I've seen the future, brother: it is murder

Segment One

The shades come down and the room begins to darken for the final time. The light fades from a man's prematurely aged face, firm and frowning. The man locks the door and moves slowly along the terrace, thinking of his wife; the woman is lying prostrate in the corner of an aging apartment, eating cheese and slapping herself with a tasbih. "Ferdowsi Ferdowsi, it's my fault my fault my fault." Ferdowsi wishes that he could console her; he wishes that he did not loath her. He turns away from his thoughts, away from the ninety-nine bruising beads, away from the great bruise in her stomach; Ferdowsi wishes not to remember.

Ferdowsi chooses to walk the long way to the apartment, through the tattered neighbourhood south of the subway line. Along the way he sees a blue girl with ashen skin and pink ballet shoes strung around her shoulders slouching along a set of stairs. Ferdowsi vaguely understands the melodramatic nature of young girls but he speculates upon her sadness anyhow; is it that she cannot elegantly perform a chassée in front on her more advanced peers? Ferdowsi's thoughts quickly return to him memories of which he wishes not to remember. He is now thankful that the girl will only remain in his vision for a short while longer.

"Please, sir."

Ferdowsi is startled. He stops and turns towards the girl and meets her puffy, bloodshot eyes.

"Please, it will be dark soon."

Ferdowsi looks away; a tear escapes from his eye and it moves slowly along his cheek, over the crevasse of his upper lip, and into his mouth. The salty taste reminds him of his boyhood days along the Caspian Sea. After his parents had been killed in the revolution, Ferdowsi clung to the coast where a local fishery fed him their daily waste and expired bottles of doogh. He often slept on the shore, buried in the sand to keep away from the cold breeze that came in off the sea at night. As Ferdowsi grew stronger the fishery hired him as a hand and Ferdowsi learned the art of fishing aboard the MarjAneh. Ferdowsi's work ethic impressed the captain, and Ferdowsi's humble and quiet nature impressed the captain's wife, Farah.

Farah dreamed of a more fulfilling existence than that a of fisherman's wife and, before Ferdowsi joined her husband's crew, she would often stare out the window praying that her husband's boat would not appear on the horizon at twilight. Ferdowsi himself found life at sea a lonely existence and he resented his haggard shipmates who enjoyed low brow humour and only saw the rials when the sturgeon were brought up from the sea. Ferdowsi and Farah's common misery brought them together at the light house at night. Ferdowsi said that it was their love that blasted a light across the sea, and Farah would smile longingly.

Ferdowsi's nose for nostalgia has lead him away from the present and has caused him to momentarily forget about the little girl slouching before him. Ferdowsi moves his thumb along the right side of his face, wiping away the evidence of his reflection and softly asks, "What can I do?"

"Some food?" The girl's puffy pink eyes match the hue of her ballet shoes. Ferdowsi always has been a keen observer; it was this qualification that got him employed at the lighthouse at night when he could no longer bear to sleep in the captain's spare room, away from Farah.

"Is no one coming for you?"

"No."

End of segment one.

Blood Oranges

"Twenty-two may not be the start of maturity but, in all conscience, it's the end of youth."

The only thing that could of saved his brief legacy: assassination. But the blood would of stained the First Lady's gown and it was nonrefundable from designer Isabel Toledo. The blood stain would not fit the chief's motif anyway, because a blood stain is tangible and impure; his soaring rhetoric is perfect because the people cannot criticize Lockean political philosophy and the meaning of post-Puritan freedom. These were indoctrinated in them upon their exiting of the womb with a recitation from the sixth edition of Liberty or Death followed by a slap on the ass. Even more, his cold face would be splashed across the cover of tabloid magazines like Time, and a public mourning for their fallen Napoleon would always be compared to that of his predecessor, Jackie's husband Jack.

Assassination saved Jack's legacy. The hero's moral death, birthing the Vietnam War, is now never spoken of. Perhaps this is because one cannot blame him for producing a murderous child. He could not raise her, lest the child could raise her father from the dead. His shiny legacy is lauded across lands everywhere because planting a seed to destruction is all right so long as one does not water it.

The current chief is not so fortunate. The seeds are being watered. How are you doing old chap, my fellow, dear old corporation! Why certainly, full immunity for all telecommunication corporations for eavesdropping on Sylvia asking Mary the proper technique of knitting. Why hi there Israel! Yes certainly, continue new wave apartheid in Palestine! Of course, destroy Alena's school (she was always a slow learner anyway). Do you need some matches to burn the bodies? No no, I still go by Uncle Tom, not Uncle Jeremiah. Please continue the hegemonic wars, we will just withdraw some combat troops, all the other non combat troops and corporate troops can stay.

Domestically, well, admittedly, I can do very little constitutionally but my vagueness will prevail; inadequate environmental policies wrapped up in gold are the wave the future; a stimulus to an unregulated economy is practical; an increase to the military budget is necessary because we must fight rising temperatures by building a giant ice gun; and I will proudly carry the torch of hyperliberalist tradition to free us from our responsibility to the people! Because we can.

Speech speech! The people cry to me. I am not a man of the people. I look away. I am not a poet-in-chief. I can only speak the truth: my youth is gone but my maturity is in question.

Endless Balls

I pull my jalopy up to an isolated, industrial building. I leave the whale shark behind and enter the rotten rectangle through its grimy double glass doors stained with dirt and mucus. I flash my blue card to the lady in the glass box and enter a narrow room with a beat bench. An aging man rests there comfortably. I place my blue knapsack on the far side of the bench away the man. I begin to undress. The aging man turns towards me and I figure that it is time for a pisser. Half-dressed, I pull out of the urinal to return to my knapsack on my side of the bench only to see that it is being violated in the most grotesque fashion imaginable. The aging man, now naked, decides either unwittingly or molestationally to hang his towel on the wooden hook on my side of the bench and, in that process, allow his hanging balls to perch on my faithful Dakine knapsack. A pregnant paused fills the moist air. I turn my burning eyes away from the sac on sack action. I stare at the rusty tiled wall that is oozing moisture and anxiety. What is the appropriate response to this uncouth man who has demonstrated such hostility to social etiquette and hygiene? I peer back to my side of the bench: the affair is over. I totter back to my side of the bench. I avoid any sort of social interaction. I finish undressing. I pull on my dark blue trunks. The aging man is, incredibly, still naked, with his eyes shut. Is he meditating? Oh, the eccentricity of the naked man. I resolve for a ballsy move. I march into a stinky stall, wrap an inch of toilet paper around my hand, noisly return to my side of the bench, pick up the tainted knapsack, stomp to the garbage can, turn around, establish eye contact with the perpetrator, and tomahawk slam my knapsack into the garbage. I dive into the blue.

Mockcast

Part one. Part two. Part three.