I decided to go to the kid’s school—what the heck. I looked him up in TelstarCat, sort of a home brew system we have for finding out information on people. There he was—Sheth Jones, 15, Stivers High School. Academic performer? We’ll see about that.
I dissed my partner on a 111-1. That’s when you need to take care of some personal shit but you don’t want your pard to come along so you toss him out on a 444. Sucks to be the partner on that one, ‘cause a 444 means you gotta do all the same shit as usual but without backup. Sending someone on a 444 is grounds for ending the partnership.
Martin just said, “Whatever.”
He slammed the door.
Going across town, I put my driving gloves on, turn’t up the radio. We listen to nothing but hip hop—hippity hip hop!—Niggars singing their hearts out in lovesick songs. Niggar ballerinas like Rihanna singing songs with fake-Black Eminem. People like me will never understand Eminem’s culture (that it isn’t Black). Now I’m asserting truths from within a rejection of my main persona—good to be back! As to whether I do drugs, let it be a mystery to you, now, oh child. Let you not worry your little mind about it. If I did drugs they would be like Vicodin or Adderall (pills)—If I did pills they would be pretty pills. Pills with scientific names and symbols on their body, like a capsuled spaceship that took me where I wanted to go. You might think me a crude disciplinarian—a strange cop!—but all I was if ever I was anything is bad. It’s true. They’d never make a movie about me. I’m not interesting enough. But I didn’t say I was interesting. I just said I was bad. I don’t look bad—just the opposite. I look good. I represent the government. I’m here to help. See these cuffs? They’re not here to hurt you—they’re here to keep you safe. Further around on my Batman belt, this gun? It’s not here to hurt you—it’s here to keep you safe. People don’t see the bad side of me which—doesn’t want to hurt kids, nah, I’m not that kind of bad guy. I feel guilty when I catch sight of Missy’s underwear. When its in the wash. I’ve known some child perverts—I know some now. But that’s not my kind of bad. My bad is a kind of self-serving—ness. Ish. Ticity!
My kind of bad. My kind of bad. It’s a serpent type—a viper type. It sits laying and waiting for eons before it strikes. Way faster than the Empire Struck Back. Way faster than that. And when it strikes, you never see it. It doesn’t strike like a snake. Because something truly evil would try to hide as the most beautiful thing. So I strike with a kiss—or with no touch at all! I strike like the lamb who yawns in the middle of the afternoon. You get what I’m saying? I’m not the evil guy who does drugs. That would be too easy. I’m the evil guy who doesn’t do much evil after all.
But when I strike, I do.
I pull up in front of Stivers. Park on the street. Go up the Colosseum stairs.
In the Principal’s office, a woman comes right up to me.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Sheth Jones.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He’s about to be,” I say.
The woman goes to her computer. Taps.
“He’ll be in room 316. Do you want me to go with you?”
“No thanks. I’ll be fine on my own.”
She looks at me with a slightly worried look on her face.
I leave the office. Take the stairs. Hop hop hop! I was always a hopper, as a kid. Still love to hop. Love it. I fucking love to motherfucking hop! Hop. Hop. I’m hopping through the tulips like a graceful one-legged gazelle. I picture Sheth Jones’ face. His classroom. In effect. Teacher teaching. Students learning! Hop hop hop. Sheth Jones pops a crack vial from underneath his fingernails, produces a pipe from invisible-ness, smokes up the back half of the room. Why do I say Sheth Jones is likely a crack addict? Because of the company he keeps. How many crack houses have you dismantled? I have dismantled six. All in West Dayton. All full of Blackies. Yes, the occasional White. But it’s like eight-to-one, twenty-to-one. I mean, what would a Niggar crack house be without its token White strippers? White prostitutes? White bitches giving a Niggar head while he smokes that crack? This is what I pictured so of course when I came upon Sheth Jones in the classroom what I saw was a surprise.
