The Ignored

by Bentley Little - (ebook by Undead)

  I looked around the table at my fellow Ignored. Everything was happening so fast. My brain was registering the information, but my emotions were lagging a beat or two behind. I knew what was happening but not how to feel about it. I found myself staring at John and Tommy, or Tommy and John—I couldn’t remember who was who—trying to recall if I’d seen either of them on the streets of Irvine during the days I’d ditched work. There was something about them that made them seem more familiar to me than the others.

  Had I seen them before?

  Had one of them stolen the Coors from the 7-Eleven?

  “Okay.” Philipe smiled at me. “I know this is all new to you, so instead of me trying to explain everything, why don’t you just ask what you want to ask.”

  I looked from one face to another. I saw no unfriendliness there, no suspicion, no superiority, only sympathetic understanding. They all knew what I was going through, what I was feeling. They’d been there themselves.

  None of them looked like terrorists, I found myself thinking. Philipe was probably the hardest among them, but even he did not look mean enough or sufficiently fanatic enough to be a true terrorist. They were like kids, I thought. Pretending. Playacting.

  I realized that, as they’d introduced themselves to me, they’d all told me what they had been doing, what their jobs had been, but none of them had said what they were doing now. I cleared my throat. “Where do you, uh, work?” I asked. “Do you… do you all work together someplace?”

  “Work?” Buster laughed. “We don’t work. We’re through with that shit.”

  “We don’t need to work,” Steve said. “We’re terrorists.”

  “Terrorists? What does that mean? What do you do? Do you all live together someplace, like a commune? Or do you guys meet, like, once a week, or what?”

  I was facing Steve when I asked the question, but he immediately looked toward Philipe. They were all looking toward Philipe.

  “It’s not like a job,” Philipe said. “It’s not what we do. It’s what we are.”

  The others nodded in agreement, but none of them volunteered to expand on that.

  “You asked what we did,” Philipe continued, “where we work. That’s the problem. Most people identify themselves with their jobs. Without their jobs, they’re lost. That’s the source of their identity. That’s who they are. A lot of them don’t know anything but work. They need that sort of structure to give their lives purpose, to feel fulfilled. But how fulfilling can a job as a secretary be? With free time, you can do anything! Your limits are those of your imagination. Most people don’t have any meaning in their lives. They don’t know why they’re here, and they don’t care. But we have a chance to be different. We don’t need to just keep busy, to put in our time until we die. We can live!”

  I thought of my long weekends, my boring vacations. I’d always been one of those people who were lost without imposed structure. I looked around the table, at the faces of my fellow Ignored. They, I knew, were that way, too.

  But Philipe was right. This was a chance to break out. We had already killed. Each of us at the table, as nice as we seemed, as friendly as we looked, had murdered someone. What else was left after that? What other taboo could there be? We had already proved that we were not bound by the strictures of society.

  I nodded at Philipe.

  He smiled at me. “We’re freer than everyone else,” he said. “Most people think that what they do is important, that they matter. But we know better. There are sales clerks who come back to work immediately after they have a baby because they’re convinced that their work is so important and valuable, their contribution so unique, that things could not go on without them. The truth is that they’re just cogs in the machine. If they quit or died, someone else would immediately take their place and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to anybody.

  “That’s why we’ve been blessed. We’ve been shown that we are disposable, dispensable, unimportant. We’ve been freed for other, greater things.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked. “I mean as terrorists, what do we do?”

  “Whatever we want,” Buster said.

  “Yeah, but what do we want?”

  Again, all eyes turned to Philipe.

  He straightened in his seat, obviously enjoying the attention. This was his idea, his baby, and he was proud of it. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, talking in the furtive yet passionately committed manner of a rebel leader giving a pep talk to his troops. He saw our role as that of avengers, he explained. We had experienced the persecution of the known, of the intellectual and physical elite. We knew what it was like to be overlooked and disregarded and unseen. Because of that, he said, because of our experiences, because of our oppression, because we had seen society from the yoke end of the plow, we knew what needed to be done. And he knew how to do it. With planning, with organization, we could bring about changes, great changes.

  Everyone nodded enthusiastically, like true believers at a tent revival, and I, too, felt a proud stirring inside myself. But at the same time I found myself wondering if we all truly had such Utopian goals in our hearts.

  Or if we just wanted to be a part of something for once in our lives.

  “But are we really… terrorists?” I asked. “Do we blow things up and kidnap people and… perform terrorist acts?”

  Philipe nodded excitedly. “We’re starting small, working our way up. We haven’t been together that long, but we’ve already vandalized a McDonald’s, a K-Mart, a Crown Books, and Blockbuster Video, some of the most recognized and well-known franchises in the country. Originally, as I said, our intention was to strike a blow against our oppressors, to cause financial damage to name brands, those who extol the known over the unknown, but we realized almost immediately that terrorism is nothing more than guerilla PR. What it does is draw attention to an issue. Individual acts of terrorism can’t bring about any permanent, lasting change, but they can alert the masses to a problem and focus public attention on it. To answer your question, in our case the word ‘terrorists’ is perhaps an overstatement. We haven’t actually blown anything up or hijacked an airplane or anything.” He grinned. “Yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “As I said, we’re working our way up, conducting a campaign of gradual escalation.”

