Travel Bug (45 page)

“I see,” said Mr. Hollywood.

“You don’t understand. This new world, the world belongs to our leader, not rugged individualism and thought…”

Suddenly Ian Flick did understand, in fact, it was crystal clear now He was a useful idiot.

The controversies surrounding Ian Flick’s life were literally flashing right before his eyes. All of the left-wing dictators he defended, they were like fools to him at this moment in his life. They were playing in the nursery school of evil; the ones who came later were in graduate school.

“You see, we don’t want such trash in our brave new society. Please understand…”

“Let’s talk about this, please,” he said with his voice full of fear and trembling.

The Rapture woman was standing right behind Ian. She must have known we would see this at some point. We could do nothing; we were the true useless eaters. She smiled at us and whispered, slowly a single word.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“Fool,” Harold said.

“You’ve confused a liberated state with a libertarian state,” said the doctor. He smiled hideously at the terrified actor. “Please don’t try and run. The young men who have been trained to torture are so anxious to get a hold of you, I thought they would cum in their pants,” he said.

“They turned on me, like I turned on freedom itself,” Flick said. “They used me for their own purpose. He did. The leader, he will…”

“Ian, he will add you to the mountain, you will be on the mountain, I promise you!” exclaimed the good doctor.

Flick stuck out his arm for the shot of death…

“Well, I know enough about your past to know this isn’t the first time you had a needle stuck in your arm,” Doctor Death said.

“It will be the last time,” said Flick.

“That it will……”

“It’s party time, Doc…”

“Good luck, Ian?”

“What?”

“Good luck, if there is an afterlife. I sincerely hope you do a better job than you did in this one.”

“Poor Ian,” Harold said, sorrowfully.

Harold looked like he regretted what he had previously said.

“We have many things before us that don’t include mourning the death of a relatively young Marxist asshole.”

“An insecure actor that starred in ‘Party School,’ I said.

“An insecure Christian and an insecure actor are somehow ruining the country and perhaps somehow even ending the world.”

The man, the actor, was almost predestined by The Rapture Woman or any fucking woman who has read the Bible to die and go to Hell…

“Prior to this experience, ‘Party School’ was one of my favorite guilty pleasures.”

“That’s not funny,” he said, laughing.

“What next?”

“Where fate takes us, we will go…”

The cremation business was booming to be sure. I don’t know where the massive government program got all of this funding to perform all of these cremations but I suspected the answer to the question was not merely sinister but purely evil…

“We have a quota,” said one of the cremators. He was not even thirteen but apparently our dear leader believed he was up to the task.

“I wish we had overtime, answered a young girl, no more than fourteen.

“Don’t say such things, sister of the new world order. The concept of getting paid a wage is considered to be blasphemous. It was what the former America, the imperialistic or capitalistic Americans would have done.”

“Oh God,” she said. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay but if you ever say that again, I’m going to have to report you.”

It was fucking bizarre but it was also painfully obvious that our two young cremators were in love. They were in the same type of boiler room basement that our tortured pupil was, it might have been the same location but with these psychedelic blackouts providing description for you ain’t easy, dear reader.

“Why are all the people taking advantage of free cremations all at once?” the young girl asked.

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“It seems like the people’s doctors and the C.S.V. are overwhelmed,” she said. “We’re doing our dear leader’s work, so I suppose we should not complain.”

“Please stop flirting with blasphemy,” he said, pleadingly.

“These two star crossed lovers are the most positive thing we’ve seen in many ways,” Harold said.

“I am aware of that, Harold.”

“We need to cremate as many bodies as he commands,” the young cremator said.

“Sure,” she said, almost mockingly.

“You know, our leader’s name should not be taken in vain,” he said, very seriously.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, taken by surprise.

So this was love during the blessed leader’s new world order of chaos and genocide in… America? This was hard to believe. It seemed like it should not be happening but it was indeed really happening.

“We should do the best job we can,” he said.

“Of course,” she answered him.

“We should make the most of the information and training we’ve been given,” the young man said.

The Rapture woman would be proud.

“How many bodies today?” she asked him.

“I told you, I still don’t have exact count, quotas…”

“Okay,” she answered him.

“Whatever it takes,” he responded, impatiently.

A dark vision haunted my great grandfather and I. What if history merely repeated itself until the point of pure insanity? There would be generation after generation believing the same stupid nonsense without learning from old mistakes. The lord will come back again; the messiah is on his way, the great prophet will return, our leader is a loving father who will always lovingly watch over us.

They worked hard and they were in love.

“I wouldn’t have picked this for a career,” she said.

“God it, will you please stop questioning our leader?”

“Sorry,” she said, her voice sounding a little frightened.

This was a true love story. It was a true romance.

“Sorry, I’m also sorry,” he said.

She smiled but did not answer him now.

“I accept you apology, just please lighten up a bit.”

“I can’t.”

“What?” she asked him.

“I can’t.”

“And why can’t you?” she asked.

“If you want to thrive or even survive here, asking too many questions is a very, very bad idea.”

“Oh,” she said. “How bad of an idea is it?”

“My dear girl, it’s fatally bad.”

“I understand!”

They worked very hard for the next several hours without saying a single word to one another. The skulls and bones and bodies and things got burned real badly by the two young volunteers of America’s new messiah.

“Good work,” he blurted, his voice exhausted.

“I want to pass out.”

“We did a hell of a lot of cremation today but the government has made it free of charge,” he answered her.

“I see,” she said, her voice was full of fear and trembling.

“Please don’t be afraid,” he said.

She was terrified, scared out of her fucking mind and with God damned good reason!

