fiction-chicken

I better start getting religion, since a higher power is looking after my dumb ass. Yesterday at work I placed a ladder against the wall and walked away and a gust of wind knocked it over. It came within inches of hitting a very expensive SUV. Today I am staring vacantly at the computer not having a thing to write about and immediately stumble on this, a fiction piece I had forgotten about. Again, it is unfinished. It is also politically incorrect and some parts are raw. For those idiots offended at the first part, I am not being racist. I don’t care about color, only actions. I was disparaging acting ghetto. We have a sub-species called Wiggers. And they act as irrational as uneducated people anywhere. Color is besides the point.
*
COUGHING KGB CHICKENS AND FLESH EATING CATTLE AND THE COMING APOCALYPSE IN THE NEWS AFTER A WORD FROM OUR SPONSER

Remember the old question, Where Were You? To those ancient ambulatory fossils amongst us it was about the day John F. Kennedy was shot. Oh, sure, everyone just loves dead people, once they are gone. So you always talk good about Aunt Gertrude, even if she was a sour old evil bitch that went around pissing and moaning about every damn thing under the sun. More than likely she just needed to get out and get laid at least once every decade or so, but instead she would be so full of venom that even at 2:00 a.m. when the bars started closing she could perhaps pick up a one legged one eyed cripple in a wheelchair but chances were that after two minutes of conversation with Gertrude the poor bastard would not only be unable to function sexually but he would also be madly propelling his chair towards the nearest cliff to commit suicide. Some people are just that way, so sour and uptight that no one wants anything to do with them. Yet as soon as they kick the bucket no one has a damned bad thing to say about these truly insufferable people. You are walking around, breathing other peoples oxygen like the selfish foul bastard that you are, attempting to share with everyone by clouding up their otherwise sunny day and not one person will admit to liking you and your very offspring will disown you. But as soon as the poison spewing heart in your chest stops beating suddenly everyone positively glows about what a friggin saint you were and how they will all miss you.
*
So whenever anyone wants to get all depressed and gloomy and morbid, as if failing bowels and memory weren’t bad enough, they ask where you were when our dear departed saint of a President was gunned down by a magic bullet. I say, John Old Boy, where were you when The Best President Ever To Live And To Grace Us Unworthies With His Presence was brutally gunned down by a lone assassin firing perhaps the worst example of surplus firearms available at an almost impossible angle at an impossibly high rate of fire with an unbelievable accuracy with a bullet that defied all laws of nature? And you would ponder a second and answer with something perhaps like, Well, Dave, I was in the process of treating an impossible case of crabs with a homemade combination of moonshine and lye in the bathroom of my Chicago suburb tract house next to the ghetto that was full of migrants that once thought they could get rich working in the factories but were now eking out an existence with a combination of surplus cheese blocks for food, pimping white ho’s for beer money and selling bags of marijuana to wealthy teenagers for rent when the radio shouted out that The Best President Ever To Give Two Craps About Us Little People Just Like A King Sitting On High From His Throne Would Bestow The Peasants With Holiday Feasts had been brutally slain by a CIA agent that was paid by the Federal Reserve Bank to assassinate the guy who was stupid enough to try to break the monopoly on printing money at will from thin air with no tangible assets backing them.
*
It seems that no matter who you talk to from that generation, JFK was a literal saint. Most likely because he wasn’t in office long enough to screw things up too badly, but also because people just won’t talk bad about the dead. As if it was a superstition in which mud hut dwelling pygmies raced around in dread of the Evil Forest Mutant Zombies and refused to talk about the deceased at all, calling them He/She That Crossed Into The Inner Realm Of Perpetual Jungle Living Peace Where Monkeys Were Loved By Real Men And The Lord God Ug Blessed Us With Tasty Insect Treats. So while we might scoff and make fun of primitive people being superstitious and living in fear of night time spirits, we were little different as we avoided black cats as we walked underneath a ladder and threw salt over our shoulder as we only said nice things about our ancestor ghosts.
