Manphibian

Hey guys!!! Boy, am I glad I found this place! I sat down and began a story last night, as I've done many times before. The working title is "I Burn Heretics". I really like the idea, but I was wanting some feed back. I'll just post what I typed, unedited, and probably full of errors. LOL. It's short and fast. Enjoy! I apologize if my .doc loses its formatting in translation, I have no idea how to fix it. It will be posted in 4 posts below.




If you’re reading this, it’s probably because I’m dead.
Psych.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because I sent it to some publisher somewhere who thought he could turn a profit by printing it. I figured if I typed some memoirs and shopped them around somebody would take the bait. Some guy, in some office, printing my story and laughing about it; well, the jokes on him. He’s bound to be sorry he did. Everything I touch goes crazy.
This is the story of a group of friends; me and my diseases. The story of a man who went insane the only way he knew how too.
If you’re reading this, I’m probably in some prison somewhere. At least you’d better hope I am. Because if I’m dead, most likely you are too. Welcome to the club. There isn’t a devil this side of hell that couldn’t see me coming. And I rarely travel alone.
Misery loves company. I blame most of you people for my infirmities. That’s why I blew a lot of you up. I turned a lot of Smiths into Smithereens.
Payback. It’s not a bitch. It’s a man on the edge. Payback is a man who has come to the realization that capitalism, democracy, and the American Civil Liberties Union do not have his best interest at heart. A man who knows he’s just a number. A man whose number finally came up.
Like I said, I went crazy the only way I knew how too.
I started a 501(c)3.
I drank a lot of your donations up in bars. I gambled your support away in casinos. I wasted your tax-deductible contributions on hookers.
But I never lied. I never actually profited from any of it. If anything, I bared the burden of your charity on my drunken, stooped shoulders.
Love hurts. I’m the enforcer of her pain.
I took your money. Money that you donated for starving, homeless families in hurricane destroyed cities, money for the relatives of bombing victims, money for food, medical supplies, construction costs; I took this money and I hired terrorists with it.
That takes time. You have to shower and take a dump in a lot of third world countries.
Your monetary gifts helped finance the destruction of cities. You financed the deaths of thousands. Tens of thousands. Your contributions may have even killed you.
Now that would suck.
How does it feel to have suicide bombers on your payroll?
This is not the American Red Cross.
This is the American Red Dawn.
I did not stop until the streets of your city were flooded. Blooded.
Though I never set foot on location during the actual attack, I always imagine some secretary’s serotonin fluid spilling into a fax machine, or some headless janitor on a toilet. Some V.P. of Operations being torn to shreds by the shrapnel that was formerly his file cabinet.
Picture a young woman in the mail room. She thinks she’s working her way to the top. Worried that she may have endometriosis or that she’ll never have children. Or maybe she’s worried that she’ll never find a man. Picture her rushing home to catch Will & Grace on the tube. I blew her up. No worries babe.
Thank you for your donations. You helped change lives; one gift at a time.
Stick that in your form 1040EZ and smoke it.

Manphibian

Here’s why you shouldn’t hate me:

I was born with fine sets of wrists and ankles. They functioned flawlessly. They weren’t gorgeous or anything. I couldn’t have been a male model for wrists and ankles, mine were a little bony, but they were fine.
If you’re reading this you probably don’t model ankle bracelets and wrist watches on QVC, either.
I got rheumatoid arthritis out of nowhere. I walked, or hobbled, around like a ninety year old man. A ninety year old man in his twenties. A manic-depressive, ninety year old man in the prime of his life.
Things like those make you want to start a non-profit.
You tell your wife.
You say, “I’m going to the store. I need some pills. I’m in a world of pain here.”
She tells you to go ahead. But make sure and get the generics. Save a few bucks.
So you start blowing things up.
When you hurt, you don’t really feel like being thrifty.
You stand in line with the generic Tylenol. The lady in front of you acts deathly ill. Holding her hand to her forehead, palm forward, like she’s on fire with a fever.
You see that she’s paying for yeast infection cream and an US Weekly.
Even though this woman is apparently dying from a rare and severe vaginal infection, she still has to keep up with who Jessica Simpson is dating.
You hope somebody comes in to rob the place. You will beg them to shoot you. But shoot her first. Please. Shoot her first.
You think about robbing the place.
You’re scared. I mean, unarmed. And arthritic.
Tylenol makes everything better. For a while, at least, the pain becomes a dull throb instead of a battlefield. It feels like your joints and tendons have begun a civil war on your insides. They clang swords against fibers and bones. You can feel your muscles tighten up, trying to crush the enemy. Your feet are burning. Some rogue cell has decided to set the stadium ablaze.
You feel like this, so you take Tylenol.
Your anti-inflammatory pills just aren’t cutting it. So you drank liquor and pop Tylenol.
Your liver hates you.

