The Domestic Terrorist - Man In The Grey Suit

“The Man In The Grey Suit”
Mark Reed

October 1999

It was a snowy day outside, and Ruski was padding gently in the snow. He’d tried to lick the milk that had frozen in the bowl, but ended up burning his tongue. Hearing his mew outside, I picked up my stick, and walked over to the back door, and when I opened it, he rubbed himself affectionately against my leg. I knelt down, picked him up, and then walked into the kitchen, whereby I poured some milk into a bowl.

James was up, and dressed formally, as usual. He is a smart man, and though he may not say it, I always know that he can detect a Shit from a Johnson at a hundred paces, and makes the necessary moves to avoid the Shits wherever possible, without causing unnecessary offence. It was a trick I picked up in Tangiers. How to glide invisibly through a mass of people, and not be noticed. To the Shits, they don’t even know James would be there, even if he was standing next to them.

He’s helped me a lot, and pulled things together where previously I may have let them unravel. As I sat down to breakfast with Ruski, James came in.

“There’s been a phone call for you.”
“Tell them I’m not interested, whatever it is, unless there’s money in it.”
“It was from the White House.”
“Well I haven’t wanted to be President since birth, so they’ll have to ask Allan if he’ll do it.”
“They’d like you to give a dinner speech to the Conference of Shits in Washington.”
“It’s a long way…” I protested.
I relented.

Later, as I was preparing my bag, packing and unpacking, including, at all times a trusty revolver, the thought crossed me that this may be the last time I see that gleaming white dome of lies. At school they’d made me pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth. Well it’s only fabric anyway. Some people may die for it in Vietnam, Guatemala, or somewhere else unpronounceable. I bought mine. A life is a large price to pay for a flag. Too large. I’d rather be a live coward than a dead hero. Dead heroes are no good to anyone.

So every day I pledged allegiance to the United States of Apathy, and promised to honour and obey the flag, whatever bunch of Corrupt Shits were giving orders at the time. When they nuked Hiroshima and the aliens revealed themselves I knew the elected leaders were hell-bent on Genocide. Biggest, best. America always had to have the most. We’d kill more than you, statistics sneered across the history books. You may have got the Jews, Krautyboy, but we got the Nips, and the Gooks. We didn’t need camps neither. We just needed a small nuclear bomb. The joy of schoolroom physics.

The school where I had been brought up on freezing fields by terrifying ex-military bullies was also the birthplace of the Atom Bomb testing. I could see a link. Under my feet, Molecules were preparing to unleash the power of an entire generation’s certain suicide. All it takes is one General with a tiny penis and a budget to justify.

Outside I could see Radiation in the air.

As we sat on the plane, waiting for take off, I looked out of the window. Again, not the most interesting of views, but I could have stared at it for eight hours if I was still using, transfixed by each piece of dust. People were still boarding. James sat next to me. One of my friends was to feed the cats. I couldn’t bear it if anything had happened to them.

I’d prepared my speech. They’d told me I had six minutes. Not long, but long enough. The Thanksgiving Prayer only took about two, so in six minutes I’m sure I could do enough damage. I couldn’t figure out quite why they’d chosen me, but like some snivelling little collection of DNA would grovel in front of the bored omnipresent God, I’d got the calling. Imagine getting to heaven and nobody being there.

“James,” I began, “Did I ever tell you about the woman who exploded?”

James, bracing himself for a routine I hadn’t tried out before, began mentally preparing notes.

“It was in a plane like this she met her end. And nobody misses Plastic Lilly anymore. Her name was Jocylene. Jocylene Snidey. She started off a normal, relatively pretty girl, but was a little snobbish. As all pretty girls are. Anyway, she got into college, and found herself no good at anything except being pretty. Work was too much like hard work to her, as was anything except being fawned over by stupid males looking for somewhere to bury the bone. Of course, once you bury a bone, you can’t always get it back.

