FIRE

ON

THE

MOUNTAIN

 

 

Adler S Walt

Dedicated to: Daria Andreavna Skorobogatova

Also to Elena Komarova,

Yelizaveta Kotlyarova,

Valentina Stanovova,

With Special thanks to

ALAN MEDVINSKY

 

Thank you to my editor Daniella Bonder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A C T O N E: S T R A S T

The Mother of FLame

 

E P I S O D E S, List

 

 

PRELUDE: “Storytime”, SET IN MOSCOW

ONE: “A Double Funeral” SET IN THE BRONX

TWO: “The Last of the Underground,” SET IN HAIFA

THREE: “The Tavern,” SET IN MEHANATA

FOUR: “Red on the Run,” SET IN NEGEV DESERT

FIVE: “A Message to Sympathizers” SET IN NEGEV DESERT

SIX: “Safe House J” SET IN UPPER WEST SIDE

SEVEN: “A Dream from 1999” SET IN THE BRONX

EIGHT “The Rise of the Black Mermaid” SET IN CARRIBEAN SEA

NINE “Maya’s Escort Service” SET IN NEGEV DESERT

TEN “The Tunnel to London or Russia” SET ON A TRAIN

ELEVEN “The Bratva” SET IN MEHANATA

TWELVE: “The Brothers” SET IN CROWN HEIGHTS

THIRTEEN: “The Assisted Suicide” SET IN ADDIS ABBA

FOURTEEN: “The Coast of Brooklyn” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

FIFTEEN: “The Unit has a Palaver” SET IN CARRIBEAN SEA

SIXTEEN: “Little Talks at the Rock in 2000” SET IN UPPER WEST SIDE

SEVENTEEN: “A Conversation at the Tavern” SET IN MEHANATA

EIGHTEEN: “Ideological Lessons” SET IN CARRIBEAN SEA

NINETEEN: “A Bomb Plot” SET IN MEHANATA

TWENTY: “The Unit Arrives” SET IN BLOCK ISLAND

TWENTY ONE: “Brunette in Grapes” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

TWENTY TWO: “Photos from Hell” SET IN LOWER EAST SIDE

TWENTY THREE: “The Skin Suit” SET IN BLOCK ISLAND

TWENTY FOUR: “Bohemian Festival Day 1” SET IN ONDERDOCK FIELDS

TWENTY FIVE: “Bohemian Festival Day 2” SET IN ONDERDOCK FIELDS

TWENTY SIX: “Bohemian Festival Day 3” SET IN ONDERDOCK FIELDS

TWENTY SEVEN: “The Labor Day Rising” SET IN GRAND ARMY PLAZA

TWENTY EIGHT: “Debrief Penthouse J” SET IN UPPER WEST SIDE

TWENTY NINE: “Black Black Hearts” SET IN BATTERY PARK

THIRTY: “Blessings” SET IN MIDTOWN MANHTTAN

THIRTY ONE: “The Boardwalk Never Ends” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

THIRTY TWO: “The Peruvian Friend” SET IN MEHANATA

THIRTY THREE: “My Dream is to be Free” SET IN BUSHWICK

THIRTY FOUR: “New Year’s Communique” SET IN MEHANATA

THIRTY FIVE: “The Russian Quarter” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

THIRTY SIX: “The Mirrors on the Ceiling” SET IN MANHATTAN BEACH

THIRTY SEVEN: “Drunk Drowning” SET IN EAST HAMPTON

THIRTY EIGHT: “Valera Says” SET IN BUSHWICH

THIRTY NINE: “Accosted” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

FORTY: “Torture at the Foxy Cabaret Club” SET IN BRIGHTON BEACH

FORTY ONE: “The Curfew” SET IN FINANCIAL DISTRICT

FORTY TWO: “The Fall” SET IN FINANCIAL DISTRICT

EPILOGUE

 

P R E L U D E

 

Two little partisans hide in safe house in Russia.

 

The snow fall was exceptional. It was as if god had pulled a vast white blanket upon us to tuck Russia to bed, and then the devil and a host of petty bureaucrats did not take the time to keep the power running, and so this winter was the winter that tens of thousands across the country, were tucked in without heat into a long kiss goodnight.

 

Blat.                                                                                                                         

 

But I have a very supple and extraordinary woman lying naked in my arms and below a great burgundy comforter she slumbers gently as I prepare to read her epic verses of Amerikanski poems written in her name while I caress her soft blond lioness mane.

 

“Where did you find that?” she asks like a pouty German baroness.

 

I am paging through a leather bound compilation written in what she recognizes with a dismissive glance to be English. The room is dimly lit with the flickering flames of candles and a dim glow from the night stand casts a thrilling ambiance. The flat itself is on a fourth floor walkup just fifteen minutes strolling on the prospect up to the Arbat. And of course so close to the center of everything our heat is on just fine and the room burns with reverberations of a passionate exchange. But yesterday a general curfew was issued and the capital placed under martial law. Everything has been locked down and there are tanks in the street. So we bolted the door turned down the lights and made love in the only three ways we knew how.

Waiting for the government to lift the curfew.

           

            Having given her every bit of me, my life included several times via deed and also a contract she humors me sometimes when after love making I read her old poems from past lives we led long ago.

 

To remind us that while the great uprising is not yet over, we are free because we have finally found a quiet little place to love each other roughly and via our previous assignments, absolved ourselves of our past crimes. Thus our hard work has allowed us now to have a simple life where we can carry out the only justifying and partially redeeming characteristic of the species; expressive and wanton love. To do so we must now hide in plain sight.

 

In a well-fortified safe house buried in the heart of the Russian capital.

 

I lock eyes with a woman who in another life broke me down and sold me as a slave. Her eyes, her eyes! Even the bluest day on the Caspian contains no such expansive shimmer; there is no comparison for this level of captivation. All things we have done, or did or may even still have to do are only so that we might never have to bear again the painful agony of our tumultuous separation.

 

“Read then my little bleak one, my Mayakovsky,” she says disarming me.

 

And thus smiling I read some.

 

“Daveigh,” I exclaim, which means ‘enough’ “Poem #038: Moscow Hostage Crisis Part One.”

“Dedicated to me, Dasha Andreavna,” she exclaims right back.

Her hands pantomime the ghost of quotations for that name is certainly not the one she was born with.

She recites; “Life of the salve show, let us remove you from your tower and observe how we helots live in the wilderness below!”

 

“Are you blushing yet?” I ask her in jest.

            “We know not how,” she is all she replies.

She then claps with excitement, kisses me wild eyed then retreats under the covers.

“Did you like it?” I ask following her under the vast red folds of the heavy blanket.

“I like very much it when you try and talk so dirty to me in American,” she says in Hebrish with a devilish little smile.

I wonder when she learned to speak like that.

“I am capable of just about anything when you believe in me,” I remind her.

She laughs at that. Though knows the full extent of it.

 

“I believe, that you still believe in Brooklyn Soviet,” she says softly and kisses my lips.

 

“You whisper always of dangerous things,” I tell her slyly.

“Story time tovarish lover. I challenge you now. One for one. Two for two,” she purrs.

“The trouble sweetness with your stories is that not a single one of them are true,” I say to her. She feigns a pout.

“The greatest fun with your stories is that so many of them are!” she retorts.

“Dasha, what will be the prize for the partisan with the premium story?”

“The usual my daring Valera,” she says with a smile.

And licks her lips at my obvious arousal.

Her amusement and our perpetual survival had gotten us in quite a yarn of danger. She’s been worth every bullet. As well as dirty things I dare not reveal at this juncture that I do to women as well shaped as she. Or worse the tender things I do to balance those out and then so let my guard fall, completely.

Under the folds of the burgundy comforter we languish in the sensual embrace of each other’s longing as our pillow fort assumes new dimensions. A vastness will unfold with the power of words and the only distraction from the yarn of escapade will be the fortified lusts we will unleash when a parable wears thin. She will draw on fairy tales and I will spin from the ghosts of my dead friends and the darkness still in me. Somewhere in between that space hope will float perhaps. We expect and encourage each other’s full participation.

 

“Ladies always go first, for this is the code of the Haitian gentleman” she declares and launches right into her opening tale.

Let the mind games begin.

 

            Daria thus exclaims;

 

“If I am woman, and he attempts to be man then we are easy prey.”

 

For the gods, the spirits, lesser demons and also human devils! Sin and general winter are historically undefeated. That’s a fact. Above all those forces seeking to make us base slaves, we are bound most to our own wild passions!

I am creature ruled almost selfishly by my passion, and so is he. Inevitable really that so much did burn.

I do not make any remembering when we had this conversation. Only that it occurred.

It was sometime after our very first meeting.

Sometime before I found myself handcuffed to a chandelier fixture in the Millennium Hotel awaiting my deadly snuff and torture! Sometime after blue moons of their Bohemian festival. Sometime before that murderous uprising called “the Great Disorder”. Sometime after the Great Revolt. Which was its more articulate, yet ultimately more homicidal older sibling.

Before I sold soul to a devil without making ask of questions!

Certainly after I realize I loved him as I have never loved a man before in this life or the next, or one after that.

Before I realized that I had loved him several times before. And that we are both so dangerous when in love. To each other. Also world at large.

And that Russian love, and American love have very different expectations that come with them.

I will now make careful my choice of my words.

Speaking his American language with my Russian thoughts is to attempt placement of entire Caspian Sea into hip flask. My English when spoken without any intoxications hints that I will speak more clearly with my actions.  Were he sober then when we found each other on that roof top, instead of passion punch drunk he’d not have ignored the threat our lusty adventures soon presented. We would have walked away. Despite his fascination with me. Despite my overwhelming beauty.

But that is not how the story was to write itself!

He could deny me nothing. But no one dare should point the finger to me that I did not give warning! Perhaps we were blinded by the vodka lullabies, the bright lights of the towers and the good night moon.

 

“I’m going to use you,” I announced on the roof of the district. And he didn’t care.

“Completely and utterly so that I may get from point A to point B.”

Did I say that to him, or did he say that to me?

“I consent to such use, use away,” he immediately retorted, “we will see how far in the alphabet we can climb with you on my shoulders!”

“The Russian alphabet, it has more letters. The letters also can take different subtle meaning based on where they are placed. The sounds, they will completely change. Some hard, some soft.”

“Place yourself besides me for now,” is all he said to that.

“I shall, but tomorrow this will be finished. How long can you make more of your favorite poetic noises, your rhymes in American English as you devote your life to something hopeless that cannot ever be?”

He looked at me with big bright hazel eyes.

“I like the way that all sounds, he claimed, “I like way the way the word ‘hopeless’ rolls off your lips. I am an Amerikanski, as you accuse me. Hopeless is just a call to arms.”

What could I say in the face of mad idealism! His passion did touch me.

My eyes flashed blue silver back.

“I’m going to devastate you, you know,” I casually mentioned and I took his hand and thrust it against my heart so he could know that I was flesh and blood like him. No angel. Or Devil. Or ghost.

“Well we shall not later claim I wasn’t given a fair warning,” he whispered but for some reason did not try to kiss me.

“Had we met in another time, were I a different person wearing a different life; I would still know you,” he declared, “I cannot put the emotions that I wear like cufflinks to my funeral to bed as easily as you.”

In the darkness of the district night. In the wilderness of North America I repeatedly told him nothing but white lies. I did what needed to be done.

 

“It is sad that it all has to end,” I remarked.

 

These were the first words uttered in acceptance of a risk and a warning between myself Daria Andreavna and the mad idealist named Sebastian Adonaev. Our love and the totality of our affair will be thing of Post-Soviet lore and Amerikanski voyeuristic fascination. There have been many doomed loves before. Captured artistically in bright theatre lights of both empires. There have been tales of hard hearts which remain unbreakable. And wild bohemian longings that conquered heroically the conventions of their day.

Often Valera, whose American name was Sebastian would ask me, whose Russian name is Daria Andreavna; “Is the story of our love to be more like Russian literature or more like American cinema, mere Paramount Pictures?”

I would cryptically respond, “General Winter has never been defeated, not once ever.”

So we performed miracles. In the wilderness to remain together a variety of strange longings took shape and bore most irregular fruit.

That much is clear.

 

            The first miraculous act was turning his tragic tears into vodka. This was my happy gift to him. To turn an unusual and storied past into a heroic song and dance. And make his dead mechanical heart beat like a war drum as the waves of the uprising crashed upon the nation we shared or really I should say, co-inhabited.

 

            The second miracle was the theft of the blue moon itself. Such a task was just a starting point for him to please me, also my ransom.  He took to heart that the materialism of a Russian woman is but an ante up to play a most choice and high stakes game of loyalty.

 

            The third miracle was for us to put bullets in the devil himself. In retaliation for crimes of the past committed against us, and our love, and humanity in general.

 

            The fourth miracle act was that I could truly come to love him. And forgive him for what he had to do in my name. In the name of his long dead wife also.

 

It took several lives and a solid contact between us to accomplish these four miraculous acts. They will make wild tale and epic song.  Mine I did with ambition first and then secretly, begrudgingly with love. His he did to please and save me and avenge his fallen tortured soul. Via my company and our secret series of kisses we made war on the devil and his entourage. And we painted together a portrait that in the end makes Russian literature look like tame romantic comedy, and Amerikanski Cinema, just flickering soma on telescreen.

 

To beat back brutal hunger and or feed those dependent upon them; to meet the benchmark called survival; human body and mind capable of any number of general sins.

 

At times grossly unpalatable to human soul. If you believe in such things! It is not just question of what we all must to do to preserve our own selves. The shifting of alliances in pursuit of securing our deliverance from the wilds of worldly living is exhausting. Strange bed fellows make and break even the strongest of hearts.

 

The wilderness at night is vast and treacherous place that to some is source of fearful panic. To others bevy of potential opportunity!

 

In darkness of night fallen angels appear as demons at times. Most treacherous are our human misjudgments. The nuances of intention are lost to perceptions of trickery. Violations of trust. Devils can look angelic for a time and humans with host of mixed motives can see best kept secrets revealed like so much dirty laundry blowing in the cold winds of night.

 

Not here to talk to you about night! Or about all the devils that thrive in its long shadow.

This just story about when feeling returns to the heart when the body has been dead for many days. So many that the world of the living is but a restored memory. Also about the selling of souls and the banding together of destinies.  Also about whether poems can feed anything more than hope in the face of hopelessness.

 

And whether more reckless and brazen hope, is indeed the only cure something so called hopelessness invites.

So it’s Haitian love story, also a Vodka Lullaby staring brave Russian angel from Penza me! And devilish American paramedic born in New York. If that’s how like look at it. Little like the Christ Story, has less violence and more nudity and good deal more vodka from tears in place of water into wine.

 

And it also about trying to steal away another man’s wife. Which is whole category of sin onto itself. It’s about old souls coming back for each other, even if just for a fall.

This yarn is play with words based on true Brooklyn noire based on two people not “being in love” or “missing each other” or “being tortured by our supposed fate”, but instead some wide range of prophesized events which we set in motion via of our high impact knowing of each other. Maybe like in a biblical sense.

 

But with more carnality! And gun play.

 

Set not in heaven or hell like the Bible but in the Holy Land of Brooklyn and the Wilderness of the Financial District in the City of New York, mostly to glow of blue moon light at night and structure fires by day.

 

In Moscow! In Haiti! In the heart of Brooklyn Soviet! In places that were and also soon could be!

 

This not just the story of Sebastian Vasyli Adonaev and I, Dasha Andreavna Skorbogatova; it is also a tale of forbidden-impossible love in the age of anarchist trials; of great train robberies in the former Soviet Union, and of a tavern in the wilderness where lost souls find short but wholly tumultuous company in post Capitalist America on the eve of a global human rights revolution.

 

And so begins the tale of Daria and Sebastian, a Russian me and a most irregular Amerikanski he and the partisans we led into a vile battle. Star crossed lovers with the moon as our witness, fuck and vodka as our means of cross interrogation and higher ground beyond the waves of hopelessness and fate as our primary objective.

 

He begins with memories of a murder and a war. I with a warning but a promise of deliverance via passionate love, once adequately demonstrated.

And yet,                                                                                                                                          “We begin our tale with a double funeral!”

 

 

O N E, the Bronx

 

“A Double Funeral”

 

 

Somewhere in the Bronx a sea of red brick high rise tenements hits a long highway bed and then the dead place of poverty becomes a green and hilly oasis. This juxtaposition is striking.

They all found their way north along that endless highway to a place called Wakefield.

 

Victoria Christiana Contreras was dressed in all black, a lace vale covering a pretty albeit heavily make upped face and contacts which turned her eyes vaguely feline brown blue. Her husband, Ernesto Rafael Contreras was in denim jeans and black shirt as he owned no funeral appropriate suit and had only sobered himself up long enough to attend the two funerals. He was unshaven; his baby face was markedly hard for the first time in many years.

The weather was poorly.

 

It was nearly New York Winter, but it had refused to snow this year. They were in a crowd of several hundred mourners anonymously performing mass mourning while numerous people did so more dramatically.

 

The first Funeral was for Sebastian Adonaev. It was very well attended considering all the bridges he had burned that year. But very few people believed he was really dead.

Everyone was speaking of “seeing it coming.” Also of his epic potential now buried just as many had suspected before his 30^th year.

 

It was rather like a circus actually. There were way too many people speechifying, justifying and explaining, and there was an overabundance of booze flask flowing. And many of the mourners were black, and many were wearing blue ambulance Class A uniforms which was striking too. His parents were kind and bourgeoisie. They didn’t break down or cry. They just quietly held court and whispered on the sidelines, his mother in particular with select old friends paying their respects over whisper.

It was a closed casket. Sebastian had shot himself twice in the head with pistol and then toppled seventeen stories off a roof. There was very little left of his face.

 

It was theoretically a Hebrew funeral. But the only thing Yiddish about it was that it was done on the tasteful but cheap. He went in the ground less than 24 hours after his alleged suicide.

There not being a note was the most un-nerving aspect of the whole thing.

Sebastian was amongst other things a prolific writer. Not leaving a suicide note was highly suspect, vaguely anticlimactic. But, the inner circle knew exactly why he’d gone and done what he did, what he thought he had to do.

 

“Over a woman that didn’t even love him,” explained his best friend Nikholai Trickovitch. And then he spat.

 

“I want to see the body,” demanded a woman named Anya Drovtich with thick black dreads and the blue FDNY uniform that many are wearing illegally out of respect for the fact that Sebastian had once been an EMT with that organization until they fired him.

She said what many were thinking, but few other than the parents, Trickovitch or Mickhi Dbrisk had the cred with the dead to declare.

Victoria and Ernesto quietly stood in the background of the mob of sorrows. They recognized many of Sebastian’s associates and former lovers and comrades from the Z.O.B., his gang, clique, club, and ‘cult’ (which many have and did still call it), whatever it had been, or still secretly was.

Victoria knows the female faces slightly better than the male ones. Ernesto was more involved peripherally in the internal club politics.

“The casket stays closed sister,” declares Mickhi Dbrisk, a tall Jamaican in a black pea coat. His grey-blue-black armband and the small silver pin on his left lapel indicating him as a person of authority here.

 

“I won’t believe he’s dead until I see the body,” Anya repeats.

 

The mob mills about in the brick house cold, the mother of the dead man nods to Mickhi Dbrisk. Sebastian’s mother has circular, red wizard spectacles. His father is portly and normally jovial, albeit not really such as his first son’s last first funeral.

Dbrisk opens the casket.

And there lies the body of the poet, paramedic and rebel hooligan Sebastian Adonaev. He appears to be wearing a pair of bootleg designer Ray Band dark sun glasses. A Haitian flag is tucked in his left lapel.

 

 

Four hours, three shots of vicious Rakia, two Coronas and a car service ride later.

Somewhere on the coast of Brooklyn.

 

 

The second funeral is quite small and fancy. It’s on the other side of town. Ernesto and Victoria take a black town car hired out from the Mexican Express. Sebastian’s funeral was in the Bronx and Dasha’s is in Southern Brooklyn.

There are fewer than two dozen people there. No speaks anything but Russian and no one cries. Dasha looks as beautiful dead as she did alive, like a gently sleeping doll. The funeral was nominally Russian Orthodox, as that was her husband’s religion. And although Dasha was technically Ivoryish, the husband has spared no expense. Her mother had been flown in from Penza, on the husband’s insistence she was to be buried here and not brought back to Russian.

There were a couple lady friends that Victoria knew without knowing. There was an assortment of men, looking suspiciously at each other.

Ernesto’s Russian was much stronger than Victoria’s though it was his third language. He made out vaguely hushed interaction. Scene size ups.

Victoria knew very little about the nightlife of Dasha outside of the Bulgarian Tavern ‘Mehanta’. Only that there was husband named Maccluskey and a boyfriend named Surge, and also a corporate lawyer named Dmitry. She had a best friend named Tanya.

She could basically only guess at who everyone else was besides the husband. Maybe.

Allegedly Dasha’s heart had stopped roughly 24 hours ago. The medical examiner inconclusively blamed a hazardous midnight cocktail of red bulls, vodka shots and cocaine, but Dasha wasn’t really known to play with that stuff, anymore.

The paramedics found her body at the Stillwell Station. She was pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital.

 

She had in her purse, amongst other things a small book of poems written to her by Sebastian Adonaev. He allegedly killed himself just a day after confirming she was gone.

 

“Allegedly, blat” was the only word in English being bandied about this funeral.

 

“Who is to blame for the death of my daughter?” her mother asked Victoria in broken English when no one seemed to be paying attention, “which one of these men?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dasha told me that there was some crazy ambulance poet in love with her. She hinted that this man had been trying to steal her away for about a year. Who killed my daughter’s heart?”

“I don’t know,” repeats Victoria.

“Is that man here now, this Sebastian?”

“No. He’s dead. He shot himself twice after seeing your daughter’s corpse. We just came from his funeral,” says Ernesto quietly.

Ernesto looks like he might cry looking down at Dasha’s body buried in Peony flowers and fancy white casket. He had loved her too, while still loving his wife of course. Everyone had loved Dasha Andreavna, without knowing very much about here because she was young and free and exotic and beautiful and impossible to tame.

Many men here had tried, her husband included.

“Who is to blame for this catastrophe?” asks the mother again.

 

And nobody really knew. Allegedly a lot of fucking things had happened over the course of the year 2012, in the wilderness of New York City. Also called by some The City of Many Many Lights.

 

“A senseless tragedy. A senseless goddamn waste of…,” the very well-dressed man in the custom cut black suit whose name is Dmitry Khulushin, who had almost said ‘talent’ aloud, but instead, said “…of perfection.”

 

Dasha’s mother began to quietly sob which is permissible for a woman and mother to do at a Russian funeral. Her daughter had come a very long way to die for absolutely nothing.

Ernesto grabs Victoria by the arm, “It’s time to leave.”

And his eyes say he means it.

 

Ernesto looks as though the hard defenses of his man code machismo will crumple any minute now. They wait in the cold outside the funeral hall for another Mexican Express cab to take them home. Ernesto finally begins to weep heavily without sobs for Dasha whom he once very much loved and Sebastian who was one of his closest friends. He had introduced them and thus felt now more than any other moment in the year responsible for what had happened. In both Peruvian and Russian culture, real men do not by any stretch of imagination cry in front of mixed company. Wives included.

 

But cry he does wiping away the tears as they form. Victoria is an American, the children of Fenian Catholics. Fenian Catholics make up about 1/6^th of the population and cry in front of whomever they want.

 

The cold wind blows deathly. The Mexican Express is nowhere in sight.

 

Victoria Lynch takes out a leather bound volume of Sebastian’s poetry on the subject of Dasha Andreavna. There were three copies only. She finds some solace in having the only copy that will survive the ordeal. He had always told her he hoped his poems would absolve him of the calamity caused by loving that woman.

Rafaela Ernesto mourns. Victoria Christiana reads on.

 

There are 99 poems in total. Sebastian had loved Daria something endless. And when she died there was nothing on this cold earth left for him to love. Himself included.

 

Her tragic tale then concluded, I, Valera also called Sebastian think to myself; ‘we could blush at the pain we’ve caused others in the name of good causes. But, we do not.’

“We surely pulled that job off, albeit most traumatically,” I testify to her and the bugs in the wall of the safe house.

 

“Never send a man to do a woman’s job,” Daria replies.

 

“Highly dramatic, I applaud you. A grand and deceptive opening. Though not the double funeral I was thinking of. Certainly that was indeed a most tragic day,” I tell her.

“We were only parted for a lunar month,” she reminds me.

“Well if my memory serves me correctly, prior to that month I had to wait 28 years to find you. I was speaking more to those we may have briefly traumatized with our out of body elopement.”

She gives me a stern stone face.

“You’re completely whipped. Is that the right word? Whipped?”

“It is dorogaia. And perhaps I am. Whipped like a planation slave until I can no longer feel pain or fear. Such was needed to love you as I did.”

“And to love me as you do?!”

Her face again feigns a pout.

“Possessing you has only intensified it I must confess.”

Then suddenly a mad woman’s devilish happy grin.

“Do you remember the games I used to play?” she asks.

“Used to, ha. Or, still do?” I say tracing a figure eight with my finger about her navel. When you used to make me prove how much I loved you with epic impossible feats?”

“I loved those games!”

“And I would deliver on them each time with a larger ante.”

“That was something. The moon! You shouldn’t have,” she smiles.

“My first story then to counter your opening reminder of our sad funeral will be about the only woman I’ve ever encountered who has more wild machinations in her head than you and the emancipatory mission to retrieve the man who made me the zealous partisan I am today.”

“Maya and Andrew,” she whispers her eyes now ready to devour detail.

“Emma and Avinadav,” I say using their truer names.

 

“How your Sebastian came to be intimate friends with the mother and father of the Mahdi and Messiah of our age, was due to his brief stint in Israeli night life promotion which led to my eventual enlistment in the fledgling Résistance movement there. I’d gotten banged up. I’d seen real bad things happen to my comrades during the purge of the underground.”

 

“Tell me more,” she says in Russian.

 

 

T W O, Haifa, Israel

 

“The Last of the Underground”

 

It’s November of 2001, and they are sitting in a Haifa hills café that is small and dimly lit, secluded from the street by a big black Bedouin sheet. The last light of day falls softly on the Carmel.

 

A fleeting splendor ripples over the harbor bay.

 

The boy is too thin to look American. His eyes have a lean and hungry look and are bad eyed and deeply sunken. They are filled with hate.  His clothing is worn and torn. He might even be mistaken for a Russian street kid. The dirty gray corduroy cap on his head is encrusted with sand and sweat. It conceals his natty brown hair and gives him the appearance of a child like Che Guevara, perhaps in his own mind alone. The loose, blue pin-stripe suit he wears had been kosher cut in Golder’s Green, but is now a patchwork of torn threads and desert dust. He removes a crumpled green pack of Noblisse cigarettes from the inner pocket, puts one in his mouth and lights it. He takes long drags.

 

It looks as though he might cry out at any moment, or lash out across the table throttling the chubby preacher with his bare hands. If he lets down his guard down long enough though, he might have to admit total defeat.

 

Occasionally the boy looks up to stare across the table at the man who is so determined to save him.  This true Christian soldier has a cherub-like face even though he is in his forties and sports a brown scraggly beard. The chubby man is a proselytizer disguised as a tour guide.  The man is uncertain whether this meeting will lead to more violent outbursts. His last encounter with this boy in Jerusalem was a debacle. The man says a quick prayer and begins to talk in his soft Midwestern drawl.

 

“I’m sorry,” the preacher says.

 

The boy looks up. His response is steady and calculated despite his condition.

 

“They fucked her within an inch of her life before they killed her. They ripped her to meat shreds. Her body, was cut into pieces. And then they dumped her along the southern highway as if they knew there wasn’t even any use in covering the thing up. Where was your man Jesus then? Not with the underground. What do you know of good hard pain?”

 

It is a sharp and biting response. There is a quick pause and the flash of yet another silent prayer as the preacher man’s eyes dart up. Apparently the kid’s partner was quite dead.

 

“I know plenty about plenty. And I’m sorry about Emma. Do you remember what I said that first evening we met Sebastian?”

 

The boy’s eyes focus intently. He is uncomfortable with anyone using his real name. No one has used his real name for a long time. Suddenly there is some frustration in his voice.

“Why do you insist on calling me that?”

 

“Because it is your name.”

 

“My name is Zachariah Artstien.”

 

The preacher give him a ‘boy don’t talk crazy’ look.

 

“Your real name is Sebastian Adonaev, you were born in New York City.”

 

“But there is no such a person anymore. If you wish to carry on this conversation you will not refer to me by the name of a man who is rotting in the ground,” he responds sharply.

 

“You know I don’t like to humor your devils.”

 

“You know I do not like to humor your just about anything,” the boy retorts. “You cannot save me. I don’t believe in your religion. You are wasting your time on me, yet again.”

 

“Please calm down, Sebastian. To the best of your ability. Emma would prefer that, I’d imagine. Having read all her work.”

 

The kid gets up to leave.

 

“Sit the fuck down!” That time he didn’t have a Southwesterly accent at all for some reason.

 

There is authority in the man’s voice for the first time.

 

“I told you the first time we met that I saw a well of pain in your eyes that was so deep that you might drown in your own sorrow. The night we met I laid awake praying for hours in the hope that you might find peace. It’s a long war, some of us need to survive to win it.”

 

“Redemption being some Nazerene, of course. Shut the fuck up.”

 

“Could you please stop?”

 

“What do you really know about me? About this Sebastian you’re trying so hard to save? I grow very tired of people these days. Especially those with penchants for doing the Lord’s work through lost children.  There is nothing you can say to me to make me forget everything that has happened.”

 

“You can forget the past, Sebastian. Even the immediate past. It’s actually part of your training to be able to do that incredibly well, invent a new reality, for now.”

 

“Well thank you, you quintessential, self-helping faith healer! I killed two people last night. The night before that they murdered up my partner. ”

 

The preacher stares into him and knows that cannot possibly be true. It’s not in the prophesy. Emma isn’t really dead. Something else is clearly going on with the Israelis and its time to bring the kid back home.

 

“Not everything you saw actually happened to you. You are not a corpse, but you have allowed hateful demons to possess your body and speak on your behalf. It is time to go home!”

 

“My home is a place near two flaming towers where men of finance sacrificed three thousand of my former country men to their false god and those that rule this country collaborated with them!”

 

His words sear the man’s heart as he continues.

 

“Thank you for telling me what everyone always tells me, just in case I had forgotten the misery and grind of things since yesterday? Perhaps another brilliant cliché is in order like ‘be myself?’  Or forgive my enemies perhaps! Remove the grey mask! I’ve been trying. I swear I have. In all honesty I think your coming here was an enormous waste of both of our time. I have no home at all, traded it for tea and fire.”

 

The man’s tone changes.

 

“I figure you tell lots of tales. Throw around theology at people and radical rhetoric. You’d tell your secrets to any stranger who’d care to listen if you thought it would teach them something. But that doesn’t make your secrets true.”

 

“I don’t follow you.”

 

“How many people speak out of your mouth boy? Who’s that imaginary friend whispering in your ear today? It’s gotten worse since you arrived here in the land hasn’t it? Can you tell anymore who is talking, you or the ghosts, you or the angels and devils?”

 

“Don’t worry your Southern neurons. So what’s the moral, Brent Avery? The take away?”

 

“What I want you to do is to tell me how you came to be the way you are without Zachariah doing the story-telling. Why are you so angry at your tribe and country of birth, the world in general and even God himself? ”

 

“You would never understand that story, Brent. It isn’t set in places where the wind blows lightly on the plain. I feel you’d quickly miss the plot points.”

 

“Try me then, comrade. Believe it or not we’re not so different. God cries for all of us. And we all have served Solomon and the underground.”

 

“Oh really!?  I don’t believe that for a second. God spits on us with its indifference! I doubt that there are two people who could be more different than you and I. You have your Lord, your God. You serve him blindly like a sheep. My only higher power is the inevitable great revolt. I will get what I contribute.”

“They are one and the same these higher powers you speak of.”

 

“Really, Brent Avery? Do you think I believe that?”

 

“No. I don’t think you don’t know what you believe in anymore. Other than in the hate that never leaves you, other than the demons whispering inside you to pick up arms and kill without compunction for cause.”

 

The thin boy smiles with a shit eating, devilish grin.

 

“At least I can believe in my hate. But if faith is what governs us–you in your God, and me in the coming revolution–what makes you think we should see eye to eye on anything? You play the preacher pray boy and I’ll play the rebel with righteous cause.”

 

“You should confide in me because we all have nightmares about the things we can’t control. Your demons have taken their toll, Sebastian Adonaev. An ocean, a latest new name and some ten thousand miles later ain’t improved your sleep, boy. Is that truth? You report directly to Solomon and Andrew, but you do not grasp their plans.”

 

The coffee shop has all but emptied out, still the boy doesn’t answer. The Arab Christian is keeping it open for the sole prospect of what these Americans might buy. He will stay open all night as long as they keep drinking and eating things. The Carmel is sometimes slow on a Tuesday night. Especially since the Second Intifada began.

 

“You want to hear a wild yarn?” the boy asks.

 

“I want to hear a mostly true story, true to facts as you care to tell it.”

 

“There’s no such thing as a true, Brent. There’s only the mostly true, the heartfelt and remembered past. It’s a long story. It goes well with vodka and cigarettes. Told backwards and forwards, as if I had rehearsed it under the supervison of visionaries.”

 

“We’ve got all night, and as long it takes. You enlist me in your narrative and I can get you on a plane back to New York. You walk out on me, you’re wide fucking open. But you’ll have to settle for coffee. I’m not much of a drinking man and neither should you be. I’ve come a very long way to get you back to New York and I don’t have anywhere else I’d rather be, but don’t play me.”

 

            “Well, let us all hope this Arab can tolerate the sound of our English and takes limited mental notes. It begins with the tale of a rude boy on the last days of summer. It ends with a fancy hooker beaten half to death on a lonely desert high way. A black man hanging from a tree and an early deportation. And we know exactly who brought the towers down, and more importantly why.”

 

Tough talk from a seventeen year old, the new recruits are hard.

 

“The underground thanks you in advance for your unit’s heroism out here,” Brent Avery half whispers.

 

But the boy is still just a walking corpse with a demon inside him and the if the lord works in mysterious ways maybe Avery can him back to a safe house before someone, something or even himself will cut the story short, or worse change the underlying narrative. The preacher has been in this game closing in on forty years. He knows the investment in talent that went into creating Emma and went into Sebastian. He’s hoping the story is coherent enough to allow actions to be taken to secure the blood line of the prophets, sure that’s part of the work. But, really no one wants this to be a double funeral. Certainly quite enough people died horribly this week getting those secrets out of Jerusalem.

 

As this war would take a very long time, the saying went in Hebrish; long live the underground!

 

T H R E E, 113 Ludlow St, Manhattan

 

“The Tavern”

 

Sebastian arrives at the tavern limping and near death. His feet are badly burned and his face smeared in dried blood.

 

Things were broken inside of him that hurt worse than bones. Daria called ahead and banged on the door with a well-manicured fist.

 

So, generally speaking, it would come to be said that a small army of angels amassed like a great flotilla flew above Sebastian Adon also named Valera Adonaev, and seemed to protect him in the 11^th hour from the multitude of enemies he had made. But now in a den of literal devils, thieves and aggressive criminals he seemed to be surrendering his luck. A great and powerful ancient devil took him into a Bulgarian tavern to sign some papers in blood. His last protector a blond angel name Daria had taken them here for refuge as the city burned to the ground in race riot and class war. The revolt began on September 1^st, 2011.

 

Hanging above the main dance floor across the third floor gallery area is a clothesline and from it hangs a wide variety of female under garments that were not there when the club opened and the evening began.

 

The origin of these under garments is a source of amusement for the casual patron and a source of unspoken shame for a variety of young women hired as trial waitresses and bartenders, also unseasoned patrons left drinking heavily and unattended.

 

Sometimes a seemingly small place can become a vast labyrinthine and impregnable fortress when inundated with a bit of black magic, vodka and immigrant elbow grease. Perspective is but a cheap pair of sunglasses after all, paradigms are but Costco contacts to be shed and quietly replaced at will.

 

Finally after several minutes, they were ushered in by a stone faced man named Slavi.

 

Were you to visit Mehanata on a Thursday you might come to think it only a single story lounge. Friday and Saturday patrons might access the basement Ice Cage and third floor table galley, but when it gets past 400am Sunday morning, not only can carriages change to pumpkins, but the depth and girth of the rabbit hole here can delve expansively into the fourth dimension. On a Wednesday you could lap dance or rape and immigrant girl in a cage if you paid in cash and respected silence.

 

Oh yes, the tavern is a vast entrapment.

 

Its 5:09 am. And everyone that isn’t meant to be in the club has been pushed, cajoled or driven out like a herd of drunken cats and those that remain are only staff or spoken for card carrying regulars.

Astika and Corona bottles litter the establishment on any number of table booth perches, the dive bar black piss fluids of spilled drinks irrigate all floor space.

A flurry of activity directed at securing the premises from external assault comes quite suddenly.

Justin Toomey Azello, a Fenian hooligan with true crazy man eyes, bolts the door with the pull of a large metal brace and shortly after James White and James Behemoth begin piling tables against it. There is an urgency with which they carry out this task as well as efficiency. It is not the simple and previously observed urgency of men and women working long hours and just wishing to go home. The three man Mexican kitchen staff lines up and begins stacking crates and kegs and assorted furniture against the storm shutters now pulled down and latched closed over the second exit to the tavern.

Martina the bartender begins placing bottles of liquor below the bar, vigorously. Conspicuously absent is all of her clothing and in the strange new light of the bar her wild black curly hair for some reason appears fire red. How curious, thinks Sebastian through the haze of his own vodka and pilsner soaked observational capabilities, which maintain some attention to idiosyncratic detail.

 

Ernesto Lynch, the Peruvian Disk Jockey looks as though he is half asleep, a zombie casually examining his drink seated at the bar on the swing seat, taking dainty swigs his head drooping, intermittent half singing accompanies the dull steady thumping of his palm to the bar. Victoria Lynch is also entranced so it seems, seated beside him on one of the four two-person bench swings abutting the main bar.

 

The lighting has completely changed. It’s become eerie in here on the eyes. Everyone who smokes is now smoking which is absolutely everyone except the Mexican kitchen staff, the Lynches and James White the Fenian bouncer who used to be a cop and still carries himself like one, except more jolly. The plumes waft about like ghosts of tobacco island taking on shapes most various in the doldrums of the shifty light which remains other worldly, blue tones and greyscale which emphasize reds of Martina’s lick stick, reds of Dasha’s large pocket book satchel, and the reds of the wine.

 

Sebastian without using words makes a quiet Hebraic motion of his hands pantomiming a peace signed puff and his eyes go half black wolf, half-drunk rabbit and so thus alerting Dasha Andreavna that he wishes her to retrieve the packet of Newports out of her deep red pleather purse, and share one with him. They have seated him on a military stretcher on the dance floor.

Her hand bag seems as though in contains an endless assortment of things that cannot via the laws of normative physics fit inside it. Were a sledge hammer to be passed out of it he wouldn’t even feign surprise.

 

As of lately they seem to share all their cigarettes when they are happy with each other and tonight the are indeed happy because she has plied herself with eight types of vodka infusion and he has sipped on enough Astika to be doing an accomplished impersonation of Latin American dancing all evening.

 

Sasho, the boss, is watching everyone and everything from the end of the bar, his back to the wall of the kitchen. The boss is wearing a black leather jacket his face stern and commanding; he snaps his fingers and fire takes form off his index finger. From this miraculous flame he lights a long cigar.

 

An uncanny display of your evil black magic, thinks Dasha.

 

If anyone else notices this trickster subterfuge, then they hardly seem surprised. Martina takes from below the bar a chalice of usual size, Byzantine even in proportions and pours him off a tall glass of what is presumably a thick red wine, although the lighting, quite unusual as said, makes it appear as though it is thick sanguine blood. The bottle from which she pours is house blend called A Shot in the Mouth.

 

But Sasho doesn’t sip this concoction, just leaves it out.

 

He remains at the head of the bar with his unusually large chalice of blood red wine having ordered the entire fortification effort with simple subtle nod. The place is very much locked down.

 

Misha Korovyov, a Bulgarian regular, with his long flowing brown hair and one eyed squint, and playboy bi-winning manic grin with some European designer cigarette dangling out his mouth throws his arms around Dasha and Sebastian. It was a though the eccentric Bulgarian materialized behind them.

 

“Joyous epic times new friends! Where but five weeks ago we were all merry strange acquaintances but how now we are intimate co-conspirators!”

 

As if to coincide with the subversions of reality and convention already underway, Dasha and Sebastian although aware of phantom lights, of the mezmerization and stupor of the Lynches; of Martina’s brazen nakedness; now also it appears James Behemoth mostly called “James Brown”, to differentiate him from “James White” the former cop in casual conversation, the sly and charming Ecuadorian gangster bouncer; well for lack of a better description, he has now transformed into a hippopotamus sized black cat! Walking upright still in his leather jacket, James Behemoth is now at the bar and Martina is pouring a pint glass sized frothy frozen vodka shot and leaving him the bottle.

 

“Are we in the secret company of angels or demons?” asks Dasha in a whisper.

Misha grins, “That’s the spirit! What my lovely Mademoiselle if I told you that the combination of man’s primitive brain with his powers of creativity with his latent albeit savage thirst for self-importance, self-aggrandizement creates an ongoing wildly unstable variable where bye all manners of mythology have been generated turning vastly complex phenomena, into well, cautionary children’s tales?” rambles Misha K, the wild eyed Bulgarian millionaire.

 

Misha had previous asked Sebastian to compose him a popular anthem for a fictitious country he was developing. Sebastian had abstained.

 

“I’d go even further to say, to caution even the arrogance of making Judeo-Christian spiritual assumptions in this day and age. The utter epitomes of self-absorption most grand that would make you all assume that you were either the center of the universe figuratively. Literally or neurologically; more so spiritually. Even now putting these base ideas into Amerikanski I must use nine words when in my own native tongue I could use a hand gesture, a syllable.”

 

“He speaks a lot while not saying anything,” notes Dasha, bored finally.

“Indeed.” says Sebastian. He felt like it was time to lay down given the amount of torture he had just sustained in Brooklyn.

 

“Good, Evil, Angels and Demons! Flabergashy I say. Well I’m sure someone from the former Soviet Union once has explained how there is no such thing. No such thing as either. I’ve never seen an angel before I laid eyes on this woman” he says taking Dasha Andreavna’s hand and kissing it gently.

 

“Enchante,” she responds facetiously doing her famous micro curtsey.

 

“To which I attempted to refute that with my American understandings of hope and heroism there are both angels and demons battling everywhere, and certainly good and evil are quite real I assure you,” Sebastian retorts.

“Mere devices in service of the ego sir, you see there may be deeds that cause pain or deeds that cause pleasure, but all of them get accomplished without some god or the devil whispering in the ear of human kind.”

“I’ll believe what I believe and you believe what you believe,” Sebastian says paraphrasing the Prophet Muhammad.

There was a rumor circulating that for some brief period of time the rebel went Muslim.

 

“And I’ll believe what I’ve believed all along which is that you men say a lot of drunk bullshit when you all drink!” Mutters Dasha, “darling tovarish let’s leave now, these wily tricksters offer us little besides their temporary refuge, their wine and some vodka.”

“Darling tovarish, it looks as though they have sealed us in,” Sebastian notes.

The fortifications are very much in place.

It even appears that the enormous vodka drinking black cat that was once James Behemoth is welding the metal door behind the barricade right to its frame. Ernesto is singing some old folk tune in Spanish as he gently swings the bench back and forth. Sasho has not left his standing perch at the bars end.

“It is not to seal you in. It is to keep the secret police and regular army temporarily at bay when they arrive,” states Sasho.

“Well sit down,” Sasho commands.

There is age as well as gypsy wisdom expressed in the features of this strong man, though his Semitic black eyes burn with casual madness. But, it is also as if he has not aged in ten years, will not age in ten more. Perhaps he has never aged at all thinks Sebastian as a remarkable feeling of de ja vu over takes him. He had wandered into this tavern many times over the course of the decade, or century maybe but when had been the very first time?

 

What had that original indulgence cost?

 

Sebastian Adonaev and Dasha Andreavna seat themselves on the plank of the bar bench swing closest to Sasho. Martina drops shot glasses in front of them. Her nakedness is ignored by virtually everyone. Dasha notices. And out of his corner eye Sebastian does too. And in this noticing of her pale, curvy and naked Bulgarian body he sees although flawless in her nude form she has what appears to be a subtle ecchymosis of the neck, a hicky perhaps, but black and blue. The only deformity to her naked perfection.

 

“I have plenty of doubts about helping the likes of you,” Sasho begins. “Just because you’re adulterers doesn’t mean you came to play with a full deck of cards.”

“They’re not consummated adulterers, just wild reckless ones with intent to achieve adultery,” Martina interjects.

“Please do remain quiet, Hella,” Sasho commands.

“What is it you want from me again?” Sasho asks.

“A trade,” says Sebastian. “A job,” says Dasha.

Their answers came out at once.

 

“You have nothing that I cannot just take, either of you,” Sasho grins.

 

“I respect you sir, your powers I mean and this establishment generally, but we are not afraid of you,” Sebastian says, “Unlike many others we are neither enthralled nor intimidated easily. Our regularity has not indebted us to your, tavern.”

Sasho grins and his smoke trails take form before then, out his lips the smoke becomes a floating diorama of urbanity unraveling into anarchy.

Misha K. interjects himself into the palaver with wild hand motions and flailing;

“You ought to be more afraid of your fellow humans. And each also other since both of you albeit human are both vigorously more endowed. There will not be dawn breaking in two hours. Outside lawless mobs are looting and burning, the whole city is much on fire. Heads are being cut off as though this were Jacobin France. The police are killing people in the streets. Sheer and total anarchy! And as we speak cordons of police are marching their way across the Lower East Side, heading here! They are after you two who they wrongly suspect of being key players in this bloody revolution being carried out. The Authorities dejour mean to arrest you both for high crimes, conspiracy and treason! In any number of minutes they will be banging on these doors asking for your heads on platters. It’s no state secret you both traffic here frequently.”

Martina pours shots for them from a deeply frosty unmarked bottle.

“Do you really love her?” Sasho asks pointing to Dasha, “She’s a common whore.”

“Watch your mouth demon,” Daria scoffs.

“Alright,” Misha interjects, “an uncommon witch whore.”

 

Now a real pause.

 

“Of course I do,” Sebastian says. “Of course he does,” she responds simultaneously.

She turn to him as if surprised, although it’s come out once before.

“She doesn’t love you at all,” Martina says nakedly.

“I realize that might be true.”

“She most likely and I say this respectfully but with great faith, she never will. Not in this lifetime cycle anyway.”

Sebastian turns to Dasha and takes her hand. She doesn’t pull away from this grossly sentimental display.

“Well as we all know. It’s not as if you only get one life.”

Sasho grins and breathes about smoke.

“I’ve run out of people to help me run and places to hide are running short as you know. If I am not mistaken many of my friends and associates have been taken or killed over the course of this black night. If I am not mistaken, the authorities think I am higher in the non-existent chain of command of this uprising than I really am. If I am not mistaken some rather grisly crimes have been committed over the past five weeks, my alleged role the general uprising not withstanding; it seems that the authorities wish to try us not just for treason but for sick, an heinous offenses committed by some rampant cult in grey.”

“Well it is certainly not Behemoth and I who are the poster children of the uprising or the slaughters of young wayward women,” notes Justin Azello.

“We may be an establishment of handsome devils, trickster Gypsies and seductresses and thieves, but we are not sick fuck murders,” states James White seated now at the long bar with a Corona which is also the neighborhood in Queens that he lives in.

 

“Are you asking me for help then?” Sasho asks.

 

“We don’t have anyone else to turn to, at this juncture” Dasha says.

“Are you saying your G-d is ignoring you?” Misha K. asks with a grin, “Are you saying you tried to pray and nothing happened?”

“Imagine that,” says sly Martina.

“Look here,” interrupts Dasha, “we are not at your mercy. Although he doesn’t exactly look the part right now per-say, this man is or was; Valera the prophet.”

“Valera the gunslinger!” echoes Martina.

“Valera the gunslinger,” repeats Misha with glee.

“Yes, yes I know the human protégé of Archangel Michael, guardians of the unborn children of potential messiahs,” states Sasho.

“If such fantasies are still believed in,” says Misha K.

“I believe,” declares James Behemoth Brown once from Puerto Rico by way of the South Bronx.

“Me too,” says James White, the injured and retired cop. A mortal and a Catholic too.

“Martina, my Hella, what think you of us assisting agents of, the other side?”

“Well now!” She leans her supple frame over the bar painting up her lips deep blood red as she does, “Well most interesting is that neither of them reports to remember anything of their past lives and associations, in a word, sorcery made them mortal this round, but who’s sorcery? Not ours surely or we’d have known about it.”

 

“Daria Andreavna remembers everything,” states Sasho.

 

Justin Azello with a cowboy killer in his mouth is now also seated at the devils bar table and declares, “We definitely would have known about it.”

Martina continues, “The mystics long believed that in each generation would be born one hundred and four candidates exactly out of the bloodline of King David, house Judah that these candidates would be hidden from the so called forces of good and evil, that then three would reveal themselves by their 33 year as the Tzadikk ha Droriim, the three potential candidates for messiah. Only these three; a warrior, a sage, and an oracle might reverse the tide of human suffering and usher in an age of reason and compassion. Suffice to say, a good much was invested to snuff this nonsense out. Many factions have at one time or another joined hands to abort this prophesy as close to the womb as possible. Mostly by killing or corrupting them before the year of their revelation. Often by getting at their mothers before they are born. Have you heard this Old Soul mythology before?”

 

“Emma Solomon!” yells Justin Azello spastically and neither Dasha nor Sebastian flinch or appear to recognize the name.

 

“Who’s Emma Solomon again?” asks Sebastian with a poker face.

 

Sasho, with a poker face says, “Never mind your poor dead wife for a minute.”

 

“If I told you that you were both super natural beings with auspicious births and no biological fathers, at least not genealogically speaking what would you make of that?” asks Sasho.

 

“I’d say stop fucking around with drunken wounded people and let’s get down to business,” Dasha retorts.

 

“Alright then, if it is in my power, I’ll make you both a good deal. For a job I require you to follow this sad man to the cross roads and keep him from selling his third soul to anyone, anyone at all. I will help you escape and you will be in my employ for three years of human time which is considerably more or less fourth dimensionally speaking, though cost no more than three life days here in this reality. As for a trade I will trade you her contract to me and help you both quite literally disappear if you will go on a little field trip on my behalf once you escape.”

 

“So my job for your establishment is to escort Sebastian on some mission into exile?” Dasha asks.

 

“Exile isn’t any place to hide. He’s far too hunted. We offer you improved fourth dimensional time travel,” states Misha.

 

She looks at them all blankly, this cohort and Otriad of thieves, whores and devils.

 

“What in the fuck are you talking about!?” Dasha demands.

 

“Let me blunt, before I am specific because time is for once not really on your side tonight new friends,” says Misha, ” Sasho might I be so bold as to lay out the terms?”

Sasho makes a hand motion and a shrug indicating the international indication of; carry on.

“Dasha Andreavna Skorobogatova Maccluskey. We know what your keeper will do to keep you! He’s found Mr. Adonaev’s letters; he has your passport and Adonaev’s parents address and your mother’s too. He’s not going to let you just walk away, he’ll make all the people dear to you suffer first, that is the man he is. Sebastian; Valera, whatever it is you’re calling yourself this in epoch. Since the little melee on that train and in the district your little band of black brothers has been hunted down and exterminated down to almost the last woman and man. Not only are you all being accused of being of house of subterfuge and treason, when you are arrested they will accuse you and she and your associates in the Z.O.B. of being sadistic vampires cannibals! They will drag you before trial and say that the thirteen of you were kidnapping, raping and vivisecting young girls for sacrifice.

And then they will line you up and execute you all to make an example. Under any scenario your little five weeks of romance have yielded impending catastrophic dividends.”

Dasha shrugs. Sebastian again with a different Bulgarian hand sign often utilized by Sasho and Misha asks Martina to fill up their shot glasses and get Dasha a red bull chaser.

“How now?” he says.

“Most basic. We will hide you in the past and the future. She will belong then to us, and you can auction her freedom with your abilities. You will thus work under a contract with a devil like me for three days’ time. Which will feel to you like three years over three past lifetimes. And when it’s done you’ll both be free and your friends will be alive and your city will be secure and spring time will be near. Instead of torture, prison, murder, death, not just yours and hers but your friends and families, instead of another victory for one side or another, you get freedom. You get to absolve yourself of the burdens you were born into, and in five weeks flirted your way toward courting oblivion.”

“What does he have to do, for us to get that?” Dasha asks.

“Three day’s work,” claims Sasho.

“But three years in the eye of the mind,” warns Martina always quite a fan of Sebastian’s hopeless romanticisms and writing, also the way Dasha moves men.

“What is it that we have to get done in these three days, or lifetimes or whatever to save our families and friends and each other?” Sebastian asks.

“Hella,” says Sasho.

She open her pouty lips and pulls out a tiny scroll and on it reads: “Die, steal the moon, kill a lesser demon, and take good notes of your comings and goings. Return to life.”

“Miraculous levels of detail here,” says Dasha sarcastically.

“If you sign yourselves to me and my gang I will not only harbor you but I will aid you at all stages in getting this job done.”

“How will we convincingly die?”

“I will put your souls in new vessels and leave convincing corpses for the authorities and your sadistic lesser oligarch husband to find.”

“Dance magic dance. The implications of your voodoo are not as interesting to me as what in past lives and other times you want us to accomplish,” exclaims Dasha.

“I want you to see for yourselves what happened to the man Yeshua ben Yosef in the year 33, I want you to kill a certain lesser demon I compete with in 1933 and to this very day, and I want you to steal a diamond of enormous size in 1996 and trade it with an old Ivory who will give me something I require.”

“In just three days, what the fuck man,” Dasha exclaims, “What expertise do either of us even have for this black magical undertaking?”

“Three days here. Three years there. Over three lifetimes. Understand what you’re signing,” says Martina.

“And what is it you want from the conclusion of hostilities?” Asks Dasha as if the notion of time travel and other lives doesn’t perplex her in the slightest.

“I want total leverage. I’m bargaining now to open a new tavern and I require a high placed bargaining chip.”

“And on your three day journey you will take care of three variables I need adjusted.”

“What’s on the list?” Dasha asks.

“Names of auspicious women he wishes to employ at the new tavern,” Martina smiles.

“It’s a rather tall order. Infiltrate and revise the New Testament, snuff out a lesser Oligarch, and steal a precious stone to get a list of women’s names. Fourth dimensional mission impossible,” Sebastian says likening it to a great American film. His burned feet hurt even though she injected him with morphine and rubbed down in Tiger Balm.

“The things a woman will do for a man in the name of her freedom, sounds like Master and Margarita,” says Dasha likening it to her favorite novel.

“We’re going to help you,” says James Behemoth Brown.

“It’s not as if we’re just going to burn the social club to the ground and quietly plant your lifeless corpses about the city and vanish into blue smoke,” says James White.

“Although that was one plan,” says Justin Azello.

“Oh no-no, were gonna to that and transmography the entire tavern down the rabbit hole of time. We’re gonna help you run three mighty-mighty epic miracles,” claims Misha.

“For leverage,” says Justin Azello.

“With whom?” Dasha asks.

“The man who issues liquor licenses and cabaret licenses for the city,” smiles Martina.

“We’re not stupid,” says Dasha.

“And we’re not lesser demons,” says Misha K with a smile adjusting his glasses.

“You’re definitely not angels,” says Martina.

“I am a devil though,” states Sasho, “not the devil, because there isn’t just one anything in a universe so vast, but know that if you two don’t live up to my powers of intervention, then the Bratva your latest keeper sponsor associates with, and the security apparatus of the American state investigating you, and the cult that pursues you will be the least of your problems,” explains Sasho.

“By far the least,” says Justin O’ Azello.

“Why us? Why help us though. What makes you think we can do what you want?” Sebastian asks.

“Because of your reliable Old Soul credentials,” says Misha.

“Because I’m not dealing with paramedic student Adonaev son of a privileged bourgeoisie, and Dasha Andreavna, accounting student debutante, property of Khulushin Bratva,” exclaims Sasho, “once you leave these feeble bodies I’ll have put two very powerful creatures on my pay roll: Valera the Gunslinger and Dasha Andreavna Skorobogatova Maccluskey; Candidate 64.”

“Candidate?” she asks.

“Oh poor unfortunate souls, the ethanol clouded all your past lives and past accomplishments,” says Martina pinching Sebastian’s cheek.

 

“Moonstruck until they can’t tell an angel or devil apart,” says Justin Azello quoting the prophetic verses.

 

Martina leans in, “Why, you’re Valera the Gunslinger, Valera the Sword, main disciple of the archangel Michael, the greatest killer of demons in Gregorian time! And you,” she says leaning into Dasha, “well via the blood line of the house of Judah traced only in part by our little gang, well you have full Hebrew blood, you are candidate daughter of a prior powerful Tzadikk ha Dror.”

“What does that even mean!!” Dasha half yells.

