The clicks, cracks and clunks snapped, messages from a torture dungeon, off the house walls. For five years I've wondered about them, the detractors, how they've made so much noise that I only got an hour or two of sleep. Writing this, clicks whipped the living room walls, anxiety and stress confused me until every song on the radio sounded like "Jingle Bells." Once a loud clunk tore ceiling paint above my head, falling on my face, waking me at three AM. If I could find out who manipulated those clunks, I'd rip out their brains with a pry bar.
A guy in the adjoining house often said, "Watch, he'll swallow, saying, 'Watch, I couldn't help it,' then he'll scratch his groin, complaining that he can't masturbate after watching internet porn for seven hours. And he'll follow up, saying, 'I can't help touching my eyes.' Then he says, 'The detractors say I couldn't help crashing my computer, pushing the delete key, sabotaging my refusal to take out by dick and ejaculate on the carpet.' Then he'll say, 'But, in reality, the times I've ejaculated they'll say I used eczema cream to simulate sperm.'"
I couldn't help myself: I thought, spoke and acted truthfully. I mentally freeze-framed my disconnected life-flow the intruders caused. If they could read my mind with their cell phones ( ? ) or wi-fi ( ? ), they'd understand my entire life was actually as I lived it. But, under those circumstances, they edged their way into my six room house and into my present, past and future life. Verily ( I enjoyed transcendent language ), they blasted to smithereens my remaining days, turning me into a leper, flesh eaten away, never dying. Perhaps a new belief system would ooze from my eternal body.
Shortly after my computer was taken over by hackers because I panicked, clicking two virus-ridden internet security outfits, I took my hard drive in a taxi to a repair shop. I paid by debit card. The technician said he'd call me after he eliminated the viruses. He called after three weeks, telling me it was fixed. I took a taxi to the shop, only to be told that he hadn't gotten to it yet. I used the shop's cell phone, calling another taxi.
I waited outside, watching vehicles pass, some drivers on their cells, others staring at me on the small porch. An eighteen-something girl, wearing blue knee socks, exposing her bare, cute thighs walked past me. I flashed to the origin of the corrupt computer. Too many illegal downloads? Tom Petty's lyrics, "I won't back down" looped in my head as I visualized a continuous video clip of that girl doing it with someone.
Two weeks later I picked up the drive. I told the cabbie to wait. I told the tech I'd paid by card. He checked for ten minutes. "There's no record of that transaction." I whimpered, paced like a caged maniac, even cried. Techs stared at me. Collecting myself, I got into the cab, stopping at an ATM, withdrawing $120. I went back, paid $100. Then the cab let me off at my usual food store.
I walked through the aisles, picking my standard meat, fish, veggies, dairy and canned goods. As if on autopilot, I heard both employees and customers say out loud the very words I spoke in my mind. "I didn't know my debit card wasn't valid," a man said, his baggy trousers identical to mine." "Tom Petty's 'I won't back down', how it won't quit, how I can't help it," said a woman, grasping a tomato against her ear. Was the tomato miked? "Why don't those clicks, cracks and clunks stop? Who's behind this? I'll never know and even if I did what can I do about anything," a guy said, holding a skateboard, his head down, mocking my habit of looking for money on sidewalks. "The girl wearing blue knee socks exposing her thighs: I could get arrested for downloading underage girls," a twenty-something woman, wearing a high school cheerleading uniform, said. My thought-talking, then their response. Not the other way around.
Normally there weren't this many customers in the store. I was like a magnet, bringing them in. "Without me, they'd be nowhere people, parasites, gullible and paranoid, these customers should quit tormenting me," said a senior, mimicking my incessant towel-wiping of my glasses. I'd said those words a nanosecond before he had.
All the way back home every pedestrian was on a cell phone, alone, or walking in pairs. A senior said, "I didn't make the switch," a direct quote from a story I wrote when I had my chops. A single man walked towards me and I heard only, "daughter."
