Andy Moto

You know, it's a war out there. In here. Everywhere. Especially in Cybernia, what's left of it, bobbing over there in the darkest corner of the room, alone. Unless I am mistaken, the Watchers are still watching me and doing a victory dance. After having got the best of me online, zapping me at will, seemingly, although I'd managed to get things up for people to read. I have a loyal subscription base, or I did. They're all hanging on, fighting to keep their heads above the water, before the thing is filled with water from God knows where and falls to the bottom of an ocean floor, which consists of cobbled tile and brick. The Watchers finally killed two computers, a Mac and a PC ... though there was no one around to care. And then this she-devil from the west coast of Africa, traveling perhaps along the same route the slavers once took as they were headed back east, into the Gulf of Mexico, came to punish the saints right along with the sinners.

I had a cousin, several leap frogs back, whose name was Katrina. Deceptively beautiful, even as a girl, by that I mean on the outside she was perfect, but that girl could be rotten to the core. I don't suppose you could ever become unrotten to the core -- so, like I said, she was deceptive. Mean, but gorgeous. But the time she was well into puberty ... well, let me put it to you this way, when everybody gets together for the holidays, like Thanksgiving, and there is someone like Katrina in the family, and she walks by, every single man is undressing her with his eyes ... while he pretends not to look. We're a sorry lot. Not just the men. We find a way to beat ourselves up, or get ourselves in trouble, for thinking that Katrina was looking at you and smiling, because she wanted you, and not because you had half of a banana cream pie on your jacket and pants. And had you not realized that you were wearing part of the festivities, you might have embarrassed yourself, or worse been caught. She might not tell you that she had slipped that pie underneath you, just before you sat down, until she had lured you somewhere, unbuttoned her blouse and screamed rape. That could happen with Katrina. Things often are not as they appear. If Katrina was punishment, it was evil doing the punishing.

Sex. If we can figure out sex and why it makes us feel guilty while it creates babies at the same time, we could beat the devil. God said to Adam, "Who told you that you were naked?"

That's a profound question, more profound, I think, than we realize. For therein we can learn how much evil had to do with creation ... and how they attack us, psychologically, using our own bodies against us. Evil attacks with guilt with regard to sex, because making a baby is contributing to God's creation ... and the devil, like any good fascist, is trying to make population growth go the other way. Ultimately, evil wants to destroy God's entire creation, but it doesn't tell that to its human accomplices, the high rollers, the corporators who are ready for some big numbers! No, evil in any form it chooses tells them that this global thing can work, that it will work, that it will be better than Goony Golf ... if they will just stay focused on killing people. And success will be more, it will mean more, more than they could ever have dreamed possible, streets lined with gold, if they can just get rid of all of these useless eaters, these drags on the system who are going to die anyway. So put a bullet in their heads.

Does anybody remember the little girl in the red coat in the black and white picture Schindler's List? All the significance of that came and left with the wind. Ooo, a masterpiece, and just riveting, hard to watch ... but here they come again.

I think I understand Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection better these days. If Jesus gave up his life, went powerless, when he could have saved himself, and died to redeem me and all who wish to be (except the Jews who are already in, if they're observant) ... if I get into a spiritual fight with evil ... am I gonna have power, power to withstand death, power to fight ... with lightning bolts. Maybe that's just wishful thinking. I don't think God is engaged at all when lightning strikes, especially not if it does any damage or kills anybody. He could stop it, and he will. In the meantime, we're drowning over here, Lord.

They stand behind me ... in another dimension. Or, I'm nuttier than a fruitcake -- much, much worse than I thought. And now my mind has a mind of its own. I like the sound of that, but it's weird. In fact, it's more complicated than that, in all seriousness. Pardon me for trying to be funny, the sides to myself are in and out. I am what I call a baptized-by-fire philosopher, with various frequencies always squealing in my ears. You think I'm kidding? Would I kid you? You, I might kid. But I'm not kidding. You see? It's maddening, really -- and here's the kicker I'm a blue-collar Southern boy, who can become a Jewish person -- snap! -- like that. Not just any Jewish person. Not your run of the mill Jew. I'm talking ... the finest, warmest, most generous people I have ever known. And do Yiddish comedy to boot, with the accent and everhthing.

I should just get on with this. I've been fighting it ... there, you see, you made me lose my place. Anyway, I should get on with this, which I intend to do, after injecting something here into the monologue. I intend for this to be some honest fiction you're about to read -- in other words, the names have all been changed, but I'm innocent. I'm sitting in a completely dark building which happens to be a Catholic church as I am writing these words by candlelight. I've gotten a bad konk on the noggin' (what the hell is a noggin', anyway? I mean, besides your head), and there are lines down and about three feet of water in the sanctuary of the church where I sort of work as a lint supervisor and live. Wrath of some kind has been brought to this place, and I timed my entry into it smack dab perfect. I have never dealt at all well with accusing the Creator who made flowers of also creating the forces which will tear them out of the ground.

In fact, I am ready to go on record right here and now, though my white cat is floating on black water and a pretty floral print mattress, and say ... damn! You made me lose my place again! Go on record here and now and say, oh yeah, that you realize of course that back in the days of ancient Canaan they seemed to know who these weather gods were, and for some reason they had this hang up with El. Like, I dunno, El Toro, or El Vis, or just El, Bael, Baal, Beelza ... something, anyway, they all have the same name! Hey, I'm doin' apocalyptic stand up comedy. Like Andrew Dice Clay, Cassius' fourth cousin, once removed. If you know what I mean? But that's my name, too, Andrew, but most of my friends call me Mojo, cause that's what I've told them to call me in honor of a fallen friend. So, anyway, I'm determined to get through this ... and you don't have to like it, or read it, but I'm writing it, because if I don't stay busy writing I'll think about how bad it's gonna suck -- eggs, wind, whatever, creek, a place near me; freaky place, really. We'll talk about it further on). Surely they have a way to drain this off, otherwise, we're awaiting a boat ride, Slick, my man.

