The Cult, Page 2

  She said I might find out if I paid attention. That was a little disappointing considering we hadn't had sex for days and I felt intimidated by Smith and Angie. The children were making fun of me. I felt like one of her kids.

  I've never been a religious person but these two certainly practiced a form of worship. They seemed extremely devoted to the ritual and completely serious about their marriage even though it wasn't legal. Macy explained that it was an act, for all of them and I understood because of the Chem 1. In fact this entire household seemed like a bizarre carnival because of that drug. It made us child-like and weird, especially the veterans who needed it apparently to survive. Several hours before the scheduled wedding, a visitor came who appeared to be extremely strong and I was afraid again.

  He said he had heard that Mika was here. Macy said that he didn't live here. I thought; ‘why not tell him where he lives?’ But that was the nature of Chem 1. It made us paranoid. Everyone was a potential threat. She saw the man out and I learned later that he was a good guy, but didn't do the same drugs as us. In fact he was a captain. His name was Jerry and he was on a different team.

  Smith and Angie were bonded in marital ceremony at around 7:00. I sat and watched with the kids. I respected the newlyweds’ fervor but was somewhat alarmed when Macy asked me to come forward before they said their vows. I lurched upward, being high, and tried to pretend to hurt myself. I was having a tough time with all my doubt. However, she asked me to anoint their marriage myself by wishing them well with all my heart for I was blessed by Iris and could do his bidding.

  I stepped forward and said nothing. Their laser eyes waited for me and I twisted my body away from them. My head turned towards the ceiling for a few seconds until I finally uttered, "I bless your marriage with all of my heart. I hope you find happiness in your partnership." Macy was extremely pleased.

  During the after party which made me feel small and rodent-like I started watching her for clues about what had happened and also for cameras. It must have been a symptom of the intoxication. I really wanted out of this situation but couldn't tell Macy because I still was attracted to her. Did she like this drawing? Yes, very much. But I was one of her kids, not her lover. I became curious about the huge man asking for our captain and planned to go see him sometime. It had seemed like he was riding on a missile, the energy he carried was so strong. When I fell asleep, I dreamed of robots because that's what the children were watching on television. I really was just one of them.

  Chapter 4

  There was a time when I was away from her due to stress or morbid fear and stayed with my Mom across the city. I cooked food for her children once she moved closer to me with her entire family. She wasn't trying to get closer to me, however. There were a few people I visited with during this time and a couple of men I even invited into my Mom’s house on the weekends which she was gone. The first man was Jerry, the captain. He was from California and had AIDS. He knew all about weed. Unfortunately I must report that he was not on the proper medicine and treatment for his disease. It wasn't irresponsible as far as anyone else is concerned. I would have hated to see his life shortened on account of a homegrown remedy.

  The other two were black men who I felt needed respite from the cold and danger. I supplied it to them by allowing them to nap on the couch where I had spent my high school years sleeping after class. The couch now had been utilized as a detox center for Chem 1. I knew they wouldn't steal anything, and even let them stay there unattended while I busied myself with Macy's chores. I did try to watch some television with them but Mika seemed to have a problem with them and arrived in his huge black truck to demand money. Macy told us they were very shallow for not paying him earlier, and in order to get the cash I drove them to an abandoned apartment complex to steal the heating elements off air conditioners for scrap metal. I was listening to The Pens in my car. I didn't have a problem with it, because I felt so useless it was a service I was glad to get credit from Macy for doing. The music and the colder atmosphere were exceptionally depressing. Now, the smell of cigarettes reminds me of this time when I was forcing my limbs to move the heating elements into my trunk despite being stiff. I am reminded of the fear. I was afraid of Mika. I thought he might shoot me.

  I was trying to figure out how much the men owed him. "Do you owe him for meth?" I asked.

  The bigger man, curiously named Brown, responded patronizingly. "You think all we do is do meth, don't you?"

  "I can't think of anything you would owe Mika for." Mika had a codename I couldn’t remember. My imagination swelled at the idea they might have some other kind of trade going on.

  "It's for tweak, what the hell do you think it was for?"

  I shrugged though I couldn't be satisfied by that explanation. Being Macy's boyfriend I didn't have to pay for any drugs, although I did have my own weed which had lasted the entire time I had known her. I was pretty sure there was something else going on with the handling of the drugs.

  The real story was much more fantastic than I even could have thought. The captain for the other team, Jerry, had a deal with Mika. He was telling me about it when I visited to see his weed, or kind bud. His friends in California were artists. Their company and time was their product, besides the Chem 2, or marijuana. They were "large-scale" media entrepreneurs. Any Internet video with them in it was guaranteed to get tons of hits, and you could pay a price to get into the films and market your own services. The videos were hypnotic, the captain was explaining. His friends were highly influential.

  They knew how to control people’s perception.

  He began to get a little suspicious of me I thought. I was chain-smoking in the trashy fashion which I handled such magnanimous company and that's probably what started the questions.

  "I heard that Macy thinks you've got the potential to be her Iris archetype. Don't you know what that means?" He asked.

