteries. From different mind sets of the past. From attention craving whores.
         It flows from everywhere. From the right and from the left. From the East and from the West. Up and down, all around, it’s flowing, and it never stops.


Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
-Albert Einstein







CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Trinity

Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.
-William S. Burroughs

Psychologists report on Patient x22317:

         The following is my evaluation of a rather disturbed patient of mine, a certain Homes Jinn. Mr. Jinn was first sent to me in fourth grade, suffering stress and depression following a traumatic event in his life involving his sister. The poor girl, Jill Jinn, was brutally raped by three young men and has since been committed for insanity. 
Homes was suffering from horrific nightmares and sporadic breakdowns. He claimed to be a hopeless addict to Psilosergic Acid Phenethylamine, a drug that I have searched through thousands of medical books to uncover to no avail. He claims that the street term for the substance is “Slosh” and that it is supplied to him by a group called the Eco Cull Eegerr society. This drug and this society are both non-existent.
         He has many other delusional realities. He repeats the phrase “I am Ray Gin” sporadically through our sessions. He claims that Ray Gin is a piece of his brain that was cut out during a surgery performed upon him, against his will, by the society, to weaken his defense as they crammed more of the “Slosh” into his system. Clearly Mr. Jinn’s subconscious is more perceptive than he is. Clearly his subconscious is trying to tell him something as the phrase “I am Ray Gin” is just a rearranging of the word “imaginary”.
         Homes lives in a world fettered only by himself. It is untapped sensory perception, a world whereas he is in a constant state of inebriation due to his lack of filtering system for the things that go on around him. Homes takes in every gesture of the hand, every twitch of the eye, and his brain computes it all together into an endless inner monologue that is his delusional life.
         In a recent episode, Mr. Homes Jinn was brought to my office screaming. He claimed that the society was punishing both him and Ray Gin at the same time, and that he had to endure the pains of both of their punishments as they had fused together. In his mania, he clawed his own eyeballs out of his skull, blinding himself. He has since been committed to solitary confinement.
         End of report.

Dear Home's psychologist,
                   Sorry but we don’t exactly know your name. Hi. We know you think Homes made us up, and that’s good. We know most people think he and Lucy Dobbs and Chuck Wiggins and Morgan Featherstone and all of our agents made us up. Keep on thinking that. We’re out there and we’re laughing our asses off.

The Eco Cull Eegerr society.

         I awake in the gutter of all places. I guess this is as real as anywhere else. The red haired man is leaned over me now and he smiles and says “he’s awake boys!” I sit up and the world shifts into focus.
         The red haired man, the brown haired man, and the blond haired man stand around me holding their cigarettes.
They chuckle and I know exactly who they are. I could spot their faces out of a crowd of a billion people and then scream “vengeance” and run towards them, guns blazing.

“Devon Reznor, Freddy Vernon, and Chuck Johnson” I say. They laugh. “Yeah, that’s us. You could also call us Eco, Cull, and Eegerr. We answer to those names too. You can really call us whatever you want, we are the Alphas and Omegas.”
They put out their cigarettes.

The brown haired one steps forward. “I’m Mr. Cull, and I am very proud to finally meet you Mr. Jinn. You have served as a loyal agent for a decade now and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
He steps away. The red haired one steps forward.
“Hello Mr. Jinn” he says. “My name is Mr. Eco, and I will finish this here and now”.
Mr. Eco, Freddy Vernon, the red haired one, he pulls out a gun and aims it at my head. “Wait for me” says the blond haired one, Chuck Johnson, Mr. Eegerr, as he walks over to me. “Before we paint this wall with your brains Mr. Jinn, I just want to say how nice it was to be up in your sisters writhing pussy”. He laughs like a hyena and the other two laugh as well. “You see” continues Mr. Eegerr “we knew if we fucked the shit out of that bitch and fucked her up, you’d have nowhere to go. You’d feel lost and in need of help. Your mom was lost and in need of help and she turned to alcohol. We knew that if we pushed hard enough, you’d turn to us. You’ve played the fool Mr. Jinn. You played right into our game.”

Funny how the Beast becomes the thing we need.

“I’ve killed before” I say through gritted teeth. “I can kill you right here and right now”. The blond one grows a big fat smile on his face.
“Put the gun down, Freddy” he says.
“What?” says Mr. Eco.
“I said put the fucking gun down! I want to see how much fight this little bitch has in him.”
Mr. Eco, Freddy Vernon, the red haired one, slowly puts the gun down on the floor. I slowly straighten my knees and I am standing.
“This I have to see” says the brown haired one, Devon Reznor, Mr. Cull.
I stand before Mr. Eegerr and his fists are up and he is ready and happy to destroy me. I feel weak, my knees shake and I tremble as all the blood inside of me boils with fear.
         It is like thunder and it knocks my head from right to left. None of this is really happening, but it still hurts like hell. It is like lightning and it knocks me back, starting in my abdomen and pushing me to the ground.
         I am like a rain puddle, with the lightning and the thunder looking down on me with blonde hair and a smirk.

