Muscle and Hate

Windows up, engine running, just in case.

Sharpie and crayon on an index card

Have you seen? Have you heard? Have you been out there recently?

Outside, I mean.

Have you been into what remains of the world? The changes are not subtle, but they are also surprisingly not explicit enough to merit action.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think this, too, was intentional.

The frog in the pot metaphor.

There is a slow—burial constantly taking place. A mute dirge. The living bodies are being embalmed in advance. Wrapped in bubble vests and sweatpants.

It all started when they took away all the color.

Remember?

They reduced the world to three shades: black, white, and gray. Some people noticed, but they were confused. These misguided ones thought that a few of the suns had been replaced by artificial light. These diluted ones noticed the change but misunderstood it.

Most didn’t notice anything.

The death cults had been so busy, and the sense of scarcity so severe, that the robbing of color was beneath attention.

I blame most people.

I know I am not supposed to, but this whole idea of supposed to is—out of hand. We were supposed to do a lot of things.

I’ll tell you, driving to the former strip mall was a challenge. The road leading there has not been repaired in fifty years, and what remains of old markings has been covered up with white cones. Every third automobile is a monster truck with tinted windows. These trucks are covered in various tribal markings.

The markings—the markings, have grown more obscure! Each signifies some vague violent affiliation. Aside from the trucks are those old beaters, the ones with mismatching gray or black panels. These vehicles don’t have the same level of demarcation because of their patchwork nature, but to compensate for that, they all have some sort of relic or stringed ornament hanging from the rear-view mirror. These chachkas, for lack of a better term, can range from a bejeweled insect to a plastic animal toy. Imagine that!

The meaning of these suspended relics is even more obscure, but they remain benign enough to live in unquestioned symbolism.

What was once a strip mall and center of commerce is now a vaguely health-related depot. There are places for muscles, backs, eyes, and teeth. Additionally, there is a bar that pretends to be a restaurant, and something called a health food store. The reason I ventured out today was so that my assigned rent share assistant could purchase some sort of topical ointment. This is my fourth ARSA this year, and she has begun developing an autoimmune disorder. The ointment is little better than a placebo, and quite expensive, but the fee for filing a new ARSA application is too high to simply give up a life. I didn’t want this person to die, like the others.

You understand.

They call it an autoimmune disorder, but it is a disease caused by the scarcity mindset. What used to be called “people” are now overworked, understimulated, and eat foods that have seemingly been altered.

Some say the food is meant to keep you docile, some say it changes your genetics, but all of this is too complicated and expensive.

The truth is, the food has not been altered, but our allotted feeding times have been slowly cut back. Consumption was a luxury and a reward, but now it has become mandatory.

We need to eat to work, but eating takes time, and they scared everyone so much with that propaganda about “the poke.”

Now, no one would accept intravenous feeding.

So, in order to keep the feeding—cost efficient, they expedite the process, and we are forced to consume quickly. The change in habits again happened so incrementally that we didn’t notice until it was too late—too late.

Some of the global exploration wars taught the ruling classes that you cannot fight an enemy that does not engage. Due to this, the colonization of other planets was a failure, but the RC brought these tactics back with them. They brought them back here.

There is nothing to resist.

The armed order of class enforcement, or AOCE, is physically dangerous and murder at will, but it is unclear who is in these militias. Everyone is simultaneously a real danger and not. Threat assessment is paramount, but this was also a tactic learned from the failed wars. The system itself is the enemy, and since life outside of this system is impossible to imagine— given the lack of free time, fighting back would be cutting off your nose to spite your face—cutting it right off!

Also, around the time the color was removed, the once green vegetation of this planet gained sentience.

This happened quickly.

Many were dragged underground to be—repurposed. This term is now the official and only legal language to be used around such events. The RC used toxic chemicals to attempt to eradicate this threat, but ultimately decided that these methods were too expensive. The loss of life was not a worthy enough reason to spend. Anything deemed a plant was outlawed, and all the soil was covered in thick, dense plastic or concrete.

Some believe in the conspiracy that none of this is true, and the RC just wanted to commodify oxygen, but I have seen the plants move and consume, so I again do not give the RC this much credit.

My ARSA went into the store, and I sat in the automobile.

Windows up, engine running, just in case.

It was a long wait, as finding retail staff has become nearly impossible, with only the elderly and those unable to commit atrocities willing to take on this thankless job.

I witnessed.

One gray body after another gray body would fight for the closest parking spot. They would honk and wave weapons at each other. There was screaming and posturing,

Some types of bodies, which might have been AOCE, huddled waiting for a moment when a single individual could be isolated and murdered. These huddled ones laughed and made lewd gestures at the tumult. I parked as far away from the entrance as possible. My ARSA complained but was too weak to make a cogent argument. Even removed and protected as I was, my musculature filled with hate. Not hate of an individual but a hatred of the moment. There was an electrical surge to this non-détente; it was contagious—seemingly. I remembered what it was like being alive, but only for a moment. I lit a cigarette, hiding it below my knees. I let the cherry burn my leg; I remembered desire.

The charge was shattered by violent upheaval. The huddled group was ready to pounce when something broke through the plastic and concrete parking lot. At first, I thought it was a plant, although I had never seen the plants be this aggressive. I put the automobile in reverse and was ready to flee, but I waited.

I took a breath and watched.

What came out of the ground was not quite plant, and not quite color. It was something else. Something of no matter or shape.

It flowed with feral fang—violence.

It rolled forth, consuming blindly.

Dry, gaseous, but in waves—waves of turbid tendinous mist.

The bodies it met offered no resistance. Consuming would be a gentle way to state the shifts in matter that took place.

There was a chorus, a sound—something like a rip or shred. Sound can only exist in metaphor, and in comparison to a relative silence. Whatever this was aurally, had no business in this world. My other senses were spared, and no odor or taste entreated or repulsed me. I remained only long enough to attempt a visual dissemination.

I needed a description, and I still do.

Violence is commonplace, death is part and parcel to this life I have found myself living in, but the inability to reference visual demarcation haunts me.

There is no madness. There is no grief for abandoning my ARSA. Those concepts of life were discarded long ago.

The question itself is what haunts me.

Neither technical nor organic, none of the states of matter I had previously believed to be absolute. Nothing of past notions of life nor beast. I did not even sense the familiar muscle and hate I romanticize. The solace that has come with me in time is this faint notion: It is almost blockwork germs, dissipated geometric thirst.

I cannot draw it, but it remains in my mind—Locked in a place I keep forgotten senses.

Blind semiotic dissonance.

Retreating home was when a new sensation overtook me. This question of what had been witnessed brought with it a renewed will to live. It was soul alchemy. Not just muscle and hate. Not only feral desire under masks of socialization. I always wanted to survive, but now I knew why.

What had I seen? What are the factors that need to be in place?

I have an out.

How can I see it again? I will live in the earnest attempt to manifest something like this again. I will live so that I may find an answer. How can I make others see it too?

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