This girl fucked her way to the higher echelons of society by dating a increasingly rich strata of males, renowned for having money, high tech jobs, and no social skills at all. She married a plastic surgeon, who earnt more money in an hour than a factory floor worker earned in a year. Destined to be a parasite living off others, Jocylene married him, and became the barnacle on the side of the whale. Most barnacles didn’t get greedy. They knew their place. But this Missy was ambitious, like a vampire in a blood bank, she wanted it all. Not just enough to get by, no. She wanted to have all the cake, and eat it, even if she the rest of the world was starving, she’d throw it away when she’d had enough.

Jocylene Wildenstein, as she was known, was like all pretty girls. They didn’t love themselves as much as anyone else did. Inside every one of these pretty girls an ugly girl is trying to get out. Every birthday Mr Joyce Wildenstein, who became little more than a wallet to her, gave her a brand new operation to transform her into the Six Million Dollar Woman. Perfection itself. First he ironed out her wrinkles. Then he injected her lips and checks with collagen to give her a fuller, warmer face. She had more cheek than a room full of Sumo Wrestlers. Soon she was almost as pretty as she wanted to be, but could not get rid of the ugliness inside.

Her eyes were lifted one year, so she resembled a Nipponese whorehouse. Her eyes were more slanted than a house built on a hill. The next, her breasts were augmented. Her tummy tucked, her legs suctioned, her bottom (which she couldn’t even see) reduced, until she resembled Wildenstein’s Monster. Or at least, that what they said, but not to her face. Although it wasn’t her face anymore.

When there were no more operations to be done, Wildenstein’s Monster divorced her husband. With a healthy divorce settlement - roughly half of what he earned which was millions, and roughly half of what she had earned, which was fuck all - she’d become a millionaire, dozens of times over. So much so, her divorce lawyer fell for her, and they became married. It was on a plane like this she met her end. As the pressurised cabin reached 40,000 feet she simply exploded all over her private jet. Her breasts exploded first, inside her shirt, turning her white shirt a distinct crimson. Her legs were next, and the resultant torrent of blood flow caused her to fall off the chair, as the rest of her detonated from the artificial air pressure until she resembled no more than a giant grape that God had stepped on.”

By now we were airborne, and James had committed my tale to memory.

I was sat at a large table, James by my side, in a large room. There were many tables like this one in the room. At each doorway several anonymously powerful men in suits loitered without any obvious intent. Waiters brought food on silver platters for the assorted collection of powerful shits that surrounded me. I saw many people here for the first time, even though I knew them inside out. Each of the doormen was the type of personality I would have gladly never seen again, especially in a past life of mine. Fiercely anti-Narc’s that sleep with their eyes open.

My table was populated with some token members of the anti-establishment. I knew, like Patti, and David - who’d done a good job of my book a while back - that we were little more than a slightly dangerous window dressing. Food good to look at, deadly to consume. For when two ideologies that are mutually opposed to each other’s existence sat in the near proximity even total inertia and deliberate ignorance of each other would cause a counter-reaction. Nonetheless, for the benefit of the cameras, we were here, on the provision that whilst the voice of dissent was present and seen to be present, it remained mute.

The Cabinet Office had asked to see a copy of my speech. I wrote them a speech. Not the one I was going to give, of course. Deception is as natural to them as breathing, and their fetid arrogance so pervasive, they couldn’t comprehend they had anything other than a god given superiority.

We ate together quietly and listened to the speakers, including the President. Naturally I found it enthralling. The combined economic wealth of the privileged souls in this room I am sure far exceeded the GNP of the countries they purchased illegals from and distributed them to the masses to keep the population sedate in a organised, regulated rebellion.

James tapped me gently under the table, and the hypnotic stream of voices was broken. There was a note poking out from under the silver plate I was about to dine from. Underneath the gravy and potatoes, aware of being watched I gently removed the slip of paper and on the pretext of adjusting my shoes, read it under the tablecloth. Such simple deception was no doubt noticed by the eagle eyed general. Well, I was a civilian, and therefore not to be trusted.