*
A more modern generation was asked, Where Were You when the Twin Towers were bombed and three thousand people were killed? Your neighbor would ask, Yo, Mildred. Where was your skinny white ass when The Man Planted his bombs in the City to make it look like towel wearing A-Rabs was attacking us. And they might get a reply such as, My Homie, Yo, I was chillin in my crib, listenen to my Boom Box when I heard The Evil Powers That Be used remote controls to override the steering mechanisms of the airplanes in the attack and were guided in to the towers from the ground and the conversations from the Pennsylvania plane were faked and the Pentagon was targeted at the deserted section so as not to damage the command and control ability in the soon to be started war in Afghanistan and Iraq and some time later Iran, even if that wasn’t so smart since the Russians or Chinese had supplied them with nuclear weapons as a stalemate to check out of control imperial ambition, as we left Syria and North Korea alone, not because they weren’t part of the Axis Of Evil but because they really had no oil reserves to speak of and if you are going to attack a country it helps that they have more oil in reserve than you would use transporting the armor divisions into the place to attack it.
*
But the newest question, the one that superseded all else, was Where Were You when nuclear bombs took out the Saudi Arabia oil processing facilities and major fields and the world plunged into a Greater Depression which looks like we might never recover from. Where Were You when the oil was nuked? Saudi oil was not the bulk of the worlds oil, but it was ten percent. And when the Saudi oil blew, the Green Zone in Baghdad was nuked. And suddenly we had too little military and too little oil. And as bad as our economic imperialism was, without it the fighting suddenly broke out everywhere and disrupted trade and that with the oil disruption sent us all into a economic slump. Oil was still traded, arms were still shipped, life limped along in some places, but that was pretty much the end of the Oil Age. We had already started experiencing disruptions as the oil started to run out of the giant fields, as demand went up higher than old supply and new discoveries. But the ten percent decline is what started the all out fighting for the remaining oil and the long line of cargo ships from China to halt.
*
So whenever an old crusty bastard even looks at me wrong, looking like he might start to get a watery eye from nostalgia of the good old days, I scream at him that we could give a crap less about what he was doing when some pretty boy Ivy League puke that was diddling Marilyn Monroe was shot a few times for pissing off the banking cartel, nor did we care what his son was doing as New York city was used as target practice by a few Kamikaze pilots. What mattered was, when the Oil Was Nuked, I was sitting on the couch in my PJ’s, eating a bowel of Captain Crunch sugary sodden pellets with one hand and scratching my ass with the other, foul thoughts gathering about going to work yet another day. The TV was tuned to one of the many interchangeable morning shows, plastic boobed Barbie hostess and perfectly coffered distinguished older host with a ten thousand dollar hair implant with enough makeup to hide his nose with bright red color and burst veins from too many five martini lunches. I wasn’t even paying attention, it was just a tool to drown out any asinine request that might come from the master bath from the old Ball and Chain as she labored mightily without too much success to cover up the fact that the cow had had one kid too many, ate just a tad too much Subway at lunch every weekday, was approaching the wrong end of middle age and had no exercise to speak of past running her lips a mile a minute whenever her female radar picked up my presence within twenty yards of her location. It’s not that I minded being married to the old bitch, I was just trying to minimize the vocal communication between the two of us as much as possible.
*
I had been continually glancing at my watch lamenting the fact that the time was fast approaching when I would need to get in the shower, scrap away half of my face and get dressed and then begin the long and slow commute to my useless and unnecessary job. Oh, the wife loved that paycheck. I worked for the state, in not much more than a glorified paper pushing position. Four years of school on the GI Bill in Economics and Sociology, with not much foresight past perhaps getting another two years worth of teaching degree and had basically fallen into this job twenty years ago out of luck and student burn out. Future Economic Investment Feasibility Study Officer. Basically, I advised on where to invest tax surpluses for maximum return to increase the money available to the Great State Of Florida. It was only exciting for about the first six months as I did a lot of research and doodled on a lot of napkins. And then by accident I happened on a book by a hard money economist that spelled out a simple plan where you invested in four different areas, each one acting differently in various economic conditions. Then periodically you adjusted the sectors back into equal quarters and the process made you money regardless of growth, or recession, falling or escalating currency, whatever. Since then I always got a modest return. Less than others when times were good, more than others when times were bad. And now I was completely bored. There was nothing to do every day. Thank goodness for the Internet and books-on-tape or I wouldn’t stay sane. Or as sane as possible.
