Judgement Day

by Michael Spears

  I left Silk’s place and went to my room at the Gearins Hotel. I was getting so damn horny being off my medication, every woman I saw I would start drooling. I would wake up and masturbate three or four times in a row before even getting out of bed. When I was in bed, all I would do is talk in the voices of my characters and laugh. Talking in strange voices became an addiction, a compulsion, an obsession. Even when I would sit down at the bar with a beer, I would hold the beer in front of my mouth and mouth words and still do my voices, just very quietly and hoping no one would see my lips moving. I only had enough money for a week at the pub, and then it was back to the bush. This was my pattern now, a week at the pub when I got paid, and then back to camping in the bush. I did this for probably a couple of months. Everything is a bit hazy from this time, events in my mind are blurred, but this was how it worked.

  I had found somewhere a green army style baseball cap, and I drew an anarchy symbol on the front, and I wore it everywhere. I loved my anarchy hat! I met a man at Glenbrook station one day who started talking to me, he ended up sitting with me on the train and giving me a huge lecture on the evils of anarchy. I was getting so angry with him, my entire belief system was based on lawlessness. He made me furious, but as is my style, I kept my mouth shut. About a week later I saw him again at Glenbrook station, this time he had a broken arm and a huge scar and stitches on his head. He told me he was in a car accident the day I saw him last and almost died. It didn’t click straight away, but later that night I was in a room at the Alexandra Hotel in Leura when I realised what had happened. “God beat the shit out of that guy for trying to tell me about the evils of anarchy! Fuck him!” I couldn’t stop laughing about it!

  I began to think about other things God had done on my behalf. I remembered the way I hated the Tax Office, the way it towered over Penrith, I cursed that tax office so many times when I was young. I realised that the World Trade Centre was basically the biggest tax office in the world! “Holy shit!” I thought, “God destroyed the World Trade Centre because I hated the tax office in Penrith!” I thought also about the way my arch-nemesis Stephen Hawking was massively disabled. I called my newly discovered karma, “death causing karma.” Somewhere along the way the terrorists were no longer the problem with the world, the United States were the real enemy. They were the destroyers of countries, not Osama bin Laden. I nicknamed George W. Bush “the Burning Bush,” and whenever I referenced him I refused to call him by any other name. I was young and immature when September 11 happened. I thought I was here to stop Osama bin Laden, I didn’t understand that the United States was the true enemy of peace. Then again, who knows? I’m now a little older and a little wiser still. The enemies of peace have changed so many times over the years since September 11, perhaps we are all the enemies of peace, but at this time, in 2004, I had my sights set on the Burning Bush. There are no good guys and no bad guys in the world, just people who claim to have the knowledge of good & evil.

  When the United States invaded Iraq I was watching live on TV. The whole lead up to the war was always about weapons of mass destruction, and disarming Saddam Hussein, but as soon as the bombing began the name flashed up on the screen, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ I laughed out loud! The name said it all, there never were any weapons! The fucking liars!

  I wrote my first Judgement Day script while I was sitting in The Throne. I imagined that I was becoming more and more powerful all the time, that I could manipulate The Stage by the power of thought. “If God does things on my behalf, then couldn’t I have God do things for me?” I began to wonder, “could I manipulate The Stage with the power of my mind?” I believed that if I believed I could, then I could. Even though everything follows the laws of physics, I believed that if I made some Judgement Day predictions, then I was always going to make those predictions, and those predictions were always going to come true. The idea was that I could predict a lot of extraordinary, but still physically possible events for Judgement Day. I could defy all chance, leave no doubt in people’s minds, and whatever I decided would happen on Judgement Day was always going to happen, it was written into the script from the beginning. The Throne was a powerful place for me.