“You might bear the messiah of your generation and he is the man in the grey mask, a historical serial killer. Your blood and your womb and your collective memories will take us where we need to go and his deadly-deadly aim will let us acquire the things we need,” says Misha.

“If we do as you ask we can save our families and his murdered friends and we can return in three days and when we do what we change will set us free?”

“Precisely. And when the new tavern opens I’ll rehire you both happily,” states Sasho.

“Albeit in far more glorious capacities!” declares Misha.

 

“Absofuckinglutely!” yells Sasho slamming his hands on the bar.

 

“All this for a cabaret license, ha,” mutters James Behemoth Brown.

“For a cabaret most subversive to the elites of this world and lucrative for me. For all of us. So if you would, Hella!”

Martina Hella Dubryska pulls a ball point pen of solid gold out her red lips.

Rising out of nowhere from each shot glass emerges a rolled scroll.

Dasha takes the one in front of her written in Russian. Sebastian’s is in Russian too and thus he cannot even read it, anymore.

“You trust her don’t you?” says Martina with a wink, “she’ll translate it.”

“What’s it say?” Sebastian asks Dasha not even thinking so hard about the content.

Slowly she translates:

“..I will own you and you will own me and the Perchevney Bratva will own us both until completion of our duties to Mehanata which include documentation and surveillance of the man Yeshua ben Yosef and his wife Mary Tania Magdalena; the assassination of a demon in the form Mr. Breria head of the Stalinist secret police; the assassinations of Superior Oligarchs Kahn, Talleyrand and Trumpuldoroff; and the theft of the blue moon diamond. Once said duties are in order we are free people and all calamities unleashed by our brief passions will be un-made allowing us at that juncture to part as associates or should love or passion grow strong enough to marry and allow Alexandre Sasho Perchevney the honor of hosting our happy marriage.  It specifies that under no circumstances are you to be allowed to sell your third soul, nor am I to have sexual intercourse with you with results in child,” she paraphrases.

 

“Avoid further sexual intercourse!” interrupts Martina, “we don’t care about the rest of it. No babies made between your vile races.”

“Slavs and Ivory,” Hella clarifies.

Tough talk from Bulgarians.

Dasha without even squinting continues, “And we are prohibited from drinking alcohol while under contract as it will lead to babies being made.”

“And what does mine say?”

And she looks it over.

“It says almost the same thing except for a sub clause which establishes that should we fail at our tasks you assume full responsibility for all resulting actions.”

 

“Bro, just sign the thing, the cops, and secret police and the National Guard and the military are gonna be here to blow in the door any minute now, I have a good tip. You’re gonna get accused of harvesting and eating women’s sexual organs. Just sign the thing. Its three days of work and it your only way out,” says James White, who as the only human privy to the sorcery at work is rooting for Sebastian as a fellow former civil servant.

 

“I love you,” Sebastian says looking into Dasha’s big blue eyes and he signs the contract totally unable to read it.

 

She marvels at this strange thing called love he exhibits then calmly signs hers.

A controlled banging on the metal doors shakes everyone out of their surrealist stupor.

“They’re here,” says James Black, then the power goes out except red ghost lights.

“Welcome to the gang and the tavern staff,” Martina says extending her hand.

The banging continues muffled shouts through a public address system declare everyone must come out before the authorities come inside. It sounds as though a battering ram has been deployed.

 

“‘James White and my noble Companeros please exit via the roof and see to it that the body doubles are put in place before dawn,” commands Sasho, “Tomorrow is Friday thus this is when Dasha must be found lifeless in Brighton and it must be believed that Adonaev murders himself on Saturday after a night in Bellevue. And please call the Lynches a cab. Everyone else! To the Ice Cage, now!”

 

Another controlled bang shakes the tavern. Probably the second blast door.

James Behemoth Brown still in the form of a cat kicks over an enormous canteen of petrol as does Martina. Everyone forms a line behind Sasho and then go down stairs. The stink of petrol is over powering. Justin Azello opens the freezer door. A hatch in the floor is then unlatched and they behold a bottomless pit.

 

“Down the tunnel you go, we’ll be right behind you as soon as we burn this place to the ground,” Misha K. declares.

 

“Remember, no matter where you end up find the tavern and there we will be,” Martina says, “to answer stupid questions and arrange your papers.”

Dasha turns to Sebastian and takes his hand as they enter the freezer box with wall to wall vodka for the very first and possibly last time.

“No drinking, no baby making and no re-selling his soul,” Justin Azello repeats.

“I’m sorry that I’ve gotten you into this whole mess,” Dasha says to Sebastian.

“Did you do it on purpose?” He asks her as they stand at the precipice.

“I did. But I had no choice, my Mom is still in Penza.”

Contemplating the utter madness of the past five weeks, the misadventures the brushes with death, now the signing of a contract with the devil and a step into the unknowns of the past!

 

“Bze platnee syr ve mishalovka,” Sebastian declares. The only free cheese is in a mouse trap. He pronounces everything correctly this time, for the most part.

 

“If you do a good job, and we get them what they want, then I promise ill make real love to you until you don’t even know the difference between your wants and your needs, between lust and loving, I will give you everything you ever wanted from me.”

“For how long?”

“Three days of nearly forever.”

“Dasha, no matter what happens I’m glad that you found me on that roof top.”

“We shall see,” she says with her famous poker faced smile. I didn’t find you, death found you, she thinks. Using me.

 

“Is any of this even real?” he asks her.

 

“No, they’ve just tortured us so badly we’re muddying the waters of objective reality for all around us and are imaging, or remembering perhaps; our other lives. Pretty soon these bleak dreams will end and you’ll wake up on the floor of a cell with no teeth.”

 

“Better to wake up in a bed with no feelings,” he replies.

 

It really takes a lot of torture to make men see blatnoy like this, she thinks.

 

“Find me again immediately when you wake up,” she says and kisses his cheeks hard twice.

 

Holding hands, him leaning on her just to stand they step out and fall tragically into the abyss, a hole in the ceiling to somewhere. A hatch in the floor of an ice cage. Just another way to end up back in Tel Aviv enroute to Moscow. Fall back to the center of the universe.

 

 

F O U R, the Negev

 

“Red on the Run”

 

 

 

Red and I are on the run.

 

I’ve on my feet for many days. The girl named Red is leading the way. We’ve changed our clothing at a tiny underground weigh station three days back. The blue overalls of slavery discarded, we’re clad now in the light grey shawl tunics of the desert pilgrims. The girl carries one of the dead guard’s pistols strapped under her tunic and bag that contains lord-knows-what, the size of a bowling ball, with a checkered stripe across it of the rude girl unity flag.

 

When I can’t walk anymore she nearly carries me across that desert. Ten thousand miles of off white dunes to clear. She never says much. Just harder, faster, stronger. Time is a little different now. Every time I go to sleep at dawn I find myself dreaming of that boy in America. He is building an army.

 

Red is a woman possessed. She’s convinced we can clear this desert by sheer tenacity and reckless constitution. We ran out of water a few days ago. She says we’ll reach the depot soon. She is hiding something in her loose grey pilgrim’s shawl that she has changed into after we had hot, naughty desert sex at the weigh station. It appears she’s a few months pregnant. I hadn’t noticed before.

 

She is holding me one night looking at the stitches around my neck. She keeps calling me Michael, but I know better. I’m just a pilgrim. Sometime before sunrise, easily a week into our death march I drop to the ground in spasms. We move at night mostly through vast, ever-changing dunes.

 

“It’s just a day’s journey further, Michael. We’ll rest a bit. We’ll reach the depot by dawn.  I’m parched and delirious. Never was a fan of exodus without manna and quail.

 

“Why. Do. You call me by his name,” I stammer on my knees.

 

“I guess it’s time to let the cat out of the bag,” Red says.

 

Gently she takes me in her arms, takes my head against her breasts.

 

“They just cast you as the knock-around guy this in life,” she says as she breaks the stitches around my neck.

 

I don’t feel any pain. The quick sound of flesh ripping. Then the Grey’s Anatomy of dreams. My head is torn back and out of my neck I birth the body of a pilgrim boy without a head. In a jumble of blood, sand and slime this headless boy wriggles free.

 

I lie on the desert floor bleeding. Red takes Mike’s head and some surgical knives out of her checkered bag. How long and how often do I become Mr. Washington, the man in the Grey Mask? How often does he speak for me in this place and back in Amerika?

 

Like a makeshift Bedouin surgeon she carefully implants my head back on the boy pilgrim’s body. The head of Mike Washington is stitched back on the body, which carried me thus far. Red sits between us running IV lines between our bodies filled with neon blue, glowing fluids. She jams a thick syringe in the heart of Mike’s body. With a great spasm and then shudder, the hero is reborn. There’s a lot of blood in the sand. Her tools are not so sterile. Her grey tunic is a dirty mess.

 

“Was it good for you two?” she asks us.

 

Dawn is coming. Mike and I are several days to ambulatory. Red places oxygen masks on both of us from a liter-sized tank with Acadian markings. Concentrated manna. There sure was quite a lot of crap in one little bag. I fade in and out of consciousness. She covers us in some organic micro quilt, which forms itself like a cocoon around both our bodies.

 

“I have to reach the depot. Come after me when you guys have regained your strength,” Red says.

 

Then she covers us with sand. The quilts and manna will sustain us from the elements.

 

 

F I V E, Kibbutz Sde Bokr

 

“A Messsage to Sympathizers”

 

 

Zachariah Artstien, still wearing his brown leather jacket and iconic grey scaly cap, records a martyr video on the safe house/ kibbutz 80 kilometers south of Be’er Sheva intended for an American audience, but with obvious cross appeal to the supporters in Israel. Typically these messages are recorded first at the Academy during training and ideology; then again immediately before potentially deadly operations. Such as a martyr operation on an airship, or a major hostage talking exercise.

 

“Sometimes, old friend, I cry from own weakness.”

 

I bash my Ivory face against various mirrors around town angered by my own lack of force, lack of seed, and lack of ability to carry my band more truly into glorious and successful battle. I beat my frail fists on concrete walls which always win! I ask my God why it untrusted me with anything at all. For I am so small and so unable it seems to be a good fighter, an adequate lover, or a good leader, or a good son, or a good husband to Adelina, a good much of anything. I started the game with such a strong position but have not leveraged that to advance my people and cause, even protect those I loved the most!

 

And then I remember my actual role, not the role my mad ego ascribes. I am but one single partisan. One isolated man with such true friends.

 

I am commanding, a funny word “commanding”, more appropriate term coordinating for can one even give orders to a volunteer? A force that numbers at any given time no more than ten to maybe twenty women and men. And no God nor man nor foreign government gave us marching orders; well at times a Russian woman gave me some directions, but only when at most desperate and bleak junctures, I had to no council to turn to. But, I brought almost all this chaos upon my house unaided! But this is hardly a wide conspiracy. But looking into my own soul I am not doing this for God or man, I am not simply avenging my losses, nor am I simply working off a duty to act. No, no; I am self-propelled and highly lucky. I am doing this because my eyes see fire. I am doing this because I have seen the view from the top of the Mountain, I have seen the killing fields too. I have a great empathy with my kind. I wish good to triumph over callous and well planned evil.

 

And the responsibilities that were impressed on me by the old leadership, they were small bits. And I say to myself that if our little band with no weapons and no training and no funding and the protection provided us only by our passports and various skin tones could do so much! Still we did accomplish a range of small things in the Americas and beyond. We took over buildings, and organized demonstrations, built unions, operated a substantial underground press. If we could build youth brigades and lay cells across four continents; if we could operate clandestine supply chains, raise tens of thousands in equipment and supplies, conduct hundreds of underground political trainings, infiltrate major city civil service organizations, if we could smuggle activists and trainers into distant countries uninvited and opposed by government. If we could do all of this with no outside support and do it with keeping all our partisans out of long term prison, and have only buried three men in seventeen years of war under questionable circumstances. Well perhaps we are all still young and the war shows no sign of being over. Perhaps we have a small latent talent for freedom fighting and if not killed or imprisoned could with a little guidance grow more professional.

 

And we have not killed one single person in seventeen years, in fact we have with our own hands saved the lives of thousands and counting.

 

“I’ve always said he has a fucking ton of potential! For good, for self or for evil, wherever his own heart ultimately sends him,” Daria once declared.

 

So, really as was explained to me then in 2011 before the uprising in Brooklyn by my confidant Dasha Andreavna; I could either surrender, collaborate or be utterly destroyed. But as she gauged my nature was highly American, she guessed correctly I would never tolerate a life of collaboration, so thus death or some impossible victory were the only moves coming.

 

I have been imprisoned twenty times. My brothers and sisters have never allowed them to take me for long. Each time they have chained me to beds, administered electricity, loaded me with drugs, asked millions of stupid questions to attempt to make me alter my perspective, denounce my own logic.  I have observed members of the band lose their very homes and their livelihoods and their freedom and their health. I have seen men thrown through Plexiglas glass windows. We have been held in cages and also tortured. The deaths of McGaffey, Becker and Black were all sudden and violent and unexplained. I remember little Paul behind bars, I remember harassment and humiliation of Comrade Vik, I remember how much was sacrificed vainly in the name of this struggle. This struggle which absorbs my beingness as though it were the love of a woman, but I am a zealot. I am not good for anything but this. I am in love with my entire people and I have resolved that it would be better to be killed, to lose my privileges of skin and class, than to live in a world where a tiny vile few make the lives of the many, the lives of all I know and love a wretched grinding torture. Truly a half-life.

 

I cry sometimes, no longer in the presence of any others. Dasha mocked me so each time I failed to be a man. I cry because the horror is so vast and the injustice so great. And I have but ten to twenty partisans, several with wives and children. I worry that I am not going to be able to shoulder this struggle, that I lead my closest to sedition and doom. I worry I have not the moral fortitude, the calm patience of humble leadership, the organizational skills the funds we will need, the weapons, the uniforms, the petrol, the Planes, the will. For I am a man and I am seduced sometimes by wanting more good life, wanting to walk away. This is not your fight, she said, no one asked you to struggle!!

 

Friends, they torture me once a year. They tell me I have an unstable mind. They drag me away over and over and over again. I am grateful for such friends as you, who refuse to accept surrender. Who know that we can win the war! I wanted to tell you all, see what we do with just ten women and men. You have that many fighters too. Here we all are at the top of the mountain, assembled in the ghettos encircling the Isle of Man.

 

I loved her so much. Maybe only one or two of you know what I’m talking about. They took from me the only thing a man should care about.

 

I’m thankful for the resistance. I’m thankful for our little Otriad in Brooklyn. For the cells in Chicago, Philly, Baltimore and DC. The underground in Moldova, Cambodia, Haiti and occupied Israel. Thankful for Commander Reed in Mosul, Commander Bonhomie in Port Au Prince. Inspired deeply by the teachings of Solomon and DeBuitléirs. I love my family and my wife, I hope this is the year we go pro.

 

She is a million miles away, but she can hear me. She can see me. She liked me better before I fought for Democratic Confederalism. Liked me better before I rediscovered my religion. She even liked my used suits better than the grey uniform of an officer I wear now.

 

I raise glass to the East, for there somewhere out there I hope she is waiting for me, waiting for us to win. I raise my glass, I look my men and women in the eyes when I toast, “Long live the resistance, God protect the blood line of the prophets and the Meshiach and the Mahdi. God keep us moving along the straight path, not the path of those who are cowards, or those who have been lost and lead astray.”

 

For those of you who are joining us from home, for those listening from the trenches, from the fields or from the big house, or as servants in the towers.

 

This is just a love song.

 

 

 

 

 

S I X, Upper West Side

 

“Safe house J”

 

Some three months before the fabled uprising began Sebastian had gone uptown to visit his friend and associate Nicholai Trickovitch to speak about a Russian woman he’d just met.

 

Located about seven miles north west from the District Financial is the Upper West Side; an affluent cluster of well-kept mostly spacious and well furnished apartment homes with door men running from 79th street to around 96th street between Central Park and the Hudson River. The entire island of Manhattan, excluding some small clusters of housing projects, section 8 and rent controlled units is the domain of the country’s elite, upper middle classes and new rich                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    financial class. Sports players, movie actors and celebrities live their too.

 

Though undisputedly the wealthiest people, people who own property live on the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Central Park. This gentrification of the city which always had been took its purest form in the mid 1990’s when the economy was booming, the police forces were tripled, Wall Street hedge fund tycoons and robber barons consolidated wealth alongside globalization and the demise of the Soviet Union.

 

By the time of the Great Recession in 2008, the only working class people living in Manhattan were clusters of petit-bourgeois professionals who bought things or secured rent controlled units in the 1980’s. The New York Times, the paper of record suggested that by 2012 there were over 57,000 individuals with net worth above 37 million apiece and greater living in the City. More concentrated wealth than London and only slightly behind Moscow.

 

Sebastian’s father is a teeth puller, he owns a small practice on Staten Island mostly treating cops, firemen and Sanitation worker families. The loft they own in the coop at the North end of the district financial is mostly paid off. Sebastian had never lived in it until about 5 months ago. He grew up in a rent controlled apartment in Waterside Plaza. He ran away from home at age 14, was locked up in a youth offender faculty by age 15, became a Democratic Confederalist by age 16 and was living abroad for most of 17 and 18; then he came home and lived with his best friend Nikholai Rosetree Trickovitch for a period before chasing rooms for rent in all boroughs besides Staten Island where the rent was less than $500 a room, or a couch or on a floor mat.

 

There is no person on earth who better understands Sebastian then his best friend, his loyal droog, his comrade, partner and companion. They are so alike in both genes, upbringing and disposition they can anticipate each other.

 

The train ride on the 2 Red line from the Financial District historically preserved print shop Sebastian’s family lives in; to the 96th street and Broadway train station is about a twenty minute ride. Nikholai rarely goes downtown. Nikholai has long memory, he remembers most of the thirteen years contiguous friendship. It has had a lot of ups, downs and misadventures. But Sebastian brings a world of drama and intrigue to Nicholai’s life, which could have otherwise been uneventful. And Nikholai brings Sebastian qualities he utterly lacks; self-analysis, dispassionate reasoning grounded in fact and most importantly; restraint.

 

Introverted Nikholai is happy in his solitude, while Sebastian can never enjoy being alone. The two men have come to need each other, but it is mostly Sebastian who is always in trouble and Nikholai who devises the maneuvers to the next to crisis.

 

They look out over privilege itself. Seventeen stories up, the rooftop deck of the Trickovitch Family Penthouse looks North and West over the Hudson River, the Upper East Side, and also the George Washington Bridge. There are not one but two private garden terraces. So much light and so much air, all somehow under nine hundred American dollars. Much to the chagrin of the Satmars who own the building, the House Trickovitch is completely rent controlled.

Most other families in the building were bought or were forced out. The whole building worth tens of millions, the unit they occupy could be sold for 5 million outright.

Sebastian Adonaev is wearing his favorite cap and looking somewhere between manic and marmalade, caught somewhere in between possessed with some inner zeal, and at timed calm, cool and collected. His eyes are strange and happy as though he wishes to recite a poem. Or give a speech, which he frequently does at dinners, on trains and in public parks. He isn’t totally of this time, which is logical having immersed his thoughts in the past to make something better for the future. Although he does not ever smile except behind closed doors he is by all accounts charismatic. On an adjacent bench in the roof garden, shirtless with a Noblesse dangling out his lips is his best friend and long-time partner in conspiracy Nikholai Trickovitch.

Penthouse J has been in the hands of the House Trickovitch since the early 1981. That was not such a heyday for New York City as some newly arrived ‘hip’ individuals have come to believe. By the mid-1980’s looters and vagrants were scaling the walls to steal anything not tied down, there was trash everywhere you could get accosted at knife point in an ally. You could get stabbed to death in a public place with dozens of people watching. That was the old New York.

 

Located on 95th and Riverside, it is now one of the most luxurious and safest of safe houses. Which is to say a lot of small talks happen here on sensitive things. It is rent controlled and guarded by Albanians. They are highly warlike these Albanians. Good at moving people and things, also safeguarding things for others. Nobody wants to fuck with the Russians, because they send Albanians.

 

The place has wall to wall books and a rather large aquarium filled with amphibious turtles. The building has gone coop, and they are the last remaining holdout sitting on a highly choice property paying $1,200 American a month for it adjusting for utilities and service fees. A good number of Ivoryish lawyers have been paid to figure out how to extract them from this property, so far unsuccessfully. For the Trickovitch family employs and are related to Ivoryish lawyers as well. It was once a little more of zoo filled then filled again with animals and young girls with long legs. Now it is a sad, empty place for plotting with Nicholai’s fraternal twin brothers living in other cities and his parents more frequently at their upstate farm than here, often now for week at a time. The apartment has functioning landline.

 

Sebastian rarely calls by mobile when he intends to visit. He calls from a subway payphone to the land line and then just shows up. Nikholai was the very first young person they knew with a bulky mobile phone as early as 1998. Nowadays both men don’t carry them very regularly. Both men use quarters, both men have throw away $10 phones. They both have Sky Pagers, but neither are doctors.

 

Nikholai, it is rumored is paralyzed with some dark inner depression, some sickness inside him which makes him overly analytical. For a time he was married and playing house in Midwood, Brooklyn deep in the shtetl. Midwood is a place about one hour by train from 42nd Street, Time Square city center. One of the earliest New York settlements in the 16th century, now firmly in one of the largest eleven Ivoryish Quarters of the greater New York area. Nikolai’s father grew up there, as did Sebastian’s as did the populist secretly centrist politician Bernard Sanders currently running for the Presidential Primaries. Midwood is New York City’s most staunchly propertied Modern Orthodox Ivoryish district. Along with Crown Heights, Borough Park and Williamsburg which are the more black hat ultra-orthodox neighborhoods dominated by particular Rabbinic sects that find the entire gentile world profane and unholy. These four neighborhoods are surrounded and slightly intermixed with a sprawling array of Afro-Caribbean and African American ghettos and slums. The districts to toward the Southern Coast are Russian and Italian respectively, but most of the Italians left for New Jersey, Long Island and Staten Island in the 80’s. The Haan quarter of Brooklyn is based in Sunset Park, but the epicenter of the colonization is over in Flushing, Queens. The unofficial population of Brooklyn is around 3-4 million persons, over a million not officially or legally supposed to be there.

Nikholai and his now wife, Krissy, moved to District Midwood as it was close to Brooklyn College where they were then going to school. They both had grown up in Manhattan. They lived a happy, secluded and hyper sexual life for more than half a decade out of sight and out of mind.

Then some years later, Krissy completely vanished, and Nikholai returned to the security of parent’s Upper West Side penthouse barely leaving now except for jaunts, benders, mild malingering whoring and occasionally a revolutionary plot, when he must to keep up appearances of being a trusted inner circle man. His connection to so called political activism is not academic or experienced, mostly were he to admit it, he has been sucked into the revolutionary vortex by association; enabling increasingly bold incarnations of Sebastian Adonaev’s little Otriad; their irregular detachment for agitation, propaganda and freedom fighting.

 

“The most striking thing about her is the murder in her eyes which beg a man closer with the promise of bliss then deny him everything,” mutters Sebastian. He’s always talking about and obsessing about, eyes.  Nikholai knows the code though.

 

Sebastian speaks of “her eyes” so he appears less crudely animalistic speaking of breasts and other luscious appendages. Behind this charade of romance, knowing Sebastian for so long, since teenage times; Nikholai knows the projected poet, from the lusty rake and barely tamed savage. The periodic excursions into serial monogamy are punctuated with inserting his penis artfully around town.

Nikholai isn’t himself tonight, he’s not even putting on a show of host and entertainer.

 

Looking out towards the George Washington Bridge, Nikholai thinks of suicide, fleetingly.  Sebastian observes the same Fort Washington district rising as the highest point on the island of Manhattan. There is no suicide in Sebastian, it is removed from his very way of being. He periodically began mentioning to his close confidants, “If you ever here I killed myself, it’s a lie, I don’t have it in me, they finally did it.” But, you don’t kill white people in America, it has to look like something else.

 

Sebastian ruminates in butterfly flaps of mental head space. In his wandering mind he sees all the times he’s walked aimlessly around Fort Tryon Park with a particular lost lover. Holding her little cold hands. One partner, in particular, comes to his mind for Fort Washington District; the Russian Ivoryish quarter perched up in the rafters of New York City. For after her, none of the other previous ones had mattered. Her name was Yelizaveta Alexandrovna Perechenova, he has fought very hard to keep her love alive in some tantric, flickering form. She had left him for the fortieth time, this time breaking off both communication and sex, and ended all correspondence about six sad months prior. No other woman had even crossed his mind, since then. But, then came Daria to kill him. Hardly an improvement really.

 

But, some neurons fire faster than others, and then his mind quickly reverts to his newest fascination. All previous lessons were lost. Were Futurist New York anything like more medieval times, both Sebastian Adonaev and Nikholai Trickovitch; are the disgraced sons of Hebrew Dukes. In layman’s terms, the prodigal children of the Upper Middle Classes of New York Ivoryish gentry. Both blessed with privilege, education, several serfs and white skin coats, cursed with mental illness and an evolving revolutionary thinking.

 

Nikholai was briefly an unlicensed private detective moon lighting as an accountant, wiggling his way listlessly through college. Helping cheating wives get their proofs of infidelity or parents find their dead kids in Newark, New Jersey. He can get to a lot of things in the dark of the web. He is now moonlighting as a driver for the Red Cross in their vast housing and logistics Ponzi scheme, taking money raised from one catastrophe to band aid, blanket and water supply the next one. They hand out prepaid ATM cards to people who lose their homes to fire or disaster, that’s surely appreciated. He’s cut off a lot of people, he begrudgingly lets Sebastian get him out of the house once or twice a year.

In this year, 2012 he can barely manage to leave this house, but he likes to make short walks into the dusk. He is a mostly functional alcoholic, notwithstanding his inability to hold a job, his failure to get over his disappeared wife, his utter failure to finish university and his paralysis. Haitian Rum Straight. Maker’s Mark Straight. And cartons of Newport cigarettes. Sebastian has never questioned what Nikholai does for work. He does something with the internet, living off his wealthy father and selling pills through Albanians to Columbia University students. The children of the elite are addicted to something called Adderall to study and take their exams. The Ivy League is only nine blocks north. Sebastian stays out of his friends’ money. Almost all of his friends have either clean ambulance money or dirty criminal money, and not much in between. Colluding with angels and devils to make an uprising occur, things like that take allies and real dependable, actually won’t run allies take time.

 

“Go work from somewhere warm droog,” Sebastian always encourages him, but Nikholai is cold and spiritually long dead. The blackness in him sees reality as it is, not how it should be or could be or filtered heavily through the ego. “Get yourself a new woman! A blonde with big inviting tits!”

 

But Nikholai never heeds Sebastian call to pack up for prettier places or faces and Sebastian never listens to Nicholai’s persistent advice to stay away from Russian women or be less of committed Democratic Confederalist.

 

Back in the year 2000 they both joined the Democratic Confederalist Party of America, but got kicked out for throwing a huge underage drinking party in it, also launching a short non-lethal bombing campaign connected to slave labor and garment industry.

 

Nikolai sees the bridge out there in the pretty lit up night and thinks about sweet surrender. Sebastian, though here to talk about Daria and his near death experience, remembers his Yelizaveta, a fond memory of challenging strokes.

 

Yelizaveta who Sebastian met while attending Hunter College lived in a cute two bedroom apartment on Fort Washington Ave in a six story building above Fort Tryon; the tallest point in Manhattan. Officially her mother was a maid at the Benjamin Hotel and her father un-employed on disability. But, that was not in any way their real jobs or capabilities. For on the outside the family looked like a struggling working poor immigrant story with young Yelizaveta clawing for the Russian American dream via medical school at Stony Brook University. But Sebastian was privy to the truth.

 

“In Russia we were Ivory. Outside of Russia, we are finally called Russians. We are treated about the same,” once explained Yelizaveta’s father, Alexandre. Yelizaveta was Sebastian’s partner and paramour for the past two years. She met him in the student movement days before she left for Medical School in Long Island. They wrote many months of letters then for two years were partners and rigorous lovers. Then things fell apart. While Daria was igniting some new desires and unsung anthems, Nikholai had heard the songs all before. For years with Yelizaveta and a couple more with several women before her. Now Sebastian and Nikholai, born nine days apart were both nearly 30, but once they were both as wild at age 14. They had loved and lost many times, though Nikholai had loved and lost everything when his wife left him and disappeared into thin air. They knew each other’s’ songs.

 

They had all called in chips and put out feelers to find his Krissy. No one likes to hopelessly cling to a failing marriage then have it break apart. People like even less when the person they love becomes a vapor. A ghost. When all the leads dried up there was still this terrible hope she was somewhere she could return from. When they almost had every ambulance and every gangster, every bad man, every snitch and every soundbite looking for Nicholai’s ex-wife. They went together finally to Alexandre Perchevney, the most dangerous man in New York City. The father of Sebastian’s favorite ex. A person who according to the IRS was collecting disability from a small rent stabilized flat in Washington Heights while his wife worked full time cleaning hotel rooms.

 

But, Alexandre owned properties all over town. Alexandre, born in Ukraine, raised in Bulgaria held a growing empire in disguise. His wife, Yelizaveta’s more Magda Marina; someone that looked exactly like her was indeed cleaning rooms. Someone that looked just like her had raised little Yelizaveta; but nothing was what it appeared to be.

 

Alexandre is called Sasho by those that think they know him well. He is a fierce and indomitable man, but also a gregarious buffoon behind the doors of his famous tavern Social Club when no one was looking but those he mostly trusted dancing about with a cigar grinning. Sasho is also quite a mastermind. He found himself with a great deal of money at the end of the 90’s. Always plotting and constantly cashing on his plots. A Ukrainian Ivory when he felt like it. A Bulgarian Mobster when he felt like it. The IRS auditor registered him at receiving about $600 a month in disability. The very last man you’d ever want to owe. But Sebastian had owed him several times. But, even Sasho couldn’t find Krissy. Or that’s what he finally said after getting a lot of free work out of them.

 

The family safe houses were still ‘too hot’ to talk about anything heavy. There had been multiple police raids to Sebastian’s loft since 2000. The young men were always plotting too and that plotting got them investigated by multiple police and intelligence services. Sebastian had to flee the country for the year of 2000-2001, he moved between London, Paris, Madrid and eventually Tel Aviv evading allegations of terrorism in New York, largely unfounded. He came back in November of 2001 after the towers fell and moved in for a time with Nicholai’s family. Shortly after they got back to plots, plans, direct actions and trouble. As young men causing trouble should do, they both moved deep into Brooklyn in 2005. But while Brooklyn and the Bronx have many alcoves for sheltering rebels and criminals, they always needed a dangerous protector. So since, their little movement has taken shelter under the roof of a loving lesser Post-Soviet Oligarch. And there was a lot of business relationship now facilitated by this. In 2010 amid a terrible blizzard Sebastian Adonaev had saved the leg and life of his then girlfriend Yelizaveta Alexandre’s daughter or at the very least fought his way through a snowstorm to rescue her from a broken tibia, lying bleeding and abandoned in JFK airport. That night was so pivotal for it was the first time Sasho owed anyone anything and found out about the secret little thing is daughter had with Sebastian. But then a lot of other things happened. Sasho was shot and nearly died. It was messy, Sebastian killed a few people that night. Yelizaveta loved him even more, her father respected and owned him. But her mother was horrified and worked full time to end the entire relationship. All in just a seven day blizzard.

Sebastian was locked up for a month. Not for the men he killed, but from lack of sleep. Sometimes when the work he did took over and he wandered around town in big circles engaging the universe and lot of other people. An ambulance picked him up near Coney Island.  He never was held very long before the American Civil Liberties Union or family lawyers got things negotiated. They never killed anyone or blew anything up, that’s what the lawyers always repeated over the years.

 

Most of the work Sebastian and his outfit did was propaganda. Historical lectures, street theatre, speeches and lots of diner salons on topics of subversive relevance. Sebastian’s father was the dentist for a lot of detectives and high ranked cops, which helped some. Sebastian and Nikolai picked up with Sasho, which helped a lot. A lot of the time some standoff happened and Sebastian took himself hostage. The police hospitalized him a lot more than they put him in the tombs. It was easier to get rid of him that way, since they recognized, those that knew or heard that he was city paramedic and an affiliated person who never put boys in blue in harm’s way for the most part.

 

Yelizaveta’s mother ordered her to break the whole affair off immediately in the Winter of 2010. So after a year of hiding and sneaking around, breaking up, fucking hard and making up, then breaking up again in circles; the day after his birthday 28, giving him a good hard last ride she decisively ended everything. Sasho was never consulted with or weighed in on the romance between Sebastian and his daughter. He was of course by then aware it was happening, and did nothing. Sebastian never asked permission or asked him to do anything after the final break up. The man being paid to be her disabled father, the double who knew Yelizaveta more than her biological father; well he was the only other person sad about the whole thing.

 

To the brutal and brilliant ‘Bulgarian’ gangster slash businessman, Sebastian Adonaev amused him. Reminded him of himself as young man before he lost Democratic Confederalism and found a million ways to make money at the tree of life.

 

Not that any of these things have anything to do with two fucks of an anything. Except to paint the portrait of Sebastian as more hopeless romantic puppy than a stone cold killer, which he eventually became after losing enough friends in the years of the underground. He still loves young Yelizaveta the prim, Japy pre-medical student as ferociously as he ever had. He served her needs and courted her involvement in political projects, and she certainly did quite a lot to assist him. But, her mother wanted her to have nothing to do with a young man so alike to her father, both hear real father and the man hired to play her father.

Nikholai traverses a daily memory road his with his vanished ex-wife. Wonders did she leave him or was she taken away, and by who? Sebastian is regularly and often existentially dying from his beliefs. Women just distract that he is a committed zealot, let him pretend he wants a ‘normal life’. When his partners reject him and his unstable, if not probably impossible pursuits, he goes harder at them. Which thus magnifies the danger to himself and others. Before this recent anguish over Yelizaveta, there was Hali Vik, the artistic Swedish anarchist to whom he was engaged to marry. There was also the debutante Ukrainian Maria Parsheva. Less passionate, but certainly highly influential were Polish Democratic Confederalist Joanna Kocab and his Sephardic Israeli partner Emma Solomon.

Not that the list of other unlisted, less contemplated lovers and girlfriends were of less importance to his human development, but the women who evolved him were their own league, they all attempted to love Sebastian as he was and better the quality of his life game.

Maria and Yelizaveta were the two other former Soviet lovers Sebastian had taken as his closest partners in the past four years. It would be incorrect to say he dated “Russian Women exclusively”; as later inferred by the Russian photographer and Israeli gangster Oleg Medved. He had merely intimately engaged only just two, one right after the other. And that was enough for him to suspect there was something remarkable about the character of a “Russian woman.” The first, Maria brought such stability and calm to his mind. She made a good home with him in Midwood Canton, she pumped him full of sex. But Sebastian did not love her completely for she did not excite at all intellectually. She would suck on his cock for hours, or take in in uncomfortable places sooner than talk about the ‘emancipation of the negro’ as she called his work dismissively. She never seemed angry or critical. She removed Sebastian from the stresses of paramedicine and organizing.

 

“That’s all she seemed good for,” Nikholai once suggested, but he later impressed her on one very particular occasion. She could barely conversate on the political level, much less cook.

 

Nikholai remembered redhead Maria as something of a “submissive Soviet Jessica Rabbit,” complete with a cute little mole, slightly husky voice and marked non-fascination with much that wasn’t Soviet in origin, besides Sebastian of course. She sure did hold her own on the “train job” though, that bloody mess in 2007. That was the time when Nikholai, Sebastian, Maria and a foxy little Chechen named Angelika had to hold off a murderous mob of sixteen working poor white hooligans from Gerritsen Beach with a briefcase, a prayer, and good Bangladeshi Samaritan. Which got them all over the papers and Sebastian into the ranks of the FDNY.

Sebastian would forever view Maria as his “Betty Shabazz” as their black nationalist associate Justin Thomas described her. This was a real gesture of flattery on Justin’s part by in calling Maria “Betty Shabazz” he was calling Sebastian a white Malcolm X. Or something to that effect. Betty, like Maria in a most ways strong woman who stood behind her larger than life man without involving herself in the political melee. Sebastian and Maria lived together for over a year, they broke up on Block Island. Sebastian had left her on the beach and swam out into the night.

 

Nicholai just thought of Maria a Russian geisha, until he watched her do the train job. At that moment under fire, her realness did come out. Nikh still had no trouble after the break up confiding she was just a Geisha, a stay at home fuck.

 

The second Russian girlfriend Yelizaveta was headstrong and wild and Sebastian could never forget her, no matter how many women he got under. Yelizaveta, a spoiled daughter of a dangerous mobster in a subjective reality, a working poor dreamer in another. Hustling to become a doctor to get her parents out of poverty. No one approved of her at all. Though no one really said so while it seemed to make him happy; everyone later told him ‘Yeli’ was walking all over him.

 

Nikholai remembers young Yelizaveta emerging into the picture, and Sebastian’s bedroom sometime in early 2009. He remembers her at meetings, and social functions as “a highly mouthy Americanized blonde know it all little bitch who walked all over you privately and publicly and privately yet again. She emptied out your pockets, put wild eyed ideas in your head, and reduced you to bawling tears when she eventually left you over her mother’s total lack of approval.”

 

But Sebastian never saw it like that, he’d held the relationship long past when it should have ended. He left here with a box of letters and a diamond engagement ring he’d bought from some Rabbi in a bathhouse.

 

“Your women are never far from the very center of your goriest war stories,” Nick notes.

 

The two comrades Sebastian and Nikolai had been partners in the student movement, in the underground and in the insurgency and its defense committees 2000 when Sebastian got out of the behavior modification camps he’d spent a year in; escaping on Valentine’s Day back to New York from Upstate. The year they did their first job. They both opposed their government’s imperialism as well as the capitalist system generally. Sebastian always put amalgamated ideology to it, but Nikholai just always felt the government was repressive, the Noires totally oppressed and the population brainwashed into fat apathy.  There had been a lot of great and also “highly mediocre women” and a lot of jobs since then. Jobs, being their little word of resistance operations. But not for nothing, since Sebastian Adonaev entered his “Postsoviet amorous period,” as Nikholai liked to call it, well the jobs had gotten quite a lot more ambitious. The man needed an iron clad muse all assumed. In reality, he simply needed to be loved so that the love he put in the world could find a singular dedication, another soul to whom he could do all his work for.

“How do you think that bodes for longevity? More importantly, love making? The full blown Russianness of her” asks Nikholai. As Sebastian had informed him that Daria was fully Slavic and all his other so-called Russian lovers were variations on Ukrainian Ivory.

 

“Referring back to this new lady being a full blown Slav?”

“Certainly. Slav is only one letter from you being a slave after all. And you and I know full fucking well that it isn’t the female who’s the slave in these Cold War flings. Those women walk all over men with their parapsychology and high heels.”

Sebastian had come to believe that Nikholai harbored some rather base prejudices against ‘the Russians’ but had never determined why. Nikholai had come to believe that Sebastian unable to love himself at all found himself enslaved by a series of at least partly damaged, somewhat dangerous, quasi gold digging immigrant women. Russian and non-Russian alike. Both men had father’s three of four generations removed from pre-Soviet Russia with Ivory blood. Both had mothers eight or nine generations American by some distant way of Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and famine. Both men share a political conviction perhaps reflective best of being born Petit Bourgeoisie in the leading city in the last violent flutters of an Empire.

 

Sebastian had not previously thought of how Dasha performed in bed. It was as if he had known that already, being a man. From first sight as she sized him up like a slave on an auction block being told to find a cocktail.

She could clearly fuck a man into pieces.

That wasn’t up for any speculation on his part. But this was not the immediate attraction, the shapely form and the physical curves, the eyes he keeps talking about and the crazy in her. There was some great familiarity she bore to someone he used to know. There are poems and songs about that. And it most certainly wasn’t either of his previous Postsoviet partners. He felt a sexual pull, animalistic in nature. But this was a different thing. A Deja-vu about loss and longing.

 

“I bet she is ferocious,” remarks Nicholai.

 

An apt word for her, all things considering what transpired on that rooftop but two days ago.

“I can’t stop thinking about her. She’s made more remarkable not by her sheer dangerousness, but by some feeling I have of having seen her before in another time. I speak not about a blackout in hat Tavern. I must confide in low volume about other lives and other worlds. A pure predator not even posing as a house pet! And the things she confessed to under torture.”

 

“Tortured her did you?”

 

“I did. With my choice words.”

 

“This is your primary instrument of torture tovarish.”

 

Tovarish is former Soviet for, comrade. Nikolai is a Russian-Ivoryish-Fenians-German mutt just like Sebastian. Their New Yorkerness, supersedes all that imagined identity. Neither of their mothers is halachically Ivoryish, though Sebastian’s mother Barbara had gone through some motions to convert to the watered down Reform version.  So the black hats would, of course, disavow them both as sad losses to the Gentiles. Neither Sebastian nor Nikholai could marry lawfully in Israel neither, but that didn’t bother Nikholai as he had no intention of ever going to that particular colony after hearing many of Sebastian’s accounts. Sebastian and Nick both look enough like “the Russians,” but they speak, and they think like children of the American Upper Middle-class intelligentsia. Both of their fathers are medical professionals. Nikholai’s father is a neurologist, and Sebastian’s a dentist. Both fathers are committed, Ivoryish Atheists. Both gentile mothers being American ‘hippie’, openly minded sorceresses perhaps predisposed the young two men to their lower case Democratic Confederalism as they’d be denounced as over and over. But, they were not orthodox Democratic Confederalists, or working in the local Party organs. The nine of which in New York were marginal anachronisms at best composed of the awkward and the elderly. They simply were two young men of privilege aligning their lives with the plight of the much-trampled masses out of empathy not necessity. They were only about as Ivoryish as their value for education, but sometimes Sebastian was known to make a rude display of it in the form of Holiday parties.

 

They did Rosh Hashanah, the Ivoryish New Year’s, Hanukkah the eight-day gambling potato pancake party, Passover the Exodus Fest; and Sukkot the eight-day tent party feast. And the rest were all causally omitted. As well as poorly understood.

 

They had met in their freshman year of High School. Sebastian’s home had been robbed, and Nick had shown up with some weapons and an offer to help him get his honor back, his rep. They rarely agreed on anything besides opposition to the government, and the greatness of big firm breasts augmenting rough sex, but they were very similar men in disposition. They both enjoyed the drink and could work each other into nights of sheer ethanol rampage. In City, culture, genes, and habits their cloth was of similar cut. Until the year 2010 though, Sebastian has been married to his interpretations of Democratic Confederalism via Zionist Universalism while Nikholai had been married to Krissy, not needing angry politics at all. But things fall apart. Sebastian returned from his ‘second homeland’ in cuffs and Krissy ran out maybe, then as stated completely vanished. It was perhaps Nikholai’s inner misery over the fate of his marriage and Sebastian’s inner misery over being denied what he had imagined was his occupied homeland or imagined was his destiny that put them back together, left them open to suggestion. This lead to the expeditions into Haiti and the beginning of the armed struggle. Via a machine of networked factions and sympathizers the two had built in tandem over a decade.

 

And let us all be frank that women can give men any number of tremendous suggestions and wield a power that shapes a man’s deeds. Perhaps you could say women, with more love for the world and more investment in its future can direct the violent ego driven nature of men.

 

“She didn’t tell me everything, but enough to conclude she is a victim, a prisoner of sorts. With a dark Post-Soviet past to unravel all of her callous behaviors and the smile she hides behind.”

They had toppled backward together toward the precipice, and in the free fall, he had pulled her with him to collective death only averted because of certain laws of physics. Well, it was impossible to know truly, Yelizaveta the young scientist could have explained it, but she was long gone these days.

Rather than tumble into a pit of death, Sebastian grabbing onto Daria altered the trajectory of the plummet. She had made every effort to follow his deadly, beckoning commands and rather than go through with it honorably he had tried to take her with him.

How Russian American.

 

“So what the fuck happened on that roof?” Trickovitch asks.

 

“Well toppled and we landed on top of each other half off the edge. Then we just lay there quietly panting. I realized that she had almost just killed me and I had almost just taken her with me toward death.”

“That’s hot. And by hot, I mean real fucking stupid.”

 

“Well, anyway. So hearts were racing and looking down into seventeen stories of death she then grabs my hand and bites down into my right shooter.”

 

Sebastian shows the wound. There were a literal ring of red bite marks around his right index finger.

“I think I know her from before,” Sebastian finally admits overtly.

“Before, eh. Tovarish. You need to take more of your medicine.”

“No, I mean maybe. But this was different. I am not making chemical, electrical mythologies droog; I remember Dasha Andreavna Skorbogatova Maccluskey from before.”

 

“You’ve always been a sick fuck. It gets worse when you low dose or drop dose, or of course Wakefield and don’t go to sleep. And you need not let fourth-dimensional things interfere with the gathering war effort,” Nikholai replies and lights another menthol smoke.

“Well then she calms down, and we do this kind of half swoon, half cuddle, half makes a reevaluation of an enemy. As she did just try and push me off a roof and kill me. Daria tells me that she paid 25,000 dollars to come to America and have an arranged marriage setup. She said she had to work the debt off and the work was highly unpleasant. She asked me if I wanted to take her on a date. She told me she knew the Financial District very well and could tell me who and what to hit.”

Sometimes Nikholai Trickovitch believes his best friend is mad Hebrew profit and a highly inspiring leader. And sometimes Sebastian is draining.

“Don’t project and don’t believe her Russian lies. You always seem to tell a tale always darker than is. The world is evil enough on its comrade story teller. As for her offer to help? Why? What’s in it for her? I think you should ask where this woman came from, question why she ended up meeting you at this very stage. You know, right before the biggest job to date. Don’t think with your dick. You’re not her type. What are you holding? What do you have in the bank? The whole thing looks fucked at every angle of evaluation. She tried to kill you.”

 

 

“She told and made most illicit references to what she did to come here. Perhaps she wants out of who holds her paperwork. Or maybe something else,” Sebastian suggests.

“I’m not sure she did anything but prove you’re easier to kill than the rumors suggest, you’d both been drinking and we all know just about anything can come out of a Russian woman’s mouth drunk or sober. We both know all women lie,” Nikholai replies.

“Just about anything can become true or untrue, dangerous or stunning. A top or a bottom. But given the entirety of the encounter, it seemed Daria was alluding to her imprisonments and debts. Whatever their current state might be.”

“But are they even true? All women lie, and these Soviet women lie highly convincingly as if it were storytelling as art or advanced parapsychology. You magnify and exaggerate all suffering to fit in the contexts of your often convoluted radical politics. You make every single woman around you’re your damsel in distress from Capitalism! You’ve done so time and again. I’ve been here for it all. Remember your truest, most equal partner Hali Vik, the one you quite nearly married? Before you dated and slept with former Soviets in this endless succession, you did date and slumber erotically with Americans for a time.”

 

“Nicholai, you’re making something out of prejudices. I had just two partners after Hali. I know what you’re getting at. But really man, there was only Maria, and then there was Yelizaveta. And there were a couple of short stands in the Stans in between, but they meant so little and felt like so nothing that I all but stopped my fucking for fun. My hand gave me greater pleasure,” smirks Sebastian.

“Hali Vik was the kind of woman you need to find again, steal her back from that Italian hipster musician she dates or something, you’ve done such things frequently. Not these cold, possibly morally vacant Russians. They will never understand you, and they’ll never join this cause,” says Nikolai, “Just like Maria and Yeli, Daria will reject your ideology, reject your lifestyle and leave you the very minute you become hard to deal with; which you are! Incredibly hard to deal with,” says Nikholai.

Nikholai Trickovitch is referring to the only woman that anyone ever thought had made a realistic and well-suited partner for Sebastian Adonaev. All of his friends, comrades, and co-officers never went so far as to say “Maria Parsheva is a Russian Geisha,” or “Yelizaveta Perechenova is a condescending, high maintenance Ivoryish American princess,” but they all said it when the two women broke off the relationships. Sebastian’s mother was vaguely prejudiced by now of anyone who even spoke Russian.

Hali Vik, Fenians Swedish wild rebel Hali Vik was not a natural fit either though. Her big tits and flirtatious demeanor caused a lot of fights. Sebastian remembers momentarily the time Hali cut her risks, and he had to get up to Massachusetts and find her doped up in a roadside motel. He also remembers the Lowell Job, when they burned down half the Meth Labs in the city and engaged in a running gun fight with the Cambodian street gangs. Which had been a messy over exertion of well-intentioned violence because Hali Vik, had gotten herself in a lot of trouble, but Sebastian may well have made up stories in his head too?

Part of Sebastian’s condition was that everything was always happening at once in total recall. If he did not take a medicinal salt to lock into the present, he gets overwhelmed by the intensity of everything.

Well anyway, Hali was ‘safe in Italy’ or maybe Texas now, and while there may have been a little bit of torture, murder, barbarism, and war utilized to get her there, well nobody was dead and buried in Lowell that didn’t deserve somewhat to be dead, burned and buried in Lowell.

Nikolai and Sebastian being best friends talked a lot about their women. But there was one woman that Nikholai new precious little about and that was Emma Solomon, but he was correct that Hali Vik the only American was, in fact, the only person he might well have married in a normative sense of what that word means. For in the State of Israel, Sebastian was in paperwork at least still quite married to Emma Solomon. But bigamy of paperwork is not the same as bigamy taken to the firing mechanisms of the inner heart. Was it these four women that had made Sebastian believe in the struggle as if it were love? No, only Emma did, and Emma was dead. Or didn’t exist in the same space that everyone else had.

 

Yelizaveta in a completely separate way. Because she had worked on his body very thoroughly. And he had been employed heavy on hers. They were together for only three months when the storm hit; someone broke her leg, someone tried to kill her dangerous father and Sebastian fixed it all. Then he was imprisoned. There had many lovers, not an inappropriate amount but a good amount still. Sebastian had well ripped the heart out of their young Polish comrade Joanna who loved him as no other woman had or perhaps could but to whom he felt youthful nothing. But that was a decade ago. Sometimes, he felt like all his pain with loving women that couldn’t love him, in the same way, was due to what he did to Joanna.

 

Nikolai had been married to a Syrian Italian Puerto Rican model for seven years named Cristiana, or Krissy for cute. She had wanted very little besides children, and she was an agoraphobe; she didn’t leave their Midwood, Brooklyn apartment very many times in the ten years they lived together. The product of near ceaseless sexual harassment and advances on the street, she preferred the life of a managed housewife. Her father was rather wealthy and also in the Central Intelligence Agency. The parents disowned her for cohabitating with a Ivory. Though he wasn’t very Ivoryish at all and didn’t even have a Ivoryish mother, or a Bar Mitzvah. They married early at age 18 and lived together in District Midwood until their late twenties. Adonaev rarely saw his best man then, but Nikolai was happy playing house, he was domestic in his soul.

Eventually it ended, he wouldn’t bear her kids. She didn’t want one she wanted 3 or 4. And he didn’t know if his life wanted to look like that. The money wasn’t great at his job, and she was even a little more homebound than he was which seemed extreme. They bargained and fucked, bargained and cried. Then, they divorced and then she completely disappeared, into smoke. As if her father had managed that; which maybe he had. The very last time they saw each other to sign the divorce papers she gave him a parting fuck. He poured olive oil on his cock and put it deep in her ass for as long as he could think to. It was the kind of rough good bye sex from movies, which passionate, angry people have in real life. It was the kind of sex Yelizaveta and Sebastian had for a year since they broke up about once a week for a year. Nikholai doesn’t like to equate his last encounter with Krissy as sodomy with Italian olive oil. It was a lot more than that. She had completely rejected him and then cut him off.

Nikholai has been fucking and drank his way towards oblivion lately. He felt nothing anymore now that Krissy was gone to god only knows where. Self-destruction or the arms of a wealthy man, who only knew? In all likelihood, her father probably just gave her a trust fund and sent her abroad somewhere. But dark minds make up the worst possible scenarios about everything. After Krissy, every single woman Nick was with looked like a lumpy mommy. Nothing to write home about any single one of them. Women that emasculated him even further.

 

Then Nick put out the past with his cigarette.

 

“I am only suggesting slowness and loads of needed caution is required are you to obsess, I repeat the word obsess! Further about another woman you meet by the brink of your crazy pursuit of wild partly damaged women. Joanna was great to you, but you never felt anything and that destroyed her and perhaps forever cursed you if you believe in the dealings of love. Hali Vik was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to you to being unadulterated happy for a brief fuck of time. But let’s not forget just how much we had to burn down and knock around over that little lady, and that you may have saved her life, but she well near killed you. Maria Parsheva was a loyal little Russian geisha, but between various factors that we need not rehash, that too was doomed. Though, on the train, what a little gangster she was! Perhaps you did faster more far reaching organizing so moved as you were by Ms. Yelizaveta Perechenova, but you have such a way of making women into these wild muses and then yourself into tragic fucking art. And to be frank, Yelizaveta completely emptied your bank account. She also humiliated you on a weekly basis by refusing to give the relationship any stability after you got out of prison. All the women you take as your serious partners, well none of them have fathers and all of them of dark pasts. Except for Joanna who you destroyed. Poor noble woman. Which was rather sad because none of them loved you as fearlessly as she. She was the only one who followed you into the camps remember, into Palestine. He was a quality woman. But, you were bored and cheated on her left and right!”

Yelizaveta has a most brilliant and scary father. Bulgarian by nationality. Ukrainian Ivory by blood. But he was highly bipolar. About as high functioning Bipolar as a major criminal/ business man can get. When he arrived in America in the 1990’s the ambulance men carried him off all the time, like every other year. Until Sasho had every single paramedic working north of 168th street killed. Had New York Presbyterian Hospital burned down? Made Washington Heights once again since the 1980’s an entirely unsafe place to live. So, it went to reason “that the daughter of a bipolar man carried away by ambulance men should perhaps not marry a bipolar ambulance man.”

 

That’s what Sebastian’s condition was also called, Bipolar 1, invented medicine for deviant minds. That thing did not really exist. It was simply one more way the Western governments colluded to chemically neuter powerful people.

 

Firm and logical now, but not in 2009. After Sebastian secured Yelizaveta during the blizzard and brought her to a hospital for treatment. After Sebastian, Nikholai and some of their men thwarted and Italian mob attack on Alexandre. After Sebastian was taken by the secret police for a month and disappeared into torture land. Well, despite the conflicting recent record of heroism, Yelizaveta’s mother Tanya Marina forbid Yeli and Sebastian to see each other, and a woman with only one functional parent will follow the will of her mother in the end. But, Yelizaveta was a little crazy too and loved Sebastian. So for a year, it was on again off again, rough and deep, hard and passionate, presents, secret rendezvous and lots of art, poems, dinners, flowers and a lot of time in the sheets as well as in showers, tubs and the floor.

“Dasha is a continent on to herself. I ask you not compare and contrast my various past uses of love and longing. I can’t even truly say that I know her well enough to speak anything like love to her. I only felt like I was in the presence of, a long lost friend.”

He almost said, ‘murdered wife’ but he decided that Nikholai would then actually mock him. As everyone had and would that he suggested something like that too.

“A damn construct man! Do not mistake your fucking black Israelite training for reality or it will consume you, again,” that’s what Nick would yell at him in simulations.

“You love dangerously and often inappropriately. You don’t let go at all. Just remember that Hali Vik was also the closest time, in my memory to you being killed by another man, group of men really over a woman. I suspect that is something you are secretly craving in some reminiscence of an older life.”

“Well, maybe she hasn’t got a man, per say. Maybe she hasn’t got a dark past at all; maybe it’s just a mind game. I’m very hard to kill as you know. Dasha has already tried.”

 

“You might have easily both died. And truly this time for absolutely nothing!”

 

“She claimed to Rafael Ernesto she remembers nothing about that night at all.”

 

“A black out as a reconciliation for your improvised murder? Prosto, so if she had killed you she wouldn’t even have remembered it!”

 

“A blackout woman always thinly hides a dark past in my experience.”

 

“I fail to see what, at all, is attractive about her willingness to murder you!”

 

“This isn’t lust. Or love. This is something surreal brother. Something I haven’t felt in before in the same way. They say she has been coming to the Mehanata Social Club for a little under three years, but I’ve never seen her before. She never pays, always leaves alone. Drinks like she needs to part the Red Sea via her consumption. I’ve never seen her at the club before, I’m there all the time as you know. I have no idea how I could have missed a busty, wild thing like her.”

 

“That my friend is only called a trap. She is not what you or we need right now. She is nothing but big tits with bad trouble.”

 

Sebastian would perhaps not have noticed her because for the past year and a half he had weaned himself off that den of Bulgarian sin and former Soviet misery by convincing himself no woman on earth could be as angelic and pure as his Yelizaveta, his last and most imperfect love.

“The trouble is you’re not a hopeless romantic,” continues Nikholai getting yet another cigarette fired up, up off the first, “It’s far worse that you’re a real romantic. You usher in the 18th century for the coldest of former Soviet hearts. Some of these poor girls have to learn how to protect themselves from whether you’re sure you’re serious or not. More precisely you need to protect yourself from your projections of love and the cowboy like the way you shoot cupid’s arrows off in your artistic yet unpredictable shifting of moods.”

