Invasion (2 page)

The cosmos is naturally dark

It is light which is the invader

B
e a carrot. Staring at the frozen wood dappling the world, I try to recall where I first heard that. Be a carrot.

Carrots are deceptive things. You can plant your seed and then get that thrill when you see a bunch of ferny-greenery growing, until it’s so prolific you think you’ve grown yourself a substantial stick of beta-carotene. And you’d be wrong. If you pull that fine frond of greenery out of the dingy dirt, you’ll be sorely disappointed at the toothpick attached to it masquerading as a carrot. Carrot my ass.

That’s me. There’s nothing under the ground, in the dark, where eyes can’t see. To look at me you’d say I was the full package, with deep roots, with a life even deeper, but I’m all image. I have no purpose, I’m nothing. I’ve been yanked from the grainy earth with dead hopes. I’m stiff and stagnant, unable to fathom who I am.

I’m the carrot. A carrot pretends to be a full blown, robust vegetable, even when it’s not. It’s faking, it’s pretending. Sure it looks normal from a bird’s eye view, but if you ask the worm he’ll ask yo
u
‘
what carrot, where?
’.

I’m disguising the truth too, feigning. At first glance I’m respectable, decent, an upstanding member of a rotten society. If life is empty, simply be a carrot. Put on a show, fool every eye glancing your way, blend into your surroundings, camouflage yourself inside the thick arteries of society, because if you pretend for long enough eventually you’ll become that substantial root.

That’s basically all it means, fake it ’til you make it. People believe the projected image. Project strength until you are strong. Like a stupid root vegetable fools ninety percent of all gardeners, it’s your sworn duty to con your microcosm.

Experience is the only tutor to garner my loyalty. When you wash your hands with grime instead of grace, something about it screams safe and you forget anything decent. Instead you rely solely on what you’ve endured;
what you’ve put others through.

Plotting and planning, waiting and biding my time, I may be down and out but I’m not thick. I don’t know much about who or why, or even how, but I know I’m dangerously intelligent. My hands are nimble, flowing and ebbing to their own cunning rhythm. There’s hardly a task I cannot complete: from breaking into cars undetected, to stealing food and clothing from the convenience store; it all comes naturally. Between my brain and talent I have survived a world that has shown its ugly more than its beauty.

Winter is oppressive, the snow is too pervasive. It’s time to get out of the elements and into someone’s pool house or something.

There’s a dead moon rising and it’s eclipsing my mind. It’s now in the crepuscular window between the sightless void and sunrise that I loathe this condition. I despise that before I step into twilight I first take the time to meticulously run the knife edge under my nails to remove all grime, I pick my teeth and give them a good rub on my cuff to ensure they appear clean, I tussle my hair to make it look deliberately styled like bed-head – which is a really polite term for hobo. I do this shit to blend, to camouflage the truth, to be a carrot.

The joke between the carrot and the man who wears a million masks goes to and fro in the most inane way. The charcoal pane into my past is grimed, and the icy temperature doesn’t help. In fact I’m pretty certain it’s exacerbating my amnesia.

Glaring at the soulless house adorned with sightless panes, I doubt I’ll find answers in there. Not mine.
Who I am. Who I was.
They’re like hunting for pond skaters – they dart out of reach just when you think you’ve caught the fuckers.

It’s a matter of increasing urgency to secure warmth and food. Camping in shrubbery and woodland is getting stale. This property is large and in an upmarket neighborhood. No one will see me because it has hedges higher than heaven’s gates.

It bothers me that heaven has gates, cos that means their security sucks and the presiding deity isn’t all he’s been drummed up to be. Maybe he tossed too many gold coins into the scribe’s fountain because the propaganda says he’s
all powerful
, so what the fuck does he need gates for? Yeah, something doesn’t add up, and I’m a mathematical genius.

Sitting up, wriggling out of my snowy shrub-fort behind the garage, I stare at the home ensconced by privet hedging, feeling the cold comfort of sharp steel in my pocket. The issue with not recalling anything, (other than my name, which is a most unimpressive David Hearse), means I don’t know if this condition is permanent. Maybe I’m the CEO of some massive corporation, and I simply suffered the misfortune of a ruthless mugging to prevent me from showing up at the world summit for clean water, or a new method of collecting free energy from the movement of atoms through air.

Maybe the black market needed me out of the way because I knew the back door into the dark web and had the home address of the world’s surliest drug lord. Maybe I knew the president has a love child in Ethiopia, and his mistress practices voodoo.

Should that come to light everything he’s done will be called into question, like how exactly they buried Bin Laden. Maybe Bin Laden’s still alive and being subjected to the best drugs the government can buy, throwing money at the problem, hoping he’ll open his mouth and spew decent intel the way a professional hooker opens her legs for the right price. Throwing money at the problem i
s‘
our thing’. We’re proud to be the world’s biggest consumers of everything from literature to deep fried chicken.

For some reason I know that if you supply the nervous system with enough shock and violence, in short succession, it can cause short-term amnesia. Maybe I’m the unlucky billionaire who went wandering off into the night when I regained consciousness, sore and bruised, unable to gauge where home is after a pipe to the head. Time falls from the sky, repeating itself day after day, while my motivation remains elusive.

Maybe I’m mentally compromised in some way, or maybe street punks beat me in the dead of night and caused blunt force trauma to my limbic system because I didn’t know what craic was? See the quandary? How the fuck do I know how the brain is wired but can’t recall how I ended up homeless?