I hadn't mentioned my twenty-nine years of therapy with a psychiatrist. I'd gone through millions of pills. I'm boasting. The intruders don't like my sense of humor or deny that I even have one. I hadn't much to say until pornography overtook me after I bought a computer. Before that I bored him as well as myself, small talking about news and magazine articles. The pills were necessary for remaining on federal and state disability. I told him about the clicks, cracks and clunks I heard bouncing off a painting to his right. He said he hadn't heard anything, though I insisted I had, assuring me of remaining on the program. He grabbed his iPhone, telling Social Security to investigate me. I gratefully laughed at the joke.
When I told him it was his new secretary doing that, sensing he hired her for computer skills, he told me she was a regular soccer mom. "Why would she do that? We're talking therapy here," he joked. He added: "No remission, count on that." Making the next appointment, I realized he meant the opposite. I was scared.
I walked back home and searched porno soccer mom categories, hoping a geyser-like spume of cum would explode. Ever since the posse interrupted my life, I hadn't masturbated. A couple dozen drops fell on the keyboard. Now, every time I saw qwerty, I thought of soccer moms.
I e-mailed my daughter June, telling her I was back online, explaining porn brought me down. Previously, she phoned from Europe, worried for five weeks that I hadn't replied to her emails. She'd received my two snail-mailed letters, minus porn confession. She told me I should run a complete scan every week on my internet security software.
During downtime, I tried faxing June but the copier store worker said both numbers wouldn't connect. I also forgot how to use an international telephone card, which I blamed on old age. Sixty-seven was closer to late middle age than true old age. However,speaking by telephone to a computer tech, my technical ignorance obvious, he asked my age. When I told him sixty-seven, I immediately heard the company's menu, then electronic music. A Luddite oldster, strictly analogue.
During my tribulation, a term my nay-sayers, psychological torturers, despised; those click-despots allowed thousands, tens of thousands ( millions? ) not only to hear me but also see me on video 24/7.
Since my phone was tapped, they heard June over the phone, as clear as I had. If the posse heard her, I'm certain they didn't believe it was her voice, but another's. And if they heard nothing, they assumed I was as deaf as a stop sign outside my home.Though I'd written poetry and prose in both print and online magazines, the detractors only understood my existence as a gigantic lie. I wanted to send the print magazines now in drawers to June. I'd e-mailed most but not all online pieces, yet from the familiar vehicular and skateboarder racket, the harassers don't believe I knew June's address or even that she existed at all.
Point of contention: the adversaries don't believe my father wrote his own memoir. Undoubtedly they'd claim his memoir was ghostwritten; I, a frustrated writer. Obviously his memoir was as authentic as the hundreds of photos taken of my maternal and paternal grandparents. Plus hundreds of photos of my parents and, later, photographs of June from infancy through adulthood.
And they'd think that my certifiable passports, driver's licenses, birth certificate and debit card were forged. Perhaps they assumed June an ex-girlfriend. And no, I've never been incarcerated for rape, identity theft, or any crime. Though I'd threatened the interlopers, those who undermined my sovereignty, machete, hammer and dowel my weapons of choice. Those sitting in the downtown bars and restaurants believed that I'm a thoroughgoing fraud. I couldn't help that.
I met June at the airport today. Home, she said that isolation had scooped me out, leaving only irrational thoughts.
I drank a good and expensive Scotch malt whiskey.
"You stopped alcohol, I thought. Pressure, Russ?" I got a glass, pouring her two inches.
"You don't hear sirens, do you?" I asked. Both police and fire engine sirens blared past the house. I hesitated, waiting for June to comment on their high-decibels.
June said: "People, well, adversaries, say I hear sirens but the clinks, cracks and clunks I hear indicate my deafness. And being deaf means I'm sixty-seven, just as the outsourced tech mentioned when he asked my age, meaning I'm not smart, too dumb for tech stuff. Every time the interlopers outside this house, their muscle cars making loud noises, I tell them without opening my lips, mouth closed, tongue not moving, teeth clenched, bruxism, clinical, of course, that means I've a symptom of mental illness, what is it, it was chronic paranoid schizophrenia, then morphed into paranoid personality disorder but I'm sixty-seven, too old for more medical evaluations..."
