The Angel of Death Battles the Brown Shirts (for control of Men's souls)

I didn't bring an umbrella (foolish) because umbrellas are for women and children. Stoicism in rain is one of our most lauded virtues (men).

This is me on October 13th, the year of our lord, 2006, wet (because of the rain) and happy (Wendy not 20 minutes prior has given her non-minor, entirely uncoerced consent to [wet]).

I met Wendy a year ago (November), by one of those chance encounters met often by those of a chance (rape) existence. She has blonde hair. Blonde eyes. She's blonde. Really, really blonde. It was raining. She had an umbrella and I stepped under it (bold). I imagined some sort of humanity thing. Something that lives in us all. We don't like to see others wet; we want to provide shelter. And I was right (about that alone) because she responded with a greeting and a blonde laugh. This is how I met her. She was a kind and well meaning sort.

A bad point, but as good as any other, to deflect your gaze, because this isn't about me.
I'm just walking to get some condoms.

It's Wendy, now finishing her cookie (wiping the crumbs from her chest), that I direct you
towards.

It's a room with white walls in which she sits. She's huddled (shivering) on a bed with a
white blanket. You can only see her head. There's a commercial about Dove soap. "A campaign for real beauty." Or something. And beyond the screen, alive in the white light, the room. Wendy feels alone and desperate. That's me she's thinking of rescuing (from what?). But I'm on my way to get some condoms and to fuck her sorely.


Wendy will die for 21 reasons.


1) She was white. This alone is enough.

2) She once ate the last piece of bread.

3) She was born with asthma. This means, without the modern works of doctors and nurses, she was a dead one for sure. Asthma is a fish god, the writer of the fifth gospel, to quote Darwin.

4) She used computers, whose only design is to emulate man.

5) She believed in Armageddon. Judgment Day. Ragnarök. Regardless, she loved them all.

6) She mocked the homeless via a home.

7) She called a NATIVE AMERICAN by his god given name, "INDIAN"

8) She once dreamt that life was a dream and that moral judgment was a human construction.

9) She blew a bubble. This bubble wished she hadn't ushered him into existence. He said, "Insects have better lives than the one I'm about to live. If only they would listen... If only they could hear the thoughts that a single bubble can have. I am a bubble. A BUBBLE." And died. Popped by Wendy herself. If this doesn't offer a premise for belief, I'm not sure what will.

10) She believed all information existed only to be properly disseminated, all facts organized with purpose.

11) She resolved (absolved) herself to never finish the Bible (or vote).

12) At one point in her life, the name "Nietzsche" had pertinent meaning.

13) Triskaidekaphobia. A symptom of [unknown].

14) Upon reading Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel, she chuckled to herself quietly. God did not.

15) White epitomized her. And to be epitomized by a single thing is doom.

16) Her father was a butcher. Death begets death.

17) She was struck with the majesty of the Global Positioning System and said to a Mexican friend, "Behold the tower of man!" who replied, "Quien soy yo?"

18) She locked her door, expressing a need for isolation from the Communion of the Lord.

19) Consequences of previous actions untold conspired to rob her of free will, which she accepted.

20) Nothing. She did absolutely nothing. (And the time demanded action!)

21) Omitted


I finish my trip to pharmacy, exchange two disease ridden bills for three other disease
ridden bills, a handful of coins, two boxes of sex armor, and one fifth of JD. With this, I start
back home, casting sidelong glances at two black fellows I encounter and taking brisk unmeasured pulls from my brown bag. They nod.

The two men are wearing long coats and shooting dice against a curb. Two days prior, they had watched “Torpedo 4: We Built It, They Took It” and were now out for vengeance. Both are drunk and furious and calm. They are two eyes of one storm.

In front of the Majestic, the noise of Necropolis can be clearly heard. It's nerve wracking. It's movement only consistent loudness. It is gray, chaotic static. A naked man (Arthur the Sage) hangs from the third floor window using his feet (hooks) on the window ledge. He stares down at the pavement. He would collide with the the two passed out (vomited) pre-meds that lie propped against the wall. All manner of broken bodies lie about the 7 feet of dirt that separates the Majestic Apartment Complex from the street. All are wasted, some drunk, some tweaked, some burned, some wet. All are witnesses to their bodies.

Wendy is inside, up the stairs, up the stairs, (the Necropolis is alive) to Room 321.

Arthur the Sage was brought upon the world, a genius yet half-baked alignment of embryotic fluid and godly schematics. A cramp sent him to the ground from which he rose.

I knock on door 321, one door short of my own. Grundlich answers.

Grundlich's room is a shithole. It's dirty. It smells like sweat and urine. Like meat kept in a refrigerator that doesn't work. Attached to the ceiling, via chains, there's a 22 foot replica of a G7eT2 German torpedo (400 lbs). Amid fast food debris and discarded clothes, there is a music box. This box plays only Necropolis. That is only authentic, genuine, 150% Scandinavian grindcore deathcore black metal (a genre within which exists more than a few nuances that permit further classification if wished). This is the epicenter of catastrophe. The single point from which it all begins and will return.

My neighbor is a burly man of indeterminate youth (as if it could one day end - instantly).

He enjoys:

Skin (the pleasures thereof)

BBC Radio

Submarines

Film making (He's made four)

German Films

Scandinavian Grindcore Deathcore Black Metal (Who does it better?)

