The boy without a soul
Feb. 9th, 2006 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonControl Sub-Hive Epsilon operating on nightmare frequency 0.9333: Room 41:The Office of Inquiries :
"Take a seat please Mr.Mosco." The bureaucrat mumbles. Two pairs of small beady eyes, floating slowly in a fat face, look up at me over the horizon of a stuffed manilla folder.
"That's Mosca." I correct, taking a seat on the edge of the desk, ignoring the profered hand extended in an awkward shake towards me.
"Noooooo...." The bureaucrat hums through the choke of his tie "It's Mosco. See." He holds the manilla folder up to me, it is indexed in standard New Times Text 'Mosco, Robert B'.
"Guess 'i'll buy a vowel' then Vanna." I shoot him a wink and casually pick up a golden scarab paperweight off a stack of similarly labeled folders.
"Ahem....Mr.Mosco, please. The sooner you quit fooling around, the sooner we will be done with this interview. I'm sure we both have better things we could be doing."
I look at the scarab in the light of his desk light. I can see my reflection shimmer all fun house mirror distorted. Suddenly the legs on it start twitching and there's this sound of steam hissing from it's mandibles. I put it down on the desk and to my surprise it scurrys off and over to the stack of papers I plucked it off of. There it crawls quickly in a circle finally coming to a stop.
"Now then.... if you will be kind enough to take a seat..." He waves to the office chair behind me. I shrug a 'why not' and drop from desk to chair in one motion. He continues.
"As you know this is the Office of Inquiries. We've been reading your more recent reports."
"Reports?"
"Or 'Blogs'" he says the word like it's a fart in his mouth "To use the parlance of the times."
"Uh-huh."
"Besides the attrocious grammar..."
"Whaddya want from me. I'm a product of the American Public Schools..."
"If you'll be kind enough not to interupt me, you'll find this will go much faster.... now where was I? Ah yes, besides the attrocious grammar... we find there are a many, shall we say, incidents from your past you are leaving out."
"Like what?"
"You tell me."
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Yes."
"Thanks." I light up a camel. Having attrocious grammar skills I really can't be sure of the difference between 'Yes' I mind and 'Yes' I may. "I'm not sure I follow where you want me to go with this."
"Yes, your report states that you have I.D.D.."
"You mean A.D.D.?"
"Nooooo... I.D.D.Intention Deficit Disorder. While most children wanted to be Firemen or astronauts or Basketball players when they grew up... you didn't want to be anything."
"Noooo..." I reply imitating his chortle. "I wanted to be 'Nothing'. If you think about it, it's the only thing worth being..."
"Like most children diagnosed with I.D.D. you were prone to excessive daydreaming, anti-social behavior and an inability to apply yourself within the parameters of the various social indoctrination systems that Control has established..."
"Wha..?"
"In simpler words. You're a fuck-up Mr.Mosco."
"Mosca. And hell, you couldn't tell me that on the phone?"
"That's not why you're here. You're here to clarify something for us. Who is 'The boy without a soul'."
I freeze up. I haven't heard that in ages. I put my cigarette out in a styrofoam cup filled with the last dregs of something they tell me is coffee. Now this fat faced fuck is smiling like a Jack'o'Lantern on prozac. He pushes himself away from the desk, sliding back in his chair to a large metal filing cabinet. He opens up a drawer and rummages through it to produce a small keyboard. He then pushes himself back to the desk and hands me the type writer.
"Tell us about 'The Boy Without a Soul'."
I look down at the old keyboard. Disconnected it's wires and plug ins hang limply off the edge of the desk and into my lap. Suddenly i'm not in control anymore. Which is the irony of being in Control. I don't want to but my fingers start sleepwalking across the keyboard. Then they become a frantic dance and the clicking music of letters being pounded takes over...
"Yo.Moscow!" Vinny Maggio sneers at me. I've just gotten out of class and he's waiting, as promised, right up the block. "I heard you don't believe in God?"
