Contributor: George Sparling
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I’m Ted Black and that voice, a surveillance technique, as if thrown by a ventriloquist’s between my apartment’s walls, down my toilet, into my food, shoes, sheets, between my toes, between my teeth while I floss, beneath my feet as I walk, under my flesh, down my throat, into my spleen and prefrontal cortex; as yet I can’t shake it loose, that metallic, asexual digitalized voice as I saunter crosswalks, and traffic, it reverberates off bumpers, infinitely repeating that three-word phrase, “Ted Black’s Shit”; this isn’t a common auditory hallucination, today I get off my butt and refuse to rot anymore, listening to the voice’s taunt. I’ll hunt it down and send it to hell so it’ll never say, “Ted Black’s Shit” except to the devil below.
It’s real, I should know: I read Wired magazine, DARPA ( Defense Advances Research Projects Agency ) is always onto inconceivable yet, very often, pragmatic mind-destroying torture.
I want my life back. I’m familiar with search and destroy missions but this human concocted sound effect engendered by a puke needs to be wiped off the town’s census records, you know, killed; it’s on the map, this town, its citizens hysterical and loathsome; I’ll get you yet, I have the means, a black and sharp machete in my backpack, they’ll be one less terrorist, though all the town’s citizens bear the crime that undermines my confidence and shatters my personhood, one massacred town folk is as good as another to stop that automatic noise machine.
I walk through residential neighborhoods; I hear you get louder each block I stride, I close in on you, the machete’s eager for severed flesh and bone; I salivate, no longer the feeble victim; your three words, “Ted Black’s Shit” repeated countless times, every time I awake, every time I piss, every time I eat, every time I brush my teeth, every time I read email, every time I wipe my ass, every time I sit and watch trees blow in the wind, every time I dress, every time I read, every time I stream movies, times when I have sex with myself, but I can’t cum, the surveiller going, “Ted Black’s Shit” and impedes my ejaculation; it will soon end, this town’s folks all complicit.
The streets deserted, I speed-walk, your inhuman voice ferocious, disastrous, and sinister, I hear your vilification, you want me disgraced, but I yield to no one; I hear it from an open garage, one old man, maybe eighty-five, putters with a lawn mower---it could have been the mayor, fire chief, a psychiatrist, the town’s most lovable homeless person, but I choose granddad.
I pull out Blackie, walk up to him from behind, then swing with all my strength the machete down upon his pink, bald head, and cleave his skull, more overhead chops, the head split like the cantaloupe I ate for breakfast, then I swing my blade across his neck, what joy, what relief, what happiness; still not satisfied, I hack his arms off, first at the elbow, then shoulders, then legs, sprouting red borscht after a while; it takes a long and muscular time, then off go his testicles, his penis, I grope his innards, cutting out organs, blood spreads across the cement floor like the river of creation, I a reality-bringer to shittown.
If that computerized voice comes back with it’s singular hatred toward me, I and Blackie will return---I’ll lop off more heads.
The next day, when I wake up, a man stands near my bed. He is well over six feet tall, wears a dirty white trench coat, cloudy goggles conceal his eyes, though thin trickles of blood from both eyes make me think of yesterday. His bluish hair stands upright as if he’d seen the edge of the universe and it brought him greater fear known to Homo sapiens since we first walked the earth. His hand touches my face, long fingernails lightly scrape my lips, and squeezes them as if he has the strength of a machine vise on a rotary table. I didn’t bleed. He opens his trench coat, spreading it wide like vulture wings; all sorts of gadgets in pockets, some known to me, others strange as if he had them custom made.
He takes the coat off and it thuds on the floor. I’m the guy with the voice, you know how it goes, ‘Ted Black’s Shit’. Why are you here and what do you want with me?
These tools, instruments of the black arts, I don’t use anymore. Outdated and only blockheads use.
So? Are you calling me a blockhead?
Machetes are for older generations. How old are you?
Over Ninety-six.
He takes off his goggles, and looks at me. Hard. Penetrating. God eyes.
Cagey, aren’t we. Your enigma, you want to pretend that you’re the wisest man the earth as ever known.
When you’ve done nothing in life to amount to anything, when you’ve sat for days at a stretch staring into empty space, when you’ve never hungered for anything, this is how you look.
Why butcher that old man?
I need one true thing done in my life before I go. I did hear you spew that automated hate machine, and I did need a sacrificial dead human being to live just one more day.
So, you think I’ve come to end your life in spite of your claim you’ve only one day left. Right?
Do what you must.
I’m not dreaming. My consciousness hasn’t been more acute, its antennae reaches out as the sun brightens the room. I feel like Apollo, god of light and sun, god of healing and truth. The man knows I’m invincible, and as he leaves, he hears me say:
You’re just shit to me.
- - -
I live in Northern California.
I've stopped making much sense long ago. But I do like Tom Waits, Bartok quartets, Don Winslow, Jonathan Letham, Joyce Carol Oates and Christina Stead.
In my spare time I have more spare time.
