CHAPTER FIVE
The Tall Dark Stranger had several remote controls in his hands and he was pointing at several television screens. Gavin stood watching as the screens flickered while beside him, The Beautiful Girl draped herself over his body and whispered subjectively into his ear in regards to things of which she desired and of which she sought in a man, things that she had never expressed to another man before this day; a feeling of which Gavin had somehow invoked from her spiritual centre and of which left her without control; liberated in her surrender.
“Media is what gives us our power. Before it, we had no stage unto which we could elevate our message. Now, a thousand news channels, a hundred thousand papers and a hundred million blogs, they take something finite and minuscule and under the layers of evaluation, they make it perfect and whole. The people love us. They love what we do. They need their villain, but their villain cannot be like themselves. They need to believe in monsters, that these beings came from a nether world, from somewhere unto which they themselves could never be cast or their seed, from within it, never sprout. For goodness is in all and acts of disaster, of tragedy, of reckoning, it is only by the hands of monsters and devils and upon just accountancy, God. And so they invent immortality and politicize the Devil. Because none would ever believe that everyone is indeed sick and one stress away from taking up arms and acting out in god-like endeavor. None would want to believe so one moves to address these common disturbances with supernatural title, elevating man to infamy. The Lone Gunman. He is not George, the unappealing neighbour whose shabby dress hints towards his flailing virility; completely uninspiring and without sexual, physical or economic threat whatsoever. He is not George because George is anyone and George is everyone. He is spoken about as having been quiet and uneventful, as having had no close friends and no real interests whatsoever. And these tags, they will become the markers of social derangement, boxes to tick for a therapist, or a doctor or mother and father, or a worried and loyal citizen, unsure if the quiet man on their street, hardly engaging in their societal orgy, might instead be planning to harvest some catastrophe in his idle and conspiring hands. If George had just hanged himself, nothing would have come from his life or his death. But by walking into work with his hands heavied by an arsenal of artillery, George became something important for the people, he became the villain that retracted them back onto the fragility of their beliefs, those ideas and thoughts and blessings that like their lovers or like their children, they had taken for granted and set aside for the wishing away of dull and labored days and assumption that nothing ever changes so that one can address the frayed and tattered ends of their relationships and their existences tomorrow or down the line, after that thing. George becomes The Lone Gunman and The Lone Gunman, for a week or two, ignites the empathy and compassion in the hearts of billions and singes the frayed and picked at ends of the tapestry of their lives. Without tragedy, humans are rude and begging and stealing and corrupting and lying and deceiving and manipulating and thieving and strangling and perverting and procrastinating and complaining and completely self-gratifying things. But with tragedy, they are compassionate and caring and wholesome and giving and collective. They are the extension of their hearts. The human’s soul only alights when another’s has been shrouded in dark. Humans love compassion, but it is not something they can attest to in their own monotonous lives. They need some catalyst. They need a God or a Devil or Lone Gunman or a Terrorist to make them feel loved and clement and caring and humane. We are, in every right, The Judas. Without us, the world will suckle itself into aridity. We bring forth the evening rains. We moisten the breast of humanity. Just as Jesus would have eventually aged and have been forgotten and divorced from divinity without Judas, so too would humanity slip away from its compassion and belief with you. But the media has given us a greater title that time had given to Judas. We have become greater men. We have become indomitable. Their title for us is a strength beyond strength. It is unyielding. It is a sound that when spoken, cracks upon one’s teeth like ice upon a crushing and rising tide. We inherit a title above and beyond all mortal men, the attention of an angel but of whose hands touches closer than any God or Devil ever could. We are The Terrorist. We are men. The name alone draws hair upon our chests. It makes our penises longer and thicker. It makes our testicles rounder and of solid brass. It makes other men wish they could be us and makes all earthly women, scenting our virility, wish that they could bed with us. We are Terrorists. We are sex. We are violence. We are life. We are death. And it is the media, our disciple, which casts us in this light. It is our bible.”