A few months before you finally snap you check yourself into the mental hospital.
Are you suicidal? Do you think you could hurt yourself or someone else? Do you abuse drugs? More importantly, do you have insurance? These are the questions they ask you.
If you’re insured, they will try to help you.
You tell them you’ve reached a crossroads. You’ve reached the end of your rope and there’s a dragon with a flame thrower there; making jokes about your mother.
And you have insurance.
So they try to help.
They teach you to play board games and get up at 7 a.m. for breakfast.
You work a few puzzles and go home a week later.
They tell you to see a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists don’t let you lay on their couches anymore. They write prescriptions. No talking, just writing.
You want to talk; you go see a psychologist or a counselor.
They ask about your shoes. How you’re sleeping, eating, and relaxing. You can’t look these quacks in the eye. So you stop going.
You wake up every four hours. The Tylenol wears off and you hurt. You stay up for a while, and then you try it again.
Enough nights like this and you start a 501(c)3.
If you’re reading this book, you probably don’t sleep well either.
You call a lawyer.
You need to square away the legalities of your new endeavor. It takes a few months to get all of the paperwork in order.
You can do it all online. I prefer a good, old fashioned sit down.
Take your smiling face to a local radio station. Talk about tornadoes or starving children in Africa. Fatherless, Inner-city youth who read at a third grade level, things like that. People can relate. You tug at their heart strings.
Angels. That’s what you call your non-profit.
The Angels Network. Fluffy winged, heavenly harpers on marshmallow clouds sent to the rescue of the unfortunate.
You pay fifty bucks to some kid on the internet to design you a logo. Angels, in block, white lettering with heavenly wings at each end and a shiny halo atop the logo.
Print shops will hook you up with letterhead, envelopes, and business cards for free. It’s a tax write off.
That same kid will build you a website.
Network television will donate airtime for commercial slots; volunteers will go door to door. The mass mailings are free of charge, and the donations start piling up.
Suddenly you’re global.
You acquire offices and quit your day job. Spend some start up dough on warehouses. Send medical supplies to Africa, buy a jet.
Fly. Fly enough and shake enough hands and you become a sort of celebrity. You get invites and you send your staff to parties; along with your regards. Sorry you couldn’t make it.
Busy saving the world here, but thanks, maybe next time.
I’m not interested in Hollywood. Well, maybe in the schematics of certain buildings, or the layout of blocks, even the sewers. Never the actors.
The money? Sure.
Burn Hollywood, burn.

Okay, so it’s not rheumatoid arthritis. It’s some degenerative disease or something brought about by over use or faulty genes. The doctors seem a little confused. In the mean time, I can’t straighten out my arms. Wrists and hands swell. And I haven’t been laid in months.
My vote is for the genes. My DNA has got to be whacked. I have a birthmark on my butt. Weird.
They prescribe steroids and painkillers. These I can work with. My hair is falling out anyway.
I failed to mention earlier that I’m also obsessive-compulsive.
Ever burned your hand on the stove? Let’s say I burn my right hand on the stove eye. It hurts. But seeing as how I’m OCD, I have to burn my left hand too. It has to be even.
In an effort to make certain the evenness of the pain and scarring, when I burn my left hand, I hold it there a little too long. It ends up burning too much.
So I burn my right hand some more.
If I saw you walking down the street accidentally, out of the corner of my eye; I’d turn around and look at you out of the corner of my other eye.
Even Steven.
I count. I count alot. I count to 5, to 10, to 11, to 28. And then I start over. Fun times.
I just thought I’d throw all of that OCD stuff out there, for the psychologists speculation and your entertainment.
Enjoy.
My pill count is up to nearly ten a day, not counting my twice daily asthma inhaler.
So I light another cigarette.
I sleep pretty well. At least 10 hours every time I sleep. Odd hours, that’s me. I prefer the night. I always have. I like to crawl into bed just before sun up and sleep until I hurt bad enough to get up.
I can be a pretty heavy drinker, but I’d rather smoke weed. I haven’t smoked weed in over a decade.
So every now and again I‘ve been know to tie one on. I’d drink beer. Then I’d add several whisky sours and some PGA. I’d laugh at my humanity. I’d boast about how I couldn’t feel my face. Then I’d pass out on your couch. The next morning I would be all like, “Who are you?” and “Nice couch.”
Here’s the way I look at it: I hate society.
Not your average man on the street, but the wealthy, the powerful, and the metro-sexuals.

