Turn on the small black ImageGrimⓇ and surf the sewage. Record the information as it arrives:
-Do Not Miss Out Ladies and Gentlemen-
“I have the freedom to live now,” says the spelunking phlebotomist just before he enters the decrepit double-wide trailer. It is raining soft warm rain. Rural Mississippi rain. There is no electricity in the trailer, prompting the spelunking phlebotomist to turn on the headlamp mounted to his caving helmet.
“Great Scott!” exclaims the spelunking phlebotomist. The living room is unlivable, the rotted floor heaped with garbage and trash, the walls scored with angry bangs and slashes. Dried spatters and smears of feces, sauce and blood decorate the surfaces like abstract-expressionist murals. The gray ceiling sags like a wet quilt. Rainwater, filtered through filth, drips on a frozen orgy of dirty, mutilated dolls. Their plastic eyes stare out at the fetid landscape with dumb wonder.
-Focus on Machine Learning-
“But if you work at it you can find it again, my children! My little sheep!” Reverend Eustice shouts to his congregation. His Marshall County audience is rapt, sweating, nodding along to his fiery sermon.
The people in the pews are here for myriad reasons. For dozens of parents, it is a terrifying time. Preschools are teaching witchcraft to teething toddlers who chomp on dirty rubber doorstops, weeping for unreachable relief. Teenagers loot pet stores for ritual sacrifices. The devil lurks everywhere: behind tempting store shelves, inside the wicked rhythms of music, hidden in immoral images on television.
“Young girls are unnaturally fertile soil for the satanic sin of sexual attraction!” Reverend Eustice rages from the pulpit. “You know this in your heart!”
Scattered Amens float like frangible bubbles in the stagnant chapel air.
“But I said, No! I’m gonna feed him like family!” rails Pastor Eustice, talking about his adopted adolescent son, Enoch. “Enoch is dim, I do admit! Doesn’t have a lick of sense! But he’s my boy and I understand and forgive his ignorant ways! And I shall tend him with a firm, guiding hand!” He wipes the sweat from his hairless head with a tattered rag. “I must slap the Spirit into him, praise God!”
More Amens pop like muffled farts throughout the tiny chapel.
-We Guarantee the Best Prices-
One Biloxi police officer opens fire. The perp is so damaged he has to be torn down. Killed while doing his job. You love your job, right?
“Nice shot!” says Bart, the self-appointed sniper’s comrade in law enforcement.
“Thanks, B-man. I been hittin’ the range lately.”
Euell Kellens has been huffing holiday stuffing for eight straight days. Ranting and raving. The bullet in his chest called a halt to his meth binge but his frantic behavior continues. Euell rolls over, scrabbling in the dirt. “I got leeches in my bloodstream! I can feel them slithering in my veins!” he shrieks. “Help me get these things out of me!”
Rookie deputy Glenda Garcia makes the superfluous decision to hit him with her taser. The crabbed insanity in his face reminds her of small brown apples on her grandfather’s lawn. She thinks about shrunken heads.
“Whoa whoa whoa!” says Bart. “No need to jolt the sonofabitch!”
“Sorry, boss. My bad.” She shrugs. “Guess I got too excited.”
Euell Kellens looks up with dazed eyes at the five peace officers surrounding him and says, with the clarity of an emergency, “Y-ya’ll, k-killed m-me…” Foam dribbles from his quivering lips. “Y-ya’ll k-killed me s-stone d-dead, y-you fuckin’ b-bitch p-pigs…”
And then his heart ceases to beat.
“Awright, let the damn rig come on through,” says Bart, waving the ambulance toward the casualty.
-Epic Fun Is Just a Click Away-
The spelunking phlebotomist aims his headlamp behind a soggy, collapsed couch. There is what looks like dried vomit on a mummified poodle. Next to that is a hole in the rotten-soft floorboards. He unhooks the blue nylon rope at his hip and prepares to lower himself into the dank hole. Fruit flies hover above him in a black haze. Cockroaches scuttle around the perimeter of the dark entrance. A mosquito stings the back of his neck and he thinks about West Nile virus, encephalitis, malaria. A trailer in the Deep South can be deadlier than any remote jungle in deepest, darkest Africa.
The spelunking phlebotomist secures one end of the line to a propane water heater in the bathroom. The bathroom is a grisly sight and smells like a monkeyhouse in a corrupted zoo. The cracked toilet has been tipped over and then never hoisted upright again. Someone has been using the bathtub instead. Dried diarrhea Rorschach tests are slathered everywhere.
The spelunking phlebotomist declines to perceive meaning in them.
The spelunking phlebotomist returns to the cave entrance behind the mildewed couch. He threads the rope through the rappel device and attaches it to his harness.
