The Dog Story

I don't know how I feel about this story, I may revise it later.

Here I am, working day in and day out packing shelves in some small town in Northwest Connecticut. This is truly a dead-end job in a nowhere place, but working at the Country Grocer has its perks. The people are great and the other employees are a riot to work with. Even the occasional customer has a story to brighten my day. One of these customers goes by the name Chris, and he’s earned himself quite the reputation around town. Chris always has some new girl hanging of his arm at least two years younger than himself, and his strange magnetism for little girls makes him last guy you’d want your daughter dragging home.

Chris came into the store the other day looking for something or other, and he recognized me among the shelves. We lamented the time spent in the crucible of high school shaping the horrible experiments which will ultimately become our lives. I felt something lacking about Chris as we talked, and before long I noticed he didn’t have the usual girlfriend. I brought my concern of the matter to Chris and he hushed me, pushing in close and telling me he and his latest girl took a few much needed days away from one another.

I asked what happened and his response was simple, “The Dog Story.”

What he told me then is a tale not for the decent or faint of heart. Just two weeks prior Chris convinced some young girl the world didn’t treat her the way a goddess such as herself should be treated, and that he wanted to show her how great she was. She must have swooned at the idea because she invited him to her home while her parents were out. Chris sauntered over to the lovely Karen’s house and was let in by the excited and willing girl.

Chris by this time made his first move, suggesting the party move to a more intimate location, namely Karen’s bedroom. The girl complied, bouncing up the stairs and bounding down the hall towards her private temple. The two settled close together on the pink for poster bed, and they got to know one another. As the two went kissed Chris suggested Karen take off her clothes which hid her beautiful body, so the girl threw her clothes off in a tizzy and they strewn the floor as soon as Chris finished his sentence. Karen spun around; standing so as to accentuate her curves yet kept her arms over her front retaining some modesty.

Chris smiled as he told Karen, “You’re coming in quite nicely.”

She giggled and danced around the room while Chris watched this divine show. He grew tired of his jacket, so he discarded it. The same with his shirt and pants until all that remained were his socks and underwear. Karen both didn’t notice or mind her audience’s transformation and continued on with her dance. Unable to remain a petty bystander, Chris rose and beaconed for the girl to come over to him. He whispered in her ear that she was so unique and wonderful that he wanted to do something special with her.

She cooed, “What?”

Chris responded, “Anal.”

Karen was a little disappointed and very much confused by the suggestion. She told Chris she’d never done it before and was too afraid to try. He told her there was nothing to be afraid of and promised her it would feel great. Karen had a hard time saying no, how could she refuse the requests of the worshiper come to pray at her alter? She gave her blessing and asked Chris what should next be done. Chris caressed Karen’s shoulders and guided her onto the bed. Following the necessary preparations and gentle prompting from Chris, the two got into their respective positions and got on with it.

Shortly into their romp Karen winced in pain and complained about her role in the whole affair. Chris reminded Karen the best was yet to come and on he continued. As she braved the experience as best she could, Karen felt something sink deep inside her. She jerked and tightened, upsetting Chris.

He made a sound as if to speak, but Karen cut him off with a terse, “Shit.”

Chris asked, “What?”

The girl screamed at him, “Pull out! Pull out!”

So he did, and along with Chris’s exit came a gush of excrement, a flood that washed over Chris, his member, and the bed. The girl jumped out of bed in a panic and belted down the hall towards the bathroom, spraying all over the carpets. Karen shut herself in the bathroom as Chris surveyed the devastation. With only a few short hours to clean before Karen’s parents returned Chris set to work. He stripped the bed of its sheets and covers, hauling them to the washer and throwing them in. He then found a sponge and collected a bucket of soap water, bringing it to the hall with the stained carpet.

Chris scrubbed the carpet for a long time, but he only managed to drive the brown sludge deeper into the carpet. After awhile Karen reemerged from the bathroom freshly showered and wrapped in towels, marching past Chris neither acknowledged the other. Karen shut the door behind her, and as Chris continued his futile cleaning the puttering of an idling car engine echoed from outside followed by the slamming of car doors and the sound of the car engine dying. Karen’s parents returned home early.

Karen burst through the door of her room and told Chris, “Hide!”