  I stumbled over the word archetype when I said I wasn't all that interested in it.

  He explained that Macy herself was highly influential as well. “The archetype can be thought of like mental software. The ego is programmed and then downloaded to the collective unconscious, where others live and think as the archetype does.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  The captain told me I was worse than he had suspected. "The archetypes serve special purposes. The role they play is specified by the individuals who play those roles. You program yourself. The story is written by their character and personality. Do you know who you are? You're going to shape what her archetype for Iris means so you better get ready, and you better not be stupid when shit gets heavy. I'm telling you this as your bro. Right? The archetypes are based on the theory of the Tree of Life. The angels live at the topmost part of the Tree of Life, and archetypes below them, and regular people near the bottom. Inside each of us is the potential to be the archetype for the angels. Anyone could be an archetype," he said, then smiled. "But it's very expensive to get the attention a true archetype deserves. Macy has competitors on her own team. She needs you to be the strongest version of Iris out there. You can't choke at the last moment and rat her out." He blew into his pipe to clear an airway through the resin. "That's really what's trashy."

  I didn't know what to say. These weird stories I had only pretended to believe up to this point, out of fear of rejection or insecurity.

  "Your name, Adam, means something too. It means you’re the archetypal ‘man.’ It’s truly perfect. You’re like a light saber, Adam."

  I lost my speech. I went for another cigarette but dropped it and apologized and thought, ‘this could get me killed.’ I could get killed trying to make my girlfriend's insane plan happen, this nonsense about archetypes and angels, and whatever the Tree of Life could be. How complicated it all felt. She wouldn't tell me about anything, yet I didn't want her to anyway. The idea made me anxious. How much had I invested of myself into this relationship? I couldn't even fuck her. I thought I was losing it, and wante
d to leave the captain there in his pad but knew that would be rude. He was a socialite and would have been offended and not invited me over again if I left then. I lifted myself with my legs to a halfway point and realized this at the last second and collapsed back onto the floor with crossed legs.

  So why hadn't I kept my job and gotten the duplex? He was loading his weed pipe with kind. She was still doing Chem 1 and I wondered, Jesus, could I really help her? I could stand there with my conviction of my love for her and this other person would tell me things she had never even mentioned and I couldn't understand it anyway. I had been devoted before but now I felt like a harsh schism had bent itself between us. It was overwhelming and the room seemed to shrink from the contact high I was getting off the smoke he was trying to blow in my face. “Stop it,” I said.

  "My apologies," he said. "I'm here for you, if you ever have questions. Part of being the archetype fortunately is that you mustn't try too hard."

  Jerry was my friend, where Macy was my girlfriend and nothing else. I felt like such a bitch.  I finally asked, "so she wants me to be famous?" It seemed like a good question although I was barely paying attention to his company at this point. He laughed loudly.

  "You're already famous. You're dating Macy."

  “Famous how?”

  "That's what you'll have to figure out for yourself."

  “Oh.”

  I took some kind with me and ran a stoplight. The speeding traffic crashed headlong into my vehicle. The first car that was ever mine had been crushed from the driver's side. I regained consciousness at my Mom’s after two days' hospitalization. The concussion was serious.

  Chapter 5

  It took two weeks to figure out something wasn't right and I went to a psychologist. I told him I was irritable and scatterbrained and having a really emotional time trying to get my life back on track. I had recently broken up with my (I didn't say criminal) girlfriend and still felt like I was going to die all the time, despite being completely out of danger. I cried nonstop and I also told him I was upset because my high school friends weren't there for me. He said he couldn't do anything about that but told me I had probably suffered a serious and life-changing traumatic brain injury.

  He gave me debian for depression and irritability. We were all going to watch me very closely for any more changes or even improvement. I had decided my life was over. But after a few days, I did feel better. I got a job.

  I wasn't a waiter exactly but I did get tip-outs and had a lot of extra cash. Everyone who worked at the restaurant was exceptional and most of them were even in college, which I tempestuously envied and made large plans to enroll myself. The work was easy but I was really good at it, especially the details. The nights were intense and late, and I worked up and down the stairs attempting to hide the racket of dirty dishes. I could lean backwards and hold my hands outwards to keep the dishes in the bus tub. Fine dining has a special effect on someone that can be envisioned only if you meet the people themselves. Those people, who like to bill really extravagant checks on dinner and wine, have characters that are almost as magnanimous as the captains I had all but forgotten.

  I was glad to be away from the Chem 1 and debian improved my mood so far beyond what I had felt before that I can say now I was definitely manic for the first few weeks on the job. The mania brought sadness but it was a healing type, where I could regain perspective on how traumatic my relationships had been for so long. I could talk to these people about music and other things I loved, and they liked me for that.

  Whenever I would take debian in the mornings, I thought my imagination was somehow improved. The clarity with which I could perceive things now made me a newer person. I thought constantly of little scenarios where fantastic people came and went. The restaurant was the perfect environment for that. I wrote a story about a local dancer I met named Geronima. Actually, I wrote four stories but each one improved on the last and I considered my last story to be the only important one.