 

“I’m deadly serious with this one, and will not weigh its risks against the others. You are lecturing me about my love life as if I were proclaiming a new love. I am speaking about something else now. I am remembering things that were, shall we say deleted. Mediated away. Washed down with salt! I am telling you not that I plan to try and bed Daria Maccluskey. Of course, I will try, that is what men do. I’m trying to tell you that with all the sleep, salt and training in the world; I know that woman from before.”

 

“All of them. You say things like this about all of them. It’s either a blessing or a terrible curse you love early and often love as you do. I suspect a curse upon your well-being. You seem to enjoy these unstable, untenable trysts as if pursuing the romantic ideal of poorly constructed epics might necessitate your energies to live a more basic life. Not that anything you do is basic, but I suspect you’d always be happier as a wandering bard than as a loosely grounded resistance fighter. ”

“I have no idea anymore; I just feel something in the molecules, my friend. I am telling you that what we have been planning might well hinge on this person. I haven’t written a magnificent poem in many years. If quite a little good art was made under Yelizaveta, it was because she asked for it and returned it and sucked it out of me on her knees. They are all entirely different loves. One loves the struggle because one always thinks it noble, or heroic and the cause just and the suffering of our people, all people immense. One loves a woman because she emboldens him. Makes him a real man by showing love as something justifying of our human condition.”

 

“Different Sebastian’s have said differing things on the matter over this decade mind you. You must look yourself in the mirror more often or more deeply. For one thing, you’re too lean for my liking and you hair is too short it means you aren’t eating. That is always a giveaway that you are about to do something reckless. Police and imprisonment tend to follow an old friend.”

 

“You’re being a real Ivoryish mother now. More praying is perhaps in order?”

 

“I certainly don’t care what you pray to this week, but you do need to eat more, drink less and certainly not be chasing around a woman you hardly know, who happens to show up now. Three weeks from the job. The biggest job ever. And for the love of god: You just got over Ms. Yelizaveta and were beginning to sleep around more casually, so please just don’t get drunk on any more roof tops. Just be cautious of what a wild woman you are dealing with. And please, whatever you do, just don’t tell her you love her until you can pronounce her last name. And have done the homework on the skeletons in her closet. This is a Russian fucking woman after all. They play no games, not with one damn thing. We could sort of vouch for Maria and Yeli, but who is this bitch? Seriously, who the fuck is Daria Maccluskey?”

Nikolai then asks Sebastian quite specifically, “What happened up on that roof?”

 

Sebastian blows out his smoke.

 

“I died and was immediately reborn, like the last few thousand times,” quietly responds Adonaev puffing his cigarette, “we toppled to our very deaths. We died in a very inglorious real way. Stupidly and drunk. But, miraculously we then awoke panting in the alley way, holding each other’s near death hand. This all happened in the blink of an eye. Then we got up, and I dusted her off, and we walked out as if nothing happened. She gave me her number, and I put her in a cab.”

“And you think you see the soul of your dead wife in her, is that the story?”

 

“Nikholai please do not judge me. If I’m so fucking crazy why is anyone following me into this war?”

 

“Because we’re all a little crazy. You’re just very persistent,” Nikholai replies.

 

But Nikholai Trickovitch does not judge him for too long because he too knows what it is like to bear forced eternal separation from the one you love. He too is gifted with a long memory and knows what Sebastian first lost that brought him to the revolutionary road. He simply is aware of something that Sebastian Adonaev is not because Sebastian is at least partly sleeping, still taking the last load of salt drugs they put him on, while Nikholai is completely awake.

 

They’ve been friends since 1999. Just before Sebastian did his first bid in the camps.

 

S E V E N, the Bronx

 

“A Dream from 1999”

 

My oh my. Tickle me Tamerlane. I wish I were part of a religion important enough to have my God housed in that thing, thinks the pilgrim as he looks up at the sprawling temple complex on the mount in this little desert town.

This is the Pale City in the badlands. I’m back in the vile fucking camps!

The streets are dark. An eerie twilight dances upon the cobblestones and the happy laugh of children is missing. The pilgrim senses that this place is just no good. There is no moon and someone has turned off the stars. He has been here many times before. He has wandered these cobblestone streets lost while searching, drinking deeply from the puddles of his own soul. Time has no meaning here. There are only the ghosts and the growing darkness surrounded by an endless desert of the mind. Each time he returns to bow down and to venture towards the light glimmering in the darkness. He is no longer sure this light even exists. Behind every locked door is some route to the horror freak-show of his subconscious, some lurking subterranean display of rape or torture. The place is good at making a religion out of violence.

 

The pilgrim passes by a towering Ferris wheel at the town wall; a Bregna barrier, an apartheid separation wall made of pyramid bricks and barbwire. The wheel sits in a thorn garden. Its operator is a hideous harlequin whose face is painted white, red, and black and who laughs like a mad man carries himself like a pederast.

 

There is no way out.

 

Every night the pilgrim returns to this personal hell, this Pale City in the desert, this home of perpetual blackness. His pilgrimage begins anytime he goes to sleep causing him to return to pay homage over and over again, to bear witness to hell as he understands it.

 

Tonight there is a great commotion coupled with alarm. The town’s transient population waits on the central square called umslagplatz. Their faces are twisted in grimaces too close to death to be truly alive.  Everything appears grainy, toned in black, white and gray scale unless it needs to bleed. Then it is the color of bright red arterial blood, like a 1970’s B movie grindhouse.

The temple looks like a cross between the Hagia Sophia and the Luna Park housing projects, or maybe the Alhambra mixed with Astroland in its heyday. Robed clerics on the balconies of the temple drone out prayers from behind their grey hooded robes. One can never see their faces, accuse them of their crimes. The holy men are never from the pilgrim’s tribe.

A tall and twisted tree stands in the center of the square, bulbous and ghastly.  It looks like the last standing cherry tree in the parking lot at Chernobyl. It has flowers, but not the kind you would give a loved one. The pilgrim knows what is to come for he has read about it in a banned book called the New Testament. You can’t get a good translation of it within ten thousand miles of Brooklyn.

 

But most versions agree on one detail at least. When the messiah came back, well the forces of evil got her, got her good.

 

An illiterate and rowdy mob has assembled around the main square. A large garrison of foreign troops forms ranks and bars all the entrances and exits. A big black man crowned in barbed wire, already beaten nearly to death, is being dragged through the streets as the people pelt him with rocks and garbage screaming for his blood. The crowd exists as a single entity, a twisted sweating creature of manipulated rage. The black man carries a long wooden board over his muscular African shoulders. Grisly avulsions run down his back. His blood and sweat only lubricates the mob’s resolve to hurt him further. It emboldens them.  Many would have begged for mercy or made an indignant show of fortitude toward their captors but this man simply marches along with a sad look in his grey eyes. His humility makes them hate him even more.

 

The pilgrim is watching the spectacle from his hiding place in a bombed out café at the edge of the square. He is too scared to get much closer. Finally, the man is lifted by the mob onto the tree. The beam is fastened. They begin nailing his hands to the ends of the board. Then they nail his feet with one great big rail spike right into the tree. Two more pitiful figures, some alleged criminal that the pilgrim didn’t know and some revolutionist are fastened next to this dying rebel. Their bodies form a triangle above the base of this crucifixion tree.  The mob is cheering with an orgiastic glee, dancing about the tree. Soon they begin fucking each other right there on the square.

 

The pilgrim shudders. He is only thirteen and can’t speak the language much less really protect himself from that mob. He uses a pair of binoculars to look up from behind the counter of the derelict cafe into the eyes of the man. There is no fear or agony on the man’s face, simply the grim realization that he has failed in his mission. The black rebel spasms and coughs up blood as life drains out of him.

A soldier stabs him with a bayonet to seal the deed.

A young girl in a dirty white dress is hiding in the bombed out café also. She is only sixteen or seventeen and pregnant. She could be Arab, Russian, or Puerto Rican but passes easily for blan. She has blonde bleached hair. She is sobbing quietly, on the inside. Her hair is tied in the light grey wrap that pilgrim women wear. Daria? Who the hell is Daria? Why did that name pop into my head for a stranger with blonde hair?

 

She whispers accusingly, “Collaborator.”

 

The alarm rings. It’s an air raid siren blaring the pilgrim out of slumber.

Sebastian Adonaev wakes up in bed of privilege.

 

I wake up quickly in a pool of sweat. I nearly fall out of the bed that is a raised bunk bed with my desk underneath. It has been another in a string of nightmares. They all started sometime in 1997.  I never remember most of the details, only the horror.

 

It is 6:15 am on a Monday morning of a new school year. I live at Waterside Plaza on the island fortress of Manhattan. My school is an hour north by subway in what some call the Boogie down, but what I call the fucking Bronx.

 

It is time to go to the camps for some indoctrination.

My name is Sebastian Adonaev. Believe as much or as little as you hear about me. That goes for the things I tell you about myself as well.

 

The mind works in cycles and patterns, innate behavioral conditioning brought about through external governing factors that mold response and reaction. How strong or beautiful a person appears is genetic, but that the mind is a clean slate, a great evolving tapestry, a mostly unused muscle. With discipline, this muscle can be harnessed to radically affect a person’s surroundings, sense of time and ultimately, the character of an individual’s life. The mind is a beautiful piece of organic clockwork that we are largely unable to understand, regulate or control.

 

I’m sure that I’m not using more than 8% of my brain, but like all things that will change.

 

I get up quickly and shower. I jerk off in the shower thinking about my dick with two chicks–one Black-Irish, one Haan-Nipponese. Mixed races are the future. I towel off. I dress in whatever is lying about. Some days I undress again when the socially conscious part of my brain realizes my threads look ridiculous.  I run back to the bathroom. I throw Queen Helene, that thick mix of hardening green goop, into my hair, slick it back, spike it and sculpt the devil horns that swoop and curl. I use Scope instead of brushing my teeth because it is quicker. If I’m late the teacher will make me sit in the corner.

 

I run down the stairs and drop by the steel shutter coffee stand to wait in line for my morning fix of that nasty, bitter stimulant that will keep me awake long enough to do last night’s homework on the train.

 

It is “essential” that this work be completed, because it is essential that one finishes high school. That’s the place you memorize facts you do not need to know in pursuit of a so-called “body of knowledge” necessary to be considered a civilized member of Western society. This is nation-biased bullshit that paints our consumer-frenzied culture as truth and light to the brown barbarians.  But learn it you shall, for college is only four years away. There you will be further tuned and refined into a cog, screw or girder in mainstream society. Eventually you will choose a career you hate, making enough money to one day join that promised upper middle class bracket of the American socio-economic stratosphere. You will marry, have 2.3 kids and move to the dream home in the suburbs. You will go on vacations to places with beaches or European cities you can’t quite pronounce and hopefully sip fancy drinks. Your children will grow up to be accountants, doctors and lawyers if you’re a Ivory or athletes, musicians, or entrepreneurs if you’re black.

 

But the main goal is to get rich. This is the American Dream.

 

I board the uptown #6 train on 34^th Street and transfer at 42^nd to the #4 Bronx-bound uptown express. The train is packed like a fetid Polish cattle car, a sea of inter-tangled flesh, crammed into a metal can and shipped to its respective destination.  People push and shove, fighting over every inch of cubic space. The heat is unbearable. The stale air is cross-pollinated with the odors of aftershave, raw armpits and cheap cologne.

 

Right now all I am thinking about is the history homework I didn’t do, the sleep I didn’t get and the utter monotony of the life I am currently leading. The roar of the train car through the underground tunnels is deafening. People peer through the glass divider giving me annoyed looks as I finish off my cigarette. I once read a story about a boy who was thrown to his death from the train while riding between cars as the train made a sharp turn. I am sure these rumors are propagated by the old to make the young less daring. Wouldn’t want to be fucking statistic!

 

I arrive at the Bedford Boulevard station at 8:30 am.  It’s the second to the last northbound stop on the #4 train. I’m fifteen minutes late. It will take another five to ten minutes to cross Bedford Park Boulevard and Harris Field and smoke another stoag.

 

My school is the Bronx High School of Science. I have been going here for two weeks. I spent the nine years of elementary and middle school at the private United Nation’s International School.  But it was pure luck that I tested into this school a month before UNIS suspended, then expelled me.

 

Bronx Science is a magnet school. The school draws its roughly 2,400 students from throughout New York City. Like many other New York City Public magnet schools, the classes are over-packed and the kids are largely middle class. Unlike almost all other New York City public schools, Bronx Science will, in theory, get you into a good college. I took the admissions test back in 8^th grade.  I got in by a single point.

 

I am walking through Harris Field, the dilapidated expanse of gnarled-down lawn that is a massive sports field where teenagers smoke pot. This morning students are clustered across the field indulging in the morning reefer madness amid patches of dying grass. There’s no cover, just gonna-see-the-law-coming-from-a mile-away cover. A part of me notices that it isn’t even 9, so what is there to celebrate? Maybe they have first period off because they commute from Staten Island, but they’re probably cutting. Maybe they just like the green.

 

The school is a T-shaped, red brick building that is three stories high. The object is not to learn, but to absorb it sometimes seems.

 

There are exceptions. My first period teacher, the one who is about to put me in the corner, is rather on point. His name is Dr. Avery. He sounds Southern, but I don’t underestimate him. I keep falling asleep in his class, even if it ain’t so boring.

 

I run up the down staircase as I rush toward Dr. Avery’s first period global history class. I dash past a group of Asian schoolgirls sitting in the corridor talking. They are legion at this school.  My homework is only half-finished. I will most definitely be placed in the corner. My only hope is that he will have checked the work already. There’s a slim chance. I have another worry as well. I push open the door.

 

“Good of you to rejoin us, Mr. Adonaev,” he says sharply. “Your presence and your homework were greatly missed.”

 

“Sorry, sir.”

 

“Quite alright, Mr. Adonaev. Your assignment please.”

 

Wolves ate it, I think to say but mostly give him a stupid look like it was news to me we had any. The class is staring at me. I look for the sympathetic eyes of Hubert O’Domhnaill, another sometimes denizen of the corner. I see him smirking in the back of the classroom, his blue baseball cap pulled tightly over his brow. Also smirking is Tamar Dreyfus; the Greek-Ivory girlfriend of my latest friend Donny Gold.

 

“Sit in the corner. You’re late and unprepared.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Stop calling me sir.”

 

“Yes, Dr. Avery.”

 

The theme of today’s session has something to do with cavemen and walls. My eyes feel heavy. Sleep begins creeping into my mind. The room periodically blinks out of existence. The class drones on. Reality melts away. I slump over at my desk. The room fades to gray. I fight it but just can’t win.

All I see is the great desert expanse and the Pale City, dimly lit in the never-ending twilight of my mind. I’m on the tree. My hands are nailed to the branches. I look to my side at the Black man nailed next to me. He eyes pop open and his head swings in my direction. Although his mouth never opens I can hear his thoughts in my head.

 

“Collaborator, do you see it?” he questions me in rasps.

 

I awake with a sudden start. I have fallen asleep at the wheel once again, with too many witnesses.

            “Mr. Adonaev, perhaps you could give us some insight into this subject,” says Dr. Avery smugly. I have been caught sleeping in class yet again.

 

“I can tell that you are particularly enthralled by the discussion and won’t hesitate to add some of your own vast wisdom to our dialogue.”

 

The class bursts out in faggot chuckles.

 

“Well, I suppose I could repeat the question for you, Mr. Adonaev. I know a mind like yours requires periods of, thoughtful hibernation.”

 

“Yes sir, it certainly does,” I respond to the amusement of my peers.

 

“We were discussing early human socio-economic development, Mr. Adonaev. As you know from last night’s reading, which I am sure you read in depth, hunter-gatherer societies evolved into the classic city-states of antiquity. We are now debating how.”

 

“Well, um. I suppose when the rich folks started building high walls around their homes and telling all the little brown people what to do, tricking um like to relinquish control over property that nobody really owned.”

 

Dr. Avery looks vaguely intrigued.
“So, like, society evolved from a concept of ownership and property, a mass theft really. Hunter-gatherers did not understand the concept of property. But it was this concept that created the early foundations of the city-state. The moment the biggest, toughest caveman built a fence and declared that the land inside was his, modern society was born.”

 

“Once again, ladies and gentlemen, the young philosopher king redeems himself. He may pass this class, yet. You may return to half salute slumber, Mr. Adonaev.

 

I lean back in the chair with a smug grin.  Only seven more hours to go. I really hated that school. If there weren’t girls here I wouldn’t probably even show up. These simulations are incredibly insulting to my resolve.

 

They remind him of the months on the Submarine, attempting to learn Hebrew and the art of war. Was that all a dream too, or a future life or a passing listless fantasy? Or worse something he was being forced to believe as an explanation for unpleasant reality. A reality that hinted unsubtly at his own failure to live up to his abilities.

 

A reality that hinted at the possibility of his prior failures to protect those he most loved.

 

 

E I G H T, the Caribbean

 

“The Rise of the Black Mermaid”

 

 

Far below the waves of the black, blue Caribbean, a vast underwater leviathan of a craft named the Black Mermaid hulks its way gradually toward the surface. The vessel is forty kilometers off the Eastern coast of Socialist Nicaragua, sloshing and bashing the waters. It cascades aggressively. All of these things happen in depths of the sea and black of the night as its crew makes way toward New Shoreham; a tiny settlement on Block Island. An enclave off the shores of Galilee Rhode Island in the United States of America. Which for this aging Soviet era refurbished Akula class nuclear submarine, is about a fortnight away.

 

States Kudzai, a Shona Warrior, biochemist and alleged member of the Trinidadian Special Forces, “A quite stupid name for a town overtaken by the mere name of its own island,” and he knows about such things being a Trinidadian. Knows about proud yet isolated things from being born in Zimbabwe. Kudzai- which certainly isn’t his only name is inherently skilled in both second guessing postcolonial island nation nomenclature and storming small seaside towns.

 

Adelina Anatolievna Blazhennaya with her soft auburn hair tied behind her head has just graduated from a prestigious Sharashka in Seattle, Washington. This particular Bureau of Experimental Design funded by covert Haan direct investment. Therefore into her recent studies were incorporated elite techniques for parapsychology, the studies of human manipulation and magic. The Haan colonization of the Americas began in the 18th century but has accelerated in the 21st century as the Pax-American wanes. These artful deceptive trade secrets cultivated over 4,500 years of Middle Kingdom. Adelina was born in Tank City, the closed Soviet City of Chelyabinsk. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, she fled like millions of others. Some fled, and some were ordered to pretend to escape. To hide amongst the exodus. Take jobs they didn’t want and were over qualified. Like the engineers driving taxis or fine art students stripping. Doctors were working secretly in Brooklyn basements. To wait for the right time to be patriotic. Hold on, just soldier on a bit longer, despite the degradation of being treated like a gangster or whore in the land of the imperialist enemy. To ready themselves strategically to participate in the supposedly imminent counter offensive anticipated by the organs of the inner Party, which was to take a new name called United Russia. Then something in the plan for resurgent Russian resistance went very wrong. Over ¼ of the union was lost forever. The former intelligence services gradually took over the state, got drunk on the spoils of that and handed it to the new oligarchs or became them. The vast underground abroad took the hints; they lost morale and purpose. They became self-interested and cynical in a way unknown in any previous human experience on record.

 

They grew up abroad feeling used but for no real use. Former Soviets and Post Soviets of all shades and convictions left their motherland in raid and ruins. They saw the values, the dark but high minded ideals they grew up with utterly betrayed. Adelina was one of the ones who left young and waited ten years for nothing to be reborn. The U.S.S.R. made Chelyabinsk a secret, closed city. There were nuclear reactors and silos there. Past the mountains, in the mountains to keep building the tanks and stage a nuclear war. If the West had ever overrun the East as it nearly did in 1943, this was the fallback location. Along with Yekaterinburg. Her whole city was a tank and steel factory. Her entire town has a slow cancer. From three reactor incidents similar to Chernobyl, but secret and therefore not dealt with appropriately. Her whole city has a slow cancer now. Her brother has a heroin addiction. She sends money back when she can.

At the University of Washington where she enrolled in the late 1990’s she studied Slavic Linguistics by day and parapsychology by night. As well as approaches to shamanism for those aspects of the Mezzo-Americans that are in the writings of Carlos Castaneda. She’s got developed fourth-dimensional powers and uses them seamlessly. In early life, they were scary and unpredictable. With training, she got stronger and more focused. After the fall of the U.S.S.R., she used them with beliefs and also pressured patriotism. These days for the money.

 

Adelina had arrived like many Post Soviet young women in the United States on J-1 visa in the early 90’s. Assigned by the Federal government to a below minimum wage job in some disinteresting local in Oregon, she made a new American friend and escaped that bondage into another type. She married a handsome American cop at age 19 and received a green card. He married her, supported her bachelor’s degree in linguistics. He paid for everything, as was the 1990’s terms of Russian immigration by mail or by sea. But like many of the Russian American unions of this period, there were shall we cultural barriers. Things became hostile, if not somewhat emotionally abusive. He never beat her, but he did begin to cheat.  Shortly after Adelina’s graduation, she took steps to divorce him and move east. Patrick was his name, and he was neither ugly nor fat nor particularly stupid, but he, of course, had an American mentality unsuited for dating Russian women long term. Unless of course, he provided a lot more than he could as a cop. To his credit, he did learn some Russian and did, in fact, travel with her back to Chelyabinsk in the West Urals to ask her father for her hand in marriage, unnecessary, but charmingly American. But, in the end, he did not ever evolve in his mind to meet her more than immediate needs. Then, sexually things began to stagnate. Finally, she took the instance of her America paperwork husband’s constant infidelities, if not also aggressive homosexual tendencies, to promptly divorce him, pack and leave. Green card in hand, English perfected without an accent she left Patrick and moved to Philadelphia where she found her next patron in Andre, a Ukrainian American construction contractor.

 

That honeymoon ended about a year later. Andre got her pregnant against her wishes. She aborted the baby. Then Andre choked her on the bathroom floor, gave her a black eye, threw her laptop out the window and put her on the street. She headed immediately to Russian Boston, never in her life had wanted to end up in Russian New York.

 

She’s now doing her make-up, red lips on child like features. She is very agile looking, big brown eyes and light cedar brown hair. She hasn’t aged in a decade. She looks through the mirror into the eyes of Emma Solomon, her employer and commanding officer watching her from the rusty portal door.

 

“The greatest trouble with Russian men is that they are animals, though quite good at being men in all other regards were we all measured by our fuck and our fight, our bite and our valor. The greatest trouble with Americans is that while good at being gentle, in many regards they fail at being men for they are quick to make and break promises,” reads Emma Solomon from a book with black leather binding she has picked up off the metal nightstand entitled, American Refugee.

 

“I have never read his writings deeply, only between the lines, but I hear from others that he makes some pretty sweeping cultural generalizations throughout his various novels. Many of which are harder to Americans than is fair and certainly reflect that he did indeed grow up here and not somewhere else,” Adelina says while painting her face for war.

 

“And I don’t think you can lump them and us into simple gender roles, mentalities and generalizations,” Adelina adds.

 

“I’ve read them all,” says Emma Solomon, “he’s trouble to read after all, and they get bleaker as the serial progresses. The poems I cannot stand I have no idea how that little traitor whore got so many coded poems.”

 

“I’ve never read his poems either.”

 

But, Adelina would indeed soon read poems made just for her soon. This was Sebastian’s device, his means of being even more dishonest about his goals in this life to the women surrounding him. And Adelina did know that already from reading his Kaba files. Adelina could see the future in her dreams as well as her coffee. Clearly and concisely. Congruent and in parallel time space- not some foggy Hollywood acid flashback. She’s never physically met Sebastian, but in reading about him had come to know him part way. Her powers of future site painted the rest of the picture about her mark.

 

“You’re missing nothing. Think hypersexual Democratic Confederalist Dr. Seuss with a slight swagger of Mayakovsky,” Emma says.

 

“Well, I think highly of his contributions to the resistance. I could give a damn about his artistic abilities if you want to know the truth.”

“I didn’t marry him for art,” Emma says.

“Husband? Is that true he’s your husband?”

“Well a long story is a long story, but suffice to say a need for documents was once involved, on his part.”

 

“No one marries for love anymore, just for Golden tickets,” Adelina replies.

 

“Ah. Well that doesn’t concern me either.”

 

“You’re a magnificent creature dear Comrade Blazhennaya; your work will not be so hard. We have to identify a chain of small cells his cadre has built up and down the Eastern coast. I will see to that, but you have a sensitive task. You must make him love you and trust you. Mostly with a mobile phone and radio, but you’ll have to engage him in a variety of emotions, and positions. He will probably try and put himself inside you several times- lovingly and also uncomfortably.”

 

“I know my job, tovarish.”

 

“My husband, our target has a lot of potential to kill a lot of people. And get a lot of people killed.”

 

“So I’ve read. A sort of profound contradiction for someone trained in medicine no?”

 

“His healing is like is like is writing and poems, just a hat. A mask and a means to an end,” Emma replies. She places the book back on the night stand.

 

“The Oligarchy knows the general date for their uprising. I mean how could they not? There is a camera in every bedroom and a listening device in every pocket.  Numerous operators were compromised due to sloppy work on the American end, not his fault, but it’s locked down tight as a drum over there.”

 

“Tight as a drum?” asks Adelina, though trained as a linguist and a parapsychologist she sometimes misses the vernacular which comes out of hip hop and American movies.

“It means solid and completely under control. It’s been that way since they deported and exiled the Wobblies back in 1914. They hunted out the Democratic Confederalists in the 1950’s. They tightened it again after Weather Underground and the Panthers in late 1968. Everything was in place, then after 11 September, the hard cage came down. What was left of the resistance movement has evaded the American State Security apparatus for one hundred years. Everything is going according to plan. But it’s frankly the worst place on earth for a revolution.”

 

“Well, no one I talk trust thinks it will work out well,” Adelina responds, “They have fluoride in the water supply. They have nanobots and chips in the general public. They made it fun and cool to film everything and report on each other via Social Media.”

 

“Well men plan, but women can prophesize,” says Emma with a smile. She has a warm trust inducing smile that goes well with her charisma and disarming ability to lead and listen.

 

“The dry run last year was mopped up in under three months,” Adelina, “Russian intelligence is spreading the story that the American security apparatus coordinated the occupations so they could flush out everyone into the open and biometrics everyone. But, I know that’s not true.”

 

“It’s all according to plan,” Emma replies.

 

“Or, according to prophesy?” asks Adelina who can converse with the higher power when she feels she must, but trusts completely in the Baraka, the divine charisma of Emma Maya Soraya Solomon. Commander Solomon. The hidden candidate for Messiah of their generation. Known in Ivoryish cults as the Tzadikk Ha Dror.

 

Emma nods and flexes in her dark green uniform and then places her left hand on Adelina’s shoulder.

 

“Little darling, we’re gonna take a lot more than New York City.”

 

“What’s in New York that’s so important anyway?” asks Adelina.

 

“The end of the world or the blueprint for the world to come.”

 

Adelina looks at her bulky satellite watch made by an Israeli company called SAM; Superior Alien Military. In seven days’ time, Adelina and her hastily although systematically assembled unit will be launch from this briny abyss via a hermetically sealed fast boat. In that electric coffin motor boat they will then land on Block Island and be taken to the aged but hippy Hygeia Hotel; given some new identities and “Strategically Americanized in the greater Boston area.”

 

“I would like to examine something that the Prophet Muhammed wrote, and Avinadav read to Sebastian in the summer of 2001. Before my capture and crucifixion, before the infamous martyr operation which killed so many at the Millennium Theatre,” says Emma taking out a green leather bound manuscript from the shelf in Adelina’s little metal cabin.

 

“It is called Sura 81, Al-Balad, the City,” she explains.

 

Emma reads, “I do call to witness this City. And thou art a free person of this City. And the mystic ties of the parent to child. We have created man into toil and struggle. Think he, that none hath power over him? He may say boastfully; Wealth have I squandered in abundance! Think he that none watch him? Have We not made for him a pair of eyes? And a tongue, and a pair of lips? And shown him the two highways? But he hath made no haste on the path that is steep. And what will explain to thee the path that is steep? It is freeing the slaves; the giving of food to the hungry in a day of privation. To aid the orphan with no claims of relationship. Or to stand for the indigent down in the dust. Then will he be of those who believe, and enjoin patience, constancy, and self-restraint, and enjoin deeds of kindness and compassion. Such are the Companions of the Right Hand. But those who reject Our Signs, they are the unhappy Companions of the Left Hand. On them will be Fire vaulted over all round.”

 

“That’s a very different kind of poem, Adelina says, “I’ve never been a student of anyone’s religion though. I’m not afraid of anything you know,” states Adelina to Emma.

 

“I know you’re not, my fearless one. That’s why you were selected to keep Sebastian Adonaev under control. His mind is now in a dark and treacherous place. He’s been in the field for too many lives. He’s losing his mind; lashing out at demons all around him without any guidance or realization of the consequences. They have taken him out of objective reality to torture him yet again. They hate him and refuse ever to end his pain.”

 

“He loves you very, very much,” Adelina closes her eyes to see.

 

“He loves a person that was here on this earth a very long time ago, and he sees her in in the spirit of candidates. He will love you too, and it’s not dishonest love, but he knew me for only nine months when they got us. He’s using this love, this shattered memory to keep himself from dying. He just isn’t in the world of man anymore. He’s living every single human tragedy all at once, and it’s propelling him a down murderous road.”

 

“I will not fail you, Commander Solomon,” Adelina says, “He always has loved me and always will though he hasn’t met me yet.”

 

“I know my little sister,” she smiles, “And when it gets crazy in American Babylon, which it will, you can rely on the rest of your unit. Oleg the Bear, Yuliana Romanova, and Mr. Kudzai are, well suffice to say we don’t use anything but the best players when we’re this close to being forced off the edge of the game.”

 

“We’ve never been this close to the edge before,” Adelina replies, “We’re trying not to lose, our, heads.”

 

Emma winks, Adelina nods. Then both of these powerful women go back to being calm, cool and collective. The black mermaid stays its course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

N I N E, the Negev

 

“Maya’s Escort Service”

 

 

Red, Mike and I are sitting on a bench in a grey brutalist concrete bus depot along a black asphalt highway that looks like an airport tarmac. It has taken me six days to recover. On the seventh we haul ass across the barren dunes to reach the depot. We’d barely spoken since the Transmogrification. There has been no strength for more words.

 

The potential means of transport can vary incredibly in this place. Not another vehicle in sight. Enormous deep desert sand dunes surround us although the sands are now rocky and red. A change of wind and the highway depot will be gone. Mike Washington and I are wearing the black pinstripe suits we took from a locker in the depot. The funny hats and implanted jerry curls mean that we’re both dressed as Orthodox Ivory.

 

Mike hands me a lunch box. It says Maya’s Escort Service on it. There’s an image of a stripper in lace with handcuffs on it painted black and red. Something inside it is rather heavy.

 

“What’s this?” I ask Mike.

 

“Open it.”

 

“I think I’d rather not.” I say.

 

“What advice do you give a soldier too afraid to pull the trigger?” asks Mike.

 

Mike Washington leans against the bus stop wall and pulls a green pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He flips open a gold Zippo lighter and lights it up. He takes a pair of scissors out of his pocket and cuts off his jerry curls. He throws the black hat into the sand.

 

“You’re the Mr. Pinstripe Suit. You’re the fuckin’ killer,” I respond.

 

“You said it, not me.” Mike says.

 

A bus pulls up with Acadian writing on the side. I don’t know what it says. Mike Washington motions for me to get on the bus. The fare card reader is broken and the driver points to sign that has the number 40 and a Mesopotamian letter next to it. Mike hands the driver a wad of various coins in different currencies and the driver shakes his head in annoyance and waves us through with his hand. The bus is packed with people all speaking in different languages. I move to take an open seat in the front of the bus. Mike stops me.

 

“The Noires didn’t bleed to sit in the back bus for Ivory to get lazy and die near the front.”

 

“What are you talking about?” I ask Mike

 

“Always sit in the back of the bus,” Mike states emphatically.

 

“If you say so,” I respond.

 

The bus driver shrugs as we cram our way through a wide aisle obstructed by blocking limbs and bags probably best consigned to the bottom of the bus. There’s the redheaded girl taking up several seats stretched out and a bunch of what look like guards around her. She’s even more pregnant. Four guards in brown suits are standing while everyone else is sitting. She’s dead asleep and Mike tells me with his eyes to keep moving. We find two seats in the last row. I put the lunch box on my lap.

 

“Don’t you wanna know what’s inside?” Mike asks me.

 

“I already know what’s inside,” I say.

 

The bus chugs to a start. It drives for a few miles and then clunks to a stop. In a jarring lurch the front of the bus elevates itself on hydraulics. There’s a pause and clank. The bus rockets into the upper atmosphere. Clouds fly by the windows. Not even the children cry out. I see metal steam punk wings extend out the sides of the bus.

 

“Let go of your nose. You look like an idiot,” he says. He takes out his cigarettes. They were inside my suit pocket.

 

“You probably can’t….” I begin to say.

 

He’s already smoking on the omnibus.

 

“That isn’t just a pregnant girl,” Mike says.

 

“Huh?” I ask.

 

“That isn’t a girl at all anymore. If I told you that that wasn’t a pregnant shiela but a ticking time bomb inside a pregnant woman hiding itself? How would you deal with the situation?” Mike says.

 

“Only you ask questions like that.” I tell him

 

“It’s a valid question. Think the kid’s yours?”

 

“Huh? Here’s a better question. Why would I ‘deal with’ anyone? Why would I deal with a pregnant girl in the first place? And it definitely isn’t mine,” I tell Mike.

 

“She’s the kind of woman that has the potential to spread confusion up and down the aisles,” Mike says.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because that’s the kind of broad she is.” Mike says.

 

I feel a cold sweat and clammy palms. I feel the fear of something too impending to plan properly for.

 

“I’m not into this today,” I tell Mike.

 

“And I’m not a reincarnated Warsaw Ghetto fighter babysitting an insolent boy pilgrim either.”

 

“What?

 

“What kind of name is Mike Washington?”

 

“It’s a generic American hero name,” I respond.

 

“Remember when you used to stay up all night letting me write stories for you? Stories about me for Mr. Avery.”

 

“Yeah…” I stammer.

 

“You made up a name for me. For the guy you wanted to be. What name was that?” Mike asks me.

 

“Mike Washington,” I say.

 

“Yeah. Do you think that’s my name?”

 

“Probably not.”

 

“Who carried you through your ten years of prison hospitals when all you wanted to do was let them program you or die? When you were screaming down in that hole, who did you call out to when you needed to be strong? Me, motherfucker. Me. When the devil whispers your name do you tell yourself it’s the voice of God? Are you having trouble picking sides?”

 

“You are the fuckin devil!” I spit out.

 

“Don’t cheapen yourself by thinking that the spiritual dichotomy is as simple as two guys in a room playing chess. And don’t paint a saint a sinner simply because you haven’t read the right books, or know the rules to the great game.”

 

“Where is this bus going?” I ask, tired of his tirade.

 

“Someplace the little time bomb inside that woman shouldn’t go. They think they have a virgin but what they really have is a sad and sorry whore from Babylon. The men guarding her don’t even know who they serve. Someone ordered them to seize the mother just like someone ordered me to protect you. We all have our orders, little pilgrim, but that don’t change the fact that you’re still Mr. Pinstripe Suit on a mission.”

 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

 

“It’s a lyric from a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy song.”

 

“I know it is. What does it mean in relation to me?!” I demand.

 

“Mr. Always-on-the-go,” he sings, “I know you got the answer, and we all wanna know.”

 

The men in the suits look in our direction. When they talk it sounds like nails scraping across a black board.

 

“I can’t kill the beast, pilgrim. You may have the answer, but you still don’t know how to fire your weapon and we’re seriously running out of time.”

 

The eyes of the four men go pitch black. The children on the bus start screaming. One of the bodyguards picks up a small girl who is yelling loudest of all and flings her across the bus. Her head cracks against the windshield. Her dead body hits the ground.

 

“If I told you we were gonna soon engage in actions that sacrifice innocents for a greater good would you be willing to do it? Some people are gonna have to die to save the whole. You and me, too if necessary.”

 

I stare at the men with the black eyes and look at my hand. My hand is shaking. I don’t dare open the box.

 

“Open the box, boy. We don’t have much time,” Mike mutters under his breath.

 

The other passengers have moved as far away from the four men in the brown suits as they possibly can and are cowering in the back of the omnibus near us.

 

“Are you still a Democratic Confederalist, boy? Are you still one guided by your belief in some collective good?” Mike continues.

 

I give him a dead blank look.

 

“The greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people right? Individuals have to sacrifice for the greater good. Sacrifice or be willing to sacrifice others cause we ain’t leaving without her means of production.”

 

He slaps me on the back and stands up.

 

“Just remember that you’re the fuckin’ omelet,” Mike yells at me.

 

The rest happens very quickly. Mike’s cigarette hits the ground. He reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a golden handgun and takes off down the wide aisle running. Whenever this happens I think in onomatopoeia. Too much Adam West when I was little.

 

He pushes his way through the crowd and bum rushes one of the brown suits giving a flying kick to one as he shoots another in the face. BLAM! As he lands on top of the man he kicked, he carefully fires quickly point blank at the head of second. BLAM!  It explodes like a firecracker in a watermelon. Blood gets on everybody and everything. The passengers are screaming as he darts up the wide aisle, he catches the arm of the third as he reaches for his own gun and turns around and shoots the fourth. BLAM! Mike swings the gun around and brings the barrel down on the face of the third suit he’s caught the arm of. Shit brown blood is all over the place. The last man standing manages to get his pistol out, a German Lugar, and tries to fire at Mike. Mike twists his arm and the man fires haphazardly all over the bus. Several shots hit the driver and the controls. The omnibus lurches into a dive. Mike manages to overpower him and shoots the final bodyguard in the back of the head. BLAM! In less than five seconds my imaginary friend has shot four brown-suited men and his face is covered in their blood. So is the pregnant woman. This is Mike at his most decisive. The pregnant girl is pale and silent. There’s blood splattered running down her face. Her hair is colored with the cheap red die Eastern European women seem to love. Like Jessica Rabbit. The color crimson. I run up to the front. The control panel is covered in the blood and brains of the dead driver. We’re now in free fall.

 

“If the bus gets to ZION, so help me God, we’ll be in trouble!” Mike yells.

 

“ZION? Is that where we’ve been going?”

 

“Open the lunch box and end this situation. Those were not men of flesh. This is not just some frivolous girl. We cannot let this bus get to the City of Lights in one piece,” Mike continues.

 

“What’s in the box?” I ask again.

 

“You know what’s in the fucking box.”

 

I think to myself that my imaginary friend wants me to shoot this pregnant red haired girl and I wonder what that says about my mental health. The holes in the heads of the four brown shirts close up. Slightly groggy they start to get up.  Mike, still looking at me, shoots them again quickly without batting an eye. He slides the magazine out of his handgun and drops the empty clip to the floor.

 

I open the box. There’s a silver plated stethoscope inside.

 

“You thought there’d be a gun in there?” he smirks. “You don’t know how to shoot. What makes you think I’d give you a gun? Go listen to her heart.”

 

I place the stethoscope on her right side above the breast.

 

“Left side, pilgrim.”

 

I replace it. I hear the rapid thud of a panicked girl’s heart.

 

The beating heart becomes like a vibration. The heartbeat is transmitting a code. I interpret the code mentally like a black and white comic book. I see Mike, the girl named Red and myself on the flying omnibus. It’s very Roy Lichtenstein.

 

“What’s your name?” I watch myself say.

 

“I told you my name is Red. I’m scared. Please don’t kill my child and me. They got inside without my permission and they’ll enter someone else as soon as you kill us,” I watch her say.

 

“What do you want me to do?”

 

“Don’t trust anything you hear me say without that stethoscope. It will try and get you two to bring me to Zion. You need to get him out of me before we get there or you’re going to have to kill us both. I trusted him and he got inside me. Please help us.”

 

“Who got inside you?”

 

“The laughing devil Clown. Please don’t let your friend kill me and my baby just to stop the beast.”

 

“Bring…down….the….bus,” she whispers in my ear.

 

I remove the stethoscope.

 

“There’s gotta be some other option,” I watch myself say.

 

“Those things will be up in a minute. Ammunition is finite even in dreams. If you think drinking is bad while pregnant you can be sure sky diving is worse,” Mike says.

 

“With what fucking parachute?!”

 

“With the parachutes in our goddamn suits.” Mike yells.

 

“What about her? What about the other passengers?”

 

“In Amerika a crisis decision is between Coke and Pepsi. For everyone else it’s about the least worst option to survive.”

 

“And what’s our least worst option, Mr. Washington!?”

 

“I shoot out a window and we dive out of a plane with the woman tied to me because if the shoot doesn’t support two people you’re the only person who’s absolutely not expendable for the time being.”

 

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” the pregnant redhead says.

 

“All of us dying a flaming, horrible death in a flying bus accident is not exactly on my agenda, sweetheart,” Mike tells her.

 

“So here’s a better idea. I change out of this suit and she gets her own parachute. You and I can share.”

 

“I’m under strict orders to keep your altruism from getting us killed,” Mike says.

 

“I order you to let me give her my parachute.”

 

“What makes you think I take my orders from you?” He snaps.

 

The omnibus dips vertically and I nearly fall over and careen down the aisle.

 

“Time is of the essence boys,” the girl moans.

 

“This isn’t Terminator, Sebastian. Just because I protect you doesn’t mean I have to listen to you. You have less than a minute to keep some of us alive. Changes of wardrobe are absolutely out of the question.”

 

With reflexes faster than I’ve ever seen the four men are back up and on top of Mike tearing at his suit, their fingers extending multiple joints wrapping around his body with their screeching screams piercing our ears. Mike struggles to pick up his gun that has been knocked from his hand. Mike kicks the gun in my direction. The four suits strike his face and wrap tentacle fingers around him like a ball of suited male violence. They crash up the aisle and smash directly against the front windshield. The glass strains and cracks.

 

He lets out a terrific yell. Like a war cry.

 

The windshield breaks and the five of them fly out the window.

 

The air sucks through the bus. A passenger tumbles down the aisle and out the window, too. I manage to grab the girl’s arm. I’ve been socialized to grab onto attractive young women in the event of an emergency as if it were protocol. This can’t be very good for the baby. The thing inside her feels nothing. With one hand clutching the girl I empty a few rounds of Mike’s pistol at a side window. The air pressure sucks the shattered glass outside. Holding the little Red head tight I mutter a prayer to a vague conception of a higher power and jump out the window.

 

There’s a deafening rush of air. I’ve never seen the sky this blue. The bus disappears below me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mike’s parachute inflated like a great, grey balloon, a brown suited figure hanging off him. A kick sends the brown suit tumbling toward the ground miles below. Where the fuck is the ripcord, I wonder afraid to let go of the girl who has wrapped herself around me with all her strength as we plummet to our deaths. It doesn’t matter, soon enough the blue balloon parachute inflates on its own with a RIP and POP and BANG. Red is wide-eyed and holding onto me still for dear life. I’ve lost my hat. Least of my concerns, I reckon. It’s automated-action adventure time and I’m a good three miles above the desert with Red wrapped around me tight.

 

I wonder what she’ll name the babies.

 

 

T E N, the Tunnels

 

“The Tunnel to London or Russia”

 

Misha was right, there are trains to absolutely everywhere.

 

        I’m in an empty car with big comfortable green seats taking a six-hour nap. I’m curled up in big plush chair on the Chunnel Train having a pleasant dream about being back in Nice.

        I’m now on a green sprawling estate in Nice, but it’s not the real Nice. It’s a mini Nice on a calm, artificial blue sea, the size of a small estate. Outside of the estate are miles of sand dunes and deep desert. It seems that the train I am riding to London has taken a slight detour. Once I’m off the pills, I’m back in the desert. The train is pulling into a station coming out of a large dune. Mike Washington is waiting on the platform with an attractive, buxom blonde girl. Everyone else on the train is slumped over asleep.

 

“There’s some things you have to learn before you go any further,” says Mike Washington, “This is Dasha, and she’s charming, lethal and only partly Ivoryish.”

 

I shake her hand and leave my bag on the platform, “I look forward to simulating with you,” she says with a fairly thick Russian accent.

 

I take a warm bath in an antique metal bathtub with thick suds and green drapery. The mansion of the estate is some kind of fusion between Greco-Acadian architecture and Middle Eastern interior. It looks like a big white mosque if Mohammed had conquered Rome and remodeled the Pantheon. The rest of the estate is in a French classical, mini-Nice style.

 

After that bath they hand me a white linen robe with a large black symbol on the left breast that I’ve never seen before. I sit on pillows on the floor eating dinner with Mike and Daria are at a low table with a bright red cloth. They tell me it’s a Kosher meal with an Indian recipe from vegetables all grown on the estate. In case I end up in places where I can’t eat anything clean, they want me to remember what it tastes like.

 

When the meal is over we go through a large hall. We pass a room with several doctors and medical equipment attending to the pregnant redheaded girl from the flying bus secured to the table. Her vital signs are pulsing intermittently. They urge me along the way to what looks like an indoor firing range with a couple of black pistols laid out on a long table. Mike stands smugly in the corner.

        The girl tells me her name is Daria Maccluskey. As she looks into me for few minutes and Mike doesn’t saying anything.

        “You see, my little pilgrim, Apo teaches us that revolutions are violent and tumultuous. You must separate the term, of course, from your American revolution, which was bourgeois and wholly reactionary. Your capitalist pig country uses the term as a marketing slogan.”

 

“Of course.” I respond.

 

“The capitalist pigs have made us workers suffer for hundreds of years. They steal our labor and they exploit us completely. The violence they do against us is physical, psychological, and complete. Our two classes of course cannot co-exist. We must eliminate every last one of them, their children too.” Daria proclaims with a grin. Then she winks at me.

 

“Innocent people?” I respond.

 

“Who is innocent? The young bourgeoisie have not a care in the world. And the bourgeoisie middle classes of the great power nations, you pay taxes? You live in the metropole power without political involvement or revolutionary activity. You are also to blame,” she states.

 

“So you will have to kill a lot of people in America?” I ask.

 

“This is real revolution. Don’t your imperial wars kill people? War and poverty kill people every day. People look at the writings of Chairman Apo and say he is violent. They look at his revolution and call it genocide. To this, my dear, I respond, violence has been perpetrated in every major historical epoch. Do you know what makes every epoch similar except the epoch of Democratic Confederalism?” Mike asks me.

 

“Tell me.”

 

“Every epoch has kept the masses down and kept the means of production in the hands of the few. Power always being consolidated and imposed top down upon the masses. No longer! Now is our epoch. This is our time. We’ll kill all enemies if we have to!”

 

Daria hands me a gun.

 

“You know how to write, correct?” she asks.

 

“Yes,” I respond.

 

“Now I’m going to teach you the other side of the coin. I’m going to teach you how to defend your words. The pen and sword, my little Pilgrim comrade, combined will set us free,” she informs me.

 

My eyesight is unusually good. She tells me to hit the target, which is radiating circles around a map of the United States. I load the clip into the gun, remove the safety and cock the weapon. I squeeze the trigger, but it’s not the map that is pierced with the bullet, its Daria’s left shoulder.

 

She’s bleeding profusely, but doesn’t squint or articulate any pain.

 

“Shoot again, Comrade. Learn to do violence to those that have oppressed us for so long. Your vision is off! You’ve hit the right target,” she yells.

 

I fire twice more. The map doesn’t change. Part of her face blows off and her chest is now gushing blood.

 

“SHOOT! SHOOT!” she yells, half her jaw now missing.

 

I fire more rounds. I unload the entire clip at the map. I hear the dry clip of the empty magazine.

 

Mike Washington has been shot a few times in the chest, standing like nothing happened. Dasha is oozing blood from all over. My chest feels damp. I’ve shot myself in the heart. I fall over. The pistol makes a metallic clank hitting the marble floor. I just make a thud.

 

I awake in large metal frame bed with green sheets. I feel my chest and there is no wound at all. Mike and Daria are sitting in armchairs in the room. Mike is reading a book. It’s the Bravest Battle book from my bag. It’s the day-by-day account of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

 

“What’s in a name,” asks Mike, “Would a revolutionary by any color not shoot as straight?”

 

“What’s the lesson now?” I ask him.

 

“Do you know who I am?” he asks.

 

“You’re me as I want to be?” I try.

 

“Not quite,” says Daria with no Russian accent this time.

 

“It’s not time to be like me again, Sebastian. I made in my short life all the mistakes you will be spared. I fought a losing battle with all the wrong types of ammunition far too late in the game. You and I serve the same powers and it’s my job to make sure we aren’t wasting our time with you. Mike Washington isn’t my name and Sebastian Adonaev isn’t yours. There’s a name we share that It gave to us before we were even born.”

 

“I don’t follow,” I ask trying to understand what he is telling me.

 

“Your name contains your purpose. I’m here to tell you your real name. It’s the name that you will have when you are re-united with your soil someday. It is the name all that know you will associate with your contribution to the struggle,” Mike continues.

 

He closes the book.

 

“Before you go would you like some Poland Spring? The water in England leaves something to be desired and before you leave that place you’ll get all the water you’ll ever need,” Mike tells me as he hands me a water bottle.

 

“It was nice to finally meet you, Tovarish Zachariah Artstien. We’ve all been hearing such good things,” says Daria who looks a lot like someone that I’ve always known.

 

 

***

 

I wake up back on board the Chunnel train in an empty car. I rummage through my rucksack and take out The Bravest Battle. In the middle of the book are archival photos of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. There are surviving pictures of twenty of its several hundred key participants. The last picture is of smug, twenty-somethingish Zachariah Artstein. He’s good looking and bears a vague Polish resemblance to Mike Washington.

 

I swap the “i” and the “e” in Artstein and that is how I came to be called Zachariah Artstien by most of the people that will meet me abroad or in the context of love, revolution and God.

 

I see the English countryside sweeping by in the dark. Rain is hitting the train and water runs down the side of the exterior windows. London has been the refuge over the last several hundred years to exiled revolutionaries like Marx, Herzen, and Bakunin. Some of their best ideas have been shaped in the rain and poverty of this city I am quickly approaching. It seems fitting that perhaps I will come up with some ideas here myself. Or maybe I will just run out of money during the rainiest most desolate part of the year and do everything and anything just for another meal.

 

Either way there’s a bunch pink pills from an orange bottle that I pour into a toilet during my final minutes on the Chunnel train to make real certain that this will be a one-way trip.

 

 

ELEVEN, Moscow

 

“The Bratva”

 

Back in our Moscow safe house.

 

“Story time pause tovarish lover. I challenge you now. One for one. Two for two,” she purrs.

“The trouble sweetness with your stories its hat not a single one of them are true,” I say to her. She feigns a pout, as if she has heard that line before.

 

“The greatest fun with your stories is that so many of them are!” she retorts.

“Dasha, what will be the prize for the partisan with the premium story?”

“The usual my daring Valera,” she says with a smile.

And licks her lips at my obvious arousal.

Her amusement and our perpetual survival had gotten us in quite a yarn of danger. She’s been worth every bullet. As well as dirty things I dare not reveal at this juncture that I do to women as well shaped as she. Or worse the tender things I do to balance those out and then so let my guard fall, completely.

 

Under the folds of the burgundy comforter we languish in the sensual embrace of each other’s longing as our pillow fort assumes new dimensions. A vastness will unfold with the power of words and the only distraction from the yarn of escapade will be the fortified lusts we will unleash when a parable wears thin. She will draw on fairy tales and I will spin from the ghosts of my dead friends and the darkness still in me. Somewhere in between that space hope will float perhaps. We expect and encourage each other’s full participation.

 

“Ladies always go first, for this is the code of the Haitian gentleman” she declares and launches right into her opening tale.

 

The safe house has fine wood work and dark red walls. Its floors are beige red Jerusalem tile. It resembles something of a cross between the old world and the new. On an old school record player in the next room comes over the soothing beats of a Tribe called Quest. The emergency radio we use to digitally stream the Interweb is set to the Fire Station; the Pan-Caribbean pirate satellite radio, “to tell da masses no fire ‘til day see de white in dem dutty man eyes o’da oligarchy!”

 

“Fire! More fire!”

 

There are only two sources I trust completely for my news.

The People’s Television Network that was founded by my old friend Nicky Mapfre which Livestreams efforts of our international movement. And; the pirate radio broadcasts of The Fire Station stoking the rebellion with dancehall, with Reggae, with Zouk, with Kompa, Calypso and Wild West Indian rebel music songs. Interspersed amid its songs it serves as the global public address system of the “Militant Human Rights Movement”.

Everything else comes over Sky Pager.

“Your turn,” I say.

“Let my plots be made thicker than the blood you shed for them,” she says using an Old Russian idiom that barely even translates.

Whatever that means to her.

 

“It was understood by all involved that the take would be vast. Idea itself dripped of currency. Huge, as in a leviathan level steal. ‘Unprecedented theft.’ Complexity of job vast. But architects of robbery had worked out their neurological muscles so that each of the stakeholders would be thoroughly invested,” she explains me.

“And anonymously capable of carrying out parts without need of centralized control.”

And again her yarn then assumes the grim narration.

Ultimately, they’d be emptying several hundred banks in 48 cities, across 18 countries in a 24 hour period. Visigoth, Arabian and Mongol hordes working in confederation could not carry off so much treasure from vaults of West.

“And by they; I mean we.”

 

Dasha lays down her yarn.

 

In an accent thicker than that which she ever uses around me she explains:

 

“Job took nine years to orchestrate. Planned in its grandiose entirety in Bulgarian tavern on Lower East Side of the Isle of Man. Place called Mehanata Social Club.”

 

Man who planned job was Bulgarian dentist named Alexander Dmitrievich Perchevney, called “Sasho” by his closest confederates. Also his wife.

 

In Gregorian calendar year 1999, because of technical glitch in computerized monetary systems sensationalistic-ally depicted on proletarian media as “Y2K”, many system analysts were worried about system wide failure of internet. And electronic military defense complex systems more generally to experience temporary shut down on New Year’s Eve’ December 31st, 1999.

In order to protect critical defense and money changing infrastructure, major digitalized commerce, and all sort of civilian surveillance databases; governments and major corporations had begun scrambling to back up data on fixed servers, secure from the effects of the Y2K glitch which many big brained computer engineers believed would wipe out digital control of commerce via internet.

 

Enter Perchevney Bratva.

 

At time of plot, really just consist of newly immigrated Alexandr Perchevney and his scheming, but quiet brother strong man Slavi, a Krepki Mushik, tough guy.

Along with wife Magda, and also three quite shady grinning characters named “James White”, “James Brown”, and “Justin Toomey O’Azzello” who all worked part time at “Bulgarian Cultural Center” on Canal and Broadway. Cultural front for a “cash for marriage agency”, an extralegal dental coverage program, and also planning center for lucrative racket called “no-fault-insurance”.

Also premium place to drink underage and dance naked, do cocaine; no questions asked.

Alexandr and Slavi, alongside millions of newly admitted “Soviet Ivory” began immigration to Brooklyn immediately after the Berlin wall came down and United States of America “defensively” begin total rape of former Soviet Union, Post-Cold War victory.

They came to coast of Brooklyn with advanced degrees, speaking multiple languages, and instilled with a profound skill in “extralegal entrepreneurship”; cultivated in a Democratic Confederalist society where graft and bribes was way of life. When informed by Amerikanski immigration officers that these degrees not worth the paper they were printed on, well perhaps this is how it all began. In former Soviet Union, Alexandr Perchevney was dentist, which there was really more like doctor specializing in dentistry. His wife, Magda, was “engineer”.

That really could mean almost anything in former Soviet Union where almost everyone was some kind of engineer.

But, Magda was computer engineer. And Slavi, well Slavi was good with machines and breaking man’s faces also with fists.

Alexandr, Magda, Slavi and infant progeny of Magda and Alex: four year old daughter Yelizaveta all moved from Brighton coastal ghetto to high ground of Washington Heights shortly after their arrival in winter of 1991.

It not take Alex and Magda long to realize that not only would they be treated like fourth class citizens of vanquished enemy nation, but that as immigrants their own people would arrive not just with advanced degrees and “dubious moral code”, but accompanied by violent thieves and Voorhis with links to privatization under way transforming KGB, into large and ruthless mafia, or in Russian parlance a Bratva.

It was shortly after his first brutal run in with a New Russian Voorhi seeking an overtly grand percentage slice for protection of black market dentistry clinic run out of Alex’s basement in Brighton, that Alex realized that one; his daughter would be raised outside the clutches of new Russian ghetto, so called Little Odessa. And two; to operate anything mega lucrative in this new soft country he’d need the help of the natives.

So Alex embraced Judaism and made friends with some ambitious Fenian tough guys. And before long he, his brother his wife and daughter were humming away Kiddishes in good times and Kaddishes in bad times with congregation Bet Shalom on Fort Washington Ave. And this was how Alex met first met young Misha Kishbivalli, a young Bulgarian pretend Ivory like himself though much wealthier having gotten to America three years earlier and begun actively trafficking in uncut conflict diamonds traffic out of Liberia.

Over a round of Astika beers Misha and Alexander envisioned an establishment “where criminality and philanthropy, stealing and borrowing, culture and crime could all intertwine, “voluptuously” and thus the Mehanata Social Club was born.

