Windy City Stories - #Partless: My United States of Whatever

“David, you have a visitor.”

The voice had came later than he had expected; the temperature in his twelve cubic foot chamber of isolation having dropped dramatically almost half an hour ago. He had his regimented lifestyle in place and these visits were beginning to be just another example of the regularly scheduled programming which had become his life over the last month. He would wake, medicate, exercise and eat; the only difference was that now he done so in the confines of what had once been his own containment facility. The Sanctuary as it had been known was a front for the study of genetic mutation no longer; it’s expansive and seemingly endless corridors of red, wrought-iron cell doors now housing those considered to be mentally unstable, clinically insane or otherwise a danger to society and the general public, themselves included. How had David wound up in one of these little concrete boxes? Wrapped up like Alice in Chains’ proverbial Man in the Box. That was another story for another time. - Another Girl, Another Planet if you’ll allow the Nineties references to continue, - and one the reader would understand in due time.

Every week for the last month it was the same thing at the same time: he would arrive, the air-conditioning would be adjusted to suit his particular tastes, they would talk, perhaps even share a reminiscent laugh; but before long the outcome was always the same - he would leave and David would be left gritting his teeth in a prison of his own creation. The irony was not lost on the South-American, nor was it heralded. At least he usually brought Subway, that seemed to be one of the few things he had to look forward to these days. Turkey salad on hearty Italian bread, twelve inches, sliced into three four inch parts with light mayo: never toasted, never wrapped for too long and allowed to sweat in the paper and polythene, and never, ever forgotten. So when the Polar Phantasm entered the room with not but a board game in hand and a second chair upon which to seat himself, it was safe to say and clear to see that David’s heart had sunk.

“Mr. Mayor.”

He still wasn’t sure if this was meant as a jabbing insult or a term of endearment, nonetheless he found it creeping under his skin like a tick and draining the vitality.

“Mr. ‘Mare… Where fuck’s my sandwich?”

Cameron smiled as David’s impolite nature still managed to rear it’s ugly head, even in such an ass-backwards situation.

“Yeah, cute... Because I’m the chick… were you up all night thinking of that one?”

He had known of David’s deteriorating mental health, but he couldn’t have possibly known that. Could he? The man was clever but this was getting fucking creepy. The two leaders elect of their respective stables shared an awkward smile for a moment; David wondering how Cameron could possibly know of his obsessive thinking at night that was causing his insomnia whilst Cameron smiled back, masking the fact that he knew he had just accidentally hurt this fragile shell of David Sanchez’ feelings. The silence seemed to drag on for longer than usual, longer even in fact than it had done when Polar had first came to visit the mayor who was using his vacation time to try and regain some sense of psychological normality in the wake of the events which had thrown him down the metaphorical rabbit hole so to speak over the last year. Hello, Alice? It’s me David, which pill makes me larger? I feel tiny and insignificant right now. I am David’s crumbling self-worth.

“... So, about that sandwich? Don’t hold out on a brother.”

His words seem to come across in a joking manner but his face didn’t even half-mask the fact that they were a sincere plea. With a sympathetic grin Cameron set the cardboard box, advertising to contain a chessboard and all the pieces; suitable for ages eight to eighty - down on the neatly made bed upon which David was seated before pulling the nightstand so that it was between them and taking a seat opposite his counterpart. Lifting the lid, David’s spirits followed suit as Bankston revealed some additional contents to the box; handing David a sandwich which Sanchez did not so much accept as snatch from the hands of the Phantasm. Ripping into the packaging and stuffing the first piece of into his mouth, David let out a moan that could easily have been mistaken for an orgasm by anybody passing the room.

“Oh my fucking lord, them’s good eats. The food in here is fucking abysmal.”

Confused, Cameron had to ask the million dollar question:

“Didn’t you approve the fucking menu down here?”

With a laugh that seemed to interrupt his savoring of the sandwich, David quickly maintained his manners and chewed the remainder of the first sandwich with his mouth closed before answering. After-all, he had been brought up, not dragged.

“I didn’t exactly expect to ever have to eat it, did I? Do you know how much it would cost to feed these; errr, ummm ... Us people actual food instead of that gloop they serve? I’ll give you a hint: ... it’s more than I was willing to pay.”

Joining in the laughter, Cameron had come to appreciate this new side to Sanchez; he was still a cunt but at least he was now owning that fact instead of hiding behind a public facade. One mask for the masses, another for the shadows; that had been the mantra of his former rival for too long. A professional sheep in a more professional wolves’ clothing. At least the last year had humbled him, perhaps he could even accept a little bit of responsibility for this fact, although deep down he knew that the words ‘thank you Cameron’ would never be uttered, at least not in his presence. Pride; it seemed was the last strand of stability by which Sanchez was dangling, his feet teetering over the edge of a level eleven mental breakdown. As david continued to maul through his sandwich, Polar started to set up the game, using David’s pristine, dustless and polished bedside table to support the board.

