PRONOUCE DEATH SENTENCE

PLEASE NOTE: This is work of fiction, entirely the imagination of the Author. It makes reference to a Public figure, to be sure, but is entirely conjectural. While Medium is generally not a platform that publishes fiction, this emerged in my private contemplation of current events, about which I sometimes write. It is part of a forthcoming collection of stories and essays. This story contains mature language (immature language in fact, profanity, in fact, as it is written in the voice of the person it is about.)

Someone was trying to fuck with him. Always, they were trying to fuck with him. Problem was, this time, only…was it only this time, or had it been like this? Problem was that he couldn’t tell if it was THEM, those fuckers, or his own mind. And even to be aware of this–in this fog, dawning on him, or falling on him–even to be aware of this was frightening to him, that’s what it was, the feeling, a sort of awakening dread, that he immediately had the impulse to medicate into oblivion, to destroy. But he couldn’t make it go away. The doctors had said something about the contagion. They had been whispering. But maybe he had mis-heard. Of course he could pronounce it. He was a genius. He was a master of the English fucking language. Of course he could pronounce it. But then there was that word. That word he didn’t like. But was that the word that they had said? Because that didn’t make sense, context clues suggested that it didn’t make sense, because why would they be talking about pronunciation and a sentence, and then that word?

Third grade. Was it third grade? Matheson, the teacher. It was Matheson. Why was he thinking about this? But then suddenly–it was as if he was there, was nine years old. His body was nine years old–he looked down at his hands and they were little boy’s hands, and there he was, sitting in his desk. Alarming, to be sure. This was alarming. It was the virus, doing all this, he was sure of it. But Matheson, the teacher, the third-grade teacher, was saying, “Donald, can you pronounce all the words in the sentence?” and there was a bead of sweat, cold, moving down his neck, he felt it slipping into his shirt collar. It was taking him too long. People were beginning to snicker. David Giuliani was tapping his pencil. Rude. Rachel Sanders was starting to giggle. It was a trap. He knew it was a trap. His brain, it had this habit of skipping words. It was just that it didn’t see them. They weren’t important words, they were little words, tiny words, words of two or three letters, inconsequential words, loser words, but he would miss them. It was just that his brain skipped over them. The problem was that they were connector words. Little tiny bridges. It was something with his brain. If he said it out loud, he knew, if he did it sincerely, they would laugh because those little fucking words would be missing. You wouldn’t think a tiny word of two letters could bungle up so much the meaning of a sentence, but surely they did. Of course he could pronounce the words in the sentence, but it was all of them, that was the problem, not the big words, not aristocratic, not crown, not diamond. Those words he knew. “Donald,” Matheson’s voice brought him back. Matheson had stepped out from behind his desk at the front of the room. There was a note of something in his voice. A note of the man’s armpit in his voice, that was it. Why the armpit?

He wasn’t going to say anything, he decided. He crossed his arms over his chest. That felt good actually, somehow, it sharpened something in the room. What it was exactly? Something in the room began to take shape, a sort of waiting–for what? The breath seemed to be held. Everyone was holding their breath, suddenly, that was interesting, something had happened. Something was occurring to him, taking shape, not a thought, a feeling in him, a sort of resolve, but what was it? Here came Matheson, down the aisle, and there was something in his eyes.

Queens. Flatbush. The sound of the engine turning over. Saturdays. Dad. “But why do I have to go with you?” Who wanted to leave the house on Saturday? Who wants to leave the castle? To go out there. Out into THAT WORLD. But it was going out there, into that, his father kept telling him, that got them all of this. Rolls-Royce. Cadillac. Mansion. Traipsing up and down stairs.

Why do these people live here?

These are our buildings.

But why are they so ugly?

They’re not ugly, Donald.

Compared to our house…

These people aren’t rich.

Are we rich?

Up and down stairs. Knocking on doors. “Hello Mr. Trump.” Checkbooks. Cash. The book out, a tiny checkmark. Excuses. The book out. It smells sour. Babies crying. Dirt caked on the windowpanes. “We must receive rent within the week.”

Why don’t we clean these places up?

The people who live here can clean them up.

Families. Old men. Wives. Children. Dirty children. Children without their hair combed. Glaring children.