Then he leans back and slowly lowers himself down into the hole.
-Compliments to the Management-
Reverend Eustice pounds his fist against the lectern and says, “My boy Enoch is guilty! I admit it! He surrendered to temptation and subdued that girl! But her vile temptation should also be decried, praise God! That demonic little succubus and her shameless displays of nakedness must also be acknowledged and punished! She is complicit in their mutual sin and violation! It takes two to tango, brothers and sisters!”
The congregation voices their assent.
“My poor boy was seduced by the wickedness of her pure female carnality! He is foolish! He is human! But he is not the villain in this tragic situation! For that girl offered herself as gazingstock! Enoch was weak! But she gained power with her sin and flagrant, wanton harlotry!”
The congregation nods along, murmuring words of encouragement.
“And what of her parent’s guilt in this? Offering their daughter up as Lot offered his two virgin girls to the mob at Sodom! Shame on them as well!”
Someone says, “Testify.”
“I will handle my boy with stern words and a raised fist! When he was delivered to me at age eleven he was lost, confused and mired in sin! The first thing I did was rechristen him with a holy name! When I received him, his name was Chance! Chance! It was an evil appellation! The irony was palpable! And I immediately baptized him and renamed him Enoch! A strong, Old Testament name! Enoch was famous for his piety! His Biblical bloodline! Enoch walked with God! Hallelujah!”
Several shouts of Amen! And Hallelujah! erupt from the congregation. They are stirred by the sermon. Reverend Eustice always provides them with an exciting church service.
-Under an Early Weather Alert-
The paramedic is diligently pumping on the stricken man’s chest but cannot restart his silenced heart. Another fatal cop-shot has claimed the life of yet another mad, erratic addict.
A yellow Volkswagon slams to a stop behind the ambulance and a woman tumbles out and staggers toward the commotion. She is disheveled, dressed only in a dirty pink robe. She screams when she sees Euell sprawled dead in the dirt.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” she screams, as two officers attempt to pull her away from the site of the crime.
“Step back, ma’am,” Bart orders. “This is still an active police situation here.”
“He didn’t do anything!” she screams. “You murdered him! Shot him like a rabid dog!”
“Ma’am, I’m not gonna tell you again,” says Bart.
She wrestles herself free, leaving the two officers holding her empty robe. Naked now, the woman runs toward Euell’s body. The two officers release the robe and tackle her to the ground. Deputy Glenda Garcia hits her with a taser and she grunts and convulses while the other officers restrain her, fumbling handcuffs onto her fluttering wrists.
“Well, shit,” says Bart.
-TURN OFF THE TV FOREVER-
The spelunking phlebotomist drops through the darkness. His headlamp illuminates nothing but more gloom. The thick black void seems to stretch forever.
The spelunking phlebotomist has never seen anything like it. He feels suspended in deep starless space. The light on his helmet reveals only his hands on the striped rope and his dangling legs when he looks down. There seems to be nothing below. He will run out of rope before he reaches the bottom.
If there is a bottom. The drop might last forever.
His ragged respiration is the only sound in this limitless abyss, until he finally runs out of rope. And then the clacking, chattering begins.
It sounds like gnashing teeth. Surrounding him and biting into the dark. He swivels his head with frantic, birdlike movements, trying to spot something with the meager beam of light. Nothing appears but the clicking teeth get louder. Closer.
The spelunking phlebotomist widens his eyes, aiming the beam, searching desperately for the gnawing jaws that seem to be eating their way toward him. He pumps his legs and begins to swing like a pendulum, reaching out with the light.
And then it is there—a vast metropolis forged by moonless night. Buildings of blindness. Creatures with teeth. The air has grown cold and smells like ice crystals formed from raw sewage. The teeth continue clicking toward the spelunking phlebotomist and now he sees the eyes. Millions of unblinking eyes, every one glinting with countless galaxies, staring with infinite multitudes that finally overwhelm him and break his brain.
The spelunking phlebotomist laughs with a piercing scream that brings caustic gastric acids rising to the back of his throat and he chokes to death, sanity dangling helplessly on the line.
-Trying To Get Ready for Easter-
Reverend Eustice shouts from the pulpit, “A satanic scourge has visited our good township, my children! A scourge! It arrives on a river of blood! It stains our youth with scarlet sin! And it smells of sulfur and sex!”
A man mumbles, “Yup, thass right…”
“We must protect ourselves from these malicious demons! They are assaulting the sanctity of our families! With tongues of fire and salacious evil eyes!”
An overlapping smattering of Amens escapes from the congregation.
“And teenage pregnancies and children borne of rape are the least of our worries! Praise God…”
Turn off the ImageGrimⓇ. That’s enough for today.
Crumbling Asphalt 