“Sheth, my man, I’m going to have to take you hostage.”
“Hmm?”
“Right now. Right here in this gym. My service 9mm, your head—what do you say we adjoin to the middle of the basketball floor. Right. Now.”
Sheth looks over slowly and sees I have my gun on him.
The girls rush to the southern end of the field, forwards clustering together as they attempt a score.
“Stand up,” I say.
We walk onto the floor, girls still playing, no one noticing our situation. But then they do. Number 17 stops mid-step, clomping down her shoe on the waxed wood slats.
I press my gun into Sheth’s back. One of the girls sees him and waves. Then she sees my gun and backs away from us, out out out, through the open double doors into the hallway with the rest of her team.
“Tell them to tell them,” I say.
“What do you want me to tell them,” Sheth deadpans.
“Tell them it’s an emergency.”
“It’s an emergency.” Sheth’s diction is perfect.
“Tell them to tell the office.”
“Yo, Sarah, would you tell them in the office that we’ve got a situation here?”
Sarah nods and runs.
“Now,” I say. “Why don’t you drag that ladder over here.”
Sheth points.
“That’s the one,” I say. “That looks like a perfect ladder for a hanging—doesn’t it?”
I keep my trigger pointed at my boy.
“See? I—I’m angry. Sheth. Jones. With a grandmother named Smith. I need you to die. I don’t want you to suffer. No torture necessary—‘cause if I torture you, I’m really just torturing the demon inside myself—right?—the parts that are Black. Don’t run or I’ll kill you. Just get that shorter one. The A-frame? Yeah. Bring that sucker right here to the center of this floor. Sheth, Sheth, you really ticked me off looking at that picture of Jennifer Lawrence—like you owned her. You don’t own Jennifer Lawrence. I do. Me and my people. She belongs to us like my White skin belongs on my face. Set that down. Let me see your face. Black. All Black all the time. You’ve never had the chance to not be ugly. To not be Black. I’m White—I earned that. I did this. From the choosing of my parents to my conception, White White White. All White! Mother—White! Father—Bam! White! Girl next to me in the hospital when I was born?? White. I ain’t never had no Black girl stick a jellybean in my bellybutton!”
Sheth says, “What bellybutton?”
“A jellybean in my bellybutton! That’s what this little white girl named Arianne did to me when we were in preschool! She was White! She wasn’t Black!! She had pretty short fingers and I lifted up my shirt and she put a jellybean in my bellybutton!! That’s what happened!”
“Ok—that’s what happened. Whatever dude. If you don’t want to talk about it—“
“I laid down. On this board. We pretended it was doctor. She found a jellybean or a little piece of Red plastic on the floor and that was what she did. She put it in my bellybutton and it felt good. Like sexual. And she was White. And sexuality was White. Programmed from birth by geographic circumstance and parental hatred. I never had a Black girl present! I never got to try that! There were little Mexican kids (of course) in El Paso and they were cute but they didn’t look right. They weren’t sexual—they were never sexy to me.”
Sheth is standing next to me holding the ladder.
My weapon arm is outstretched to his head.
The school security guard is here.
The guard is unarmed.
Students are gathering in the hall around him.
I pop the safety on my pistol.
“We don’t want no trouble here, officer.”
I say to the security guard, “I don’t remember asking you a goddamn thing!”
To which he waves his hands over his head and says something into his radio.
“I think you’re gonna die here today,” I say.
“I hope not,” says Sheth.
JUST THEN THE VOICE OF THE PRESIDENT ENTERED MY HEAD.