Are we the lord?

Landlord, Donald. Stand closer to me.

Why do we step out of the way after you ring the bell?

Sometimes they shoot through the door.

He was standing on the landing. There were four doors in the landing. Somewhere in the building a banging sound. Water in a pipe. His eyes drifted. “You don’t want to go to jail,” his father was saying to the man. Armpit. He turned back. The man was old-ish. A grandfatherly-aged sort of man, but rumpled. He was standing in the doorway. His belly was round, like a bowling ball, his shirt barely containing it. Disgusting. “Eviction proceeding,” his father was saying. Behind the man, Donald could see into the apartment, a hallway, nothing on the walls. Faded paint. A dirty, off-white color.

Why was that man scared?

He didn’t pay his rent.

But why was he scared?

He’s back in his seat. Matheson is standing in front of him, over him, and he knows he should look up, should display respect, but something about Matheson’s waist, from his belt, across his tucked-in shirt, to his elbows folded across his chest, something about this is disgusting to him. There is, he notices, an inkstain on Matheson’s right sleeve. It is dirty.

“You smell like a…” It is a thought first, but he realizes he’s said it aloud, not because he hears it, but because there’s a sharp in-suck of air in the room, all the children sucking air in together, and the air goes dangerous, goes electric.

He looks at the floor. A spider is making its way across the floor and he has the impulse to crush it, that threat. That creature of the darkness. What’s it doing in here in this school? Inside. It belongs outside. If it should exist at all. And Rachel has stopped giggling, he meets her eyes–there is something about her. Something about the curve of her knee, the way that it peaks out above her bobbysocks, and then the way that her upper leg disappears up under her skirt, there’s a way that his eyes like to travel, when she’s sitting, the skirt is short enough that it is just resting across the top of her thighs, so that if he drops his pencil, and has to reach down, there’s just a brief moment when his face is at the same height as her crotch and he can see her underwear, the pink. It’s this, really, this moment, because her laughter, that was the unbearable thing, her specifically, Rachel Sanders, who he would like to do something with or to, who he would like to have alone in his bedroom, on his bed…he is curious about the shape of her and how it would feel to place his hands…and in this glance, this micro-second of eye contact when she is regarding him with…anticipation…that is the word, and he wants to be…victorious, that is the word…he wants to overthrow, yes, the established order, to show her, yes, that he is the lord of the land…he wants to be in charge.

If he were in charge, it occurs to him, things would be different. It dawns on him slowly, he sees it unfolding in his mind, like a movie. Things would be better, even great. She would look at him in a certain way, she would give herself to him, and maybe not only her but all of them, all of the pretty girls. If he were the King, he could have any of them that he wanted, in his bedroom. He could line them all up. He could let the other boys watch, but they would be his. They would compete to get to him, really. It occurs to him.

There was one book that mattered in this life, one book that made it all happen. A little black book, the book in his father’s breast pocket, the book where the checkmarks got made, the book of rent. His father’s book. That was the book that made all of this possible. The mansion. The Rolls-Royce. Not some dumb sentence, here in a schoolbook. Not some inkstained teacher. “Rotting meat.”

A sense of general decay. The world is a dangerous place, and you have to be a killer, you have to fight. There’s going to be a carcass, there’s going to be blood shed, and that carcass can’t be yours. And you’ll say whatever you need to say, and you’ll do whatever you need to do to fight, to win, you’ll make words into whatever salad is required, you’ll paste or throw or nail them to the enemy because you are the controller of words, you are the one who tells the story, the one who writes it which is beautiful and some kind of justice against all those tiny words that get away from you, trip you up, those little shitbird loser words your brain doesn’t see.

“You smell like rotting meat.”

The funny thing–and it is funny, it has a hilarity to it, a giddy-edged hilarity to it–is that as soon as its out of his mouth he knows he’s won. That he’s said it, that will be the legend. It’s not true. Matheson smells like an armpit. Rotting meat has a sweetness to its rancidness, and this is not that, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s already won, and he knows it, and Matheson knows it, and everyone in the class knows it. His heartbeat has picked up, it is singing, it is racing, even before what happens next, the trip to the Principal, the suspension, none of it matters, as he begins to look up toward Matheson’s apoplectic face, his eyes travel up and then meet Rachel’s and her eyes yield to him, to his Power, he presses into her, through her with his gaze, and she yields to him, like butter, she can’t help it, he is the King. He turned the tables. It will be different now.