This was no word in English, Russian or Bulgarian.

 

By winter of 1992 Alex and Slavi had rented out second floor loft space on the corner of Canal and Broadway and registered it as “Bulgarian Cultural Center”. Despite having no liquor license or paying any taxes to internal revenue service Alex hired a large menagerie of former Soviet women to work as “cultural hostesses”, and bartenders and “cultural attaches”.

Also to dance the go-go.

 

In the entire sixteen year run of Mehanata at its Canal Street location much was exchanged, culturally and financially.

 

The enterprise itself was careful gamble that under guise of “multi-culture and diversity”, just about anything could follow.

Alexander used the Russian language internet to recruit a wide range of medical professionals of former Soviet extraction to offer black market healthcare to other new arrivals, and long stayed arrivals without paper work. Next, Misha and Alex worked out a technicality called “no fault” where by accidents could be staged arranged all over Brooklyn and insurance companies could be divested of millions upon millions. And they reached out directly to the Jamaican Mafia to help them. They were recruiting veritable Gypsy underground army all fueled by greed, music of Balkans and Astika beer.

 

But the greatest expropriation was yet to come.

 

 

 

 

TWELVE, Crown Heights Canton

 

“The Brothers”

 

 

The room was jam-packed. People sitting on the floor, on the tables, people out in the hall. Many of the apartment blocks on Schenectady Ave have concrete inner court yards, have multiple means to get in and out without keys, lot of places to run and evade the police. The followers of the Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the Chabad Movement congregate near Kingston Avenue and the large Afro-Caribbean community stays more toward Utica; but for the most part the Noires and Ivory live right on top of each other.

They for the most part ignore each other. With the exception of a bloody three day riot in 1991 this is virtually the only neighborhood where two completely different people share a ghetto.

But in the bunker basement here, not a white face in sight.

They are all pressing closer to hear the words of the man that so many people had been talking about. The basement of the apartment block fallout shelter has a maximum occupancy of a hundred and fifty people. Nearly three hundred had filtered in, a hundred more are waiting upstairs. Most people had just gotten off work, some neighborhood kids, boys off the block, had dropped by to see what all the commotion was about. They heard this man was “gonna tell it like it is and how it could be”. Lay it down for them in words they could understand. The neon lighting grid in the basement flickered its blinding light. Suddenly there was a hush. Three men dressed in black pushed forward through the mob. One of the men put his hand up in the hair, a call for silence. For some people in the ghetto there was religion, for others some little hustle, for a tiny talented tent make music or athletics for the whites. But lately for the struggling Jamaican and Haitian lower classes there were the words of Mickhi Dbrisk.

“You know what the trouble is these days?” he began.

“We work. We starve. We fight amongst ourselves. We embrace another civilizations God and we sing to hymns to white man on a cross. We work more, we hustle more, we get sucked into criminality, negativity and vice. They lock up one in 8 of our men, they break up our families and they use as their slaves. We always lose, and the white man never relinquishes his hold on the power structure. My name is Mickhi Brisk and I am here to tell you brothers and sisters not just how it is, but how it could be.”

Every voice died down to hear what he would go on to describe.

“The white man says we need schoolin’. But not a single one of our schools is well funded or intact. So we try go to college, but the majority of the colleges where actual opportunity is found are not open to us.”

“The white man says get jobs. So we try to get one. But most of the jobs we have to take are the jobs they don’t want, the only jobs open for us.”

“The white man says you ain’t a slave! That you can get some, equal opportunity, but as we all know. They on some shit. We are willingly patriating in a bondage system that get more work out of us than slavery did!”

“Now, I ain’t some redundant brother. Here me now. Do not. Do not I repeat blame the whites fo’ yo’ problems. The white man doesn’t want to hear it, can’t hear it, so it won’t do no good fo’ the community. Ya see, lots of brothas out there will tell you that blame needs to be cast everywhere but here.  They say “BUY BLACK”. They say “BECOME MUSLIM”. They tell you “BLACK LIVES MATTER.” Hell I say it to, our lives matter. But itz the language behind the diction that’s important.” The whites kill us in the streets. They humiliate us and strip our rights in the court rooms. They lock up whole generations and take away our votes. The time for resistance was before they took us out of Africa, but the solution is not confrontation and protest. We must focus on control of our own development and intuitions! Like out Ivoryish brothers and sisters right upstairs do.

 

The youth began to leave.

“Hold the fuck up,” said Mickhi Dbrisk.

“You wanna go play gangsta, you’ll end up in a coffin. You wanna be a man. Hold the fuck up. Let’s drop this criminal shit today and we’ll teach you how to find with mathematics, with science with economics and with strategy.”

 

A few people, mostly young hoods walk out, but the masses were becoming enthralled.

 

“I come before you with a simple message. We as a community have suffered the injustice of being begotten by slaves into a modified slavery. We can’t hold onto that, but we must not ever forget it. We, the descendants of black African people are no better or worse than the white people. Bear in mind, when I say white people, I’m not talking color of skin. I mean the establishment. The man. There are many types of people and situations and circumstances dictate the state of current affairs. But learn to think about class not just race. So many out there will fight and die for their race or their religion. What I say is fuck your race? White people are slaves too. Yellow people, Brown people, Muslims and even the Ivory are all bound slaves on in this world system. We need allies for our liberation, but do not hear my words and think we plan to start a plantation razing race war.”

 

There is a pause. Every eye is on him now.

 

“Never forget what our system does to maintain itself,” he began again.

 

“Never forget that as an American, black, white, and yellow you all on that slave ship and our goal is our won ship not burn the ship and drown together. What oppresses one man oppresses everyman, here and abroad. Our chains are not of lead but of the illusion of gold we are promised every day. It’s said in America that history has been a progression towards ever-greater freedom for humanity. “Name a better society than this one” is a common statement made to anyone who criticizes the system of modernity. But if no better system than this one has ever existed does that automatically recommend the status quo? What if, on a scale of 1 to 10, with most countries in the world currently scoring a 4, modern America is a 6 for its whites and a 3 for everyone else? What if humanity started out as driven slaves with a whip-master behind them; progressed to a stage in which they were only driven but not whipped, then to a stage in which they could stand enchained on their own? What if modern society is only one in which we all wear really shiny chains? Should we be satisfied with this state of existence? Is This Just The Way It Is? I cry bull shit!” He pauses. “I am here to say, let US get free together.”

If anyone had the audacity to speak up now it was young Tina Shabazz.

“So you talk a big game Mickhi, but what do we do?”

She was standing now, her trim and beautiful Nubian frame sliding out of her seat and pushing to the front of the crowd.

“We stand up and we dig deep inside ourselves and community, we marshal our resources and we prepare for autonomy, ghetto by ghetto,” he quickly retorted.

“Like my grandpa did?”

She would often claim Malcolm was her grandpa. Anyone who knew her knew she didn’t even know her father’s name let alone her grandpas’. In the hood she was treated like a crazy artistic teenager.

“Tina. Tina. Tina. Always rabble rousing, but never achieving nothing for the community.”

“What fucking community Mickhi? Harlem’s now half white, in five to ten years Bed Stuy will be too.”

“Not if we unite and resist,” he replies

“You would burn down a brothers’ home before you let the white folks get it, is that it? That we must fight? You is on some shit. The only thing brothas wanna fight fo’ is loseies and the next big score. How you gonna rally um them? How you gonna wake up all the good striving Christians and Separatist Muslims? What does Uhuru and your Ivory allies have to offer that don’t get more young people killed like that last time we got up?”

“It’s this very attitude sister that keeps us all oppressed. Disunity and prejudices. Artificial divisions.”

“Way to be optimistic brother. It isn’t THE MAN that keeps us oppressed, we do a good enough job oppressing ourselves. You used to be Crip, you know the cycle.”

“Have you missed every word I just said?”

“I heard you loud and fuckin’ clear Dbrisk. “RARARA. Uhuru Movement! All power to the people!” the same horseshit grandpa shouted.”

“As you will be Tina. As you will be.”

She knew he wouldn’t argue with her long. After all, it was all a front. Dbrisk and Tina Shabazz were in the same squad; the community just didn’t know it yet.

“We have room for good Christians, we have room for Bloods and Crips, and we have room for strivers, bourgeoisie niggas and room for Muslims. We have a ten point program that will be familiar to everyone. We have clinics, schools and training camps. I am here tonight to invite everyone to enlist in the Uhuru Movement. As you may have heard on the wire there’s gonna be a show of force at the parade. We will keep everyone updated on the Fire Station, the underground press and via liaison officers.

 

“They are killing us man by man and isolating us in these ghettos to exploit us. If you can fight you fight, if you gotta run you run. This uprising is not black against white, we have allies among the whites, the Muslims, the Ivory and even the Fenians,” he tells them.

“You go back to your churches and school and places of work, the snitches in the room can pass this on to the cops; we are fighting for democratic Confederalism and autonomy and human rights. If you ain’t running’ wit it run from it.”

 

“Well nigga, how do me an’ my squad get in,” asks a tough young thug on the wall?” who one his government papers was written down as Joshua Hunter.

 

“Well, you’ve got your gangster slouch down, now it’s time to master the revolutionary swagger.”

 

T h i r t e e n, Addis Abba

 

“The Ivoryish Guilt”

 

Laurence Simon, PhD is the recently discredited director of a non-governmental organization called the Amerikan Ivoryish World Service, which he founded. He used to lecture idealistically at several places where ivy grows thick to ivory idealists, with soft hands. He filed over ten thousand reports over his career. Violations committed in every square corner of inhabited earth. But now, he has a sholem of medium-caliber in his mouth with the hammer cocked back. He’s been drinking a shit ton of fire water burn, but the pistol still tastes salty. And a pistol in the gob of the Gulliver well that always just tastes like self-righteous death quickly closing in.

 

The lights in the room are flickering in and out along with the city’s most questionable power supply.

 

He’s been holed up in small hotel in Addis Abba, Ethiopia since he got news of the horrific murder of his wife and daughter. Sometimes he stays lucid long enough to remember the pictures he was shown of their faces beaten beyond recognition. Or the one of his daughter with her breasts cut off. Mostly he drinks to die. He’s coming to crescendo.

There was greater, more sadistic violence, which surely came before their demise. Laurence Simon’s written over a dozen books on Africa; on the Western sack of Eden and mass collective movement away from the norms of civilized behavior. The virus of slavery and the bacterium of colonialism

 

And after his immediate banishment from professional circles for as of lately urging support for the long running armed struggle against the Haitian Government, he has remained there in his own hell and quasi-lucid liquid oblivion for one month’s time.

 

The Maccoute marauders raided the village of Cange about six weeks ago.

 

They killed the whole town of somewhere under a thousand unarmed men, women and children. Bayoneted a whole orphanage of skinny, half starving little girls after sexually assaulting them. Hearing things like that makes good people want to vomit, but most just tune it out by not reading valid news sources, or just looking in a different direction. This particular attack was actually on the cover of the New York Times. So no one could really be in denial about the true depravity of the regime. And dead, white raped aid workers sure did sell papers too.

This was sort of the Maccoute way.

Well documented. Preying on the defenseless, as the world looks the other way.

Degradation and utter violations of those abstract things called “Human Rights” take place every single day. In every nation on earth if you come right down to it. Albeit in varying degrees of what-the-fuckery.

 

Tonton Maccoute means ‘Boogie Man with Sacs’, in Haitian Creole.

 

These Maccoute marauders then stormed a monitoring outpost just outside of the village after the African Union peacekeepers fled without firing a shot. As they always almost do when not selling off their weapons to whatever faction pays top dollar and-or fucking around with local underage prostitutes. And there the Maccoute militia got their hands on the Haiti regional staff of the Human Rights Watch. Including the wife and daughter of Laurence Simon and wrote everyone in the book of grisly slaughter.

 

Even in Chechnya, at the height of the conflict the Russian military didn’t go as far as killing the entire foreign national field staff of the Service. Well they did make Fred Cuny disappear. They were periodically abused, beaten and arrested, interrogated then deported, but this was the first time they were singled out of murder alongside those they were observing.  Generally the group has its members picked off one by one, not slaughtered in the middle of conflict zones openly, deliberately and with the militia men obscenely taking so many pictures.

There hasn’t been a sober moment since for the ghost of now broken Laurence Simon.

Maya Sorieya Solomon is a woman with two names. She can also gamble with a gun even with two bullets inside it. Her nom de guerre is Maya Rose. Her favorite color is purple. She has been in the dimly red lit hotel lobby for a three-quarters-an-hour sipping on a short glass of Knuckle Acre Blue label, mixed with something local. The world is still a nasty, terrible place where one often needs a series of stiff drinks anywhere they can be found to arrive at fleeting moments of inner tranquility.

 

There is a very real genocide going on in the land of Haiti, a wild madhouse of an ethnic bloodletting. These atrocities in Haiti have been going on high and low for over three decades, particularly in the Southland and Haiti the regions where under the sands lay so many oceans of black gold.

 

The intensity of the genocide is enough to barely bother those besides an Amerikanski neo-liberal or a university student looking for something to believe in, but thanks to some pop singers and occasional rapper, with this particular genocide one can at least attach a name to an African destination, provided you begin with the intellectual understanding that Africa is a continent, not a country. It has various parts. Africa is just so large and so full of such mass torment even the highly educated lose touch and tune out.

 

A heart of darkness, a broken Zion, a bad man place full of gun toting highway men and people with communicable diseases that have long been eradicated in the West. And plague: lots and lots of it. The pharmaceutical giants won’t magic Johnson 24 million people if they can’t pay up.

 

A clandestine apparatus based in the newly liberated micro republic of Brooklyn Soviet has recently vowed to make a stand there and answer Laurence Simon’s late call as it were, though they’ve had their eye on Haiti for some time. Maya Solomon was the undisputed leader of that band; a stunning mix of idealists and wild dagger merchants, until she was confirmed dead in a tragic series of events dubbed “the Millennium Theatre Hostage Crisis”, just three years prior.

“Neo-Jacobins!” once declared their Wall Street and Beltway detractors, back when anything of importance was happening in those respective places. Detractors and nemeses alike were always quick to bandy about the words “vile anarchists”, but there are no black flags flown here and the club now administers social services to 80,000 people in its seven district zones of control. These were women and men of the Brooklyn coast who like many across this planet in the turn of the millennium found the notion of a so-called hopeless battle for the good cause of human freedom more than just a thing to write a miserable French play about. They held a belief in their inevitable victory. A willingness to fight coupled with a duty to act.

 

Seven years after issuing the “Declaration of a State of Emergency in the City of New York” they are a hard proud people’s army of Human Rights oriented “Westies”. Called “the Brooklyn Otriad” in some circles.  Referred to as “the Brooklyn Bath and Rifle Club” by friends and nemeses alike. Bound closely by a secretive cohort, its name spray paint stenciled on all their zones of control: Z.O.B.

 

No one has yet to explain what that acronym stands for, or who is at the core of this radical club allegedly founded in Jerusalem at the turn of the millennium.

 

They are people with guns in hand who believe in high minded ideals and die for them regularly, loudly speaking of something called “real change”, utilizing “conscious thinking”. Very glamorous when one signs up, but rather inglorious long before you get your pension. The Israeli Mossad conservatively places their true military capability at approximately 780 combat tested fighters. The Russian Federal Security Services, the F.S.B. places them at 4,000 by counting all their foreign medical workers, engineers and teachers as “potential combatants”  and the American Joint Special Operations Command (J.S.O.C.) even via the N.S.A. still has a great deal of trouble differentiating the club’s “enemy combatants” from “domestic terrorists”, its factions from its caucuses, its working groups from its wide sympathizer base on the East Coast of the formerly United States of America and throughout the Wild West Indies. But since the armistice, all three million citizens of Brooklyn Soviet have officially been declared “stateless people”.

 

Maya has been in the game for a very long time, but she doesn’t appear to be quite aged by the politics or hazards of it. You’d think by appearances she is in mid-late-twenties, and she would laugh at you for it and not even pretend to be vaguely flattered. Tell you about the wonders of yoga and the tantric arts! “The Club” is democratically run. It is led by an Executive of thirteen officers elected once a year. She was a founder of the club’s Israeli Branch. And was Chief of Staff of its American Branch for three years leading up the conclusion of the revolt. Now she does not hold an official title. Three years ago she was killed in the Millennium Theater Hostage Crisis and confirmed dead having given her life to liberate the people of Brooklyn.

She leads now from the field and from beyond the grave. When you die in this Club you often end up back in Africa. The old voodoo legends were in fact mostly true. As were radical advances in science long kept from the general knowledge of the people.

She finishes her stiff drink and the glass lands hard on the table.

She casually saunters ups four flights of piss soaked stairs. The power is once again out and the generators at the hotel have shut back to only the most necessary components, like supplying the crimson neon lights of the hotel bar, which flicker and flash “Live Girls” in both Amharic and Tigriti. It’s an inside joke. There are no girls working here. She swipes the pass key to Laurence Simon’s room, which sympathizers have supplied her with. Though the wall paper of the hallway is peeling after being nearly a decade out of fashion; the electronic card reader works just fine even with no power. She walks in right as he’s finally about to pull the trigger.

 

“Please hold that thought just another ten minutes Laurence Simon.”

 

He almost shoots himself in stupid shock seeing the elegant Yid, blood descendant of King Saul skillfully wrest the burner away from him in a Brooklyn swipe. She has star qualities and long flowing auburn hair. Her skin is dark for a blan without being olive. The faded fatigues of her blue uniform do little to hide the voluptuous curvatures of her body. She’s stunning but even more lethal. A red sash is tied about her waste. But, she’s not a pinko these days. Her medium caliber burner is loaded with non-lethal Afula specials is only vaguely concealed on her left outer hip holster making just a small bulge over the leg of her uniform pants.  The Pin of Palmares, the universal badge of safe passage for the blan in most liberated zones of noire Africa and Gran Columbia is fastened to her right epaulette.  On her right shoulder is a button peel away, which if exposed would reveal her to be an internationally licensed Cuban paramedic. And her hands themselves are shrouded in the thinnest possible black polymer gloves to conceal the intricate tattoos that cover both her hands and wind their calligraphy up her forearms.

One marked as such is left alone or overtly aided these days in the Free City of Addis Abba. But this is not her outdoor attire. When not in an air-conditioned, window tinted vehicle she moves about in public a light weight grey synthetic fiber burka which was designed by the Japanese to keep the wearer remarkably cool, it leg covers tear off into a mini skirt; although such a practical joke has not found time to play itself out since she bought the thing.

To cut right to the chase, being a highly attractive white woman in the middle of East Africa is not very problematic. But, being an international martyr of the human right movement believed dead by the all of the security and intelligence arms of the various major oligarchies and then turning up alive, well that’s very bad for business.

There’s an international war, a multi-lateral bloodbath going on between the world’s populations and the world’s oligarchies. It’s really not clear yet who’s going to win. But when leaders of the resistance are confirmed dead and elaborate tricks were played to even produce their bodies, well let’s just say Maya doesn’t do soap box oration anymore or casual heartfelt spoken word like she used to.

“I plead sorrow for the horrific murders of your wife and daughter, as well as many of your many comrades. I am an avid reader of your research, longtime admirer of your work and addicted reader of your WikiLeaks contributions. If you wish to take your own life, that is a choice between you and the black baby Jesus, but I still require roughly five more minutes of your time.”

Baffled and sobbing, the foolishly inebriated Laurence Simon, whose brave activism brought original attention to the genocide in Haiti before the rock stars made songs and t-shirt slogans about it, has lost everything a man on this earth needs to live a happy life.

And he’s just too old to craft his own vengeance.

Laurence Simon sputters, “Those sick, evil bastards have taken everything from me,” he looks both jaundiced and indemnified. Ready soon to die.

“And in five minutes before you decide to take your own life, know we plan to take from them.”

“Who, are you?” he demands.

“My name is Maya Sorieya Solomon. I am an Old Soul like you. I represent a faction of concerned individuals always prepared to act quickly and with near certain international impunity. We need something from you so we can avenge both the people of Haiti and your murdered family. Just as your blue print calls for.”

The 77-year old, once fearless human rights crusader, a two time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and one time recipient, looks quite pathetic, as do most who are truly about to carry out an act of sincere suicide. The former director falls to his knees still ready to die.

“Give. Me. Back the gun so I can end this.”

It’s about to get endless.

He curls up in a pleading ball at her feet. Sobs and the stink of ethanol. In the part of the world that Maya came to age, which is to say the Middle East, it is viewed as completely dishonorable to let a group of men rape your wife and daughter, torture them, then murder them, and the only person you kill is yourself. If you don’t even take out at least one of them, then your claims at manhood went right out the window, no matter how old or young you are. And you will have a highly questionable place in the world to come. She puts her hand on his brow. Via such a sympathetic gesture she listens to his head with her vast powers. He did write quite a lot of good books though, she thinks, even if he happens to be something now of a broken self-murder coveting coward.

 

She quotes from his ubiquitous manifesto:

 

“There are many evils in this world that are made far worse by the great distracted, faceless mob which does nothing but fixate on their own shallow existence, for the great enabler of our oppression is our narrow self-interest.”

 

“As I don’t surely need to tell you, there are far more potential villains than heroes in the ranks of men. But my compatriots are cut of very different cloth. We will hunt every single one of these Maccoute brigands down and we will bring massacre upon them.”

“The fighters we command are all called zealots by all who know the word. The Maccoute and those that shield them are cowards and swine. They will fall to our irons in legion. We will reduce their encampments to ash. In the three minutes before you decide to leave this world if you wish to tell me something, it will greatly facilitate our wrath to be brought upon them.”

“Please, why are you mocking me. I have nothing useful to offer you or the dead! I beg you to just let me come to an end.”

“My dear, dear Lawrence, I am an avid student of your life’s work. It was all noble and via it’s non-violence rather touching. Suicide is never a victimless crime, but I will kill you myself without sentimentality if that is your wish. I need you to tell me where I can find a recently disappeared man. I need you to tell me the exact location of imprisoned rebel commander Avinadav DeBuitléir. And I need you to turn over to me the login codes to the virtual Underground Railroad that is the international human right movement database.”

“To what end,” he asks.

“So that all those violations you’ve had to witness don’t ever happen again without punishment,” she responds.

A bullet quietly finds its way into the chamber.

Five minutes later, as Maya Solomon sometimes called Maya Rose steps into a waiting electric Lincoln Town Car a gunshot rings out in the hotel room above the messy cobble street.

BRAKA! Goes the gun. And his brains blew out over the hotel wall.

She hums a somber Kaddish for a great albeit now self-murdered man. The Yid prayer for the dead is too long to really do the whole thing so she hums just a bit of it, time being short and life, unfortunately being rather cheap.

She picks up her bulky iridium satellite phone to call her sometimes favorite partner. A damn fine dagger man. Truly a bi-winning character. A legend in his own mind at the very least.  A dead man in the eyes of his former nation. But when he died for some reason he awoke in Russia. Because she had much work for him still to do.

Three years and war path later, he was again in Moscow and his work was almost complete.

“Peace be on to you,” she tells him.

“And also on to you that same peace,” he offers in customary reply.

“Our long disappeared comrade associate Avinadav DeBuitléir is being held by the Department of Homeland Security at a prison camp called Angola 42 outside of Dubai. I will uplink with you later and hopefully convince you of my plan to liberate him. Carry out your last job and head home to Brooklyn.”

 

“Ain Davar,” that’s all Sebastian Adonaev ever says these days.

That means “it is nothing to worry about”, or “never mind”, or “fuggettaboutit”. Depending what you do with your hands and body language. It’s a phone call so she can’t see his hands obviously. But she knows his hands and his handy work about as well as anyone can. They’ve been legally married in the State of Israel since they were eighteen.

 

“Five minutes to nation time Zamni Cherie,” she responds in Haitian Creole.

            My “dear partner”, that’s all it means.

 

Most members of the “Brooklyn Bath and Rifle Club”, especially those in the Trinidadian Special Forces seem to speak Hebrew when whispering code on the iridium satellite phones or, Creole when making love. The revolution began in Haiti after all. Though, it was in a place called New York City where the tide began to turn and after four thousand years of servitude the forces of human emancipation began to prevail in earnest aided by parapsychology, black magic and the para military prowess of the red haired freckled, fighting Fenians.

 

F o u r t e e n, Brighton Beach

 

“The Coast of Brooklyn”

 

“Stop jumping all around or I’ll hit you hard!” Daria yells at him.

 

Eventually Daria stopped torturing him, answered his calls and met him on the Brighton Boardwalk again. It was now death to be without her, but she thought it merciful to allow him some head space.

 

“You are the futurist paramedic, but it is I who keep brining you back to life!” she told him. She was fickle. She had so many obligations that all paid off better than him.

 

Time stopped it seemed for Sebastian Adonaev between the double blue moons of Labor Day Weekend and the 17 of September, the date of the General Uprising. It was as if the bite of Dasha Andreavna, through his index finger to the bone had altered his very electricity and chemistry. Was it the moon; perhaps for we are but 70% water; or was she something clandestine, if not supra-natural? With so many variables, no many players and plots vying for the most cost effective means to the biggest slice of the apple; well it makes a dizzying narrative.

 

But from the minute she bit into him, the night they perished in a fourth dimensional sense on that roof; the days became long. Sebastian had forgone the gift of sleep. At some point he had had taken some pills that abstracted his world, deduced him to a broken shell. The glory of his early life and past lives squandered, but Dasha knew his face; knew his capabilities; knew how to wake a sleeper sleeping. For four straight weeks neither she nor he slept. The one or two hours of snooze was purely for biologics sake; they flattened out time.

 

On 15 September, 2011 they had walked down the Coney Island boardwalk towards Manhattan Beach; towards the strip of mansions and yachts in Sheep’s Head. They came across a shrine. An iron torch wrapped in barbed wire about a pillar; around the base which extended out in a marble slab as if for human sacrifice. There were dozens of low cut tombs with the names of villages and families and entire peoples wiped out in the Nazi holocaust. Upon each a short story of things Sebastian knew, knew as if experienced. And they paused there in the dry docks and canals of Sheep’s Head, with the jazz cafes and lounges lined up on Emmons Ave.

 

Time stopped yet again.

 

“What is this poorly maintained shrine,” she asks him, “why do we linger here?”

 

And everything about his life he then knew to be a fabrication. His name, his parents, his religion, his country of origin. All a clever, highly cultivated disguise.

 

He was suddenly in many places and times at once. He was explaining to her the significance of the Partizan shrine; he was teaching her about his people’s history. She was telling him that her Ivoryish grandmother married a German baron and hid a Ivoryish lover in the manor for the duration of the purge. He told her about how when he was young he used to train with black guerillas in the shadows of these shrines all over the city; as if the younger he knew more of his past life than the man now; the man who has his face and memories wiped out repeatedly after being used by both sides of the war? Yes, the war. The oldest war; between humans and those that prey on them. And those humans which help the predators exploit us. The collaborators. They begin cleaning up the Partizan shrine which is gratified and defiled.

 

“What about the hatch?” she asks.

 

“The hatch?”

 

“I heard that under every holocaust shrine is a hatch to great behemoth craft; a black freighter ready to carry your people out to sea. If the purge, when the purge begins again.”

 

There appears to be a hollow in the base of the pillar upon which the flame site. She reaches in to brush the leaves aside, looking for the hatch. She cuts her hand on glass and bleeds out all over the shrine, until he goes in his jump bag for some bandages and iodine to pour. He secures her, she never cries out; just bleeds on her pretty dress, bleeds on the shrine.

 

“My personal paramedic,” she says, “no hatch. You are deluded and mistaken, yet again!”

 

He is using much more of brain now. Able to be several places at once. He has seen the hatch open, seen that it needs a hand grenade to break the shrine and controlled explosion to pop the layer open to the great craft; the 24,000 person capacity nuclear powered black exodus freighter. And its sister crafts in Star City, Fort Totten, Fort Washington, Waterside and Seagate. And the corrupted one under Richmond Plaza. He thinks the freighters have been there since the 80’s. She shouldn’t know about them; unless, unless.

 

So it’s hard to describe fourth dimensional time; being in numerous reality states and historical times. She was her great grandmother he was the Ivoryish lover in the closet space hidden away. He’d been to Vienna; he’s bombed the theatre there also bombed a police station. So now, now in this state he knows that he’s not just a three dimensional man; 29 years old, a petty bourgeoisie of mixed Caucasian race in a paramedic program after the fire department put him on trial for Haiti, after the Israelis locked him up briefly and deported him for treason; he’s self-aware. He remembers the camps. He remembers the Sharashka Waltham, which is to say remembering things that haven’t even happened yet.

 

“Where are you right now?” Dasha asks him, “As you perceive it?”

 

“I’m in the Waltham Special Engineering Camp, inventing the blue print 5 module training system, three years from now.”

 

“Good. Well finally, you’re near awake. Five weeks under man. Welcome back to Babylon. Do you know the Gregorian date?”

He simmers on it, “Sometime mid-November 2012?”

“Something like that.”

 

There was this whole other life happening all at the same time, happening while he slept and the rational mind cultivated by the Pharisees told him that his delusions were delusions but the world was sane. And several times, several times Lt. Moishe Klein asked him, “A sane man in an insane world is what?”

 

And the least complicated answer was, “going completely insane.”

 

“What are you after?” she asks him, there in the fall, there in New York, there in front of the Sheep’s Head Bay Partizan shrine, the pillar covered in barbed wire and former Soviet looking torch.

 

“I want to know the truth about our, real nature.”

 

“You need to process the truth about yourself Old Soul, you need to ask why other men sleep and you are awake, ask why you attract the others with the full range view; ask about why people like us don’t die; we just get reborn in new realities or vessels, over and over and over; why? You tell me because you’re older.”

 

“Emma sent you?”

 

Daria nearly laughs.

 

“Man, I’m not affiliated with your long dead wife,” she says in total scorn.

“My memories are frayed.”

 

She looks into him with big bright eyes.

 

“They’ve tortured your corpse many times since 2001, you’re a real champ.”

 

“What’s my name?” he asks her.

 

She gives him such a look.

 

“2952. We’re just numbers to them.”

 

He sees all these things and times. The Black Freighters levitating into the air with the waters rising up and over the ramparts and swallowing up the bay. He sees massive flying fortress ships gas rocketing Brooklyn, Brooklyn? Brooklyn Soviet; the citadel of the un-born messiahs’ the son and daughter of the Mahdi?

 

“How many times have we danced this close?” he asks her.

 

“We’ve been dancing a lot since the 17^th century poetic little gun slinger. I’m not as old as you, I’m just currently far more self-aware. Ochen Bolshoi.”

 

That’s very poor Grammer in Russian.

 

He remembers another time and place when she found him sleeping at the base of the Shrine; Vienna maybe, 1804? 1886? Aren’t those the reset dates? Hard to say all made up dates anyway. She found him and he drew for her and they were lovers for a year until the secret police murdered her. Was that the oldest story? And there was the German baron, there was another time in the 1990’s maybe when he refused to leave the park because fucking Italians, Sicilians really, in the Columbus Association would come every year and sacrifice a virgin Ivoryiss there by gang raping her on the marble slab; the cops would never be there.

 

They’d go to church and be absolved the very next day. They would be asleep. And she showed up the morning he was sleeping there and she said she’s help him defend the shrine, prevent this year’s annual Yom Kippur rape atrocity. And the Jamaican gangster Mickhi Dbrisk showed up and the three of them with bats guarded the shrine so when the Italians from Garretson beach did show up to decorate and foul the shrink; they three of them reinforced by forty Crips with bats really fucked those nasty kids up, broke out a lot of teeth. Was that the 1990’s? Was that during the Crown Heights Riots, the Ivory-West Indian mass hate crime? Was it reality or should I say linear Pharisee created three dimensional reality.

 

“Are you setting me up for someone?” he asks.

 

“Not me, Tovarish lover, No-One is setting you up,” she replies.

 

A pause.

 

“Does he pay well?”

 

“Now you ask the right questions. He pays in Bitcoin not Rubles.”

 

“I would have the young dvoktchka professional killer know that I had to chisel through a plastic cage and with a hair pin remove from my face the mask that was keeping me speaking soothing words of poetry.”

 

She blushes inside perhaps. He tries very hard with fairly limited means.

 

“I would have her know I then had to tunnel nine hundreds quariiums, yes “quariiums” the bizarre system of measurement that is used in Mass-A-Choose-Wits Sharkasa Camps, which is to say just under three kilometers, in civilized, divisible by ten measurement.”

 

“Not yet you haven’t my babe,” Dasha smirks, three more years until that occurs.

 

She smiles at him. He looked different than on this reality plane actually as an American.

 

“I would have the young, elegant and truly stunning dvotchka killer know that for 35 days I was again a bleak captive! To my ambulant plantation surely but then to a fiercer master that of Sharkasa Waltham which seems to hold me in its thrall and not let me leave its westerly winterly prison for what how now! Two long years, nearly three!”

 

“How now”, she replied, still grinning. She was already envisioning herself at a new work site now the fearsome awakening was mostly completed. The gladiator thunder dome of Atlanta, or perhaps one day a Haan internment camp depending whom one asked at FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security. She remained a happy optimist that mother Russia would win the clash of civilizations.

 

Well then she says, “All that escapery had in fact taught you to be on time comrade Adonaev! To pay for all things womanly, to be careful with nigger gun play when knives do the trick or poisons!”

 

And he for one now blushes. For it was true, being on time was not a Brooklynese strong suite.

What will they make me a Master of he wonders? Sustaining International Development or sustaining himself for some unrelenting struggle? With some coexistence thrown in there as if he didn’t play well with black and brown people, oh he played well for a white one he did!

 

“What was the last think you remember of the camp before you dove down your 900 quariiums of tunnel to escape all the way here to New York to see me?” she asks, “what was the most exciting lesson you’ve come to learn?” Again, this was a thing to come he was seeing.

 

“That I am a rollercoaster of entertainment. Until one realizes that it never stops, and they jump off, or so says Oleg the Bear.”

 

“I can and I will if I have to,” she smiles. Which she does.

 

They walked and talked the length of the Boardwalk from Sheepshead West to Seagate, like they used to, playing with time. Probing what the other remembered. The kissed a lot, it was alive again the passion of rapturous feelings; they had grey eyes for each other.

 

Sun eventually rises. They end up at the Stillwell Station and then he walks her home to her sponsor’s place on Banner Ave. A masochistic ritual he knows far too well. Knows he will know? Knows he’s been in this mouse cage before. Eventually he meanders back to the grim train depot. To take the Q train north back to the City.

 

And the doors closed on Sebastian Adonaev at Avenue H and the Q train southbound to Stillwell Ave. carries her home, to her husband on Banner Ave. Like I shall never see her alive again. That is what all nights have felt like since I have known her, but these four of five weeks. Parting with her is a type of death.

 

He muses into dawn his new powers unstable and waning.

 

Knowing she returns to such an animal neither she nor I can control or break from. I begged her many time to leave with me to somewhere, to anywhere really. She only quietly laughed and loudly judged me.

 

A few more nights until the end of the now.

 

The cabs could take us still thorough the Battery tunnel, but we often had to board the trains to get deeper into what was quickly becoming the most heavily armed and barricaded urban stronghold barring perhaps Baghdad and Mogadishu. Every ethnic group, every gang and mafia, every faction was warming up observing what was about to occur in the city the morning afternoon and next week days and weeks after 17 September. September 1^st had been a Great Disruption, all listening to the FIRE switch, fire station radio broadcasts knew what was soon to happen; a great slaughter.

 

So in Brooklyn, Queens the Bronx and many other places like ATL, Boston, Flint, Hartford and Detroit the innumerous factions of resistance dug the hell in. They got ready to hold ground, room to room, block to block. No one thought it would be feasible to storm the district financial. A real one way trip. But Anarchists are always after hard, symbolic targets and by that stage the city unions and student movement were behind them in the raid.

 

The blood of the left would spray into and open the eyes of the right and the center so went the brinkmanship of the Planning Section chiefs in the Brooklyn Bath and Rifle Club called also called the Banshee Otriad. There would be no Anarchist Trials here, who even had time for such warnings; only massacre and atrocity. Followed by deceptions like ones perpetrated in September 2001 and again in January of 2009. Such tricksters we.

 

I am not, was not afraid to die. I had asked, begged my God to see her again, and again and now, now it was time to join his friends and fight like hell. But these were just the scribbles of a mad man, none of these things had happened yet in America.

 

 

F i f t e e n, North Caribbean Sea

 

“The Unit has a Palaver”

 

The Black Freighter is approaching its ultimate destination on the eastern seaboard.

 

For many years there has been a persistent conspiracy theory about boats and planes going missing in the North Caribbean within an area called the Bermuda Triangle. While a range of legends both mysterious and scientific have been laid out in varying circles, to date no real valid objective theory has been substantiated.

 

It is towards this Triangle from an approach between Dominican Republic and the U.S. Colony Puerto Rico that the submersible will make its determined approach toward the eastern coast of the United States after dropping its precious cargo in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

 

The black freighter is nearly two Manhattan city blocks long. One of the largest submersibles constructed in the period of the Pax Americana between Cold War One and Two, loosely 1989 to 2001. No one is sure what the Haan have developed since then, but surely large, deadly impressive Haan things. The Black Mermaid, the new name of this submarine since its purchase/capture, is hidden by virtually all conventional forms of technological detection by the depths it can descend. Because of its reactor, air recycling purifiers, heavy stores of food and fresh water it can remain undetected indefinitely able to deliver a payload of intercontinental ballistic missiles, that no one of the rebel alliance ever intends to use. Via hope, you feign intention.

 

The ship is rumored to have only five functional warheads. But, that is five more than anyone needs to reduce major cities to ashes. More importantly than missiles is that right now this ship is hosting about half of the rebel government in exile of Israel, Palestine and Kurdistan. Some forty co-chairs, political heads and their immediate families. Most of those families are somewhat smaller now, many lives reduced by the hasty exodus after the battle of Madeira. Waves of killing machines had just one month before surprised the hidden rebel bases. Except for the Kurds which have families larger than most of the crew of the ship. All members of those families could fire Kalashnikovs, but everyone lost someone. It amounts to just under two thousand high value persons they were moving from Sakhalin to Trinidad & Tobago. Very important persons. Before the strike team is loosed off the Eastern American coast most of the rebel government will be brought to the relative safety of Port of Spain, Trinidad.

 

Yulia Romanova, Adelina, Kudzai and Oleg the Bear have been confined democratically and by an armed Ethiopian Israeli sentry to a small bunk room on a lower deck. The size of the vessel is sprawling. No one trusts the three Russians. There is a Spartan, wood plated and red rust room with two bunk beds for each gender and a small common room for playing cards and drinking. They are coldly and politely given three meals a day in this room since they were taken on board in Sakhalin; a Russian island north of Japan.

 

Oleg the Bear is imposing while remaining intellectual.

 

“No, I’ve never read a thing, he’s written; though I’m told I’m depicted as some real shtarker. A brutal tough guy who loves taking women’s clothes off with my hands and camera. We met in some other life, but he doesn’t remember. When we met again he’ll look to me as some another older brother he never had.  I will only just encourage him to write,” states Oleg the Bear and all nod in agreement. Yulia Romanova, a tall Slavic pixy shaped conventionally like a Barbie modal doesn’t even enjoy reading. In Russian or Angliski. Hasn’t read a book since she was forced to attend High school. She has dark brown hair and doesn’t appear very crucial to the operation. But, she is actually the bomb maker. She’s not paid to look pretty, but she is. She’s not paid to fuck men on demand, which she won’t. She isn’t a subject matter expert on American affairs. But, she can build and place satchel bombs in expensive hand bags, simple enough, the extent of her patriotism.

 

On the monstrous underwater vessel called the Black Mermaid; traveling propelled by its nuclear reactor towards the United States; the extraction and intervention squad sits for black bread, herring, tea and Kompot, sweet berry punch and some Russian Standard Vodka.

 

The Haan had finished a canal across quietly Socialist Nicaragua that was three times the size of the US controlled one in Panama. But, for some reason very few people in the USA even knew the thing was operational. It was through this cognitively non-existent mega water way the Black Mermaid nuclear submarine had passed with prior authorization on its run into American waters after it’s off load of high level rebel leadership in Trinidad.

 

There were all these people that no one trusted the Russians to be around. Not to meet and not to see. They were taken in hoods from a safe house in Sakhalin, de-hooded in this very bunk room and the only person they had even ever met was this nameless Ethiopian sentry in a grey uniform holding an Uzi. Adelina had been taken to her own room just up the hall and was visited twice by the infamous Emma Solomon. But, none of the others in the unit had left the room. Which was vaguely confining but no one was particularly claustrophobic. Oleg and Yulia mostly played cards. Kudzai mostly read the Jesus books, or engaged in quiet mediation. The only time the four of them talked was during daily meals. Thankfully no one was a smoker.

 

Kudzai is very muscular from years of hiking, swimming and combat. Big in all four ways that matter. His biochemist brain, his black noble soul, his empathetic heart and his Shona warrior hands. Oleg Medved, otherwise known as Oleg the Bear is perhaps physically larger without being obese, but they are big in different ways. Oleg is simply physically imposing, but his brain, heart and hands; they are smaller. He’s the unit’s intelligence officer, so all hope he is as clever as he appears to be. Kudzai is a holder of a Trinidadian passport. He is dark as night. Black even for the eyes of white men that turn many shades of not Caucasian into racist enemy others. Kudzai stands nearly six feet tall. He is by far the most trusted person in the unit that was being briefed just one hour before deployment, as he is a member of the revolutionary army while these three Russians are all under contract.

 

Kudzai and Oleg are both witty conversationalists and do their best to engage the two women they will be working with. Kudzai is here primarily to protect Adelina, since the other two Russians Oleg and Yulia are expendable. He will break the back of any person who might lay their hands on the candidates Emma and Adelina. He has taken a blood oath to protect the chosen; his main task on this mission will be to protect Ms. Adelina while she attempts to enter the dreams of Sebastian Adonaev, and keep him from unleashing his fighters in ways that might trigger a bloody, bloody bloodbath and catastrophe. In fact, their unit, now in massive black nuclear submarine once owned by the State of Israel is hurtling toward the international maritime border.

 

They will let most of these very important passengers off in Port of Spain, but this unit will remain below decks until they get to American waters.

 

Oleg Medved will be quick to tell you that “Oleg the Bear” is certainly not the nice Ukrainian Ivoryish or later Israeli name his mother gave him. But, it will be his name for now.

He is very likable. Gregarious in the right word. He goes nowhere without a camera and takes a lot of pictures some arty, some naughty, some of assets to note all of them quite professional. He even has a good one of Ms. Adelina giggling on the first time they met; which was a few weeks ago in Sakhalin, that cold vile place.

 

Oleg is the Communications Officer for their little squad, which is nice way of saying the intelligence man. It is his responsibility to work with his partner Ms. Yulia Romanova, to whom he sometimes calls “his muse”. They knew each other from before. Yulia alongside being a slender and sensuous dark brundinite she was very good at building little bombs. And also good for social engineering.

 

“Every artist ultimately dreams of fucking their muse,” Oleg said over dinner one night in the lower depths cabin.

 

“Don’t dream too hard. I have a boyfriend,” Yulia replied.

 

If it was the duty of Adelina Blazhennaya to enter the mind of Sebastian Adonaev and take control of the resistance apparatus working towards a vast national uprising set for an upcoming hidden date; no longer hidden to the National Security Agency and also the Department of Homeland Security’s secret police forces. It was the duty of Kudzai to use his training to help her enter that glorious but treacherous rebel of mind of Adonaev’s. See what was actually happening in America Babylon. See if the resistance was really able to pull this off. Then it was Oleg Medved’s job to teach the resistance how to use the special new tools of technology and magic developed in the Sharashka in Hong Kong. Or, if things were quite fubar and infiltrated; they would just mop up anyone who might be able to identify Solomon or any of the other candidates.

 

“What’s a candidate?” Yulia asks finally.

 

“People descended from the bloodlines of the seven original prophets,” Kudzai replies.

 

“Does that mean?” Yulia exclaims pointing at Adelina.

 

“Yes, she’s related to Jesus or somebody, pass the potatoes,” mutters Oleg.

 

“That’s not substantiated,” Adelina replies.

 

“She’s descended from either Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammed or some hidden line they haven’t figured out yet,” Kudzai interjects, “both Adelina and certainly Commander Solomon are both candidates.

 

“Interesting,’ smirks Oleg who doesn’t believe in any of the God delusions, “pass the Vodka please.”

 

These were upside down cake times, you didn’t know what to believe as the world kept unraveling. Were Adelina really a powerful sorcerous shaman and considered a candidate since birth; well hopefully that meant this would go more smoothly. If not, well she looked too hippy to pull her weight as death squad member. Which is what was going to happen to Sebastian and the rest of the American rebel leaders if this thing was compromised. So basically Adelina and Kudzai as believers were here to make the uprising work. Oleg and Yulia were here to liquidate the American’s if things had gotten fucked up. Life was to have balance even in insurgency and murder.

 

Adelina was to lead quietly the unit and ensure the outcome of prophesy foretold in a little book called the New Social Gospel revealed by some magnimonious higher power to Emma Solomon in the year 2001. Which was the same year that she was captured by the secret police, tortured repeatedly, brutally raped, then crucified and left to die in the Negev Desert.

 

What politicians said on the international circus stage were hardly what their populations connected via the inter-web were ready to agree to, not a single year longer.

 

December 21^st, 2012 was to be the year according to the Mayan calendar that a great shift would occur in Humanity. Well that was not the exact date of the American uprising. But those great spiritual cosmic forces were being factored in. It had taken over twenty years to coordinate a military insurrection in the belly of the empire.

 

Oleg and Yulia had worked together before. Adelina and Kudzai had just met and the unit was assembled about a week ago. They were all now confined in this cabin and to break the ice over vodka, Oleg the Bear got them playing a famous game of gradual interrogation called “Three Thing to Know about me.”

 

“Let me tell you three some things about me,” Oleg said to them. They were drinking vodka and eating black bread with caviar and herring, onions and salted tomatoes, goose patty, Salo and strange orange vegetable that only grows below the soil of Russia.

 

“I am not a creature that will live vicariously!” he declared in English out of respect for Kudzai who spoke no Russian.

 

“I am not any kind of believer like you two in some vast invisible forces that I cannot measure hold and see. I am not here there therefore as a fact of faith in your Comrade Solomon. I am here because I have money and orders and a contract to be here. And that is simple enough.”

He continues, “I was told to come and evaluate these Americans. See if they are finally coming to the table of struggle. The story of their uprising most precisely is interesting to the person who pays me. I was told to set up these communication lines so Americans can join the global revolution underway for over two hundred years. I was told to help murder every single one of them that might have gone over to the enemy.”

 

“You have no enemies’ friend, you are only here for money!” Kudzai proclaims, “What does it really matter if Sebastian is hero, a hooligan or a traitor to us all. You will be paid the same amount.”

“I am actually paid more to not kill anyone,” Oleg replies.

“Yes, it’s clearly in the contract we get less the more people who die,” Yulia says.

“Why are you really here,” Kudzai questions, “Doesn’t the enemy have a bigger bank account?”

 

“Listen. We do professional work. That’s what we’re being paid for,” Yulia declares.

“What are you all here for, really? If you don’t believe in miracles and prophesy,” Kudzai says, calmly without any accusation in his tone.

 

“I am here too to enjoy myself, make money and take some pictures!” Oleg declares, “All the most reputable of foreign analysts, journalists, pundit and economists have declared an American uprising as literally impossible. Like you’d have to be working with God and Magic! Which you all seem to think you are. That nation on the mount would sooner watch sports than tune into see the world burning. This is just a fact! As long as they keep the flights to Europe running, as long as they have their beer, football and porn, hookers for those who can afford them then they will be the grinning bastards, the opulent retards, their cities blue grounds for the world elite to harvest more women and treasure!”

Then Oleg continues, “I’m going as a highly paid adventure tourist. I will take a million pictures; I will leave behind more than I take away. Save me your magic! This is a revolution that will be wiped from the history books in treachery and gore. They will all be killed. The only question is, will they be killed from incompetence that comes with their privilege, or because their top leadership was infiltrated long ago” declares Oleg Medved.

 

“Have you any faith in the prophesy?” Yulia sarcastically asks him in Russian.

 

Yulia was prim. Oleg had never known her to loyal to her boyfriend patron back in somewhere, but Oleg had come to see women as accessories for men, adjuncts and muse for the doing of big things or even just fun sweaty thrusting things. What he noticed since the Romanoff Bratva took over his other contract was that he had more time to pursue his art. Money absolutely brought options.

 

Oleg had a long running morally ambiguous relationship with Yulia founded on the principle that her partner back in Russia was not her boyfriend or her husband, just some patron paying for a flat in Moscow and an Amex. The world was burning. They made money wherever they could. These were times of fun and games with papers and loyalties. They took a lot of pictures together; he of her and she and he from his hip. His burly part beard and broad shoulders were quite the opposite of her elegant spindle form, her fake but convincing to touch tits, her black brown hair falling back and forth over shoulders as she let him capture her.

 

“No faith at all in anything, or anyone, certainly not the fat Americans,” Oleg declares.

 

Yulia feigns a small, false pout. Then immediately grins. While her beauty was not a question, her eyes lacked what the parapsychologists called the Old Soul depth of Comrade Blazhennaya.

 

“And you little Mosquito,” exclaimed Yulia referring to the American translation of Blazhennaya’s fictionist passport name, Komarova, “Do you really believe? Do you really think you’re some chosen child of God?”

 

Adelina makes no motion to respond.

 

The conversation goes back to three things to know about each other. In the cultural context of Russia and Ukraine Oleg & Yulia make a lot of toasts and knock down their shots in celebration of the supposedly impossible; the hopeful success of their mission. Kudzai and Adelina stick to tea and water. But, then Yulia provokes the subject again. Emboldened by the drink.

 

“But really Mosquito! Do you believe in this blatnoy? Or are you being well paid too?”

 

Before Adelina answers Yulia Romanova’s inquiry, her face grimaces with a hard and quiet smile. Now into the thirteenth shot of Russian Standard Vodka Yulia has never seen such a sinister grin. Oleg was drunk but wholly functional. Yulia was probably able to drive a car or mix some chemicals into an improvised explosive device, but now though she was seeing things.

 

Drunk was the only way to even take in or put up with this rhetoric. The theories of mostly nonviolent resistance to oligarchy, codified by Emma Solomon, Avinadav DeBuitléir and of course; Comrade Sebastian Adonaev. The likelihood of death in taking this assignment.

 

 

Drunk Yulia now jerked to attention and carried out a most dramatic reading.

 

Adelina’s eyes began glowing a brown into eerie green on gray. Yulia jumped in her seat, then Adelina’s eyes went grey on grey and Oleg arched his back contorting into a Bhutto type posture, spasmodically twitching and frozen. Grinning obscenely. Oleg too lurched out of his seat but then by the force of her mind and found himself saluting her.

 

And now, Emma Solomon in husky, but authoritative voice of a warrior queen spoke out the mouths of Adelina and Kudzai perfectly synchronized, and that was then Yulia and Oleg realized that neither the Romanoff Bratva nor the Israeli resistance forces were in charge of this mission at all.

 

The pair then both exclaimed possessed in the voice of Solomon, lips moving in unison:

 

“Welcome to the world to come. Open your eyes wide. By the time we are done here there will be no more safety for those men in high towers. Perched atop the mountains d in their gilded bunkers. No faction will be left standing. We were all born serfs or various types of half casted slave, but our unborn children have been assured their emancipation via deeds to come.”

 

Everyone dropped back into their seats postictal from possession, post coitus almost with no warm fluids. Oleg simply kept grinning refusing inside himself to believe. They had drugged him, it was simple as that. Kudzai smiled too, but it was the smile of happy belief. Yulia looked truly scared, emotions breaking through her year’s crafted control of countenance. And Adelina Blazhennaya in all her petit and unassuming compact grace then uttered, “Trust that among the Americans are many who have cried out over what happened in the killing fields and their sprawling slum cities and prison camps. They have more going on than dancing, fornicating and erection of taller towers and bigger, brighter stadiums. Have a little fucking hope,” she tells them.

 

“Don’t overestimate the prophesy or underestimate the cowboy libertarianism of the American resistance,” Adelina tells them, and pours them their next round of slightly poisoned shots.

 

“America, fuck yeah,” exclaims Oleg the Bear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S i x t e e n, Upper West Side

 

“Little Talks at the Rock in 2000”

 

The infamous and quixotic Mr. Adonaev is back. There he is after a ten-month disappearance wearing a pine-green jumpsuit and a white beret. He is urging his compatriots to get organized. He proudly proclaims that he has become a Democratic Confederalist. No one entirely sure what that means. He says that drugs and alcohol keep us from is our full potential and that we have to become a movement of young people dedicated to retaking our society. No one has really ever heard a person talk like that around school.

 

He wants us to become revolutionaries!

 

Within three days of his reappearance he has made quick rounds of the NYC magnet high schools to organize a meeting. Trickovitch certainly isn’t going to give up alcohol and become a Democratic Confederalist, but he is intrigued by the concept of this ‘change by struggle and fight’ that Sebastian Adonaev has been preaching since his sudden return.

 

There are about forty kids sitting on the Rock on February 16^th, 2000. They are mostly Sebastian’s old crew from the public magnet schools as well as his little brother Benjamin and a few of his friends. Everyone is milling around near the summit smoking cigarettes until Sebastian and Nick Trickovitch arrive wearing black suits and dark sunglasses. The dress code was Trikhovitch’s idea.

 

Sebastian begins his call to arms.

 

“As many of you know I committed a string of vile and self-serving acts in my previous life. I was sent away because of them. If I’ve put any of you through bullshit, hell or otherwise, I sincerely apologize. I’ve been locked up for ten months and I have learned only two things of any value from this trial. The first is that we have been deeply wronged by the forces, which govern our nation. The poverty, misery, and general oppression, which are the fruits of our American comfort, have raped the soul of our generation. Our dreams have been perverted and our ideals warped. We all used to think that we could the world. Now, all we want to do is get fucked up, shut down and drop out so we don’t have to acknowledge the fact that we once believed in things. All that is left is for us to make money, make babies and die.  The second thing I learned is that it is never too late to revive our lost hopes and dreams. We don’t yet have a plan. We don’t yet have points of unity or a list of concrete grievances. We just know something is wrong within this nation.”

 

Those assembled process his proclamation in different ways. To some it is a minstrel show from out the 1960’s, to others it is like witnessing their pent up frustrations and middle class rage being channeled into pieces of a dream.

 

“Mr. Trickovitch and I want to create an organization, an association of young women and men ready to fight. We don’t even have a name yet. We just want to get ourselves organized and learn how to take our country back.”

 

Trickovitch doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. Those assembled know the boys worked out the particulars behind closed doors. This is Sebastian’s second attempt at making a speech. There is no applause this time like there had been when he ran for Freshman Rep. Just 40 youngsters in the February cold, hands stuffed in coat pockets, thinking with fire and breathing out smoke. No one says a word. No one walks away.

 

“We can use the copy machine in my Dad’s study to run off your little manifesto,” volunteered burly red headed Fenian named Hubert O’Domhnaill.

 

 

***

 

One of the first things I did as a free man was to go down to 23^{rd Street} and 7^th Avenue to the Democratic Confederalist Party USA Headquarters and sign up to join the party. The building looks run down. Everyone inside calls each other comrade, which for some reason seems a little silly. I have to be honest with myself. I’m still not exactly sure what dialectical materialism really means. I don’t have class-consciousness. My knowledge of Democratic Confederalism is limited. My understanding is that capitalism is a system of competition that pits people against each other and benefits only a select few. This select few is a group called the bourgeoisie. They control something called the means of production. Throughout history there has been a constant struggle to take back the means of production. With each struggle a new group lands on top. Democratic Confederalism is about achieving equality. The group that is able to do that is called the proletariat.  Once the proletariat seizes the means of production in something called a revolution there will be freedom. There will be opportunity. And there will finally be true equality.

 

After haggling with an elder statesman on the fourth floor of the office, I receive a Red Card and become a 16-year old, card-carrying member of the Young Democratic Confederalist League.

 

***

 

I decided somewhere along the way home from the Family School that I will no longer drink alcohol or take drugs. It is not so much that I associate substance abuse with my previous condition. It is more to prove to myself that I did not need the Family School to be sober. I looked up some AA meetings in the City and have started going to a group called Midnight in the West Village. People are really shocked with my ability to give heartfelt survivor advice but I am used to the sharing rhetoric of AA from my time at the Family School. I found a sponsor at my second meeting. He is a gay news reporter from CNN.

 

I bounce around friends’ houses for the first few weeks. Then after a long dinner with my parents, they decide to let me move back in. I assure them that I am able to live in the City and not get into further trouble. We try to figure out what schools I can get into this late in the school year. They are nervous, but happy to see me. I guess a few people are.

 

 

***

 

 

Nick Trickovitch has been reading the Democratic Confederalist literature I brought back from the national office. I have been trying to turn him commie red. We are attempting to put our ideals into writing.

 

“Largely from here on out it becomes an issue of good propaganda,” he observes. “The message is good, right? But we got to give ‘um some quick victories, show them their time and energies yield dividends.”