Chris dove into the nearest closet and held his breath as Karen’s father announced their return and asked if everything was alright. The daughter didn’t answer, and the fall of each of the father’s footsteps approaching Karen’s room counted down to her and Chris’s eventual doom. The father reached the top of the stairs near the closet with Chris hiding and stopped dead. For a moment there was complete silence.
With a sudden burst of force the father exploded, demanding to know what happened to his carpets, blasting out at the brown stains dug in the once pristine white. Karen sobbed and Chris bit his tongue, but Karen caught herself and said to her father, “It was . . . it was the dog that did it. He’s sick. I don’t know how it happened, but I tried to clean it up, I really did.”

The father took a deep breath and calmed down, demanding to see the dog in a reasoned tone. The animal managed to slip into Karen’s room following the debacle and found itself a place on the girl’s bed, right on top of a large brown stain on the bare mattress. The dog yelped in confusion as the father yanked it from its rest and dragged it outside. The rest of the family followed, allowing Chris the opportunity to escape through the back and steal towards home.

Just as he gets through his own door thinking he’s safe, Chris receives a phone call from Karen summoning him to the town vet, of all places. Karen threatens to tell her father the truth if Chris doesn’t show up, so he obliges reluctantly. Upon arriving at the vet, Chris is met by the imposing and unhappy father, who asks his daughter why this scum showed up.

The daughter answers flatly, “Moral support”

Both Chris and the father took Karen’s words at face value, but I don’t think the father needed worry about it and Chris shouldn’t flatter himself. From the sound of it Karen wanted Chris to see his folly come to fruition and continue the farce to the bitter end. Chris asked what was going on, so Karen told him her father, in a fit of rage, decided the best and only solution to the dog’s mess was to put the animal down for good.

Karen told her father as he handed the dog to the vet, “Chris and I want to watch.”

Chris pulled away at the suggestion but Karen glared at him, silently threatening the truth, so Chris gave in. The father tried to intervene but Karen insisted, “I grew up with Charlie and I can just let him die alone. Don’t worry about me.”

Karen takes Chris by the hand as the father wrangles with the vet, managing entry for the two teens. They watch as the vet tranquilizes the confused animal, administering the drug the puts it to sleep for good punishing the dog for its phantom illness. Karen squeezes Chris’s hand to much for comfort as they exit the vet clinic. Karen’s father picks up on his daughter’s frustration and offers to get her a new puppy, asking her to think up a new name on the way home. The group reaches the car, abandoning Chris by the side of the road, Karen only giving him a terse, “Goodbye.”

The car sped off and Chris stood for a moment before walking down the street in the other direction. I told Chris his story didn’t sound good and that he probably won’t be seeing Karen again. Chris told me not to sweat it, smiled and left me to my work, never losing his smile. I sometimes wonder how someone so stupid can continue to outsmart so many different girls, but he manages.

On God and Christianity

I have a Facebook group on the subject of Nietzsche that I've let languish for years now. It has seven members, an eclectic group of people from the four corners of the globe, and this both intrigues and frightens me. I finally got around to making a post on the group, and I decided to put what I wrote down here as well. I will wax philosophical again soon.

Taken out of context the quote lost all meaning over the years, and Nietzsche's original point thus obscured, which is a shame. It's hard to get what Nietzsche said when working with the American concept of God because as far as most Americans are concerned God is a real, physical being residing the a definitely physical Heaven. God is as real as the stranger on the street or the President of the United States, and he cannot die.

Nietzsche, I think viewed God as an idea, one that conveniently explained the mysteries of the world in a comforting fashion in a time of darkness and ignorance. The idea of God held society together through the worst parts of human history and served his purpose. The problem with God in the modern sense arises with the scientific revolution.

With human understanding advanced far beyond the imaginations of ancient peoples, the old concepts of good and evil God represents and Christianity extols lose their usefulness. The modern concept of evolution introduces the idea that humanity is just another animal and like all other lifeforms has two primary purposes in existence: self preservation and propagation of the species.

Under the newer concept of life, what's good is promoting life and expansion of humanity, both in physical presence and in our understanding of the world around us. Evil, in simple therms is anything promoting death and decay, a position of anti-life.

Christianity holds God as good and those against God as evil, but the path to evil is paved with the various sins humanity examples, in particular the seven deadly sins. Looking at the worst sins, those of gluttony, lust, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride it's easy to see these are basic aspects of human nature. Christianity takes human nature as inherently evil, and the inhuman ideal of God as good, which taken together is a philosophy of death and destruction, something to be discarded.

