It is not normal to be alive, since the living being as such exists and is real only when threatened. Death in short is no more than the cessation of an anomaly—EM Cioran
During the day, I mostly read. I looked at maps of South America. Anna mostly played with the drill. Once I saw her put a one-inch bit onto it and stick it up Kimmie's ass. She pulled the trigger for only half a second. Then she looked up at me, delighted, and said, "Oh!"
One night, Anna asked if anyone had ever tried to mind control me.
I turn over in bed.
"Tell you a story. And in telling this story I'm going to piss off some people."
"Who?"
"People who are monitoring this conversation."
"Who's monitoring the conversation?"
"All conversations are monitored on this planet."
"You're sounding a little X-Files for me."
"Well. You can call it X-Files or you can call it old-school spy tech, but every conversation on this planet is monitored, including this one, and when I tell you this story—I'm gonna tell you the story—I'm just saying I'm gonna piss some people off."
"Wait. If every conversation is monitored, then don't these people know about you abducting little girls?"
"Oh. They don't care about that sort of thing. And it's abducting, torturing, and killing young women and girls. Give a man his due."
"Sorry. Guess I forgot to read the fine print on your website."
"So you asked if I ever got mind controlled."
"Yes," she says.
"Yes," I say. "One day a fucking government helicopter picks me up. It's got six meatheads, pilot, plus me."
"Where did they pick you up?"
"Can't tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Because that will really piss off the people who are listening to this conversation. I mean there's ways to do things and there's ways not to, you know? So anyway, these brick boys are trying to scare me by sitting there outnumbering me with tac rifles—horrible, horrible weapons—people killers—and I'm playing around with them telling them jokes I remember reading off Laffy Taffy wrappers when I was a kid. Stupid, stupid jokes—I mean the dumbest puns you can imagine. How do you communicate with a fish?—You drop it a line. What is a parasite?—Something you see in Paris! So I'm cracking my ass off and these guys are sitting there like rocks on a log—I mean it's in their job description not to smile.
"And they're like, 'If you don't shut up, we're gonna kill you.'
"And I'm like, 'Yeah right. You pick me up in a helicopter with six guys to make sure I don't get away. You have orders not to kill me and don't think for a second I don't know it. I could spit in your face and tell you how loose your wife's post-childbirth pussy is and all you would do is protect me. Your orders are to take me someplace to talk to somebody with an actual job title and an actual name—even if it is a fake actual name. If your orders were to kill me, they would have sent one guy and there wouldn't have been a fucking helicopter. I was born on a Thursday but it wasn't yesterday.'
" 'You and I are not adversaries,' I tell these thick-neck motherfuckers.
"And they're like, 'Yes we are.'
"And I'm like, 'That may be the way you see it, but trust me, we're not.'
"And they're like, 'You're our prisoner.'
"And I'm like, 'You don't even know who I am. What I am to you is above your fucking pay grade.'
"So they bag my head, I keep telling jokes—mostly to entertain myself—and they take me to a room and play this tape and it's a bunch of cartoons mixed forward and backward and quick cuts of images that didn't make any sense and a modified classical score and I was like, 'Look, if you want to break into my mind, I can give you something that'll work a lot better than this.' That gets their attention. So I tell them the name of a movie that I only watched once—when I was coming down off crystal meth—that really got under my skin..so much so I was afraid to ever watch it again because I didn't want to re-invite those associations back into my head."
"What's the name of the movie?" Anna says.
"I'd rather not say."
"To protect yourself from whoever's listening?"
"No. To protect myself from you. No offense but you're a sick bitch. Does that offend you?"
"I take it as the highest compliment."
"Further proof that you're a sick, sick puppy."
"Would you like me if I wasn't?"
"Hmm..doubtful. Anyway, I tell these idiots the name of the movie but then I inform them it would be a waste of their time.
"They're like, 'Why?'
"And I'm like, 'I'm already crazy. The natural content of my mind is weirder and scarier than anything your PhD psychologists can remix from Saturday morning cartoons..weirder and scarier than anything in that movie I just told you about..I've already walked through hell..so even if you produce actual demons from hell (which they had the technology to do), it's not going to help you break into my mind. Besides, I said, I'm not trying to lock you out. You want inside my mind, have at it. My mind is an open book. Have you read my book? It's in the library. It's in the bookstore. It contains most of the interesting contents of my mind already. So if you want to know what I think, all you have to do is start at page one..and read through page four-hundred and fifty-one. Then read backwards..from page four-hundred and fifty-one..to page one—'
"Stop talking!"
"There are letters on each page which you will find entrancing as they are perfect in every aesthetic. The font was chosen a decade ago knowing that you would invite me into this room with you to have this little talk which I am enjoying greatly. Just tell me what you want to know. I'm not bound by the same secrecy agreements as you—I can tell you anything I want. You brought a tank to break into a candy store. All that's in here is purples and greens and blues and—oh, look!—here's the opposite of green and the opposite of blue—"
"Shut up!!"
"Did you know girls pee standing up in Japan?—Lot of the world, actually. Right at urinals, just like us boys."
"Somebody get a piece of tape to put over his mouth!"