  “And what do we hope to accomplish by this?”

  Philipe leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “We’ll become known.”

  The waitress came with food and drinks, and I hungrily scarfed down my lunch while the conversation between everyone else drifted back from the rhetoric they’d been spouting for my benefit to more everyday topics of trivial personal matters.

  Philipe did not participate in the conversation. He stayed out of it, above it, and I thought that he seemed so much more knowing and sophisticated than the rest of us.

  I finished my pie. Two of the waitresses pulled Venetian blinds over the windows on the west side of the restaurant. I looked up at the wall clock above the cash register. It was after three.

  There was still one thing I did not know, that I had not asked and that no one had voluntarily answered. I put down my fork, took a deep breath. “So what are we?” I asked. “Were we born this way? Did we become this way over the years? What… what are we?” I looked around the table, but no one would meet my eyes. They all looked uncomfortable.

  “We’re different,” Philipe said.

  “But what are we?”

  There was silence. Even Philipe, for the first time since he’d called out my name on the street, looked unsure of himself.

  “We’re Ignored,” Buster said.

  “I know that—” I began. Then I stopped, thought, looked at him. “Where did you get that word, ‘Ignored’? Who told you that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Philipe saw what I was getting at. “Yes!” he said excitedly. “We all thought of that word, didn’t we? It occurred to each of us independently.”

&nb
sp; “I’m not sure what that means,” I said. “Or if it means anything. But it seems too weird to just be a coincidence.”

  “It means we were meant for this,” Philipe said. “It means we were meant to be terrorists.”

  “Manifest Destiny!” said Tommy or John.

  I felt uneasy with this kind of talk. I did not feel as though I had been chosen for anything, I did not think God had picked the ten of us for some special purpose, and the idea that there was a power guiding us, a reason and a will dictating our actions, made me very uncomfortable.

  Philipe looked at his watch. “It’s getting late,” he said. “I think we’d better hit the road.” He pulled a twenty out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.

  “Will that cover it?” I asked.

  Philipe smiled. “It doesn’t matter. They won’t notice if it doesn’t.”

  We split up in the parking lot, agreeing to meet again the next morning at the municipal courthouse in Santa Ana. Philipe said he had a plan to throw a monkey wrench into the American legal system, and he wanted to start small, with a test, to see if it would work.

  Philipe was planning to get a ride home with Steve, but he turned back to me as he headed across the asphalt toward Steve’s Toyota. “Are you coming with us?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Of course.

  I had killed a man this morning and then spent my afternoon casually hanging out with a group of people I didn’t know from Adam who called themselves terrorists, and I was already thinking of myself as one of them, was already taking part in their activities as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Pick you up at seven-thirty, then,” Philipe said. “We’ll grab some breakfast first.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  I drove home.

  They were at my apartment at seven-fifteen the next morning. All of them. Waiting on my doorstep. I’d just finished taking my shower and was getting dressed, and I answered the door wearing only my jeans. I was glad to see them. I’d spent most of the night tossing and turning, trying to figure out why I wasn’t more suspicious or more curious or more… something, why I had just accepted the terrorists and fell into step with them; but when I saw them again, all that worrying and speculation seemed irrelevant. I was one of them. That was why I felt this way. I had never been part of anything before in my life, and it felt good to know that there were others just like me.

  I was absurdly glad to see them, and I grinned hugely, unable to help myself, as I invited them in. All eight men crowded into my mismatched living room.

  “Wow,” James said admiringly. “This place is great.”

  I looked around my apartment, seeing it through his eyes, and for the first time since I’d redecorated I thought that, yeah, it was pretty great.

  I finished dressing and combing my hair, and we went to McDonald’s and grabbed some Egg McMuffins for breakfast. We took three cars. I rode with James and Philipe in Philipe’s Dart.

  It was as though we’d known each other forever. I was not treated as an outsider or a newcomer, and I did not feel like an outsider or a newcomer. I’d been instantly assimilated into the group, and I was comfortable and at home with my newfound friends.

  No, not my friends.

  My brothers.

  Court did not begin until nine, but we arrived earlier, at eight-thirty, and Philipe withdrew a large canvas bag from the Dart’s trunk. We asked what it was, but he smiled and would say nothing, and we followed him into the building and up the stairs to a traffic courtroom, sitting down in the theater like section in the back that was reserved for defendants and members of the public.

  “What are we going to do?” James asked.

  “You’ll see,” Philipe told him.

  The court started to fill up with other traffic violators and their families. A clerk came out and read off a list of names. A bailiff entered the courtroom, and then the judge, introduced by the bailiff as the Honorable Judge Selway. The first case was called, and a policeman and a dreadlocked black man who identified himself as a taxi driver began discussing the circumstances of an illegal turn.

  There was a pause in the discussion.

  “Judge Selway is a putz!” Philipe yelled.

  The judge and the rest of the court staff scanned the seats. There was a crowd of people in the court, but they were all scattered, and in our section there were only us and a Hispanic couple.