As far as Nietzsche was concerned, Europeans of his day already discarded much of the old Christian moral and ideological system, not truly believing in God. In this way the idea of God died, but nothing replaced it. Nietzsche called this lack of belief nihilism, and the nihilists feel that life has no value. Nietzsche saw this as dangerous and only welcomed the arrival of nihilism as the interim between the necessary clearing away of the old Christian value system allowing for the creation of a new and better system.

The Job

This is not my best story, and I not at all happy with the writing, but whatever it got done. I can always come back to it another day.

Someone once told me life is a series of choices. I wish that was so, as I’d like some choice in my life. Maybe that someone had a choice, and if so they should count themselves lucky. When presented with multiple options people freeze in terror, unable to select one course of action leading the choice to fall into the hands of others, those more proactive. Decision-makers choose for the layman and leave nothing to him for his trouble. If you don’t want to lose that power over yourself there’s no time to wait and think, but the decision-makers don’t leave any time to act, so what do you do then?

Decision-makers take on the title of authority, and they make all of the decisions they can. Despite this they don’t want the responsibility that comes with their choices, so out of this conflict government arises. Government shifts the responsibility of decision-making onto the people, the taxpayer and offers up the illusion of safety as payment for taking on responsibility. Why doesn’t anyone walk away from this deal? Why do we all jump at the chance to be enslaved by the system? Some present the situation as Hobson’s choice, but the alternatives to the status quo cannot be worse than the current contract between government and the people. Hundreds of years ago men believed in the idea that authority lied with the people, but we lost that, I lost that.

A couple of years ago I gave up my freedom to choose not for my own safety, but for the safety of someone else. I now stand before that someone in a large, open glass office looking over the hundreds of steel towers of mid-Manhattan. A clear blue sky bends over the city, extending the view for miles; it’s not every day you get such beautiful weather in early spring. I’d rather be outside on a day like this than standing in this office, but that’s not my choice to make. That honor belongs to my boss Ms. Anderson, but she’d rather I call her Cassie. We grew up together, and my sacrifice gave her this office, her job, and authority. I’m happy for her.

Cassie tied her red hair back into two ponytails looking immature. With a wide smile she fidgeted in her seat, crossing her legs back and forth unable to settle down into a steady rhythm. Her voice cracked once causing her to pause. I asked her if she needed me to leave and she responded, “No, I’m fine. You’re fine; I’d like you to stay.”

I waited for Cassie to give me my first assignment as my new boss while she played with her tablet pc, tapping on the screen conducting the beat to some unheard orchestra. Cassie talked to break up the silence, “It’s been a long time James, I’m sorry we had to be apart for so long. I’m glad Huron let us work together again.”

I never gave an answer though she gave me ample time. Her smile vanished and she got down to business, presenting the job. She said leaning back in her chair and stretching out her arms, “We’re renting a warehouse over at Port Elizabeth. . .”

“Yes?”

“Yes, owned by some Russians and they asked for more money to handle the goods Huron stores there. Things got tense.”

“Really”

“Really, Huron doesn’t want to pay, so the Russians decided to seize our goods as compensation. I need you to go and deal with this, and do your best to not kill anybody this time, alright?” Cassie looked down at her computer, “It’s a . . . small arms shipment, but don’t worry too much about it. Just get back to me when you’re done, and if it’s late you can stop by my apartment, here’s the address. It’s been a long time James.”

She tossed me a folded piece of paper. I paused for a moment; Cassie hasn’t changed as much as she probably thinks she has. She smiles again, though this time it looks painful. I spent the entire time in that office looking past the girl behind the desk and out the window, but I gave her a quick glance when I said, “Alright, I’ll do the job.”

Cassie sighed, standing up and walking over to me standing too close for comfort, “James you’re the best guy we have, when you want to be. The reason they put us together again is the board hopes you’ll shape up working for someone you like. . .”

I finished, “Isn’t that why they hurt you back then, why they separated us in the first place?”

Cassie stood dumbfounded when I left her office, and I didn’t much care to hear her answer when she finally got around to giving it. I leisurely made my way to the docks at Port Elizabeth figuring if I can’t choose what jobs I get I can at least do it the way I want, taking my time. When I got there three SUVs sat parked outside the warehouse Huron rented, all black. I guess they were Russian mob, but it doesn’t matter, they didn’t stand a chance against me. It’s funny, Huron does business with scum like the mob, but I learned not to care overmuch about what my employers are up to lest I learn too much for my own good. I’m not what most people would call normal, and my capabilities prompted Huron, and Cassie, to send me on this particular mission I’m sure.