 

“Go on,” I say watching Nick collect his thoughts.

 

“I’m not saying that I’m a theorist of any kind. I’m not even really convinced I get everything Marx is saying. But I understand enough. I understand that I live in a society with massive inequality and that one solution is rooted in this text. But we can’t call ourselves commies. If we do, we won’t get anywhere.”

 

“It’s always been like that, right? The lie that this society is better than the ones a couple hundred years before? The history books in school make you think it is,” I respond.

 

“The books are filled with lies. There may be no real way to quantify human suffering but like I said, if our manifesto smacks of socialist crazy talk no one will join.”

 

“So we’ll stick to the basics,” I say.

 

I pause smoking my Newport. We are sitting on his roof with a typewriter in the bitter cold.

 

“The unpleasantries of life,” he says as he types, “are to be blamed first upon our own inaction.”

 

“I like that,” I tell him.

 

“What did you really learn in the camps Sebastian?” he asks me for the first time.

 

“Self-reflection at gun point.”

 

“Fitting.”

 

My silence and perhaps hateful stare communicates to him that this is a subject I am not yet ready to talk about in depth. He types a few more notes. Feels like we’ve been up on this roof writing for days.

 

“This organization is being created to get our compatriots to understand that something must be done about the way we live?” he suggests.

 

“Not exactly. This organization is being created to train revolutionaries.”

 

“What is that fucking phrase? Don’t use words that set off red flashing lights. That phrase is used to sell cars and beauty products too, you know. No one knows what it means, not even you,” he tells me.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Teenage angst is society’s way of marginalizing the confusion and breakdown of our ideals. We are all being changed living in this country. We are being force-fed conceptions of beauty, economic relationships and the necessity of material things. Our social circle is the perfect example of bourgeoisie youth reeling from the contradiction of what we know is right and what we are taught to accept. We grew up with everything in the world at our finger tips, but it is all based on this grotesque system exploiting other people for us to have our comforts,” he tells me, “Revolution means we’re gonna tear it all down and blow it all up and start from scratch.”

 

“Well isn’t that what we want, Nick?”

 

“It’s a stupid buzz word and a scary thought to the sane. You’re talking about different kinds of exploitation here, Sebastian. Are you saying American wealth is predicated on the suffering of the international working class or are you saying that we’re suffering because of our socialization to accept this reality?”

 

“I’m saying that we’re asking some pretty big questions for kids who are just sixteen. What I saw in those camps was the tip of the iceberg. We need to keep asking these questions and we need this organization to put these ideas in a format regular people can understand.”

 

Nick pauses looking at me intently for a moment while he flicks his Newport over the railing.

 

He reads as he types the second sentence of our treatise,

 

“This organization is being created to absolve us of the horror our nation has unleashed upon this world via our limitless resistance. Our enemy is capitalism.”

 

“That I can dig,” I say.

 

“What are we gonna call this little outfit?” he asks me.

 

“I’m not sure yet. Something militant. Like the Zealots of Brooklyn.”

***

 

Every day I jump on the #4 train and head up to the Bronx. Today 1 am handing out newly printed broadsheet flyers that hammer out our rough little call to arms. I am taking down numbers when a kid I don’t recognize approaches me. He introduces himself as Simcha. He is Chilean Ivoryish and his look is difficult to place. He wears neat clothing, formal but not preppy, and has an intense look about him. He isn’t tall in stature, nor is he incredibly articulate or easy on the eyes. He looks a little Latin and a little Gorski. Unbeknownst by me, I have just met one of the first great ideological influences of my blossoming political ideology.

 

“My name is Simcha Rathajzer. We’ve met before but you might not remember me.”

 

I extend my hand to give him a pound, but he shakes it firmly instead.

 

“Sebastian Adonaev.”

 

“I know exactly who you are, comrade. I want to talk to you about this club you’re putting together.”

 

“What do you want to know?”

 

“What is your intention by founding this organization? I understand you’ve recently become a member of the Young Democratic Confederalist League.”

 

“That’s true. I joined last week. How did you know that?”

 

“I was surprised to hear you had become a Democratic Confederalist. Some people are saying the organization you want to found is a front group.”

 

“I don’t know what that means.”

 

“A front organization is an issue specific group funded by a larger Democratic Confederalist organization to bring young people towards political action and then condition them to accept Democratic Confederalism. You are somewhat familiar with the loaded nature of your new affiliation?”

 

“No. Not particularly.”

 

“You haven’t exactly picked the most beloved of ideologies to embrace for your new found desire to be political. There have been nearly a hundred years of government action against the party you are affiliated with, not mention assassination, imprisonment, and deportation of many of the more radical members,” Simcha continues.

 

“I’m hanging’ on your every word, but how do you know all this stuff? Everyone else is like ‘politics, yeah that sounds cool’ but you seem to have thought about a lot of this stuff before.”

 

“I’m a socialist. I’m not a member of any of the big organizations. It’s just something that my family has believed in and I grew up with.”

 

“Isn’t a socialist like a halfway Democratic Confederalist?”

 

“I get the impression, and this is not meant as an insult, that your reading of the Democratic Confederalist Manifesto is your only real exploration into this school of thought. You’re telling everyone that you embrace the most hated of adversarial cultures in American society, an ideology our government fought a bloody hundred-year, international conflict to contain. You’re going to make a lot of people nervous with all this. I just want you to be aware of that.”

 

“I’m quite aware.”

 

“There’s another thing. Your own political ideas aside, once again, what is your intention by creating this new organization?”

 

“To build a fighting force for people’s struggle.”

 

“You need to pick your words carefully. Is your objective to spread Democratic Confederalism or is your objective to make apathetic high school students care about political issues?” Simcha continues to grill me.

 

“Well I hardly see those two ideas as mutually exclusive.”

 

“I thought as much. Did the Y.D.C.L. put you up to this or are you acting as a free agent?”

 

“They don’t even know I’m going to do this. We have a meeting tomorrow to request to use their meeting space on 23^rd Street.”

 

“Do you have a name yet?”

 

“Youth Resistance Front.” I tell Simcha, proudly.

 

“You need a much better name. That name connotes violence and no one will join.”

 

“Well, we have ‘til tomorrow to come up with something better.”

 

“I’ll join if you change the name.”

 

“Will you help me better understand my ideology so I can articulate more effectively to the kids around the City? I could use a person like you on my team.”

 

“Yeah, I’m down. I want to help you with this thing. Just remember that what you’re doing has a lot of baggage that comes with it. You really ought to read a bit more before you jump head on into organizing a project like this.”

 

“You can make me better informed as we go.”

 

“Yeah, have you talked with Isaac Zucker yet?”

 

“No, why?” I ask remembering the friend I stole from before I was locked up.

 

“Zucker and his brother are both members of the International Socialist Organization. Hubert O’Domhnaill brother is in the same organization you are. You gotta connect with all these kids that are already political to help you get the kids who don’t have a clue.”  Simcha advises.

 

“O’Domhnaill and Zucker are socialists?” I said incredulously.

 

“Isaac is and recently, Hubert has become highly sympathetic to certain working class ideals.”

 

“This is perfect! The four of us ought to sit down and work this out as a group.”

 

“I’m sure we could make that happen.”

 

“There’s a Bulgarian Cultural center down on Canal and Broadway, they’ll serve us without ID, we could all meet up there and talk about fine tuning this movement you have in mind,” says Simcha.

 

And this was how we stumbled upon that cursed Bulgarian Tavern in its original location and how it became our forward operating base in the Americas.

 

 

S e v e n t e e n, 113 Ludlow Street

 

“A Conversation at the tavern”

 

Back on the Lower East Side in August of 2011, the Tavern is open for business officially only on Thursday Friday and Saturday.

 

The lights are kept dim no matter what happens.

You need that to hide subtle stains from fluids. You can dance all night if you have to, but eventually someone has to herd the cats out the door and hide the bodies on the floor. The Mehanata Social Club is tucked away discreetly on 113 Ludlow Street on the lower east side of Manhattan. This is its second location. Numerous police raids and finally a raid which transformed into a brawling melee succeeded in burning to the ground the original location on Canal and Broadway. In an ugly incident that took place in 2005 the lights of Bulgarian Bar and Cultural Society briefly went out. The new location is about six times the size over three levels. Surely it will not be the final location, given the tumultuous nature of the existing times. Sasho the owner has already begun planning an even larger Brooklyn location, a whore house in Kiev with the same name and a School for Alcoholism in upstate New York.

 

At an infamous establishment such as this you ought to always know the names of the men standing watch or the women pouring your drinks. Or the people holding down of your bags and coats. Most importantly you ought to be cautious of the seductive forces marshaled via awkwardly inexpensive liquor and the black magic to lead you to things you ought not to be playing around with. Such as foreign persons in needs of papers. Or creatures that drink blood.

 

There might was well be signs on the wall telling you anything not tied down will be carried away into the night, your bags, your souls, and virginities of every kind. Come to think of it, there are such overt signs hanging everywhere! Literal not figurative signs. One claims three teeth are needed for entry. One says anything not checked will be stolen. One says get naked get a shot, get fucked on the bar win a bottle. That is hardly a bluff, but the bottle is never top shelf stuff.

It’s a Gypsy Bar, they claim to the public which romanticizes Gypsies. But Gypsy’s all steal. Gypsy’s will trick you with music and some dance, lure you for tarot cards and then steal you internal organs and you will wake up in an ice bath in Bratislava missing some elements internally, then die of blood loss. The name of this place literally means ‘the Tavern’ in Bulgarian. And it lives up to that designation splendidly.

 

You wouldn’t find it unless you were looking for it. The entrance isn’t loud and the clamor inside is well insulated by its system of layers. The Lower East Side area is a drinking dancing seven day a week shit show anyway for university students and the children of the upper middle classes. Mehanata is the club of choice for New York’s newly arrived undocumented immigrants from South America, Central America and the former Soviet Union. You’d only be looking for it if someone told you about it. Perhaps you’d hate them for it later, but very few people are not amused the very first time. There never is just a first time. But, in the New York wilderness a tavern of eclectic wilding foreigners and untamed domestic people dancing to the tunes of Latin American, the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and the Roma can draw to it both angels and demons by word of mouth. Since 2000 it has been surviving pogroms, police raids and venue changes via fire. The police department is doing everything in their human power from keeping the Brooklyn location from obtaining a liquor license. Sasho has been trying to open it for three of four years it seems.

Who is Sasho? He’s the boss.

There are three floors to the Tavern. The website extolls patrons to “meet their future green card holding spouse.” There is live Latin music. Live fire juggling. Bulgarian contortionists on Thursday alongside with Bordel Dali; Ernesto and his business comrade Georgie who is from Bucharest, Romania. Or maybe he just says that knowing no Americans know any other cities there.

“But I’m not Gypsy!” he declares. He’s getting a PhD in Computer engineering. The cast of characters around here boggles the mind.

 

The club has the look of a vast lawless pirate ship or a wilderness brothel. It is sometimes dim red and under the cloth tarps of the upper galley level which looks down with little tables in the dancefloor. The main floor has a dancefloor, a bar and a kitchen. The downstairs has stripper poles, blue light, a bar and an Ice Cage.

 

The Ice Cage has bottles of wall to wall Vodka, which is all the same Vodka, but when people pay $40 to enter the cage and slam that wall to wall Vodka orgy in Soviet officer uniforms; they don’t notice. Vodka drinkers of repute, do not go in the Ice Cage, which also sits above a hatch to the abandoned railways under lower Manhattan. So one can walk or take a private train to Brooklyn or New Jersey.

 

And that is also why the place is only officially open Thursday through Saturday, to facilitate that traffic.

 

The waitresses and bar tenders are skinny or shapely, all Post-Soviet Bucharest or Sophia girls just arrived recently though generally well educated and for now, un-indentured. Some claim they are from Moscow, but they are not from Moscow. They are from shitty little Eastern European towns no one has ever heard of. They mostly don’t stay long and the reason for that is partly because of the mental and physical demands of the work and because their boss is the devil himself. The club is only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Things that go on during the week here are private and mostly didn’t even ever happen. There are private parties in the basement you’d do well not to crash unexpected or uninvited. Like the one on Wednesdays which is sort of high stakes a gang bang contest. There have been cock fights, dog fights and also bear fights. There are a lot of meetings happening upstairs right before the place fills up in Eastern European languages that you’d do well not to hear.  The musical talent is highly various. Normally three or four live acts a night on Friday and Saturday. A lot of live horns. There’s a rather Pall Mall esthetic of transcontinental bacchanalia.

 

The booking agent for Music is petit and elegant Victoria Lynch often wearing the hat of a Soviet officer the shoulder length locks of her hair falling over well fashioned skirts or flowing dresses. She was born in the Catskills, but has recently gotten her New Yorker residency card much to her delight; eight years later. The primary live acts are Gypsy Jazz, Spanish Ska and Balkan mostly. Roma meets Latin American for the most part. You get dance hall and reggae tone periodically from the DJs, but for the most part ‘the brothers’ stay out of the place. The doughty wine happens, but as international as everything remains, there are almost never black people at Mehanata.

 

Which no one has a problem with except maybe Sebastian Adonaev who keeps bringing them there? But, they have one drink and politely leave after meetings. For some reason the charms of the venue are lost on the brothers.

 

Since 2001 the Z.O.B. has made Mehanata its unofficial office and social club. It’s meeting spot and its drinking spot. Sasho allows all kinds of people to meet under his roof and being there has connected the movement to darker things. There is a power the club has to draw in the very worst and best of people. Mehanata is thus a fitting place for the Z.O.B. leaders to draw towards since many of the group are hardly saints. Its members are generally able to lumped into the categories of ambulance workers, criminals, sex workers and leftist radicals. Sometimes a cadre is two or more of those things.

The salsa, the tango, Cumbia, sometimes even a little Zouk are played by the selectors, but ‘the brothers’ always depart when the meetings are over. No one can say why they don’t like the place, but they don’t. But as it is a central location for all four boroughs, it’s remained an unchallenged haunt.

 

Sasho and Sebastian go all the way back to 2001, but they don’t always remember or talk about all the events in between.

 

The most popular disk jockeys are Raphael Ernesto Contreras Lynch also called DJ Rafflex and Georgie from Bucharest also called DJ Mishto. As stated Romanian but “not a Gypsy”. Recently booked is the bearded, crazy eyed Serb; A.J. The most famous of the current bartenders is Martina Hella Dubreskaya. She has been here a good deal longer than the others. A black haired Bulgarian journalist, music blogger and BSDM enthusiast. She has the special constitution that a bartender needs to work the shit show around here longer than a month. Though many suspect she will quit soon. Perhaps go into Real Estate. Martina smiles at everyone in hate. She is technically speaking the first person to publish the work of Sebastian Adonaev by putting his sad poems on her website. She regrets that she encourages him, but secretly likes some of his work.

Outside and inside is James Burns the feisty retired Fenians cop on ¾ pension. They call him James White, because he’s white. After his ACL was torn chasing down a perp he retired to bouncer work. His partner is James Behemoth Brown Pererez a smart talking, burly Mestizo from the Bronx. They call him James Brown, because he’s Mestizo. Always outside is Slavi the stone faced brother of Sasho, but no one trusts they’re actually brothers. Until sneaking a sly grin the Bulgarian strong man collects people’s papers, cans their IDs and directs them to be retina scanned via this Israeli device at the door which biometrixes all the guests. He collects cash or directs drunk people to use the external ATM which charges a ten dollar service fee, the highest almost in New York. The irregular admission charge never gets a smile, because Slavi doesn’t charge people he knows in money. Then he sneaks a grin, has a smoke and sometimes asks people for money to come inside wearing a black Soviet wolf fur hat except during the summer.

You should pay cash up front for everything unless you’re a card carrying regular. Giving them your credit card is a horrible idea. It means you’ll just keep drinking. James White and James Brown are sometimes easy going on admission for just about anyone not over weight and female. The regulars never pay. The various mob tough guys never pay. The Z.O.B. members never pay. Sexy young girls never pay. The endless Korean bachelorette parties never pay except to ride the Gypsy Bus. The guests of regulars, mobsters, musicians, DJs, rebels and girlfriends of friends never pay. It’s between 15-35 dollars though if you’re just sort of showing up. Except on Thursday when everyone is free.

 

James White, James Brown and Slavi sometimes have to get fierce quick to squash the brawls which happen, generally around 2 AM, generally instigated by the Albanians, but often before and after. They can’t seem to keep the Albanians from breaking people’s faces over stupid things. But that’s part of their cultural charm some say.

 

Justin Toomey O’Azzello is the General Manager. He is full blood Fenian and has ‘wandering hands’ people say. He is quite jovial and likes to tell elaborate stories about his days in the Air Force flying bombing missions over former Yugoslavia. He blames his flirtations with alcoholism over the years on bombing runs he inflicted over Bosnia. But Justin was never in the air force or in Bosnia. His hands do wander though.

 

The owner of this place is a fearsome Bulgarian half Ukrainian Ivory named Sasho, but is real name is Alexandre Dmitrievich Perchevney. He was born in Kiev, lived in Belaya Tserkov, Ukraine and moved to Sophia, Bulgaria before arriving here in 1992. He used to be a dentist. He used to be a person of importance in the Democratic Confederalist Party. He thus has a soft spot for revolutionists. The debaucheries of fallen men. As well as a hard spot for undocumented woman of theatre. Misha Kishbivalli, the long haired millionaire playboy from Georgia also is his silent partner. No one ever knows of asks what Misha does for a living. But the answer is blood diamonds. The Mehanta cooks are all from the tropic of Capricorn but nothing is ever very good eat except the beet soup or the Bulgarian salad; cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and pepper and white cheese. The cheese over fries is safe too. Some type of Borscht which is rumored to sometimes contain menstrual blood. The pork dishes are outright made of people.

Sasho’s wife Tanya isn’t the cook. It’s always undocumented Mexicans Sasho brings on over the years. They say the Brooklyn venue when it opens will have traditional Bulgarian food, but no one knows what that means.

 

Tanya is not a vindictive person, but she can’t stand Sebastian Adonaev. There is very valid reason for that beyond him being something of a trouble maker.

 

“Stop cooking people, and more people would eat here,” Sebastian once suggested.

 

“Stop being a fucking Democratic Confederalist and Daria will date you again,” was Tanya’s response.

 

It is rumored also that there is tunnel running from under the club to places unknown. Some nights Misha Kishbivalli has pontificated outside of the club that an American engineered mega tunnel system runs under the entire country in case of insurgency, general emergency or nuclear winter. The traffic around here is always hard to predict.

There are tall glass confectionaries of apple cider ginger vodka that sit atop the bar. There is a sign informing people that “get naked get a shot, get fucked win a bottle” and people seem to win all the time.

 

Also the rule that patrons must have at least three teeth to enter the establishment, that is untrue. You just need to have cash money. Preferably American type. But, things are negotiable.

 

The music is playing loud at the Mehanata Social Club where Daria Andreavna makes eyes then orders a Vodka based energy drink confection. She then slides up to Sebastian at the bar. He is wearing a black suit this time. A week since his death.

 

“It seems that we have found each other again,” she whispers.

“You were misbehaved I dare tell you,” he says.

“I was bad. Rude should I say? I am told I insulted your hospitability greatly.”

“That you did.”

“What are you drinking,” she asks.

“Astika,” he replies. The Bulgarian beer that is never in stock.

She catches Martina’s attention, and get him his drink. Martina winks at her.

“So,” she whispers again, “Cheers. I have no memory of anything last weekend. Forgive me for that. I don’t even know what I did.”

“You remember nothing?”

She just gives him a devilish smirk. And then shakes her head.

“I drink a lot for fun. I don’t always remember my Friday or my Saturday nights. Outside work, where I also drink the week gets interrupted by school, and then I party hard on the days off. I was told I was really bad to you. So, I’m saying the sorry. For the being of bad. What are you really drinking? This is our custom. Astika is shit,” she says.

“Nothing? No recollection?”

“No nothing at all. Oh, ok,” she smiles at him, “you were wearing a suit that’s a different color from the suit you’re wearing now, this I remember.”

Sebastian is now in a black suit. The night she almost killed them last it was white linen.

“You never acted all that drunkenly. You were calm and in control throughout, your, shall I say, outbursts. My friends have told me that it’s too late to stop your vodka calamities from unfolding sometimes. But, you nearly killed us. And you bit me,” he says showing her the red ring around his index left finger.

“Well we all have our demons in there, don’t we? I’m good at drinking. Until I sometimes fall down. I fell down those steps one night,” she says pointing to a long downstairs plummet into the downstairs floor where the Ice Cage is hidden.

The Ice Cage is a freezer box in the basement where people pay forty a head to slam wall to wall cheap vodka over a period of two minutes. It never ends well for those who get in that cage. There is perilous flight of stairs down to the basement where they keep the stripper poles and the blue lit fuck cage by a second bar and dance floor.

“That looks like if would hurt,” he replies, “if you remembered it”.

“I don’t remember it,” she smiles wide and seductively.

But that’s a silly thing to say. Seductively. Dasha is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Her proclivity for homicide aside, she is fascinating. Describing just how beautiful she is almost doesn’t fit in a later play he could end up writing. Her golden locks are like a lioness. Her eyes are capable of quick swing between fierce, curious and loving. She loves to hear men say it, how beautiful she is, but beauty isn’t where a man falls from when he falls from the heart not the groin. Beauty is a thing of lust. It has no bearing on love when that love is real love and not lust with imagined feelings. Love is energy, a wave crashing over you. Sebastian has drowned several times before. He’d be very careful to use the word again. In that regard he is reckless to no end. He feels an attraction and can’t comprehend it, must be love. Previous formularies for the same emotion dictated that whatever woman resisted his affections the most adamantly and then let down her guard to an elegant seduction of deeds and art, must be love. There were loves at first sight, or interaction as well as friendships that became romances and he was unafraid to say the words again. The words often came out without his permission.

Overtime several women had accused him of bastardizing the loaded phrase via serial usage. There were over a dozen women he’d uttered it to over the course of his 28 years. Generally after the conquest of kisses, but to a couple stupidly even before.

They were all very different women of course and they all brought out very different rolls to his emotional dice. Sides to his coin being a limited idiom. Supposedly in popular fictions man or woman is supposed to have only one true love in a lifetime, to marry them or be parted from them tragically. So Sebastian was working hard by that standard, which truly in real life it can never be that simple, that limited.

“You’re really something to write about,” he says.

“Absolutely I am. And I never say sorry to men, but Ernesto said he would cancel his friendship with me if I didn’t say sorry to you. Apparently I underestimated that you are the favorite host. The dashing revolutionary saint. The darling also of the owner. The grandeismo. Wait I’m not sure what that word means! You’re great. Also as the confidant of Rafael Ernesto and Victoria, you should become my confidant too.”

“I’m just Sebastian on my good nights.”

“And on the bad nights? Tell me some of your other names,” she whispers.

“Valera Vasyli Pveada.”

“Ha! Royal Victory? Where did you concoct this other strange and slightly atrocious moniker? Moniker, is that the right word?”

He nods slightly.

“I’m Sebastian when the drinks flow and the desire to dance returns to my hard hips. All other times I’m at war. With myself and my nature, with a world of sheep and a den of wolves. In such circumstances I require a hard Russian name, and the luck of a royal victory.”

“Hm. Well it sounds ridiculous the way you say it. I’ll call you Valera sparingly, it’s an insult you know! Some girl insulted you and you made it your Russian name. We can get you a new on. But, Sebastian is ok too. I’ll see what rolls better off tongue. All that other stuff, well I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

 

“Marina, two shots, Russian Standard please,” Daria proclaims dropping another twenty on the bar.

 

Martina the bartender comes over and gives Dasha a little wink again. She pours them out.

“This is sorry alright,” she smiles “I have said the words sorry! Now I again reserve the right to be rude to you and forget about it later. Fair game, yes? You got two drinks.”

He looks deep into her blue eyes and gives a half smile wondering how much she really remembers. In her eyes he sees someone looking out at him below the swagger of her posture, behind her beauty is a much older beauty.

“Well aren’t you impressed with my new manners?” she asks

I find you quite a bit stunning, he thinks and almost says.

“Of course I am.”

“What are you drinking next?” she asks.

They clink the shots and she proclaims, “Nazdrovia!”

She drinks like a fish, but really she just drinks like a Russian.

“Astika,” she orders for him.

She has years of recent training in anticipating the needs of men. And by realizing those needs controlling them. And she thinks, what terrible piss but of course she orders him another one from Martina. The raven black haired Bulgarian bartender who knows exactly what she’s doing. Since Daria never buys men drinks. Because Russian apologies are based on acts not words.

“Are you coming to our little festival?” Daria asks him almost casually.

There will be a four day Bohemian Festival happening Labor Day Weekend where all manner of fuckery will take place in a park in Queens called the Onderdonk Public Fields. Sasho the owner had let Victoria allow Sebastian do a benefit concert for their Haiti efforts at Mehanta a month ago. So a week from now Sebastian and his EMT, Paramedic in training comrade Jared Forgetter from California will be freelance EMTs covering the first two days of festival.

“Wait,” she pauses.

“You are working the festival as our paramedic,” she says as she presses her palm to his side burn and face side.

“Sharp as a dagger you are dorogaia,” he smirks.

She smiles with big bright eyes. Who the fuck taught you that word, she thinks.

“Don’t call me dear ever again, I’m not so old. I’ll alert you that I may well come to some of that festival and if I fall down, drunk, I will ask for very intimate and professional service.”

“Hand pressed ice,” he promises reaching for her waist then thinking again.

“Hand pressed everything,” she demands.

“It’s at the service of all attending,” he declares.

“You are a true servant of the people,” she mocks with a wink.

“Dasha, you’re a tough act to follow.”

“You’re gonna keep calling me that are you?”

“That a problem?”

“It’s rather intimate, I don’t know if we know each other like this or that.”

“Well I suppose we can work on that over festival.”

She smiles a lovely, practiced smile.

“Valera. Press me best you can. The risk is completely yours not mine.”

A song about the great and noble Commandant Ernesto Che Guevara by the Buena Vista Social Club a famous Cuban salsa band comes on and she thrusts herself into his arms for a last dance. They take the floor to themselves.

“I knew you back in Cuba,” she whispers in his ear.

“I’ve never been to Cuba,” he replies with a stone face.

She sashays him across the dance floor muscling out the other couples with her buxom way. She’s crass and wonderful. She lets him lead and he does a fairly good job under pressure to keep up. It’s been over a year since he’s danced with a woman of any substance.

“You dance like you’re from the Caribbean,” she says to him.

“But I’ve never been to Cuba,” he repeats.

He dips her slightly. A full dip might turn into quite un-romantic arms to floor plummet.

She’s a gorgeous powerful woman who will always get what she wants in the end so it seems. Except perhaps happiness which no power or money can so far buy.

“You’re good at being an Amerikanski,” she tells him.

“You’re even at better at being a Russian,” he replies and they dance the rest of the night.

 

It is past 4 am now and efforts begin to clear the worst kind of rabble out the tavern have begun. Only card carrying regulars and lovers of staff can remain and light things up or pound things down. It’s now with the storm shudders sealed just over two dozen left lingering around the bar. Smoke them if you got them. They count out the cash on the bar.

 

For some reason with almost no music, drunk as hell; Sebastian and Daria are still dancing.

 

“Right never on schedule,” says Justin Toomey O’Azzello to Sasho, the burly owner smoking a cigar at the end of the ground floor bar passage way, packed up with intoxicated core circle patrons, tight except around his circumference.

“Hasn’t changed his cap or tune much in ten years,” Justin notes.

“I know him of course,” Sasho says without looking up, “with or without the ridiculous peasant cap. He’s been the same good man for over a decade.”

“He’s dancing with Daria, good for him! She’s got great big ones for him.”

“He’s always dancing with Daria, or trying to dance with her anyway.”

“You’re thinking of…” notes Justin.

“No Azello. I’m thinking exactly what I mean to be thinking. He’s always dancing with Dasha right before thing get interesting around here.” And it sure can get interesting fast.

“They just met boss.”

“You’re thinking of things three dimensionally and I am thinking of things fifth dimensionally, even sixth or seventhly and I know that when those two dance. Fucking trouble. Niggers with arms in the streets. Israeli mind games. Decapitations on camera and lynchings to boot. Lynchings and lots burnings of bodies.  It’s time to call up all our troops, every single man to the front.”

 

Justin sometimes suspected the boss was fucking insane, but the old man had a gift for utilizing that insanity.

 

The lights come on and the remaining guests not vouched for are herded like drunk cats out the secondary exit on to Ludlow street until no one is left inside but the staff, a handful of regulars and of course Sasho with his cigar.

Daria and Sebastian wander out into what’s left of the night on the Lower East Side.

Out of the corner of his eye Sasho notices the Mexican weight staff are carrying the body of a man out of the tiny room upstairs where people go to fuck whores, or their drunk lady girlfriends, or college students. Or, he supposed less frequently, but evidently in case tonight; kill a man, drain his blood and empty his pockets. A little room to the very back of the second floor mezzanine. You can fuck or murder at the top of your lungs and no one would know.

 

Of the four little Mexicans none are taller than four feet a piece and they must carry drag the body down the stairs.

 

The corpse is pale from exsanguination.

 

“Into the soup?” asks Enrique from Monterrey in Mexican Spanish.

 

And Sasho nods. Let the dead keep eating the dead, like they do out in the colonies. James White and James Brown sit with their drinks in near silence. Tanya counts money. Martina counts money with a smoke in her mouth for some reason naked as they day she was born. Justin Toomey sits on the bar next to Sasho. Wondering how many days the Tavern has left above ground.

 

 

Eighteen, Atlantic Ocean Depths

 

“Ideological Lessons”

 

After everyone and their family was safely disembarked in Port of Spain, conditions became a little looser. They were allowed to leave the two conjoined rooms and walk about the lower deck. A strict military order presided here. Which was to be expected as the ship carried the women most responsible for gathering the tribes, uniting the factions and ramping up the war path from the colonies now into the heart of the empire.

 

Of the four on this team none had been at Madeira. That place of balance, of mountains and springs, of constant Spring and Fall had served as the main rebel base for the Democratic Confedralists outside of Qandil Mountain and the growing revolution in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Northern Syria. The island of Madeira is located south west from Portugal into the Atlantic and about 400 kilometers north from Tenerife, Canary Islands. It’s on smoldering still, but’s still there physically. Though far less of attraction after a carpet bombing wave.

 

By Oleg the Bear’s estimation they were four days from American shores when Emma called them into a conference room on the deck above them for briefings. Red cushions and steel benches.

 

“Why are we here?” Emma asks them.

Oleg raises his hand.

“You young man, in the front,” Emma says.

“Your uprising begins in about three weeks,” Oleg replies.

“The core revolution beings in about two weeks. The peripheral revolution has been going on hard since 1791,” she says.

“Why are we really here?” Yulia asks.

“The American’s have been slow to contribute,” Oleg says.

“They contribute erratically,” Kudzai cuts in.

“Stop talking and listen please,” says Adelina.

 

“Something is wrong and we need you all to find out the extent of it,” Emma says, “The cells in the U.S. are planning to launch the second phase of the uprising on September 1st, which is in thirteen days.”

“You in the leadership think something isn’t right,” Oleg tells more than asks.

“That’s very close,” Emma replies, “we are certain everything possible will go wrong.”

 

“Why didn’t you see Madeira before it happened,” Kudzai asks her.

 

“I’m not G-d,” Emma replies.

 

“What actually happened in Madeira?” Adelina asks.

 

“They have a lot of ability to lean on everyone until they make people change their sides. Someone gave away the base and set up half the leadership for slaughter,” Emma tells them, “but you were all hired before that. Those of you that didn’t volunteer.”

 

“So what happened in Madeira one last time,” Adelina asks again.

 

“Thousands of our best people, many of them with relatives there from the top positions of responsibility, officers, deputies and committee heads of the Congra Gel People’s Assembly were burned alive in their beds. Many of the leadership were shot dead by walking robots and Serbian commandos. Of the Confederation leadership of some 240 elected or appointed delegates, which included about half of key movers that very much mattered; all except 40 were murdered. Decapitating us right before the revolt.”

“What are we supposed to do exactly” Yulia asks.

“She wants us to..” Oleg begins.

“Stop being a jack ass,” Adelina interrupts.

“I’m here to do something highly specific for you,” Oleg says, “let’s be clear about that. I’m not one on the team who is volunteering. They massacred you all in Madeira. That was supposed to be a high level gathering on your super-secret base. That was someone’s fuck up.”

“Someone towards the top has clearly betrayed just about everyone,” Emma says.

“Ah,” interjects Oleg, “now I see. And based what I think I know there are only two people that could be.”

“That said you were quite clever,” Emma smiles finally.

“That is why you must be getting paid so well brother,” Adelina interjects.

“So you go in and blend into the mobs,” Emma tells them, “You watch how the thing all goes down and you join in when you must. You find out how bad the shape of their movement is. You find out who is giving us away. That’s what you’re doing out there. Most of you.”

 

“Sounds like quite a suicide mission,” Yulia states flatly.

“Stay out of New York,” Emma says.

“Why do we need to do that?” Kudzai asks.

“We’ll get trapped there,” Adelina replies.

“How can we get this accomplished if all the primary leaders are in New York?” Kudzai asks.

“Well some of you might will probably get trapped in New York and the rest of you can wait up for them in Boston which will rise up as well. As everyone is either paid by the day or volunteering. You’re all aware this can’t be rushed. We don’t even know where Avinadav is.”

“Who’s Avinadav,” Yulia asks.

“What are you paid to do again?” Oleg laughs.

“She’s paid to murder people, just like you,” Emma retorts, “Avinadav is the military commander of the Resistance in Israel & Palestine. He helped found it in 2001 with Sebastian and I, he disappeared in 2005. We think he’s being held by the C.I.A. somewhere but he could be also be dead.”

 

“For a prophet you sure have a lot of questions,” Yulia remarks.

“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need,” Emma replies.

 

“Where will Sebastian be when the uprising begins?” Adelina then asks.

“They put him back to sleep,” Kudzai states.

“What does that mean?” asks Oleg the Bear.

“They took him and wiped out his mind again. He doesn’t even probably remember what he’s helped organize. We don’t know what state he is in,” Emma says.

“We don’t know how many rebel leaders have flipped. We don’t actually know how far the secret police have gotten in. We have no way of calculating the probabilities of success for the September 1^st rising.”

“How many cities and towns are going to rise up after New York? How well coordinated is this expected to be?” Kudzai asks.

“If they succeed on the 1^st, maybe three dozen other City groups will follow suit the next day. If they get quickly repressed. Everyone else will wait for January, we think,” Emma says, “but it’s Democratic Confederalism so honestly we can’t command and control very much. The other groups will all follow New York.”

 

“So we get in, we wait. We get close to Sebastian and other leaders. We wait. We take pictures we make an assessment. Then you tell us who will die?” Yulia asks.

“Unless they all get killed in 13 days and then you just try and find where Avinadav DeBuitléir is,” Emma says.

 

“You’re a questionable ass prophet,” Yulia says.

“I can’t vouch that we will ever see each other again after this voyage,” Emma replies, “I don’t lead alone, nor do I lead with some mandate of certainty or belief in my own divinity. But I assure you it will be a Great Revolt.”

 

“Please, let’s finish the fascinating ideology training,” Oleg urges.

 

Emma clears her throat.

 

“The theoretical foundations of the Rebel Confederation lie in understanding five merging currents of adversarial thought, all different but in absolute opposition to the world system as it has been created and controlled,” reads the book Democratic Confederalism Theory and Practice by Julia Tourianski. Which is Yulia Romanova’s government name.

 

“This could be major boring shit,” thinks Oleg the Bear, maybe I will skip this chapter.

 

“Don’t you want to know what they’re even fighting for?” asks Adelina.

 

In the literature of the revolution, they are called the five camps.

 

Four of the camps are reasonably old and one relatively new. None of them play well together in the sand or on the battle field. Most of the time they are not even aware on the level of the rank and file that anyone is coordinating the so-called resistance. Because most of the time no one is. Most substantial in overall number throughout the global resistance are the Africans. Most of the 56 African nations are among the poorest on earth. Most of the African diaspora is persecuted, subjugated with forms of Apartheid. They are driven into degenerate ghettos, jailed, used for the worst available jobs, or just murdered in the street by police forces. One in every eight African American men are at any time held in penal camps. Virtually every important African leader that emerged in the 1950’s-1980 was assassinated. Peaceful or calling for armed struggle. The majority of the Africans no longer identify as African; but no one ever forgets to remind them that they are black. This camp is not large in leaders as they are quickly cut down before they emerge by the Western intelligence agencies and the secret police of black client states established by the U.S., Europe or China. But the well of resistance is deep and the war is existential as numerous attempts to genocide the peoples of Africa have been defeated by a desire to live and willingness to fight. The horrid Belgium genocide of Leopold in 1885-1908. Which goes on today still in the DRC over the cell phone metals provoked by the treachery of the Clintons, Ugandans and certainly Rwandans. The German genocide in Namibia from 1904 to 1908. And of course the total vile epoch of transatlantic slavery from the 15^th to 19^th century which emptied the continent; coordinated by the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Arabs. Then colonialism itself which post 1885 loosely splint African between France and England. The Africans always fight back first. During the Cold War Africa largely tried to go Socialist. Their identity itself provokes Whites to violence in all forms. The center of the Pan-African rebel movement was Haiti which through off white rule, battled France, England and Spain on the battlefield, and won in 1804. The Haitians have never been forgiven nor have they ever surrendered. Port Au Prince, Haiti’s capital was been a constant site of battle for 200 years. It is currently under foreign occupation via a United Nation’s proxy army of Brazilians and Argentines. A year ago over 316,000 people died in a catastrophic earthquake.

 

The current centers of the Pan-African Resistance are concentrated in South Africa, Tanzania, Angola, Jamaica, Trinidad, Zimbabwe and Brooklyn. None of these places are safe, most are only part free. None of the elected or imposed political leaders of these nations are representative of the movement. Most of the real leaders are dead. The surviving undisputed ideological leader of the Pan-African Congress is a former liberation theologian Priest. The first democratically elected President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He escaped his U.S. imposed house arrest in Central African Republic, studied and taught in South Africa and returned to Haiti via the Underground Railroad just six months ago. He now lives under virtual house arrest in Tabarre Commune, Port-Au-Prince but leads a banned political movement called Lavalas. Every time the Martelly government tries to arrest him a fire fight breaks out and barricades go up all over the country. Lavalas has over 100,000 Haitian fighters with small arms throughout the island ready to forcibly remove the U.N. troops. This will happen any year now. The military head of the Pan-African Congress is Avinadav DeBuitléirs. Founder of the African Defense Forces. He is also a Haitian. He has both a Sudanese and Israeli passport. He disappeared in 2005. No one knows where he is. Probably a secret prison being tortured.

The many voices of the Congress on the level of secretly filmed public oration, music making and diplomacy to the other camps is multi-co-chaired. A man known only by the stage name M-1 is major hip-hop artist. Billy the Spritchild is another musician who raises money and guns in Europe. The towering Netic Kinnari Okonkwo leads the underground on the West Coast of the United States from their training bases in Los Angeles and Oakland. T-Bird Tall Flame Luv leads it on the East Coast from a series of underground radio stations. Both are part Native American. Ashanti Assata coordinates prison breaks through the Jericho Project. Justinian Tomas and his Haitian wife are famous film propagandists. There is a really long list, but they are cut down quickly and replaced as fast as they fall.

 

There are several major regional commanders but almost all the main leadership has been jailed, killed or sent into hiding. Black Lives Matters is the latest front group for popular mobilization in the United States. Fruit of Islam, The Black Panthers and Uhuru are the three wings of the decentralized military arm of the Congress. They drills in the mountains and forests for armed combat. They try and get people out of the penal camps. The most prominent emerging militant leader is stationed in the district of Brownsville, Brooklyn. His name is Djbriel Okonkwo. He leads Uhuru alongside Brother Malcolm Joyles of St. Lucia.

 

Then there are the Muslims. Specifically the Shi’a Muslims who secretly are protecting the Baha’i and Alawites; two far more tolerant offshoots of their faith. The Alawites, currently under siege in Syria are thought to be of direct lineage to Ali, cousin and son in law of Muhammed the Prophet, peace be unto him. Though you’d never know that from the propaganda coming from the West on Iran; life is straightforward there. Tehran is the military center of this part of the movement and its spiritual center are in Qoms, Karbala, Najaf, and Jerusalem and though never officially acknowledged ever: Akko & Haifa in Israel at the Baha’i World Congress and tombs of both prophets. Despite of everything the Shi’a revival has been accused of; it is fundamentally the only military, nuclear and intelligence semi-peripheral power that has been able to check the West in the Middle East.

 

This faction is of course religious and prays to their God they call Allah. Unlike armed Sunni Muslims repeatedly mobilized for war through the Central Intelligence Agency, the Inter-Services-Intelligence of Pakistani and Saudi Arabian style Islam; the Shi’a for the most part do not kill non-combatants indiscriminately. The Shi’a in Iran do stage daily arrests and executions. They make a lot of very real arrests and public executions. They hold monthly conferences about eradicating Israel. Their Army of the Guardians is believed to have over 125,000 battle ready fighters. They are certainty at war with Israeli through their proxy force the Party of God; Hezbollah. However, they are at war with America in Israel, the Israeli state and thus are on collaborative terms with Ivory and Zionists who are also at war with that state. Like the Africans the Muslims generally were clearly under siege as Muslim genocides began happening across the globe beginning in the 1990’s.

 

The Leftists make up the third most divided and disunified but tenacious of the ideological camps. Anarchists declare outright war on all states and institutionalized forms of hierarchy. Communists and Socialists want one party states controlling the means of production on behalf of the working class. Take as a whole, though both would object to that, they are the second largest international web of forces, behind the Shi’a, and do not even like fighting in the same units or brigades. The Communists and Socialists split themselves up further through tendencies. Ideological interpretations such as Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyism or Maoism. They disagree a lot about what happened and what went wrong in the past 100 years where Socialist forces lead by USSR and PRC took over one third of the earth then lost it down to four states. No one really counts China anymore though they are led by a Communist Party. Laos is a mostly failed state. Vietnam and Cuba are holding on, but accelerating embraces of free market practice. North Korea embraces something called Juche, or Self-Reliance, but no one knows what’s really happening there. The reports all conflict and they disappear a lot of people who have gone in. Some Parties’ make revisions. The make jumps in logic to justify famines and social engineering which cost the lives of tens of millions. Some call China; State-Capitalist, which is what happened to Russia sort of. Most revolutionary Parties acknowledge China has thoroughly begun the recolonization of Africa and will soon challenge the United States of America for hegemony. Just about everyone admits the Russian Federation is return to czarism. Their parties bicker about these kinds of things endlessly in their meetings and newspapers. Each making longer apologies for varying atrocities committed by the 20^th century incarnations of the original vision. The only two countries these thousands of little Socialist & Communist Parties and Splinter Parties, and Splinter-Splinter Parties are able to look to for material support are Cuba and Vietnam. Both Havana and Hanoi hold annual Congresses to try and unite them in varying ways. Both Havana and Hanoi are only a few economic steps ahead of being Haan dependencies. The Communism of China is only a rhetoric for their new empire. Cuba trades on its medical internationalism and Vietnam on its integration with Western markets. Neither are ever very secure. The U.S. embargo on Cuba is still strong. Their ally in nominally Socialist Venezuela can barely contain its growing civil unrest. A product of bad planning and the CIA. The Anarchists are much smaller in number, but have a much harder time forming sustainable blocks. They of course largely reject chains of command and structures. The Leftists are almost impossible to access or unite except sometimes through Hanoi and Havana, their sources of funding and ideological inspiration. Thus the most important living symbolic Communists are aging Raul Castro and Nguyễn Phú Trọng as they lead the last of the functional Communist nations to survive Cold War and collaboration. Laos is falling apart and North Korea is its own thing. The younger leaders who command some following are former Chairman Simcha Rathajazer of the Young Democratic Socialists and his wife Cecily McMillian. Shane O’Domhnaill is well liked through Ireland and Latin American, deputy-secretary of Communist Party USA. There are more but most are revolutionaries of armchairs. The three listed are commonly regraded the great unifiers of the non-anarchist left on the East Coast of the USA who helped stage last year’s Occupy Uprising. The dry run to the coming revolt in the USA.

 

The fourth camp is quietly growing out of the third camp; but it is new and is neither really Communist nor Anarchist. It is also not wholly Western in implementation.

Turkish-Kurdistan, specifically in the Kurdish Workers Party leader Abdullah Öcalan’s embrace of “libertarian municipalism” from his correspondence with the now deceased anarchist thinker Murray Bookchkin. Öcalan has been held in solitary confinement since 1999. Bookchin died of Congestive Heart Failure in 2006 in Burlington, Vermont.

 

Öcalan has been imprisoned as the sole prisoner on Imrali Island since 1999 despite several attempts to free him.

The Democratic Confederalists are interesting as they are not truly left, but they are certainly pro-democracy, pro gender equality and are preparing to conquer most of Northern Iraq & Syria.

Fifth and final are the Zionists. The tight cadre of Israeli veterans and cells seeking to drive the American government out of Israel, end the occupation of Palestine and implement of Democratic Confederalism modal throughout the Middle East. They had only just discovered it had been called that. The submarine was their submarine. The several satellites were their satellites. The arms road from Tehran to Qamishly was their doing. There numbers were not insignificant, but certainly much harder to gauge. Their leader is named Emma Solomon and most of the people following her were called once Ivory before she told them about being Hebrews. Like Moses, she had been separated from her parents at birth and had to be directly reminded later by the source where her basket floated in from. Like Jesus she had devoted her early adult life to a trade; but gotten mixed up in healing, teaching and disrupting the capricious hypocrisy of the rich and powerful. Like Jesus, but earlier she was badly lynched. But being female, was badly raped before she was crucified. Then cut into parts and dumped on a highway. But she also didn’t die. And like Muhammed she had carefully built an army of orphans, slaves and the oppressed and unleashed them on the people she believed were enslaving her people with false gods and a secret police force. At some point she married Sebastian Adonaev. At some point she wrote, or received the New Social Gospel. At one point she founded the Z.O.B. with Adonaev, Avinadav DeBuitléirs and many others. At some point she raised a mighty army and united the five camps loosely to launch the Great Revolt.

 

“Well it seemed the road to Jerusalem and Mecca needed to make quite a few loops around the globe causing trouble first,” notes Oleg the Bear, “Or maybe, just maybe changing something was a pretext for the ascendency of a new Messiah? There is desperation setting in, I can admit that even as an atheist. It is getting so bad and things are so polarized. No one wants to admit it is the third world war going on, but it has markers to it.”

 

Oleg the Bear was on Maiden Square taking pictures when the eruption in Ukraine began. Now about one third has been annexed into People’s Republic’s supported by Russian Federation. He then took pictures of that.

 

He’d only just seen a few pictures of the devastation on Madeira where apparently waves of N.A.T.O. coalition fling Predator drones and air strikes and waves of those walking metal robots no one in the press talked about leveled the island in the middle of War Council meeting and many key people died from all 5 camps. All the people they were never allowed to meet in the chambers upstairs in the Black Mermaid were the shell shocked survivors on the so-called leadership. The Madeira base he knew was also home to many families of the top groups. Nothing was ever prohibited anymore, there were no real rules to the war. By the time they took on Oleg, Adelina, Kudzai and Yulia in Sakhalin that whole place was up in robot smoke. If they’d used real Special Forces probably less people who have gotten away. Can’t knock down Special Forces commandos with an electric magnetic pulse. Terradrones and predators go right down. He wasn’t there. He’d never seen the bodies or the rubble of the ambush. He’d never seen the important survivors. But he knew, because Emma showed them while they slept.

 

“Still just an atheist?” Adelina asks him.

“I used to put things in people’s drinks in the 90’s babe. Before it was cool. I didn’t see anything. It didn’t even happen to me,” he replies gruffly.

 

So after that most confining submarine ride which had to round the Cape Horn from ravaged Madeira, run south Pacific and then upwards toward North Korea and Sakhalin Island to reach its next pick up. Then re-absorb several thousand survivors undetected by the military intelligence of the U.S.A. in Trinidad. Which wasn’t as safe a place as Madeira people warned.

 

Then there was about 12 more days of sitting in that cabin the four of them. Playing cards, drinking, praying, reading whatever. Emma sometimes came to collect Adelina and take her for little walks but the other three were never let off the lower deck. Nothing ever got fun here, thought Oleg. But this contract paid crazy. You had to estimate they didn’t expect you to survive to fully pay you. Half now, later in daily instalments, Emma has offered. It all looked unstable. Maybe more than other jobs. But with this particular expedition, Oleg knew they were at least good for the money.

 

 

Nineteen, 113 Ludlow

 

“A Bomb Plot”

 

The yellow cabs fly by on Tuesday night. You could cook things on the sidewalk, that’s how vile and hot the concrete jungle is this summer.        The Bulgarian Tavern called Mehanata on 113 Ludlow Street has roughly four doors in and three tunnels out.

 

For the nine to thirteen million rats in their various races, this city never fucking sleeps. Its go, go, go, zoom, zoom rush! Slaves and serfs to the trains for service. It’s all an illusion its fun here with no currency. It’s a filthy place except at the center. Getting in early with red eyes and leaving late. Back on the cattle cars. The masters dangling enough to cover the rising rent and some groceries if you’re lucky. You’re so lucky to here in this cage! The hope dies out. You whore yourself somehow. You have to. You drink more than you should. It feels worse if you’re not from here. Even the yellow cab driver have more education than most of the rest of the country.  The black sports utility vehicles, with tinted windows and important people that don’t want to look at you. The constant sirens. Everyone running somewhere not making eye contact. Always a fucking siren going off for some emergency that isn’t probably real. The city itself was built on the very top of the mountain. Its highest towers hold more rich and powerful people than anywhere on earth. Except maybe Moscow. This apple is all poison and rotten. The high octane hyper diversity is just a sex circus. Plus a racial death trap. Plus an ugly over crowed sprawl more regularly breaking then making those who arrive from the interior or abroad.

 

Nikholai Trickovitch is bleary eyed.

 

He stinks of cigarettes, some cheap men’s fragrance and also of Rum. The climate here is repressive towards the end of summer. Rum Barbancourt Three Star on the rocks isn’t served in this part of town. So he brought his own bottle to the tavern. For their troubles were about to mount.

 

Nikholai also technically, mostly by association with more militant Sebastian; part of the core of the leadership of the Z.O.B., a network of insurgent cells and the editor of its underground newspaper, the Banshee News Service. He highly prefers conducting his revolutionary duties from the computer of this same Penthouse. Moving things about the internet, correcting pamphlets and public movement speeches Sebastian and his comrades give in parks and on trains. Nick was persuaded to manage the logistics for the First Haiti Operation.  He did well. He was then persuaded to manage ground logistics in Port Au Prince for the expeditionary forces. Still later, he joined the medical guerrillas in their ill-fated expedition into Colombia. But, he has only so much will power to back up such walk.

 

 

I need another drink, thinks Trickovitch. He knows it will be a long meeting and the A/C won’t in the club house. The night is really just getting started workwise even though it’s past 4am. They’re erring toward minimal street traffic, but even the rats and pigeons here work in shifts. Well that same night Nicholai Trickovitch put together a little squad to, “do a messy little big job.”

 

There were big jobs and little jobs. There were campaigns that took years. Some jobs where social engineering was needed. Others where brute force was the best approach.

 

This required some of both and right away. He had to get buy in. No one was ever really in charge. Now, outside New York the Resistance got very eclectic who was involved. It would be inaccurate to say anyone could possibly lead it. It was as bad in New York where 70% of the population wasn’t even born here; they were born everywhere else. A lot of players. They all “relied heavily on black, white and grey magic to keep this thing together,” as Nicholai was fond of saying, “But in New York City, we still do things the old fashioned way. By having a real tight crew.”

In the dead of something, where night creeps toward dusk, around a table on the fourth floor of 113 Ludlow Street, they met. That is to say the restaurant immediately above the Mehanata Tavern. A little talk is underway, a briefing maybe also a sale pitch.

 

“There are thirteen leaders of the Z.O.B,” Trickovitch explains, “Two have disappeared. We don’t fill their seats, but we consider them probably dead. Ones in living in a submarine somewhere hidden. Two are sleeping. That’s a polite way of staying they were thrown in a camp and badly tortured. Most of them kill themselves sometime after. That means at any given period nine are left. Left in charge of all the cells in the division. Greater New York City.”

 

The table is wooden and plates of street meat tapas have all been cleared. Nobody got in from the street, they got in from the tunnel.

 

“Let me tell you how this is gonna go down,” says Nick to his fellow partisans which include the tall well-polished Jamaican Gangster Mickhi Dbrisk. He is wearing a black suit with no tie after coming from work at previous engagement. Where girls were still jiggling.

 

Mara Fitzduff Donahue is the half pint Fenian, dirty blonde famous for her firebrand speeches on the Fire Switch Radio. Also present is Raphael Ernesto Lynch Contras, the Peruvian disk jockey. A photographer. Retired child soldier and lesser officer of a defunct guerrilla band in Arequipa Province. The fifth member of this add-hock unit was Siegfried Sassoon. He speaks very well. He should be expected to as he is an actor classically trained in Moscow. He too is in the black. Just getting off work as bar tender at a flashy supper club up the street called the Fox. A dashing swaggerous man of Cuban descent. Perhaps the closest man to be able to influence things after Trickovitch and Dbrisk. The sixth man in this last minute, late night call up was the light skinned Haitian smooth criminal Watson Entwissle. The seventh at the table wasn’t made, a smooth young Sheath from East New York. Said his name was Joshua Hunter. Had ok references and they were going to test him out.

 

Watson is pissed. You can tell when he’s pissed, he doesn’t pay attention at all. It’s based anyway on the past midnight hour. He left his favorite chocolate in bed in the Bronx for this “bullshit.” He doesn’t get to see his lady enough. She lives in Boston. Charlotte from Uganda.

 

In the confusing and albeit vaguely disjointed chain of command Mara, Watson, Mickhi and Nicholai are all title holding inner leadership. Only one is from the inner nine. Siegfried Sassoon, Hunter and Raphael were called in as volunteers. Though technically Hunter was not even a “provisional member”. Hasn’t made rank or been sworn in. Not written in the book of life. But they were told he could work.

 

“The Labor Day weekend begins in 72 hours and you all know what’s coming,” explains Mickhi, “The West Indian Day Parade ain’t heading south at the Grand Army Plaza. Oh no, they’re gonna head north right over the bridges and attack the mostly empty City.”

 

Everybody except Joshua Hunter knew that already. They were gonna stick Hunter with Watson and Watson would keep him working this weekend until he was trustable, or dead.

 

They were all aware of the score.

 

“As most of us know this revolt is a three stage attack in New York was being coordinated mostly by the Pan-Africanists, the Garveyites, the BLMM, some of the liberal and radical medical trade unions, the I.W.W. of course, the Muslims, the Occupiers, the student movements in CUNY, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and of course; Uhuru and us,” explains Mickhi.

“The dry run were the occupations on Wall Street and around the country last year to assess the state defenses. Phase Two is Labor Day where we take Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Phase three will be to hold and liberate the City before New Year’s Eve,” he continues.

“Hectic shit,” mutters Raphael.

“Our role then is quite basic in phase two,” explains Nikholai Trickovitch, who knew indeed that the General Rising was close in coming, but not actually five days away.

“We all know what was revealed about the h1n1 and Ebola. We’ve all seen the reports. The documentation has been widely circulated and now the people are ready. Enough outrages have occurred to spark something bigger than riots. The Stop and Frisk, the weekly shootings, the Iran war conscription and the new walking drones of course. This time almost everyone expects death camps and prolonged urban warfare, not Capoeira” Mickhi explains.

 

“The Z.O.B. has called up eight hundred riflemen, combat medics and agitation propaganda officers to support the needs of the parade. Our convoy of marauders. They will be attached to each major island band truck. Flying columns are on the ready in all five boroughs. An additional three hundred and forty three women and men.

 

“Listen, Watson knows all of this shit. So brother please come to conclusion so I can get Bronx bound with this new jack,” says Watson.

 

“Watson, we just need this young buck briefed, you can get out the door in fifty minutes,” Mickhi tells him. Used to his way.

“Watson needs this to happen in less minutes,” he replies with a grin

 

“As usual,” continues Mickhi, “The 2 Haitian Convoys will bring up the middle and the rear. Unknown to the City parade organizers, and hopefully the police intelligence forces, there are actually three Haitian bands this year of 10,000 masqueraders a piece. About ¾ up the route the Middle Convoy which is gonna be twice as big will initiate the raid across the Grand Army Plaza and then fight their way up Flatbush hope fully with the people behind us. And this is when the hectic bloody melee will begin.”

 

“What’s our precise role tonight,” asks Siegfried Kenly Sassoon. Siggy, who god or his parents made tall dark and handsome never goes to that many meetings. He never votes in Otriad elections except with his feet for Sebastian. When Sebastian is leading he steps back and when Sebastian is sleeping her steps up. He did however vote for keeping Sebastian asleep after the last Haiti job, when the hospitaliers took him very hard. Sebastian is a serious knock around guy; best estimates think he’s been taken to the camps over 21 times. About three years’ worth of his life. Siggy, like Watson does jobs not meetings. Neither ever-ever tries to be at these meetings. Rarely even the candle light salons in Brooklyn. Which are sometimes cute.

