TheNextOne

“The window burns to light the way back home…” – Metallica

These lyrics with melody en-tow haunt my mind whether awake or trying to sleep. I’ve heard them so much it really comes as no surprise. I’m not myself when I don’t listen to music every day. I got up one morning a few months ago and thought it would sure be nice to make a lot of money.

Only insane people believe they can make money with an internet scam, so I guess you can lump me in with that group. That’s exactly what I did. I’ve been spending money like a mad man ever since and laughing like a half-baked loon every day for my troubles.

The scam goes like this. You enter a few words into the google search bar like, “make serious money online” and up pop about a bergillion websites showing you how you can make all this money and why you can’t trust anyone else’s methods. I found the least legitimate looking one, and in retrospect that’s not saying much, and went with it. Just $49.95 for this ebook that tells you about a bunch of useless products and how you too can turn around and sell the same useless crap to other people.

So I have. I bought a domain name and a host and pay a lot of money hooking up keywords and using google ad-sense and making a virtual ass of myself. I look at my bank account and I can’t tell if it’s crying or I am. When this is all done and I am penniless I will end up on the street with dollar signs in my eyes breaking and that half-baked loon-like laugh. I will be one of the zillion people or see you hear about in your lifetime that once had a good idea but did no research and thus ended up not in the poor-house for I am not going to be quite so lucky, but instead whom ended up on the street corner talking and laughing to himself.

Only when I end up there I will be muttering things about HTML and XML, and thinking of key-words like ‘intense internet money, make money in Massachusetts” and so on. The kids will walk by and think they passed a stinking filthy bar because I’m sure I’ll make enough money pan-handling to get booze to keep warm here in Boston during the long lonely winter nights.

My apartment is already kept cold because I decided to spend even more money keeping my Internet connection instead of wasting extra money on electricity. I look down at my body and realize I can go a little longer without food before total emaciation sets in. And why do I do all this you ask? Why, if I know for certain that I will be one of the many nameless hobos on a street corner would I persist in this insane venture? Because my dear friend, because you see…the American dream is really a nightmare of obsession. Because I know I can make the money and when I do I will be watching movies where hobos are just background stuff, the stuff of utter fiction.

I tell myself all the bad things can’t happen to me, not me, because I am the star of my life, and therefore I will always be okay. I’ll always live a long happy life filled with riches and contentment. I even reckon I’ll stop by some of the hobos later in life and dole out some spare change to keep from owing too many taxes…if I’m smart enough…smart like a fox. Just like on my Internet venture. Excuse me…I can feel the laughing coming on…that loon-like mad laughter that says, “I know I’m right! Just watch me prevail, you sons of whores, you non-believers! Choke on my Corvette dust!”

And I laugh and cackle for a while and come back to writing in between sips of my only luxury, Brandy, the good stuff, the stuff that burns going down and keeps right on heating while the heater in my apartment is turned off. Watch me become king of my domain. I can’t wait to see the looks on my neighbors face when a bunch of movers show up in a kick ass eighteen wheeler and haul my crap away, not to my new domicile! To the dump! I will have the nicest bunch of professional movers they ever saw come here and move all my shit to the dump, that’s right and when my neighbors stop and ask me where I’m going I’m going to tell them, “I’m going to my new mansion just outside Boston. I’ll write you a post card!”

And they’ll ask, “You’re brining that stuff to a mansion?”

And I’ll say, “Hell no! I’m having that stuff removed to the finest dump in town. I’m going down to the Mattress Firm and getting me a California King sized bed when they’re done here and have them move it into the living room of my new mansion. Before I go to bed tonight I’m going out on the town to eat a nice filet mignon or perhaps a porter house, or maybe even king lobster and the night after that and the night after that one too, same thing. I’m going to live all the rest of my days having people work for me because I get paid from this website…see, I have this amazing website that makes me all the money I could ever want.”

And they’ll say, “Oh my god! You’ve lost your mind!”