Manphibian

I hate the television. I hate capitalism.
Boy, do I hate television.
You see these shows on the tube, and they make you angry. Like the one’s where guys go around building nice, poor family’s houses, trying to tug at heart strings. That’s where I learned it.
Reggie served in Iraq, where he lost his leg. Now he’s contracted spinal meningitis. So they build his family a new house.
You see? That’s my problem.
Reggie deserves a new house. He’s a nice guy who’s lived a decent and honorable life. What these television guys are doing isn’t charity. It’s justice.
Cripple ole Reggie deserves a house for his family, so his family gets a house. Where’s the virtue in that? Are we to get extremely teary eyed and all shook up by someone getting what they deserve?
I’m a virtuous guy. I believe in the three Christian virtues.
Faith, Hope, and Charity; that’s the life for me.
But television wants you to believe that justice is charity. I don’t buy it.
You want to do something charitable? Give the drunk on the street corner, the one who ran out on his family because he was a coward, give him a new house.
He doesn’t deserve one? Exactly. It’s called Charity.
Let justice be served, don’t get me wrong. But don’t call justice charity.
Capitalism is incapable of any act of charity, which is why I despise it. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and I get mental illnesses and degenerative diseases.
Justice and temperance are rights that everyone has, not something to be applauded on Wednesday nights at nine.
They should make a really moving show about a guy who goes to a restaurant. He orders whatever he likes, and enjoys every single bite. Then the waiter brings him his receipt; which, of course, makes all the home viewers fall prostrate on the floor in front of their TV in awe of the waiter’s charity.
You eat at a place, you pay the tab. Ole Reggie, I’m sure, would agree with me.
I’m old fashioned. I like women. And I don’t dress like one. I don’t own any make-up.
You see these guys downtown, the ones with the waxed eye brows and gelatin hair.
I hate them.
Overtly feminine masculinity, that’s what I think it is.
Man is the new woman. Fifty is the new forty. Times they are a’changin’.
I’ll bet that when a man asked a woman out on a date in Sheriff Andy’s Mayberry, I’ll bet she never asked to look under his nails, or pluck his brows.
Our forefathers smelled like cattle and oil. They had scars and war stories. Women used to love that sort of thing. Women don’t want to have kids anymore. They want to work 70 hours a week. They want pensions and 401(k)’s.
Even when they do have kids they want someone else to raise them.
In Africa it takes a village. In America it takes an Education system. People send their kids to school when they can’t send them to their rooms. They teach them mathematics when they can’t teach them manners. They learn English in classrooms in order to pardon the French at home.
Brainwashing starts early and only gets worse.
I’ve heard of moms and dads with 14 kids. It was hard to support, feed, and clothe them. But they did, because they loved them.
Now an underpaid teacher has to tend and care for 30 kids with whom she has no relational or emotional ties, except maybe pity.
Anyway, that’s a little of my philosophy.
When you feel like this you hire a lawyer and file the necessary paperwork for your nonprofit.
You want to save the world.
I’m not rich. I work; strictly blue-collar. I have a house with a basement in a subdivision about a mile from the school my kids go to.
I’m just like you; just exactly like you.
I’ve never made six-figures in a year.
I go to church. It’s the only real thing there is.
“This is my body, given for you; This is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”
It sounds so good. It feels so true. It’s not like television. It’s really happening.
The church isn’t full of experts, but it is full nonetheless. I usually sit beside Saint Joseph, the Patron Saint of a happy death.
Talk about a nice, normal guy who history has completely glossed over. I sit by his statue. I make sure all the candles around him are lit.
I won’t forget him.
I was born a Southern Baptist, born into a family full of Southern Baptists. I converted to Roman Catholicism a couple of years ago. I just realized that some guy made up the Southern Baptist religion in the sixteen or seventeen hundreds. I don’t like make believe. I like truth.
I don’t want to gloss over the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin, and the Pope just because they are old. I believe those dogmas precisely because they are old; and they still make people young. I believe them because they are eternal. I believe them because some guy who lived seventeen hundred years after Jesus didn’t invent them. He simply found them too fantastic to believe. I believe them because I didn’t make them up. They made me up.
If I were ever capable of clear thought, pure motives, or any sort of self denial and goodness; I have the Catholic Church to thank for that.
I wish I could have been a good Catholic, a good Christian. Maybe I still can. Maybe I will.
I just get so confused.
I don’t recognize myself anymore. I don’t want to recognize me anymore.
I used to watch The Sopranos on cable, pretty good show. I bought all the episodes on DVD and watched practically the whole series in a few days time.
So I called my friends up and wanted to know if they would mind going with me to “shake down” some local business owners. Maybe a little shy-larking or credit card fraud, but they weren’t interested.
Thing is, I really thought I was a mobster, an Italian mobster. I don’t even like pasta. And I’m as Scottish as a bagpipe.
I told them about this when I checked myself into the mental hospital. They laughed. I worked puzzles and learned about the intrinsic healing properties of Yahtzee.
I used to enjoy fishing and hunting, but now I can’t get motivated to go. I can’t really afford peace and tranquility anymore.
I’m on a mission.
I want to learn how to play the piano and sing. Play the guitar. I want to go to Montana and breathe.
Instead I fly in my Leer to Saudi-Arabia on your dollar and choke on the sand and the stench.

