genius
Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer wrote in message
<3dc0818019e5edaed61506667f40359a@cypherpunks.to>...
So I'll bet you're thinking that it's a bit early for Christmas,
eh?
No *****, cupcake.
I had just entered the local Wal-Mart, that unholy mecca of all
things
cheap and fast when I noticed it. The part of my brain still
coherent
enough to remember eleven years spent playing low brass
identified the
tune with unerring autonomy. It was Carol of the Bells.
It was being piped in over the PA system.
IN SEPTEMBER?!?!?!?!
As I entered the garden section, my fears were confirmed. There
in all
its commercialized glory stood a wide selection of Christmas
lawn and
interior decorations. There were full-sized santas and
inflatable,
lighted snowmen standing in regimented order like the garish
afterlife
army of some long dead Chinese emperor. As I passed in mute
horror, a
mechanized santa tracked me with its dead, baleful eyes while it
crooned out some Bing Crosby monstrosity. It waved its
tinsel-draped
arms like some mortally wounded cyborg motioning to its cohorts
for
fire support, a socket wrench and a gallon of forty-weight. Even
my
jaded eyes were shocked wide open as my pickled brain struggled
with
the awful realization streaming into it from all directions. I
have
seen my fellow humans rent to tatters by unimaginable forces. I
have
stepped over dead children and crawled over dead adults. I have
done
and seen things that would have sent normal people trembling and
bawling to psychiatrists for the rest of their miserable lives.
To date, nothing has horrified me like this.
Some ***** somewhere decided that September 6th was the date
on
which Wal-Mart should begin displaying its yule tide offerings
in
their full, horrendous glory. September 6th? What happened to
Halloween? What happened to Thanksgiving? To whence did our
wonderful
fall holidays, replete with drunken mayhem and unabashed
gluttony go?
What happened to cyanide-laced candy scares and
salmonella-induced
diarrhea? Were they canceled? Did some commission of corporate
demigogues seated in plush chairs behind yards of mahogany
decide that
all festivals should bend to the will of the one
overly-commercialized
horror show specifically designed to yeild the best profits?
This could not be. Temperatures here are still hitting in the
middle
90's during the day and rarely dropping below 80 at night.
Cicadas are
still belting out their chainsaw drones from the fully-leaved
trees.
Everything is green, hot and humid here in September. How could
a
store even think of inflicting its Christmas hysteria upon us
now?
Christmas is a special time for family, friends, gift-giving and
quiet, vodka-soaked brooding over failed lives and suicidal
ideations.
It occurs in a season of cold death; a season that annihilates
the
weak and forces the survivors to flee its icy grasp by any means
necessary.
Christmas is not meant to even be thought about in September.
As the absolute wrongness of the situation before me was still
being
ground between my rusted mental cogs, my mind attempted to
sheild
itself with fantasy. First, the audio input was squelched and
replaced
with something more comforting. As Pink Floyd's "Empty Spaces"
flooded
in to replace the awful, bell-laced grating, a fantasy of
vengance for
this transgression soothed my tattered psyche.
I saw myself walking to the sporting goods section with the
stiffness
of a person being controlled by his most primal desires. The
sheeples
I passed gave me one look and quickly huried out of the way,
seeking
errands in safer places. Three million years of being prey to
bigger,
stronger things with long teeth and murderous intent have given
humans
a healthy fear of predation that not even a few thousand years
of
insular society can breed out. As I reached the desk, my right
hand
dropped to the corresponding hip pocket. The acne-covered
dropout
manning the counter didn't even notice the small, black,
razor-edged
blade as it arced up to sever his carotid artery. I saw myself
being
painted in garish red as the knife sliced through his trachea
and his
shocked exhalation sprayed blood in all directions. There were a
few
horrified gasps and one shocked scream behind me as his body
slumped
to the cheap linoleum; the sum of his 19 years spilling out
across its
chipped, scarred surface. As the sounds of hurried footfalls and
shocked yammering retreated behind me, my left fist raced
forward to
smash the glass that inefectually guarded long, mean sculptures
of
blued steel and oiled wood.