  I had changed completely, but had issues focusing on conversation and communicating. That was the scariest part, and I began to feel like I was like my biology teacher's daughter. Was I retarded now? With horror I could recall conversations and my memory seemed to warp my image of myself. I felt convinced that I had become more handicapped than my family had thought. I began to get extremely anxious before and during work. But I still could assure myself that I was okay, because I really liked myself, and that was how I could function. I liked the stories I wrote, and my coworkers, and wanted to eventually start a huge, purposeful life. ‘I am an adult now and,’ I thought with humor, ‘as soon as I could have sex I'd feel much much better.’

  The one thing holding me back from either enrolling in college or becoming a full-time waiter, was the lingering idea that I was still in love with her. It was stupid, I knew. I was torn by one emotion, which felt almost confused but happy; and another which longed for my ex-girlfriend and even the thrill of her company. My Mom was still working at the shelter and that would ultimately be the end to my life at the restaurant after the TBI, and a new introduction to my next life as a pedestrian of the pill I could call my own shelter, debian.

  I met Anne at my Mom's house when I came home from work one night. I avoided her at first by going into my old room which was socially acceptable even to me who was insecure, and when I overheard her I felt that first attraction to her when she took my virginity. She approached me in my room and gave me her number. I asked her how she was. She said she was having a hard time taking care of her new boyfriend who was nothing like me. Curiosity would execute me mercilessly that night. I woke up in her new place. I felt much much better.

  Chapter 6

  Macy wouldn't have me share this depiction of her, and would prefer I make a long letter about her other boyfriend, the captain. But as I sit in first class drinking short Cokes I think of how her ex-boyfriend Mika almost died in a shooting, which is how I met Macy at Mom’s.

  The path which led me to her was one I followed through weakness not courage and that must make her feel enraged. But she shall never read this, I suppose. No fire could take her but it was fire which consumed me when we were together. Although the way I see her all the time gives me wonder: will leaving help? Nor validation finds me, flying to my new home, nor comfort nor satisfaction. It is truly the outlaw of my conscience who could make me be so at unease for such a period of time. Exact matches we may be, we cannot say to each other that as lovers we made any kind of real progress. That is her loss. So I will continue about her.

  At long last, I had been initiated into the cult of personality surrounding her family and personal life. I had hit the pipe and smoked enough cigarettes for her and her mother to design a short mission I could help execute at the casino. My girlfriend had arranged for us to meet the man who had shot the recently appointed captain.

  I didn't know why the captain was so important, but apparently a man named Roger Ethan had shot him because of Chem 2, the substance which was going to be legalized very soon by our government.

  That was the reason we were at the casino: to search him out. The captain had been hired by the government as a survivor on a war on drugs and did whatever Macy told him. He was simply a very strong man that Macy had dated. She use him in an important purpose to give Chem 2 a touch of legitimacy. Instead of being an uncontrollable cultural mythos, she wanted to create a plethora of realities that the organization imagined. It was the honor and courage of the captain Mika which allowed him to skip out on attendance.

  He said I was going to get myself into to some crazy shit.

  He was once a low-level drug lord and had been shot and survived. When Macy recruited him to comfort civilians who knew very little of the pathology of drug use, he began working towards the wake-up call about the reality of Chem 2 legalization. He focused especially on the strong stuff called “kind bud.” It was tough for me with my high school diploma to understand, and I did a miserable job being of use which of course ca
used me intense anxiety and nearly got them all in real trouble.

  The captain, who had with her thought he was above the law and now worked for peace, or civilians, was the player in a CIA effort to comfort us about the legalization of weed. The captain was a man with street experience who could lead us to a better understanding of Chem 2 by getting us the good, valuable “kind.” Chem 2 was safer than Chem 1.

  I was the newbie and the focus of everybody's attention who knew the mission at the casino: her, her mother, me, and Jed.

  By the final hour I had without care accused her of stealing my car, although it was parked where I left it. That is enough detail to see the whole story. I thought the second half of the casino was too scary to approach at first. I imagined it was a place of dissection and torture where Mika would find me to execute eventually. By now you get the gist. I couldn't find Roger Ethan, and called Jed who was trying to help us stay organized from the parking lot. He said I was doing well, laughing. I told him I needed Macy.

  *

  The objective of the mission was to trade cell phones for the benefit of Roger Ethan's gross rage and envy of our skirmishing ability. I would give her mother my cell phone in the casino in front of Roger Ethan who was at the lotto machines pushing away at buttons. It took me hours to find her mother, but I knew through odd hints on the drive with her to the place that was the plan and I had nothing else but to stick to it.

  The bet-masters were watching me very closely, including security, as I trekked through the hallways into each room, scanning the crowd. I had lost her mother quickly because I thought she intended to hide from me. When I did find her, I realized she had gone off in search of Roger Ethan who had been tricked into coming by a phone call or weird suggestion from Mika.