I lower my hands and speak into the microphone. “As some of you probably know, I got where I am today without the love and support of my parents. They couldn’t be here today. Whatever. I don’t care. It’s not like I’m thinking about them. Anyway. My mom and dad didn’t support my moral obligation to become a pirate and spiritual leader at all. (The two always go hand in hand. Being a pirate a spiritual leader, I mean. Not my parents.) I don’t know how Jesus did it. If I’d been Jesus, my mom would’ve been like, ‘Of course I believe you, dear, but don’t you think you should wear a life jacket just in case?’ And my dad would’ve been like, ‘Back in my day, we ran on water. We didn’t have time to walk. We had to get to work!’ And I’m pretty sure Joseph never told Jesus, ‘Back in my day, if you started your own religion, people looked at you like you were weird!’ But I want to make one thing perfectly clear, and by that I don’t mean I want to make one thing completely transparent, but if I could, I would and, obviously, it’d be my man-junk, and I’m not saying that’s unquestionably the wisest thing to make see-through, if you have the—it must be acknowledged— rare opportunity to make any one thing perfectly clear, but as you know, I’m a sixteen-year-old male, and I hope it’s not shocking to anyone that my (disappointingly small and frequently malfunctioning) lightweight penis/ testicle-combo weighs heavily on my one-track mind. No. The one thing I want to make plain, obvious, evident, and unmistakeable is that I am not comparing myself to Jesus. I’m way tougher than Jesus. In fairness, it’s mostly because I was born American, something over which I had no control, did nothing to deserve, completely take for granted, but in which I, nevertheless, take no small amount of pride. I’m just saying. If a guy tells me I should let a bunch of jerks nail me to a cross, I’d tell him exactly where to go and what to do with his nails when he gets there. I don’t care who he is.”
The audience jumps to its feet, roaring its approval. Holding up my hands, trying to restore order, which is impossible, because there was never any order to begin with, just as there was no peace to disturb, officer, I wait for the crowd to sit.
“If you’re a rebel, doctrinally, like I am (and Jesus just so happened to be), and the establishment wants to get rid of you because you’re a danger to their sweet little set-up, like I am (and Jesus just so happened to be), you’ve got to shoot your way out. That’s the real first commandment. Look at Moses. He killed a guy. He knew what time it is. And now, some might argue (certainly not me, but others), in a situation that pretty much perfectly mirrors the one in which Jesus found himself, the establishment wants to get rid of me because I’m a danger to their sweet little set-up. It’s recently come to my attention that someone, a zombie obviously, has tasked Sweetie Honey, ninja detective, to stop me from ending human suffering.”
The crowd boos.
I nod, holding up my hands. “Jesus never had a ninja detective out to get him, as far as I know, but it’s entirely possible he did, and the ninja detective either erased it from the written record afterward, or earlier, by killing those who were passing down the story orally.”
The crowd cheers. I keep holding up my hands.
“Not that kind of orally.”
The cheers die.
Lowering my hands, I continue: “Perhaps the ninja detective succeeded in his mission to kill Jesus, and the ninja detective set up Pontius Pilate to take the fall, or perhaps Jesus evaded the ninja detective until Jesus was ultimately captured and killed by (or more likely gave up and committed suicide with a little help from) the idiotic bloodthirsty rabble he tried and failed to save. One thing is for sure: we’ll never know. Another thing we’ll never know for certain is whether or not zombies are, in fact, Jesus’ kickass revenge on the world. There’s certainly some startling evidence to consider: As the story goes, Jesus was crucified, died (did you catch that?), and was buried. Then Jesus rose from the dead. Obviously, dying and (especially) rising from the dead is typical zombie behaviour. Furthermore, around the time of Jesus’ death and ‘resurrection’ (reanimation?), there are reports of an earthquake. That in and of itself is not especially noteworthy, but the same reports go on to indicate that because of this earthquake, ‘graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves . . . , and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.’ Did the poor people who encountered these ‘saints’ (or zombies) scream, run around, fight back ineffectively, only to be cornered, bitten, infected, and, ultimately, turned into ‘saints’ (or zombies) themselves? Did they then go on to infect all the other people in the world? We can’t say for sure.
