”Fool me once, shame on… shame on you.”
That was the final straw for Jimeriah. Born and raised in Portland, Maine, he was not a devout follower of the Republican agenda, nor a man inclined to hate or limit things that were inconsequential for his well-being. But right now, he was walking out of a screening of Fahrenheit 9/11, pacing forward with furious strides, barely able to contain his composure before getting home and slamming his door shut. He tried to focus, concentrate, count to ten. No way, no say.
“AGGGRRGAGAGAGAGAGAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH FUUUUUUCCCKKKKKKK!!!!”
After bellowing his feelings out into the world, echoing in his apartment and neighbours from flats 2, 4 and 7D, he looked at himself in the mirror, seeing not a reflection of himself, but of the Devil. The one who fucked it all up, the one who he knew he could blame for all the misery around him and the whole nation. Dubya smirked right back at him, giggling like a pouncy asshole who stole candy from a baby, enough of candy to warrant to gigantic debt that country was weighed under. Unable to stare at the demon in his mirror, he swung his fist at, smashing it into eighteen pieces, his knuckles torn open by the shards, blood running down the mirror shape.
Few drops of blood dripped onto the foyer table, onto a magazine. Jimeriah looked down. It was the newest Time, advertising the President’s arrival in Portland for an upkeep tour, today at 6 PM, to hold a 20-minute speech. He looked at his watch – 4:50 PM. He froze for a second forgetting to breathe, looked at the magazine again. If what he saw was right, it was a message. And a clear one at that. He burst out the door, ran into the streets, glanced around, unable to think clearly, when he saw it.
Dick’s Sporting Goods. Yes. That will do.
He ran across the street, in the store’s direction. The Time magazine on his table lay alone, untouched, with the visage of George W. Bush, smiling away, and Jimeriah’s blood drips forming a large crosshair across the President’s forehead.
The bell over the door chimed as Jimeriah bustled into the store. He glanced at his watch. 4:55 PM. Shit, shit, shit, time was running out, he thought. As he stood in the foreground next to the checkout, he searched for the gun department. The store was surprisingly large, he had to find it right away as he knew there was going to be some hassle with paperwork. But he knew the owner; he would get a gun and bullets in no time at all, no waiting periods.
The owner, Roger Marmary, had begged him years on end to come with him on a hunting trip and camp in the woods for a few nights. Roger was as closeted as homosexuals come, and Jimeriah wasn’t going to give him any chance to act out his dirty desires. But if push came to shove, he would get a gun out of the store in less than fifteen minutes, ready to purify the world from evil within the hour.
A clerk approached him as he started running towards the back of the store, but he pushed him out of the way, almost keeling the young boy over. He rushed as he could dodging kids in hockey masks, waving their sticks in the air, jumping over a punching bag that had fallen down from the ceiling and the clerk that was trying to fix the situation, half-tackling a teenager in lacrosse gear onto a shelf of tennis balls in the process, and he finally made his way onto an isle from where he could see some shotguns and rifles on the walls, located near the emergency exit and the bathrooms. He grinned gleefully and turned to the guns’ direction, when he felt a massive pain in his stomach.
No, not the ulcer, not now!
His teeth clenched together, biting off a small piece of his tongue as he kneeled down in pain, trying to subside it with his mind, but the body was stronger than his will to kill. The clerk he jumped over ran up to him, chasing him to ask what was his fucking problem, but he saw Jimeriah in small convulsions, with a little diarrhea running down his ankles and soiling his pants.
“…just… JUST TAKE ME TO THE DAMN BATHROOM!”
The clerk opened the door to the unisex bathroom and Jimeriah stumbled in, sweating all over, scaring a mother and her young daughter as they ran out of the toilets frightened. He leaned against the stalls, with only two in the whole bathroom, opening the first one to find it occupied, and turning the second’s handle, hastily removing his shitty pants and collapsing onto the toilet seat. He breathed out a sigh of relieve as his bowel moved and the pain began to go away, lessening greatly with every passing second. Watch. 5:11 PM. He still had time.
“That bad, huh?”
He heard an intriguing female voice from the other stall, it was a deep and sexy voice, reminding him of Linda Fiorentino, or someone who had been smoking since the age of 12.
“Uh, yeah, ulcer, you see. Caught me up at a bad time, I’m… in a hurry.”
The woman scoffed. “Is that so? Living the fast life?”
Jimeriah gulped. “Well, not really, no. I’m, I’m sort of on a mission. Or, I have to do something. Something important and I don’t have much time.”
The woman’s voice seemed colder.
“You don’t actually think that you could kill the President with some shoddy sport store rifle without any actual preparations? Just on a moment’s notice? Give me a break.”
Jimeriah felt like a freight train had hit him, causing his heart to skip a few beats and then blast off into a thunderous pulse and he could almost feel it burst out of his chest.
“..what?! What?! Who.. who are you? What..!?”
The woman’s voice seemed as calm as a desert at noon.