*
Of course I never told anyone where I got the idea, and I wouldn’t plainly spell out the formula but instead hid it in hundreds of pages of economic double speak and math. At least there I could use the college learning. Not that it helped on anything else. After a trial period of testing without actual funds and fobbing off other make-work projects to keep me busier than those with seniority, my recommendations were implemented. After a few economic rough spots where my recommendations outdid everyone else’s I turned into the golden boy, could do no wrong, was assured of never being laid off and was totally and completely bored with my work. As is normal with almost any modern marriage, my spouse managed to piss away all the money I made plus put some credit cards to use yet still never managed to have enough money at the end of each month. Out of my boredom and my desire for a few spare nickels to rub together, I started a newsletter that pretty much mirrored the formula I had used at work. I priced it at the insanely high level of a hundred bucks a year for twelve issues back in the early nineties and got a few dozen subscribers. This was due to the three month free trial subscription I offered, which generally made folks at least a little profit if they followed my advice. Then it was usually about fifty percent that paid up. Not bad considering that anyone with two bits wandering through a used book store could have found my secret.
*
As the millennium was approaching I accidentally stumbled on to the Y2K scare while doing some research on companies selling gold coins. After a lot of research I was bitten by the scare and decided to put some supplies aside as an insurance policy. I wasn’t rich, but a few hundred bucks a month was easy from the profit on my newsletter. Hundreds of bucks a month quickly stockpiled a lot of weapons and ammo and food. After that I stockpiled a lot of gold and silver. Remember when gold was under $300 an ounce? No, of course you don’t as you were busy on a first hand inspection of your colon wall as your head was firmly shoved up your backside. Well, I bought enough to stay happy, regardless of what the economy did. Instead of just having gold on paper, a financial asset, I now had some buried in the backyard. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
*
My wife started noticing I kept the garage locked and she was parking her car in the driveway. I should have told her to shut the fuck up and get in the kitchen and cook me some dinner and while she was at it to kick off her shoes and get pregnant since maybe the baby would suck some of the fat off of her ass. But, being the average 21st century American male that was totally whipped not because I was afraid of losing bedroom privileges since that had long ago been ruled out due to lack of giving two craps about her partners wants or needs but rather about the fear of divorce and total financial ruin for the rest of eternity. So instead of bitch slapping her as she so richly deserved I said I was trying to set up a separate office, gave her a check for a thousand bucks ( not disclosing my true profits of course-sucker! ) to let her forget her troubles for a day by going to the mall and if I was lucky buying a pair of shoes but if not a pair of lingerie which she would put on and rather than covering her in my vomit as was natural I would have to take quick shallow breaths and think of a porn star desperately trying to get aroused enough to service Shamoo the killer whale that had somehow gotten into my bedroom and was wearing a fabric of a sheer nature and let every little fat bulge and crease show in nauseating detail. I even offered to wash her car every weekend so being exposed to the elements was not a huge deal anymore.