“So why the fuck not just have one of these guys go on fast-food errands for you at meal-times? - I mean, technically don’t they all still work for you? It’s not like you were committed, you signed yourself in; nothing to stop you from eating whatever you so choose.”

It was with an empty, yet somehow still full-to-the-brim with sadness expression that David replied.

“I can’t trust myself to make those decisions right now. It took me all morning to decide which socks to put on and I’m still not sure if I made the right decision.”

“Speaking of decisions… have you decided how long you’ll be staying down here yet? Not to pressure you but you’re kinda still the mayor. There’s grumblings of an impromptu election and I’m a firm believer that you’re better the devil you know… Oh and for the record, your socks look fucking excellent.”

Even in contrast to the whitewashed walls of surgical cleanliness, Cameron’s hair was still so white that David had been tempted more than once to enquire if it was snowing outside. He couldn’t stop staring at it; like a trainwreck or the posterior of one Iggy Azalea. Tearing himself away though he looked down at the socks which were visible underneath his black jeans: one of them black with treble-clefs, the other white with pawprints. What the fuck was wrong with him?

“I… I have no idea. Not much longer hopefully, I’m curious to see what has become of the world. As for the election though; I think any attempts I could make at fixing the mess I made and regaining the trust of this city would be applying a plaster to an axe-wound. I think my political days are behind me.”

Looking a touch disappointed, Polar moves a white pawn two places forward on the board, the one which had been placed in front of his Queen. Scrunching up the subway wrapper and tossing it into a small, plastic receptacle in the corner of the room, David studies the board but for a few moments before responding by immediately moving his Knight in an L-shaped movement so that it now stands two places in front of his black Bishop.

“I wouldn’t be too sure David, people are forgiving by nature and everybody deserves a second chance. Sure, you made some questionable decis… Okay, you were a fucking tyrant, but Chicago needs you: your money, your resources, your sway with city officials. If you were only to use your influence for good; people would soon forgive and forget your shortcomings this time around. You’ve been ill, and one thing this world understands post-wave is emotional and mental strain.”

David glanced up from the game of chess and into Polar’s eyes; full of hope and righteousness. A direct opposite to David’s icy pools of nothingness that had long since been drained of any real feeling or sincerity. Like fluorescent blue cigarette burns, sunken into his eye-sockets in the way that only a lifetime subscriber to Opiates Monthly could manage without looking inbred or constantly to be scowling.

“When most people have issues they go to the doctor and seek medication, it’s hardly the same thing. There’s a faint line in the sand that I crossed so long ago it looks like a mere haze on the horizon. I don’t do pandering, it’s not in my nature. I accept that I was a monster, and I will fix that which can be repaired - but, I’m not going to say sorry for anything I’ve done, I’m not sorry… I don’t know what I am.”

Cameron's expression was stern, strict even. Somewhere inside he felt empathy for David but the mayor made it difficult when he said things like this - after all he was responsible for much of the violence and gentrification that still swept the city of Chicago, even now as he remained locked in his little room and subsequent lapse in sanity. There were still a lot of question left unanswered, not least of which came out of the Polar Phantasm's mouth upon this revelation.

"So.... are you ready to tell me what the Diego Garcia shit was all about? I know it was you that gave the order. You can pass it off as White Lotus or another random act of violence, but I know what I seen David, tattoos don't lie and the markings on your hands are the same ones on the CCTV footage of the arms deal that led to the dearly departed being shot to pieces. It doesn't hold much weight in court, but I need to know. Why did you do it? and why did you bury it? You've taken public credit for worse than this."

With a smile that seemed to mask his guilt, it was all David could do to muster a shrug of his shoulders; whether he didn't cafe, couldn't remember or simply didn't want to talk about this subject, was left to the decision of the reader.






What was once a non-denominational, multi-generational, Evangelical Christian megachurch was now a hollow husk of its former glory. Perhaps the only similarities to the auditorium before and after Sanchez had closed it’s doors last week were limited to: two Mitsubishi Diamond Vision High-Definition screens fourteen feet by twenty-four feet in size, usually seen in new sports stadiums. Each screen, movable on its own track system and able to be combined into one giant screen. That, and the general layout of the building were all that seemed familiar. Surplus of pews suitable to seat seven-thousand stretched the length of the venue; making this once of the largest churches in the United States. Founded in nineteen ninety-seven by Bill Hybels, who until last week was still serving as a pastor, this church had thrived under his guidance since its inception over forty years ago, much to the chagrin of other, less modern Christians.