Math class. Calculus. Sheth Jones sitting in the front row. If this was a story in a book it couldn’t have been more perfect. Him wearing a Lacoste green shirt, long sleeved, tapping on a tablet. If I told you he was wearing glasses it would be too much—yes? He wasn’t wearing glasses, but his Beige slacks and thin Black belt made him look absolutely White. And I was disgusted to think that he might claim Jennifer Lawrence’s bright White pussy as his own and claim her muscular Kentucky stomach as his own and then he would claim her claim to Hollywood and there would be Niggars in East Dayton running up and down the streets—running amok!—running everywhere! There would be West Side Niggars in the East and East Side Niggars in the West. We have to slow this sort of thing down. We have to make it so slow that it’s occurrence is imperceptible. So that it hardly affects us, and then one day we wake up having been the centuries-long subjects of a genetic study by the other kind, living on Arctus Centauri. Or some shit. You notice when they show us aliens the aliens never have any Black people? There’s no Niggars in space. Every advanced civilization goes through a process of homogenization wherein all the Black people and the White people interbreed and become Gray people. Or the White people get together and exterminate the Black people. Lickety-split! Snap! Hiroshima but for Niggars. Sub-niggardly behavior from some of these homunculi. Aging me prematurely. Bum rush till dawn. Three and fours in a bungle. Niggar music in my head. Martin’s playlist. So Niggardly. Cowardly. Music for a non-thinker. Music for a follower sect. Their weak Christianity with demon elements, starting at the face, breaking at the shoulders, turning pure voodoo by the waist and unleashing a savage burn from the root chakra into my erect cock! I am Shiva the God of Purple Penises!!
From the bone chakra to the pistle to the root of my seed. I am the production war machine made for invading the Black territory. My president supports me. He bade me well. He promised me I’d be paid in virgins and horses and oil and cash and all the dirty powers that fill my miniature hand. Play those cards like a wallop on the table then slink off alone into the darkness with my money. Happiness lies at the edges. Out of contact. With your back against a wall. Happiness isn’t possible for everyone. Everyone is capable of it. But not everyone gets to feel it—there are only so many slots. Those of us will be rescued by God in the Final Days. Suckled up to space by a giant vacuum cleaner. Placed on the judging platform and those of you who do not make the cut will be knocked down to the planet headless, your bodies tumbling until the Earth knocks you dead.
It’s not hard to describe what I saw when I saw Sheth Jones sitting in that calculus class, pretending to learn, his tablet before him. I saw—first—flames extending out from the center of his pubis solar sexus clinging to the background like wallpaper melting the faces of every child in the classroom. A wasteland of monkey skeletons. The rapture! One in the field and two will be taken—all the White kids out of the room and everyone else stay right here. Everyone else we have a cool plan for you kids—right? We have a real cool plan for y’all. It’s called Let’s Burn You in the Oven! Yum!! Low beat. Hum. The waves crashing on the shore. You can see me in here—can’t you? See me dodging and diving the flames.
You can see me so far down, down this well of gravity and hate, my lowly nature revealed to you in this text. My hatred of myself. That has to be the worst thing about me—don’t you think? That I hate my self. My very self. So much I can’t sit down on the toilet without hating my own genitalia. So much that when I flip on a light switch, the thoughts that arise lead to that one final place—my evil fucking self. So much that when I turn the lights on at night, the demons don’t just come—they come and come and come down upon me like rain on a tin roof. Salt. My essence. An eight-legged stowaway left behind by multiple travelers on a journey that sparked the edge of my soul.
I am trying, you see. I am trying to be a better person. I make mistakes. My mantra with Annabel is at least we’re not a serial killer. At least we’re not dictators. At least we don’t make lamp shades out of people’s skin.
No. We’re good people. We don’t question the norms. That’s why we’re not a serial killer. But, unfortunately, for people like us, this is our downfall. The serial killer goes outside society’s bounds too far. We go outside too little.