Manphibian

The flight was pleasant enough. I sang most of the way. It was just me, an assistant named Laura, and the pilot; at first.
I was humming a few bars of “Saint Robinson in his Cadillac Dream”. It’s a song by the Counting Crows. They’re probably my favorite band.
Anyway, I sang it for a while and started adlibbing my own lyrics into certain parts. I look over and see Adam Duritz sitting across from me.
Adam Duritz is the lead singer for the Counting Crows. He isn’t on my payroll and he shouldn’t be on my plane.
He’s giving me this big thumbs-up, as if he approves of my lyrical and vocal styling. His fake dreads are turning grey.
I laugh at his antics. Then he disappears. Laura says she didn’t see anybody else on the plane.
Counting Crows are a great band. And their music makes me sad, which is why I like them. That’s also why I like kids and dogs. And church, too. With me it’s all about the longing and the regret. Sometimes I’m close enough to almost touch whatever it is I’m longing for, but then, like Adam, it disappears.
I am the Rain King.
We landed at Riyadh King Khaled International Airport, and it was hot. I had to pee.
I’ve peed all over this old world of ours. I’ve marked a lot of territory, so to speak. I told Laura that she should hold a cup for me to urinate in. She thought I was joking. I was. Despite all of my evils, I’m not much of a tyrant. I respect a woman’s right to choose. Hold the cup or don’t, ladies, it’s up to you.
Whoever King Khaled was, I’m sure he was more tyrannical than me; which is why he has “King” in front of his name.
I changed my name to Lazarus, legally. I thought it spoke volumes, in a poetical sense. I did it back in the states before I left. You have to respect a man named Lazarus. Lazarus commands respect, theoretically.
I’m such a coward. I get to the middle-east and I get scared. The people here are different. They don’t like me. At least we have that in common.
I have a spastic colon. My colon is currently spasticizing. I’ve taken dumps abroad.
Laura still isn’t sure why we are here. Now I’m not so sure either.
We take on fuel and we fly away. This type of behavior is the general cause of my international peeing prowess.
Lazarus, the Champion of Charity, peeing in a city near you.
This multinational terrorism is fairly scary stuff.
I hire a guy to do the recruiting. I stay in places like Paris, Rome, and New Amsterdam. I pee at a safe distance from the Muslim Extremists.
I figure I could get this recruiter into the Mosques, into the gutters, and that he could bring me some men who were ready to kill, and to die. I gave him money, loads of cash. I would have given him camels and harems if I thought it would have helped.
Omar, that was his name, was a guy I met online. He was a freelance writer, he said. Al-Jazeera, and several other Muslim news agencies apparently ran his work regularly.
I didn’t check his credentials. I just flew to Paris to meet him, once. He assured me that he could get me bombers, and pilots, and skirmishers. I asked if he could get me Bin-Laden. Bin-Laden was dead, he said. He promised that with enough money he could get them into the States. I gave him enough money.