*
Of course by now the garage was starting to resemble a mini warehouse and I had shelves from floor to ceiling on the walls and down the middle several times so that I barely had room to walk or bring in other supplies and my office space, the cubicle I used to camouflage my operation, was very small indeed. I had already stashed most of the regular garage items up in the rafters to make as much room as possible. To hid my stash from thieves, but mainly from the wife I had permanently locked the big door and at the house entrance I had created a wall of shelves filled with Xerox paper boxes, stationary supplies and economic reference books ( mostly old college textbooks from the thrift store at a quarter each ). So how did I hide the space behind the shelf, fool people from thinking it was anything other than a collection for boxed junk and garden tools? It wasn’t foolproof, but I had an open door leading into the larger portion of the room that you couldn’t see through or get past because it was totally blocked by a stack of boxes. I put kids books, kids cloths, college term papers, anything heavy in the boxes. I labeled them and placed those actual items inside the boxes in case they were ripped open. But two stacks beyond that were my shelves full of supplies. I had a brace behind and on the sides of the camouflage boxes so they couldn’t push them in. If you pulled them towards you into my office the game was up, but I figured it was unlikely. I had fake boxes stacked in the one side window. Then I had a hidden door under my desk. If you crawled under the desk ( I had it built pretty big just for that purpose ) and popped the latch you got into the supply room. It wasn’t going to stop a 3 a.m. ninja police raid, but it kept the neighbors and the wife from knowing what was going on.
*
Why did I go through all that trouble? You’re not married, are you? Every dime you earn through years of sweat and blood, that isn’t your money. Oh, no. That is your wives money. She feels she is entitled to it. She thinks she has earned it. In bygone years, you went to the mine, worked twelve hours days, inhaled copious amounts of toxic dust, barely had enough to buy clothes and food and died at a relatively young age. Those bastards were lucky. Today, you need to put up with twelve years of state indoctrination as you are forced to remain servile towards your parents past the point of biological necessity so that archaic laws keeping wages artificially high by keeping young adults out of the workplace can be observed. You are prevented from earning a living or starting a family too young, instead being placed in the military or in to a institute of higher learning to further mold your delicate fragile mind. After a suitable period in which almost no one escapes total government brainwashing you are deemed eligible to go off on your own and start a life, usually not before the age of 22 or 23. However, as you have been pampered and protected from reality you are still incapable of making rational decisions and inevitable to blunder in to a life altering decision such as marrying a totally unsuitable individual. A baby is inevitable conceived and thus your life is now deemed null and void and out of your control. Not that this is anything new. Our species survival depends on nearly two decades of total care for your offspring. Physically, mentally, emotionally. And it is a good thing. The hardest job is to properly raise kids, and it is the most rewarding. Unfortunately it also exposes you to the control of your spouse. If you are as unlucky as me you get a woman that takes advantage of the letter of the law and coerces my obedience. May her eternal soul be subjected to an horrors of Hellfire.
*
So despite the best efforts of my dearly beloved to spend one hundred and three percent of all my earnings, I had managed to set aside a goodly amount of supplies in case of emergency. When Y2K didn’t happen I was a bit disappointed but somehow managed to overcome my sorrow. Heck, do you know the many ways in which a spouse can “disappear” during an emergency? During rioting she could take a spare bullet to the head. During the mass migration of populations from one area to another her body could be conveniently disposed of by a gator. When fires rage out of control her body could be burned beyond recognition. If dental records were sought and if her broken neck was actually discovered, unlikely due to the vast numbers of casualties, I could always claim I was in a different location. Well, officer, I had separated with my wife after dropping her off at her fathers since I needed to go find my child who was away at college. Or, I could have killed a homeless guy and stuck a knife in him with her fingerprints on the hilt, and then shot her with an unregistered gun with his fingerprints of that weapon. Although that seemed like a lot of work. Perhaps it was better to just wire the car up to explode when she went to drive away from the house. That should work, the bitch would go shopping after the world was impacted by a friggin asteroid.