I saw myself select a Mossberg 12 gauge with an extended
magazine.
With a quick twist, I tightened the secutrity cable running
through
the trigger guard until that fixture's cheap platic shattered,
freeing
the weapon. A short kick to a lower cabinet made available all
the
ammunition I would ever need. I stoked the shotgun with a mix of
one-ounce slugs and double-ought buckshot. After filling my
pockets
with loose ammo, I headed towards the source of my misery.
Although the patrons and staff of this horrid establishment has
fled
to the relative safety of the parking lot, I found the santas
and
snowmen right where I'd left them. They yammered mindlessly and
clanged out their nauseating tunes with the awful glee of
automata.
Before my mind could be further infected by their cheery sadism,
the
shotgun boomed to life. The ear-abusing racket was a welcome
replacement as lead tore through the horrible display before me.
Smiling plastic heads were severed from their owners and
synthetic
torsos were pummeled flat as all of the shotgun's ammunition was
sprayed forth in a relentless shoot-pump-shoot cycle. Shredded
garments exploded into confetti as shattered electronic
components
sparked with malevolent impotence. The inflatable snomen first
sagged
and finally went completely flat as they succumbed to the
fist-sized
holes being blown through them with mechanical ferocity. I have
no
idea how long the slaughter went on, but when it ceased I saw
myself
beholding a smoking, shredded mess of torn and shattered
mechanical
cheer. With the blue-grey haze of burnt powder hanging in the
air, I
quickly reloaded the shotgun with my final stores of ammo and
headed
to the front of the store where I heard approaching sirens above
the
cleansing ringing in my ears.
Outside, a phalanx of long, low police cruisers awaited me with
their
red and blue lights stobing through the advancing dusk. Amongst
the
steel sharks hid police officers with their weapons drawn and
nervous
fingers resting listlessly on grooved triggers. They hadn't even
had
the chance to scream out the required warnings when the shotgun
snapped up to my shoulder and began to spew out its deadly
payload. As
a credit to my trap shooting roots, I got off three round before
the
terrified cops returned fire. The first few bullets snapped
harmlessly
past me as I sent a slug into one officer's armor and a load of
buckshot into another's face. Then the bullets began finding
their
marks. One tore through the outside of my right thigh, pulling
behind
it a trail of atomized flesh and fragmented denim. Another
bullet
ended its journey in my liver. Nine milimeter ammunition can
definitely kill a person. This is a fact of ballistic science.
Another, more unfortunate fact is that it sometimes takes *alot*
of
nine milimeter ammunition to bring somebody down. Especially
when the
somebody is big and determinted. Even in their terrified state,
the
police officers managed to score a dozen or so hits on multiple
parts
of my body. Unfortunately for them, none of them were
immediately
lethal. I had just run out of ammo when a bullet screamed in
like a
supersonic ballpeen hammer and destroyed my left elbow. I
dropped the
shotgun and had my hand on my knife before the hot, smoking
death
machine even "clinked" to the pavement. Advancing towards the
nearest
officer, I felt the right side of my jaw explode in a shower of
teeth,
bone and blood. My intended target was reloading his weapon with
panicked hast as another round zipped in and struck me in the
left
side of my forehead.
I went down like a sack of cement with my body bleeding from
multiple
holes and half my brain pulped. I couldn't feel my right side
and I
was unable to move. But this did not concern me. This was The
Way It
Had To Be. I had simply found it impossible to live in such a
pathetic
society without visiting some sort of awful vengance upon it.
With
said vengance exacted, I found a sort of peace. As I lay on the
cooling parking lot, a great many things went through the
still-functional half of my brain. I recalled with photographic
perfection fishing in the sublime stillness of a windless
morning. The
Parkland Burn Formula flashed before my eyes, still represented
in
white chalk on that long-forgotten green slate. That first
drunken
encounter with the female of the species caressed me with its
illicit
excitement and the exhilaiation of clinging stoned to the roof
of my
own car as my buddy drove it at 80 mph washed over my failing
mind.
And before death swooped in and shut down my few remaining
faculties,
I remembered that couldn't hear Christmas music of any sort.
None at all.
.