“I am a better fighter than you. Let me out!”
I hear the whisper in my head.
“Is that you Ray?” I ask myself.
“Let me out right now!”
I think about it. “I can’t do that Ray. Not yet.”
“You want more?” asks Mr. Eegerr.
“I want to know something” I say back.
Mr. Eegerr smiles. “Oh yeah?” he says. “What do you want to know?”
I laugh. “What makes you so Godly. All you seem to be to me is a bunch of pushers smoking their lives away under a bridge.”
Mr. Edger’s look of dominance and victory fades and I know I’ve struck a nerve.

Memoirs
By Mr. Eegerr

         Everyday we hurt people so that we can help them. It is a natural technique as old as the Art of War. It got to a point where scuffling on street corners, shifting our eyes back and forth to watch for five o, asking passersby “you cool? You want some Slosh?” just wasn’t cutting it. 
         It got to a point where we had to take something from everyone who we wanted to need us.
         We took the lives of the Kaktu and we took the virginities of Ixtansana daughters. We took the freedom of the Africans. We took the happiness out of Lucy Dobbs and the self-importance out of Ray Gin. We took the lives of Morgan Featherstone and Chuck Wiggins. We took the self away from Homes Jinn. We have been here forever and we will remain forever. We are leaches, vicarious organisms that need to feed on the needs of others. We depend on dependency and we depend on a maintenance of our image. The truth is that we are as weak as any other man but we have one thing most don’t.
Pure, uncut, self-realization. And since we know who we are, we know everything.

         I am still lying on my back on the ground bleeding when I hear Mr. Cull shout “hey Eegerr, hey Eco, look what I got!”
I tilt my head up and see what he is referring to, and immediately my arms shoot back and push myself up to my feet.
He holds Lucy, tightly, her arms behind her back. “So bitch” he says “not only do you decide to go AWOL during an official society mission, but now, when we’re going about our business of disposing of the bad apples you have to come around and spoil the whole bunch?”
He clocks her across her beautiful face and she falls to the ground. Something inside me surges, but there’s nothing I can do. I see that her hands are bound behind her back. “I would say you’re about to meet your maker” says Mr. Cull “but you already have. He’s right over there getting the shit kicked out of him by Eegerr. To bad you got out of the delusion while he stayed behind.”
Mr. Eco walks over to her and says “lets get Jinn over here and make him watch as we rape the shit out of this dumb broad”.
Something dizzy and maniacally satisfied appears in Mr. Cull’s eye. “Yes! There is no worse punishment than watching your own creation be defiled before you! Ha! Bring him over”
I am dragged like a sack of potatoes over to where they have Lucy, on her knees, hands pressed up against the wall. Eegerr is holding my head in place and not letting me look away. Eco is holding Lucy in the right position. Cull is kneeled behind her, ready to go in and feel the warmth. He takes off his jeans and pulls out his throbbing member, which looks strong and malicious as it hovers above her ready to stab in at any second. He smiles at me and says “just like your sister Homes. Just like that dumb bitch!”
And then, he thrusts himself inside her with one long and dominating motion.
         I have never heard a scream so shrill as the scream that Cull emitted at that moment. He immediately pulled out of her and what had been so strong and malicious moments earlier was now lacerated to shit and leaking blood in sporadic little bursts.
“It bit me! Her fucking cunt bit me!” screams Mr. Cull as he frantically and pathetically grabs at his quickly draining dick, falling to the ground, dying in the most humiliating and deserved way. And Lucy smiles and says “even my pussy has an attitude”.

Memoirs
By Mr. Cull

         I don’t know what it means to be God, but I’ve always pretended that I knew better than anyone else. I have thought it apt that I hurt people, as I have no sense of what it means to be a person. I tell others there is nothing worse than seeing what you create be defiled. To me there is nothing more beautiful. To know that you can take something, give it life, and then make it suffer, that is true power, that it true dominance, that is absolute control. It is important that I remember, at all times, that I will change with times and places, that I depend on others, but that I never let on to anyone other than my two colleagues the true weakness of our project. The society is a delusion for the delusional, a big collective unconsciousness shared by far too many fucked up folks. Sadism, this word does not describe me. I wish it did. That way things would be far easier. A simple label like that. The truth is that what I am is confused, searching, thinking that I like the suffering of others, but really just being bored by it. For now, control. For now, Slosh. For now, misdirection, leading awry the buyer, leading into nothing those that I feel nothing for, which is everyone and everything.
         I always guessed that one of my own creations would destroy me. Who knew that the creation of one of my creations would be my undoing. And who knew she’d do it by slicing my dick up. How embarrassing.