“I want to go home,” the old man said.

“So do I but we can’t, you old man.”

“Why the fuck can’t we do that?” he asked.

“Fate,” I said.

“What?”

“These star crossed lovers of cremation. We have to know what happens to them.”

“Whatever.”

The two young people were proving to be quite interesting and even though he would not admit it, so was Ian Flick. What made folks behave in the ways they did? There truly were no answers to some questions. How could the Rapture woman be so viscous but still offended by the theory of evolution and the viciousness of the jungle? She even murdered folks.

“I love you,” he said.

“What?” she asked stunned beyond belief.

“You heard me,” he said.

“Yes I did,” she answered.

“Why so shocked?” he asked her.

“Well… I feel the same way,” she answered.

“That s much unexpected, he said.

That was interesting. The fall of the republic in favor of a dictatorship was also not officially expected unless you were eating the meat of the travel bug.

“This poor girl,” said Harold, sharing my thoughts precisely and perfectly.

“Is there ever anything else? She asked.

“No, “said the boy, let’s just cremate more bodies…”

They worked around the clock, it was very much like
1984
, Big Brother or all the president’s men were watching.

“Nightmare,” the old man said to his great grandson.

There were more and more cremations. Two armed guards walked in and spoke to the two young people in a very serious manner.

“You need to get moving here,” said the first guard. He was somewhat older than the other one.

“That’s a fact,” his apprentice agreed.

“We will work harder,” said the boy.

“Mom and dad didn’t make it,” the elder member of the fascist police said.

“What?’ The girl said, bewilderingly.

Both bad cop and bad cop or bad cop and worse cop…… laughed in damn near perfect unison now.

“You two have just cremated most of your families this fine day,” the elder said.

Their young faces were stunned. The love and hope they secretly buried deep inside of themselves was crushed, and destroyed.

The young apprentice smiled a very obvious smile of sarcastic, sadistic hate. “Do you know what we’re saying to you, both of you are servants, slaves if you want to be really technical about it?”

“Both our families are dead?” asked the girl.

“All of them,” said the older one.

“Everyone in our families, even after we volunteered our whole lives,” said the young girl.

Harold and I were not merely useless eaters, we were being mentally tortured, and this was excruciating to watch…

“I mean everyone you know, soon,” said the elder fascist. “All the ones you called family are dead. You have been cremating them all day long and not doing it fast enough for our dear leader, I might add. Move your ass or…”

“What?” the boy asked.

“You will join them,” the older one answered. “We came to make sure you were working fast enough. The greatest man who ever lived, our dear leader, who offers hope to all wants to create something beautiful for the entire world to see,” he said.

“What would that be?” asked the young girl, full of tears that would never dry.

“A mountain of skulls,” the younger monster said.

“You need to work harder or we have ways to give you a family reunion that you will not want to be a part of,” said the older policeman.

“I understand,” said the boy. He fought his inner despair with his innate desire for survival. It was what his father would have wanted.

“Excellent,” said the apprentice of genocide and evil.

“We will work hard for you,” said the girl.

“We will,” the boy answered.

The two men walked away. Their backs were turned just long enough. Cremation, like burial required the use, the free use of shovels. The backs of their heads were both smashed in, damn near at the same time. They both sounded like popcorn in an insane microwave. Both men fell, not quite dead but barely conscious.

“We both know what needs to be done,” said the young girl. “Don’t we?”

“Yes we do,” answered the boy.

“Our dear leader puts infants in the furnace for population control,” she said. Her face grimaced with pure anger. “We need to warm things up a bit with his own family, since he is, father to all.”

“Much agreed,” said the boy.

The two cops were thrown in the furnace. They waited for the screams and quite frankly, dear reader, so did Harold and I. They never came. These two fools would become part of the mountain of skulls that the dear leader wanted so very badly.

“We need to get out of here and try and escape,” the boy said.

“We do,” said the girl.

They did. They ran out the back. I could sense that they were delighted to be away from the burning stench of dead human flesh.

“Will we make it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

The girl was young, thin, had lovely black hair and almost perfect skin. He was pale but still had the elements of being a classically handsome young man, wise way beyond his years.

“I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she said.

The two lovers left their deceased ancestors and fled into the night. Harold and I do not know, still whatever happened to them, dear reader.

The ‘People’s Mount Rushmore’ in the former state of South Dakota was now the fortieth liberated state. Four great men were carved on it. Chairman Mao, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, and, of course, The People’s President.

Below the ‘People’s Rushmore,’ there was literally, thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of them, a mountain of skulls…

I was not afraid of many terrible creatures. They never hid under my bed and I would never have to put the covers over my face. Even though the monsters, the worst ones, were not big prehistoric bugs but rather fascist men who wanted to treat other humans like bugs, monsters still tended to haunt my mind. I had no doubt that both my revelations and hallucinations were deep and very real. My great grandfather and I had experienced hell, the absence of all reason. Islamic extremist beheadings, medieval torture and fundamentalist Christian insanity were on what was left of our once rational minds……

Still… there was more…

Something worse… ?

If there was one thing history seemed to prove, even during such a brief tour of time as the one we took… things were never as they seemed. Every single revolution that put the people on a pedestal crushed them with wicked evil, systematic starvation and fascism. The so called elitists’ revolutions such as the one that took place in North America, whether by accident or default, always seemed to do the most good for the most people.

Power made men into terrible monsters and Harold and I were monster hunters who meant to kill them.

“Is everything okay?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” I answered him.

“Good,” he said.

There was a pause. We knew things were far from normal…

“Truth is always simple,” Harold said.