“During your life, you’ve made some bad decisions, haven’t you, Jimeriah? Like not asking out Sally Noonan to the prom, or taking the insurance job instead of leaving to Europe with your best friend, Jake. Those were terrible decisions. What you are thinking of doing now would be another terrible decision. Not just in your life, as you would be shot to death before you even pulled the trigger in many of the possible outcomes, but if even if you actually managed to kill or wound the current President, foolish puppet as he is, you would still die in the process and the ramifications of your actions would throw the whole world, the whole Universe into a downward spiral.”
Jimeriah was unable to move, shaking like it was freezing in the bathroom, unable to utter a single word.
“Listen, Jimbo, mind if I call you Jimbo? No answer, fine, I’ll call you Jimbo? You see, Jimbo… there’s a lot more to this Earth, this planet we live on, than many take on during their lives. There are a lot of people who finally do get through, they are not all smart, but some of them, like Nicola Tesla, George Washington and Grigori Rasputin were able to attain the answer – what is the true meaning of life, for humans, for animals, everything. They stood next to the portal, ready to engulf themselves and become Gods, but they refused. They saw what could happen, so they only took parts of the answer back with them, helping them harness electricity, see the evil of large government rule and dabble with immortality. They knew.
But they refused to accept it as a whole, building foundations on the parts of the truth they withheld inside their minds. So, just out of sheer friendliness, Jimbo, it’s time for you to hear the true meaning of our days on this rock.
Jimeriah shivered, but eventually calmed down, as the woman, her voice now sounding like a mix between a soothing summer breeze and a rat suffocating in a hornet’s nest, explained to him the answer to life itself. As he listened, taking it all in, he began breathing in slowly, calming himself to a halt, realizing he could speak again, feeling enlightened. He opened his mouth, his tongue still hurting from the bite.
Watch. 5:58 PM.
“…can it really be that simple? It sounds so absurd. The lengths of what people have gone to attain this knowledge… I cannot conceive how it was all just…”
“Spare me, Jimbo. I’ve heard this a million times over, no less now that you humans seem to be so damn smart and start studying philosophy already in high school. But the fact, that you must now acknowledge, is that if you would succeed in doing what you in your mind have set out to do, it would bring about the destruction of the universe, of an infinite space. All would collapse in a few, short silly years. Because you are not aiming for the true evil in this equation. If a leader falls, the second-in-command rises up to the mantle.
Jimeriah gasped. “…Cheney? Dick Cheney?”
The woman’s voice sank and felt sullen.
“It is true. Cheney knows. He has seen beyond the veil and he understands the answer. But as a man of pure evil, of such horrifying deeds, he could not let it go. He took with him, back from the void, everything. From beneath the surface, he drank from the literal fountain of all knowledge, unable to stop. But as he is now, he is still limited by his position. Not even the Answer can guarantee one’s victory. But were you to destroy his boss, he would gain power. He would reveal the existence of extra-terrestrial life forms, whom you humans have been in contact with for centuries. But instead of invention, craft or new possibilities for your kind and the future of your Planet, he sees this as an opportunity of war.
He will use his knowledge to play with the minds of our society, gathering forces from the depths of Amazon to the highest rises of man-built towers. We will be sent into space, warring against all possible races, armed with the Answer In hand, unstoppable, unbeatable, and he won’t stop until he has everything. This will bring forth a treaty between your enemies, ascended life forms, or as you may know and worship them, Gods.
The woman sighed deeply. “They will decide that for the fate of the Universe, it is a must and only option to destroy it, as to not let Cheney get hold of the Meaning’s true location, gaining the power of all Gods combined, creating a literal Hell described in many of your scriptures all across the galaxies of immense space. That is why, Jimbo, Jimeriah… that is why you will not go.”
With a large swoon of light and a thunderous sound, the woman, the being, was gone.
Removing his dirty trousers and underwear and tying his shirt as makeshift pants, Jimeriah walked out from the bathroom, with the clerk still waiting outside to check on his condition. He signaled for the clerk to leave him be, as he scuffled along the isles towards the entrance, his mind clouded by the knowledge of all things, slowly starting to fade away into smaller and smaller parts, until he couldn’t grasp it anymore. So close, yet so far, but he understood that it wasn’t his to keep or take. It was for everyone to seek and share.
He dragged his heels as he made his way to the checkout counter, looking at a large group of people standing around a television set near the roof in the corner.
The President was holding his speech in the central square, fumbling along as he always did. Next to him behind the sidelines, however, he didn’t see a person known as Dick Cheney as the other people in the store did. No. Looking at the mass of red viscous, glaring in the sunlight in the shape of a man, only visible in its true form thanks to the few, remaining shards of the Answer in Jimeriah’s head, he smiled. He saw something else.
He saw a fate that he had stopped.
![[hamnuts]](/data/avatars/m/171/171426.jpg?1745610909){kind=avatar}
