It all started by chance, as it usually does. The pamphlet was meant for my next door neighbor in 32A but it was wrapped around my door knob by mistake. “Come hear what no one else will tell you. Come hear the truth!” I gave the thing a quick scan, the images of mushroom clouds and gas masks revolted me and I tossed the silly thing in the trash without giving it a second thought. Later that night in the deepest recesses of my sleep the pamphlet came creeping back and I had the most nightmarish dream of gas mask wearing Nazi’s goose-stepping through my living room. Each footfall raising a mushroom cloud of dust. I was hot and a bit fevered and chalked it all up to the egg salad I had for dinner, perhaps a few days older than it should have been.
I spied one of those pamphlets wrapped around an empty apartment on my way out to work the next door, so I grabbed it. On the bus I examined it more closely and read it over 7 or 8 times. Each reading the words carried more weight and the message more dire. Everything I had come to love in this life, my job, Penny, Mom and Dad, the Yankees, all of them were oblivious to the real threat to our existence. Simply put, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I was a good man and thus far had not lifted a finger to stop evil. Evil had trampled through my living room and my dreams last night and now I was mad.
I got off the bus at the next stop and began to walk. Anywhere was better than where I was currently standing. It’s as if I could feel evil nipping at my heels like a puppy. Trying to bring me down. The rally wasn’t until that evening. All I could thing about was attending and joining the cause. To take up arms against evil in its many guises. To join a brotherhood of like minded individuals, to once again restore the natural balance to life itself.
All around me, walking this way and that were mindless automatons unaware of the pawns they had become. Ignorance is the most powerful weapon in evil’s arsenal. I found the nearest convenience store and converted all my money into quarters then found a copier machine in the library and made 321 copies of my pamphlet. I handed them out to the most mindless looking people that passed by. Some through it back in my face, some refused to take the thing. They acted as if I was handing them a bag of bacteria. Some yelled that I needed to put my tinfoil hat back on and get on the short bus from whence I came. These where the ones that we the closets to hope, so I began to chase them in front of the library and would stuff the pamphlet into their pockets.
I guess that’s when the police were notified of what I was doing. As agents of evil, I gave them a good run. There were too many of them and eventually one of the cops shot me with a Taser. I convulsed for 20 maybe 30 seconds until my body’s nervous system reset. During that 30 seconds or so I achieved a new, deeper level of consciousness. I was surrounded by police wearing bubble bath tiaras with drawn Tasers in their hands. Here was one of Evils may faces.
I only hoped there would be fewer Tasers in Miami.