Travel Bug (25 page)

“They’ve removed the drugs and booze; there is nothing left to be addicted to. Hell, except old Ian Flick movies and ‘Party School’ isn’t worth being burned alive by vigilantes for.”

Now I couldn’t help but to wonder what insanity was next that would insult my previous love of the teachings of Jesus and the constitution of the United States.

“Look, more craziness from our little insane factory,” I said.

“Well, hell, of course,” said Harold.

Now… those who had a per-genetic disposition to skepticism, meaning specifically agnosticism or atheism had to shape up quick. They couldn’t even stay in the country; they were considered the most grave of all political, philosophical and intellectual threats. Nothing or rather no one who threatened the world view that much could be allowed to hang out with the righteous.

“Do you repent for using the lord Jesus’ name in vain?” asked the strange man.

“Yes,” answered the ten year old boy.

“Good,” he said.

This was in a public square. The man, who almost appeared like some s and m freak, his face hidden under a mask, stood by the child. He was tied down to a whipping post. A man and a woman, looking very concerned, must have been his parents. Then it happened suddenly.

“Please, no!” screamed the child.

The sadistic prick flogged the little boy once.

“Oh, God!” he shouted.

The sadistic prick flogged the little boy twice.

“Christ, I can’t watch,” said Harold.

The sadistic man flogged him eight times now.

“God damn this asshole to hell,” said Harold.

“Amen,” I answered him.

This was unbearable but it was the chickens coming home to roost in many ways. Spare the rod and spoil the child had always been taken literally by these idiots. Unfortunately, quite a few nuns got off on this aspect of scripture due to the fact they were forbidden to get off in any other way. Not many verses later, stoning disobedient children was also the order of the day.

“Please…”

The sadistic prick flogged him twenty times now.

“Please…”

“I will show some mercy on you because you are a child but the good book says to train you up in a way you should go…”

“Yes,” said the poor child.

“If we could intervene, I would kill this asshole,” said my great grandfather.

“I know, Harold.”

“But… we can’t…”

“Please…”

“Only ten more to go son, the lord Jesus has mercy even when his most holy name is taken in vain…”

The sickness of these people was almost beyond comprehension. I finally got it. We were all monkeys but some were sillier than others. Sometimes the silly monkeys were very insecure and needed to rule the others with an iron paw.

“Oh, Andrew…”

The child collapsed, blood dripped all over from his back and it filled the cracks of the public sidewalks. It was sheer horror. The child’s parents walked up to their deceased loved one and began to slowly carry him away.

“I believe he was truly sorry for his sins,” said the masked torturer turned accidental executioner.

“Yes,” answered the father.

“I have faith that he is, thanks to our loving savior.”

“Our lord endured much more horror than this,” said the masked murderer.

“I think so, without a doubt,” said the father.

“Yes,” the mother agreed.

The father and the executioner gave each other a huge warm hug. I cried and so did my great grandfather.

“God, Andrew…”

“I know, Harold.”

“We need to go a little bit further into the future of this little nightmare scenario, Andrew. Then we can see if things get better.”

“Would you like to go about ten years into the future?”

“Yes,” he answered.

We did.

The Museum of God’s history was the next step on our little tour of insanity. This was fine, I mean at least the possibility of killing the unbelievers seemed a little bit less likely of a scenario here. The first scenes were labeled as “In the Beginning…” and of course, featured a six day literal creation story.

“It’s lovely,” said an old woman in the front row.

“This is true science,” said an old man behind her. “You see,” he continued, “only real science acknowledged that all bible stories are literally true from Adam and Eve to the age of the earth being six thousand years old to end times prophecy according to the King James Bible.

“Nonsense,” said a young woman in the back.

“What?” the old man asked.

“As long as we live the righteous life, the end times are postponed, maybe a little, maybe a lot, perhaps until the end of time itself according to the will of our lord.”

“What does this mean? The old man asked.

