Don Henley was playing Jones Beach for the Labor Day weekend. I could think of no better way to end the abased eighties than to hear Henley perform Building the Perfect Beast. It had been their anthem now it would be my eulogy. There were thousands of people at the concert but I was probably the only one that knew what he was talking about when he boasted that they knew the secrets of eternity, they had found the lock and turned the key. As a sly aside he said Pandora’s not going to like it. All I could think to myself was if you’re going to open Pandora’s Box you better know what’s inside. Henley went on with his salutation; the day had come, soon he would be released, hallelujah they were building the Perfect Beast. I wondered where he was getting his information. He had better find a new source. I guessed those were heady days a few years ago when that song was written. Now that we had finished abasing the eighties we had finished ourselves in the process. The eighties were so abased that marriage vows before consummation was never even an option. If I had told Dianne we had to get married before we could have sex she would have thought me insane for real. Henley finished his tome by saying that they were going to take Olympus in an all or nothing attempt. No doubts the Titans would strike back but where did they think they were going without Hecate, nine out of ten times in chess when you lose your queen you’ve lost the game.
When we got back from Jones Beach that night Andrew called the two Arab attendants in the Seven Eleven next door to my apartment complex Sand Niggers. One of the Arabs responded by pulling a pistol. I was outside the store so I didn’t see it but when I heard about it I went to go get my AR15. I figured shooting an Arab for no real reason had worked for Camus’s character in The Stranger and it would work for me too. On the way back to the apartment a drunken Geir slipped on the wet grass and started trying to swim through it. The moment of levity diffused my homicidal intentions.
Late that night when everybody left Michelle, and I went into Cypress Hills and got an ‘eight ball.’ When we got back, we had an expensive bottle of vodka lying around and hours before the dawn. When daylight began to show through our window Lilith was with us and she seemed more powerful than she ever had before. Michelle was in a complete trance almost half her hair was standing up on end. Shadows appeared all over the walls, everywhere you looked. They began to move around the room with great rapidity independent of the wall. When I started feeling hands all over me I began to feel threatened and I was in no mood to run. I went into a red out. The next thing I remember is blasting away at them with the sounds of the gunshots ringing in my ears.
I smashed the window of my apartment with the still smoking AR15 and threw it to the ground outside. When I thought about it, I decided to get as far away from the scene as possible. The cops were going to come into that apartment and up those stairs shooting regardless of whether they found the gun outside or not. I pulled on a pair of jeans and started to go down the darkened stairway, but I saw movement in the shadows and Michelle was taunting me about it waiting on the stairs for me. I went to the broken window and jumped from the second floor. I landed on my feet and felt my right ankle pop. Something else gave in the bottom of my left foot. But I knew if I wanted to live, I had to get as far away from the gun as possible. Since I was wearing only jeans they might not shoot if they figured I wasn’t armed.
I started to run and with each step my right ankle became looser till it was flopping around like an untied sneaker. I ran into the super at the next building. He was standing there as if nothing had happened. He ushered me into an unfurnished apartment in back of him and told me to stay in there. When I checked the door, I found he had locked it somehow from the outside. Or at least I thought he had. The whole thing smelled like some kind of set up. All the shades were drawn, and he had been casually standing outside talking to a madman who just opened up with an assault rifle. I took a running dive through the window. I was certain that apartment would be my coffin if I waited for the cops to come through the door. I ran for the six-foot cyclone fence at the end of the property and remember almost clearing it with one leap in spite of my ankle which was now wobbling like a loose shower slipper every time I came down on it. I remember the top of the fence spearing a hole through my ass as I landed on it. Then everything went black. I woke up in the emergency room.
There was a cop there who looked a lot like some old pictures of a grandfather I had never met, my mother’s father. He was a high-ranking Free Mason, the only one in my family. In the operating room I was refusing the blood transfusions that the doctors told me were necessary for my survival. I kept saying “no just let me die. Why bother? I’ll be going to jail for life. How many people did I hit?” The cop kept telling me in a soothing voice that I didn’t hit anyone and that I would get off with a couple of years. There seemed to be this bright light behind him and he was soaked in my blood. He finally convinced me to take the hospitals blood. I never saw that cop again. From recovery they wheeled me up to my room in a gurney accompanied by four cops. The elevator stopped on the way up and Dianne got on. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform. She asked the orderly how I was doing. He told her I was stabilized then she looked at me and said “everything is going to be alright I’ll be right on the next floor.” She got off on the floor right below the one they were taking me. The lighting around her seemed unnaturally bright and I watched the elevator door close behind her. I tried to call out to her but I was unable to speak. As Jimmy Carroll had said “my lips were chained they were filled with empty wonder.” – Excerpted from Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan
Below are two links where you can purchase Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan. I would suggest you buy it in hardcopy, not because I make more, I actually make the most from Amazon E books, but because you will avoid giving Amazon any money. Frankly you should be shooting Amazon employees in the street, Google too.
Those Who Would Arouse Leviathan by Jack Heart, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
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