"That True?" Sneers Dino from behind him. "You hate Jesus?". It's the Fifth grade in Yonkers, NY. I'm just some fat kid who had the misfortune of having an afro and zero social skills. There's more of them now. The Metal Heads. These are the apex predators of the P.S.21 socialecosystem. They're basically wop kids who think you can get high smoking stolen Kools or Marlboros from their mom's purse and they get a kick out of torturing us bottom feeders. Me? I'm the lowest of the low. I'm holding my D&D manuals in front of my chest like they'll shield me from what's going to happen next.
"Do you hate Jesus, Moscow?" One of them spits in my ear from behind me.
"'Course he hates Jesus! He's a commie ain't he?"
Let me explain that last line real quick. See, since my last name is only two letters away from being the capital of the 'Evil Empire' I got tagged as a commie by my second day in school. That and the fact that I attended a Montessori school prior to this. Said school didn't require a student to recite the Pledge of Allegiance first thing in the morning. Well here we were in a public school and when the teacher realized that I was only mouthing the words she made me stand in front of the class and recite the Pledge.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the united states of America. And to the...."
Everyone was staring at me. Students giggled and murmured to themselves. I froze.
"...I don't... I don't know the rest of it ma'am."
"What!?!" My teacher snarled at me. "Why don't you know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone! Are you stupid or do you just hate America?"
"Umm..."
"Well! Which is it?" The whole class is laughing at me now.
"Well speak up Moscow!" Dino jumps in my face, he does that whole stick your chest out thing and opens up his arms wide.
"I don't hate Jesus..." I mutter.
"What?"
"Yeah speak up..."
One of them smacks my D&D manuals out of my arms. I lean down to get them and one of them pushes me into the ground.
"You know what happens when you don't love Jesus?"
"Yeah!"
"You know what happens? Hey i'm talking to you Moscow!"
"Wh-what?" I say unable to get up.
Vinny kneels down in front of me. All I can see is 'Eddie' grinning at me evily from his Iron Maiden shirt.
"You lose your soul..." He stands back up, turns to walk away and then spins and gives me a kick that lands straight in the gut. The others join in. They're not bright, but smart enough not to hit the face. I take a series of kicks straight to the guts and ribs. Looking back on it now, it really wasn't that bad, it was watching the cars drive by, the adults passing us on the street not saying anything, the store clerks who looked past us out their shop windows. Not one of them doing anything.
Finally when they're finished they walk away, back to the schoolyard, all high fives and laughs. I overhear one of them.
"... boy without a soul."
Later I found out what brought all this on. I was asked by one of the kids I played G.I. Joe with what church I went to with my parents.
"My parents don't believe in God..." I remember him blushing at this confession. The word went out through the rumor mill quickly. 'The commie kid who don't know the Pledge, well he don't believe in God neither...'. By the end of the day my fate was sealed. Not just for the rest of the school year, but for the rest of my life.
I look up from the keyboard. The bureaucrat has his eyes rolled back in his head, and a drop of spittle hangs precariously from the corner of his lips. With one hand he is stroking the scarab and the other hand is under the desk.
"Yesssshhhhhh..." He hisses and suddenly he begins twitching and shaking. "You fuckin' little dirty bastard whore... you dirty, dirty whore." His eyes roll back into that stare. He stops stroking the scarab and adjusts his pants.
I look down at the keyboard. Shamed. Defeated. Revealed.
"That what you wanted?"
He leans across the desk and pulls my cigarettes and lighter out of my shirt pocket. He lights himself up one, leans back and blows a satisfied puff of smoke to the ceiling. He looks back at me.
"It'll do.... for now."
"That's it?"
"Nooooo..." His voice returning to normal. "Now you will kindly, ahem, fuck off. We'll send for you if any other... inquiries come up."
I get up and exit the office. The next R.E.M. shuttle back to the waking docks isn't for another three or four nightmare cycles. Nothing to do now but wait for my alarm clock. I watch a little boy knock on the door of the office. He's crying and I can see from here that he's wet himself. Another future writer... may God have mercy on his soul.
