Even though there had not been a complete societal collapse, West had an uneasy feeling the worst was far from over and America and the world might actually be on the brink of a modern day Dark Ages.
A sudden surge of anger engulfed him, causing him to fling his award across the room where it smashed against the far wall, shattering glass everywhere. He stared at the bent frame and shards of broken glass strewn across the floor and it dawned on him that the scene pretty much resembled his own shattered life.
A stabbing pain in his bladder suppressed his reflections regarding his life failures. By instinct he shuffled over to the bathroom with glass crunching underneath his feet. He started to pee while staring at a framed article above the toilet. It was the last article he had written for the Wall Street Journal and he hung it in the bathroom as a reminder of when his personal Shit-Hit-The-Fan.
He had been so proud of the article. In his egomaniacal self-delusion he had actually thought the article was going to propel him to a new level of stardom. Instead, he was fired and subsequently became a pariah in the circles he had publically vilified, but privately cherished.
To make matters worse his employer had made sure his career as a journalist was over by issuing repeated statements that West had been fired for due cause because of chronic drug abuse, journalistic malfeasance, filing false expense reports and sexual harassment.
Of course, most of the accusations were technically true but that wasn’t the real reason why he was fired. After all, he had been drunk or high and had chased women around the office for well over a decade. That was just part of the job. And certainly, on occasion, he had abused his expense accounts, with his insatiable penchant for partying. None of his editors had ever complained about it before and every year he received glowing evaluations from his bosses and journalism awards from his peers. But none of that mattered because he had been effectively blackballed.
The reality was it was all a giant facade, just one big fucking lie. It wasn’t until after he was fired and sobered up some that he realized he had underestimated the content of his articles and its effect on the powers-to-be. His editor had warned him hundreds of times that the newspaper’s new corporate owners didn’t particularly care for him or his subversive articles and had tried to get West to tone things down a bit. But in his delusional and often drug-induced state he was too smart, he was too important.
The final straw had been the article hanging above his toilet. West had spent weeks researching and writing the essay that outlined the structural changes in the United States and how the Constitutional Republic and The Declaration of Independence had been thrown into the trash bin of history to be replaced by an all-out fascist-police state ruled by an authoritarian government, financed by a corrupt Federal Reserve, empowered by judicial activism and controlled by a morally bankrupt media and education system.
He supposed he might have kept his job for a little bit longer if he had just stopped there, but no, he had to push the envelope as far as it would go. At the end of the article, West individually listed the names of the top 100 traitors he felt were responsible for destroying the United States and he ended the article with the line, “the greatest enemy of America was Washington, DC.”
Of course, it didn’t help that the day the article was published an anti-government group called The Republic Keepers detonated bombs in half a dozen federal agency buildings across the Midwest, killing hundreds of government employees along with scores of innocent civilians.
Two days after he submitted the article West was fired by the company’s CEO in front of the whole newsroom. The CEO along with six armed security guards had surrounded his desk and forcibly removed him without allowing him to take any personal possessions. The guards physically escorted him to the elevator and literally threw him out of the building.
It was one helluva a sendoff, West thought while he zipped himself up, ignoring the urine that he had dribbled all over his pants. He stepped out of the bathroom, walked 15 feet into the tiny kitchen and grabbed a beer, which was the absolute last thing he needed.
He sat down on an old, smelly brown couch that for some reason he thought was originally green? He stared out of the apartment’s only window and watched the muted skylights flicker across the endlessly dark sky.
West reflected back on the last few years. Despite DC’s iron grip on the country there had been some push back. A low-level sporadic uprising against the government mostly in the Midwest continued, but even those efforts seem to be slowing as people appeared to have given up and relinquished themselves to their fate.
Whether people consciously knew it or not, the point of exponential decay had been reached. The national debt was north of 50 trillion dollars, not including unfunded entitlement liabilities. Real unemployment was perpetually above 25% and wages, if you could find work, were abysmal. On top of that the cost for the most basic necessities had exploded and most of the population was living a day-to-day existence.
As a last resort, hundreds of thousands of Americans joined the military or one of the dozens of government policing agencies. After successfully turning the Middle East back to the Stone Ages, the war machine had set its sights on Africa but that still wasn’t enough and a new enemy of the state was created. DC had declared war against its own people.
The government-run media even gave this new enemy a name and it constantly reported this organization was so evil just the mention of their name should strike fear and spark hatred into the hearts of all patriotic Americans.
The enemy combatants fell into a broad definition of various, and in many cases, ragtag collections of anti-DC groups officially labeled The Local Terrorists or LT’s. The LT’s were Americans who fell across the vast socio-economic-political spectrum. Their old labels included militias, far left radicals, survivalists, conservatives, IRS tax cheaters, preppers, libertarians, constitutionalists, states-rights groups and the Tea Party. But just about anyone who thought or lived outside of the collective groupthink demanded by DC could be labeled a Local Terrorist.