"You talk just like me," I said, pushing back the lounge chair. Lying, laying, my poor grammar won't matter in the grand scheme of things, I said to myself.
She said: "Lying, laying back, either one, they're attacking me because of my poor grammar, I can't help that. But I was a writer, not anymore, not articulate enough, but I did write prose poems. I read them at both funerals in Iowa. Sure, no one, nobody, who cares, so long or as long as the crux of the idea is there, crux has something to do with crucifixion, I call it my tribulation. Of course it's tribulation, why would I say I was a writer if I weren't? Why write anything that wasn't the truth. Why lie about attending my parent's funerals?"
"That's what I've been saying these last few years. Yeah, goddamn it..."
June said: "Is it goddamn it or goddamned it, right, even professors over there, I always swing my arm out, gesturing towards this town's university. I went to two colleges, one I flunked out because I couldn't understand accounting, father being a certified public accountant. The other school, Iowa Wesleyan College, was much easier. I made Dean's list three times..."
"June, stop it. You're saying things I say all the time ever since the clicks, cracks and clunks began. And I'm scared of death. See that book by Ernest Becker down there, The Denial of Death?"
I said: "I quote from books, mention their titles, and still the local bookstore owners don't believe they're real, that I've printed them myself. But Dad hadn't made that much money, that's why they could afford the plush retirement village and nursing home..."
The noon whistle blew downtown. I heard it clearly, my hearing better than most, especially those in the neighborhood.
She said: "I stood in the hospital, Mom staring at me, forgetting my name because she had Alzheimer's, telling me I've done the best I could, getting a degree in sociology rather than English. I never made the switch, that's why my computer died, too much sexual imagery and not enough jacking off, jerking off, whatever, I've a small repertoire these days..."
June talked my talk, the talk of the town so to speak, The Talk of the Town, it was in The New Yorker magazine, wasn't it? And attending those funerals in Cedar Rapids, a medium-sized city; yes, I was being followed. The provokers even followed me into restrooms, a man sidling up to me, pissing in a urinal even though there must've been a hundred in that majestic hotel bathroom. I spoke: teeth grinding, tongue unmoving, silent words popping in my mind.
June said: "You're my daughter, after all, aren't you? I'm sure of that, I impregnated your mother whose own mother and husband lived in Crawfordsville, the town I drove through at night, writing a prose poem, "Jazz Highway," and another one, "That Sweet Spot," about living in Northbrook, how Mom in pedal pushers ran down Sycamore Lane, excited that Bobby Thomson's home run beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, connecting baseball with love, that sweet spot..."
"You heard the siren go off, didn't you?" I screamed, losing confidence.
"Frankly, no. I think people say you hear sirens but the clinks, cracks and clunks I hear indicate my deafness. And being deaf means I'm sixty-seven, just as the outsourced tech mentioned when he asked my age, meaning I'm not smart, too dumb for tech stuff. Every time interlopers outside this house make loud engine noises, I tell them without opening my lips, mouth closed, tongue not moving, teeth clenched, bruxism, clinical, of course, that means I've a symptom of mental illness. What is it, it was chronic paranoid schizophrenia then morphed into paranoid personality disorder but I'm sixty-seven, too old for medical evaluations..."
So much anger welled up over these last few years. Clashing with debunkers had me question not only my fleshly existence but my mental one as well. The meddlers craved my self-inflicted destruction. I lashed out at everyone denying my place on earth. Yayweh: I Am That I Am. Yeah, paranoid delusions.
I rose from the lounge chair, grabbed the whisky bottle and bashed my daughter's head until the bottle broke. Then, I drove the shards into her attractive face until there was blood all over, until her facial features were unrecognizable. She was just another traducer.
I looked out the window before electric-power drilling June's skull and tearing her brain to shreds. What stopped me were dozens of police cars, sirens blasting, and thousands of people surging around my house. When I saw SWAT snipers on roofs, I ran into the bedroom, pulled out a 30-06 rifle, and pointed it at one sniper. The marksman fired first.
I couldn't help myself.