The note was simple, typewritten, discreet. nine small words.

“YOUR KILLER IS AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS”

I passed this information onto James whilst dining. I awaited a suitable comment from the speaker, General Dogshit from the 23rd Texan Division of Bigots, before passing a related comment to him. Panic was the killer of surprise, so he remained calm.

Glancing around the room, I wiped my mouth with the silken handkerchief. I noticed a tame gorilla waiting for his turn to speak. I followed that gorilla in the speakers’ order. Behind the gorilla, in the midst of security staff and plants, a thirty something woman was staring directly at me, for merely seconds at a time. There was something about her hair that told me she had written that note.

I mentally rehearsed my speech, one that would be substantially different from my praise of democracy for allowing tolerance of all races implicitly, through the absence of concentration camps. Though ghettos came close.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of this fine nation, I thank this democracy for recognising that democracy can only exist when all views are represented. Whilst some of you may think a one time heir to the Burroughs millions, a conservatively dressed old man with a cane may not differ from you, it is part of the human condition that deceptively identical looking objects always carry different payloads.”

I held up a small tablet, red in colour, ingrained in white, with the letter “e”.

“This tablet could contain either pleasure or death. It could contain a series of patented anti-blood clotting chemicals. It could contain nothing more than essence of cocoa in a multi-coloured shell. To a child the former is death through a congealed bloodstream,” I paused for effect. “ To a physically ill person, or a old cowboy,” (I coughed) “like myself, this little tablet is responsible for my presence on this planet here today.”

“Naturally then,” and this is where my speech differs from the submitted version, and my pacemaker tightened slightly, “it is impossible to judge a book by its cover, or a person by their face or uniform. Statistically speaking, if mathematics is uniform across the universe, 10% of the population of our armies, 10% of the members of our pressure groups, and 10% of our fiercely illiberal pro-life - or more correctly - anti-choice groups are ingrained homosexuals. There is no shame in this, as I will explain”

“The United States is as tolerant as the most liberal country on earth, on the surface. In fact we pride ourselves on being the peacekeepers and bringers of democracy to the uncivilised corners of this ravaged, dying planet. Whilst we are mass exfoliating the cure from cancer from Brazils rainforests, we fail to investigate the cure for bigotry or stupidity. The Third World of Islam could be seen as the most liberal in the world. For it recognises that all men are led purely through libido, and hence women must be repressed for they have the power of the vagina over most men. The clitoris must be castrato, and the physical shell of woman hidden from view at all times. Even the sight of some eyes may be enough to induce a weak, mortal heterosexual to rape.”

“Inside every member of the 13th Alabama order of Corrupt Shits, lies a homosexual nigger waiting to burst out camping at all his colleagues in their uniforms and weapons ready to fire.” At this point the Generals Shitbag and Dogshit began choking on their thousand dollar glass champagne.

“I don’t believe anything from this constitution, except, perhaps for the freedom of expression. If you must have control systems over the masses, then change the message. If your censorship debates, Mr Gore, be accurate, we should replace violence on the television with the act of love. If violence breeds violence, then love will breed love in the hearts of our nation.”

“Flood the televisions and advertising billboards with our nation in love with everybody equally. If love be the most positive emotion, love your fellow men copiously and publicly, and the entire nation will follow suit. Drive by shootings will be a thing of the past, replaced by random acts of loving, lubricated buggery. This is my vision for a better America.”

“To achieve this, I act in the public interest when I state that each and every President, General, Corporate Lackey and Police Shit be elected by the people they represent, from a select choice of candidates - homosexual, naturally - to lead mankind to the higher plane. Give the power to them, and they will give us the world we deserve. Appearances will no longer deceive when there is no repression. I long ago dreamt of the complete Un-anxientised Man.”