Over the years the LT’s had claimed a few high profile victories including assassinating the Federal Reserve Chairman. But their biggest coupe de grace had been the kidnapping of Nevada Senator Harold Reidson who had been instrumental in trampling the last vestiges of individual rights.
After kidnapping the senator, the LT’s took him to a hidden location and staged a trial complete with attorneys, a judge and jury. The whole trial lasted for four days and the LT’s managed to get it transmitted to every multimedia outlet in the country. No matter how much the government tried to suppress the broadcast, they couldn’t stop people from watching it.
The jury found Senator Reidson guilty on 72 counts of treason, violating the RICO laws, conspiracy and murder. The jury handed down a sentence of death by hanging. In what was probably the highest viewed event in the history of broadcasting America watched Senator Reidson begging then crying for mercy while turning on and denouncing all his fellow comrades in Washington, DC. His plea for a stay of execution was denied and the last photo of the senator was a grainy image of him hanging from a barn rafter.
But the trial and execution only served to further infuriate those in power, and they turned the screws tighter and tighter. Drone strikes went on across rural America for months afterward as Homeland Security delivered payback for the execution of one of their own. There was no telling how many innocent people lost their lives due to DC’s wrath over Reidson’s execution.
West belched loudly and set the empty beer can down. He grabbed his monthly mail off the coffee table. Very little mail was sent via the post office anymore because of the expense and lack of dependable delivery. A first class postage stamp cost $1.89 and took two weeks to arrive, if it even arrived at all since the post office barely functioned anymore.
Most communications ended up being sent via the AmeriNet System including bills, government announcements, insurance payments, personal communication, IRS inquires, and Homela
nd Security Watch Lists.
Forget about any privacy because everything was monitored and recorded, then stored in underground fortified facilities capable of processing information by supercomputers at the speed of light.
Only the government regularly sent correspondence through the mail. Every month anyone with a government registered address was lucky enough to receive the Citizens Watch Newsletter that was published by DC in conjunction with the New York Times who in the 20th century had been one of the greatest news publications in the world. Back then it was affectionately nicknamed The Old Grey Lady but now the newspaper was simply known as The Old Grey Whore because it served as nothing more than a state controlled propaganda machine.
West picked up his copy of The Citizens Watch and scanned through the table of contents. The publication consisted of eerily robotic articles about what DC was doing to protect and improve the lives of its destitute citizens.
The newsletter also contained a section called The Patriots Report which tried to run feel-good stories about average Americans doing their patriotic duties in the fight against the LT’s by reporting their neighbors, friends and family for suspicious activities. The slogan “See Something, Report Someone” was now part of the American lexicon and was displayed everywhere.
The Citizens Watch also had a large section listing the names and rewards individuals had earned for turning in people for anti-American, terrorist or suspicious activities. There were actually clubs across the United States called Patriot Watchers who made good money solely from snitching on people and collecting rewards from DC.
West never read the bullshit newsletters, only the snitches and citizen bounty hunters did. He tossed all the government and state crap on the floor. Only a beaten-up envelope that looked like some eight year old had scribbled his name and address on it remained.
What the hell was this, he wondered?
The last time he received a personal letter was over two years ago when his girlfriend broke up with him because of his constant drinking and erratic behavior. West stared at the envelope then noticed it wasn’t stamped.
Great, he thought. Some Citizen Watcher must have gotten access to his post office box and was probably leaving him some type of warning.
He carefully opened the envelope and pulled out a letter printed on old discolored paper. The first thing that caught his eye was a faded blue timestamp in the upper right corner dated June 4, 8:32 am.
He began reading the letter:
The Akashic Records contain the vibrational information on every soul in the cosmos and stores every thought, emotion and action. The Records connect each of us to one another. After your death you will return to what you were before birth. Everything in this universe is entangled to The Source as The Source is entangled to THE ONE. You are an anomaly but you are not alone.
The Dracun grows stronger but they are not The Source. By the time you read this Mark Sloan will have passed from this plane and returned to The One. He was the same as you.
West read the letter three more times. He had no idea who would have sent this crap or why. The only part of the letter he could understand was the mention of Sloan’s name but even that was perplexing–to this day no one knew about their relationship.
Sloan had been a managing director for Lehman Brothers and was his inside contact during the investment bank’s collapse. According to the mainstream media and financial pundits the Lehman bankruptcy had almost collapsed the world’s financial system but Sloan had told him that Lehman really was only a false flag within a global high stakes power struggle.
But even in his alcohol-induced daze West couldn’t understand why Sloan would have told someone about their relationship, because it would’ve been suicide. Sloan’s Wall Street career would be finished for good if his employers knew he had provided corporate secrets to someone like West.
