“You see those men” he said, pointing out to the end of the warehouse where a group of men all dressed in sheathes of colour, all loaded arsenals to their chests.
“Yes” said Gavin.
“Today, they will be remembered for an eternity. They will go to war. They will attack a target of the east side of town. By the evening, their faces will be on every news channel on every station in every city in every country across the entire world. They will be more than famous. They will be infamous. They will live as martyrs for us in our brotherhood but for the entirety of mankind, they will live forever as Terrorists. Look at them. Look at the joy on their faces. Finally, they will attain what is rightfully theirs.”
“Are they scared?”
“Why should they feel fear? Our minds are a puzzle. When a piece of that puzzle is missing, when there is some information of which we do not know, our minds invent the worst. They invent that so we go on our search for information. It is the core of survival and the catalyst of learning. But some pieces have no resolution and so we must carve our own. Some think of an afterlife, of an eternity that awaits and rewards their giving; like Judas. Some think of their title, of the infamy they will have and of their names being read aloud on television sets and in history classes as a reward of their giving; like Jesus. Do you have faith?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you believe in god?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you fear god?”
“No.”
“Then you are not Jewish. Do you love god?”
“No.”
“Then you are not Christian.”
“Do you accept god?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you submit to his reverence, like a mother does to her body when he gives birth to her child. To accept means to love and god and to fear god in the same tone.”
“No.”
“Then you are not a Muslim.”
“I’m an atheist.”
“Well that’s kind of tricky. There’s no such thing. To disprove or to disbelieve in god is to assume the idea of god as an opposite to the ideal; therefore, by incorporating god into your ideal, you assume that god exists. Atheism became the intellectualized devil so to speak and is in every right, infeasible without its opposite. It’s like believing in ‘up’ and saying that ‘down’ does not exist. So if in fact you are an atheist, we can assume that in heightened fright, you will secretly and quietly assume a thought of either god existing or its polar, god not existing. Both in their right are the same thought as both access the same function in the human brain to tickle the god receptors that release endorphins and make the idea of death seem bearable and without unnecessary panic.”
“And what about a Nihilist?”
“The faceless god. All believe and non-belief s but the same. It is just words that can fill that void in one’s mind, the one without resolution, the one whose fright is ever so heightened. What will yours be? Will you think of heaven? Or will you listen to the echo of your name?”
“I wanna be Jesus.”
“We all want to be Jesus.”
“I’ll do it. Tomorrow. I’ll do it. What do I have to deliver?”
“Yourself” said The Tall Dark Stranger.
Gavin watched the men strapping black vests on loaded with explosives. They looked so fucking cool. He wanted to feel like they looked.
“You know what really turns me on?” said The Beautiful Girl.
Gavin had no idea.
But he wanted to know.
“Suicide bombers” she said.
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 godlike 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 quiet and uneventful, as having 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 rayed 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. Human loves compassion but it is not something they can attest to on 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 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 the 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 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 himself apart and orchestrating his 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.
CHAPTER SIX
Gavin walked differently. He had always hunched his back and kind of retarded his head into the gouge in his shoulder blades. His feet would always sweep along behind him and as such, the slouch in his step would wear through the soles in his shoes.
Not today.
Walking down the street, he felt taller. He felt taller because in his mind, he imagined himself taller. He felt bigger. And it might have been because of the vest he was wearing and the explosives that were strapped to it but in truth, it was because, in his mind, he imagined himself bigger.
And in his mind he imagined himself more alluring; or sexual potency. And as he walked down the street, his imagination must have been casing a scent because dragging along in his shadow, were the turned expressions of wonder and awe from men and women who passed him and were drawn into the wake of his passing, unable to stop themselves from casting their stare, like a desperate and wormless hook.
Gavin imagined in his mind, not the thought of death or what dying might actually be like. No. he thought about a particular newsreader that he loved to watch on television. She was a specific and unusual kind of beautiful. She was older than most of the reporters but her age didn’t spoil her splendor or her allure. And her eyes, they were so big. Not like most girls’ eyes. They were glacial but they weren’t at all cold. They were the kind of eyes that entrapped you and had you boldly listen as you remained at the command of her tongue. And it could have been a makeup trick or maybe she was an alien.
But every night, Gavin watched as she evangelized over landslides and mortars and murder and rape and terror and torture and anger and hate; and bombings and stabbings and football and wars and the nightly soap opera and the pop culture whores and she was so beautiful that nobody else in the world would ever compare to her. She was so beautiful that Gavin hoped there would never be a world without suffering so that he should never spend a night without throwing himself into her trapping gaze and list with her fanciful stories.
He imagined, as he walked through the now diverging mass on the sidewalk, the newsreader speaking his name and as she mouthed the word terrorist, it almost looked like she was blowing him a kiss.
He passed his old work and he looked at the building with a certain regard for he knew something that they did not. And the security guard sitting behind his desk, he gave Gavin his usual discerning stare. Not because he saw in him the future of his intention, but because he imagined in his mind, that Gavin and whoever was walking past was laughing at him in mocking secrecy. Laughing about his weight. Laughing about his splotchy face. Laughing at how he panted, each time that he leaned to pick up a pen. Laughing at how, like a blind man, there were parts of him that he only knew from touch and laughing too, because quite surely, it was only he who could prove that those parts were even there. And so the security guard, he looked through a disapproving lens and though his eyes were stern, it was upon himself that his consternation drew the highest acclaim.
Gavin then passed, as he made his way to the bus stop, the tennis club and there, at the front door, was the same spiky haired man in the same provoking
t-shirt and Gavin looked at the word Nihil and he thought then that maybe there was some truth in this, that nothing at all had any significance outside of what was taught and therefore, nothing was real and nothing existed, nothing at all was nothing and all.
He went back to his dreaming and he imagined his mother and father being pestered by the media, hounded as to how their son could have risen so tall under the roof that they had built. How could they have missed it? What else could they have done?
And as the reporters talked of the collateral effect, the changes that will come into place, the coming together of people, and the abandon of common disregard and squabbling dissent, Gavin smiled knowing that without him, without this violent act, none of these good things would have been given a life.
“And where were you all day?”
It was his mother. She wasn’t really expecting any kind of answer. Nothing that came out of his mouth would be what she would deem appropriate. It was obvious that she knew. His brother would have already told her by now. Little mama’s boy probably called her right after he stormed out.
“Your father is not happy” she said.
That was true. Though it seemed it didn’t need to be pointed out. The man was never happy. His life was a bourdon. He hated his job. His marriage had withered into pleasant company and his children, the extent of his seed, had grown into bitter disappointment. His father was not happy, ever.
“Where did you get that jacket? That’s not yours. I don’t remember buying that for you. Did you buy that? When did you buy it? Is it new? God look at the arms. It’s too long. Look it sits to shabby on your body. Oh that’s a terrible jacket. You see, this is why you’re better off buying clothes with your mum. You can’t see what I can see and it just looks like you’re trying to hide something under there. A jacket should sit proper. Here let me just tuck…”
With er knitting hands, she pulled at the bottom of the jacket, trying to see how low it would sit. Underneath, Gavin could feel the vest shiting under her poking about and he could feel the red and green wires, scratching against his skin.
The Terror[blist] Page 6