I experience time and space differently than most with the ability to distort both, bending them to my will. I move in ways defying physics to those with the . . . limited perspectives of regular people. The prevailing assumption is the universe is a collection of different points separated by some distance existing in a three-dimensional plane, but I see it as one single point, no one position apart from any other. People limit their perspectives and see less of the truth of things, but it’s comforting to see only a straight line instead of the complex shapes reality takes. I’m scared of how I see and what I can do, so I don’t use my powers often, but Huron asks me to do jobs requiring my skill set so I can’t avoid it.

I vaulted my way up to the roof of the warehouse and entered through an access door. I hung out in the rafters and chose to watch the Russians, waiting for the right moment to attack. Most of the grunts spread themselves out throughout the building, guarding the few moving Huron’s goods into place for transport. The whole process went on uneventfully until I noticed one of the Russians jump and shout in surprise. Behind the man lifting crates another person appeared out of thin air and this new arrival proceeded to call out for whoever leads this operation. One Russian stepped forward and addressed the man, and the two talked quietly while the others went back to work. I felt a knot in my stomach just looking at the Arrival, he appeared so suddenly I didn’t even notice, and he seemed so out of place. The man smoked a cigarette and dressed in a tattered plaid sports coat, corduroy pants having an unkempt beard and wild eyes; he looked like someone’s crazy uncle.

I jumped down from my perch and landed near the Arrival and the Russian with a resounding thud. All eyes turned toward me, most incredulous at having witnessed a person fall so far and survive, let alone land standing up uninjured. The Russians draw weapons on me, but the Arrival waves them off and tells them, “Get out of here, I’ll handle this.”

The Russian nearest us starts to object but gets waved off once more. The Russians file out quickly and the man left behind asks who I am. I respond, “Huron.”

He laughed and I asked who he was, he responded, “Me? You can call me Rock Rogers.”

I said, “Funny name.”

Rock took the cigarette out of his mouth and smothered it on the floor. That very moment I doubled over in pain, Rock’s fist buried in my gut. I didn’t see him move, but I felt the perturbation of space around the man. He’s like me, only faster . . . and stronger. I can’t win this fight. I took two steps back and took a defensive stance. I said, “Hey, look I don’t want any trouble. I’m just here for the goods. I’m not looking for a fight.”

Rock responded, “I’m here for the goods too, so if you want them you need to fight.”

I knew I couldn’t abandon the job. Huron’s done worse to me, worse to Cassie for lesser transgressions, and the last thing I can do is run away. I decided the best course of action right then and there was to get the hell out of there. I backed away slowly, but Rock advanced with me, keeping at an even distance.

I said, “Come on, just let me go. I really don’t want trouble.”

Rock chuckled, “You come in here and call yourself Huron, and you should expect trouble. Do you know what’s in these crates?”

Rock knocks on the wooden boxes, and I stare uninterested at the object while glancing towards the man hoping to find an opening. I said, “Small arms?”

Rock smiled and cracked open the case, “Nah, it’s nothing like that. This here’s the worst kind of crime, the most despicable form of human trafficking. Huron’s trading in human embryos.”

Rock held up a clear plastic tube with metal casings on its ends and encased in the middle was a pink blob, reminiscent of a human. The blobs pure black eyes radiated death, and I could not pry my own stare from its. I wondered aloud on why Huron, why Cassie would lie to me about the mission, and Rock responded, “Why not?”

Rock placed the tube back into its crate with ease and then looked at me. I felt space bend in my direction, but my own reflexes betrayed me, reacting too slowly to meet Rock’s movements. He stood before me as I tried to flee, but found his fist in my face instead. There was a moment of intense blows hitting my body and terrible pain followed by darkness. I don’t know what happened after I blacked out, but I awoke in a comfortable bed in a quiet room. I ached all over unable to move myself out of bed. Apparently Rock took the opportunity to rough me up while unconscious. Tired I tried to keep myself awake, fearful my latest location might all be a dream and hoping to prove that thought wrong. As I drifted away a familiar voiced called out, Cassie cried delightfully that I finally woke up and asked if I was alright. I told her I was fine, and asked how I got here. She told me, "You don't remember? I found you outside holding onto the piece of paper with my address.

I said I couldn't remember, and she asked, “Well, then what the hell happened to the job? Who did this to you?”

Too tired to say much I struggled to raise my voice loud enough to hear and gave Cassie her answer before falling asleep once more, “Rock Rogers.”