The
Lulk’D’Haim Prayer Festival was over. With its ending came the beginning of a
new year, a time for new goals and fresh perspectives, the merry singing and
celebrating of all those who celebrated this great time in the cycle. Rejuvenated
after his time off, Stessus was back at work in high spirits, and with an
appreciation for the finer things in life. A tiny raise, a tiny plant, a medium
sized car, a humble home, a caring boss, and a devotion to life. But it is only
a matter of time before the radiating joy of all Prayer Festivals is tarnished
by the unlikeable things in life.
It was less than a month into the
new year when Stessus received a letter in the mail that got his blood moving.
It was from the Illinois Tariff Patrol. Without transcribing the contents of
the letter here, it will suffice to state simply that it was a notice of transport
tariff violation in the state of Illinois. Being a strict practitioner of his
religion, Stessus had traveled to see his family for the Lulk’D’Haim Prayer
Festival in mid-December. They lived in Milwaukee, and on his trip Stessus had
passed through a few tariff stations on the Illinois interstate he didn’t have
enough coins for. After passing through unpaid, he had been informed by a large
blue sign that he could pay his tariffs online within seven days. Upon reaching
the home of his aunt and uncle, he did just that. Or he tried to. He had gone
to the website, entered his license plate number, but he found that no
violations were reported. NO TARIFFS MISSED. Nothing on record. Strange, he had
thought. But he knew he’d missed the tariffs. With a boggled mind and an intent
to meet the requirements of the Illinois Tariff Patrol, he found a place on the
website to fill out a Tariff-Breaking-Questionnaire.
The questionnaire presented him with a
series of options to select, each relating in some way to his missed tariffs. No,
this must be wrong, he realized. They must know that I’ve missed paying these
tariffs. They have cameras. Those cameras catch license plate numbers. They
feed that into the system, and the system informs the website, and I come here,
type in my stuff, and it presents me with my violations. But this sensible way
of thinking was not at all in line with the Illinois Tariff Patrol’s way of
thinking. He found that nowhere on the website was there a record of his
violations, or his car. Not knowing the names of the tariffs, nor the costs of
the tariffs, nor the locations, nor the reasons or specifications of these
tariffs, and finding no resource on the website which would provide him this
information, he was left with only the option to make things up.
I missed paying three tariffs, he
knew. So he had listed three random tariffs. He had never seen a tariff that
cost more than a dollar per traveling vehicle, so when it asked the price of
the tariffs, he wrote down “$1.00”. The locations he entered were arbitrary.
They’ll have my license plate on record soon enough, he said to himself. And
they’ll see that I missed three tariffs, then they’ll see that I paid three tariffs,
and they’ll know things are OK. He paid the three tariffs on the internet.
After returning to his home at the
end of the Lulk’D’Haim Prayer Festival, Stessus had passed through two more tariffs
without paying. Again he had gone to the website to pay the tariffs. Again,
they had had no record of his car having missed any tariffs. Fine, Stessus had said.
I will pay nothing. If they say I missed nothing, I missed nothing. It is on
them, not on me.
So the letter he received, you might
well imagine, threw him for a surprise when it said he had five tariff
violations. And not only was it asking for the price of the tariffs to be paid,
which was $1.50 each, but it was demanding an additional fine of $20.00 on top
of that. That amounted to $107.50 that
Stessus now owed to the Illinois Tariff Patrol. But Stessus possessed a
first-rate sense of right and wrong, a monumental comprehension of personal
responsibility and accountability, and held others to the same standards to
which he held himself. Knowing full well he was in no way the violator the Tariff
Patrol was accusing him of being, he wrote a note in which he presented his
case, provided proof that he had paid his first three tariffs, and included a
money order for the last two tariffs from his return trip. All sealed up and
perfectly reasonable and right, he sent these items to the Illinois Tariff
Patrol. His personal obligations ended there. He owed them nothing further.
So when he received another notice
from the Illinois Tariff Patrol two weeks later stating that he had been
granted a hearing to present his case to the Hearing Officer, Stessus was
perplexed. I just presented my case, he said. I sent them the whole thing. I
sent them the money for the tariffs, I proved to them I paid my first tariffs,
I explained how they could fix their website to more adequately handle tariff
violations, and I detailed my own failed attempts at paying for tariffs I might
have missed.
Again, Stessus presented his case in
writing. He brought up serious points and called attention to important
problems in the Illinois Tariff Patrol’s process of dealing with missed tariffs
through its website. He flawlessly conveyed his innocence and his various
attempts at following their rules to pay for his tariffs. He provided, once
more, the evidence that he had already paid his first three tariffs through the
website. He provided documents showing he had sent the money order for those
last two tariffs, which was still in the Tariff Patrol’s possession. And he
proved the futility of such endeavors.
After sending his statements once
more, Stessus forgot about things. So when, two more weeks later, he received a
final notice from the state of Illinois stating that he had been found guilty,
and was ordered to pay the full price of $107.50 within six days, or suffer the
consequences of paying a tripled fine for each unpaid tariff, he was shaken.