  “Your daughter fucks cotto salamis!” Philipe yelled. He nudged me, grinned. “Go on,” he urged. “Say something.”

  “They’ll arrest us for contempt!” I whispered.

  “They don’t see us. They forget we’re here the second after they look at us.” He nudged me again. “Go on. Go ahead.”

  I took a deep breath. “Get a dick!” I called out.

  The judge pounded his gavel. “That’s enough!” he announced. He said something to the bailiff, who walked up to the railing in front of us.

  “Pussy!” Buster said loudly.

  “Cocksucking fuckwad!” Tommy called.

  The judge banged his gavel again. The bailiff looked at us, through us, past us. The Hispanic couple looked around as if searching for the source of this disturbance.

  “Your mother takes it up the ass!” I cried. I turned, grinned at Philipe. It felt good to shout like this.

  “Pussy!” Buster yelled again.

  “Eat shit!” I screamed. There was anger in my voice, as there was in the voices of the others. I hadn’t realized I was angry at anything, but I was, I discovered. I was very angry. I was exceedingly angry. I was angry at fate, angry at the world, angry at everything that had made me this way, and years of rage and frustration came out in my cries.

  “I pissed in your sister’s mouth and she begged for more!” I yelled.

  “You’re a fat-assed, pantywaisted, tater-twanging, wuss-boy!” James called.

  Philipe opened his canvas bag.

  Removed several cartons of eggs.

  I laughed, excited.

  “Do it quickly,” he said, passing the cartons down the row.

  We began throwing. An egg hit the bailiff’s hat, knocking it off. Another, immediately after, broke against his bald head. The judge ducked under a hail of eggs that splattered against his desk and the wall behind him. I let one fly, aiming for him, and hit him squarely in the chest, the yellow yolk brightly obvious against the black robes. Declaring a recess, the judge hurried out of the court into his chambers.

  We were out of eggs almost immediately, and Philipe grabbed his bag and stood. “Okay, guys. Let’s go.”

  “But we’re just getting started,” Steve complained.

  “We’re not invisible,” Philipe said. “We’re Ignored. If we stay here any longer, they’ll catch us. Let’s cut out now.” He walked out of the courtroom and the rest of us followed.

  “Pussy!” Buster yelled before leaving.

  I heard the bailiff yell something, and then the door closed behind us.

  We were high on adrenaline, our spirits soaring, and we fairly floated down the hall, laughing and talking together excitedly in a close-knit bunch, going over what had just happened, repeating our favorite lines, calling out things we should have said but hadn’t been able to think of at the time.

  “It worked,” Philipe said wonderingly. He turned toward me. “Imagine if we interrupted a major trial, something all of the media was covering. Think of the exposure we could get. We’d make the newscasts for sure.”

  “So what’s next?” Steve asked as we pushed open the glass doors and walked out through the front entrance of the building.

  Philipe grinned, put his arm around Steve’s shoulders, around James’. “Don’t worry, boys. We’ll think of something. We’ll think of something.”

  TWO

  My brothers.

  We got along instantly, and although there were definitely some terrorists whose company I preferred, I basically liked them all. To be honest, I was so ecstatic t
o find people of my own ilk, others who were Ignored, that I probably would have been happy even if I’d hated Philipe and his followers.

  But I didn’t.

  I liked them.

  I liked them a lot.

  I got the feeling that, despite all of Philipe’s talk, they had not been very organized before now. But something seemed to come together with my arrival, something seemed to coalesce. I brought nothing special to the group, no ideas or ambitions, but it was as if I was some sort of catalyst, and what had been just a loosely knit gathering of men joined by the circumstances of their existence suddenly started to become a cohesive unit.

  Philipe spent most of his time that first week with me, finding out the details of my background, trying to indoctrinate me and make sure I saw things from his perspective. It seemed important to him that I buy into his concept of Terrorism for the Common Man, and although I already did, and told him so repeatedly, he still felt the need to go over it with me, explain it to me, as though he was a missionary and I was an unbeliever he had been assigned to recruit.

  I worried at first that Stewart’s murder would somehow be traced to me, that the police would put two and two together and notice that I hadn’t shown up for work since he had been killed. When Philipe came for me on Saturday morning and knocked on my door, I half thought that it was the police, come to question me. But Philipe explained that none of the other terrorists had been caught or even questioned, and that it was highly likely that my coworkers had forgotten all about me and had not even mentioned me to the police.

  I saw no mention of Stewart’s murder in either the Orange County Register or the Los Angeles Times.

  We spent that week on vacation, having fun while Philipe formulated plans for upcoming terrorist projects, and I thought that it was the best week I’d ever had in my life. There was a short January heat wave, and we went to the beach. Since no one noticed us, Philipe said, we could stare to our hearts’ content, and there were women galore, all available for our visual enjoyment. We compared breasts and bikini lines, rated postures and posteriors. We would pick out one woman and all concentrate on her, watch her swim and sunbathe, watch her adjust her top, watch her surreptitiously scratch her crotch when she thought no one was looking. All this time, one or another of us would provide running commentary on her each and every move. On a dare and in a mood of lunatic bravery, Buster ran down the beach and pulled loose the bikini ties of all women who were sitting alone on their blankets.