 

“We’re gonna install Fire Station Transmitters on four very, very tall structures,” says Mara Fitzduff. She has been the club’s chief of staff, worked in propaganda, women’s affairs and fundraising for the past ten years. She’s not officially even Z.O.B., but she is dependable. She has no salty broag. She’s got one kid with a soldier who ran off and another with the Russian loan shark Donny Gold who Sebastian and Nikholai went to high school with ‘way back in the day’.

 

“And then tomorrow we’re gonna blow up the Consolidated Edison building, putting most of Manhattan in the dark” says Mickhi Dbrisk, who has been the club’s Operation’s Chief since nearly the very beginning. He was in prison for a year as a teenager. When the cops accused him and four friends of all robbing a liquor store and no one talked.

Some people say he’s a Crip, but he’s not a Crip anymore.

 

Nikholai holds the official position of Logistics Coordinator, but he’s more hands on than many before or after him as a good logistic fixer should be. He’s the one who arranges a lot of the raids and bombing targets. Now that Sebastian lives in a dream, or a nightmare.

 

“The transmitters will override the police radio system and turn whatever frequencies we feel like into dancehall radio stations. We need them hidden and we need them high,” explains Mara, “so we can keep broadcasting when they shut the internet down.”

 

“We’ve gotten the four choice spots picked out well enough,” Nicholai explains, “each transmitter is about the size of a football. There are blasters and flicker masks in the bags at the downstairs at coat check. But those are for getting out of the buildings later. Soon as this meeting is done, if you agree to this shit, you’re all getting in the town cars outside and getting dropped near bye all four targets,”

 

“Fuck the girls if you feel like, if that works for you. We want you rested and loose. The town cars bring you to apartment brothels we work with and you sleep there. Whatever you decide to do,” Mara says.

 

She continues, “You wake up again when it’s dark. One person one location. In the bags with the guns and flicker masks are the addresses and names of four sympathetic venues, but really the car will just take you pretty near there. You’re going to get dropped at some of the tallest buildings on the island. Masks go on to obscure your faces, before you get out of the town cars. The girls will have you over for a drink, and whatever. Don’t really drink. Fuck if you wanna fuck and go to sleep. Then they will give you roof access when you get up. Those masks don’t come off in elevators, in lobbies, on streets anywhere near that building. The cameras are everywhere, as you know. You will get up the roof and turn on the transmitters.

“Try to hide them somewhere,” Nicholai mentions. Don’t just leave them lying around, they’re booby trapped anyway. Whoever tries to turn them off will is gonna lose their arms and face,” says Mara.

“Watson, you are assigned to the Heights. You’ll take Hunter with you. Siggy you’re in Midtown working with Ha Chi as usual. Denby and I will work in lower Manhattan. Raphael you’ll be setting up the Long Island City installation which is quite tricky because there’s nothing residential in the CITI Corp building so we’ll have to social engineer it. Nicholai and Dbrisk will go after the Hightower on Atlantic Junction also with the same predicament.”

 

“And by assigned, we’re asking you to accept the job as a volunteer,” Mickhi explains.

“For the good of the service,” Mara smiles.

“How is Jon Denby doing?” Mickhi asks.

“His father is real sick, it cuts into his out time,” Nicholai explained.

 

“So are you with this? You’re all Pararescuemen and or amateur Parapsychologists so I’m sure this will all just be fun. Once you get to the safe houses you’re staying at feel free to relax and take a long nap. You’ve all been up all week. Some of you all month. This doesn’t have to happen at once or tomorrow, it just has to happen before we blow up the power station on Monday morning. So enjoy, thank god it’s Tuesday. Some of these sympathizers are very attractive. I’m not saying any of you would take a whole a day to ravish the high end escorts at the brothels you’ll be staying at. Certainly not as either husbands, fathers, or Haitian gentlemen. But well it’s an option. Can’t have you stressed,” grins Mara knowing full well Raphael is married albeit a consummate adulterer. That Mickhi Dbrisk for all intents and purposes has three or four wives. That Siggy is secretly married to the daughter of a powerful Russian oligarch. That Nicholai is an incorrigible whore monger. And that Watson Entwissle is a very loyal family man. A true Haitian gentleman.

 

“We’re working out of the apartment brothels yet again?” asks Raphael. The joy in his voice is real for he so loves the Manhattan apartment brothels. You can’t afford them as an internationalist Disk Jockey.

 

“We need these devices set up high,” says Mara, “If we can knock out their power and maintain alternative systems of communications we’re keeping to our end of the mutual aid agreement with Uhuru. Without blowing our arsenal and fighters prematurely,” she says, “as you all know this is phase two of three. We’re only fully mobilizing if they manage to take the City or if they hold Brooklyn longer than a week. Otherwise it’s 1^st January.”

 

“I know I’m in,” asks Raphael.

“Shut the fuck up, Watson knows before he came here he was in.”

“Ha Chi will be a little pissed,” says Siggy, “But of course. It’s too late to get out now.”

“Joshua, you gonna ride with us on this?” Watson asks him.

“Yeah one hundred,” the kid replies.

 

Mickhi Dbrisk chuckles.

“Four transmitters. Then we blow the Consolidated Edison NSA depot on Monday morning and EMP the district financial at noon thirty Monday with the anarchists, if they breech. Monday. All of you are in the trenches and I’m running dispatch with Anya out of a most secure location. Things are going to pop the hell off prematurely. We’ll do the best we can to keep up with impossible expectations, any questions?”

 

No one had any.

 

“I love democracy. All of you please grab your shit at coat check and get in the cars outside via the alley door,” she tells them, “Good luck don’t get killed.”

 

Things were about to go bang in the night.

 

 

T w e n t y, Block Island

 

“The Unit Arrives”

 

The boat ride to shore through sloshing blue black waters carrying their clandestine squad of four had gone off much more seamlessly copasetic than Mr. McIntosh had feared, who being African via the West Indies did not any longer know how to swim.

 

The Ocean was a sacred thing to his people, it was not out of laziness as he could swim quite proficiently in a pool.

 

So after the most confining submarine ride which had to round the Cape Horn and run both tropics twice to reach its drop of point undetected by the military intelligence of the U.S.A. a short boat ride thorough rocky waters brought Yulia, Adelina, Oleg and McIntosh to safe house on Block Island; via a small flashing green Beacon a woman named Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv guided them to shore, and quickly shuttled them in her jeep to the island’s underground railroad station at the Hygeia Hotel; where now they were most vulnerable for they were under the protection of a coven or witches, or shaman sorcerers it should be said, witches begin derogatory.

 

This coven could trace its origins back to the genocide in Salem when aligning with Fenian pirates, bootleggers and Mohegan Indian they had fallen back to New Shoreham to take control of the island.

 

Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv looked like she was in her late forties long dread locks rapped up above her head in a taam, but by night she transformed somehow and looked half that age. Oleg when he awoke and came to find breakfast in the three floor yellow and red hotel that he barely recognized her. All the sorcery alarmed him and he wondered what drugs had been injected into by the sneaky Ivorites, or fed to them enroot so he could be so susceptible to manipulation of the senses. Oleg had lived for some time in the Israeli city of Nazareth and served two years in its military police force before immigrating to America to not think the Israelis were one of the sneakiest, most manipulative peoples alive.

 

Oleg Medved feels the same way about Judaism as he does about witchcraft, but many a little more sentimental about Judaism because witchcraft doesn’t have any warm welcoming family holidays that he is aware of. Nor did the witches, shaman sorcerers rather help him obtain the blue American passport that makes him the only legal member of this little unit.

“So, you want a Bajan truffle scone,” asks assertively Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv.

“Why thank you,” he replies and pops the crunchy beige cake in his mouth.

“The orders are in to separate your cell immediately. You and Ms. Yulia Romanova will leave for New York this morning from the mainland by car. The candidate shaman Adelina Blazhennaya will take her partner up to Boston and get your safe houses established.

“Don’t you think we need more time before we make contact,” he asks.

“No. The enemy made contact two weeks ago. We’re behind schedule as usual.”

“One ought not to be fashionably late to a revolution,” Oleg notes.

And Tanya T-Bird Tall flame Luv agrees. Even if he does not believe in the magic, it is clear to her that Solomon selected a very good team to activate the network, get this revolution back online from here to New York and then via underground rail road out to Oakland, California.

 

“Where are your truest loyalties Mr. Medved,” Tanya Luv asks him suddenly before he heads up to his room to get his gear in order. She wonders can she just call him Alan?

“To the art I make and the money I’m paid and women that love me for both when I am so fortunate.”

“Fair enough, like all men,” she replies. A typical Israelite spy answer.

Yulia pops her slinky brundinite head into the dining room and says in Russian, “You have call from Moscow, they are saying we must be in New York by tomorrow’s nightfall.”

“The blue moon has a power that will dash the best of plots and largest of armies into lunatic disarray. You should thus make haste,” Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv says, “and please remember that for whomever you work for or actually report up chain of command to; you’re in the American Arm of the resistance now; we budget for bribing and drinking, but not for whoring and gambling.”

Oleg the Bear grins, “We are internationalists, and this is still a supposedly free country.”

“What the blatnoy is a blue moon,” Yulia asks in Russian.

“You’ll know when you see its effects,” says Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv the Pagan shamanic sorcerous in Amharic.

“We don’t speak your dessert wasteland gibberish,” Yulia declares, “Only English, French and Russian!”

But, Oleg inferred what she meant and decided that he was quite uncomfortable with the American resistance’s widespread use of magic. One could not bribe magic or placate it with whores, or get magic too drunk. You could not car bomb magic or drone strike magic’s cell phone, poison it or hurt it’s family members.

 

Most unnerving work conditions to be sure. Unlimited operations[1] can get so fucking hectic, and fast. A real big steal and a zero sum game at this point.

 

Either ensure his total cooperation, or rip out his heart. And discredit his name. Cut off his head, burn the body and if he comes back do it again.

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty O N E, The Box

 

“Photos From Syria”

 

Siegfried Sassoon, the Cuban American Actor works as bartender in the night club called The Box.

 

I’m not fully happy with some elements of my life, thinks Siegfried Sassoon the actor. I cannot exactly say that I am satisfied, though I do have many elements of a good life going; I am not using my human potential; not as an actor and not as a man.

 

There are only several places where they cannot hear you, see you, record you and file you by number. And these places are not one hundred percent secure, they only make your detection harder and prolong your date of capture.

 

Bathhouses, fitness clubs, loud electronic music venues, camping & wilderness activities, dancehall parties and in the back of municipal ambulances.

 

I take to the woods; there are so many things we forgot to do when we became civilized; we lost innate mechanisms for our self-preservation; we became reliant on government, on governance on divisions of labor so infinite that we no longer possess any intrinsic individual use. Well, a great deal less any way.

 

I am following a new serial on Netflicks and Chill; the premium film station now that we get all out television from computers and cell phones. I have no stomach for film or TV! I was classically trained in Moscow for the stage! For the fucking stage, but that is a dead medium now. I have bachelors in philosophy, I wrote my thesis on the history of time travel. I work as bar tender at an elite supper club in the Isle of Mann. I have a pleasant and attractive girlfriend, she is not as amazing as my last girlfriend, but she makes me happy and keeps things mostly drama free.

 

My father works for the military industrial complex, I rarely see him. My mother is a hippie. It’s pace love and light, and then you marry rich; it’s good for your future, your children’s future. My father has a job I don’t know the details of; his company holds patents to space craft and commercial airlines, it builds them for thee United American States; the UAS has been the name of the 87% of the USA that was not lost to socialism during the Separatist Wars of 2012-2015; the Capital is in Chicago. The 13% lost is called the Confederation of Autonomous Soviet Republics, the Isle of Mann is just over the river from Brooklyn Soviet; which is one of the most heavily armed hot beds of the sedition. The Bronx and Queens are confederated with it; Staten Island is an enormous military garrison, it got very blood for three years, now it’s all quiet. The rebels threatened to use atomic weapons and took hostages, I will tell you what appears to work; terrorism it seems to work every single time.

It is actually understood to be far less bloody than conventional war, and a lot less expensive. Who fundamentally funds these rebels is a subject of great debate in the high class circles I run in. Oh yes, the upper classes are composed of big brained thinking men.

My club, like many of the establishments in cash rich, high stressed Isle of Mann, high tower living; caters to the millionaires and billionaires that compose what you might call were you to site rather populist rebel propaganda; the 2%. Wealth in the United States of America and subsequently in the United American States is a mal-distributed slope like absolutely anywhere else in the 206 Sectors, ehm, countries. In virtually all 206 national harvest units the distribution is about the same; though there are sharp gradients in the peripheral and semi-peripheral zones; social welfare systems and trickle down economies have enabled most of the 46 Core nations to eliminate all obvious forms of extreme poverty; life below $1.25 a day. Underclasses of course exist; the Muslims in Europe and the Noires and Mestizos in the U.S.; but they are not volatile, starving underclasses, but observe the slope; same in peripheral zone Kenya, as Semi-Peripheral zone Brazil, same are core zone France; a slope of the underclass and “middle classes” that in raw net wealth and assets are not radically disparate. Suffice to say you could call much of the middle class, the working poor. And in any society the distribution of REPORTED wealth, emphasis on REPORTED wealth would show that with welfare, with subsidy; the majority of the citizens of any county; 80-90% are all on slope that tapers off at its highest mark at annual earnings of $100,000 per year; then you have a 5-10% of the Bourgeoisie, the Upper Middle Classes, white collar managers, athletes and celebrities with earnings let’s say between $100,000 to 1 million per year. This still is not a radical accumulation of wealth, not in the scale needed to exercise power. Control of political and productive mechanisms. And then you have a class in itself, what they called in Occupy the 1% is actually 0000.1% of the remaining population; a kleptocracy; more appropriately called; an Oligarchy. Organized into clubs and factions that see national boundaries as brands, or more appropriately the names of various large scale mega plantations.

I did not come to any of that by reading the manuscripts or hearing the speeches of Adon, Solomon, DeBuitléir and other famous rebel leaders. I am no prole, nor were their Partizan songs written with my class in mind.

These men do not come to my club. But I pour their managers drinks, I pour their entertainment drinks, I stay sober sometimes while their supervisors drink and I know about things like robots, clones and the great salt mine. I knew that the ‘new Panama Canal’ had already been built in the 1980’s, I knew this from the mouths of babes; the call girls these lackeys bought. I have smoked joints with fellow help and shared what we’ve heard.

Adon tried to recruit me no less than twice to three times a year in round about and direct appeals to my level of awareness. I long suspected he would ask to spy for him, or something trickier. I’m a man of privilege, but not impervious. My father is well connected because of his company’s trade in trains and planes and missiles; but if the secret police took me there would be not very much he could do. I have friends too from the Club in which I work; but honestly when they take you they take you away. Your body is found in a tragic accident or a suicide, but that’s not your real body; you end in a container ship and then in a secret prison and that’s all she wrote.

I once wondered if Adon would analyze his own privileges being white, being raised upper middles class from a family with land; well his father is no lesser oligarchy but still they were the House of Adon! An esteemed house allowed into certain elite clubs, given land in both the District Financial and the Hamptons. Well suffice to say that house was outlawed and obliterated after the Great Revolt.

They stripped his Ivory father of all his land and ranks and executed his entire family, this is all I read. Sometime after the great revolt began.

The world is not a much changing world. There are always barbarians at the gates, slaves in cages and unrest in the colonies. It has always been this way, it will always be this way; who am I or Adon or any to clamor for a new way. Adon and I used to sit in the bathhouses and I would hear his yarns. I could hardly believe much of it was real. We were in university together, though I never joined his movement officially. Never took the plot outside the steam room. The House of King and House of Adon were of relatively equal social stations. He seemed to disregard my sympathies to him and grow angry as we got older that I didn’t wish to die on some barricade like him; but there are not barricades now; there are only strange events. Strange changes to reality that happen to keep up with the future science and black magic making war.

Nothing is what is what it seems. Are these vast plantation camps; or are they developing nations? Is democracy about speaking freely or is about governing together? Why has the winter not ended for three years in Massachusetts? Why do proles take trains to serve others in the Isle of Mann and those trains take 45 minutes, but I know and Adon knows that to get from Manhattan of Brooklyn Soviet you need a plane or a 40 mile base jump down a mountain. Are you a citizen or are you a serf? Did America win the Cold War? Why is it half of the lesser, and one third of the greater oligarchs all have Russian names? What is a Princling? What is the Bohemian Grove? When is it time to smoke a joint and join a conspiracy theory, or get your cock rubbed via Netflicks and Chill? How much is a human life worth?

Make us a good price!

I came to much of these realities during my senior thesis called ‘A History of Time Travel’; which explores the metaphysics behind parallel reality states, fourth dimensional travel and such themes of Pre-Soviet parapsychology.

My ex, I can’t say her same as it was so painful to lose her. Her father is a Greater Oligarch, from her and from Adon and from the whispers at the Box; I learned that truly nothing is as it seems.

Sebastian Adon, before he embraced the Baha’i nonviolence teachings of Sheika Saadiya Usmani and was inducted into the Blue Lodge; well he was a killer, I watched him evolve. I saw him go between talk and action over a period of ten years, he was changed by his experiences in the colonies; Palestine first then in Haiti.

I will not speak to what did or did not happen during the Millennium Theatre Hostage Crisis, there are wildly different accounts. I never saw him again after that night when the whole country first learned his name. They say he died. As did thousands of hostages being held all over the country that night! And then a calm. And then, a great gold mist blew over North America. The internet turned off. The world outside our country was blacked out. And in that gold happy mist changes were made, and there was no more Adon. There was no more United States; the entire population was put to sleep.

And when we woke up out of the dream, out of the week following the Millennium Hostage Crises. 13 % of America was a wild rebel free zone, and 87% was called the United American States, had always been. And you couldn’t take a 45 minute train to Brooklyn, no this violent anarchic thing called Brooklyn Soviet was a 40 mile drop off a cliff where the East River used to be. There was mile high wall between the edge of that cliff; and I was still in the UAS, which had always been the UAS; but Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx were not. These were now autonomous zones we were prohibited from traveling to.

I got a letter in the mail from Adon, I guess a courier moved it. The letter stated he was interned in a special engineering camp not far from Boston; another liberated City State. He told me that shortly his compatriots would be taking him out of the camp ad returning him to Brooklyn Soviet, which was of course (he claimed) now ‘free.’ And what did he want, why had he written?

Of course he wanted something. He never was capable of just having a friendship. He had taped a micro USB chip to the letter; it contained god only knows what. Nothing would shock me. He letter asked to go to 7^th FDNY EMS Outpost in Chelsea, find Anya Drovtich, buy her a drink and give her the chip. Just commit treason, matter of flatly.

I had met Anya Drovtich once before the letter said; the sexy Polish chick with the dreadlock and red Hijab. That narrowed it down a lot. What the rational person would do, despite having knowledge of a highly irrational world, even sympathizing with the resistance secretly. Having bathed and been friends with supposedly dead public enemy number three, behind DeBuitléir and Solomon, ahead of famed Jamaican Rebel Commander still at large in Brooklyn Soviet Mickhi Dbrisk. I remembered Anya, I let them both in the box on night against my better judgment; they were planning to take hostages. In the end they were ordered to stand down, Adon got drunk and pole danced for her in a private room.

He wasn’t humorless.

I look at this letter in my hand and I wonder what I should do. Turning it in means incriminating myself. The televisions have said he was killed in the hostage crisis along with Solomon; this is proof of sorts he is alive; maybe his prints are on this hand written letter. His security culture is sloppy I know. Maybe throw it away? What’s on the micro USB chip? Should I open it? Maybe this all a setup, maybe the Joint Terrorism task force is looking at anyone Adon used to know and I used to Banya with him twice a year, he’s been to half my theatrical openings. Maybe it’s another purge. And why would he send this to me, all of these years later.

 

He’s been officially dead for three years.

Yes, the hostage tragedy happened in 2015? I think so. 2017? Maybe, they say never forget but I do forget. So much happened, so much changed. So many people died in the Millennium Theater Hostage Crisis. I know, what the public doesn’t know which is that the rebels were very close to using nuclear warheads against major Americans cities. Leveraging that was what allowed the Separatist victories. I know that Department of Homeland Security pumped gas into all of the hostage points, four if I remember and that gas killed most of the hostages, not the rebel small arms fire. And I know the official story is that Emma Solomon, a citizen of Spain and Sebastian Adon a dual citizen of the USA and Trinidad, some allege, also Israel lead some forty terrorists into a packed showing of a new Broadway play and held hostage some 850 people, mostly the crème de la crème of the lesser Oligarchy in New York and celebrities; and then coordinated seizures of buildings happened in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston and Chicago; and then there was 48 hour five site siege; and the terrorists called for an end to the three year Separatist Wars and independence for 13 Soviets; 13% of USA’s territory, including all of Puerto Rico.

 

And then, blood, fire, gas and then as if nothing had happened all. Just like a mass shooting or a bombing in Baghdad.

 

I ask myself, I ask you; what would you do? The world is falling apart, the wars are closer and closer to the top of the mountain; no one is safe. What is on this USB could be highly consequential, or could be a test or a set up. Plot upon sinister plot.

Anya Drovtich who I have met only once. How consequential is her role in the Resistance, how close is she to Adon. What should I do? We all know at the Box that the Secret Police are cunning; 17 whole agencies spying on us. You never know when you’re being filmed only when you’re maybe not being filmed; we carry these fucking phones everywhere like the mark of the beast.

In the woods I am free; there are of course cameras in the woods too, there are even cameras I read inside dogs and cats; inside bees! It can make you a little insane to keep reading. There is no conspiracy your rational mind declares! There is no oligarchy! There is just the high, the middle and the low classes; a product of their merit and work ethics. Whites are on top because they work hardest, we all know that! And life is certainly better in the United American States, which has ALWAYS been the name of our country; then anywhere. Definitely better than that corrupted, vile violent mafia federation of Russia. Which I do live dearly having studied their as an actor for a year. And evil red China with its pollution and one child woman killing polices, which I do love dearly, my ex the love of actual life being half Russian, half Chinese. I digress. Well most of the proles have never left America. Most of the upper middle class if they have left America they’ve gone to Europe or the tourist garrisons of the Caribbean. Or banal Costa Rica; the eco colony. Who can say they’ve seen the world! Who has laid eyes on the Salt Mines! On Kandahar! On the night train of Beijing to Moscow. Almost none, and thus they cannot believe the things the resistance says are happening, are even real.

 

One year, maybe 2010 Adon and I went to the bathhouse on 88 Fulton, now called Bath Tip Gym; and maybe he liked the Banya so much cause we can talk freely, no phones no hidden mikes, you’d hope, no cameras, you’d hope. Or at least the illusion of privacy in the stream and sweat.

He took out an envelope and showed me pictures of the atrocities in Syria; told me they were preparing to send fighters and medics; would I go? Would I raise money? Well I feigned enthusiasm but ultimately contributed nothing. Like when he’d asked me to carry out some operation on the trains they were planning.

Well anyway, everyone they sent into Syria was killed. He was shortly after arrested and tortured for sedition. And by September 1st, Labor Day 2012 the Great Revolt had begun and the rebels soon took Brooklyn, Queens and the rest.

History will absolve almost everyone. I have looked this man dead in the eyes in the steam of the baths and heard him say seditious things and never informed. I am still absolved. One day people may look back at their uprising and say they committed atrocities, they were extremist, anarchists even! They tipped the arch with their fuckery! If you showed me video of Adon executing four men with a shot gun, like the one they played on TV. If you tried to tell me Adon was really a Persian sleeper; a Shi’a tripled agent. Like they said on TV. I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe he’d killed a single person.

I ask myself again what on this USB? I could bring it to China Town, they would tell me for a small price. Or maybe I’ll bring it to Anya Drovtich. Hand it over to the Banshee underground to get it where it need to go. Those people can move anything.

I want this last thing clear. I am an actor. I am here to capture the human experience and make it relatable. But the craft on stage is dying, it’s a bourgeoisie fringe event. That Hamilton brought back black face/ white face, claiming to empower people of color, forgive me while I quietly vomit in my hands. I am making the last round of drinks on the Titanic, and knowing what I know, seeing what I saw; you cannot escape the coming war. Too much was accumulated for too long and now, well now I need a drink.

A whiskey maybe. Something Smokey. I’ll just head to work and if I can think of a clever way to get Ms. Drovtich this token of our mutual friend’s appreciation, I’ll do it not for some cause, not because of the atrocities, not because of anything. Because if Sebastian Adon is alive, if he’s passing women notes again. Well a loyal droog, and I think myself a loyal droog to him; I will pass his note along.

I am not an old soul, but I do remember the past. I did write a book on time travel; I know that Sebastian is a serious person who has suffered a lot. That he is also a mad man and possibly a terrorist, well cheers he is also my friend.

Comrade, I know you cannot hear me. I know it is not safe or prudent to hand Anya your calling card. I will either follow her after her shift ends on the ambulances, or I will call 911 fake a medical emergency have her take me, or some accomplice to the hospital and in the back of the ambulance where we believe no one is filming us; I will hand her the USB.

They used to say on the TV; ‘if you have nothing to hide why do you care if we watch you’. And then there was Snowden who defected to the Russians and testified that every single cell phone call, text, email, even ToR and snap chat was stored in NSA server warehouses, filed and linked to social security numbers. Even when Patriot Acts I, II and III came out; basically cancelling out whatever proud rights Americans thought they had; we said we were not terrorists, who cares, drink booze, and watch Sports; Netflix and Chill! They used to try and tell us on TV Democrats and Republicans were different somehow. Well they things they say are different, but now both parties are suspended under the War Powers Act of 2077. Who’s the President of the UAS, that’s what Anya the paramedic will ask me, or my accomplice after out name and maybe if we know where we are. The orientation questions.

But if she asks me who’s the President of the United States of America, instead of asking me who is the President of the United American States; well that’s resistance code.

Adon told me in the letter, ‘when they take you pretend you’re very drunk.’

I wonder if I will see my old supposedly dead friend ever happy. What would make a man like him happy, a nice girl; a year on the beach? A fast car, a published book? Well everyone has a price do they not, we all have a price.

 

Sadly, what I think will make my old friend happy, as happy as he can be at this juncture. “Falsify a medical emergency, avoid detection by using some proxy you seduce and pass off that card to the underground. That would make me happy.”

 

Well he said as much in explicit writing: “The aim of the entire Great Revolt therefore is to take full control of the means of development at the most localized level without using unnecessary violence to do so and harness our collective might to secure our human rights entitlements once and for all.” But there was something more to what he was doing than this rhetoric. And that’s why people listened to him and risked their lives for his visions. Albeit sometimes begrudgingly.

 

 

Twenty Two, Brighton Beach

 

“The Brunette in Grapes”

 

“Sometimes I’m highly classy lass, and sometimes I take off enough off my clothes over a smile.” That’s what Dasha’s private Instagram declares.

 

In the city of Penza where she grew up she was a brunette, but now while in America a meticulously dyed blonde. Her name at the agency is Goldy.

 

In pre-revolutionary Russia a beautiful woman of the gentry, with a powerful father and a substantial dowery even if she were so inclined, was not able to release thousands of photographs and short videos of her pretty face and enormous ripe breasts indiscriminately to potential suitors, horny aristocrats and common serfs, and petty criminals. The technology simply did not allow it in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. And frankly speaking then, never mind honor and propriety and the status of women; it would not have been strategic for an adventitious coupling. From a matrimonial happiness point of view, but we are not in the 19^th century certainly we are not. It is the future now. Woman have no dowery, they have rights! Our gentry is far harder to access but not as bound by protocol and convention.

 

So she sits there in her modest Brighton Beach apartment, sometimes in suites paid for by suitors in the Atlas Park Hotel or the Waldorf by the hour, and she takes a lot of pictures of herself. And thanks to technology, thanks to the future over 160,000 men, well they get these pictures immediately. Sometimes with a selfie stick, sometimes on remote, sometimes she has a professional photographer, but it’s hard to make men do things on a long enough timeline without putting them in.

She’s never depicted of course with her john’s only where they take her.

It’s sophisticated art showing strangers on the internet that you’re classy and upper middle class and unavailable for immediate purchase, but you like things.

She has a shape that wins her many admirers. 176/57 93-61-95, serious measurements to shape her like a highly erotic, but angelic doll, one social media account is more doll and one is more tits. But the modern man, maybe all men like doll and tits in tandem. It’s hard to say whether this venture is actually sustainable, but she is getting popular. It sure beats working. As a student, a model and lover of fitness this has been a good racket so far. She’s just 24 in this life. It’s sensitive but not impossible to get the kind of man who will send a 100 rose bushels across town, to you know, buy groceries and pay your rent.

 

It’s hard to get in her head, that’s the idea. Her smile is a perverse fake smile, it’s not a happy smile, and you have to work real hard to have a good and winning fake smile. Often thanks to technology men in London or New York can see her rub her enormous breasts and do strange little things with her belly, or play with a cat, she does it all from her iPhone, links it into VKontackte and Facebook via Instagram to two accounts. And then offers come in. Most of them kind of disgusting.

Well at least she can afford to fly her mother here once a year.

She’s never walked a European run way, that’s for sure. What she is a student of no one could guess. Her father thinks this is beyond dishonorable, but she’s the favorite daughter. And honestly despite having big baby eyes, and a tiny, tiny waist and ‘tits for days’ as she says, truly massive breasts for a petit figure like hers, and everything is real. Well suggestively is the color she paints with. It’s gotten her an international following.

Because that is how the modern commodification of flesh works, the horizontal voyeurism, but not consumption, of designer curves and suggestive. On SUPE you can get more, shall we say intimate with Daria’s form.

 

“You’re too skinny,” Sergey once told her, it was almost the first thing he told her and you have be careful telling a woman like that she’s anything but perfect. “It’s totally normal” she told him,” and referred him to a website of Russian models, but honestly none were as slim as her.

 

Sergey works as an accountant at the Atlas Park Hotel in Midtown. He pays for her classes, her rent in the shared apartment, he pretty much pays for everything. He loves her too much to be a legitimate sponsor.

 

Now no one wants to believe they are exploited, or being manipulated. No one likes to be deceived, you want to get what you paid for, you want out more than you put in, this is capitalism. Exponential reward for diminishing volume of work.

 

“I worry that in your desire to please your fans you take on dimensions that are unhealthy, and I mean not say this so boldly you must consider your own health above the peering eyes of the fans,” Dmitry Khulshin her manager at the agency wrote.

 

What a stupid, almost Jewish thing to say, she thought looking at this message from the Atlas Park Hotel. I am adored exactly how I am. In all my skinny and all my round. I will make someone send my favorite dumplings, she says. Or roses, or new victory bras for my big and beautiful, you know. And maybe also a new puppy. New Years is coming, options, so many options.

 

 

Twenty Three, Block Island

 

“The Skin Suit”

 

The lovely and nubile Yulia Romanova and Oleg Medved boarded the Port Judith Ferry wearing flicker masks and made their way thirteen miles west to the mainland. There they retrieved a black jeep wrangler waiting for them on the mainland under the name, “Atticus Crispy” and proceeded to New York on Interstate 95.

 

Tanya Tallflame then turned on the good weather with satellites and magic. For the weather was indeed a thing that some factions controlled.

 

‘Most peculiar’ thought Kudzai McIntosh now clad in a black suit cut exactly to his figure. When they arrived there had been storm and fog, rain and midnight, it was freezing cold all night as they landed on the beach in the hermitically sealed baby schooner. He had wondered how it could be so cold in this North Eastern August. But, as soon as ‘the Russians’ departed it was a beautiful August late afternoon on a Thursday. Adelina Anatolievna, the spry and beautiful pixy was a sorcerer like him, a sorcerous like Madame Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv; so her Russian ness was only superficial; for all people of real magic; “Majik” knew themselves to be Gods and Spirits living in host horse forms called human; vessels for the divine multitude.

“Do you have a first name Mr. McIntosh,” Ms. Adelina asks as they sit and watch the late afternoon beauty of this green and rocky place from the back porch of the hotel Hygeia.

“It’s David; David Darious Kudzai Chikwamba Dorset. McIntosh is just the super stupid code name they gave me back in Port-Au-Spain because I retain my data like a computer.”

“What should I call you then,” Adelina smiles politely.

“You can call me Kudzai in private or Alexei because it says Alexei on this intricately forged passport here,” he beams at her.

Alex is a very, very common Russian name.

“What should I call you when nobody else is listen,” she whispers.

“You should call me Kudzai.”

She puts out her slender and delicate hand for the shaking and he takes it in his large and powerful dark hand that is becoming lighter as he begins his transmogrification into a light skinned, blond haired blue eyed Russian man.”

“Do you feel uncomfortable playing a Russian businessman?”

“Less uncomfortable than with the boys in blue patting down my long and my vulnerable every single time you and I go out in public.”

“You know I was thinking I’d make myself black just to make a little controversy but low profile is now we need to work. I’m sorry you have to hide yourself. You are a very attractive man as you are undisguised.”

“Don’t make me blush until my complexion better allows it,” smiled Kudzai, code name McIntosh.

“Alexei, Russians don’t ever blush. You’ll give your mask away.”

“I will call you Lady Adelina if that is all right,” Darious replies.

“Or just Elena, is fine too,” she whispers. What’s in stupid a nom de guerre?

Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv looking younger and more vibrant as the day recedes comes out with pitcher of lemonade, some more Scarborough Scones and a leather bound ancient looking manuscript with red stones embedded in its cover.

“Do you have word in the Caribbean called Loup Garrou?” asks Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv pouring Lemonade so chilled it reminds Adelina of the vodka served at the Trinidadian Special Forces “School of Alcoholism” where operatives train to accomplish tasks like driving, dancing, sword fighting, doing yoga, or flying planes completely under the influence, yet as if sober. The lemonade looks mighty cold.

“Are you referring to the werewolf sorcerous who steal young babies and ruins marriages in the dead of night? Those we call the Je-Rouge, or red eyes.”

“Perhaps it is the same. A particular breed of super natural creature; like a werewolf, a vampire and temptress are in one.”

“Particular to the Island of Haiti there is a spirit called Je-Rouge Loup Garrou which can take possession of person, normally a woman and turn them into a cannibal lupine creature. They keep mother awake all night to trick them into giving away their children and they keep men awake all night with shall we say succubus like luring, disorientate both; steal children and infect the very soul of the men with their dark and primal character.”

His skin moved still a few shades paler and his build diminished substantially though his musculature remained.

“Why do you ask,” Lady Adelina.

“What know you both of Sebastian Adonaev and his Z.O.B.?”

“The ‘B’ stands for Banshee does it not?” says Kudzai Darious, called McIntosh[2], in front of Ms. Luv.

“No. That is a deception. The B doesn’t stand for anything nor do the other letters,” says Adelina shooting from her hip.

“You are most right. None of the letters stand for anything. They are a ghost shirt organization[3],” Starr explains.

“I’m not familiar with this Majik,” ‘McIntosh’ says sipping the ice cold lemonade.

“They are twelve old souls that jump from body to body at will. They project incredible power, Baraka is the word on those around them. They can leave their bodies at will and be in other places, other realities, other lives. They are six woman and six men, though some are hidden. The leadership on paper is not the leadership in practice. The term ‘Ghost Shirt’ refers to the American Indian practice of painting the crest of the soul on their under armor before battling the invading white colonizers. They therefore by moving so fast in space and time deny their enemies any real conception of their hidden numbers and power.”

 

“This is most interesting, unknown to me that Comrade Adonaev had such power,” says Adelina Anatolievna Blazhennaya.

 

“Only a speculation on my part and this coven, and I know his birth mother well, so my speculations about his auspicious condition are not based on pure speculation.”

McIntosh hides in him what he knows as Kudzai Darious Dorset as he transfigures more into Alexei Thermadorov; acquiring the memories of new food groups, mostly bland, new letters, mostly strange, new ways of making love; mostly savage, and new skills like dog fighting and the selling of medical equipment on the black market.

Kudzai Chikwamba is a Shona warrior from Zimbabwe, stranded in Trinidad during the War of Lesser Antilles Succession in the mid 1990’s. He had been send by President for Life Robert Mugabe as part of an expeditionary force supporting the Garveyite faction of the 1994 Civil War in Trinidad against the Western backed Indo-Guyanese nationalist faction. Cut off after the ceasefire due to the American naval blockade he was naturalized in Trinidad, became a bio-chemist and as eventually recruited in the elite Trinidadian Special Forces.

“What is his mother like,” Adelina asks.

 

“His mother is wise and kind and raised him as well as she could given all the circumstances of the curses upon their house.”

 

“Curses?”

 

“Well his father was full blood Chosen so that would have been enough to mark them all, but this is America so being a descendant of Ivorites or Ivories, is not enough to be marked. No it was a deal his father made with a devil during the third War in Indo-China. And his membership among the horrid Bohemians that invited the cursing.”

“Enough for now,” interjects McIntosh looking ever more like a young Russian businessman, “speak of this Blue Moon, of the trigger it might play in this Labor Day Weekends events, tell us why you ask of Loup Garrou.”

“Well first the blue moon; you are both people of ancient knowledge; she a candidate and you a Shona Ougan. The blue moon itself implies a lunar cycle where in there is second full moon within a calendar month. One Lunation, the average lunar cycle is 29.53 days, there being about 365.25 days in the solar year there are therefore normally 12.37 lunation. Every 2 to 3 years in the 19 year Metonic cycle there will occur a 13^th moon. This occurrence, which will occur again tomorrow night is referred to as the blue moon.”

“As in, once in blue moon the Trinidadian Special Forces sends a raiding party to establish the readiness of the American resistance,” exclaims Adelina with delight.

“Yes, it’s been nineteen years,” replies Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv.

“The suggestion has been made that the term “blue moon” for “intercalary month” arose by folk etymology, the “blue” replacing the no-longer-understood belewe, ‘to betray’. The original meaning would then have been “betrayer moon”, referring to a full moon that would “normally” (in non-intercalating years) be the full moon of spring, while in intercalating year, it was “traitorous” in the sense that people would have had to continue fasting for another month in accordance with the season of Lent[4],” notes McIntosh quoting from his Wikipedia update almost verbatim.

“Very right,” says Ms. Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv looking herself younger by the hour as late afternoon stretches on. The weather is flawless.

“Interesting cycle of events, and the last of the cycle falling on September 1^st, 2012, the last possible moment before the B’ak’tun Long Count Calendar ends on 21 December,” Adelina concludes while trying to deduce via syncretism the overlap of old and new world Majik.

“The completion of 13 B’ak’tuns since August 11, 3114 BCE; which marks the Creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya. On this day, Raised-up-Sky-Lord caused three stones to be set by associated gods at Lying-Down-Sky, First-Three-Stone-Place. Because the sky still lay on the primordial sea, it was black. The setting of the three stones centered the cosmos which allowed the sky to be raised, revealing the sun,” quotes Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv from her red stone crusted book which has an electronic reading device inside it.

“Well what does that mean for our chances of success,” wonders McIntosh aloud who now fully every bit like a Slavic business man looks.

“Well there are two dates for the uprising are there not,” states Tanya Luv, ‘the political date and the spiritual date. The date of ‘the great disorder’ and the date of ‘the great revolt’ and the oligarchy knows neither.”

“I will tell you both well, coming from the political camp of things that the date of the uprising is certainly not set to a date of historical-spiritual-magnetic-geo-syncretic origin, but what do I know I am low in the chain of command” says Darious Dorset who now speaks in Russian as “Alexei Thermadorov”.

“I don’t care about the stupid politics of it all,” exclaims Adelina, “I want to know why you were asking us about the Loup Garrou!”

Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv turns to her, “Such passion!”

“You mistake inquisition for passion, I am quite numb,” she retorts.

“We shall see what you see in his head,” Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv replies.

“His head will be like the head of all men,” Adelina replies, “Self-absorbed, self-loathing in need of woman to pacify it. I was not chosen because I was just the best of the best of the candidates not committed. I was chosen because my Kaaba score ranks my empathic ability high and my sentimentality non-existent.”

“Hmm,” smiles Tanya, “we shall see.”

“Tell us now of the Loup Garrou, so we know what you are telling us in full.”

“Enhanced by the powers of the blue moon one will strike at Adonaev. It will be subtle, it will be nefarious. It will last. It will close him off to you completely except in dreams. If your associates Ms. Yulia and Mr. Oleg get out alive know you will have no ability to affect the outcome in New York the very minute she bites him. If she hasn’t bitten him already. I see blood and poison in the tea leaves. I see madness, treachery and betrayal. I see what nineteen years of planning non-violently will do, done away with a single bite. She bit him two weeks ago. Oleg will confirm the worst,” says Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv.

“Well this creature is not more powerful than I,” states Adelina Anatolievna.

“Beware the Loup Garrou, she is of old and primitive majik but she serves one who wishes this uprising to go bloody-bloody murder,” Lisa warns.

“They feed not on blood they feed on our excruciating pain and hopelessness, all pain we release is energy they drink of our body,” quotes Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv from the New Social Gospel, written by Emma Solomon and dictated to a teenage Sebastian Adonaev in 2001, before she was crucified and he was wiped clean and dumped on a beach in Strong Island never to see the promised land again.

 

“Perchevney,” says “Alexie Thermadorov” of the old devil himself.

 

“Part of the curse on the house of Adonaev was that for twelve years the eldest son Sebastian would spent the Sabbath in the House of Perchevney, that Tavern in the Wilderness called Mehanta. You must both stay out of New York and out of Brooklyn especially but above all things do not go in that Tavern or all is lost.

 

“Sounds like a damn good time,” says newly metamorphasized Alex in newly grocked Russian.

 

“My message to you both is simple, what little Emma Solomon didn’t brief you on I was to share. You are being given a special and enormous task. Anyone can make a little revolution. Tearing things down can be done with a herd of monkeys in any part of the world. Building things up requires open minds and the job of you four resurrectioners is to awaken the sleeping dead. Be bold, have no fear the Old Spirits[5], the New Spirits, the Old Gods and Goddesses, the New Oneness, the candidates, the sorcerers, and armies of Emma Solomon the Gold Lioness are behind you. You will both suffer much, but you will win; it is written and it will be made real. This slave uprising has been fought for 4,000 years since the first coming of the prophets. The scales will tip mark my words. Go city to city in this country from Boston out and seek out the ones this little Otriad, this group of 12 called the Z.O.B. find the ones they’ve touched and readied. Give them the vast freedom dreams, open in them the true knowledge. And when the hidden uprising does unleash itself see that we evolve, not devolve this people. The rest of the world has fought for the last two hundred years to liberate mere pockets. This uprising in the land of the eagle will fulfill the Baha’i Prophesy and then down will fall the Bear and the Dragon, good luck my magical co-conspirators,” says Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv with a jovial smile.

“What dream constructs[6] are you using to tempter the hate and win the passion of Sebastian Vasyli Adonaev,” Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv asks.

“Prague Sunsets and Burma Nights, Brighton boardwalk if we must” replies Adelina Anatolievna Blazhennaya.

“And some Trinidad and Tobago,” to take his lusty edge off says David Kudzai Darious Chikwamba Dorset, code name McIntosh agent of the Trinidadian Special Forces, now hidden below the skin of Alexei Thermadorov, waiting.

“He’s not ready for happiness,” she sadly states.

Sunset falls for some odd reason in the East on lovely, rock green New Shoreham with its prohibition era hotels, its farm of exotic animals, its pirates, it’s boat people, its witches, it’s descendants of Mohican Indians and Fenian bondsmen. Sitting on the porch above one of earth’s many tertiary chakra points; Tanya T-Bird Tallflame Luv read beat poetry, Darious accustoms himself with yoga to his new fleshy pale armor; and Adelina Anatolievna breathes in the universe, and readies herself for the greatest act of passion and battle she will ever know.

 

And the moon in the distance readies vast and often misunderstood powers for the re-writing or shall we say perhaps the universe auto-correcting human destiny itself. The Thursday evening into Friday morning that Oleg and Yulia spent in a gritty off road motel 6 between Galilee Rhode Island and New York. That night she spent three hours nervously improving on her make-up, while Oleg took a few glamor pictures to calm her down; that night. That night where in all the nervousness of initial deployment she thought he’d really tear her apart, he was mostly a big gentleman. Fine, he got a little action in. Fine, the photography thing was all kind huge pussy ruse.

 

Don’t ever fuck the mark or the modals, Oleg had learned early, well some of the modals needed a fuck. Certainly Yulia, eventually.

 

You have to be about this life, thinks Oleg the Bear.

 

Their papers got them through all the predetermined weakest check points moving south bound on Interstate 95. By late afternoon they were posted at the Green Point, Brooklyn safe house in a ginger bread brightly checkered apartment; that of Raphael Ernesto Contreras and his wife Victoria Lynch. Vodka was uncorked, bread was broken and after hugs of feted reunion; Oleg and Yulia were given a small room, and he fucked her in it unceremoniously.

 

Yulia Romanova was of course also not her last name just the name of any of the women that belonged to the Bratva of Yuri Romanoff.

 

Twenty Four, Onderdonk Fields

 

“The Bohemian Festival Day 1”

 

Friday morning of the Labor Day Weekend. The sun is shining and thus the August humidity is oppressive, but the Flushing highway leads deep into the greener pastures of Queens. A heat wave of unprecedented proportions has been ravishing the city for the entire week. The globe is warm, there are many deniers though flying in the face of science. It is warming up further.

The New York Times, the local paper of the liberal elites says wild fires in Moscow and its environs are blazing completely out of control. As if allowed to burn.

Five to perhaps six dozen tents of assorted makes and models have been erected at the top of green hill whose perimeter is a steel fence; its base a small Dutch historic home and the rest a camp ground in the badlands of Industrial Bushwalk. A big band stage is almost finished in erection to blare live Gypsy Latin music is being set up and sound tested. A four day proclamation of lawlessness has been posted, but only the social club staff and its regulars will truly be encamping. At forty dollars a day, it’s a rather pricey venture to go camping in a field in the heart of a barren industrial wasteland between Brooklyn and Queens know for salvage yards, construction material stock piling, biker gangs, and various front operations.

 

A railroad to somewhere and poisonous green river called the Dutch Kills Creek separating Brooklyn and Queens officially.

 

Slavi, stone faced with black hair until he cracks a jovial grin only to those he knows is Sasho’s brother. The sometimes grinning Bulgarian enforcer is at the gate nominally charging people whom he doesn’t recognize as the spoken for “regulars”. Justin O’Azzello, “the General Manager” is cooking up “kielbasa” and barking grinning efficient commands on set up.

“What are the kielbasa made of,” asks Michelle Christina, who has booked all the bands and done much of the production work to make this Bohemian Festival occur.

“What are they made of pendaho,” repeats her husband Raphael.

“Chicken,” says Justin with his mouth, but ‘people’ with his teeth and she refrains from trying.

At various points Justin Toomey O’Azzello has come and gone as Mehanata’s so-called “General Manager”. He’s quit, gotten fired, quit, gotten sober, quit found god, rehired, lost god, gotten very drunk, gotten very sober, and now, he seems to be conducting business well enough and is back in good graces of the management. Which means Sasho, and maybe to a lesser degree in reporting and accounting; Misha Kishbivalli, but Sasho is undisputedly the boss.

The Onderdonk Fields are now held by a colorful gypsy mafia. Sasho and his young son join a game of football game now underway.

And then around 4 in the pm; arrives the medical team; Sebastian and Jared Forgetter.

Sebastian Adon shows up proudly. With his tall street aspiring paramedic partner from Methodist Academy Class 33. Jared Forgetter is carrying a large red medical tech bag, the one Adon was allowed to keep unofficially by his friends and supporters in the quarter master’s office after the Fire Department made him resign in lieu of termination after a long and draining trial over the event that occurred two years prior in Haiti.

The nature of those bloody ruinous events will be recounted in due course. But the big red bag, his experiences and ten thousand dollars were all he walked away with. And the cost of the years with that agency were yet to be calculated.

Jared is tall and dirty blond and lanky and looks exactly like one might draw all stereotypes of the laid back high fiving, dope smoking west coaster; is a skilled electrician and followed his college sweetheart out east.

Adon and Sebastian join Victoria Lynch and Raphael on the top of the hill by the main encampment.

Raphael and Sebastian embrace as they always do. They grin because they know what is coming in the next 72 hours.

A large and gregarious man rises to introduce himself, the slinky slender dark brown haired woman at his side does not. Also seated in the main encampment are Amelia Monteleone with her big French tits, Georgie Rabanca, and Dasha Andreavna Skorobogatova.

Dasha ignores his arrival most completely.

A burly Post-Soviet man with a cropped beard and fashionable dress with a camera around his neck steps up and offers his hand.

“My name is Oleg Medved, but you may also call me Alan,” the big Russian says.

“Sebastian Adon,” Adon replies, “this is my partner Jared Forgetter, medical partner for the encampment, not homosexual lover.”

Oleg grins and pours everyone drinks and Adon takes out a large bottle of Spanish red wine and uncorks it.

And he passes out wine glasses wrapped up in socks.

They all then dance and dance and drink and steal and make art and chat about the world. And the fearsome, but utterly kind hearted in disposition Ukrainian-Israeli gangster Oleg Medved “from Boston” takes a wide assortment of photos of former and Postsoviet models. Victoria has arranged a series of photo shoots and allegedly Alan, who most call ‘Oleg the Bear’ is local celebrity “up in Boston” and he takes tons of fashionable pictures. Sebastian in his blue paramilitary style EMT uniform with a red bandana arm band is soon dancing the half tango, half salsa with Dasha clad in a yellow mesh cocktail dress with blue Indian war paint under her eyes; it makes for a lovely picture.

 

“I didn’t recognize you in the uniform and your little partisan cap,” she earlier exclaimed.

 

The four day Bohemian Gypsy Festival is in Friday day one full swing by evening.

It’s a very Old Soul-Old School movement of a moment.

They’ve taken a barren camp ground in bad part of warehouse district and turned into something of a cross between the Gypsies of Patagonia and or a cold war partisan encampment.

Adon has little medical work to do so Jared at some point disappears into a tent with a young Russian girl to smoke some weed and then later they see the tent shaking gently, arithmetically. Sensuously.

And Adon begins working on sketch of Georgie and the big French tits on Amelia, and Georgie with a laugh mentions he found black and blue marks all over his woman’s body the night she went back to Sebastian’s home two weeks prior. The night Dasha nearly killed him.

 

“I fell down some stairs,” is all Amelia says. And Georgie laughs it all off because he knows Sebastian is tragic man, a good man but a tragic man. He doesn’t have it in him to have any affairs. Georgie who is CUNY Grad center professor and also a computer scientist has affairs all the time, but he is not an American, or tragic, or rarely ever sad.

However Amelia’s black and blue marks are from Sebastian fucking her dirty and rough, and then fucking her with love making. Just one week ago.
Georgie wonders when it will be that Dasha Skorobogatova gives him the opportunity for a good long strong affair, but Sebastian has and does have affairs all the time, including with Georgie’s girls and main mistress. No regard at all for other men’s relationships. Admittedly such a conquest seems expensive in a few regards. Georgie feels sad for Sebastian at times, buys him drinks periodically with an ugly Romanian smile. He has never understood the complexity of the man, or the complex behind his tragedy.

Recently he became aware of the possibility of the small and short affair between Sebastian and another regular mistress, the French girl named Amelia Lewis; he was shocked that beautiful women could find pleasure with such a sad, broken man. This is the perception Sebastian Adon paints at the social club, which is that he is broken and must be pitied. Only Rafael knows this to be a partial ruse, well a total ruse and a sly manipulation.

And low and behold Dasha and Sebastian are dancing up a storm to the Latin Ska-Gypsy Jazz Band Eskarioka now playing. Followed by the Sunny Side Social club. George has never even seen the man dance more than two or three forced times. No use of hips at all!

She is the woman at the tavern that turns all the heads as per the usual lately. Even more so than that American girl Jessica who always takes off her clothes and climbs the downstairs stripper poles, even more than Amelia who after the Sebastian affair has been around a great deal less. Even more than the Moldovan twins who kiss! She arrived perhaps six months ago and now certainly has a regular card. Sebastian turned his in for some time and has just begun to reestablish it.

A regular doesn’t just show up early and stay late two of three weekend days open; they make themselves part of the tavern’s atmosphere. They have affairs, they get in fights, they make scene.

“Now I could not have seen that happening,” says George to Raphael, “he never ever dances!”

“She’s fucking that hot, prosto,” Raphael says, prosto is Russian for simple.

 

Sebastian Adon who is half of the medical team for a three day commitment here, but is also part of the back-up team if needed for Raphael’s planned raid on Citi Plaza Tower, the “big blue building in Queens,” has been given the green light to have a good time after three non-intensive demonstrations of his worth a competency paying for themselves. And the not giving of a shit on Sasho’s end if the house paramedics are intoxicated.

Jared Forgetter is kind to people and ‘really fucking West Coast’ as a spacy partner and is high as a kite making out with some young lady in a tent somewhere, she’s a just off the boat and he’s never had a “Russian girl” before. She’s not really Russian, she’s Moldovan, but Jared isn’t really sure what the difference is. He’s good long and uncut and after three spliffs the young girl drains him dry. His cock, not his pocket. Although she does manage to take forty bucks off him. While he was in the tent Sebastian attended to three small intermittent soccer related injuries.

Dasha is never far from the fact that Sebastian not only has steel toed boots and two left feet, but she takes him up on his hand to dance over and over.

Sebastian is so happy to be dancing again and he aims to do it well, but that is a highly subjective “well”. He swore to her on the night she almost killed them that he never dances anymore. So that night before the fall, she made him two-step as she watched and pressed her weight against his hip until he came correct.

“Your hips man! Move your goddamn hips.”

And he almost crushes her bare foot with a steel towed combat boot dip.

Ernesto is wearing a gold baseball cap and sits watching with his wife Victoria manically try and direct this shit show. Bands not showing up, nothing going to schedule everyone getting more and more furiously drunk. In yester year and future year Raphael commanded men, now he mostly makes life. With his music twice a week at the tavern as part of Bordel Dali and he also makes love with his camera twice a week and always maintains a slave job at a boutique blue jeans fashion blog.

But, a revolutionary is a revolutionary and when asked by the resistance three weeks ago to activate his cell and raid the big blue tower to deposit the transmitter for the Fire Station to broadcast orders and shut down government coms during the Labor Day Parade, he agreed.

Jumping out of planes, carrying out raids and building non-lethal bombs is like riding a bike, you never forget how to do it.

“I like to see him pretending to be happy,” says Raphael to Victoria.

“They are another tricky thing now moving too fast,” states Victoria as she watches out the corner of her eye. Victoria is very happy with herself for it was she who made this four day festival come together. And it is mostly out of control.

She has no idea her husband and most of the Peruvian Ska band Eskarioka are about to stage a raid on the tallest building in Queens. She has no idea that Oleg Medved and Yulia Romanova are poisoning half the camp with vodka based neurotransmitters. She was no idea there is dead hooker in the tent next to hers. She has no idea that an Islamic Sleeper cell is carrying a bomb into the heart of Times Square to black out the city in a thermo-electric pulse Monday morning. She has no idea that 2 million black woman, men and children are coordinating their revelry amid an armed uprising. She just isn’t aware of those things.

She doesn’t know about all of her husband’s affairs, she doesn’t know he used to lead a guerrilla band in Peru called the “Bolivarian Hotshots of the Brigade Cinqo de Mayo”. She loves Raphael her husband with all her heart, she loves Sebastian Adon as her tragic brother, she loves-hates Sasho who gives her a platform for her fashion, art and music. She wasn’t a child one day. She came to this city and got a job at the Tavern as events producer and tavern has taken over most of her life and time. She doesn’t see the world like Raphael does, or Sebastian did before his friends put him into sleep.

Sleep is the cousin of death, but not physical death. It is simply reducing the size of the world one can see, third, fourth and fifth and sixth dimensionally.

Sebastian and Victoria can only really see a couple days into the past and future. Whereas people like Raphael, and Dasha Andreavna can see things much further back and forward, see things happening in other realities. It makes them very, very functional in this reality.

But the more one drinks, the less they see.

If Victoria Lynch Contreras was aware of any of those above listed things, she’d have a baby heart attack. And probably move back to upstate New York where the world is safer. Back to her hippy parents Alpaca farm. Way out of the coming crossfire.

“She can’t be tamed by any man,” states Raphael Ernesto.

“He will try, but when he fails I’ll have to pick up the tragic pieces again,” states Victoria. She’s already had to coax him gently from his Maria to his Yelizaveta and then to freedom and then through the affair where he broke the French girl Amelia’s heart and it’s now back to the bondage of his wanton reckless emotions and habits of loving early and often. She admires that about him though, she’s a hopeless romantic herself.

It is Victoria’s shoulder where Sebastian does his most cathartic crying over the past three years since they all met on Floyd Benet Field at the original Bohemian-Gypsy-Tabor festival on the abandoned tarmacs of Idlewild airport.

A cool breeze breaks the city’s August humid heat wave.

“Spin me faster man!” commands Dasha.

He is under her spell.