If, said the statement, you do not pay this fine within this time, your license will be revoked, and our lawyers will
contact you to collect.
There were threats scattered
throughout the notice, and Stessus’s heart flew around inside him as he read
and re-read. Arbitrary words, obscure legal codes and violation numbers,
illegible scribblings of Hearing Officers and Judges, demands for more money
than Stessus could afford, and all for something that was beyond his control.
Nowhere in the letter did anyone address the comments made by Stessus. There
was no evidence that anyone along the chain of command had taken the time to
read his letters of defense, his pleas for mercy, his evidence of innocence. There
was a coldness to the whole thing. An impersonal, careless, selfishness
permeated the letter, dripping with bureaucratic putrefaction. He envisioned
his rights slipping away, his money pouring out of his bank account, his
freedom falling into the hands of some unseen demiurge.
Stessus felt a darkness come into
his life. This darkness first took the shape of the Tariff Patrol, and seemed
to loom above him like a horror that would never die. But the longer he dealt
with the faceless and unaccountable Tariff Patrol of the State of Illinois, the
clearer he saw this darkness. The darkness began to grow from within.
I will try once more, he decided. He
sent a letter to the Tariff Patrol informing them that, if they so wished him
to pay his fines, they would first need to return to him his money. They had $7
of his sitting in their accounts somewhere. It was paid on the pretense of
being for tariffs. But since the Tariff Patrol made it repeatedly clear they
did not recognize his payments as being tariff payments, that money was in
their accounts illegally. Stessus ordered them to return the money to him
before any further action could be taken.
His demands were ignored. The
towering Tariff Patrol felt nothing for this tiny ant’s wishes or pleas. They
ignored any words not in complete ordinance with their code of operation. Their
notices of tariff violation flew out to hundreds of thousands of civilians
every day. Hundreds of thousands of living, breathing, thinking, working,
trying, fighting people trudging their way through life with burdens of their
own, problems to consume them individually. The Tariff Patrol was a monster, a
machine. When Stessus received no response from them, he felt his fight was
over.
And so it was that Stessus went on
living. But living always in a darkness that sat boiling, sat waiting to react
against the imposing giant that had stuck its arm into his life.
It was halfway through the year, and
Stessus was already looking forward to the coming Lulk’D’Haim Prayer Festival.
It was the best time of year. The time of year where everything slipped away
and all Earthly worries and evils were delivered unto the five hundred million
year old God Thing of Obnomox.
Stessus received a notice from the
lawyers of the Tariff Patrol of the State of Illinois, ordering him to forfeit
his driver’s license, and to pay a compounded fine of almost $400.00. Failure
to follow these orders, said the notice, would result in jail time to be
determined by the State of Illinois. Unwilling to go through this again and
seething with intolerance toward a system as undeserving of life as any ever
conceived, Stessus wrote a final letter to the Tariff Patrol. Guide my hand,
Lord Obno, said Stessus. Write to your subjects through me. Communicate with my
pen, for I am your vessel:
“Dear
Sirs or Madams, whosoever it might concern within the State of Illinois and its
Tariff Patrol,
You are in direct violation of Code
898-000-939-1199 of the Almighty Lord Obno, the Primordial God Thing of
Obnomox. These codes and declarations were handed down hundreds of millions of
years ago, and exist to this day, prevailing over your own codes and laws and
negligible concerns. The conditions of Lord Obno are to be met by every living
individual, and this is required without your consent and despite your refusal.
Your continued aggravation of this Obnomoxian Follower has conflicted greatly
with the demands of Obno, and you will be punished for it if you do not comply
to a list of demands.
1.
Submit a written
letter of apology to me, Stessus, signed in blood by all individuals of the
State of Illinois and the Tariff Patrol and all the lawyers and judges and
hearing officers involved in my case.
2.
Forfeit your
bank accounts to me, and sign over your property to me, Stessus.
3.
Mutilate your
children at a designated location in your province, serving the blood to the
sky and the soil in golden cups. A list of prayers to Obno have been included,
which should be recited upon the slitting of your children’s throats.
Failure to
complete these tasks by July 4th will necessitate the interaction of
Our Almighty Lord Obno, Mysterious Ancient Deity and God Thing of All the Known
Multiverse. Any attempt to defy these
orders or to contact Stessus in any other way other than to inform him that
these tasks are completed will require further action by Lord Obno. You have been
warned. You have one week to submit proof of completion of these demands.”
Stessus sent the letter. But it was
not time for relaxing or getting back to work. As all Obnomoxians know, the path
to Obno’s Divine Intervention is preceded by a number of requirements.
Stessus spent the weekend performing
the Ritual Dance of Obno in order to receive the ancient God Thing’s permission
to pray to It. By Sunday night, Stessus had been awake for 52 hours and had
shared his blood with the grass and the trees. His stomach ached from fasting,
and his muscles ached from 48 hours of nonstop dancing. On Monday morning, he
received a sign from Obno that he had been granted permission to pray directly
to Him.