  I began to think about the Terminator movies. I felt like John Connor in ‘Terminator 3,’ I felt like I was “off the grid.” I was going to run Judgement Day from this throne. Then my mind turned to ‘Terminator 2,’ when Arnold Schwarzenegger tells John Connor “your foster parents are dead.” I thought someone was going to kill mum and Ken, and do you know what? I wanted someone to. I imagined the media turning up at mum’s place, and those two telling the reporters that I’m not the Messiah, that I’m just a fucking idiot, that I’m just some stupid dickhead. I was angry that they would badmouth the Son of God, the King of Heaven & Earth. I could see it in my mind, when the reporters told them it was true and everyone in the world believed it, they would still think I was a piece of shit. Then I began to feel bad, “how could I wish my parents would die?”

  It began to dawn on me, “every personal problem, every insecurity, every emotional problem I had, was given to me by my mother.” My mind was filled with anger towards her. “She tried to destroy me from birth, and she thinks she’s won, she thinks I’m going to die soon, she thinks it’s all over for me. Little does she know that she underestimated me, little does she know that I’m the Messiah, and I’m about to take over this world.” I thought about people who got sick, how I was sick as a baby, I thought about people who died. I thought about the neighbour Tom, Ken’s best mate who my brother was named after, and how mum used to make homebrew for Ken and Tom, “she must have put poison into the homebrew, Ken was lucky.” My cousin Chris lived with us for a while after his parents moved to Perth, his girlfriend Katie got cancer, I believed that mum would have access to low level radiation sources at work. I thought she had poisoned them, “she poisons people slowly, people just get sick and no one is any the wiser. Our family were blessed with strong genes, with a strong immune system, and because she poisons us so slowly she never succeeded with us. It was the outsiders who died, we were lucky! She’s a fucking witch, my father always told me she was a witch! It was she who poisoned my father and made him crazy, she poisoned me and made me crazy too!” I was furious, “I see you, you are the Blair Witch, you are the Devil, but you think it’s the other way around! You think I’m the spawn of Satan, my father’s son! You blame me for ruining your life by being born, but I am the Son of God! I am the King of Heaven and Earth, and you have been trying to kill me from birth! You will pay for this!”

  The “truth” about my mother was horrible, it was the most painful of my revelations, but The Stage told me it was true. I burned everything she gave me on a fire, the fumes were so horrible they made me gag and choke, “the fumes are sickening just like her,” I told myself. “That horrible, twisted witch, with her poisons and potions!”

  Suddenly my Judgement Day script had a new component, it started with a satellite smashing into the Whitehouse, then the leaders of the world dying in a series of freak accidents, then when the media came to talk to my mother she would race out of the house in a rage and spontaneously combust, then finally there would be the most incredible meteor shower the world has ever seen! Judgement Day was coming soon, I knew it, I couldn’t survive much longer, I was getting worse.

  I became crazier and crazier, talking to myself more and more, sleeping less and less, and I began writing things on my army pants. I wrote things like “Rogue Deities Rule” (after imagining the Burning Bush saying “we believe we have a rogue Australian deity on our hands.”), “Happy Judgement Day,” but my favourite was my drawing of a peace sign with a huge Rambo knife through it.

  I went and stayed in the caravan at my grandparent’s place (on my father’s side), quite a few times too. I offered my grandfather George some money for letting me stay, he told me “what are family for?” I wish my family was like that. Here were these people that I hadn’t seen my whole life who were nicer to me
than the people who raised me. I went camping one night with my father, he was talking a lot about “shadow robot doctors.” He told me that once he took a heap of his tablets and the shadow robot doctors brought him back to life. I began to think about the tree of life, and living forever. I decided that if I was going to devastate the earth, I would want to flee the scene. I decided that I would create some aliens to pick me up and take Britney Spears and myself away at the end of the world, at least until the dust settles. I realised that alien doctors would have the technology to make me live forever. At that moment, I saw what looked like a bright star travelling overhead, “they’re here,” I thought, “I may eat freely from the tree of life and live forever.” In reality, it was probably just a satellite.