“Probably, though.”
The crowd gasps. I give them a moment to digest that puke-inducing fact.
“Furthermore, most of the (few remaining) Christian sects feature prominently in their ‘services’ the ingestion of bread and wine. The wine is supposed to be the ‘blood’ of Jesus. The bread is meant to be the ‘body’ of Jesus. While defendants of the ‘faith’ insist this is merely ceremonial, that which it represents cannot be ignored. Whether tacitly or implicitly, these groups condone, at least symbolically, the ingestion of human flesh. Who else condones the ingestion of human flesh? Zombies. Draw your own conclusions. But I believe some take matters too far. They point to the wine, signifying the ‘blood’ of Jesus, as evidence that vampires are involved somehow. That’s ridiculous. Vampires are just a myth. Truth be told, though, it doesn’t matter if Jesus was a zombie or not. Whether or not he was, we still have to contend with the mottled grey hordes of ambling undead who (don’t technically) live among us. Since zombies control all governments, institutions, and every means of communication, [save one (at least for now)], we (the few, the humiliated, the frightened) have been able to accomplish very little thus far. All those who’ve joined my religion at HowToEndHumanSuffering.com have done so at their own peril. While I take great pains (not me personally) to protect the privacy of my followers, I can’t guarantee it. Signing up for my religion might be very much like advertising yourself as the special at a zombie restaurant. But the brave (frequently insane) people who join me in resisting our flesh-eating foes know I’m (probably) right when I point out that there are zombies all over the place, and that they must be stopped. The zombies must be stopped, I mean. The brave (frequently insane) people don’t need to be stopped. A few of them probably should be stopped but they’re pretty low on my list of priorities right now.”
Suddenly, in the middle of the field, in a fireworks-like puff of smoke, Sweetie Honey appears, dressed up like a ninja! I immediately assume it’s Sweetie Honey because no other ninjas are after me—that I know of anyway. He’s wearing his dark blue ninja outfit. I think it’s my favourite.
A camera crew rushes up to Sweetie Honey on the field. Sweetie is turned to the side, holding his sword up over his head with both hands, his left arm bent in front of his face like he’s making a muscle and his chin almost resting on his left shoulder. The cameraman does a three-sixty around Sweetie and finally focuses on his face—mostly hidden by his mask—and his upraised arms and sword. A microphone picks up what Sweetie says and broadcasts it to the audience: “Guy Boy Man, I won’t let you end human suffering!”
“You see, ladies and gentlemen?” I say, opening my hand at him. “There are people out there like Sweetie Honey, ninja detective, who want to cling to suffering, because it’s all they’ve ever known! It’s pathetic! We must break free from our prisons of pain and despair, embrace as much peace and happiness as possible, and prevent the tragedy of human life from ever happening to others!”
“Why do people have to stop reproducing?” asks Sweetie Honey, his voice echoing and reverberating in the stadium. “Why not trust that science and medicine will, one day, master human suffering and end it?”
“Suffering is what makes the world go around, Sweetie. Without suffering, there’s no need to do anything. There’s no need to eat, clothe oneself, or find shelter. If scientists and medicine end suffering, hunger and the elements won’t aff
ect us. Our consumer society will collapse and die because no one will require material goods, nor will they want any, because ‘need’ and ‘want’ arise from suffering. Art will disappear because no one will require distraction from his or her own contented lot in life. And lastly, human life on earth will cease to exist, because there’ll be no reason to seek comfort in the arms of another, because if suffering has truly ended, we’ll have everything we require, and therefore, we’ll require nothing of anyone or anything else. So either we end suffering now, by choice, or die miserable, as every generation before us has, waiting for science and medicine to end our torment, if not for us, then for some hypothetical generation in the distant future when, most likely, science and medicine will conspire—much as politics and religion have done up to this point—to keep suffering alive, and thereby keep humanity alive, so there’ll be a continued need for science and medicine! Honey, I want to end sickness, suffering, death, and madness! I want to maximize happiness and intellectual fulfillment and prevent misery from being visited upon countless generations of our children!”