The ‘seeker’ or sinner-friendly church growth movement theology suggests that the Church needed to be conformed to the image of the world. But the Apostle Paul writes that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ. Christ is a rock of offense to the world and Bill Hybels and his associates were accused of trying to make Jesus more appealing. Decorating and disguising Christ with a modern take on biblical matters so that they could reach those who didn’t want to be reached. They had pimped Jesus Christ to the unwashed masses of Chicago for too long, and while David’s hardcore idea to completely outlaw religion was causing riots among the everyday Christians and Sikhs who had been flocking through the doors of their respective hallowed grounds’ for years; his actions were being praised by the ‘real’ God-squad. The extremists in Ireland and several Red-States who had viewed this place of worship as a stain on the fabric of Christianity for too long, whilst unable to act within the confines of their beliefs.

Such was the problem with organized religion in David’s eyes. People had been fighting and warring over deities, idols and beliefs for as long as history could document; and now even wars within wars were growing increasingly more combustible. David fancied himself as the cure to an illness in this sense, and Fausse was the hypodermic needle, the delivery system to get the antidote into the minds of those who desired guidance from a higher power. There would be no discrimination in this new world: Buddhists, Christians, Muslims; they would all flock to this building as one family, one community and one society - under God - well not God, but under as close to God as they would ever come to know. The birth of a new world by immaculate conception, force and the public reckoning of a few false idols.


"Where has God gone? he cried. I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?”

David had taken center stage, dressed to the nines in his usual suit, only with a black miter atop the outfit, fitted backwards with a purple crucifix and tilted to the side slightly. The way the children were wearing their baseball caps in this unholiest of ages. As he stood at the podium, throwing together quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Parable of the Madman, combined with his own fucked up interpretations, he was joined by another.

“Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto. For the next generation shall be the First Generation and their children the second. Our place in history is not that of kings and queens, but instead that of a lighthouse, a guiding beacon of light that will reveal a new path to those who come after us, and those young enough to be free from the sins and mistakes of the old world"

Erin had taken to the floor beside David, her body cloaked entirely in a nun’s habit of less modifications than her brother in arms. After-all, she was chosen by God, and then by David, which pretty much made her double-blessed; at least in her own narcissistic opinion anyway. Unlike Sanchez, she had been a believer in the Almighty, and deep down she still was. He spoke to her and through her at once: yet here she was, pedalling snake-oil and adding hypocrite to that endless list of accomplishments and things that would one day be repented and ultimately forgiven. Sure, what they were doing could be considered blasphemous, but omelettes had always required broken eggs and such was the beauty in blind faith - you could get away with almost anything if you confessed to it afterwards, and one day her’s would be a lengthy seat upon the shriving pew.

"I teach to you; the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. I have seen a man and woman manipulate the very elements themselves, and another vanish then reappear before my very eyes. I have seen space and time passed through like a doorway and all things we thought to be true reduced into nothing but the blurb on the back of a much grander compendium of stories. We are no longer the masters of our own collective destiny, not while these Overmen and women are among us. Homo-sapiens had become homo-erectus. - In the world we now call home, WE are the monkeys and THEY are the zookeepers, the keyholders and the future. For as it stands, we truly are no longer worthy to hold the title of mankind, or unkind. Our past discretions washed away in the flood like worthless driftwood and debris in an endless ocean of change."

David’s words were growing more aggressive as he continued. He was speaking with passion and with purpose; or at least selling his words to the gathering of bodies in attendance as if this were the case. It was far from a full-house, far from the seven-thousand, one-hundred and five people this temple was built to hold. With that said though, the church was still officially closed to the outside world and yet around two-thousand bodies were present; two-thousand faceless men in riot gear who watched David and Erin attentively from beneath their visors and balaclavas; unblinking and without lapses in concentration - as if they were being forced to do so by some invisible harnesses and duct-tape. These were the security officers David had been slowly but surely introducing to the city of Chicago, and while their numbers continued to grow, the number of average metropolitan police continued to diminish. They were being replaced like outdated technology and the fall in crime rate, even during riots which continued on outside was enough due diligence to allow Sanchez the freedom to continue this upheaval without question. Petty crime was at an all-time low, the body-count was still in a state of flux but again; omelettes and eggs. A small price to pay for a short transitional period that would see Chicago turned from Chi-raq into Chi-witzerland in terms of recorded crime statistics.