Stessus’s boss, Mr. Camberland Prot,
caught him by the water cooler and with white glowing eyes and an obvious
possession by some higher power, his mouth opened in a frightening hiss, and in
a booming, echoed, intergalactic voice, he spoke:
“Stessus, Obnomoxian Follower, you
have been granted permission to pray to Me.” Mr. Prot’s eyes went back to
normal and he closed his mouth and his voice was his regular high tone. “Hey
Stessus, I was gonna ask you about the tee-ball game we planned last week…”
But Stessus could not talk now. He
went home. He entered his shrine and prayed directly to Obno for His Divine
Hand, begged for His invocation, and pleaded with Him to intervene in Stessus’s
puny human affairs. After telling Obno of the State of Illinois’s violation of Code
898-000-939-1199 everything was silent. It was a black expanse of stars all
around him for a moment. Stessus felt warm and cold at the same time. The
darkness that sat dormant in his soul came to life. It was Obno’s message. His
answer.
When July 4th rolled
around and Stessus received nothing from the State of Illinois nor the Tariff
Patrol confirming their completion of the deeds ordered in Stessus’s letter, he
was disappointed. But when the thunder and lightning and winds rolled in that
night and covered the landscape, and silenced the fireworks celebrating the
nation’s birth, Stessus knew his god had everything in His hands.
The next day was horrific, and every
station on television had turned to emergency broadcast news. The state of
Illinois, it so happened, had become the recent sight of apocalyptic
devastation. A great storm of fire blew through the middle of the state,
vanquishing buildings and homes and shopping centers, while a massive sinkhole
in the north of the state swallowed every tariff patrol station and every major
interstate in the area. An earthquake simultaneously shook the entire state
with a 9.0 Richter magnitude. Everything was utterly destroyed. From the sky
came a shower of comets and meteors that filled Illinois with craters, like
consecutive strikes in a nuclear war. No expert reached for comment could make
sense of these comets, nor the earthquake, nor the fire.
The death toll was massive. As the news
agencies reported the madness, chaos still ensued, death spread far and wide
over Illinois’s flat, desolate wasteland, rendering all human life extinct as
far as the eye could see. The borders of Illinois erupted in geysers of hot
lava, ending all life for miles around. Stessus watched the news from the small
TV at work. Others crowded around. There were stories of children being
devoured by wolves, torn limb from limb, guts sprawling across the urban sprawl
of Illinois’s dying towns.
Women and men were vaporized by the
comets, crushed by falling buildings, some were stuck in tortuous phases of
pre-death pain, as lightning and hail and fire attacked them with seemingly
evil intent. Churches and temples filled with weeping Christians, screaming
Muslims, bowing Jews, and all prayed for a savior who never came. Each church
fell into a river of lava and fire and death, the screams of the pious and
faithful carried away into hell’s unholy heart.
Vipers tore out of the intestines of
Tamra, the woman at the Tariff Patrol who handled Stessus’s incoming letters.
The vipers devoured her lungs and fed on her heart long past its last beat.
Hateful ghouls shredded the penis and the anus of Glem, the officer responsible
for processing Stessus’s tariff violation, leaving him in a pool of his own
blood and excrement to die in his burning home. Tomas, the man who oversaw the
appeals and hearings of all tariff cases, was tied by invisible hands to his
son’s basketball goal in the backyard and was raped by the pre-historic claws
of deaf subterranean mutants, his children’s corpses smoldering in front of him
as he screamed. Jansen, the Hearing Officer of the Illinois Tariff Patrol, was
strung up by the feet before his congregation and cut slowly to within an inch
of life by possessed animals with rabid teeth, only to be choked out by the
entrails of his wife who cried from the top of a pile of pleading, dying
bodies. Jezebel, the judge who oversaw the hearing, and the lawyers who
prolonged the tariff cases into ungodly swaths of time were skin-stripped by
the very earth itself, gargantuan layers of granite and dirt flaying them,
filling their mouths, stuffing their bleeding orifices with the gravel of a dead landscape, scathing their mucous membranes with rocks cut into daggers.
Those caught in the midst of a fuck, in
the throes of passion, in the tender moments of romance, all those were ripped
from the inside by invisible fingers and blades of cosmic energy. Raped by
conquering horrors, a personal holocaust for every individual. Their screams
filled the sky, their tears fed the earth, their blood quenched the thirst of
chaos demons descending from the gutted heavens. No person was safe. Death
ruled supreme over Illinois. For twenty four hours nothing but misery and
violence and unimaginable torrents of destruction swelled the state to its
capacity, until, with a dying whimper, it crumbled into a hole of shit and
agony, leaving only a black void that reached deep into the earth’s core.
Stessus watched it all from the
office. When he went home, golden trinkets and multicolored artifacts of older
times sat in wait on his doorstep. These were the gifts of Obno, an answer to
his prayers. His holy work was done.
The End.
No comments:
Post a Comment