"Take a seat please Mr.Mosco." The bureaucrat mumbles. Two pairs of small beady eyes, floating slowly in a fat face, look up at me over the horizon of a stuffed manilla folder.
"That's Mosca." I correct, taking a seat on the edge of the desk, ignoring the profered hand extended in an awkward shake towards me.
"Noooooo...." The bureaucrat hums through the choke of his tie "It's Mosco. See." He holds the manilla folder up to me, it is indexed in standard New Times Text 'Mosco, Robert B'.
"Guess 'i'll buy a vowel' then Vanna." I shoot him a wink and casually pick up a golden scarab paperweight off a stack of similarly labeled folders.
"Ahem....Mr.Mosco, please. The sooner you quit fooling around, the sooner we will be done with this interview. I'm sure we both have better things we could be doing."
I look at the scarab in the light of his desk light. I can see my reflection shimmer all fun house mirror distorted. Suddenly the legs on it start twitching and there's this sound of steam hissing from it's mandibles. I put it down on the desk and to my surprise it scurrys off and over to the stack of papers I plucked it off of. There it crawls quickly in a circle finally coming to a stop.
"Now then.... if you will be kind enough to take a seat..." He waves to the office chair behind me. I shrug a 'why not' and drop from desk to chair in one motion. He continues.
"As you know this is the Office of Inquiries. We've been reading your more recent reports."
"Reports?"
"Or 'Blogs'" he says the word like it's a fart in his mouth "To use the parlance of the times."
"Uh-huh."
"Besides the attrocious grammar..."
"Whaddya want from me. I'm a product of the American Public Schools..."
"If you'll be kind enough not to interupt me, you'll find this will go much faster.... now where was I? Ah yes, besides the attrocious grammar... we find there are a many, shall we say, incidents from your past you are leaving out."
"Like what?"
"You tell me."
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Yes."
"Thanks." I light up a camel. Having attrocious grammar skills I really can't be sure of the difference between 'Yes' I mind and 'Yes' I may. "I'm not sure I follow where you want me to go with this."
"Yes, your report states that you have I.D.D.."
"You mean A.D.D.?"
"Nooooo... I.D.D.Intention Deficit Disorder. While most children wanted to be Firemen or astronauts or Basketball players when they grew up... you didn't want to be anything."
"Noooo..." I reply imitating his chortle. "I wanted to be 'Nothing'. If you think about it, it's the only thing worth being..."
"Like most children diagnosed with I.D.D. you were prone to excessive daydreaming, anti-social behavior and an inability to apply yourself within the parameters of the various social indoctrination systems that Control has established..."
"Wha..?"
"In simpler words. You're a fuck-up Mr.Mosco."
"Mosca. And hell, you couldn't tell me that on the phone?"
"That's not why you're here. You're here to clarify something for us. Who is 'The boy without a soul'."
I freeze up. I haven't heard that in ages. I put my cigarette out in a styrofoam cup filled with the last dregs of something they tell me is coffee. Now this fat faced fuck is smiling like a Jack'o'Lantern on prozac. He pushes himself away from the desk, sliding back in his chair to a large metal filing cabinet. He opens up a drawer and rummages through it to produce a small keyboard. He then pushes himself back to the desk and hands me the type writer.
"Tell us about 'The Boy Without a Soul'."
I look down at the old keyboard. Disconnected it's wires and plug ins hang limply off the edge of the desk and into my lap. Suddenly i'm not in control anymore. Which is the irony of being in Control. I don't want to but my fingers start sleepwalking across the keyboard. Then they become a frantic dance and the clicking music of letters being pounded takes over...
"Yo.Moscow!" Vinny Maggio sneers at me. I've just gotten out of class and he's waiting, as promised, right up the block. "I heard you don't believe in God?"