But suddenly he can’t breathe and it evaporates, all of it. There is the sound of machinery, medical machinery, and he can’t catch his breath. The room swims into focus, and he can’t get enough air, it’s like they’re squeezing him from inside and his brain is mis-firing or something. There’s a taste in his mouth, that taste of anticipation of pussy, only now it is trailing away like water running across cracked and parched desert ground, and it is gone, evaporated. Everywhere around him is a wasteland. There is a corrupting contagion everywhere. The very earth is parched. The sky appears to be on fire. The Sun is red. Everything is burning. Where the fuck is he? And it occurs to him, quite unexpectedly, that perhaps he mis-interpreted the word pronounce. I pronounce you man and wife. Was it pronounce, like pronunciation? Pronouncing the sentence? Or pronounce, like a pronouncement? Is it his brain? It’s hot in his head, electrical, jangled. Did he mis-understand? Like a breaker box over-heating. There is all of this current running through his body, it feels like he’s plugged in and he can’t get any air and now there is someone kneeling on his fucking neck.

“GET THE FUCK OFF MY NECK YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

It’s a cop. A police officer. And in his head he is screaming “GET THE FUCK OFF MY NECK YOU MOTHERFUCKER IT’S ME DONALD J TRUMP THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” But the police officer…is he flossing his teeth? Is it possible that he is using a dental device of some kind, one of those little floss picks to pick his teeth while he is kneeling on my neck? The officer appears to be flossing, and then, with great care inspecting what it is that is stuck to the floss that seems to have been removed from his actual teeth. And then he is running his tongue over said teeth.

Well that explains a great deal, it actually suddenly comes as a sort of relief because obviously that’s why he can’t breathe. It’s not the virus. And this thought rather buoys him, rather excites him, it’s not contagion, it’s not an existential sort of threat, it’s quite obvious, it’s rather simple–he can’t breathe because there’s a police officer kneeling on his neck, and the remedy for this is quite simple, because all he has to do is reach down and show the officer his ID, Donald J Trump, and immediately the officer will…well, it doesn’t matter, who knows what the officer will do, the officer will lose his job, obviously, he’ll never work again, he’s permanently fucked, but that doesn’t matter, it’s simply a matter of mistaken identity, he just needs to reach down to his pocket, and with a burst of energy and expediency, and even joy, he looks down to direct his hand into his pocket and WHY THE FUCK IS MY ARM BLACK?

A ticking begins in his head, and it is an unpleasant ticking, a sort of bomb-like ticking, an extremely ominous ticking and he thinks–WHO PUT ME IN A BLACK BODY? In this terrible moment, in this predicament UNCLEAN UNCLEAN foul UNHOLY UNCLEAN!!!

In this terrible predicament of someone having switched his body for a black body IS THAT PAINT ON MY ARM? WHAT THE FUCK? GET THIS FUCKING SKIN OFF OF ME THESE MOTHERFUCKERS, only at this moment the knee digs into his neck, it is as if the officer is adjusting himself, finding purchase, is finding the sweetest spot with the knee to dig into his jugular, and now he really can’t breathe and it is beginning to go black in his mind, the blackness of the body is fading into a sort of general blackness, and the lights go out.

WHO TURNED OUT THE FUCKING LIGHTS??? TURN THOSE BACK ON. Nothing. Now it’s dark. Is there an officer still kneeling on his neck? Who knows? He can’t see, he can’t breathe–HOW THE FUCK IS HE SUPPOSED TO RUN THIS GODDAMNED COUNTRY HOW THE FUCK IS HE SUPPOSED TO BE KING WITH NO LIGHTS AND SOME MOTHERFUCKER KNEELING ON HIS NECK?

When I get done with you, he thinks. Fucking heads will roll, you motherfuckers! Do you know who I am?

Only strangely, these last words, which he has voiced privately, inside his own mind, begin to echo, more and more loudly, as if amplified, booming, as if tweeted to the ends of the known Universe, as if played back through eighteen million distorting amplifiers, and they come back in upon him, they begin to cascade in upon him, like sound waves, only no, that isn’t quite right, like actual waves, actual ocean waves, cascading, first, then crashing, more and more loudly, more and more cacophonously, until he hears them, as if they were spoken by someone else.