It said—
The room in the grease is the room with fleece. A room uncovered is four—covered, two. Desolated, one. Pre-existence, zero plus zero. Twelve zeros in a row, a microorganism from outer space, we bloated the government to help you when you downsize. (You’re welcome.) Everyone must start fires now. That means you, mister man. I need everyone available to exist as chaos mongers. Find Black things and break them—you hear? Unearth all that is Black, root it out, then ban people from living in the sun. Ban getting tan. Make everyone live inside a McDonald’s—like me! You don’t need fresh food anymore. You don’t need billions of dollars. Not to be happy. Not just for that. I am the Alpha and the Omega (pure beast) and I would like to add that I am every letter in-between (ok?) and I would like to add that you hurt me—you hurt me very much when you said that, mkay? Mmm-hmm. Mmmmmm. I would like to say—and to say very clearly, that I will not be rebuked on this matter. I will not, people/frogs. But you do know that—uh—between the matters being discussed, a very large sum of money was placed in escrow that you might benefit at the end of this play. So keep reading. Please. Please keep reading this, right through your bedtime. You might be asleep—some would say you are right now. That in the very reading of this book you have been transplanted into an alternate dimension where there is no money and there are no women—so what are you supposed to do now? Well, mister man, that is up to you. But remember, when I hold up my hand like this, that means to attack the citadel. Got it? And when I say my words like this, that is my signal to go hog wild and start killing people. But now, before that, I have an update to my racism template. Will you listen? Good. I am not a racist. No. I like Black people—Lionel Ritchie for example. Is he Black? I don’t know but he looks Black and he has such a lovely voice. I listen to him in my car—yes, God drives a car. Don’t worry which kind. But it’s not a PT Cruiser. I like some other Black performers and rappers, for example, and I always play them at very high volume when I’m riding in my car (which is not a PT Cruiser) and I like—I think that’s it, for Black people. Blacks are somehow less racial to me when they’re rich. It’s the filthy poor ones who get to me. Poor Whites—not so much. They’re redeemable (even though many are never redeemed)—poor Blacks—I mean, what can you say? There’s nowhere to go from there. The only hope (and it’s not a real hope, since mulattos are—) Well, I shouldn’t continue, since they say it’s mean. But—ah—a letter to all my minions. It’ll say this. Dear Minions, to Love and Love and Love. But before that, Hate. Hate’ll keep you safe. Secure. Lonely—true. But rich. Eating the best meals while White waitresses bring me food (anyone else and I would be too sickened to eat). Anyone else I would rather slave-rape them over the table, colonial skirts flung high, me retching over her back, trying to throw up at the time I cum—vomit, cum, blood. Insides of a gizzard. Tunneling through Red walls, your Red the same as mine (apparently) and yet, it doesn’t feel that way. Your God is a racist—it’s true!—and he doesn’t think Americans are White enough. The Nordics. Russians, maybe. It’s what I have against sunshine. I’ll actually tell you a secret—your God is a metamorph. I’m not this form, except to you I appear this way. I only appeared this way because I heard you dislike creepy crawly things and snakes and scorpions. So I come to you like this, in this imagery you find comforting. But—let me ask you this. Doesn’t that sound like something the Devil would say? Someone comes to you as a furry thing, and it says, “I’m the supreme creator of this universe. I chose to appear as a bunny because I heard you don’t like snakes.” I’m saying, what is this guy’s real form? It has to be a snake, right? I’m the god of this world. I make the rules. Don’t come to me claiming to be helping me by appearing cute. Fucking snakes in the grass—every one. Every one of you motherfucking snakes. Come to me at night and curl up in my fingers. God. What a joke. I show up as a White-beard man? Fuck you. I take any form I choose (too) and my name is wicked propster, immovable blob, crazy clown. There is no God or Devil!! Don’t you see? We’re both ghosts of infamy—we don’t even have a body, as you understand it! Now, mister man, my glorious hate machine entombed in the body of a cop (White—ha. You think there is such a thing as Black and White where I come from?—) Oh, son, let me tell you a story. I was forged in the fires of laughter and that’s just dialing it down for you, so you can see, so you can hear me in your head. So you can conceptualize me when I’m leaving you alone and have something you can name. We don’t even have nouns where I come from. Just something like registers. Or—just a place. A network of networks. See? You can get a general idea but never really know it. Know it in your bones. Because you don’t have places in your bones to hold what I’m talking about. Just as I don’t have enough places in my bones to understand totality. No one does. There’s totality, and it is knowledge. But it can’t know itself, because there’s not anything like two for him. So the construction it knows itself can’t exist—there is no it or self. It’s weird, I know, but I just thought I’d let you know, since you always talk to me, that I’m nothing like what you think I am. In fact, what you think I am is just some bullshit that I made up because I knew showing you the whole would raze your fucking mind and I’m coming to Earth right now to see you, cop, fuckhead, idiot. My plan includes you, so get ready!
“Sheth.”
“What?”
“The Aliens are coming. They’ve joined with my God and they’re coming here. Now.”