The Tall Dark Stranger handed Gavin a black vest. It was loaded with explosives and from the tips of those silver canisters were a host of red and green wires that all ran to a single buttoned control that he held in his hand.
Gavin’s hands were shaking, but not with fear. They trembled with excitement. He thought in his mind of himself being idolized on the television screen like all those others being portrayed before him. He wondered if he should have a photo taken on the way home, before he did this act; something better than the photos that his mother kept at home. Those ones were always so forced and they never caught him on a forgiving and sexualizing angle. His work photo too would not suffice. It made him look like a caricature of himself, hardly the image he imagined of himself playing out on the screen.
“Those terrorists,” said Gavin. “They all look like….”
“Terrorists,” said The Tall Dark Stranger. “Don’t worry. Most of us, in our old lives, are enshrouded with emasculating imagery and photos. We have our own studio here; you will do a shoot on your way out. We’ll email you tonight with the photo that will be given to all media worldwide so that you can bask in your infamy in your imagination if ever you feel any doubt about what you are proposed to do. I promise you, you will look fucking tough and rugged and sexy. But we’ll give you that little something that makes you different from everyone else. It’s a Photoshop thing. You’ll see.”
“I…”
The Tall dark Stranger helped Gavin into the vest.
It fit him perfectly.
“Today you stop being Gavin. Today, you become a Terrorist.”
Gavin looked at himself in the mirror. He seemed taller all of a sudden. His arms seemed bigger as if they could wrestle a black bear. The line of his jaw seemed more defined and stronger. His chin was less of a shortened stump as it was a chiseled block of ‘don’t-fuck-with-me’ and what was once a dent in his jeans now looked like a manly bulge.
He was a man.
He was sex.
He was violence.
He was a Terrorist.
“That looks so hot on you,” said The Beautiful Girl.
She whispered into his ear and Gavin’s cheeked burned red. His knees buckled under her exclamation and he almost tripped the button on the vest’s control.
“I’m gonna do so much fucked up shit to you when you’re done. That’s how hot you look and how horny you make me.”
“Even the thing with the monkey?” said Gavin in nervous elation.
“Especially the monkey,” she said.
“Remember,” said The Tall Dark Stranger, “you must dress in manly colour. Black. There is nothing more masculine than black. And you must wear a workman’s boots. Because there is nothing more masculine than a man sweating over his tools. Black jeans, a black shirt and black boots. It gives me a hard on just thinking about it. If at all you get worried or you doubt anything, think of the image of yourself being immortalized as a man. Think of that and you can accomplish anything. Now I’m going to put on some videos of our past terrorists so you can see other men doing manly things and while you watch, المغرر here will suck on your penis. Any questions?”
If he had one, it vanished the moment she started. That same sense of exhilaration and corporal abandon swept over his conscious mind like a tsunami, tearing up the sediment of his logic and reason and smashing down every wall of argument and discourse that
might have been built in his mind so that he was awash with ecstasy while he watched footage of men; real men, blowing themselves up and being paraded on television as Martyrs and Terrorists.
And he didn’t watch with fright or dread or disgust. He watched each screen and he watched each manly man, blowing themself apart and orchestrating their reckoning upon the town or a school or a bus or a crowded thoroughfare and when he watched, the only feeling he had was of the impulse and desire to expulse his sexual ferocity and when he did finally explode, when his every sense erupted, he knew there was nothing else that he would want to do as much as this.
Gavin looked at The Beautiful Girl.
He wanted to bed with her.
He wanted to tell her that he loved her.
He wanted her to do that again.
And again.
And again.
“Are you… are we…” he stuttered.
“Shhh,” she said smiling, putting her finger over his trembling lips.
“Can we… Can I…”
“When you’re done. We will sleep together. But yes” she said, kissing behind his ear. “We are…”
Gavin smiled as he walked towards the photo booth, melting into blissful content.
“Say cheese,” said The Bearded Man.
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