  I started thinking about other things, about The Stage, I started thinking about all of the jokes God has made, all of the jokes that people don’t notice. I was getting a lot of fines on the trains during this time, every time I got on a train I got a fine for something, it seemed like there were fines everywhere! I was at the Katoomba Library one day and I looked around me, there were fines for everything! Fines for skateboarding, fines for smoking, a sign about fines for breaking water restrictions, the library itself was about to introduce late fees! Then I saw a joke, thrown in, and no one noticed it was a joke, a sign about $500 fines for feeding the pigeons! Can you imagine it?! Some lonely old man getting slapped with a $500 fine for feeding the pigeons! Whatever happened to just asking? Is there anything wrong with a sign that simply says, “please don’t feed the pigeons”?! This is how mad Australia has become, that you have to threaten people with a massive fine, when really all you have to do is ask. I thought about the ticket Nazis on the train, the way they wore grey Nazi SS uniforms! I thought about Stephen Hawking, the way he’s a robot, he’s God’s toy robot! Or the Wailing Wall, I thought of Dr Rips and I wrote “talking to Jews is like talking to a brick wall, I never read my mail either!” I thought about all the other crazy characters, and all of the Stage names, and I “realised” something amazing! “God made exactly the same jokes I would have made! I am the incarnation of God, God is not a man, but if God were a man, He’d be me!” “I saw the world through the eyes of God, and I realised that I created it!”

  “That’s why I have to eat from the Tree of Life, that’s why I have to live forever! How often does this happen? Does God create a replica of Himself on every planet? Maybe He doesn’t. Maybe God needed a world where people play God, to create a man who is God.” I saw the script for Earth in my mind, and I realised that the script for earth was written perfectly, that the human race is the race of beings that plays God to the extent that they would destroy themselves, were it not for me of course. God could have made this world a better place, He could have made us a peace loving race of beings, but He chose to create a world that needs saving!

  I started talking in an alien’s voice, and I wrote the script for earth.

  “There is a legend, a myth. It’s as old as the infinite Universe. They say there is a place where He will be born, all we know is that it is a place like no other. Many have dedicated eternity to scouring the infinite Universe. Searching. Waiting. Hoping. Many times we thought we found it, but it’s like the legend says, when we find it, we will know it. We found it… we know it.”

  The script for earth made me laugh so much, imagining aliens searching the infinite Universe for me, and then finding me, “what a massive disappointment that would be, ha ha ha! Today the world, tomorrow the galaxy, and then, maybe in a couple of weeks, the universe! I am, or rather, I will become the supreme leader of the infinite Universe! They have been looking for me for a long time!”

  Seeing The Stage was an amazing feeling, I could feel God surrounding me, and when I looked at the world I could see everyone being moved around like puppets, like toys, like action figures, all blissfully unaware that there is someone controlling them. People take their little lives so seriously, but they don’t understand that it doesn’t even matter, it’s all just one big joke! Really, the biggest problem with the world is that people take life, especially religion, too seriously. The Stage became my sole reason to exist, I was destitute but I couldn’t stop laughing! I believed that The Stage is what I should be doing with my life, but instead I am in human form, living within The Stage. “That’s why I was never satisfied with life, I was meant to be in charge of an infinite Universe! I was meant to control The Stage, but instead I was on earth in human form, how incredibly frustrating! I was born to be God,” and I wrote “why am I playing man?!”

  With my revelations on The Stage came the revelation that I did not need God to speak to me, God had already been speaking to me. God had been speaking to me for years, in the only way He could, by showing me signs, prophecies and omens. God does speak, I understood, I finally understood, God does speak to me, God speaks to me through The Stage! God cannot defy the laws of physics, the laws of physics that He Himself Created, but God can and does speak! God speaks to me and to all of us through signs and coincidences!

  Things were getting worse for me, my mind was drifting further and further from reality… but then I didn’t know, maybe I was becoming more and more in touch with my true self, with my true being. Perhaps the medication had been keeping my true personality suppressed. I knew that I needed the more level headed version of myself to write my theories, but The Leader, who I was now becoming permanently, I believed that now I had done all the hard work it was his turn to take over. This is the nature of madness, you never know where reality ends and fantasy begins.