The four films are all documentaries on one subject, each a revision and editing of the
first: Torpedoes. Grundlich is a fan of the silent ship killer of WWII. But his films are not about
WWII or even torpedoes in the truest sense. They are a symbol (instrument). Torpedoes as a cause of Torpor (rest, unconsciousness, apathy). It is part political propaganda (Awake, my brothers, and cast off...). It is part extreme sports video. Part snuff film. Part pornography. But mostly, the sum of all the parts, its a hate film, a bitter remnant of brown shirt ideology, adapted to American sensibilities. A nasty bit of cinema for sure. He has an audience of 5. I've bought all his tapes, as insurance (protection). The other four were sold at a local video place for $3 a piece.

The fact is that Grundlich is the scary sort. A guy that you want to stay clear of (at best)
or befriend (at worst). The other option is a poor one.

I tell him to turn that lousy shit off. I've told him before. There's a girl in my room. I'm about to sex.

"Nek-rop-o-lus ist shnot laosy." He was born in Maryland (not München). He's barely audible over the ever-present static that is deathcore.

"Du ist ein pussy? Eine kleine Fraulein?" He revels in it. He pounds his fist against the door frame. It bleeds a little. He stomps his foot, his nostrils flare, like an overbuilt German (bull).

My bottle is half empty. I'm getting into that swagger. My feet are tingling just a bit
(restless). Someone should really break Grundlich's skull, ya know? I know he sees it, the shifting from toe to toe, the observation of his flat footed stance, the darting (wild) eyes. The song ends with a 60 second double bass solo.

What I'm about to do laughs at death. It's a prayer, fair and simple.

Grundlich breaks my nose with his elbow and slams his door as I stagger (blind) into the
opposite door (ajar) and fall three stories into a pool of vomit, two passed out premeds and a scholar of vast erudition who says,

"Man, a complex, mendacious, artful, and inscrutable animal, uncanny to the other animals by his artifice and sagacity, rather than by his strength, has invented the good conscience in order finally to enjoy his soul as something SIMPLE; and the whole of morality is a long, audacious falsification, by virtue of which general enjoyment at the sight of the soul becomes possible. From this point of view there is perhaps much more in the conception of 'art' than is generally believed."

I'm bleeding from my nose (A significant crack on the head). I've broken a rib and snapped my wrist. It's then, looking up, lit by the street lamps and the general glow of industry,
two angels
are walking up (wings under long coats). One's holding a brown bag similar to mine, the other a
Israeli submachine gun. They are black shapes, only silhouettes, haloed (hallowed) by the glow. They walk past. One of them (gunner) grins at me with glowing teeth. They both proceed inside.

Wendy. Up the stairs. Up the stairs. Staggering.

The Necropolis is alive.

I can see my door (323) open down the hall. I stagger past door 321 (open) to see Grundlich and the angels conversing. The Necropolis is deafening. The conversation proceeds:

Grundlich: Torpor is the beginning. You are born from torpor, and so you die, to return to torpor. The mind does not exist before conception. This is torpor. This is a perfect state. This is the state that we all long to return to eventually. Death is a release, birth a curse. Life is temporary and death consistent.

Angel: We are energy, moving constantly. Men are nothing more than energy; when they die, they transfer. Energy never dies. The man dies and his soul moves on. So with all life. One giant game of pool, man passes his energy to man.

Grundlich: I've seen a man die in the throes of starvation. He begged for mercy for days. Then he ceased to care. He lay silent, complaicent. There was no struggle. He passed on, beyond life, before death claimed him. He achieved what we dare to attempt. We all wish we could be that man, removed from care. That's the point of all of this. That's the point of the Torpedo films. If life is nothing but a sick game - right and wrong are nothing but games. There can be no Heaven. There can be no Hell. There is no salvation, damnation, nothing except rest. The light at the end of the tunnel is a mute gray.

Angel: You are nothing more than a sadist than. A fool. This man, when he died, did his body not still have weight? Did his soul not still exert itself? If asked a question, would his silence be an unworthy response? No, silence is a response. He still exerts himself, even in death. Death changes nothing. Heaven is on Earth, and it's easy to find. It lies in the power to change. It lies in the power to effect.

Wendy, naked and bound into the fetal position by a series of ropes looks up and speaks from the corner of Grundlich's room:

Wendy: I've no self. I've nothing to exert. I've given all that was me to become what I am not. What you speak of is a world of men, a heaven of men, and a hell of men. Am I truly only the woe of men? Are men my only conduit to salvation?

The prophet-martyr began to sob.

Wendy: You all talk of this... torpor. I have seen it. It is terrible to behold. It is life without life.

The party stood stunned, each member looked at the other. Grundlich sees me, notices the blood, nods at the angels and makes a leap for the gun. The left hand of God is caught, twists and drops the Uzi, which, due to bad maintenance (a 40 year stay in a sandy bunker) experiences a trigger lock as it collides with the floor and fires continuously, spinning with muzzle velocity as it sprays bullets in all directions. I move out of the doorway.

This is where Judgment reigns, a cheap apartment battleground. Only here, midst the drudgery, are the works and words of men to be judged. In their context.

Inside, no one dies. No one is hurt. Except Wendy (bound and kidnapped). A bullet pierces her throat and she dies. Otherwise, they bury themselves harmlessly in walls, tear themselves through blankets, fast food boxes, swastica posters, 3 exit through the window. One finds the music box and the Necropolis stops playing.


The eyes of God release us.

It's a flower emerging from the wasteland if only to prove it has roots.


The torpedo, loosened from its chains by an errant bullet, falls, crushing Grundlich with its authentic replica weight. One angel (right) takes a drink from his brown bag.

“The lord works in mysterious ways.”

The angels check his wallet for cash before retrieving their gun and leaving the Majestic Apartment Complex.