"That True?" Sneers Dino from behind him. "You hate Jesus?". It's the Fifth grade in Yonkers, NY. I'm just some fat kid who had the misfortune of having an afro and zero social skills. There's more of them now. The Metal Heads. These are the apex predators of the P.S.21 socialecosystem. They're basically wop kids who think you can get high smoking stolen Kools or Marlboros from their mom's purse and they get a kick out of torturing us bottom feeders. Me? I'm the lowest of the low. I'm holding my D&D manuals in front of my chest like they'll shield me from what's going to happen next.
"Do you hate Jesus, Moscow?" One of them spits in my ear from behind me.
"'Course he hates Jesus! He's a commie ain't he?"
Let me explain that last line real quick. See, since my last name is only two letters away from being the capital of the 'Evil Empire' I got tagged as a commie by my second day in school. That and the fact that I attended a Montessori school prior to this. Said school didn't require a student to recite the Pledge of Allegiance first thing in the morning. Well here we were in a public school and when the teacher realized that I was only mouthing the words she made me stand in front of the class and recite the Pledge.
"I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the united states of America. And to the...."
Everyone was staring at me. Students giggled and murmured to themselves. I froze.
"...I don't... I don't know the rest of it ma'am."
"What!?!" My teacher snarled at me. "Why don't you know that? Everyone knows that. Everyone! Are you stupid or do you just hate America?"
"Umm..."
"Well! Which is it?" The whole class is laughing at me now.
"Well speak up Moscow!" Dino jumps in my face, he does that whole stick your chest out thing and opens up his arms wide.
"I don't hate Jesus..." I mutter.
"What?"
"Yeah speak up..."
One of them smacks my D&D manuals out of my arms. I lean down to get them and one of them pushes me into the ground.
"You know what happens when you don't love Jesus?"
"Yeah!"
"You know what happens? Hey i'm talking to you Moscow!"
"Wh-what?" I say unable to get up.
Vinny kneels down in front of me. All I can see is 'Eddie' grinning at me evily from his Iron Maiden shirt.
"You lose your soul..." He stands back up, turns to walk away and then spins and gives me a kick that lands straight in the gut. The others join in. They're not bright, but smart enough not to hit the face. I take a series of kicks straight to the guts and ribs. Looking back on it now, it really wasn't that bad, it was watching the cars drive by, the adults passing us on the street not saying anything, the store clerks who looked past us out their shop windows. Not one of them doing anything.
Finally when they're finished they walk away, back to the schoolyard, all high fives and laughs. I overhear one of them.
"... boy without a soul."
Later I found out what brought all this on. I was asked by one of the kids I played G.I. Joe with what church I went to with my parents.
"My parents don't believe in God..." I remember him blushing at this confession. The word went out through the rumor mill quickly. 'The commie kid who don't know the Pledge, well he don't believe in God neither...'. By the end of the day my fate was sealed. Not just for the rest of the school year, but for the rest of my life.
I look up from the keyboard. The bureaucrat has his eyes rolled back in his head, and a drop of spittle hangs precariously from the corner of his lips. With one hand he is stroking the scarab and the other hand is under the desk.
"Yesssshhhhhh..." He hisses and suddenly he begins twitching and shaking. "You fuckin' little dirty bastard whore... you dirty, dirty whore." His eyes roll back into that stare. He stops stroking the scarab and adjusts his pants.
I look down at the keyboard. Shamed. Defeated. Revealed.
"That what you wanted?"
He leans across the desk and pulls my cigarettes and lighter out of my shirt pocket. He lights himself up one, leans back and blows a satisfied puff of smoke to the ceiling. He looks back at me.
"It'll do.... for now."
"That's it?"
"Nooooo..." His voice returning to normal. "Now you will kindly, ahem, fuck off. We'll send for you if any other... inquiries come up."
I get up and exit the office. The next R.E.M. shuttle back to the waking docks isn't for another three or four nightmare cycles. Nothing to do now but wait for my alarm clock. I watch a little boy knock on the door of the office. He's crying and I can see from here that he's wet himself. Another future writer... may God have mercy on his soul.