"It's funny when you see them spreading those hairy Japanese labia with Baphomet fingers and being the educated men you aren't, you know Baphomet has those long purple fingernails with crisscross patterns and a fang on the end of each one. Then the girls' dicks reach around from inside their pussies and go inside their own asses to piss..I never knew that about Japanese girls before I went there. Have you ever been? Every Japanese girl has two dicks, one for your mother and one for your father. Japanese girls.."—I say this very slowly—"fucking your father..in his mouth..with their left dick." Still slowly. "Japanese girls..fucking your mother..in her wrinkly dead asshole with their right dick. Did you know who Baphomet was before I mentioned him? 'Cause that's your mother, too."
Then the guy with the title and the name comes in and I speak immediately to him, before he can say a word. I look in his light brown eyes and I say: "When I get you alone I'm going to do a little body modification on you where I split your penis down the middle—all the way through—and re-route your urethra so you piss out of the base of your scrotum. 'Course, you'll never again be able to fuck that secretary of yours out there so I guess I'll just have to take her to Uganda and have a spiny bush viper eat her pussy out. I know he'll do a lot better job than you're doing—thank you for that idea 'cause I got it right out of your mind you wannabe Jedi. Have you ever seen a picture of a spiny bush viper? Because with what I have in mind for your girl, you really should. That greedy African snake burrowing up her red-headed little snatch will solve another problem you subconsciously invited me here to deal with, though."
"What's that?"
"The inherent risk of a security man fucking his secretary—you open yourself up to that shit at this level??—you don't know who the fuck she is."
"Wait wait wait. Why do you think I'm fucking her?"
"Because your dick pumped out the minute I said secretary."
He looks down at his dick.
"Gotcha," I said. "Just one heartbeat—that's all I need. What really sucks, though.."
"What's that?"
"You wanna have her killed but you can't, can you? See, when I'm done with my women I make sure they're never gonna call me for make-up sex."
"Do you realize what you just said could end my career?"
"Forget your career. That shit could get you disappeared, my friend. And it's not what I said—it's what you said..or what you did. Have you ever eaten bush viper?—They're excellent grilled. I can have one sent over since you're so interested. It's quite a tasty rabbit as caterpillars go."
"Did they ever find tape to put over your mouth?"
"No, they were incredibly disorganized."
"What happened next?"
"I told them that if you look into the mirrors in Alice in Wonderland, you see alternate universes, and by that time they pretty much had the helicopter fired up and the guys with the big guns ready to take me back home to where they found me."
"Did they ever bother you after that?"
"Oh, they didn't care. We worked together for years. That was their idea of a job interview. I built some specialty shit for them—mind-control shit—shit you could use to mind control a ladybug."
"Tell me you're joking."
"No, you could actually mind control a ladybug."
Anna says, "That's not right."
"Of course I'm joking," I say. "Of course I'm joking."
Anna rolls over and I know she's thinking about that ladybug.
"You wanna hear another Laffy Taffy joke?"
"Sure," she says dryly.
"What did one eye say to the other?"
"What?"
"Between me and you something smells."
"Jesus Christ," Anna says. "Go to bed."
"What did the egg say to the frying pan?—You crack me up!"
I bust out laughing.
"Oh. My. God," Anna says. "I don't love you anymore."
"Did you ever?" I say.
Complete silence.
Then she says, "I guess the moral of this story is if someone tries to do something crazy to you..be crazier than them."
"Close. The moral of the story is memorize a bunch of Laffy Taffy jokes 'cause no one can stand them. Hey Ann."
"Mmm."
"Promise me something. If anybody ever tries to fuck with you..fuck them harder."
We're quiet for a while and then she says:
"Do confusion inductions really work?"
"Like straight-up magic," I say.
"I'm sick of them."
"Then put them down. Set them aside. Don't tax yourself with things you don't want to think about."
"Yeah but with a confusion induction, is it really as easy as putting it down? It seems like a concept that has a life of its own, you know what I mean."
"I know what you mean."
"Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Fuck," she says.
"Hold on, hold on. You can put it down. You can set it aside. But there's a caveat."
"I'm sure it's something diabolical."
"You don't have to anthropomorphize it..if you don't want. You don't have to think of it as diabolical. You can think of it as just the way it is."
"How is it?"
"It's like this. You're a smart girl."
"Remind me to choke your cock in my mouth in a minute."
"Ok, I'll definitely remind you of that. You're a smart girl—"
"I'm not choking it twice."
"May I please continue? You're a smart girl—"
"I'm not choking it three times!"
"Would you shut the fuck up! You're a smart girl. And being smart creates a confusion induction of its own."
"It does?"
"Smart people question their reality—they question what they know. It's wise to be confused, in a way. Average people don't question their reality, so they're more certain, less confused—they think they know things that they don't really know but at least their conscious mind isn't open to allow access to the deep. But hear what I just said: their conscious mind isn't open. That's no way to live. So yeah, being smart, having an open mind, is by definition being a little bit confused. Or a lot confused, in the case of—say—a schizophrenic..someone with a very open mind."
"Let's have no more talk of confusion inductions."
Anna slides down the bed.
"Or."
She puts my cock in her mouth.
"Confusion in general."
She chokes my cock with her fist—a tight grip.
"I've had enough of control and confusion. All I want is your crazy/brilliant cum inside my mouth."
And she works at it. And she works. And like most people who work long enough and hard enough at what they want—she gets it.