Part I

11 August 2011: The air is choked with sin. Depleted uranium. The physical sin of the Satanic wars. Fukushima. The radioactive fallout of energy gluttony and vanity, vanity being the veneer which covers human incompetence. You inhale the toxic waste product of sin, and your blood is poisoned, your lungs polluted. Cancer. The sinners’ cancer.

Of course, those are merely two examples of the airborne physical sin circulating the globe. There are tens and tens of thousands of others. The electronic waste of dead computers and all the other electronic gadgets. Lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium, all polluting the air and water. A man kills a computer with endless hours on internet porn, tosses his computer onto the scrap heap, and you ingest his e-waste. And there’s the ELF radiation cooking the air from the billions of Wall Street fractional reserve transactions. The physical sin of the bankers’ usury. These are just two more examples--as I say, there are tens and tens of thousands.

And let us not forget the psychic sins. All the deranged thoughts of all of us, creating a psychic haze of sick lusts, base envies, Cainite rages, etc., etc., etc. It creates the psychotic harmonic current we exist in. Most of us struggle against a darkness we sense, but do not understand. . .

Cancer, Disease, Death, the Blackness of Darkness. We breathe it in. We live in it. Airborne waste. This is the elemental truth of life. To breathe is to become sick and die.

Our only hope is an afterlife. . .

But if we are devoid of that hope, we must seek narcotized escape. Drink, drugs or game our way into an alternate reality. Brief moments of rest from the dark monotonous meaninglessness of existence. . .

I am at the Chase ATM at the corner of Packard and Stadium, breathing the world’s sin. I stand there, programming the machine to spit a couple of twenties at me, I stand there sinning. Hot, humid, uncomfortable with sweat. Uncomfortable in an air heavy with the ages of sin. It’s weighing down on us here, here near the End. Riots all over the world. A world out of money. The people’s skin finally starting to crawl. The first small signs of a world-wide panic, a world-wide dread the days of EZ narcotizing may be be coming to an end. The thought we will have to face life penniless, and thus sober, is now unnerving small pockets of the masses.

But anyway, I’m waiting for my twenties in this stygian atmosphere (the sun is shining, not a cloud in the blue sky) and I feel a closer, more corporeal weight pressing near me. I turn around and am nearly nose-to-nose with a fat young woman.

“Could you give me a little room, here,” I say.

She doesn’t budge. Stands there, silent and frowning. Fat and frowning. Long black hair partially covering her blotchy fat face.

I feel an angry look on my face. Sweat immediately builds under my arms and on my brow.

What’s the harm, though? She’s just a fat person, standing a little too close. I try to smile.

“I’m almost done,” I say.

A four or five second encounter. It could have gone one way or the other.

I turn back to the machine, finish the transaction. The twenties in my hand, I take the receipt, then put the money and receipt in my wallet--but there’s something, I think. Some thought is stuttering around in my brain. What is it?

The fat girl watches me as I get in my car. She doesn’t use the ATM. I fasten my seat belt, turn the key. The fat girl is still looking. Another car pulls up. An older gentleman gets out. He asks the fat girl if she is going to use the ATM. The fat girl semi-waddles away without answering. What a strange fat person, I think, as I drive off. Then I realize what it is--I’ve seen this fat girl before. . .