Sweetie Honey yells, “I’m going to decapitate you in super slow motion and blood is going to squirt rhythmically from your reluctant-to-fall torso while your severed head begins to descend with a surprised look on your face, even though it would be slightly awkward to call it your face at that point!”
I don’t know what to say to that, so, in my toughest tough-guy voice, I say, “Oh, yeah?”
“Definitely!” says Sweetie Honey.
“Do it, then!” But I wave him off. I hold up my hands in a way that says, stay there, don’t move. I back away from the podium. I turn, run, and attempt to hide [unsuccessfully (and arguably pathetically)] behind my twelve hot young female followers. My voice still booms through the stadium like I’m yelling directly into the microphone. “Come on, Sweetie Honey, ninja detective! Why are you still standing there? Are you chicken?”
“I’m not chicken! The disparity between your words and actions confuses me! You egg me on with your taunts but your body language tells me you don’t mean what you say!”
“I mean what I say, all right! I believe ninjas are beneath me!” I wave my hands at him like, no, no, don’t listen to me! “I dare you to kill me!” I yell. “No. I double dare you to kill me!”
Sweetie Honey starts running toward me. I push forward through my hot young female followers, race to the centre of the stage, and jump up and down on the hydraulic lift, which hoisted me dramatically into view earlier, but now it won’t budge. I turn from side to side, desperately searching for an escape route.
Suddenly, dozens of ninjas appear from beneath the stage. (Thanks, The Ninja Agency!) They run at Sweetie Honey. Sweetie Honey meets them head on. The dozens of ninjas engage Sweetie Honey, but they do it, for the most part, one at a time. Sweetie slices his sword down through one ninja’s head, cleaving it in two. He swings his sword sideways into another ninja’s midsection, spilling his greywhite guts onto the field. Sweetie crouches down and, literally, cuts another ninja off at the knees. The lower legs remain standing, like boots removed, while the rest of the ninja falls to the ground, grabbing at stumps, which shoot red.
Even though I’m still frantically searching for an escape route onstage—it’s a pretty high stage—and I’m a really long ways from the podium, my voice thunders through the stadium as if I’m yelling directly into the microphone. “My ninjas suck!”
Sweetie stabs his sword backwards, impaling a ninja who was sneaking up behind him. Sweetie pulls out his sword and chops off another approaching ninja’s arm. The arm falls to the ground. Its hand still clutches a sword. Sweetie dodges an arrow shot by a ninja. He produces a throwing star and hurls it at the archer, catching him in the eye. The archer drops his bow and covers his face.
“Are my ninjas stupid or something? Why don’t they attack him en masse? This is ridiculous! Look at them! They’re taking turns!” I jump down off the stage, hurt my leg, and roll around on the ground for a minute. Then I get up and start limping off the field as quickly as I can.
Sweetie kills ninja after ninja. Bodies in dark blue garb litter the football field, pouring red blood into the green turf.
“I need more ninjas!” I yell. “Or, perhaps, a few ninjas much better at killing than the ones I have now!”
When Sweetie kills the last of my ninjas, he runs and catches me just as I’m about to exit the field. He drags me back into view of everyone in the stadium. The camera crew, which had given him a berth while he did his killing, gets close to the action. Microphones pick up what Sweetie says.
“I vowed to kill you, Guy Boy Man, and now I will.” He pushes me to my knees. The audience gasps. I make prayer hands and hold them up at Sweetie, begging him to stop.
“You can’t kill me, Sweetie Honey, ninja detective!” I bellow. “You’re too stupid and slow! You can’t do anything right! You’re useless!”
I shake my head from side to side in a really exaggerated way, like I strongly disagree with what I just said. I hold my prayer hands up even higher to Sweetie, begging him not to do it. Sweetie holds his sword up, ready to decapitate me.
“Go ahead!” I yell. “It won’t work! Cut off my head! See if I care!”