I call the office to check in. There’s been an outbreak of tornadoes in Kansas. I can’t believe people still live there. I give them the ok to deploy people and resources into the area. It’s the least I can do. Well, that and tell them to move.
I watch the footage on the news the next day. The Angels Network was all over it. We’d brought water, clothing, food, and first-aide supplies. Nearly all of my people on scene were volunteers. It hardly cost me a dime. The truckers volunteered to drive my trucks and haul my freight. The freight was all donated. I had a couple thousand tied up in tents and banners, signs, brochures, and business cards.
I called Fort Wayne, that’s where my call center is. The disaster was serving us well. Donations were up because people were hurt and homeless. I took some more painkillers.
My employees, the paid ones, are unquestioning do-gooders. College grads with business and marketing degrees, ready to do whatever it takes to help. They work hard, I pay well, and they don’t ask questions.
I’ve never actually met them. I don’t want to. The men probably have manicures and the women probably wear combat boots and dreadlocks.
Mark runs the show. I stole Mark from another corporation just like mine. Well, almost like mine. He runs the show while I smile and fly away.
Just imagine what an honest to goodness terrorist attack would bring in. Wind, ice, and hurricanes tug at the ole heart strings. Uzis, suitcase nukes, and planes play Stairway to Heaven on them. Americans open their wallets because they are too cowardly to open their eyes.
They send money because they won’t spend time. They have little league games, hot dates, and fifty-cent taco nights to attend too. They have babysitters to watch on hidden cameras.
I prefer face disaster head-on, as long as I am properly medicated.
I fly back home to see the wife and kids. We play baseball, go to the movies, and shop for groceries. School is going good for the kids. My wife can’t find her coupon for half-off her laundry detergent. I buy it anyway.
I prefer to face disaster head-on.
The funny thing about kids is that they don’t clip coupons. They don’t balance checkbooks or drive over the speed limit. They like to chase each other and eat ice cream. They like bugs and farts. They’re genuinely surprised by the sunset. So I am.
They are magicians. Wizards and wood fairies caught up in a world full of whimsy and mystique. They are surprised that snow is white. It could have been orange. It sometimes is in fairyland.
Me and my son pee on tree trunks in our backyard. My daughter laughs. We build a campfire and tell each other true stories; stories of giants and elves, of princesses and dragons. The stars wink at us, they are in on the joke. If they decide not to come out tomorrow night it’ll be alright. We never expected them too. Not having stars in the sky isn’t half as fearsome or surprising as having stars in the sky. But they may indeed come back, if the spell holds. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The whole point of using Muslim suicide soldiers is because they are suicidal. They need to die too, and not just because I don’t want anything traced back to me. These people are heretics to more than just religion. They are heretics to life. Almost as bad as the Wall Street elite and the centerfold models.
I have this recurring dream where I’m officiating a meeting at some camp or village. It feels a little like the Salem Witch Trial. I have a weird hat on and there are chickens on the ground. I have to decide whether or not to burn some people at the stake for their beliefs and actions.
There’s always this really beautiful woman there, in chains. There’s a middle-aged man in loincloth and a kid, too. I can barely make out the other person awaiting sentencing. It’s a sort of shadowy figure in the background; I think it’s a guy. It may be a scarecrow or a bulldozer for all I know, I’ve never saw him. I just sense that he’s there.
Then I wake up.

Manphibian

That's it for now. Feedback?

Kittenification

I have to say, this was a lot of fun to read. The narrator comes off as such a distinctive person- very observant and fairly clever, but with this constant manic air.

In spite of having almost no dialogue whatsoever, you manage to make it an interesting read, and while the narration meanders in a somewhat tangential fashion, it fits, and only seems to contribute to the feeling that the narrator is a bit obsessive.

I definitely enjoyed it, and I look forward to reading more if/when you choose to put it up.



good luck

Kieran.

__________________
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O, Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." -Voltaire.
Read what I write

or perhaps what I sing.

Jax1108

Wow. Im going to have to agree with the above comment.

I really enjoyed this. It was so intruiging and different, it grasped me immediatly. After I read that second line, my mouth dropped open in a disbelieving grin. I couldn't believe you said "psych,' I immediatly loved it.

I could find nothing at all wrong (then again I am no expert). I guess what I mean to say is it was so neatly written too. Easy and fun to read. You got the character down alright, lol. Completly believable with all sorts of endless tid bits to prove it.

I really think you should keep going with this Bravo!

A-L

I'll admit I found the narrator a little...odd but I enjoyed your style nonetheless.