She set the alarm was set by pushing a button on something that resembled a cell phone. Then the police came, beat down the old bastard with his old time religion beliefs and the lady smiled with satisfaction and relief.

“Does every scenario have to be so fucked up?” asked Harold.

“Harold, I don’t know.”

“Let’s try to find some meaning and goodness here,” I said.

This was indeed a state of confusion for all those left over who cared about liberty and free will. The tyranny was overwhelmingly terrible. Still, a few existed who apparently did not obey their laws of theocracy. Outside, they existed, outside of the cities, in the hills…

“Well, these folks sure as hell don’t take religion very seriously,” I said.

“What a lovely jaunt through hell……”

It was sheer chaos and anarchy outside of the lord’s jurisdiction. There were men raping women, men raping men, men raping children and no one to stop them. Child porn sold in huge quantities and not just for perverts who hoped to someday enter into the seminary. We had to be brave in this cowardly new world.

“Andrew?”

“Yes, Harold?”

“Do you remember the classic teachings?”

“The church fathers, Greek philosophers?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, of course I do.”

“They believed in natural law…”

“What about it, Harold?”

“Why doesn’t it apply here?”

The sad fact was that sheer evil had always existed in America’s slums but we as white, rich folk were merely sheltered from the true reality of its existence. We need to learn about such things but we don’t. The anarchy of the dictator countries doesn’t merely exist with other human beings; it’s here at our own doorstep as well.

“Andrew.”

“Are they…”

“Yes, he answered me.

Living outside the law extended much further than extreme rape. The folks outside of the arm of the law took to eating each other. Now, I am not for one second saying that cannibalism is common among the very poor and dangerous neighborhoods of America. I was merely pointing out how extreme things got to be.

“Why are they eating each other?” I asked.

“They’re starving, Andrew.”

Couldn’t they eat dogs or cats before resorting to humans? I mean for the love of God this was really sick.

“I want to know why, Harold.”

“You know what to do, imagine… a place right here in this wicked and insecure time where there would be people to answer that question. I will also do so.”

We did.

The righteous oligarchy was in a private meeting, discussing what to do with the e social outcasts. Senators and elite businessmen sat at a table, they met privately every week after Sunday services.

“Can we just allow them to keep starving?” asked a senator from Bucks County Pennsylvania.

“Yes, of course,” answered the strange businessman from Massachusetts.

“Why?” the senator asked him.

“They live outside of God’s laws and they should pay for it,” he answered him.

“They’re eating one another……”

“I know,” said the New England businessman.

The circle of elitists was silent for quite a few very awkward moments at their round table of power and punishment. No one dared smile or even blink. It was almost like a standoff, a moral or ethical shoot out in the center of town.

“What about the children?” the senator asked.

“Oh, the cry of every bleeding heart liberal,” said the man from Massachusetts.

“Well, it was…”

“What?”

“It was until the very late stages of our religious revolution of faith. Pro-choice meant you had the right to exterminate a child up until the age of five…”

“That,” said the man from Massachusetts “is nothing like what we…”

“Oh, the hell it isn’t……”

“Guards,” said the Massachusetts man. “This man has committed blasphemy under the code of 667. Please arrest him.”

They did.

“What the fuck is wrong with these people?” asked Harold.

“Harold, you know how we can find the answer to that…”

“Yes,” he said.

“We need to go back to the start of…”

The popular atheist books of the latter part of this past century certainly did a lot to change the minds of folks who were teetering on the brink of faith and reason. Ironically, the ones that were written by former fundamentalist Christians seemed to always be the best sellers.

“I’ve heard of religious insanity…”

“Yes, Harold, welcome to secular insanity…”

“Why?”

The obnoxious, selfish and narcissistic self-righteous quest for power was definitely why. The people were starving just prior to the revolution of the righteous ones predestined for paradise. This was prior to every state having a Pastor instead of a governor, prior to states having a representative congressman as opposed to a Jr. Pastor. This all happened before the Jesus revolution that I think, dear reader; we’ve already firmly established had nothing at all do with the real Jesus.