*
Shortly after Y2K we had the Tech Wreak and my subscription numbers went up due to the safe returns one would have gotten if they had been following my advice. It wasn’t like I had been pissing away all of my profits previously on MRE’s or gold bullion. I reinvested quite a bit of my profits by hiring a firm to do all of my advertising and promotions ( another firm had been printing and mailing- all I did was write the damn thing ). So I had to do no extra work getting more subscribers. And that service had been tax deductible. Well, as careful as I had been to only buy inexpensive prep gear, and as cheap as I had been in only buying gold while it was around $300 an ounce, that only made it harder to get rid of my excess profits. I had no idea of what to do with all this “windfall” money. All the regular household items such as a mortgage and car payments went through the checkbook and were subject to the scrutiny of the Horned One. I finally decided that I had enough gold and silver coins, that a foreign bank account wasn’t much good past a few months wages due to potential lose. So I bought a few acres out in the middle of a remote swamp not too far away and let a retiring coworker build a cabin on it to retire rent free and do a lot of fishing. I also bought a piece of land up in Georgia, just in case Global Warming happened to drown this whole state. After that I just folded up shop and stopped selling the newsletter. I was bored with it, I had trouble getting rid of the profits which was a headache and the idiots who had been paying for my advice made paper profits but lost money to inflation. It was almost embarrassing to continue to fleece them. I had enough of everything since I didn’t plan on doing much after I got my state pension other than morning walks, fishing, and reading all afternoon. If the state pension ever stopped I could eat off of fishing and a small garden. My only worries were the monster in my house, the wife.
*
As I was busy not watching the morning show, I was suddenly jerked back to reality by an annoying Emergency Alert Notice screeching and a almost-shouting anchor person telling us that unconfirmed reports from Iraq were reporting that the Green Zone had been hit with what was believed to be a nuclear weapon sometime last night. I’m not sure if my jaw fell down to my chest or not, but if it did I sure didn’t notice any pieces of cereal falling out in a disgusting gush of saliva saturated milk and half masticated food particles. The dumbass on the tube started the standard loop reporting where they continue to report that they don’t exactly know what to report to you since their source has yet to fill out forms in triplicate and pass a polygraph test on the off chance that they could get a fact wrong and get sued for millions of dollars and then the CEO of the network wouldn’t get his yearly bonus of one hundred million dollars and couldn’t go to Reno and pay a legal prostitute a few hundred bucks to blow him and then the tight bastard couldn’t enjoy stiffing her on the tip. But we eat that crap up. Every time a hurricane is thought to be on course to hit land, one local station or another will do nothing but have a guy talking about the hurricane hitting, showing a projected map with probable points the system could veer off to. Every once in awhile they would show the low person on the totem pole being sent out to the shore closest to the storm, their goofy looking rain poncho flapping about madly over their already soaked clothes, their umbrella pushed inside out and lodged in a palm tree about three miles down the road, screaming into the microphone attempting to be heard over the roar of the wind and rain talking about how high the storm surge is. In the background waves are hitting the concrete retaining wall which is usually separated by a lot of sandy beach. This can go on for, literally, days. If the network is really feeling flush with profits they will send someone out to the state or Federal headquarters where they are tracking the storm for another talking head interview.
*
Nothing new is added, nothing will help anyone know if they are going to get hit. But the anxiety factor is so great ( for the love of God, Flo, will our mobile home be FedEx’ed across the county? Quick, bring the dog and the yard flamingo’s inside ) that people will watch hour after hour without much progress in reporting being made. The network of course is making a heck of a lot of money off of this with two talking mannequins sitting behind a desk being about the only expense and companies paying for the increased viewers. As they claim to be performing a public service. The point being that we have grown accustomed to nothing being said over and over again in different ways and being passed off as news. The news right now was covering perhaps the most important event to happen in quite a long time and they had nothing to say other than to find different ways of saying the same crap. Unsubstantiated rumors my dimpling spotted pale white ass. It’s not like a friggin mushroom cloud is all that difficult to see. They either nuked our asses or they didn’t. This was bullshit. I called up work and left a voicemail with the boss about how ill I was and was using a sick day. Fuck them. I had enough piled up that they couldn’t say a damn thing. If the boss even came in.
END
Sorry, I said it was unfinished. One of these days I’ll write at least a novelette. In the meantime, go buy my books at www.bisonpress.com