“We can only conclude that all men are weak and sexually repressed. The President himself has taken advantage of the women under him in - hurumph - more sense than one. I therefore propose that the President and major military and corporate figures be forcibly retired and replaced by an army of genetically superior Ubermen. They will not be influenced by the cancers of bigotry eating at this nation. To conclude to the fair men and women, do your best for the nation and not what the nation can do to better you.”

Around me a tight circle of men in smart suits was shrinking. I dreamt of the expressions of the millionaires as they received this information, but naturally, was interrupted by a moronic inferno of babbling. A respected war veteran was striding towards officiously. The Gorilla had begun barking at his disciples on the stage, and the main course, that of Gutted Slaves, was being served across the room. A door was slowly closing.

I was staring down the barrel of a gun, a .357 to be precise. I knew the impact this would cause. At the end of this, General Dogshit was trembling and a circle of security men was approaching. Faster than Kim Carsons I whipped out my own piece and it was aimed securely at the empty space in his head where a brain might once have been.

Everyone else in the world, for a tiny moment in time, did not exist.

The security men were close, close enough to do something, but did nothing. This man, El spontaeo perhaps, was the killer. The Ugly Spirit made flesh. Seven souls prepared themselves. The Gorilla continued barking, though I could no longer hear him.

It was mutual suicide. He dies, I die. I die, he dies. So this is the way the world ended. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

He spoke, in the fat redneck voice of the truly ignorant. He asked me a question, one to which I was familiar.

“What the bloody fucking hell are civilians good for?”

There was an explosion and he fell over. As he finished the sentence a small red dot appeared on the side of his forehead. It rapidly expanded to the size of a fist as the bullet impacted him. Fellow diners were covered in his bodily fluids and flesh. A red flower has been painted on the wall nearest to the exit wound.

I thought in a moment of calm, I will take that wall and call it General Dogshit. I may make some money at an exhibition that way.

James glanced across to where the explosion has come from. There a thirty something woman was just lowering a snipers rifle. It didn’t look like a library, or a grassy knoll. The Security guards covered me and whisked me away, out of the main room. Glancing back, the repressed diners hadn’t flinched. Instead they were busy silently ignoring bits of the General in their dinners and on their jackets.

“Waiter, there appears to be some …. “

Lead by the woman I had seen before, we were ascending a spiral staircase. She didn’t say anything. There was no need. It was clear. At the top of the stairs, we were delayed. There was the sound of a helicopter as the Presi-(deca)-dent was spirited away to safety.

A pad official approached with a beard. I recognised him from somewhere. After exchanging trivialities with the leader of our party, to confirm our identity, he waited for instructions. Airforce One had yet to clear the safe proximity zone. After a short period we were told: “You are free to leave.” He said. As we left him I heard a gunshot, and fell over as a sudden punch connected with my back. I stumbled in shock, and found I was unable to get up. My legs held no power. Not again. My trusty weapon was useless on the floor. James scrambled and grabbed it. Before turning. I was glad then I had spent so long on the range with him.

The woman leading our party towered above me. She swore and emptied the contents of her automatic weapon into the pad official. I saw another prospective painting spontaneously combust onto the wall behind him. These new FBI bullets, I had investigated months previous, had teeth that ate through bullet proof vests. The look on this official’s face as he met the Four Spacemen of the Apocalypse, I tell you, it was tasty.

The security guards dragged me and James into the lift. I left behind me a trail of blood. Grunting I became incoherent. Breath became short. Love? Love? The ultimate painkiller.

The lift ceased and the doors opened into light. Above me I saw a large circular craft, jet black, that I was really only aware of by virtue of the fact that I could not see stars in the sky. A doorway was open, the source of a halo of light. The craft made no sound. I was bundled on board with James and behind me the door closed.

Through my forced and stolen gasps, I heard a voice above me. It was the woman. She spoke in an accent I couldn’t place.

“I apologise for the lack of introductions. Your services are required elsewhere.“

Outside the night sky stayed black and the planet shrank until it was another spot of light in the sky.

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