Sweetie slices his sword and my head falls to the ground. Much as Sweetie predicted, my headless torso squirts blood up in the air for a moment before it collapses to the ground. The audience explodes in outrage.
“That didn’t hurt!” I holler. “Loser!”
Frowning, Sweetie Honey picks my severed head up off the ground. He removes the scarf and hood. His shoulders fall.
“I’m fine, everybody!” I announce. “Don’t worry about it! I’m good! Please, retake your seats and calm down!”
Sweetie drops the head and looks around the stadium, probably wondering where I’m hiding.
“That wasn’t me,” I explain. “It was an actor I paid to play the part of me. I’m sorry to deceive you like that, but I get really nervous in front of big crowds, especially when I’m supposed to appear before one on the same day a ninja detective has made an appointment to kill me. To help with my nerves, I’m taking anti-anxiety medication. I mix it with hard liquor, which they say is a bad idea, but it’s not. It’s actually a really good idea. Anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there with you today. I’m on my aircraft carrier, safe and sound, speaking to you live via satellite, watching what’s happening in (quote unquote) real (quote unquote) time on a wall of monitors. I’ve got all kinds of different angles here. I can zoom in if I want. Then I can zoom out. Zoom! See that? Zoom! Can they see that? No? Okay, well. It’s pretty awesome! Anyway, Sweetie Honey didn’t kill me. He killed an innocent actor. It’s a tragedy, obviously, but you know, whatever. Stuff happens.”
In a puff of smoke, Sweetie Honey disappears from the stadium and my wall of monitors.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
farm-raised People
After the speech at the stadium, I decide to act on some intelligence I received about a zombie-run farm that grows people. No. I’m determined to act on it. Ninja detective or no ninja detective, I must act on it. A helicopter takes us from my aircraft carrier to the mainland.
In a pickup truck in the night, driving down a dirt road, with headlights shooting sight in front of us and a bit off to the sides, where scant crops struggle against the elements and because of those elements, and amongst and in them, a couple of my hot young female followers and I smoke and drink and listen to pirated music too loud. The windows are rolled down. The outside rushes in, swirling everything around. I’ve got the Pope’s hat trapped between my knees so it doesn’t blow away. Beneath the truck, dust grows. Behind the truck, dust glows. We’re in the country. In the heart of it. The side. The countryside. We’re in the broken breadbasket zombies try to hold together while pulling it apart.
We skid to a stop at a farm in the nowhere of the middle. There are twelve pickup trucks in my convoy: all of them full of my girls. The dust we make catch
es up with us. We do up our windows. We cough. We blink. The trucks’ headlights illuminate the particles before us.
When it clears, I see them—the babies: the fields full of ripe babies. Their heads stick out of the dusty brown earth in rows. The headlights illuminate them and give them long shadows. The shadows angle off in different directions because of how the trucks are parked. The babies wear the soil like clothes. The clothes come up to their chins. The babies disappear beneath the earth. All the infants’ eyes are closed. They’re not alive yet. They’re not people. They haven’t been picked.
“You know where babies come from?” I ask the followers in my truck. I keep staring straight ahead through the windshield.
They know where babies come from: there’s hardcore zombie pornography playing on my ceremonial robe. “Where do babies come from?” they ask.
I put on the pirated Pope’s pirate hat. I open the truck’s door. “Bad luck,” I answer, getting out.
Some of the baby heads have thin tufts of hair. Most are hairless. Some are dark skinned. Others light. Some have heads that look too small. Others too big.
When we’re all gathered, I tell my followers, “Let’s get to work.”
We start picking the babies out of the dirt and throwing them into the backs of pickup trucks. The babies don’t wake; they don’t cry. They’re vegetables: silent, unresisting. When I grab a head in the palm of my hand and pull the shoulders through the soil and shake off the clumps of dirt, I can’t believe this is how everything started for me. I can’t believe I was one of these. I can’t believe I was once this small and now I’m this big. I can’t believe there was a time when I didn’t know anything. I can’t believe the idiocy I learned. I can’t believe the lies I believed. I can’t believe I still believe in anything. And yet.
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