Homeless equals helpless, right?
Wrong
. Dead fucking wrong. There’s a warrior in me who refuses to lie down and play dead because of circumstance. I refuse to be helpless, I’ll die fighting, not lay down and let this shitty weather suck my soul out of numb lips. It’s bullshit for fuckwits.

That’s all this is, it’s circumstantial. If you don’t like how badly your life is sucking then get off your tight glutes and do something to change the situation. Yup, I’m looking at that home for the sixth day in succession and know there’s no activity.

My recon is flawless, I can squat in this place without dealing with immediate ramifications. It’s time to seize Fate and strangle the snide bitch into submission.

Fate would have to be female cos she’s into pointless mind games. Doesn’t matter how sweet you are to her, how pretty you tell her she is while coaxing a shy smile from her thin and bitter lips, she still wants to make you pay for something you might’ve done, in your head, when she was nowhere to be seen an aeon ago. So yeah, I’ve fucked her seventeen ways and tortured her a bit, and she’s deemed it’s time for payback. Middle finger bitch, up your snatch.

I’ll go down if she sucks me just right, but otherwise I’m taking what I want. I’m not a follower, I’m a pioneer. I pave my own way and trudge through the trenches. I command respect, so this tramp gig is getting real fucking old
real
fucking fast.

Heading for the back door (not Fate’s, but this two story abode of pure opulence), I unpocket the meager tools from my cargo pant’s pocket. I have skills, but don’t know when, or how, I acquired them. I don’t care, I’ve got them, and right now that’s the only shit that counts.

Yeah, now that I think about it, if Fate was a real woman I could get my hands on, I’d tie that bitch up and ruin her mind. I’d split her so wide her hips would dislocate, then I’d fuck her with a cheese grater, laughing while she bleeds from her mauled tampon tunnel. That’s what I think of your homeless penance, Jezebel. If you’re sucking face with Karma you’re bound to get fever blisters and halitosis.

This is me seizing opportunity. I don’t respect regulations, I won’t respect boundaries; borders were created for invasion, for conquering. Get that into your thick skull, you bimbo whore.

She fucks with everyone does Fate, loosest skank in the whole damn pantheon. Bet she has meat curtains as loose as a sail; wet, mingy, and sticking.

They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle; well the rules for that fly out the window when you don’t believe in god. It’s that o
r‘
god’ thinks I’m Atlas reincarnated. The world is on my shoulders but I refuse to be crushed.

A god of love wouldn’t permit half the shit I’ve seen since I’ve been on the streets. Geriatric homeless folks rotting alive in their wheelchairs, while still begging for contraband. Barely legal girls being pimped out by men who likely aren’t their lovers. Shit, they were probably stolen out of their bedroom window after Mommy told them bedtime stories. There’s an underbelly of existence which will taint you if you let it.

I’m not a small man, not even by a massive stretch of the imagination, so what kind of moron propositions me to be his bitch to earn a couple of dollars? Hell no! I punched that dipshit flat out and took his money for insulting me. I’m alpha, sadly – stoically – stubbornly alpha. I have a thing going on which dictates deep in my soul that we protect women and fuck them well, and a man never goes on his knees, ever. If you bend down it’s for your execution, not to make another man feel tall.

The only bitch in my life is Fate - and her two sisters. I’d use that cheese grater on them, after Fate, just for being related to that ho. Then I’d make them lick it clean. Who’s in charge now, Fate?

Watch this ladies, this is me picking a lock. See that?

Ever get the feeling the entire celestial realm is laughing at you? I’ve got that vibe right this second. It gives me pause. I scan the environment yet again, seeking threat.

Trees rustle and I zone in, penetrating the shadows with paranoia, but it’s just the breeze. A frigid breeze at that. This one’s all Amish virgin. Colder and more tense than Tutankhamen’s left tit.

Looking up at the clouded night sky reflecting ambient light from landlocked lights, I reach up and finger the ledge above the door.

Brain dead.

What kind of retard leaves the key to their home on the back door lintel? I didn’t even have to pick the lock. Well, that’s three minutes of my life I’ll never get back. The occupants left the welcome mat out and invited me in.

Thank you ma’am, I don’t mind if I do.

Depressing the handle, swinging the door just wide enough for me to slink indoors, I slip inside.

Instinct kicks in and I drop low, knife in hand and at the ready, waiting for my eyes to adjust, inhaling deeply, silently. It’s the heady aroma of comfort. The seductive scent of woman. The temptation of home with a lingering spattering of deep fried onions still clinging to the kitchen’s atmosphere.

Listening for motion, any sound at all, the only movement in this haven is the annoying flash of the microwave light. Every time it beams on it paints the counters and surfaces with an alien green glow. The fridge hums.

Stealthily, my footing even, I rise from my crouch with my thighs thick with blood, with tension, with fight, hand clenched into a tight fist. That’s when I bolt, room to room, scything between shadows, into the cracks on the periphery of life, haunting the staircase and passages until I’m positive I’m alone.

The good thing about this location is it’s shielded. It’s called luxury. Luxury affords privacy. Privacy affords me the peace of moving undetected even with the lights on. But I’m not a moron. If I switch a light on I’d have to first close every blind and curtain to remain undetected.

Moving back across the upstairs passage, I reenter the main bedroom. The scent of honeysuckle and cinnamon permeates the ambiance. Sliding through darkness I reach the curtains, pleased to note they have a thick rubber backing. Once these babies are closed no light will escape.