         Mr. Cull is wide and pale eyed in a pool of his own blood, going into rigor mortus with his hands around his crotch. A symbol of debauchery and filth.
Mr. Eco pulls out a gun. “I’m done with this shit, man” he says, and without a second thought he blast Lucy through the skull.
         Her brains go everywhere, all over the sidewalk, all over the wall. Half of her face looks just as beautiful as it did her whole, no blemish but an entry wound the size of a mosquito bite. The other side of her face is a mess of bone and blood and meat. From one profile she is beauty incarnate as she as always been. From the other, she is putrid death.
         I don’t not have a say in the matter as Ray Gin leaps out from me, knocking me back. In seconds he is on top of Mr. Eco, beating him into a senseless oblivion. Eco pumps round after round into Ray Gin, but you cannot kill a thought.
         Meanwhile I look into the distance and see help is on the way.

Memoir
By Mr. Eco

         I have not just an upper hand on most people but also on my colleagues. I know of something they will never realize, something that keeps me more powerful than them, as self-realization is true power. I know that we are not the creators as we fancy ourselves. I know that we did not create Homes Jinn, but rather he created us, and that is why he must defeat us and not the other way around. The creator must always, in the end, defeat his creation. If only Homes knew what he was. If only he had true self-realization.
Half the Gods of the world don’t know they’re Gods. Half the creations they’re Gods when they’re not. The real Gods, they remain uncertain and unclear, the throne of divinity just an empty seat ready for someone confident to take. We took it, we grabbed the crowns and made ourselves some kind of trinity. All the time we bossed our creator around like a little bitch.
         It’s the same with everything. Jesus created his God, Muhammad created Allah, and on and on and on. God’s have never really been Gods. The true Gods usually end up worshipping their own creations.

         The Great Leader is coming, Jackie still walking like a dog, connected to her collar. Ray Gin is putting the finishing touches on Eco, pounding the last drops of life out of him. I stand up. “This is my world, right?” I say. Eegerr looks at me dispassionately and shrugs. “Sure” he says. “For the most part, it’s really just kind of up for grabs.”
         The Great Leader is close.
“And so you just grabbed it didn’t you. You guys decided that for some reason you were as qualified as anyone else to run the place, to control everyone and everything, and so you just took over.”
Eegerr nods slowly. “Sure. Why not?” I don’t know the answer to this question.
“On your knees you devil!” screams the Great leader, pulling a shotgun from his mind and aiming it straight at Mr. Eegerr. His other hand holds tight on Jackie. Eegerr calmly descends to his knees. The Great Leader places the gun on Eegerr’s head.

         “It is of this moment that we are free” he says. “It is of this moment that we kill God and become Gods of ourselves” he says. “And by Jove, we should have killed God a long time ago”.

He blasts Eegers head to powder.

EPILOGUE
Madeline

         All be still. All be calm. All remain unexplained. Need not finality, need only one thing more.

My beautiful daughter Madeline steps forth into the light. She glows in the darkness. She is grown, not the infant I last saw and in her eyes I see more care and passion and adoration than I ever have in any two eyes. She is a part of me, a part I left behind, and I am so sorry.

“…so sorry Madeline”

         And gently she smiles. “That’s okay daddy” she says. “I forgive you.” She moves forth and strokes my cheek. “You just have to grow up daddy. You just have to move past all of this”.

         The tears burst forth from my eyes and I fall to a mess on the ground and she holds me close and whispers “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay daddy I’m here now”.

         And I hold her and I made her and she is my child, my beautiful daughter, in the glorious glow she brings to us, the glorious light in the void.

         She holds my hand and whispers again and again “they can’t hurt you anymore daddy, you are God, remember, you are God the creator, you made it all, and I am your child. Your little one.”

My little one.

And she grips my hand tightly and I feel reality in her, I feel it in her pulse, in her warmth. I feel what I’ve lost so long ago in her, I feel the absence in my life.

I am God, misled by foolish creations of mine.

And she squeezes my hand tighter…

I am the Alpha and Omega, I am everything

…tighter…

I am the creator, I am the forgiver

…tighter…

But I am the one that needs to be forgiven.

“…so sorry Madeline”

So sorry.

One last touch before eternity. Madeline’s warm hand holds mine.

And I come down.