She feeds him still more wine. He can be known to drink in uniform when a General like Sasho gives him the green light to do so. Sebastian has at least some discipline, but like a regular rank and file loses this discipline if the drinking lets him and the front seems far. And surely it takes a lot of drink to render him incapable of splinting extremities or dealing with overly intoxicated people, the most likely of injuries. But now, he’s really not good for much but chasing this woman. He knows nothing of Nicholai’s “great big job.”

And as a card carrying Banshee member he has several local ambulance crews on speed dial worse comes to worse.

There are endless bottles of wine and vodka miraculously stashed away about the encampment. All need tasting.

Adon is no obvious martyr today, or yesterday. Obviously for all his past mountains of zeal he’s built up, he saw the loveliest girl in the camp teach him how to dance and then try and kill him two weeks prior. He cannot be unaffected by the contrasts there. And if he was aware that his closest circle is up to something very large and possibly violent, he “is asleep.” He is out of the chain of command until reactivation after his paramedic graduation. Which is in January.

After his work in Haiti, the brought him to the bathhouse, they submerged his consciousness in the great waters of a temple buried in the earth; and to keep him safe they closed his eyes and made him aware only of what was around him in a small circle of seeing.

A hint that there was a close bout with death has been made. Did our protagonist antagonists actually plumed to death off a roof top?

In a futurist play, any bout with death has at least three angels standing guard over the protagonist antagonists. And if he had died on the roof how might he have died on the roof a second time as indicated in Act One, or at the Millennium Theatre after that?

So to clarify.

The night Dasha and Sebastian boxed ferociously after he yanked the cigarette from out her mouth, she shoved him off a roof.

That was two weeks prior from the night before the Blue Moon, now.

He grabbed out for her and they both died falling into the deadly drop pit.

She did shove to kill, but rather than make suicide assembled he pulled her along, to death. They toppled off the roof into that pit of death.

But angels quickly and immediately came to their rescue.

Only Nanoseconds after lying broken and dead in a pit of death, having killed each other over nothing, over posturing and arrogance and lack of respect for physics; reality reset.

The angels, on behalf of the spirits took their two souls from their corpses and went back in time five seconds. And put the souls into the bodies of Sebastian and Dasha, took control to make them step just one foot away from the pit.

So bang! When they toppled this time they just fell to the side and pissed the pit and their deaths by one single foot. A near death experience was now near life experience. Because the spirits were protecting them both.

Panting hard, as if post-coitus she grabs his right hand.

She bit down into his right index finger to draw blood. He makes no reaction his animal soul hasn’t fully absorbed itself into his new body. Then they lay panting by the edge of precipice staring each other down, bitten hand clasped and bleeding; and then she confessed to him things that were highly unnerving.

Some were true. And some were white lies.

Now, back at festival!

Now, “she remembers nothing” and keeps urging him to explain their first night of misconduct under good night almost blue moon and tell her what happened on the “roof of the financial district.”

Had they fallen into that pit having no spirits or angel to aid them you could have taken their bodies out a side basement door and it wouldn’t have even been real news. Senseless tragedy only bothers all of the living as everyone is missed by someone. So now they dance and self-seduce, she would say she is incapable he above it, so they self-seduce.

They are engaged in a passionate stare down, but it is more playful than hot. She is very used to drunken men desiring her. He is very used to being a sober gentleman and sometimes also a drunken man.

Victoria Lynch can see the steam and glow from the tent camp at the top of the hill. It reminds her vaguely of the wild passion that came over her several years ago when she wrested Ernesto from the arms of wealthy temptress and got the ring of marriage around his ways.

Sebastian is a marvelously incompetent, albeit enthusiastic dancer. Dasha drags him off here and there and they imbibe relentlessly without even seeming to stagger.

Night comes and darkness falls.

“It most was tender to see you saving the life of Sasho’s son,” Dasha had whispered earlier making a dry Russian joke out of his earlier handy work.

He had put an ice pack on a not that sprained ankle of the eleven year old son of the club’s owner. But, it was a smash hit. Calling an ambulance costs between $475.00 and $4,000.00 in the City of New York.

“Saving lives is much easier than taking them,” he says with a grin, “in the long run anyway.”

“So what happened again on our fateful roof! Tell me the whole story!” she demands.

“So no one meta died, or really died. Only almost died. Because when dawn broke two weeks prior we were still standing, I called you a cab and we begrudgingly agreed to meet again, only by fated coincidence, as we are both members of the same social club.”

“Fascinating,” she says staring out into the bonfires of the encampment. Pouring perhaps the fifteenth glass of wine. Knowing behind her bluff they were about five three dimensional seconds were warm, bloody broken and dead.

They had gotten quite drunk on wine then Astika, then Rakia and then Vodka, eventually.

Again she pressed him for, “The whole of the story.”

“We boxed. You drank and boxed me harder. Then we fell twenty stories to our deaths in a sub-basement pit,” he explains.

“And now we dance like two lovers who could have been just two separate funerals, in two separate languages, with Raphael Ernesto and Victoria being the only overlapping guests of note,” she notes and winks at him.

The festival has become an alcoholic blur to all involved by midnight thirty.

Dasha and Valera dance, dance, and dance like they almost died for nothing just a week before. Under a bog moon taking shape in the night sky above the border between Queens and Brooklyn.

Earlier in the day Oleg Medved took a good many pictures of her and the three lesser former and Postsoviet models from Bucharest, Bulgaria, and Transdeisnester Republic. And also of lovely Victoria who always looks lovely and charming and caring for this rowdy band that gravitates to the tavern. While refusing to let the sometimes dirty laundry of her marriage ever be aired in public views. Though there had been improvements lately.

Sebastian kisses Dasha’s hand in the end of the song, then lets her swoop low and he catches her in his arms as she gets an inch from the ground with her long golden locks. It is not a smooth or graceful motion, but he tries the best he can. They nearly topple over.

Then she has her lips pressed to his neck. And they eye into each other, taking in the passion that they are generating without necessarily acting any further on it.

“I will call you Valera!” she declares. “My name for you from this point out.”

“I will call you Dasha.  As I have from the beginning.”

“You like a devil have too many names,” she smiles.

Drunkenly they declare what each had planned to name to the other already.

Then more dancing, dancing and more dancing; sway and grind like they almost died for nothing.

Sebastian kisses her hand in the end of the song, then lets her swoop low and he catches her in his arms as she gets in inch from the ground with her long golden locks. For the second time now with not much more grace than before.

Then she has her lips pressed to his neck. Again. I could fall for her quite hard, he thinks, but he obviously, has thought such thoughts before. A rather ferocious amount of wine and vodka and Astika beer are consumed.

Finally around 3 am the camp gets quieter, the Bohemian festival dies down enough for Dasha and Sebastian to sit almost on top of each other, leaning in, coloring the sketch he’s made of their near fall and of her beauty over two pages of his black archive.

She colors quite enthusiastically.

Oh to live just two lives more! He thinks.

As you know, he will get to.

She, this wild woman Dasha is pressing against me and I feel no pain, he cries out in his mind. She just smiles and takes each color rendering his work into a superior rendition via the brightness of the combined war effort.

Finally around 5 am the camp gets quietest, the Bohemian festival dies down enough for bonfire calm without drumming. Ernesto, Dasha and Sebastian sit at the edge of a terrific fire now also dying down. They are quite drunkenly and “derangedely” speaking on the subject of “phantom physics” and “meta reality”. Sebastian is waxing philosophically, as Dasha’s eyes roll, on the theoretical possibility of parallel reality and past lives. He pulls this from somewhere, according to Dasha, “His own ass.”

A little faux-intellectual rant positing his personal theory of existence.

Raphael Ernesto Lynch Contreras nods in agreement, adding his own deductions. His own Mayan prophesies mixed with some Peruvian socialist folklore of the Arequipa Province.

“What if there are other lives running right alongside this one!” exclaims Sebastian Adon, “other possibilities, other potentialities had tiny little digressions been made on the course we follow in this waking life? What if, mind you the slightest digression and decision had yielded a vastly different outcome from what we experience now? And, what if there was some way to step from one reality to another. Moving about time, changing your body while keeping your soul and memories intact?”

Ironically, like as if he had ten thousand spoons and all he needed was a knife; Sebastian Adon has in his drunken stupor articulates exactly what has happened to he and Dasha just two weeks before.

“Fascinating talk boys before we die,” remarks Dasha yawning.

It is to Adon like one of those grand conversations he once one had in the East Village coffee house Yaffa Café over red wine when he was younger. Or on the Golan Heights hills in Syria. Sweet mental nostalgia.

“Do you believe in past lives?” asks Ernesto.

“Well certainly! It’s so primitive to think this is all a show down between god and the devil over souls, one person, one life one try! How pedantic!”

“So then you believe in alternative realities, and also reincarnation?” Ernesto asks.

Dasha makes faces at Sebastian as they go on. The fire continues to die down.

“Tovarish Philosopher I’m tired and have need to be put to sleep,” she says.

“Soon, soon,” Adon says.

“The Old Soul is what I heard it called once,” says Ernesto, when I was boy in Arequipa Province, “the body is but a vessel my father and mother said. Like a suit for the soul strolling across time, across many lives. An Old Soul remembers these lives and in doing so has a mission to accomplish, what the Hindu call a dharma.”

“Boys! Bed!” yells Dasha.

Sebastian asks her for five minutes to finish his idea. She scowls and gives him three and takes off in a pout.

Raphael Ernesto with a devilish smirk says, “Speak of reality later. Go after her or I will.”

And Sebastian catches up with her mid hill and takes her hand.

“Lie with me,” he says.

“That conversation was a lot a lot of bullshit you know,” she says.

“It’s fun to speak about this bullshit sometimes.”

“Where will there be the best sleep for us?”

“I have a blanket,” he says forgetting about the inflatable mattress.

Dasha and Sebastian sit almost on top of each at the top of the hill under the trees. He pulls a black and green Arabian blanket from his ruck sac. She finds anther bottle of wine as if out of thin air. Pours them both glasses. Watches him prepare the bare accommodations. She pages through and returns to late night coloring the sketch he’s made of their fall and of her vastness over two pages of his black archive.

She stares into him with Old Soul eyes.

“Will you be my tovarisha for the whole of festival?” he asks her, “We can share our wine and food and I will watch over you.”

“Ha, ha. Tovarish is gender neutral. It is not changed to “Tovarish-a” for woman. We are equals in Russian. Only word in Russian without gender inflection. Also I need not to be watched after. I am always safe.”

“Be my tovarish then and look after me then.”

“We will see. For now this an ok plan. Likely I will leave you in the morning.”

They draw closer into a cuddle and then complete spoon. She wraps herself within his arms and he holds her like it is his duty, but it is also a thrill of some buried passion. He holds her tight like a little partisan as the trees whisper and the two double blue moons that are out late can blot out reasonable doubt. He likes to hold her.

They curl together on an inflatable mattress and a green Arabian blanket. They are both, for a variety of reasons unaccustomed to the perfect fit of a well-intentioned cuddle.

The fall into what passes as sleep, her first. As if on demand.

“We almost died for nothing,” he says.

“What if I kill all your hope,” she mutters in a whisper.

“What if I loved you until you know just what hope truly is?” he responds to her in muted tone.

“Don’t speak now of such goddamn stupid and impossible things,” she whispers.

They lie together in that Gypsy camp draped into each other on the air mattress and floating on a dream the only two partisans without tents. He dreams of escaping the struggle against the reaper to be forever in her arms and she dreams of a big black cat with a fiddle while a man on the moon plays the world’s smallest violin just for her little Amerikanski. No that’s just a romantic little literary device. He dreams of her and she dreams of nothing at all. Nothing at all she will ever, ever talk about to a man. And that nothingness is a subjective, but not the objective of her inebriations.

A good night for Sebastian is not to dream at all his dreams are clusters nightmares. She has thus has rendered him peaceful. A good night for Dasha is to drink and dance until the night is blur of happy smiling, swirling dance movies and escaping in a peaceful haze. He watches the moon and feels her breathing heavily against him. He is reminded of some great peaceful moment. Whether that is because a beauty lays in his arms, or something more ephemeral, magically real forms an underling narrative, he cannot say.

She snores a little. Makes unintelligible little cute moans. The last thing he thinks holding her looking up at the big blue moon is that if some monster or bandit came from the tree line, if bad men, werewolves, monsters or devils came to hurt them, if they sky fell out above them, if the blue moon became a meteor, he’d never, ever leave her. He’d fight on whatever level he had to keep this woman safe, to marshal every ounce of his abilities to deliver her from any impending strife.

It all felt like déjà vu, as if it happened a few times before this very moment.

She sleeps indifferent to his hold or his guard.

She has survived a nation of thieves to get here and scuttled through a den of vipers since arrival. Sleeping in a park, with or without “protection”, with or without a mattress or a pillow, these are not so high on her hierarchy of concerns. Amongst many other pressing troubles, the Vodka sung her to sleep.

 

And the big blue full moon lit up the sky marking on the lunar calendar the end of an epoch and beginning of a basically existential war for what will ultimately be the fate of this backward species of mostly self-interested violent monkeys with guns.

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty Five, Onderdonk Fields

 

“Bohemian Festival Day 2”

 

He awakes on Onderdonk fields and she is still in his arms. She is warm and breathing deeply and clutching his hand to her ample breasts and thus is pressing her body against and besides him. Very much engorged he presses his hardness into the plump of her buttocks as if waiting for her to wine[7].

The sun has very much arisen. He finds it very tranquil and makes no effort to wrest her into wake field yet. The drumming has begun again and the camp is awakening and she smells of perfume and also cigarettes.

Sprawled out on a fabricated Persian carpet, on a now deflated air mattress the thick of him pressed against her rear parts, tits in hand he smiles happy victory; for she is most beautiful.

The Labor Day weekend is allowing about half of the teeming eleven million multitude of the NYC masses not to engage in much less Monday work. This Festival is well timed but is a small Gypsy side show to Winkle and Baltic’s production at Pzeier Chemical Factory, OR the Juveaurt festivities before the Labor Day Parade on Monday.

“Today is just Saturday which means there are three more to go!” declares Raphael Ernesto, “hooray for our liberated labor! Labor Day is designed to fall not anywhere near international May Day, which is Democratic Confederalist international workers day to all other workers. Labor Day is designed to separate the bullets from the proverbial gun of the American proletariat,” Ernesto Lynch explains as Dasha rolls her eyes and throws back some breakfast Vodka Oleg Megved has obtained to wash down late breakfast.

Oleg Megved, the Ukrainian-Israeli photographer ‘from Boston’ exclaims: “This man looks just like a young Mayakovski!”

“You’re right, it’s the hat and uniform and red arm band. A little junior Democratic Confederalist we have here,” agreed Dasha.

“Who was Mayakovsky,” asks Sebastian Adon.

“Mayakovski was the greatest Russian Poet that ever lived,” says Oleg.

Dasha had then cut in sardonically, “the second or third greatest of his period at the very least.”

“And you look just like him!” she says pointing to Sebastian.

“He had lovers all over the cities and the towns! Stalin let him tour Europe, Cuba, Mexico and America knowing he’d bring those capitalist pigs to their knees: Just with words,” puts in Oleg Megved.

“Let me put on this cap while you draw me more perfectly,” Dasha orders him.

He did as she ordered. And she looked like a partisan girl wearing it, a freedom fighter made so by the circumstances of her times, certainly not of individual ideals, bare and rugged necessity made fearless.

Early deaths for most.

“Spitting image of a Partizan,” said Oleg Megved.

A burly Russian gangster, although really of Ukrainian origin with a puzzling stopover in the Promised Land north of Tel Aviv, an Arab ghetto citadel called Nazareth, only an Amerikanski might dub him “a Russian”.

Or to use Adon’s favorite lexicon a “Former Soviet” or “Postsoviet.”

“Mayakovski was something of a total romantic and free radical,” Dasha then went on, “he wrote no less than thirteen volumes of Soviet poetry. A full third just to his tovarish, lover and muse Lily Brik.”

“Tell him about Liana Brik,” says Oleg the Bear.

“Let him read about it,” said Dasha Andreavna.

Sebastian who was earlier working on an epic caracatura of Victoria and Raphael; has turned his artistic abilities toward the capture of Dasha’s breasts on paper.

“Woman, tell him the goddamn story of Lilya Brik,” commands Ernesto.

Dasha grabs Sebastian Adon by his artistic medical coat tails and lays the sordid affair down in New Speak Jive;

“So here you have Russia’s greatest poet and writer. Stalin gives him a Carte Blanche to get away with almost anything. So here we have his madness and his love life. He meets Lily Brik and her publisher husband early in career and they have a sick ménage where husband and Mayakovski have to share Lily while being partners themselves creatively.”

“They lived together right up until his suicide. He had to sometimes listen to her screw him from the kitchen even! That level of openness about the affair was absolute as her husband was a polyandrous man, a futurist,” she declares.

“What is a Futurist,” Sebastian asks.

“We believe in the future,” Dasha says calmly.

Oleg gives her a look, and grins a burly grin.

“A Futurist rejects all aspect of his past, the utility of pasts in general.”

“This is what I just said,” Dasha snaps at him.

“You didn’t say it gracefully enough in English for my liking,” Ernesto sneers playfully.

She give him dagger eyes and continues.

“In the end of many trials and many years Mayakovski couldn’t wrest her away from her husband, his closest friend and lifelong editor and then at age 36 he put a gun to his head and ended his foolish, albeit brilliant life over this Brik woman.”

“And then there was also the Tatiana affair in Paris to complicate the matter further,” breaks in Oleg Megved, “two perfect archetypes of unobtainable Russian women one red and one white.”

“Don’t kill all his limited American hope in one shot of story,” retorts Dasha, “Valera will go acquire the books if he wants to hear the whole series of events.”

And shortly after Valera and Dasha leave the encampment to wander the urban wastelands looking for a bodega and a place to buy more wine.

They make a curious spectacle walking together through the desolate warehouse district. There was not a Bodega in miles it seemed.

The district was quite bleak and they were alone on a lonely highway except for an occasional passing mac or semi-truck. Her yellow dress blows in the wind, but the sun still beats down and he offers her a water canteen and she drinks and hands him a cigarette.

They’re looking for a Bodega in the wilderness.

The grim warehouses are all one or two stories, all fortified and locked down with tall walls and barbed wire. The place is mostly without any life and smells of asphalt melting in the hottest heat of summer.

Eventually after a great deal of wandering small talk they find some foods and make their way back to gypsy camp.

“Could I be plain with you brother,” Sebastian asks Oleg the bear as they watch the girls fool around in the huge rubber inflatable pool, “what is the Russian mentality?”

“Oh, that’s just an American code word for building elaborate prejudices to former and Post Soviets. Or maybe the bunker mentality of thieves in law locked together under iron curtain quarantine.”

“Quarantine?”

“Quite so. That’s what you’re old government did to our revolution and then what our government did to us to preserve it. Locked us down in our Soviet Union.”

“There were other variables.”

“I am no apologist, but the Stalin I grew up with or should I say read about growing up for he was dead; was a very different Stalin than the one you maybe, or maybe not encountered in you college political science. To you all growing up the Soviet Union was an authoritarian gulag state of bread lines and deprivation. To us, growing up before the fall in 1989; it was our country. It was not spectacularly better or worse than yours. But we all could read and we all had jobs and no one was starving and since 1/3 of the world was within our red sphere the quarantine was less impactful. Our zone ran from Havana to Ho Chi Min City[8]; south ways as far as Angola[9].”

“Fair enough.”

“Your government and your media spent early one hundred years teaching you red terror. The school house desk hiding fallout shelter raids, the numerous adventures with torture abroad, the missile crisis, the Reagan years it all built up a viral fear and hate. And anyway you know what you do with your enemy’s women! Ha. The men are supposed to be barbarians and the women all whores. This is picture your country painted of “Ivan”, well my country too now,” he laughs.

“Agreed, whores and criminals is the stereotype, but I’m talking about the so called mentality. The effects of the iron quarantine.”

“We like new things, this is true, but more importantly we like true security without being in anyone’s debt. Those that even remember the former Soviet Union remember only its hardships mostly via stories told to them. Deprivations and breadlines they really at this stage were too young to remember. I was born in Ukraine, but I really grew up in Israel so I’m not even so shaped by this past. And of course, I’m something of an Ivory. At least below the belt. Those that grew up after the fall of Democratic Confederalism likely tasted western things and culture and simply grew up knowing they could be better off here. So some like my family used their Ivoryish heritage to go through Israel then here. Some got stuck in Israel, enough for the fourth national language to now be Russian.”

“Yeah I remember that was about to happen when last I was there,” Adon says.

“Mentality? I don’t know, people are people, we all like a good laugh, some happiness, a toast and a good fuck!”

“Well I believe that, but I think people process data differently.”

“No comrade, not so differently at all. That Dasha you’re consorting with has just gotten off the boat. Whatever barriers between you both seem to have ben easily dispelled with vodka, wine and dancing did they not?”

“I’ve always had something for Russian women.”

“That’s because there’s nothing better than Russian women, everyone knows that of course.”

“Why is it though?! What is it about them,” muses Adon.

“Well I bet you have many mostly misguided theories.”

“Surely I do, and I aim to write them down.”

“They make incredibly pliant whores once you figure out how to sustainably pay them” states Oleg to see a reaction.

But, there is none, perhaps the man still has romance in him.

Oleg, who got off the boat quite literally three days ago wonders if he has the right mark. This Adon is a caricature of the potentially fearsome guerilla leader his file claimed him to be. This man was, well he was a nostalgic poet. A hipster even living in another age, perhaps uncomfortable in his very own skin. Not a leader of men. Could this really be the most fearsome operative the American résistance had?

“Russian mentality; this sounds like an American device to reduce us all to whores and vicious gangsters. Your media likes this kind of objectification to enable you to kill and rape us with less moral indignation” says Oleg.

“Perhaps that’s the truth though is that many of you do seem to have whore and gangster tendencies.”

“If you claim it,” Oleg.

Dasha storms up to them appearing quite distraught as well as intoxicated.

“Drink man,” she says foisting a bottle upon them. She shoves a cold bottle of red Georgian wine into Oleg’s hands. And he thanks her in Russian.

The she suddenly exclaims;

“I must leave! There is someone who will ask serious questions if I don’t.”

“Please do instead stay,” Sebastian lets alcohol speak for him, “nothing will happen if you do,” pleads Adon.

“You don’t know anything about what will or will not happen to me anyhow!”

“Please stay, its already night and if you leave I’ll have to follow my code and escort you all the way home and then I’ll be waking up drunk on the beach in Brighton certainly.”

“I don’t need you to get home safe.”

“Well the code says real men don’t let women take the trains’ home by themselves after dark.”

“What stupid code is this?”

“The Code of the Haitian gentleman,” he replies.

“Well I am bound by no such nigger code and now I take my leave, man.”

“I’ll bring you home,” says Adon abandoning his responsibilities to protect the camp completely notes Oleg the bear.

She storms off and he follows after her and this in itself seems like a thing that has happened and will happen again as if a cosmic comedy.

“I live in Brighton,” she declares, which is very long way off.

“Well let’s get you home then,” it was like he was following a script.

Like an aroused, puppy dog blinded by the lights of lusting, he follows her out into the blue moon lit night. But they only make it as far as a little tavern down the road called the Cobra Club, where hipsters allegedly drink and do yoga! A few drinks later they change course back to camp and never make it to Brighton at all. They end up back on the forest floor in each other’s arms, holding tight to a memory neither can remember yet.

 

“You hold me too well,” she mumbles in Russian.

“I have five thousand years of practice,” he replies in Hebrew. He wasn’t bragging about women, he was speaking of how long he felt he’d held her.

 

Twenty Six, Onderdonk Fields

 

“Bohemian Festival Day 3”

 

He awakes on Onderdonk Fields and she is still in his arms, tits still plump and cutely snoring. She is warm and breathing deeply and clutching his hand to her ample breasts and thus is pressing her body against and besides him. Very much engorged he presses his hardness into the plump of her buttocks as if waiting for her to wine[10].

 

It was Sunday and everything would repeat itself again. Indecisive lusty flirtations with nothing to support the imagined memories and Oleg the bear stood by taking pictures. The festival of the Gypsy’s continued as the city braced for Monday West Indian Day parade. The dress rehearsal for any insurrection.

 

Eventually Sunday evening Dasha and Sebastian broke camp and headed towards the underground.       They arrived at a small tavern across the street from the faded green light posts of the L underground train in bombed out warehouse zones of so called “East Williamsburg”. The tavern is paneled in old wood and is made up like some old school prohibition tavern; the name of the joint is the “Cobra Club”. It professes to combine mixology and light yoga. Much to the delight of Sebastian who cannot think of two activities worse suited for each other than drinking and yoga, perhaps drinking and driving an ambulance.

 

And it was here that he notices that Dasha has a dragon fly necklace and matching wrist bracelet, which he had not noticed previously adorning her. Although not on her person for the previous two and part days of festival, now they were back on. And that all other times which has been twice before the festival she was wearing some accessory piece with this image it occurs to him. How curious. Or perhaps he’s making another enormous battery of false positive conclusions, based on cumulative sleep deprivation.

 

“What then does the dragonfly symbolize?” he asks her.

“It doesn’t symbolize anything. I just like the way it looks,” she responds.

Impossible it seems to gauge if she is lying he thinks. After three days of general revelry, they are both a little out of body.

“Your eyes are now green,” she smiles.

“Normally they are…” he starts.

“Hazel Brown as bullshit, I know,” she smiles.

“And yours are now silver where before they were blue.”

“What kind of Amerikanski are you? You’re not like them exactly and yet you are them and you also have certain qualities that are Russian and yet surely not of us, at all. You a mad man aren’t you?”

“I am only half mad,” he replies.

“Do you have anything else you need me to know?”

“I could help you with your anything.”

“But I need nothing from you. Not even some physical help.”

“Where are you and we gonna be when the weekend is finally over,” he asks.

“Complete strangers.”

“You’re indomitable woman.”

“Are you a jealous man?” she asks. Beware any woman that ever asks that ever in history, it means nothing good.

Never go after a woman who asks that, says his father in his head.

He looks into her thinking; he could learn to be. There had been some deliberation on options, such are her joining him in the Hamptons at the family dacha (country home) or participating in the West Indian Parade[11]. Honestly there was a lot going on that weekend, it didn’t matter if he could just keep being with her. Nevertheless, politely she said he could take her number again and call her later since she had to soften the conspicuous blow to her keeper inflicted by two night’s disappearance. One had to have a little, just a little bit of shall we say tact, attention to protocol. Formalities of fidelity, anyway she doesn’t go into any details for the sake of his fragile ego, all men have a mostly fragile ego.

 

“I do not know if we shall meet again tonight, or ever, wild stranger, but I did quite enjoy you,” she explained and then they took the L toward the city and went their separate ways, she to Brighton Beach and he to the District Financial.

 

In his sketch book on a drawing they colored together she wrote in Russian; “Shame that it all will end.” Though you could translate that several different ways, all were pretty bleak.

 

She informs him by telephone later that evening she will be forced to remain on the coast.

 

 

 

***

 

 

As usual, Dbrisk was doing the best he could in a poor overall situation for doing business. He was for whatever logistically foolish reason rushing to meet Sebastian Adon and catch a jitney to Strong Island, which was last minute and outlandish, but something was clearly going wrong with the long game.

 

“I know that man so well I could wear his skin, and you’d be convinced I was he, I know his very heart, I know his small talk and his long game and that crazy fucking Hebrew is one of my best men. The first among equals at our table. He paid dues for a long time, oh he still pays dues, but I trust my children with that man,” says Michkai Dbrisk the tall, dreaded physician assistant by training, rogue paramedic, a bad man. Jamaican. What a sweetheart, said Valera, or by his real name, Sebastian Adon.

Explains Dbrisk.

Valera is just the Slavic non de guerre of Sebastian Adon, who everyone who knows him is really only Russian by perhaps insertion and appreciation. He speaks less Russian than is appropriate for having a decade of from Russia with love, he’s tried. There were lots of well-meaning flash cards. I mean people have always taken him seriously. At this point he probably speaks more Russian than Hebrew, which is the useless language of his tribe. He is without a doubt, an Israeli. Well, may there are some doubts.

Yelizaveta tried the very least, so why he has this obsession is anyone’s guess.

Yelizaveta was good at so many other things, none of them as obvious as her shape suggested. Those gold blond hairs were bleached to attain affect, she was really a light brunette like Adon, and like his wife Adelina Blazhennaya, his real wife not his paper work wife.

There are so many details he knows his man cannot come close to remember.

Now, you must think Adon a philanderer, and a manipulator and really only in love with himself, hidden behind a revolutionary belief system, or so said Yelizaveta Kotlyarova on several occasions. All these Russian women, he must be rich some thought.

Well that was no one’s business, but he dressed in other people’s used clothes, but we generous. He drove a real basic automobile the Honda Civic 2009 and he upgraded at some point to a Charger, nothing fancy either except the Guyanese had gotten under the hood, and locamotively then it was fancy as hell. Love, yes love he believed in it. He may have never lead a very large otriad, only ten to twenty, but my did he have a following when healthy. They took him many times and tortured him many times and he wasn’t the same man all the time.

What’s a little torture when you have all those Russian girlfriends? These were very serious trysts some of them. But despite the suspicions of the Department of Homeland of Security, none not one of these lovers were FSB agents, none were manipulating the shall we say strange abilities of Sebastian Adonaev. And most of them, truly looking into their hearts suspected the family estate would be left to anyone other than his blonde brother Benny Adon, the respectable Spanish businessman. So the love, when it was love, well it was pure shit.

 

They actually loved this Jew for him, for his ways. Especially Adelina, the mother of his two children, the mystic, linguist, yogi, stunner with the long brown hair. But let us pause at this revelation, wife for papers, wife in reality, neither of which Michkai Dbrisk has met in the flesh, only read in a book, a book about the future.

 

***

 

 

Why are Chornay always fucking late, wonders Sebastian as he waits on 40^th street and Lexington for the Hampton Jitney? And what’s so terrible about sometimes being early? But they had been slaves, maybe still are slaves and thus were excused from just about anything in his mind thereafter. Only a racist blan oppressor makes you work for free for five hundred years, reduces you to raped and broken human cattle, and then complains when you’re late, but they were about to miss the bus. But this was no way to regard one’s stalwart Chief of Operations, Jamaican gangster[12], Mickhi Dbrisk.

 

Even if that was a racism to its own self. Which clearly it often was. It is impossible to exorcise ones racism, you can try so hard and the whiteness still returns.

 

After Dasha replied by mobile phone she wasn’t leaving Brooklyn, the night before Labor Day Adon had called his bad man partner in crime Mickhi Dbrisk to run away from the city to the country to a place called Montauk for a midnight journey into a day trip, the night before Labor Day proper which locked down Brooklyn with 2.6 million masqueraders and full mobilization of the NYPD amongst other agencies. Each year they flipped a coin over Hamptons v. Jeauvert and it was “heads for Hamptons” this year. But really only because Dasha was occupied, Mickhi never actually ever wanted to out during the sometimes gun play active Juveaurt[13] nor was he ever particularly interested in trips to the Jewish elite Hamlet called the Hamptons where the Adon family had their second home. And he hadn’t woken up completely, Mickhi was supposed to be on the lines tom.

Surely, they needed to make a long palaver.

Mickhi Dbrisk and Sebastian Adon had met in LaGuardia Community College seven years prior in the EMT program. They helped found the Banshee Association and later the nucleus of the New York City cell[14] of the Z.O.B. underground. In the seven years that they had known each other Dbrisk had scene his friend through many ups and downs, many treacherous jobs, and many lives saved and thankfully none taken. He had seen just what Adon was capable of when he took his little salt pills and worked under the right woman. Dbrisk also had seen his partner fall down real bloody, horror show hard.

“It feels as though I have awoken again from a dream.”

“I heard you a say that just after you came back from Port-Au-Prince[15]. And the next thing I remember is you with a sharp knife heading down to settle a score in District Garretson beach. And then came your arrest, your escape from Lennox Hill[16] and the beginning of the end for your municipal employee status. So forgive me if I worry every single time I hear that again.”

“I’d like permission to step out of the chain of command to handle a situation.”

“Of course you don’t ever need my permission.”

“The full assault on the district will commence in seventeen days.”

“So it seems.”

“We have committed all of our best volunteers to serve in the medical detachment. It will raise eyebrows if you are not there.”

“I plan to be there. I just need to handle something first.”

“Well I plan not to be there, but you do whatever you go to do.”

Mickhi Dbrisk is a six-foot tall, smooth Jamaican paramedic. He leads quietly the one of the mightiest guerrilla squadrons of paramedics and emts history has ever known with its bases in Brooklyn, Haiti, Croix-De-Bouquet and; the little park occupied in the Financial District’s northern frontier. The public private park called Zuccotti which a year ago was taken over by students and radicals and has since become the epicenter of a national rising now most regimented and entrenched against the national elites.

He leads quietly because he is gangster. That is how a true gangster leads.

He has been held in prison for over a year where he marinated his gangster by refusing to name names of coconspirators. He now raises two children. He saves human life on three continents as a paramedic adventurer. In the diffuse and decentralized chain of command of the militant human rights movement he holds the position of a Captain. The name of the faction he leads alongside Adon and few others is the Z.O.B., also known as the Brooklyn Bath and Rifle Club or the Banshee Association of the City of New York.

He is a bad mother fucker. A real Shatah.

David leads the Operations Section of Banshee mostly, with, Sebastian Adon our romantic “protagonist” leading the Planning Section, Scott Sevastra leading Communications and Trickovitch leading Logistics.

Allamby was our then Chief Financial Officer, Mara Fitzduff the most active deputy concerned with Newspaper distribution and fire switch radio. Anya Drovtich was the Minister of Information and Erza Pula the chief legal counsel and Minister of Justice, our internal affairs.

And a very, very big operation is happening as they speak involving short wave transmitters, an electronic magnetic pulse bomb, and full mobilization of partisans.

2/8ths of the elected leadership of the Club’s Executive, one awake, one awakening getting quite removed from the front.

It is now the fourth day of Sebastian not sleeping and he is looking at a golden pistol in the men’s room the Hampton Jitney, while David Dbrisk, a co-passenger on a nearly empty Labor Day Midnight Express Bus jots down baby names for his third upcoming child.

“I may need a fast car,” notes Sebastian as he passes back the loaded weapon wrapped in a gangster bandana colored blue.

As soulful pause.

“I’ll borrow you a real fast car, Guyanese[17].”

Sebastian has been manically talking whispers about a kidnapped, a hostage blondeeneet, a woman named Dasha he has just made a big picture of.

Soulful pause.

“I may, mind you may need a pistol.”

“Brother. I will get you a very good pistol[18].”

Mickhi Dbrisk has two; soon three children, lives out a hoopdee and three safe house in Bk and Staten Island, and he doesn’t have more than 5,000 green backs in the bank.

Sebastian lives within the Financial District, has no dependents and lives what’s left of savings he squirreled away while working for the New York Fire Department as an EMT.

“You are a dear and trusted comrade brother Mickhi Dbrisk,” states Sebastian.

Mickhi doesn’t even have to nod.

“I have to roll in and save her, is that the right word, rescue? I have to get her out of Brighton Beach probably out of city, maybe tomorrow night.”

The Maroon five song “Baby One More Night” comes on from his phone and annoys only the single hedge fund baby not sleeping on the midnight shuttle bus to Montauk.

“Seby. You are going to have to free her without back up. I got a third kid coming and the uprising is just three hours away.”

“The uprising,” Sebastian mutters and she sees a forty mile high view of the city erupting in violence.

Sebastian contemplates if, what if, armed with a eight shooter set and a new sholem he can keep himself and the mission alive when it comes to Dasha Andreavna, this new dorogaia; maybe tovarish, maybe the sexiest woman living in the Soviet alive and happy and free.

Mickhi can actually hear Sebastian think.

“Brother, oh, brother you fell hard yet again, once a year you get the woman, but always lose your head. Keep yourself alive and you can save you, and maybe, just maybe daddy: you get the girl. But we been down this path ain’t we? Man you have to be asking yourself a lot these days just who you let pull your strings.”

            “She bit me,” says Adon and shows Dbrisk the bite marks on his right index finger.

“Well that ain’t no good.”

No good at all.

After Festival and then some real Hamptons fuckery gets underway and Sebastian via his weed Roll-And and Mickhi with his dancing get four girls back to the dacha built by Adon’s parents. But no pants off fuckery goes down even as those girls splash naked about the pool because Mickhi and Sebastian are both in love with superior sets of women, the Maroon five song comes on that September 1^st Labor Day weekend 2012 and Sebastian sleeps well alone in big Hamptons bedroom wondering, what kind of man am I? Do I possess the constitution to take this as far as it needs to go? What kind of woman is she? And all kinds of such questions. And Mickhi waits for Sebastian not to notice and steps out in the cool but still summer right to get a smoke and Newport. It’s exactly midnight, should be Juveaurt Eve back in the city, the march in the morning the strike at high noon.

Mickhi picks up his burner phone and short wave jammer at exactly 00:00 almost midnight Sunday, he relays a message to be bounced out via Sky Pager to the unit and detachment commanders; “Stand down on Wall Street. I repeat. Stand down on Wall Street. They know, I repeat, they already know the uprising is about to happen. We have infiltration. Get everybody off line. Secure the material. We are staggering the primary hit until the secondary fall back date.”

Before his eventual arrest and execution the father of Sebastian Adonaev held the social station in American society of that of a Duke, a member of the professional aristocracy that preceded the Lesser Oligarchy and Upper Oligarchy. The secret police executed his mother and father and made them ghosts, this occurred late during the melee of the Great Revolt.

And then Mickhi Dbrisk tosses the burner phone into the camp fires. He goes to bed in the cute little Hamptons Dacha knowing hell is breaking out in Brooklyn and it’s gonna get much worse in the morning. He looks at the latest Z.O.B. pamphlet tucked into the latest issue of the newspaper. Some of this rhetoric goes way, way over people’s heads, thinks Dbrisk. It’s like stuff out of the 17^th or 18^th century. It has zero effect on the 70% that can’t read and the upper 20% that don’t read except to escape into their own minds.

One day more!

There’s gonna be a street melee to write home about in history popping and erupting like and avalanche of rage and burning, all day long. Kop Tete, boulay maisons! Cut heads, burn houses. But do it nonviolently! Thinks Dbrisk, I would laugh in the face of futility, had we not been kissed on the cheeks by a divinity.

 

 

Twenty Seven, Grand Army Plaza

 

“The Labor Day Rising”

 

Hold your breath. Breath smoke in if you must, you have to push yourself man, and you have to see things, make connections where you’re not totally sure they exist. You have to count down, you have to blink. To squint, break your knuckles and bleed maybe, bleed in quiet. You have to try, dig in your stuff, you don’t see it.

 

Pity, you can’t. You don’t have any solidarity at all. You don’t even know you’re still a slave. The chornay do. The world reminds them every day.

 

I don’t know if you can picture it yet comrade, the big wink. I don’t know if your mind can see the uprising as it was, how it all it went down. In a heartbeat, all was in flames. Anyone with black skin just being shot down in the street like rapid feral dogs! It didn’t have to be, no it didn’t! We could have reached some settlement the liberal elders said, I fundamentally disagree.

Black lives certainly don’t matter to anyone at all.

Were you to observe the crumble of the high grounds, the moral roads into base animal rage, I think it was enough that one in eight of their men was in prison, I think it enough that one died a week it seemed, a week, a day, every 48 hours? Statistics are all make believe. I don’t think any whites thought the chornay human anyway, so it was a real surprise that they were organizable!

 

The signal was a song, it is impossible to plan an uprising without a good sound track, that’s an old Haitian saying, and the gun fire erupted from make shift big truck alliance barricades and over turned cars, piled by the Grand Army Plaza. And the human spear thrust north, the melee of thousands, supported by millions counted on by no less than five billion souls, take over Manhattan and burn it all down. Light it all on fire.

 

Make them pay!

It was probably not a very good day for those marauders in the front of the flying columns, those the NYPD emptied clip after clip into, as was expected, before being torn apart and beheaded by the mob. The crush and screams of feet pounding the parkway, the blare of the signal song, the gun fire on both sides, fire bombs bursting in air.

 

Perhaps as many as four hundred men and women too plus died in the fire fight to conquer only one square of the board, the Grand Army Plaza was on fire and the Garveyites were killing police officers with the Kalashnikovs the Russians sold them, well anyway the Jews who sold them spoke Russian, but that’s as misleading a term as Chornay.

 

And that eruption, that mostly Noire eruption charged north supported by tens of thousands of masqueraders, there was gun fire all night. You could be sure they’d ban Jeauvert this time for real. What was it really all about? This annual dry run, now that the streets were wet with blood.

The uprising had been about grievances, but it wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about the handful of modest reforms groups put out there on the wire. No, it was about hate and about rage and about decades of powerlessness, about the failure of non-violence and playing the game to advance. Well, anyway what really was there to write about?

 

Sometime around noon on 1^st September a bombing knocked out the power in Lower Manhattan when the ConEd Building blew up. Lead by Z.O.B. agitators, Uhuru fighters and the Garveyite Militia masqueraders broke the police lines at Grand Army Plaza and began marching north toward the City. To the beat of steel drums and Soca, the uprising had begun in great disorder.

 

The Labor Day Parade and its 2.6 million marchers were violently turned back at the Manhattan Bridge with tear gas and water cannons. A good deal of Downtown Brooklyn was put to the torch in the block to block street battels which carried on until September 3^rd, when the barricades hardened at Atlantic and Flatbush; a General Assembly was organized on the first day of the rising and based itself at the Barclay Stadium. There were a wide range of street battles driving the first Labor Day Rising (now called the Great Disorder) which would continue for several weeks in the National News cast as urban looting. The bulk of the rising didn’t utilize short guns or bombings or arson burnings. Just days of rioting and economic disruptions that got recast somehow as black on black crime.

 

The National Guard was called up on 4 September. Barricades and General Assemblies to rally and democratize the people went up also in the South Bronx, and South Queens triggered by same faction that planned the Labor Day rising. It was getting tense as hell. It would not be long before the rebellion spread to other cities in the USA.

 

From Manhattan one could see the signs of smoke rising from Brooklyn below.

 

Concentrated machine gun fire stopped the Negro rebel onslaught at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. The internet went down for 48 hours. Corpses were piled high, no one learned anything in the popular press.

 

 

Twenty Eight, Upper West Side

 

“Debrief Penthouse J”

 

There were fairly tumultuous current events to discuss, reports to file and operatives to brief and debrief, but here was Adonaev talking about a woman, like nothing was going on. Like it was 2011, not 2076 or soon 5773. He was on his own time.

 

Trickovitch humors him.

The safe house roof deck of the House of Trickovitch is on the 17^th story and looks north over the Hudson River valley rolling towards it is the heavens on the Side Upper West, a predominantly Ivoryish district. The George Washington Bridge and Riverside Park form a noble causeway of greenery against the back blue river, scenic but highly polluted.

 

“Cuddling is very sensual,” explains Trickovitch, “my ex-wife and I used to cuddle, before and after having amazing tantric sex. Hot sensuous fucking that sometimes went on for like nine hours. Always, always began and ended with cuddling and candles.”

“So this went on for just two nights.”

“And it was hot and heavy?”

“No, highly innocent.”

“You’ll have to paint another picture.”

“We did on the third day.”

He refers to the two page drawing Sebastian and Dasha made of each other. He began it during the fashion shoot and she came back over and took a picture facing the colorless sketch and later they drank and colored and danced and drank and colored and it came alive.

“I worry about the girl who’d separate my bullets from my gun,” reads Nikh from the picture in the black archive binder where Sebastian keeps his sketches and pictures of women he enjoys capturing, caressing and making into his muse. Pictures of beautiful former Soviet women and post cards to prove it. He’s gotten a much more serious taste for the former Soviet Union in the last six years which has led to monogamous inclinations.

As most former and Postsoviet women demand. Partners as sponsors highly in need of undivided attention if you can’t throw a rubber band bank at a problem, at least worship it.

“What does that mean again in reggae?”

“She makes me want to live Nikholai. She makes me forget the wars we are fighting in Haiti and soon in Haiti and Syria. She makes me want to live and call out to her Dasha Adon until we are old. Have children with her. Not die on some barricade a million miles from home. Not face anarchist trials and accusations of treason and mental illness. She makes me want to take the salt.”

“And forget your past old boy?”

“Especially my past! No more a thousand and one lives of torment and struggle!”

“Old souls! That’s what we are, it is not our destiny to die or have boring lives” Nikh declares.

“Promise me I won’t die poorly in your next narrative!” Nikh exclaims.

He is referring to the latest manuscript being circulated about their club and circle, an epic war story love tragedy revenge opera set in Sudan. One in which Nikholai is cut to smithereens and hung eyes cut out from a tree.

 

A dramatic pause: “Nikholai, this, this is to be the content of my next play, and surely the greatest one yet!”

 

Sebastian doesn’t write “plays” so much as hard to follow multi character, subversivos; Neo-Noires loosely spun off of his life starring his friends, over and associates.

“What about your gun? And the old devil blue moon? Did she pull out all your bullets until you couldn’t shoot at her anymore!? What are you now but a love sick puppy! I have seen your 808s and heartbreaks, I have seen you in your glory and also you a toothless loon howling at moons and lost, last lives,” Nikholai proclaims.

“All we did was make cuddle, man.”

And on that drawing they made in a wilderness tavern before Sunday evening when they parted, her side of the drawing has a note in Russian which translates several ways.

“Sucks it will soon end. Or it is a shame it must end. Or, thanks for the memory its over,” as soon as Sebastian has his Russian friend Marina translate it via a camera phone picture his heart went to his sleeve.

“I will have you know that you speak of too easily of love. You have many times rendered the pandemonium of your emotions into this word, you have unleashed it like these metaphorical bullets on the often undeserving, offering yourself up as bush to be burned before the higher power of your emotions.”

“How now? What makes you so sure my emotions are so hay wire? Why can’t I be of an old soul, old school in which I act on the things that I feel? Why can’t I look into the encounter with this woman and not be overwhelmed? No woman has so effortlessly rendered near murder into tender longing. And the wild fire of her nature consumes me still.”

“You’ve known the broad for two days and a bad moon black out,” Nikh reverts from devilish poeticism back into American English, “No more new speak jive old friend. What I have seen in the decade I have been your closest friend and companion is not like the cycle of moons. It is like the Phoenix. Soaring heroic adventures punctuated by dissents into foul broken madness. Need the laundry list be read before the trip to the super market?”

“There have been bad falls…”

“Only matched by the heights you were reaching before them.”

“Nikholai. I cannot walk away from this.”

“How now! Tovarish you have said this before ruinously! Mali, Israel, Hali, Haiti, Yelizaveta, and Tiputti all were all impossible mountains you climbed in the name of love and good ideals and each time your back broke. See there is your list. The only true victim of your epic promises was you, each and every time.”

“There were more than those. But each ones listed were the epic failures of my human vanity.”

“You did deliver what you promised in Haiti.”

“Only because you all banded besides me.”

“Hear me now friend; you will be remembered by all who truly knew you as a romantic first and a revolutionary second. Your war of words are parlor tricks your ability to lead is what draws so many to you to carry long these overlapping missions, each which you dedicate in hindsight to your love of a woman. Saving lost children, saving whole nations, saving girls who never knew their fathers; these things I will list off at your funeral. But friend, Sebastian, you must check your passions before they make that funeral an event quickly upcoming.”

“Death puts no great fear in man who knows of true love.”

“I will not ever try and temper your ideals, or tell you that you are not really loving these women you invest so much time in. But the broad almost pushed you off a roof friend. You almost took her right along with you. And you’re response to that, is that you love her? What fuckery is this? That is what Dbrisk will say too.”

 

“Mickhi Dbrisk has said that I ought to ride into battle alone on this.”

 

“Well remember that battles you fight for love or wars you start for ideas will be always be rallied to by your companions. You dragged me into the fray over Haiti. I served there honorably because of your pipe dreams. And some good we did surely. Hear me when I say that if you ruin yourself again over a woman, all I will be able to do is give warning. This girl is trouble. And a love battle field is not your historical point of triumph. I’d forgotten too about Birdy.”

“Ah, Birdy. A comic tragedy.”

He almost died.

“A tragic comedy? Who fucking cares. You’ve send your friends off to danger and possible death and risked your life for many worthwhile things in the cap city of being an American. But, but! But please don’t die for a woman who you’ve known but for two nights of cuddles and one night of near life experience. You have a lot to give the world if you can just survive your reckless adventurist youth. Hear it from me, as you heard it from Captain Dbrisk.”

“I’m sorry. This will be the seventh big promise. I will keep it this time. Without reinforcements.”

“You kept your promise to Tiputti. The rest were not even in your powers to promise.”

“I didn’t promise her anything yet.”

“Oh. Well. And what is it you plan to promise then?”

“I promised that we’d see each other again.”

“That’s banal enough I suppose.”

“I suspect that’s easy enough to keep. But there is some question of her man. She asked me am I jealous. Surely I am jealous if this proves to be new love.”

“I assure you it isn’t. But your promises invite trouble.”

“I saw Mickhi Dbrisk the day I left here. We traveled out to Montauk. I told him that I plan to steal her from this man and take her away from the life she lives. I plan to promise her a better life with me at her side.”

 

“You’ve made a good deal of presumptions about her life. How bad it is. How unhappy she is or isn’t’ Are you the knight in shining armor or just a mark, a shill.”

 

“I wrote her a poem.”

“Then I know it’s already too late to talk any sense into you. I suppose I’ll just stand back and watch the buildings explode. And of course stand ready to play the violin at the funeral.”

“Stop being so melodramatic poor droog, I’m sure she’ll partially appreciate it.”

 

That was certainly not the first, last or best poem to be generated in her name and handed over with intent to take her long to bed, and out of Brooklyn and anywhere else on earth, she wanted to go. And it didn’t take but four feckless days to see her again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twenty Nine, District Financial

 

“Black Black Hearts”

 

Sebastian is wearing a rough cut-up brown leather jacket and Daria is wearing a black one. Against her better judgement, they met in early September at the fountain near City Hall; just north of the District Financial.

 

She dressed glamorously as always, perhaps too colorfully for appropriate to having come from university. That was just her way.

 

The fall came up on them all suddenly. The trees became good socialists giving up everything and turning red, at least some of them. The leather jackets came right out. The first kiss had to occur properly. There was so much dynamic tension. Our two scar-crossed, tumultuous lovers have a drink off at the Weather Up. The places is old school, dimly lit with gas lamps; master of a sixteen dollar cocktail short menu. They try everything once.

He pays as is completely expected. He a man, he’s always expected to pay in her culture. Even though she has a black card in her inner thigh pocket. The bill just about empties his checking account. That’s how liquid he is.

 

Buzzed and in good spirits, they go for a walk in the Hudson River park where the creepy anti-capitalist Tom Ottorness statues haunt this haunt. Sebastian used to try and use the sculpture park by the Hudson to explain his proto-socialist views. He prepares to make up a yarn for her amusement.

 

Climbing on one small statue and pontificating, he falls somehow. He twists his ankle and falls, and she catches him with a hard kiss. A real one planted right to stop him from ruining anything with his chatter. She blows hope down his lips, gives him so much reason not to feel pain.

He fell before he could tell a long, old soul story. He had just begun to craft her tale when in his big leather cowboy boots balancing himself on the back of a large copper turtle pedestal he tripped himself up coming down hard on his right foot as it twisted making wet crunching noise in his mind.

He’s in terrible pain and thinking something in him is torn. And then came her opportune kiss. It was quite opportune. She keeps kissing him, upside down while putting on a song from her phone somehow ‘Black-black heart’, but not until she uses her tongue to never let him utter a cry or a yelp even.

She swallows his tongue. Upside down.

I only kiss you because you are in pain, she thinks.

Please, please Dasha; just keep kissing me he thinks.

           

But eventually the time for kissing has to end, late on a Wednesday. She recalls her warning, “Are you a jealous man?” She has a bed to return to in Brighton and he buys her a cab with the very last of his money. He presses green notes into her hand.

 

I am a jealous man when it comes to you he thinks. Cuddled just twice, kissed just once.

 

“I belong to another man. I do owe him a lot,” she warns him.

“I’m not in trouble, or abused. I am a mostly happy girl.”

“Kiss me again.”

“I will. But don’t get used to it happening forever.”

 

The cabby shuttles her off into the night and he curses his ongoing unrequited love life. He asks the heavens which are blotted out by the district; “Why me! Why must I always go after that which I can’t have so all claim, even her.”

 

But the first kiss was a true kiss and Daria who has sworn off affairs as of lately likes the way he felt on her lips and she therefore swears that she will see him yet again because he is passionate and she has read long Russian tales of men and what they do when they open their hearts and then close their eyes so it seems this Sebastian has.

 

“I’ll call distraction and will keep you from wanting me to have your last name,” she vows to the moon as she crosses the old bridge back to Brooklyn.

 

“But you do distract me, and this may end so terribly. What have I done this time,” she wonders. Then she yanks him into the cab and off toward Brighton Beach they go via the Tunnel which is the only way in, the only way the through the blockades and street fighting lawless tumult.

 

Her tits in his palms, her tongue working his mouth the cap driver as if non-existent. And this transaction would go on indefinitely for many more moons.

 

 

T h i r t y, Near Barruch College

 

“Blessings”

 

I call out for her still into the death of a black ghetto night!

I will tell you know now, most dear tovarish, a story of our times. For if in the past I have written you of things that were and things that also could be; of fanciful alternate lives; or perhaps of wars or magic beyond your range of site and passions beyond your range of feeling. I have now set pen to paper to put down the events of our common year 2011, 5773 in the year of my tribe the Ivory. Known in your argots and crude vernaculars as the calendar year of the Hebrew people, the loathsome Jews.

 

We found ourselves in that year in the City of New York, a city where no one I had grown up with could live anywhere near the center for a mass of aristocrats, entertainers, money handlers, robber barons and oligarchs had pushed us all into their service living in the districts that ring the rivers East and Hudson. And in that year I was surrounded as was my way with former and post-Soviet gangsters, with newly arrived immigrants, with various Muslims and mystics, with Caribbeans & subversives, with ambulance workers, with jazz musicians with those who live the life of night. The right composition of any good dancehall party.

And then, living most precariously in a string of south and central Brooklyn apartments, making the kind of small talks I’d made for years, small talks of very, very big things I was reminded of an Old Russian saying, the words of some bathhouse mystic; that:

 

‘If I saw the size of my blessing coming, I would understand the magnitude of the battle we must fight.’

 

Someone said that to me in the winter preceding the Labor Day Rising.

 

And, for years I had been part of a little embattled Otriad, a small group of idealists and EMTs, of visionaries, malcontents and perhaps also some hard radicals, a group of paramedics and their sympathizers that had on an island off the Coast of Galilee, Rhode Island pledged their meager resources to building a resistance movement. A movement which we certainly did not begin and will not perhaps unlikely see the freedom and equality for which we have prepared to lay down our lives and accepted as our duty to act upon.

 

On Labor Day of 2011, we participated in failed and foolish uprising in the borough of Brooklyn and most of us were killed.

 

I told my brother Benny in a letter, ‘that I do not know if the resistance is now 40 or 4 million women and men. I have not spoken to my commanding officers since 2007. I do not know where Commander Solomon is, if she is even alive. I do not know where General Avinadav DeBuitléir is building his secret army in Mother Africa, if still alive.’ I told my expatiated brother, that ‘I took my orders from Tel Aviv in the fall of 2001 and have attempted to carry them out to the best of my human agency, despite so many setbacks and perilous dehumanizing conditions we all have faced.’

Shortly after publishing a manuscript about the events of the uprising and uprising, as I remembered them the secret police dragged me off the street, into an ambulance and I spent some five weeks in the camps. And then was released, as if nothing happened, but everything was different.

I then, broken and despondent I met a woman on the roof of my family home in the District Financial which changed everything. For this was the most important woman of my life. And I was to battle and die for her, over, and over and over again! Tragic hero made me! She was and is the bravest one. I play along.

How now, this was to be the story of her future and my past, everything would take on new significance. I cannot fail this time, for so many other times there was been such a dashing of hopes!

            Over five thousand years we have had our hopes so dashed, we Jews we Ivory ones.

I digress, as if mad with love and war and such high emotions.

            They wear these black furry hats on Friday. They often smell, and don’t ever make eye contact with gentiles. There are a total of eleven Ivoryish ghettos in New York City, but only one Russian Quarter, split into two zones; Brighton & Star City. The Brighton Ghetto, called by the Central Intelligence Agency Camp Alpha 1; It begins south of the Kings Highway and runs all the way to Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Coney Island and Seagate (the gated community on the water). The Russian Ghetto’s Bravo Camp, called this because here would be settled the more dangerous and subversive elements was Starette City, also called Spring Creek. This was built on a swamp between the highway and the very worst part of town’ District East New York.