  I can tell you that my mother isn’t the Devil, and that she never poisoned anyone, she was just a bit of a bitch to me, when I most needed her help she pushed me away. Maybe mum and Ken could have been nicer to me when I was having a hard time. Say what you like about that, but we are all a product of our upbringing. I'm happy with the way I turned out, so is God, they were the ones I needed to raise me right. The poisoning I know to be false, that was completely insane, the rest of my beliefs are debatable. What I can't tell you is “who” I am, but honestly, I don’t think it matters anyway. It’s like Christians, they get so caught up about who Jesus was in relation to God, when that doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter whether Jesus was God, the Son of God, a prophet, just some guy, or as I'm inclined to believe, my worthless half-brother, ha ha ha! It doesn't matter, none of that shit matters, so don't even bother debating it.

  I started to think about it though, if I was God, then everything that has ever happened, in all of human history, I did it. My mind turned to the Holocaust, I looked for a reason, and I found it, Dr Rips! “You stupid cunt! You did the Holocaust! If you had just listened to me, six million Jews never would have died!” I went to the internet café to tell him my revelation and a book on the shelf caught my eye, it was called ‘The Land God’s Anger Made,’ and it had a swastika on the front. “You stupid, stupid cunt! Why couldn’t you have just listened to me?!” I was furious with Dr Rips!

  I went camping again that night, by this time I had nothing left, I’d burned everything my mother gave me, this included my blanket, my shoes, my jacket, my underpants. I slept that night on a sandbank at the end of Blue Pool. I tried to burn my Bible, but I couldn’t do it, I didn’t have the heart. I tried to drown it, but it was water proof, so I rolled it up and buried it in the sand. I wrote messages with a smouldering piece of wood on a fallen log. I drew a swastika, and I wrote “R.I.P Dr Rips.” I was so cold that night without a jacket, long pants, or a blanket, and I kept stepping on hot coals trying to stay close to the fire. I became sick and vomited from drinking the river water. It rained on me that night too, it was horrible. I felt like I was dead, or dying. I thought about my ghost being heard as people pass by the billabong and they see the evidence that I was there. It was the end for me. I called that night ‘Easter II – The Sequel,’ and I wrote that on the log too. Burying my Bible in the sand was very symbolic, “no more” I was saying. “The Leader was right all along
, we don’t need that stupid fucking book anymore, I'm here!” The Leader always wanted to bury the Bible, but I needed to figure out how. Now that I had my revelation about the knowledge of good & evil, now that I had discovered The Stage, the Bible had become redundant. “Fuck the Jews, fuck the Christians, fuck the Muslims, I don’t need any of you cunts! My God Created your gods as fictional characters!” When the Sun came up I had a burst of energy, like a second wind. I entered the bush as a dying Michael Spears, but I buried Michael Spears along with the Bible. I left the bush reborn as The Leader, I left the bush as God incarnate. Or so I thought, the truth is that I was nearing the end, I couldn't go on like this much longer. I needed sleep more than anything else. I was deliriously tired, but I couldn't sleep, I also needed a roof over my head.

  What I appreciated the most during my days of delirium were those small acts of kindness. Those times when people treated me like a real human being, even though I was destitute. The most horrible people I met during these days were when I decided to try sleeping in Sydney one time. I was on the train, listening to a portable radio my father had given me, I was listening out for news of Judgement Day. There were three 16 year old girls, they were going on about their glamorous lifestyles as prostitutes, and one of them grabbed my radio out of my hand and snapped the aerial off. I couldn’t believe it, what kind of people were these? It was just such a rotten thing to do. I didn’t like sleeping in Sydney, I gave it a try but it was depressing, camping in the bush was much more fun.

  One day I was sitting at Blaxland station, with all of my belongings as usual, and a nice young lady started talking to me. She said her name was Rosemary, which I thought was ironic, but I didn’t say anything. I had no idea why this girl wanted to talk to me, I didn’t understand it, and she asked me for my email address, which I gave. I never did hear from her, but it was just so amazing to have the attention of someone so nice, when I was so broken.