“Do you know who I am?”

Into the silence then, that sucks all noise into itself.

“Do you know who I am?”

The question. Hangs. Looms. Whelms. Grows. And he feels afraid. He is nine years old again, and he feels afraid. It is a feeling at once alien, and deeply familiar. A feeling he can’t get around can’t set aside can’t distance. It is right here, right now, the fear. There is an embodied sense of collapse, the feeling of a dam breaking inside, somewhere, in his head, and a rush, a stroke, a flood.

There is the smell of smoke. An overwhelming, foul, cloying, choking smell of smoke. As if an entire town–churches, houses, factories, cars–as if everything burned up at once, as if grass and trees and metal and flesh were all vaporized, that’s what it smells like, incinerated. A chemical, scorching, wildfire cloud of enveloping smoke that he can feel hot and burning through his lungs. Paradise. Already he can’t breathe. California. There’s a guy kneeling on his neck. Only now within the space of the not breathing, there is the visceral animal awareness of fire. In the darkness, fire. Where am I, he thinks. Only then, he begins to know. Am I dying? The heart begins to race.

And it occurs to him again, that maybe he has mis-interpreted. Sentence. It jangles around in his head. Perhaps not a clause. Not a subject object predicate. Perhaps sentence, as in criminal sentence. Pronounce death sentence. Who is pronouncing a death sentence? His mind jerks reflexively away. Tries to go elsewhere.

Whose death? Who pronounces it? And then smirking, because he controls the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court. Only…who is in charge here? What land is this?

Who am I? And yet despite the fact that nothing within him is inclined to the philosophical, nothing within him actually wants to answer that question, somehow he can’t avoid it.

Who is pronouncing the death sentence? And who is it being pronounced upon, and Who am I?

For seventy years he hasn’t been able to concentrate, for seventy years he has been in motion, a blur of activity, of doing, but now, in the blackness, the cloying smoke, with the knee on his neck, the virus swarming through him, only now, somehow, his concentration becomes very focused, very clear. It is quite strange. Strangely magical. Something in him goes very still and seventy years rises up, mirage-like, a lifetime–of deals, of ass, of television, of handshakes, of constipation, of silences, the empty vastness of the dawn, of cold that he tried to warm with women, to push away, to keep at bay, to brighten with a constant stream of declarations, tweets, cameras, adulation…it passes before him cinematically, bright moments, ejaculations, fights, victories, defeats, and then gone. Vanished.

It is very quiet. Silent. And then, at the perimeter of fire, a brightness. Something Holy. He finds himself kneeling. He is nine years old, in church, but he is seventy-seven, in a hospital bed as well, and he is feeling the Approach. What is it? But he knows what it is. Who is it? But he knows who it is, and he knows that he is not in charge. The Radiance draws nearer. He feels a melting within.

“Jesus,” he whispers. “Lord.”

The Light hits his face like a punch and he turns away, because he can’t bear it. His heart begins to deeply weep. He feels tears streaming down his cheeks. He sees himself kneeling beside his bed, reciting, but hollowly. Did he ever believe that it was real? And yet, it is Real.

The Light comes, it washes over him, cleansing, bathing his heart, and in a moment he perceives–it’s not intellectual, not a thought–he feels the Living Force of Life. He knows, unequivocally, the Exquisite Breath-Giving Beauty of the Creation. He sees, for one brilliant moment the interconnected web of all Life, the Great Chain of Being, the inter-connecting linkages binding together the tiniest micro-organisms in the soil with the Greatest Sequoia tree, the bats and the flowers, the Moon silvering the forest at night, the Mineral Kingdom, the perfect celestial magnificence of the Creation, the jewel, the spinning blue-green marble of Planet Earth. And then, looking closer, he sees someone tearing at it, clawing at it, pulling it apart with great haste. A destroyer. He looks closer. What blasphemy!

THAT MOTHERFUCKER, he declares, overcome by righteous rage, I’LL KILL HIM WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. He looks closer. And he realizes that the destroyer is himself.