- -
I’m Ted Black and that voice, a surveillance technique, as if thrown by a ventriloquist’s between my apartment’s walls, down my toilet, into my food, shoes, sheets, between my toes, between my teeth while I floss, beneath my feet as I walk, under my flesh, down my throat, into my spleen and prefrontal cortex; as yet I can’t shake it loose, that metallic, asexual digitalized voice as I saunter crosswalks, and traffic, it reverberates off bumpers, infinitely repeating that three-word phrase, “Ted Black’s Shit”; this isn’t a common auditory hallucination, today I get off my butt and refuse to rot anymore, listening to the voice’s taunt. I’ll hunt it down and send it to hell so it’ll never say, “Ted Black’s Shit” except to the devil below.
It’s real, I should know: I read Wired magazine, DARPA ( Defense Advances Research Projects Agency ) is always onto inconceivable yet, very often, pragmatic mind-destroying torture.
I want my life back. I’m familiar with search and destroy missions but this human concocted sound effect engendered by a puke needs to be wiped off the town’s census records, you know, killed; it’s on the map, this town, its citizens hysterical and loathsome; I’ll get you yet, I have the means, a black and sharp machete in my backpack, they’ll be one less terrorist, though all the town’s citizens bear the crime that undermines my confidence and shatters my personhood, one massacred town folk is as good as another to stop that automatic noise machine.
I walk through residential neighborhoods; I hear you get louder each block I stride, I close in on you, the machete’s eager for severed flesh and bone; I salivate, no longer the feeble victim; your three words, “Ted Black’s Shit” repeated countless times, every time I awake, every time I piss, every time I eat, every time I brush my teeth, every time I read email, every time I wipe my ass, every time I sit and watch trees blow in the wind, every time I dress, every time I read, every time I stream movies, times when I have sex with myself, but I can’t cum, the surveiller going, “Ted Black’s Shit” and impedes my ejaculation; it will soon end, this town’s folks all complicit.
The streets deserted, I speed-walk, your inhuman voice ferocious, disastrous, and sinister, I hear your vilification, you want me disgraced, but I yield to no one; I hear it from an open garage, one old man, maybe eighty-five, putters with a lawn mower---it could have been the mayor, fire chief, a psychiatrist, the town’s most lovable homeless person, but I choose granddad.
I pull out Blackie, walk up to him from behind, then swing with all my strength the machete down upon his pink, bald head, and cleave his skull, more overhead chops, the head split like the cantaloupe I ate for breakfast, then I swing my blade across his neck, what joy, what relief, what happiness; still not satisfied, I hack his arms off, first at the elbow, then shoulders, then legs, sprouting red borscht after a while; it takes a long and muscular time, then off go his testicles, his penis, I grope his innards, cutting out organs, blood spreads across the cement floor like the river of creation, I a reality-bringer to shittown.
If that computerized voice comes back with it’s singular hatred toward me, I and Blackie will return---I’ll lop off more heads.
The next day, when I wake up, a man stands near my bed. He is well over six feet tall, wears a dirty white trench coat, cloudy goggles conceal his eyes, though thin trickles of blood from both eyes make me think of yesterday. His bluish hair stands upright as if he’d seen the edge of the universe and it brought him greater fear known to Homo sapiens since we first walked the earth. His hand touches my face, long fingernails lightly scrape my lips, and squeezes them as if he has the strength of a machine vise on a rotary table. I didn’t bleed. He opens his trench coat, spreading it wide like vulture wings; all sorts of gadgets in pockets, some known to me, others strange as if he had them custom made.
He takes the coat off and it thuds on the floor. I’m the guy with the voice, you know how it goes, ‘Ted Black’s Shit’. Why are you here and what do you want with me?
These tools, instruments of the black arts, I don’t use anymore. Outdated and only blockheads use.
So? Are you calling me a blockhead?
Machetes are for older generations. How old are you?
Over Ninety-six.
He takes off his goggles, and looks at me. Hard. Penetrating. God eyes.
Cagey, aren’t we. Your enigma, you want to pretend that you’re the wisest man the earth as ever known.
When you’ve done nothing in life to amount to anything, when you’ve sat for days at a stretch staring into empty space, when you’ve never hungered for anything, this is how you look.
Why butcher that old man?
I need one true thing done in my life before I go. I did hear you spew that automated hate machine, and I did need a sacrificial dead human being to live just one more day.
So, you think I’ve come to end your life in spite of your claim you’ve only one day left. Right?
Do what you must.
I’m not dreaming. My consciousness hasn’t been more acute, its antennae reaches out as the sun brightens the room. I feel like Apollo, god of light and sun, god of healing and truth. The man knows I’m invincible, and as he leaves, he hears me say:
You’re just shit to me.
- - -
I live in Northern California.
I've stopped making much sense long ago. But I do like Tom Waits, Bartok quartets, Don Winslow, Jonathan Letham, Joyce Carol Oates and Christina Stead.
In my spare time I have more spare time.
Author:
George Sparling
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