After the 2008 financial debacle Wall Street had closed ranks and adopted an omerta style silence. The legalized criminals were much better than the Mafia at stealing and laundering money while keeping the secrets inside the family.
West threw the letter back onto the coffee table. It really didn’t matter because Sloan was still alive. It was obvious the letter must be a hoax but what would be the purpose of sending him some stupid letter?
West couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that something didn’t make sense and maybe because of the alcohol he dialed Sloan’s home number.
After a few rings a lady answered, “Sloan residence.”
“Is Mark available please?” West asked
“May I ask who is calling?”
“This is West Collins. I’m a buddy of his,” he answered trying his best not to slur his words.
There was a long pause then a noticeable sigh. “This is a friend of the family’s and I hate to be the one to tell you but Mark passed away this morning. I’m sorry but I don’t know any of the funeral arrangements.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” West stammered fumbling for words. “That’s awful. What happened?”
There was another long pause before the woman added, “All I know is the police say he committed suicide in his office. I’m sorry but I have to go.”
He heard a click and the phone line went dead. He stared incomprehensibly at the date on the letter. He knew today was the 6th but he went to his desk to check the calendar and confirm the date.
“Holy shit!” he cursed.
He got up and grabbed a fresh beer. He chugged half of it with the realization that the letter had been time stamped a day before Sloan’s death. So whoever wrote the letter must’ve had advance knowledge that Sloan was going to be dead by the time he received it.
He looked at the letter again trying to rectify the impossible. His head suddenly felt like it was going to explode and he stumbled over to the sofa and collapsed onto it.
He stared up at the brown cracks lining the ceiling, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. His last coherent thought before his alcohol-soaked brain shut down was maybe if he went to sleep he’d wake up the next morning with a hangover and just a fleeting memory of a bad dream.
“Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”
– Edward Cayce
Chapter 2
West found himself in the hallowed place. He felt strange, almost as if he had entered a different plane of existence but he had been to this place before, many, many times.
He was standing on top of a steep, tree-lined hill. Behind him massive white-tipped mountains framed the horizon against a crystal blue sky. A trail winded down the hillside to a small, tranquil harbor.
He didn’t understand why but the air, the light, felt different, almost mystical. A slight chill permeated the air but he didn’t feel cold.
He stared down at the harbor realizing why he felt so odd; it was the silence which was absolute and complete. He turned and what he saw confused him. Twenty feet directly in front of him was an enormous stone building that resembled an old church or a majestic library. How had he not seen the building before?
Spurred by an unknown force he walked to the entrance of the mammoth structure and pushed on one of the giant wooden doors. It creaked open and he stepped inside.
Weird, he thought. The room he stood in was actually quite small compared to the appearance of the building from the outside. Had the size of the building been some type of an optical illusion?
He slowly walked further into the room with his footsteps echoing off the grey stone floor. In the center of the room rows of wooden pews with giant stone columns led up to a tall, vaulted ceiling. Strange symbols and mathematical formulas were etched upon colorful stained glass windows that lined the walls. He watched in awe as the symbols and numbers that filled the glass windows constantly flickered and changed.
He walked toward the front and took a seat in one of the pews. He closed his eyes for an indeterminable amount of time, and when he opened them a brilliant stream of yellow light cascaded through a large cathedral wi
ndow down to the floor. A swarm of infinite floating particles swayed and danced within the wall of light.
He rose and walked to the edge of the light. Slowly, he stuck out his arm and placed his hand inside the shimmering light. A surge of warmth filled his body and he sensed that the particles weren’t dust motes being illuminated by the sunlight. They were something much more. The particles were alive and held great secrets.
Without hesitation he stepped inside the inviting light. He raised his head towards the cathedral’s window and closed his eyes.
When he opened them he was no longer in the magical building. He was standing in the middle of a long, curved beach
that stretched from horizon to horizon. A dark blue ocean that looked more like a tranquil lake filled the landscape for as far as he could see.
He walked for what seemed like hours, never reaching the end of the beach. But that didn’t concern him, he only thought about the sand. When he grew tired he sat, crossed-legged on the fine white sand. A few feet in front of him a translucent ripple appeared in the fabric of space and unconsciously he closed his eyes. In both hands he began picking up handfuls of the sand, letting the grains fall through his closed fists like an hourglass.
Time passed and when he opened his eyes sitting across from him was a man with his legs crossed. No words were spoken. They simply stared into one another’s eyes.
Then something magical began to happen. The entity was inside of his mind and he was telling him a wonderful, magical story about life, the universe and his place among the great expanse of a circular infinity.
As much as he tried to understand the full meaning of the message, he realized much of it was beyond his grasp, at least for now, in this time, in this place.
He just sat there listening to the never-ending story, all the time picking up handful after handful of the fine white sand, slowly letting the grains fall through his fists over and over again.
The Unraveling Page 2