And I’ll say, “Oh but I haven’t. I’m going to come here in my private helicopter one day and drop bags full of money over the top of this complex and watch all you peasants scramble to pick it all up!” And then I’ll laugh wildly, throwing my head back while my locks fling about in the chilly November wind, my dark brown eyes burning bright as coals in my head.

I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces. I’ll move into my new mansion being sure to keep it mostly as empty as possible. I will hate having things and only buy what must be bought and rent whatever else I can whenever I can and need to. I will sit there like Jack Nicholson in that eighties movie “The Shining” and look out my window during the winter at the city from up top the hill where my mansion will be placed. I will be plotting and I wonder what I will be plotting. I will probably be plotting how I can shock and awe people with my extravagant waste.

The Jews, and I am one so I’d know, have a saying, “Let no good deed go unpunished,” and I intend to live right up to that very saying. I will do every good deed possible. I will read many novels and spiritual books, I will even take time to read the holy froking Bible and see what all the fuss is about. I will send anonymous donations to the US government, to our men and women fighting for our freedom, whatever the hell that is.
Because I’ve learned something ladies and gentlemen. Freedom, that’s such a word. Freedom means you can do anything you want as long as you are confined in some way. Confined in your body, confined by your finances, confined by your imagination, confined by the elements, so I ask you…I truly ask you now, what freedom does anyone have?

Even killing other people or simply watching them be killed has nothing to do freedom, for freedom is free of such things and in that freedom you can be a vagabond, a hobo, or a millionaire and it doesn’t matter because that freedom which is true is confined by nothing, not finances, not your body, not your imagination and certainly not your existence on earth. When that freedom is found the game is up, it’s all over, and then there’s nothing left to fight for because you won’t be bound any longer by the desire to fight or by the concept that there is something else to look for.

The window is still burning, lighting my way back home…I am soldiering on towards it, millionaire or madman…or both.

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atmyexpense

"smart like a fox."

That's from the simpsons.

And, I really can't believe someone would be conscious of their growing insanity. People who are insane don't know they are insane.

Changeling

The points you make are worthy of a story and the idea of the guy being suckered is a good idea.

It starts like a tale of a man in the process of losing his mind and has some interesting points to make, but i didn't find it believable in terms of him losing his mind, he was too rational and level headed about it. Too aware of probable failure.

I think it'd be worth trying to rewrite this from another perspective.
Something like the guys first person recount from a street corner telling his story to another street bum, or journal account and future plans and bizarre scams, filled with hope, pure faith and glee at his unquestioned, deluded future success. (you already did that with him living in luxury throwing money around) That way your points about the american dream become more powerful, yet more subtley invoked, as the character will be the downtrodden, more visual and identifiable example of its exploitative nature.
saying the same things from a guy wiping his nose with a newspaper in real time will make the A.D. points that much stronger i think. And take out all his awareness that he will ever fail, he must believe utterly in his delusional victory, that is why i found it hard to believe, he was too aware of failure, almost chasing it deliberately.
Good ideas, good story and good points here, just a matter of communicating them in story form. keep writing, we can only get better.

Words wrong way around here maybe?

Do you mean you believe you can?

good stuff

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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars. (Wilde)

TheNextOne

I appreciate the feedback absolutely. I could easily make this a more involved story and I definitely made mistakes writing it, typographical mostly.

As for the way that I wrote in his awareness proved he was not delusional...except he was in a way, because he was going against himself. What I was trying to convey, and which I see both your points on, is that this man is divided against himself, sort of like a double personality. The only problem with the double personality is that it is really not made clear at all anywhere in the writing.

That being said, I wonder if that was subconsciously intentional on the psychosis of the deranged delusional and insane part of this man's mind. I find it interesting that once again this story's main character, the narrator, has no name as some of my other pieces tend not to give names either.

At any rate, there could be something here after all and I thank you both very much for your comments!

__________________
Some things I've written

Things you probably shouldn't say
Forum Threads and Dreams
Carnival Loss