Anyway, it isn't the first time I've been slammed in the head with a blunt object about ten times as big as a bread box. Speaking of cats, I'm down to at least one, maybe two lives, but who's complaining. I've dodged the old bullet so many times -- I mean, mystically dodged them, as in angels pulling me out of the water -- and you think I'm kidding you. But I'm not. It has become sort of my most favorite thing to think about, that and the cloud, because I think there's a connection, only I don't what it is yet. I just hope there's a way I can ... get out somewhere dry.

Slick and me waded down into the kitchen to see what we could see with regard to edible food products, and we hit the jackpot, or maybe just the pot, because we have plenty of meat, but we need some fire, which we also have, but we need something to apply the fire to the meat with. A frying pan would be splendid, but we were lucky to get out of the cooler, which is on its side, partially submerged in the water, where it has torn itself away from part of the wall. Sacks of potatoes thick with a coating of ice, but turning to slush. Those sacks may have been in there for years, decades, a century or more. This is an old church. Slick will eat raw meat and maybe puke a little. I could go into a coma, so we're going to cut this meat, while I'm sitting here trying to think where some more matches might be. I have more candles going in this place than you can shake a stick at, or me. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand or more. I figured ... what the hell, if I'm going to need some light, and if I'm going to run out of matches, I may as well light every candle that I can find and find a place for it so that it doesn't become a casualty of St. Mary's Black Lagoon. Or something like that. Am I delirious? I'm suddenly feeling creepy, because I feel like I'm in my own Blair Witch project, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm fairly new to New Orleans, and when you say voo-doo down here, don't nobody start laughing one bit. I'm from Tennessee, originally from North Carolina, then Virginia for a while. You can't hear this, I know, but while I'm writing this ... every time I write a line, or two, I say it to myself in a different accent. Yiddish, British, Finnish, Frenchman: C'est la vie! See what I mean? That's the French for you. Schizo, right? You're damn right, and proud of it, too. Love it or leave it, I say ... both of you, the whole lot, okay, let's go. I've never trusted the French or the Dutch, and one reason must be because of that annoying "ch" at the end. But they both seem to be cut from the same cloth, silk, like what a worm spins. And I can't be positive on this, because who can, but I believe the Norse, who I have tried to like, but everything is just so damn cold around them. Everything you touch is cold. Everything looks cold. The snow even looks colder than I've ever seen snow look. And they're used to it, though at night, if a little thawing has taken place, it becomes a wasteland all over again, bound for the night in a little crusting of ice, but not much. And everything looks stunned. That must make for very hearty, globally consciousness people. I can see why they'd like to own a part of Florida, maybe the whole Panhandle. Maybe everything from Daytona south, and if you get lost you can punch in your longitude and latitude, with your sensoring device, which also works as a phone while it's giving away your location.

But I thought it was brilliant, not the filmmaking, or the verite, she said, with her pinkie in the air, but the warping of reality for all of the rest of us, like we aren't warped enough already. Course, I've been smacked around a little bit, ya know? Once tried to stop a pavement floor with my forehead. And everything went red ... and that was the last thing I remember ... until someone started tugging at my leg through the bars. Drafted in 1972 with the number 5. That's right, 5, viewers, that will be your lucky lottery number for this evening. If you forget it, look at your hand. Which means I was pulled out of a glass or clear plastic cylinder, in a red capsule, bigger than a horse pill; maybe they were horse pills with the medicine dumped out, and in each capsule was a birthdate, or, actually a day of the year, so that if your birthday was that date picked in order, that's what number you were. Does that makes any sense? It didn't to me either. Because they said only the first six days of the year would be drafted. Five. Five big ones. Five-a-roonie. Mr. Five. Greater than four. So, what was I to do? I wanted to be a poet and a painter and marry my high school sweetheart, and make babies and starve. And she wanted the same thing. She's always had a thing about her weight. But she was going to nursing school, and I was going to learn to be a commercial artist, a draftsman, maybe an architect.

And in 1971, April 21, I believe it was, my picture was on the front page of The Chattanooga Times standing in front of the Federal Building for peace. And I accomplished absolutely nothing, but I was trying to get to know this ... girl, and well, I wanted peace, too. But I wanted a piece more. Both of good. Anyway, they started screaming one, two, three, four ... we don't want your fucking war! And they were screaming it, these 50 freaks that I decided to tag along with, with very angry faces, even at some of the passing motorists, which, I'm sorry, did not compute. I didn't suppose I could go one, two, three, four ... grandma didn't start the war. But I'm sure they would have drowned me out. So, I was not protest material, but the war, the whole charade, just made me sick to my stomach. I was buying the domino theory, until we started brutalizing civilians, us, that is, and then I thought, how many dominoes have we knocked down in the last week compared to the Chinese? The it was a very lopsided number. So, we lost that conflict, so what, we just turned around and sold ourselves to them decades later, and, everybody's happy, except the descendants of the people who honestly built this country.

-- by the soon-to-be famous and best friend Randall Carter Gray ... to be continued. J.D. "This one feels right," he says. If not, he'll just change point of view, or the narrator, or formats again.