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Massive Cocaine Seizure


by Chris Okum



Look At All The People

His parents had been raised face-to-face with other human beings, but not him, he had spent the first eighteen years of his life interacting with one machine or another, and so it wasn't a surprise, now was it, really, that he had issues with reading the non-verbal signals emanating from other people, that is, all the things that were not said, because a machine only says what it says and nothing else, a computer doesn't hide its feelings, a computer has no feelings, and neither did he, he was sure of it, there was nothing beyond the sphere of words, and so for him there was a reduced number of elaborations, he lived in a world of binary choices, not only did he not understand what was going on in other peoples' minds but he didn't care, didn't even understand why he should care, didn't even want to consider that other people had minds, only that they were machines whose purpose was to exchange information with him, and when they didn't it made him angry, because it was supposed to be so easy, there were only so many things someone could say and only so many ways to say it, why couldn't everyone just say yes or no, that's what the wanted to know, why did people have to explain everything and make you read between the lines, why was he expected to be sensitive, what did that even mean, and what did that have to do with anything, it wasn't about being sensitive anymore, it was about being compatible, and as far as he knew no one was compatible with him, which meant there was either something wrong with him or everyone else, and the more and more he analyzed the data the more and more he was sure it was everyone else, not him, and so now the question was what to do it about it, what to do about everyone who was not him, should he get rid them, yes or no, yes or no, yes or no, yes. 

A Teachable Moment

After 80 years we have finally figured out the meaning of the Holocaust, an event which existed, apparently, for one reason and one reason only: to teach the Jewish people not to kill other people. Yes, that's right, while they were being ushered towards the cyanide showers; watching babies being smashed to pulp against trees; listening to the constant cries and moans and wails of their suffering brothers and sisters; consisting on less than 500 calories a day; enduring unspeakable cold while wearing clothes as thin as paper napkins; and waiting for the moment when one of their captors would walk up behind them and put a bullet into the back of their head, what the Jewish people were supposed to be contemplating was how, if they, as a people, managed to survive this mishegas, they should be nicer to everyone else and not do what was being done to them. This is why the Nazis did what they did, to teach the Jewish people not to be like them. That's all it was, the Holocaust. A teachable moment. And if the Jewish people failed to heed this lesson? Well, then, maybe they need to be taught one more time. Ja? 

Suede Shorts

He was addicted to arousing fear in other men. He took growth hormones and pumped iron until he could no longer fit in his pants. He wore custom made beige suede shorts and a white tank top that barely covered his nipples. He wanted to come across as the most virile man in the world and sometimes he could see in the eyes of his contemporaries that maybe he was just that, maybe even something more, maybe some kind of earthly God, but that was just the problem, everything was a maybe, and nothing could be certain, not even the proof of his existence as a man's man. He ingested substances which promised omnipotence, and then shrieked in horror as the side effects lead to the rapid diminishment of his body. It was not his own a lack of mass, but rather the excess of collective mass residing in everyone else by which he perceived himself as exposed and vulnerable to the worst kinds of domination.

For The Fun Of It All

They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary at the office of a renowned hypnotist. She watched as her husband was put to sleep. The hypnotist told her husband to forget all he knew to be right and true. The Hypnotist said, "Let me be your eyes and ears." Her husband had been complaining lately that he was tired of making all of the big decisions in their family. "I don't want to think anymore," he had said to her over a plate of tzatziki, and she felt exactly the same way. The world, as she got older, was becoming too complex, the responsibilities too enormous. They had a son who wanted so many things and they had no idea how to acquire them. She wanted everything to be simple again, like when she was a child and Daddy took care of things she didn't even know needed to be taken care of. The Hypnotist reminded her of Daddy, has the same shock of wiry white hair sprouting from underneath the middle of his bottom lip. Her husband started to cry after it was suggested he do so, and it was glorious, the last time she remembered him crying this hard was when news broke that Toby Keith had died. "I understand," said the Hypnotist. "I understand, and no one else understands like I understand." She watched as the Hypnotist effortlessly moved her husband around the room. It was as if her husband was connected to some kind of magical remote control. She wanted to hand herself over to the Hypnotist. She wanted to give up everything for him. She had known the man for less than a half an hour and she was hopelessly devoted. It was the purest form of love, but without sex and the promise of no more broken cock. She watched her husband get on the floor, make himself flat as a tortilla, and mush his face deep into the carpet. The room tilted and filled with hot yellow light. She could feel herself splitting in two. Empty of thought or desire, she felt like a little girl again. When she was a child her father slammed a door on her hand as punishment for her doing the same to her little sister. After that, Daddy's was voice inside her head, and she assumed it always would be, for all times, but apparently, she was wrong. The Hypnotist told her to kneel and she asked how low. 

Rumpus Room

Two brothers stood in their snow-covered driveway, staring the house across the street. The brother on the left was tall and had the blocky, angled face of a ventriloquist's dummy. The brother on the right was short and had long, stringy, thinning black hair pulled back into a sex offender's ponytail. The brother on the left wanted revenge for all of the horrible crimes committed against others. The brother on the right wanted revenge for all of the horrible crimes committed against himself. Both had their reasons for wanting revenge, even though both found the other's reasons petty at best and absurd at worst. In the middle of the night they met in the rumpus room and watched Billy Jack Goes To Washington. When the movie was over they went outside, walked towards the house across the street, and placed a dozen dead roses against the front door. This was the only form of protest available to them at the present moment. 

Goodness Gracious

As Barry sat on the toilet, he found it not only difficult to do his business, but almost impossible to hold back the tide of fleeting memories and attendant catastrophizing that came along with those memories, such as the memory of wandering around Times Square during either the early 1990s or the early 2000s (the whole decade had now been squished into what seemed like one very long month), where he was trying to find an adult book store which carried a pornographic video starring a young woman named Stryc-9 (aka Cherry Mirage), an object he does not think he was able to procure but which he remembers viewing, or maybe he only remembers staring at the cover of the video, he was not the only man in the store (he never was), so maybe he saw another man staring at the cover and remembers himself staring at someone staring at the thing he can't remember buying, no matter, he was decidedly in New York at the time, in love with two women who were not only not in love with him but completely unaware of his existence, and married to a woman he did not love and who did not love him, a woman who forced him to leave New York (more than once she had come home from work with her shoes covered in someone else's vomit and tears in her eyes) and who later bore him a child, a child who was now moving to New York, a place he had thought he had left behind forever, a place he was certain was due for another catastrophic historical event, this time even bigger than before, an event which would basically swallow the city whole and his child along with it, he could see it so clearly, Times Square and the adult book store and the young woman named Stryc-9 (aka Cherry Mirage) and the two women he loved, and the woman he did not and the child he loved more than anything and then a mushroom cloud and then poof, everything disappears all at once, the very idea made his stomach drop, causing him to evacuate his bowels with explosive force, this is what he found he had to do lately in order to complete an activity which used to be as easy as breathing, although now that he thought about it while sitting there on the toilet, breathing wasn't as easy as it used to be, which is where all this was leading to, right, wasn't it, the moment, probably the moment best described as penultimate, when he told himself to breathe and found that he was done listening to himself once and for all, that's what eventually happens to us all, the very thing we never think about is the last thing we think about, as in, gee, why can't I breathe anymore, where did my breath go, except that was for later, not now, right now he could breathe, and he didn't even have to tell himself to breathe, it was wonderful not to have to, and now that he thought about it, so much was wonderful, too many things to count, like bread, fleece, the sound of a player piano playing to no one, and smiling in your sleep, goodness gracious, he was the type of person who made lists of likes while defecating, thank Christ for the bomb. 


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