"Companions: the creator seeks, not corpses. Not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks. - Those who write new values on new tablets instead of blindly following the misguided commandments of time long since forgotten. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. Fellow creators, fellow harvesters and fellow celebrants: what are herds and shepherds and corpses to him upon his ethereal throne? What need does he have for those who in need his guidance and seek his approval in their daily lives? God is everywhere; more so now than ever before. God is the rapist, the defiler and the very succubus of misery into which the world is spiraling. The all-maker may be dead, but in his rebirth he becomes the blades of grass, the grains of sand and the very air we breathe. God is everywhere, but in being everywhere he neglects. We do not claim to be the creator, monikers and titles we will leave to those who desperately seek the validation of lesser cattle in the herd to do with as they please. I am Erin Fausse, and this my church. In this building: I am universal, I am the sun and the stars and I am the wind, rain and hail. In this church; my church. I am the only idol - The Iron Idol, and there is nothing False about it."

Erin was bringing that very same fire that David had ignited moments before, her words transcending sermon and becoming motivational.

“Brothers: Cast off the shackles of oppression, lift your visors and look upon us with the faces you were given. Come forward and drinketh the blood of the martyr one final time. Let it fill you with the knowledge that under Christ we were divided but under Syndicate, we are one.”

In stereo, as if being operated by an orchestra of puppet masters the security force rises from the pews, each of them first removing the tinted black visor, followed by the balaclava - all to reveal the very same face; a familiar face. The face of Frank Patrick Venable.

“YOU may be legion, WE may be Syndicate - but united, TOGETHER AS ONE… This is OUR United States of whatever the fuck we want it to be.”

Each of the identical security detail; this unfathomable and unexplained army of Franks filters down the aisle towards the podium in silent, emotionless obedience. They take a sip from a silver chalice when instructed and receive a blessing from Erin Fausse whilst David Sanchez kisses each of their hands individually. Whatever they were drinking was not red wine, nor any port or sangria that this writer had ever encountered. It smelled like cyanide and caused their faces to twitch involuntarily upon consumption. The scene fades to black as the two-thousand strong army of Venables march towards the stage and encounter the same fate; a brief moment of holy worth and an aftertaste of mind control. There was most definitely something sinister in the Sacramental Wine, but whatever it was - it was being consumed willingly, without fatality or bereavement.





Quaaludes; Joe Fridays, Wallbreakers, The Love Drug, Vitamin Q. Methaqualone had been known under many names over the years it was on the market and many more after it was purged and replicated by every junkie in the constitutional United States who watched Breaking Bad and fancied themselves a chemist. To David though they had always been Toquilone Compositum or Blou Bulles and they had never done this to him before. Then again, he’d never taken seven in one sitting, chased them with a bottle of Scotch and only then realized they were the real deal; having expired in March of nineteen eighty-one. How the fuck did someone manage to hold onto those little beauties for thirty-five years? Drug dealers were either getting more thrifty or more forgetful, but that didn’t matter to David right now. What mattered was that he was on the floor of his office: paralyzed, pissing himself and unable to do very much short of laugh and drool. The mayor is not available this evening, please call back during office hours or leave a message at the beep.

"The mayor is not available this evening, please call back during office hours or leave a message at the beep."

That was what his inner-monologue had said.

"MurrrnovabbleBEEEEEEEP"

… And that was all that managed to slip through the veil and out of his mouth. In his mind he was well-spoken, a plethora of conversational elegance and certified master of the Queen’s English; but in reality he sounded like a Speak ‘n’ Spell with critically low batteries... on a hot day... in a foreign language... on crack.

“Drem yol lok”

Gazing up at the ceiling of his office, David was immediately plunged into both terror and awe as the frame of a great dragon descended upon him from above. - or at least that was what he seen. In reality all that happened was FPV, or one of the FPV clones? It was getting difficult to keep up - entered the office to check if David was still alive. The mythical beast that wasn’t actually there spoke to Sanchez in it’s native Dovah-Zul. Which in his state of current being; the mayor was decisively more fluent in than English. Accepting the dragon’s greeting with a bubble of drool forming at the side of his mouth; the universal junkie greeting for: ‘hello and how are you this fine day?’

“Bonaar daar Nivahriin.”

‘Humble the weak.’ No small-talk eh? So it was true; confirming what he’d known all along: Dragon’s were dickheads. No wonder they were so rare these days. David continues to crawl along the floor of his office, muttering semi-coherent sentences and stroking Frank’s ankles as the clone tried to ensure he didn’t hurt himself or do anything stupid like be seen by anybody who wasn’t a mindless, robotic tool of the Syndicate.

The visions were over as soon as they had started; in his mind the great beast swept David up in it’s wings, whilst in reality Frankie swooped down and lifted the mayor up. Carrying him over to the leather chaise lounge in the corner of the room and placing a jacket over the mayor who made flying sound effects all the way from point A to point B. Frankie was Richard Gere and David: Debra Winger - this was the final scene from An Officer and a Gentlemen, only with more drugs, dragons and urine.

The scene ended as quick as it had started, because fuck being relative to anything. Dragons are cool and drugs are fun. That was the lesson here.