“Andrew, you have answered my question, son.”

“I wish that I never had to…”

I suppose that chaos and order are not brothers but they damn well just might be cousins who constantly bad mouth one another. It seems simple, but of course, nothing in this life ever is. Allowing men to starve is wrong, when they eat one another; it makes an extreme mockery of all faiths, even if that faith is only placed in the species of man who arrived accidentally.

These journeys were certainly not for the faint of heart. It mattered little, though. We just had to keep on keeping on and that was all there ever was to it. Dear reader, I can only tell you that when you are constantly questioning your own sanity, it certainly changes your perspective on everyday living.

“Andrew, we need to be the voices of reason on these little unnatural jaunts…”

“Certainly…”

“There should be no confusion, humanity is going to hell over a false Jesus here and I mean they might as well just move to Iran.”

Something else about our fundamentalist friends bringing hell on earth struck a nerve with me. All… well… most dictatorships and extreme revolutions have good intentions, as far as I can tell. They want society to be more moral and instead it produces an insurgency of cannibalism. Well, hell, they want the masses to be equal and it produces a pile of skulls as far as the eye can see……

“Sick society,” said Harold.

“Sick to the core,” I answered.

“Not very Christ-like, ironically.”

No. There is a reason I chose not to meet the real man who became known for walking on water and turning the water into wine. These people have taken someone who was a great man and perhaps a whole more than that… and turned him into the worst Pharisee who ever lived.

“I really hate it here…”

“Do you hate it worse than the middle ages?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“That was supposed to be our ignorant past; this is allegedly our enlightened future…”

“Why do you write all of these stories? Why do you tell the tales of our time traveling adventures chasing this insane woman into a bleak future?”

“They have to be written.”

Dear reader, the travel bug gave me my reality. I wish that it would have projected the way I was raised and what I was taught to believe but instead it showed me the exact opposite.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here… see what more of Dante’s Inferno has to offer outside this particular circle of hell…”

“Look up,” I said.

Blast off. Well, with the flat earth society that is… as long as they can…

“These folks are fucking crazy,” said Harold.

“You got that right,” I answered him.

The rocket ship took off from the planet with wealthy, rich, crazy… well… eccentric folk who clung to the belief that the world is flat instead of round because that’s that the creation story of Genesis literally says.

“You fine people have paid millions,” said the space captain.

“Yes,” answered an oil billionaire from Texas.

“Let’s… it’s time… we see the planet as it really is, as the lord intended, not as these so called scientists claim,” said the space captain.

“Captain Creationism is really passionate,” said Harold.

“What was that old quote from your favorite old movie?”

“Oh, you mean ‘Party School’ with Ian Flick?”

“You know damn well that I don’t mean that…”

We managed to come back down to earth and find out even more things about this wicked theocracy than we wanted to know in the first place. There was ironically some lack of societal evils that we took for granted. My great grandfather and I were way too biased to want to admit too many good things about this sick society. I mean as long as you agreed to be a brainwashed righteous robot, you would not be starving and you would pretty much be fairly safe from violent crime. That’s a hell of a lot more than we could ever say for anything Mr. Karl Marx ever pulled out of his hat. Still, we were talking about a system of government that would have made the woman who killed my parents very happy. Well, that is until her faith was tested to reveal how insecure and fragile it always was.

“It’s Christmas,” said Harold.

“You are the ghost of Christmas very, very futuristic…”

Christmas gifts were not distributed according to who had the most money like in the old America, God bless Americans, every one. There were actual… no joke here, unfortunately… Councils of the Righteous acted as a Christian Santa Claus determining who had been naughty or nice… My great grandfather looked horrified which was fine because he was used to his immense family wealth just like me. Mr. Ian Flick had always thought that he was making the world a better place when in fact he was doing quite the opposite.