There are a lot of Ivories living on and around the Brighton quarter, but they get less religious the closer you get to the water front. They lived in the bigger, nicer houses, especially the Syrians. No Ivory’s live in Star City, and frankly a good deal of the second ghetto has been repopulated with African Americans after the triage decade of 1989-1999 when the newly arrived post and former Soviets were screened for Democratic Confederalists, KGB (FSB).[19]

           

During the week Sebastian goes to Southern Brooklyn twice via the Q train to attend paramedic academy on Kings Highway and Dasha goes North on the Q to Manhattan’s Clinton Murray Hill District in the east side 20’s accounting school at City University of New York Barack and they illicitly miss each other perhaps and so they meet on a school night and he reads to Dasha poem to her in park as the fall falls in. It will be the first of many poems where his emotions entangle her with worry, where she cannot read his English writing and has the poem read then re-read by a female confidant. The early poems didn’t rhyme as Sebastian began reading Mayakovski and assumed that to craft such pieces meant visceral images not rhyme. He missed the underlying reality of Mayakovski being famous for his rhymes, but in Russian, only the translations couldn’t pull that off.

 

Shortly after the seventeenth poem he changed his entire cadence back to rhyme. This impressed her far more, but that wasn’t until later. And it didn’t impress her enough even then do give him exactly what he was asking for.

 

“You’re always so well dressed, so fashion forward. English doesn’t have enough words for all the grades of beautiful I must be forced to consider whenever I see you,” he says.

 

“Flatterer.”

 

She peers back at him with big curious eyes. They are seated in the Park across from each other looking coy. She’s a flowing blue dress and her tight leather jacket and he’s all composed like he isn’t about to whip out a small pistol, don a mask and take over a subway car over universal human rights later in the week, don’t ever a tell a Russian woman that.

 

“You remind me too much of the artist Mayakovski!” she reminds him.

“Then allow me just to write like him. And act like him. And because this is set in America, with fearlessness I will walk the tightrope between idealism and pragmatic Postsoviet individualism.”

“What does that even fucking mean?” she asks.

“I’m not sure yet.” He replies.

So over time he wrote many poems, each penned just for her then recopied, but they all had cadence alike extolling her virtue and ways, also declaring himself a true rebel, making great cause just for her. Fighting monsters for her real and mostly imagined. Urging her to run way to the West Indies with him.

 

They sat there in a small Japanese pub day drinking lightly. He confided in her a bit about his past imprisonments, his rebel plots his expectations to which she responds only that she pities him. It is not a pathetic pity, only a smug solidarity.

 

 

“I don’t know why you feel like any of this struggle is yours to bear,” she exclaims, “who wants to just fight and fight big inevitable things?”

 

Then she went back to her college and he off to carry out a wild plot to help take over the A train on the anniversary of 11 September in solidarity with the Brooklyn resistance forces, coalescing around the General Assembly being held three times a day on the Barclay basketball courts and all Borough uprisings, Staten Island not actually being a real borough, not in anyone’s imagination at all, they say they’re Italian, but their just a bunch of newly soft Sicilian civil servants, they’re happy doing trash, contracting, police work, hose work and the work of the White Church.

 

It was a happy pity she exhibited and in parting it somehow made him feel loved, respected and strong. But that was not what she intended.

 

 

T h i r t y ONE, Brighton Beach

 

“The Boardwalk Never Ends”

 

If one follows Brighton 6 all the way to the water you arrive at the two Tatiana’s, competing Russian restaurants on the Boardwalk, one blue, one green. The blue one has a better reputation for food and music, the green one for gambling and boxing.

 

They meet the next day they can for a picnic in the warm fall night of September 11^th. She collects him from Blue Tatiana Café on Brighton 6. He carries a burgundy satchel where he’s put inside a four course home cooked partisan meal of rice and cheese and chicken and red wine. He was drinking Borjomi Georgian Mineral water when she found him. He was drawing what looked like a Brighton flooding, and practicing a couple Russian phrases that she’s taught by text message.

She collected him and led him to the sand.

They dine on the beach on a big blanket.

“When it comes time for Halloween festival, and I bite people with real fangs; am I part of your resistance war efforts too?”

“I think not.”

“Well I will have looked in my enemies eyes and tasted their blood!”

“Who are your enemies?”

“All those who oppose the will of Dasha! I am the once and future Queen of all Slavs!”

“To me you are a most benevolent queen.”

“What does it mean benevolent?”

“Compassionate and caring.”

“Ha! There is not even any word for that in Russian,” she lies with a smile.

Sun was setting in its subtle shimmers of red-yellow tones dwindling on the abyss of horizon, but on the desolate sands of Coney Island you can watch the cosmos illuminated retreat for some time before making an abrupt departure into the blackness and glow of a goodnight moon.

The sand is gritty graceful sand, it is populist sand and the untidy refuse of eleven million summarily visitations despite the best efforts of the parks department have left it a tainted oasis, but it has old school charm by the boatload. Adon has seen the beaches of East Hampton and Dasha has four times been off the coast of Turkey, so they have a high standards to work off of, but this place has je ne sais quoi?- It has sand and a mesmerizing effect on some type of minds.

They lay out a burgundy picnic blanket right below the parachute drop with the steeple chase pier in sight just to the west and it seems like they are very much alone in all directions, though a couple vagabonds are late night fishing. She has just come her boxing class at the Underground Gym she has as of lately been attending since the night a deranged man stalked her from the train to her lobby. She has on no make-up, but her hair is well brushed, maintained and flowing, her gym session doing quite little to alter her fresh faced and polished appearance.

That is a Russian art form too, being made up to get groceries, glamorously present oneself for buying coffee, not allowing the elements to chip the facade of womanly presentations.

Adon has just come from paramedic school on Kings highway and has a dark red picnicking back pack, and is dressed similar to how he was at festival, in ems ‘battle dress uniform’ blues and black boots and a scaly cap and a red bandana tucked exposed in a back pocket, in case a woman begins to cry or a riot breaks out due a spontaneous eruption of the lumping proletariat.

 

He has set up before them a three course meal of sautéed mushrooms, broccoli rob, breaded chicken, and pilaf rice accompanied by Israeli avocado salad and three types of cheese that he cannot pronounce and bottle of Chilean red wine. He has brought red and white icon candles and they flicker in the spreading moonlit darkness. Picnicking is a poor man’s refuge at romance and he’s done all the cooking, though he hasn’t been on a picnic in two years. You don’t ever forget how to picnic if you were once good at it, it’s like riding a bike.

 

The rabbis say that an Ivoryish man ought to be able determine if he could marry a woman in but four dates, but Sebastian is only half an Ivory so perhaps it takes seven or eight.

 

“Beg me to let you take me on a date,” she’d once said the night she nearly killed him, and he’d told her he never ever learned how to beg.

 

But, how he’d learn with this one.

She had thought to break plans with him unsure if she could justify her prolonged absence after The Sly Foxing class, but she ran with it in the end, as he had seemingly put all this work in. The food fared much better than she had suspected he was capable of.

He looks so happy! She thinks. He makes jokes and he’s witty for an Amerikanski. Odd how he fetishizes us, she thinks. He cannot speak any Russian and has never been there. Curious fascination.

 

The sun down and the candles flickering she dispenses with small talk to pry out the root of his amorous fascinations.

 

“What is it that you think you know about this Soviet mentality you are always referring to,” she asks preparing well in advance to be disappointed by the answer. She already feels a certain pang of contempt when he switches out of the black suit into this blue paramilitary attire the ambulance workers wear. It was a reminder that this was not the prince in the suit and tie to carry her immediately from this coastal ghetto. It was vaguely unnerving for reasons she had yet to articulate or place why a child of solidly bourgeoisie parents residing in the financial district in that beautiful loft was playing hard not just at proletarian, but at a Democratic Confederalist too! It was if anything vaguely a spit in the face of all the work she’d done to flee, that he who was born with a silver spoon in the greatest city on earth might be romanticizing the cold criminal empire she had fled. But he did it so sincerely that what first might be a laughable nativity took on a charm, a quirky little juxtaposition of opposites.

Well he is bipolar after all.

But what she couldn’t place and what made this boy so interesting was that he was so genuinely interested in her. He seemingly truly believed in these blue collar proclamations he made. Curiouser and curiouser, but she suspected that by the end of this picnic she would be ready to relegate him to a passing hello at the social club. Temper his courtship considerably. Before something happened that might get everyone in trouble. She has a full plate of suitors for a married woman anyway she thinks, what this crazy artist rebel will bring to the table but trouble.

“Well let me attempt that then.”

“Attempt away,” she smirks swallowing down her wine. He is aware that she is perhaps even more magnificent without her make up then when wearing it, he is aware that she is a wild eyed beauty and her coy happy smile never seems to leave her continence open to other interpretation.

“First let me say that I do not mean to casually lump some several hundred million of your former countrymen and women, into a pigeon hole.”

“A rabbit hole?”

“A pigeon hole, it means a stereotype.”

“And rabbit hole is a wild goose chase to nowhere yes?”

He smirks at the deliberate nature of her word games and nods.

“Nor am I so presumptuous as to think without speaking Russian I can mount any attempt at a psychological profile.”

“Less words man,” she smiles.

And he wonders to what extent she fully takes in any of what he will say or has said. And she takes in absolutely everything knowing the power of pretending to grasp a little less than she does in English.

“Ok then, you have no sentimentality to speak of. You have no romantic notions of rose colored thinking, you have no arbitrary beliefs. You have loyalty to no one, no country or code of law, no god, only a tight perimeter of proven personal or blood allies, and these except perhaps in the case of mothers can be severed off the minute they prove, disadvantageous.”

She grins at him and her eyes declare and admiration for what she’s hearing.

 

“More beyond more!” She demands.

 

“The mentality is like a cold ongoing calculation, it weighs the merit of all actions and all alliances. Its root were I allowed to play at the idea is pre serfdom, although that condition is history’s most long running subjugation of a people, by their own ethnic group. The only people to have completely enslaved your own people for over 600 years. And then the Soviet system generated a brutal regime of parapsychological survival of the fittest where by education and corruption were wedded wholly into the national character. And now, the world’s first open oligarchic collectivist mafia state masquerades as the fourth estate.”

“Why do you use so many fucking words man,” she says smiling again. She does like to hear him give these little speeches she realizes. His education is the only proof of his upbringing besides the large loft he resides in. It must be that he not only likes the sound of his voice, but also he perhaps has few people ready to hear him speak on these things.

“Because I think in Russian obviously Dvotchka,” he says. Which means girl.

“Don’t call me that, I’m a lady!”

“Pardon,” he says but can tell she enjoys to berate him for his verbosity and his mispronounced bevy of Russian phrases.

“Alright then. But what in the world could be attractive about that mentality that so fascinates you? I consider myself a little sentimental mind you.”

“Cultural diffusion forges the greatness of this city. The merging of ideas and the fusing of mentalities. You can learn hope and romanticism here and we can learn rigorous pragmatism and parapsychology from you.”

“We, will eat you alive if these things you say are true.”

“I am not such a patriot as to assume that in the result you describe that is an impossibility. But the mentality isn’t so powerful if it is only used for pure personal gain.”

“What good for then? Seems good only for taking care of oneself. If what you describe has truth-ness then all we are commended for is our ability to sell one another, or sell ourselves without being tricked into seeing a purpose. Here is your mentality then, you Americans see miracles in the streets. You believe in too much destiny, in God in heroes. You are not an old nation so you’ve had no time to develop any real culture, and your world views, maybe not a liberal bourgeoisie part Ivoryish like you, but most Americans don’t have a world view. I will now use my words in English to speak to you on things. I’m not sure you know just how little I like Russia, like Russian things, Russian food and people. Everything. I hate Brighton Beach, I hate living in a ghetto. My mentality if you find such things interesting, as evidently you do, is shaped by living in a world where no one but my mother and a small series of men have offered to protect or help me. I’m not tough as you say so many times. I have had a charmed life and around me have been enough people to help me along. My mentality is that of anyone who has been hungry, I have ambitions and dreams. Believe me that my American dream is bigger than yours ambulance man!”

“If you say so darling.” And he pours himself another glass of wine.

“What is parapsychology to you? How do you define this term?”

“Mind games. Clever manipulations via social engineering to get your way. But that’s just the beginning.”

“I have no idea what you talk about,” she says but that’s what anyone who has a bit of game in them fronts like.

“Well you don’t have to put your cards on display at this juncture,” he says.

You’ll never see my cards, she thinks.

“How is the food?” He asks

“It much better than I expect. I would not eating it otherwise. Terrible idea to let men get false notions about their abilities. Especially kitchen and bedroom abilities. ”

“I couldn’t agree more,” he says.

And suddenly they are kissing again. Woops, she thinks with a smile. Passionately he presses her against the sandy ground and rolling about off the picnic blanket they wrestle for dominance lips never unlocking at any moment.

He reads her another stupid poem, which he wrote for her before the train ride. This is not that poem exactly, as she has long since hidden it away with all the others, but this once has a similar cadence. They extol her, they lament the world; they beg her always to take him back near her when the world is not looking, when the world blinks.

Dasha cannot always read the hand writing of Sebastian. She knows what he means because they text prolifically, but she asks him to read each poem in the beginning because she knows he will find the right way to explain his longing.

That night past midnight, after their meal which she appreciates, but isn’t writing home to her mother in Penza over locale; she allows him to read another.

She kisses him passionately again, for what else can she do. He is a hard worker. And then she pauses under the stars and by the coast of Brooklyn to lecture him again.

She has warned him that Mayakovski couldn’t ever get Tatyana his other great love and muse to ever leave Paris for his Soviet Socialist Republic. And he could never get Lily Brik to leave her husband.

“Poor Mayakovski had to listen to them make love from their kitchen. He tortured himself. What if you come to hate me? I cannot ever do anything but travel home with you. You know I keep another man, my boyfriend’s bed is always warm.”

“I will never hate you.”

“You cannot possibly love me! I am selfish.  I am demanding! I want to live in a huge house far from the Russian quarter and not worry about you!”

“I told you I’d never beg for a date once. I told you we’d just be associates of Ernesto and the Mehanta Social Club. I’m sorry to say that I cannot be rid of you.”

“If I order you go you will go?”

“Why the tortures? Are my poems not true, are my lips not soft?”

“All lips are soft when the man is still alive!”

“Dasha I love you! Does your man have this much desire in him?”

“We have been together for 5 years. He is the first and mostly the last man I’ve known here. He is hard working and good to me. He gives me things you cannot.”

What does a man say to the cold dead face of reality?

“This tryst is no real tryst. It isn’t an affair. You have tasted me, and I have nurtured your passion, and enjoyed it! But how far can this go! Please don’t beg for love that I cannot give to you. You will meet another woman in a month, I will be forgotten between the bed sheets! You have confessed to loving others before, you will again.”

He looks her dead in the eyes.

“I do not write frivolous things.”

“What is frivolous things?”

This is always the ice breaker to what will be a series of escalating fights on whether his love is real.

“I write to you from my heart which will not beat for another ever the same way.”

She kisses him again.

“What are all these kisses for when you say you will always feel nothing?” he asks.

“I didn’t tell you I feel nothing for you! I told you that we are nothing to feel anything about.”

She shoves him, then pulls him in close to her by his collar.

“I am going to tell you how to make love to me, with dripping hot wax on my back” she says.

“I’m going to try and teach you how to seduce me with much less words.”

They stay out all night holding hands and kissing in the late night Brighton Jazz Cafes. She pours the hot wax out of a red candle and presses their hands together and bites his tongue.

When they finally part neither can stop turning around and smiling at the other, checking to make sure it really is to be over.

 

They look, and they smile, and they walk a little more and look more, and look, and then it’s time to go home.

 

But finally she’s gone and he has to watch her go back to her man’s home and he just holds her memory close and boards the Q train back to the barricades near Atlantic Avenue, to make it on foot through the lines back to the heavily fortified district financial. In the whole night of course there had been no mention of the Siege in Brownsville, of the state of emergency over all of New York. There was no talk of summary executions or civil rights, or the causes of this uprising. He could tell her all about it another day, but he suspects she knows as much as he does. For a very short period of time in real time, time had frozen and the world as he knew it revolved only around this manic blonde creature, this old soul he was reunited with after some brutal time apart, that was a real feeling. A madness was taking hold in America, a mighty wave of retributive violence. But for this moment all he could think about was her.

 

 

 

T h i r t y TWO, 113 Ludlow St.

 

“The Peruvian Friend”

 

Inside the Mehanta Social Club, for now all was quiet and empty. As the traps were all being reset.

Raphael Ernesto Lynch Contreras has known for years that Sebastian was building an army, for they shared a social club, they shared many drinks, they shared a love for Russian women, and they were actual friends! Raphael had done his best to guide him through his long affair with Dasha Andreavna, but there was nothing that could really be done about that.

 

Sebastian was at the end of the day a sad romantic in an age when that was mostly entirely uncalled for.

 

Ernesto was told to put together a little convoy of ambulances and armored flatbed trucks and make my way toward the Bronx through the demilitarized zone. Most of the bridges and tunnels are locked down with check points the only one left is the White Stone. Our aim was to resupply with water and provisions, with rockets and bullets and black bread the fighters serving under Commander Goldbar Allamby in the South Bronx which has also risen up and formed a Soviet in the wake of the Labor Day Uprising.

 

I may be jumping ahead a little bit, thinks Rafael.

Before there was the class war there was dinner.

 

Remembers Ernesto,

In the fall of 2010 I attended a small dinner in the ghetto at the home of Ms. Catherine Hall a regular. Advertised as 8 to late, but I was mostly on time and so were most of the forty other guests, a wide and motley assortment of ambulance men and women, of teachers and students, and other healthcare workers and also some business men and opportunistas.

We are all there to drink wine and hear a short shall we say lecture by our friend Sebastian Adon, who had recently returned to Brooklyn from his two years in exile near Boston where he’d been studying international development on a sustainable basis, he’d improved his vocabulary in those wilderness camps.

            So there we were it was the calendar year 2010 and month was called October and there were forty mostly strangers sharing wine and a range of other dishes Cat Hall and Sebastian Adon had cooked up for the lecture, discussion, whatever. Sebastian was dresses in a blue uniform similar to an EMS uniform, but not the same, faded from the three months he spent in Cuba, DR and Haiti where it was hand washed. It was blue, it bore his name, it identified him as “instructor”, on one arm a white shield identified him a New York City paramedic, on the other arm, the blue and red flag of Haiti, which was also the flag of the Resistance he hoped to enlist the forty of us in. Many had been involved in the five years of smuggle, deploy teach in Haiti, others had written for or distributed the Banshee Newspaper, before it was suppressed.

 

Now, it was again mid-September of 2011and the war had quite begun. Sebastian called my phone and asked I meet him at the Tavern.

 

I wanna pinch your big Peruvian baby face, thinks Sebastian, I wanna ruffle your salt and pepper hairs you happy droog, he was overjoyed at his progress and again asleep to the plots underway. As if he hadn’t even plotted them.

 

Raphael Ernesto and Sebastian are seated across an upstairs gallery booth of the Mehanta Social Club. He’s more serious than he usual is, it may be because he hasn’t been drinking.

“You my friend are heading for some real, real trouble!” Ernesto declares.

“So is the whole City and nation as well, watching the news you can see the story breaking. I can’t stop now.”

Ernesto give him a baby faced look.

“How did you come to need her this fast? Is it sex hanging off her body? It is because you can’t have her so it makes her taste sweeter. Don’t you know brother how dangerous this is for a man! And of course the daily street fighting and arrests, and…” he pauses knowing what Sebastian may or may not know.

“I know. I know. I have felt in like this before.”

“And the others? There were surely others! I’ve seen you drunk over them before.”

Ernesto blows a kiss with his hand, “Amelia! Remember Amelia!”

He does and he regrets that episode fully.

“What are you plotting these days?”

Raphael Ernesto is asking a highly fourth dimensional question. He is Dasha’s old lover. He is a paid member of the Perchevney Bratva, as well as Mehanata’s resident jockey of disks. He is also rebel commander of the Bolivarian Hot Shots of the Cinqo de Mayo Battalion, planning to assault District Financial by air in just three week time taking part in the next stage of the general rising.

“We may soon send medical workers to train the Syrian Free Army in Aleppo, I continue with my paramedic studies, but may be black listed from working in New York.”

It is clear that Sebastian Adon remembers nothing. Or feigns awareness of nothing. He’s speaking of abstract thigns like no war is happening, right now.

No Maria, no Yelizaveta, no Israel, no Havana, no Haiti. Poor bastard, his memories all wiped out by his own people.

Raphael orders another round of Astika from devilishly attractive Martina D. also called ‘Hella’.

“Where do you find enough hours in the day for these external plots and also Dasha Andreavna Skorobogatova?”

 

“This passion has burned hard and fast for three weeks since festival.”

“Did you take her to bed yet?”

“No.”

“Ha! She plays games with you friend. She is fearsome lover, I think I know, I did not bed her myself mind you, I have a wife, but she craved my male attention!”

 

Victoria Lynch is right next to them. When they banter, she is quiet on how foolish such banter truly is. For when Raphael Ernesto can fly off handle when their mutual friend Sebastian forlorns for the fairer sex.

 

“Darling!,” interjects Victoria, “What my husband is saying about caution and taking time is valid. She is not a carnivore though Sebastian. Men buy her everything, but she always travels home on the subway alone and she is always not a floozy. She is strong and dangerous woman for you to be so smitten by. You haven’t the time or the resources for this I fear, and she certainly has a man. Somewhere.”

“Well, anyway that’s all a joke,” laughs Ernesto, “if he was so serious why is she so free to run about at such late hours?”

“More reassuring words please sister.”

Ernesto laughs off the contradiction and swills back his Astika beer. The Bulgarian bar tenders know the sober pensive Sebastian as well as the dumb faltering drunk Sebastian and they wonder what metamorphosis this tale will bring. Disaster has befallen him and glory too and he is not like all other Americans people know. But he believes in things which is dangerous.

The tavern attracts many tales and vice mongering spirits.

 

“Sebastian, just be careful!” orders Ernesto Lynch and gives him a cheers.

 

“Sebastian we love you as our comrade and brother, but be careful she is a Russian woman and you know well what we mean by that. You cannot compete in the ball park of things so you must just be steadfast and loyal and not come on too strong. Please be careful.”

 

Justin and Sasho are down in the sub-basement digging. There is hatch under the chamber called the ice cage. The wall to wall ice box where wall to wall two minutes of binge vodka drinking happens at fifteen dollars a minute. It’s all the same vodka bottled up and cut in various ways. Well the floor it has a hatchway that drops quite deep into a smuggling tunnel out to Brooklyn via the old train lines and out to Coney Island.

They’re not digging a new tunnel; they’re digging a demolition bin so they can completely blow and seal the hatch and tunnel to Brooklyn behind them in the event of a raid.

 

Sebastian, after his palaver with Ernesto and Victoria on the subject of Daria, stands outside with the bouncer James White.

 

“You’re becoming quite a regular,” says James White the former cop, “That’s what they call a poor life decision.”

“I used to come here when it was on Canal.”

“The old place.”

Raided often and burned to the ground in 2005.

The burly Fenian bouncer looks every bit like and off duty cop. Maybe, just maybe he smiles a little bit more.

They’ve spoken amicably of their blue collar nights many times previously. You see when Sebastian is heartbroken, as both Maria and Yelizaveta made him when those two relationships ended he takes back to the tavern, but his will as man is vanquished. That is a polite way of saying he was no ability or will to entice women on the dance or make small talk with young loose women that so fill the dance hall. It was in these periods he got to know Ernesto and Victoria in different capacities.

They had met three years prior at the Tabor Gypsy festival on Floyd Benet Field and he had become a confidant to Ernesto’s revolutionist notions and Victoria’s worries on her husbands’ ways. Ernesto it seemed lack anyone to palaver with on the issues of the world, philosophy or his long held beliefs in socialism, and Victoria on who’s shoulder Sebastian cried about his lost loves was also quite willing to console her about Ernesto’s alleged philander which was not quite real, but wasn’t either quite imagined.

 

“You’re becoming quite a regular I’d say for sure. Slavi lets you in without paying? I’d say that means you’re carrying the card now.”

“It’s a rebel friendly place.”

“For now. It’s quite getting bad up in the Bronx. We may switch loyalties back to those with the truest monopoly on violence.”

“Good to know.”

“All we newly retired civil servants have to stick together,” says James White, “no matter which foreign government might be paying either of our bills this week.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T h i r t y THREE, Midwood

 

“My Dream is to Be Free”

 

The dawn comes to District Midwood, the heartland of Ivory Brooklyn. Crown Heights is Lebuvitch, Boro Park is Bobov, the Satmars control Williamsburg and District Midwood is Modern Orthodox with a West Indian North and a Russian South edge.

 

On Kings Highway and 14^th street in the heart of Brooklyn sits the Methodist Center for Allied Health Education. Most of the aforementioned rising has stayed in the Ghettos and not penetrated the neighboring Ivoryish quarters. But there are endless drones and choppers flying over head as Brownsville and East New York get hit with airstrikes.

 

Sebastian has easily crossed the lines with his EMT badge, a grey bandana and his passport. Profound to all interested is when great sorrow and suffering can exist right alongside everyday life. The Ivory, feign neutrality. The Noires are being killed in a full blown guerrilla war street to street in the ghetto and you can smell the smoke.

 

The bath room door of the men’s room at paramedic school is locked from the inside, the Austrian instructor got his head bit off peaking in while Adon and his old FDNY ambulance partners Shamel Edge and Watson Entwissle count out about 1000 green ones in various denominations all handed over by the Z.O.B. and the paramedic in the Academy class for the father of a fellow EMT whose father was about a week from passing, in a coma, in a Queens Intensive Care Unit.

 

They’re counting out the money for a 10-13 emergency as it’s called. When an EMT or a Paramedic gets hurt. They are sometimes sloppy under takings so the money is getting counted by three impartial men.

 

The Z.O.B. is the mostly unarmed, well lightly armed, militant wing of a clandestine ambulance movement to unite 13,000 EMTs and Paramedics via a newspaper many secretly hand out and at least several thousand read. It is on its seven issue and looks menacing to the powers that be, but has cost a few their jobs and many more at least a few friends.

It is radical in that it demands living wages and recruits volunteers and materials for further subversive EMT training programs on the Island of Hispaniola in the Nation of Haiti.

They seal 1,000 green back dollars in a big white envelope there was no card. Only that the monies came from the Z.O.B., secret arm of the Banshee Association as they paper distribution was titled.

The FDNY EMT Fatima they plan to give the money to is an Egyptian, in all essence its money to bury her father. Not the usual 10-13. She periodically hands out their underground newspaper and that’s partially why Sebastian made this all happen.

If there had been a card, the card might well have ready “Happy almost Ivoryish New Year, We are sorry your father has nearly passed. Under anyone’s reasonable standard of good we have delivered our passengers over twelve years to the shore. Good, bad, we’re not the team with the guns but this meager envelope of cash is our thank you for secretly handing out papers.”

But their colleague is a woman of pride and quiet dignity and didn’t even know why Sebastian was helping. He promises more support, help from the union, he tells her this is what they built the organization to do; take care of one another.

“Thank you. You’re a really good person Sebastian. I hope you know that,” she says.

 

Watson knows Sebastian is great EMT from when they worked together at FDNY Station 35, but he can’t completely vouch for the sanity of the guy. I mean Haiti had changed him. There were so many stories which circulate about the man, some that he perpetuates, others which his enemies do and Sebastian has more friends than enemies, but it is perhaps a weekly spiritual decision on if and when his God will destroy him.

 

That, realizes Watson Entwissle is that the man thinks he has the power of a god perhaps. The will to save Haiti and also EMS and also Syria and also become a paramedic. Watson has seen Sebastian in the streets be a good EMT and he seen him in clubs drunk and dancing and racing for some woman to love him and pin a medal on him with a ring and say, you are my one true. But Watson knows too that Sebastian has impossible expectations. He has had his knees kicked in several time because he tried to fly with wax wings.

 

Watson sees it. They count the cash. And then the girl had a real idea of just how much her class of fellow EMTs could try and give when they had nothing themselves.

 

Outside is the Paramedic Instructor Mikhail Kreminizer, an Israeli Russian Pararescuemen born in Lithuanian before the Cold War supposedly “ended”.

 

“Safer than to just rob a series of banks I suppose,” the juggernaut declares.

A taste of things to come. Runners passed him a black satchel of cash for the young woman earlier, half from Stations in Queens, and half pulled off ATMS in unlimited coding scams.

“Her father is not dead, but he is not alive, and the girl claims they have no money to bury him and that she is already in debt. So we asked all to pass the envelope.”

“What is she to you?”

“A comrade.”

“You fuck your comrades?”

“Not unless the situation calls for it. And this time not so.”

“The Bronx is burning. The National Guard entered the city at dawn. I heard a rumor.”

“A rumor you say?”

“I heard a bomb is going to go off in the district financial, of similar make and modal to the one that blew apart the Consolidated Edison plant on the first of September.”

“What would I know?” Sebastian asks, “Am I a Chechen?”

His eyes dart to assure the coast of the street corner is clear, that no one is in shot ear.

“I know you to be a good deal of many things. You are a marked man.”

“By whom?”

“You made a lot of enemies with your paper. With that train job in 2007. They lynched you in the court of public opinion after Haiti. I admire you. You’re a zealot.”

 

Mikhail likes to assure everyone he is not a man to fuck with. He has looked Sebastian in the eyes and said, “You will never work as an EMT again in this city, but history may absolve you of what you have done by not picking sides. Mikhail is a former Israeli Pararescueman and parapsychology officer for the Israelis security service Shin Bet.

“Do you ever fear putting yourself on a barricade that you cannot defend and ask all you’re closest to help you hold it?” asks Sebastian as Mikhail passes him a smoke.

The big man responds with a phrase in Russian.

“Dasha taught me that word a few nights ago.”

“Dasha, eh.”

“Raspizdia, do you know what this means?”

“A person who doesn’t give a shit.”

“I’m not such a person.”

“So you learned a little, good…but not exactly. More specifically it means the indolent leisure class choosing to nothing with their lives. I know a lot about you. Enough to know you will never work in New York City as a paramedic ever again, know that you are a known radical and working is not really your objective anyway. I know about what you did on that train in 2007, I know about the Haiti operations shall we say scope and scale.”

“What do you know about dragon fly tattoos?”

That caught Mikhail Mastrovitch off guard because he did indeed know a lot about dragon fly tattoos.

“Why do you ask me this?”

He had thought that his data on the student was more complete.

“What do you know about whores?”

“Very little.”

“Where is this young woman’s tattoo?”

“She doesn’t have one. She says she’s going to get it put on soon. I told her our people don’t allow tattoos.”

“Our people?”

“Ivories.”

“I’m an Israeli not an Ivory. And you’re more Chechen than Ivory.”

“How now! What’s it mean big fella?”

“The Bratva tattoos them on its slaves. The ones it sends to snuff and slaughter. Or a black widow job.”

“Which Bratva?”

“Let’s not step too far out of civilian clothes, tovarish. Where does she say she’s getting the dragon fly tattoo?”

“She didn’t say where.”

“I want to pass you a perhaps un-subtle message.”

“Pass away.”

“Do you have any idea the kind of monsters you’ve antagonized since you came back from Israel?”

He pauses and breathes out smoke.

“I have some idea.”

“You are marked to die. As your friend and de facto mentor, as a future brother paramedic. You are about to start a war you are not highly likely to win. And they will punish you and everything you love will burn and suffer. Fighting from a position of strength has never been your strong suit. How’s you Hebrew these days.”

 

“Ha Halom Sheli, Likhiot hoffshee.” My dream is to be free.

 

“I left you a good luck present in the third sub-basement of the garage.”

“What is it?”

“A racing bike. It’s going to get a lot harder to get though the lines tonight. And there’s clearly something you need to do in the district. Luck.”

Sebastian wonders if it’s also a remote controlled pipe bomb, like the old ones.

“Luck. Toda.”

“Stay away from Ms. Dasha she’s a honey pot job at best and there’s blood in the honey. I’m not saying you don’t lay pipe right, but you live with your parents and are in school to be a paramedic; what the fuck is she doing with you?”

“She likes my poems. Who’s she work for then?”

“Probably no-one.”

“No-one is the most dangerous fiend of fiends.”

“Even worse somehow to work for no-one, but destroy the world yourself.”

“That’s a lonely road to travel.”

“Shanah tova if I don’t see you.” Happy New Years

“Shanah tova, as you probably won’t, black cat.”

“What year is this again?” Adon asks.

“It’s the year 5773.”

“Amazing! So far now in the future! No one knows anything anymore about the past or the future! So much fucking possibility!”

 

“No One, knows a lot a more than you think Tovarish Adon.”

 

 

 

T h i r t y FOUR, 113 Ludlow

 

“New Year’s Communique”

 

Slavi the enforcer doesn’t need a list, not the the drop of a name. He either knows the face of a regular, or you pay and that’s it. For a regular takes responsibility for the trouble caused by those he or she brings to the Tavern. Mehanata is lit up this Thursday for almost Hebrew New Years, mostly an excuse for Z.O.B. officers to congregate, report and have a beverage.

 

Step down the hall go straight, not upstairs, go past the coat check unless you want to be robbed, open the second wooden door and leave the time, space zone. The lights are now quite dim, the place is still cast in a dead, red light and loud gypsy Jazz is playing from the band below. Welcome to Mehanata, the Bulgarian Tavern in the wilderness of North America.

 

10 September, 2012, or also called the Ivory New Year. AR 0 as we call it now, ‘After Revolt’. The Bronx was being surrounded by the National Guard. All of the bridges into Long Island, which we all now call Strong Island were check pointed close. The National Guard opened fire in the North Bronx at a demonstration shortly before midnight. This was the Bronx though, the Bronx fired back.

 

Although Hebrew New Year begins right before sundown.

Card stock place holders on candle lit tables towards the back of the third floor declare several long wooden tables: “Reserved for the Banshee Otriad”.

 

Thirty two core and provisional members of the New York City Banshee Association, a clandestine organization of EMTS, Paramedics and Emergency workers are drunk and loudly occupying the third floor mezzanine of the Mehanta Social Club.

 

Except for the club’s current Chief-of-Staff Haitian Paramedic Emile Cange, who is a nominally straight laced Seventh Day Adventist and his fiancé Praise Augustus, well it’s almost midnight and the music is blaring dancehall in their honor, and Adon is calling for a toast.

A running joke in the club was that for the past decade or so they never seemed to miss an opportunity to go drinking on an Ivoryish holiday.

There are a lot of Ivoryish holidays, approximately twenty of them resulting an innumerous number of work days to be taken off on top of the Friday into Saturday Sabbath, which man of the club members had paper work submitted to their employers, were their shops union stating that they couldn’t work on these assorted holidays and also, Fridays past 3pm.

 

At some point Trickovitch had sat down with a calendar and made the calculation that utilizing the Ivoryish religion’s observances, one could get a whole lot of rest. And it caught on. Pretty soon over half the club carried bonifed conversion papers, certificates of bar mitzvah and briss where appropriate, kutb marriage contracts, the world.

Nikholai and the man named Lt. Moishe Klein, the clubs only actually practicing Orthodox Ivory had made some Russian rabbis in Brighton a good price and long term agreement they couldn’t refuse.

 

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1, happy new year!” Adon slapping Mickhi Dbrisk the back. Although, it is till two actual days to Ivory New Year, this being the Rosh Hashanah Pregame Party for the club’s inner circle. The New Year’s itself doesn’t fall on a weekend. But Thursday is an adequate party night too.

 

Adonaev, with a grey flash in his eyes is now dead sober somehow. As if the drinks he’d pounded, all five Astikas and three Stoli shots, and the bottle of red, then white there were glasses real cold glasses of bubbly Borjomi mineral water.

 

Somehow in the Melee of the dancehall, in flashing light and flickering candles of this tavern he had tuned out his fun and put upon the game face mask of his title, Chief Planning Officer of the Banshee Association. Surely not all thirty two of the guests were beyond all pale of corruptibility, but Banshee was proto-trade union with a 10-13 fund and an underground ambulance newspaper. Anyone could sign up.

But now at the round dimly lit table at the end of the long catwalk above the main dance floor, past an easily removed barricade was seated Dbrisk, the Bajan businessman Magnus Goldbar Allamby, who always carried in his own sweet wine bottles; Mara the half pint Fenian always drunk at these things, Trickovitch, paramedic biker Anya Drovtich, Nicholas Mapfre (only there under peer pressure and perpetually nervous), Chief-of-Staff Emile Cange, a paramedic and Adon the leadership as it were, out of sight, out of mind looking over a document printed on grey card stock, downloaded and translated just the night before.

 

The Anonymous, the vast anarchist hacker underground had circulated a cut and paste manifesto. One which Banshee could never overtly endorse, but certainly various operatives of its armed wing, the Z.O.B. were certain to lend their talents behind. It is to be a collective response to the uprising and its grievances.

At all major Banshee gatherings, there was copious amounts of booze consumed, the Mehanata Social Club such a choice place for meetings and for gatherings for it was loud and rowdy and hard to bug, or hard to track the ins and outs, hard to see who signed what, under who’s name, easy to deny anything.

A version of this document had circulated for weeks, the uprising though aborted on the labor day weekend had to meet the popular response, the demonstrations happening in all the boroughs; the wild anarchy about to happen on 17 September, 2011 when the anarchist federations, unions, socialist parties, student groups and the usual left suspects sought to again storm the District Financial.

This thing they’re all signing, it’s written in Ivory.

 

Declaration of a State of Emergency in New York City

Communiqué #01

 

Activation of all Z.O.B. cells and working groups in New York City and Abroad.

In response to mounting grievances and human rights violations here and abroad.

 

The following institutions will effective 09.10.12 be considered ACTIVE ENEMIES of our people and the human race generally. Their businesses, affiliates and shareholders shall be subject to BOUYCOTT, DISRUPTION, SABOTAGE and GENERAL SANCTION for their crimes against humanity.

 

1. OLIGHARIC COLLECTIVES IN ALL NATIONS.
2. ALL WAR CRIMINALS AT LARGE.
3. ALL INSTITUIONS ENFORCING LEGISLATIVE CAPTURE VIA CAMAPIGN FINANCE.
4. ALL ASPECTS OF THE MILITRAY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
5. ALL ASPECTS OF THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
6. ALL ASPECTS OF THE NARCO-TRAFFIC
7. ANY ASPECT OF THE SEX TRADE OR SLAVERY RELATED ENTERPRISES.
8. Pornographers
9. Strip clubs

• Escort Services

1. Brothels
2. Pimps
3. Traffickers

• Mail Order Bride Agencies
• Bonded labor of any kind

 

1. ANY LABOR EXTRACTING INDUSTRY EXPLOITING THEIR WORKERS
2. ANY GROUP OR CORPORATION WHO’S PRACTICES DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT.
3. ALL FINANCIAL INTITUIONS PARTICPATING IN OUR ECONOMIC BONDAGE.

 

THE Z.O.B., alongside the GENERAL RESISTANCE ALLIANCE-GENERAL COORDINATING COMMITEE (GRA-GCC) AND ALL MUTUAL AID BOUND AFFILIATED SISTER ORGANIZATIONS WILL POST BILLOTS, DECEMINATE OFFICIAL WARNING VIA THE LOCAL PRESS AND ALSO THE INTERNET.

 

ALL CORPORATIONS, RELIGIOUS INSTUTIONS, FINANCIAL FIRMS AND GOVERNMENTS WILL HAVE THREE DAYS TIME TO CORRECT THEIR INJUSTICES BEFORE ACTIONS AND GENERAL ACTIVE RESISTANCE OPERATIONS COMMENCE ON SEPTEMBER 17^th and build toward a an international general strike on THE 1^st of January, 2013.

 

1. THE Z.O.B. IS EXPLICETELY AGAINST VIOLENCE TO PROPERTY AS WELL AS PERSONS AND PEOPLE. ANY VIOLENT ATTACKS, PROPERTY VANDALISMS AND ACTS OF TERRORISM ARE NOT ENDORSED BY THE MILITANT HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND SHOULD BE PUBLICLY CONSIDERED THE WORK OF UNAFFILIATED RADICALS, AGENT PROVOCATEURS, SPIES, INFORMANTS, AND THE COUNTER INTELLIGENCE PROGRAMS OF THE STATE AND ITS VARIOUS SECURITY APPERATUSES.

 

1. THE Z.OB. BEGINNING 17th September, 2012 WILL CARRY OUT ONE OPERATION A DAY AGAINST ALL LEGITMATE WAR CRIMINALS AND THEIR AFFILIATED INSTITUTIONS WHO BY THEIR ACTIONS VIOLATE OUR UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS.

 

OUR AIM IS TO STRIKE THESE VIOLATORS IN THEIR POCKETS AND BRING PUBLIC OUTRAGE AND ATTENTION TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO RUIN OUR NATION AND REDUCE THE WORLD TO CHATTEL SLAVERY.

 

1. ANY ATTEMPT TO ARREST OR MURDER OUR ORGANIZERS AND SUPPORTERS WILL RESULT IN EXPONENTIAL INCREASE IN RESISTANCE OPERATIONS.

 

1948. THE Z.O.B. WILL NOT STOP FIGHTING UNTIL EVERY LAST WOMAN, MAN and CHILD HAS BEEN GRANTED THE FULL 30 HUMAN RIGHTS AS CODIFIED AND PROMISED BY THE UNITED NATIONS and ALL PARTICIPATING NATIONS in 1948.

 

9. WE, HEREBYE ON 09.10.12 DECLARE UNRELENTING WAR ON THE CLASS OF THOSE THAT HAVE FOR GENERATIONS RAPED, ROBBED, CARRIED OUT GENOCIDE, AND INSTITUTED SLAVERY UPON THE COMMON HUMANITY TO WHICH WE ALL BELONG.
10. NO QUARTER WILL BE ASKED, NOR EXPECTED.

• WE WILL BRING THESE OLIGARCHS, BANKERS, BUSINESS MEN AND CRUEL DESPOTS, war criminals all to their knees to stand trial for what they have done and VIA OUR RESISTANCE WE WILL FORGE A WORLD OF DIGNITY, EQUALITY AND FREEDOM.

 

HUMANITY THIS IS OUR CALL TO ARMS.

NEW YORKERS THIS IS YOUR BATTLE CRY.

THIS IS A WAR TO THE DEATH!

 

The People of New York will lock arms with the people of the world and the dream of freedom which has been crushed for generations will carry our uprising to its full and inevitable victory.

 

 

That following evening of September 11^th Sebastian and dozens of other activists using the Cely-Signal-Telegram text dispatch system, boarded the subway cars with flicker masks and blue fatigues. They took nearly every train line hostage across 5 boroughs, all numbers, letters and colors. Terror and spectacle abound! Not even one lethal bullet in the guns, which almost no units even had to brandish; the captive audiences were petrified or participatory in the aktion.

 

Sebastian’s unit A08 took over the A train Manhattan bound from the Rockaways alongside an anarchist named Spike, the actor Siegfried Sassoon, Fenian Mara Fitzduff and an Otriad film maker named Nicholas Mapfre. And eight back up team members whose names and faces he didn’t have to know.

 

Sebastian once road this self-same train to and from his Star crossed lover Yelizaveta Kotlyarova Perechenova, but now in his rapid speeches and flying mannerisms he dedicates this to all his injured people’s in domestic and also far flung lands. One night, this raid to redeem his American hypocrisy; to take over a train because his love is a warrior’s love. He has been sleeping for how knows how long, but it’s coming back to him slowly. What his place is in the chain.

Dasha called out to him earlier on the black berry smart phone to ask him be careful. She is no damsel in distress and he is no Shamel Basayev, yet. But she knows him much better than he knows she or she works for. She knows he’s waking up from a day dream.

Trains are stormed all over the city for mostly militant public addresses and passing out of homework assignments from big grey bags. Although, all of them are emptied right before the District financial where many cross.

 

Emptied and dynamited. The bankers take cabs to work, caps or ferries or are driven. This is to keep all of their surfs away. Deter servitude.

 

The speech needs to be cut short because he gives it over each transfer of the cars. Sometimes Spike or Siggy or Mara Fitzduff give the speech. It begins with, “My name is Zachariah Artstien, an organizer with the human rights resistance! Affiliated with the Z.O.B., we are not here to hurt anyone or take your money! We are here to declare that you have human rights and we must now link arms and fight for them.”

 

“Today is the 11^th of September, when ten years ago the Oligarchs manufactured an attack on us to secure their power and control. In six days the People’s Army of the General Resistance Alliance will attack the District Financial! If you ain’t running with it run from it!”

 

New York is the city of such theatrical disturbances. It’s also a mind-your-fucking business city. Its people are also heavily armed. But no on pulls on them tonight.

 

“Please don’t get yourself shot to ferment hope for you alone,” Dasha warns him and she hopes he isn’t killed because he is capable of making a woman care about him. But perhaps not her on a long enough time line.

 

Sebastian and his associates with their scary flikr masks, one with a video camera tell tales of the People’s Protection Units of Rojava. Of Ivory apartheid. Of the one Noire or Mestizo youth killed every 48 hours by the police. Of the 1 in 8 American Noire men in prison. Of war, endless war consuming all around for the dubious purposes of Afghani and Iraqi and Persian “liberations”. The conspirators film the whole thing, in case they are captured or killed. For the viewers at home on the Livestreams.

After all the tales end, told by the three hostage taking narrators, “We are sorry for our operations washing aside considerations of your health and safety. You cannot join us, we are organized tight as drum, but go to your churches, mosques and temples, your gangs, crews and neighborhood councils, stay strong and carry on as we are all under siege together.”

 

And to a captive train load an adaptive audience held hostage, the cameras of Nicholas Mapfre running, Sebastian began a speech, about a four minute speech per car.

 

“Hyper-development is the physical and moral state of core country populations that result from proximity to overabundance!”

 

“While each core country maintains an underclass of newly arrived immigrants, ethnic subturns, welfare subsidiaries, helot serfs and others are utilized for domestic exploitation on a variety of levels. Low cost wage labor, military or police service, undesirable or dangerous work, service sectors and prostitution; jobs considered below the acceptability of core ethnic identity in power.”

No one got up to open fire on them yet, which was good, as they were wearing blue uniforms and crazed masks in the age of public transport terror.

“Noires in United States, Algerians in France, Turks in Germany or various former colonial groups in England. However, nearly every person citizen or undocumented migrant residing in a core country can despite low probability of achieving meaningful wealth; access a range of social services, enjoy relative security and purchase a full range of consumer goods. Hyperdevelopment affects all within the territories of the Core.”

“While clearly some of the highest Palma Index and GINI coefficient variances occur within the core at rate in the United States of 47 to 1 in wealth difference; hyper development is the result of goods, commodities and general capital flows back to the centers of financial hegemony; New York, Berlin, Geneva and London.”

Now Spike Timchenko jumped in, his mask was a grimacing ghost sleep no more mask;

“While the political directives of the USA form the overt course of policy and international relations; shared race, history and basic cultural religious values have allowed for Euro-American elite consensus to function more fluidly than its 1945-1989 core contender and nemesis the Soviet Union grappling with a far wider ethnic elite, a less structurally manageable economic system and a far new set of oligarchs; the inner circle of the Democratic Confederalist Party, KGB and subsequent energy moguls.”

He wonders if they understand anything he’s saying, wonders if they have unplugged from their smart phones and iPods.

Spike continues;

“Hyperdevelopment leads to things like the US obesity epidemic, high levels of moral decay such as the feminist consensus that 1/3 women in the US is a victim of sexual assault before age 18. It is access to too much food, constant imperatives to purchase more of everything, the owning of multiple vehicles per family, the imagined entitlement to home ownership and the ownership of homes far in excess of what a family unit requires. It is an exaggerated sense of importance and uniqueness.”

He concludes as the train rumbles into the upcoming station.

“It is a complete apathy as to what is occurring not only in one’s own community but certainly the rest of the world. It is media over saturation; constantly plugged in cell phones, movies, music and video games. It is a decline in meaningful literacy, a tacit embrace of ethnocentric white (in the case of the current hegemonic order) supremacy. It is over availability of print media and pundit debate, but relatively poor engagement of the political machine itself. It is the right to vote between red and blue flavors. It is a severely myopic world view manufactured by the educational system and media.”

 

“Power to the people!” an old Noire man says and pumps his fist.

 

“We are asking for you to work in sympathy with the resistance,” says Adon.

“We have a bag of homework assignments. Simple ways to assist the general strike and uprising coming on 17 September. The best way you can assist it is to join us in the streets. If you cannot stay at home. Wall Street will be a battle field. Support the Résistance anyway you are able.”

They were mostly greeted with quiet applause, but no one shoots at them or turns them in. And in this city that counts for something. Most people take home work, perhaps largely out of curiosity.

Later Sebastian and his three cohorts are at the end of the line and the job has been carried without any of the possible predictions of arrest by the authorities or mob violence against them. A sigh of relief.

 

“It’s nice to see that on the eve of September 11^th, 11 years later, security is tight as drum,” notes Spike Timchenko an anarchist childhood friend of Zachariah, the sometimes nom de guerre of Sebastian Adonaev.

 

So when Sebastian gets back to the financial district and he confirms around 2am with Dasha he’s alive and she breathes back a sign of near panic. He writes poems for her. Places them on old school gold painted stationary, dedicating resistance to her, although to her, it is more like street theatre carried up on a moving, highly privileged stage.

 

She texts him;

 

“I made you a picture of your bleeding heart.”

 

Bleeding out yes, unasked for and unheeded, a mighty pump. His heart was quite known to hemorrhage over little and for nothing. And certainly at the invitation of No One.

 

Who then was this Mr. No One, the handler, the man in the control room playing with all the pieces and running the show? What did the management of this species have in mind, an old question, what great game was afoot!

 

 

 

 

T h i r t y FIVE, Brighton Beach

 

“The Russian Quarter”

 

The Russian Quarter is always teeming with life. Were I to put my finger in it; my nostril to the whiff beyond her buxom chest; it smells like potato pancakes, cherry perfume, cigarette smoke and fish. Smoked fish. It runs along and below the above ground Yellow Q and Orange B Express train line which rumbles above like a mechanical wave breaking in the six story tenement row houses made of red brown brick. Following the Q line above ground the architecture of the quarter goes from a mix of these artless, durable six stories inter mixed with modest suburban homes running towards the coast. The Northern most boundary of the quarter is Kings Highway because it is here that street signs appear in Cyrillic[20]. Although the overlap with Midwood Ivoryish zone overlaps with the Russian quarter until avenue H where the Haitian Bar Lev line was drawn in 1996. Drugs nor guns nor traffic can move north of that line or south. District Midwood is one of eleven Ivoryish ghettos in the greater New York area, a place of prayer and tunnels and coming and going. Sebastian Adon lived in that district for eight years on Ocean and H. He knows its comings and goings

 

The Russian quarter is awash with small restaurants with live music sung by comical tamidahs and various slender, busty, well made up on every level Slavic goddesses. And prix fixed meals. Its western border is Coney Island Avenue, which at Kings Highway becomes a Pakistani district where Shar’iah law is secretly enforced.

 

Coney Island Avenue runs parallel to Ocean Avenue to the east and ocean parkway to the west, and these three routes had to be thoroughly barricaded to turn back the advance of the National Guard and the 104^th and 116th tank column of Christmas Eve; 2015 or in the parlance of the rebels AR 3. That is still three years to come.

 

 

The eastern border if the quarter was Nostrand Avenue. Where the Russian quarter ends and the West Indian quarter begins, largely composed of Haitian s and Jamaicans. There were never walls around the quarter, not before the revolt or after not even when the southern rim of Brighton and Coney Island because the internationally famous green light district once the Soviet was recognized by Russia and China in AR 7, or 2019 Common Era. There were not physical walks but perhaps linguistic mental walls that trapped the mentality of those.in the quarter somewhere between the 18th and 21st century. Perhaps between the old world and the new. Perhaps rendering the seditious place it was and is, a place unlike any others where by huddled refugees and expatriate radicals were walled in Brooklyn habitations in a space that was neither Russia nor America, a purgatory. For had the three million souls of the future Brooklyn, excuse me Brooklyn Soviet ever been embraced by the Americans perhaps they would not have enjoined the rising. For what solidarity did those in the quarter have with Ivoryish spies and black revolutionaries? Nothing. Less than nothing. So little nothing that the majority of the quarter might have seat the whole thing out, we’re that an option. But with all the other tribes in arms and the National Guard shelling so indiscriminately well most joined in the rising before long simply to avenge or protect their own.

That is a characteristic that certainly embodies the Russian quarter. They rugged are social individualists. As in their circle of live work and loyalty contracts rapidly even in the face of minor hardship. No other race has ever been fully enslaved by its’ own people first via serfdom then via Stalinism. It ruined them as a collective or idealist species. That circle of loyalty contracts down to one. Themselves in away few other races do. At a certain point they might throw their children and wives into the raising seas. A wretched generalization but their individual will is harder than any. It is impossible to break. The social nature if their individualism is the solidly of the alliances they form. With anyone that properly secures their ends of individual betterment. They are turtle loyal and truly blind for those that aid them. They go inside a hard shell indeed and not god or insects can crack it. It is made of strongest stuff

Perhaps never not even ever having anything but predators as presidents and thieves for kings. Often the Russian quarter was festive, often feisty often a place of lawless abuses. You couldn’t ever know unless you knew the name of a song in Cyrillic.

 

Daria met him on the boardwalk. Sebastian stood there smoking a Newport sizing up the Green from the Blue Tatianna’s nothing knowing how different they were. He was sleep deprived.

 

She had told me this rambling story about being the great granddaughter of a German baroness. This seemed like the kinds of stories all White Russian women concoct to erect a regal lineage that the revolution had maligned. Yelizaveta and Maria hadn’t made up such stories, they had others though that were comparable. But Yelizaveta and Maria’s fathers had been Red Russians[21] and inner party members. They were less fixated on the 19^th century it seemed.

 

There were always these vague and ambiguous narratives Sebastian noticed about what their fathers did or didn’t do during the Soviet Union. Maria’s father had completely disappeared in Chechnya, allegedly been shot by friendly fire; he had been a General, but was dead before she was four or the family joined the exodus. Yelizaveta’s father had been a “dentist”. Or perhaps an expert interrogator. It was hard to deduce. What was the truth and what was the darkness that creeps out into his world any time he encounters them, these post and former Soviets.

Anyhow, Dasha was claiming to be part Ivoryish via her German Baroness Great Grandmother and that was her story for now. Her father apparently had just been a tramp and run out on her mom at fairly a young age.

She kisses him on each cheek and takes out a picture, wrapped up in papers and a bow.

“For you,” she states.

He opens it and it’s quite something, so black and dark and vivid. A heart. A black, black heart. But, his or hers? To what symbolic level goes it?

“Amazing, I love it,” he replies.

And for the nearly the first time in his life, he means it.

“I’m so glad.” She says with her big blue person eyes beaming?

“Shall we go get red wine?” she suggests.

That night long after midnight, late, late after a few shots, and some wine and a few dozen shared cigarettes in Cafes in and around Manhattan Beach they walk their walk, tumbled really toward to yacht yards and mansion of Sheepshead Bay.

And one point she yanks his collar close and says; “taste me”; she puts wine into him mouth to mouth.

The night gets early, he’s lost chasing her.

He runs his fingers through her thick blond lion’s mane. She leans into him on bar stools or when they go outside to spoke, let’s her tits rest on him, brush against him.

“So you’re really an Ivory?” she asks.

“Yes at least part.”

“I want to ask you silly questions and you will answer them of, she smiles rolling up into his arms, “and you will get a prize if you win, understand. True answers only.”

            “Would you denounce your Ivoryish God and become an Eastern Orthodox Christian to please my mother?”

“I don’t believe in either God’s monopoly, why not?”

“If we were poor would you work on Saturdays to support me?”

“As I have for years.”

“Would you steal for me?

“The moon itself. And whatever was needed.”

“Would you make love to me with my husband sleeping in the next room?”

“Your cries of passion would wake him, so only if he were drugged.”

“Would you kill to protect me?”

“Without a thought.”

“If I killed someone would you help me cover it up?”

“Yes of course I’d try.”

“Try?”

“Try. Depends on the mess not the risk.”

A mental picture flashes in his head of a memory. Was it real. The two of them dismembering corpses and melting them in acid?

“If I asked you to kill for me would you do it?”

“Are you in trouble?” he asks like a stupid American.

“You know I’m a married woman?”

“I’d like to suggest it lacks certain integrities.”

“Does it? How could you known. You’ve known me what, five weeks?”

“Time is relative.”

“Maybe. My husbands a monster and my boyfriend is boring,” is all she says and pulls away from him.

She shows him marks on her poorly hidden.

She has black and blue marks on her chest and under both arms. Like she got herself fucked ruthlessly. She has hand cuff marks on her wrists.

“What do you want me to do about your situation?”

“There is nothing that can be done.”

“I could take you away.”

“You could try.”

“You have to tell me what you want me to do, not what you assume is possible.”

“What’s the thing you Americans say, oh yes: You and what army.”

“What are those marks from?”

“Me being loved by three men.”

He looks sad, it breaks through. Sad for her and him both.

“You could leave with me. Tonight. I have enough money to get us away.”

“I doubt that.  I have expensive tastes.”

“Curb them?”

“Are you going to give me new clothes? And a beautiful home; and pay for my school. And give me a credit card. Give me money to send my ailing mother in Penza? Ivory.”

“I think I could give you a better life than this shit, this life. In this miserable city.”

“You can’t give me what I need. As sweet as you are.”

“I don’t think you’d be with me if you didn’t think I could try.”

“You’re broke. You’re in school. You’re up to shit, I know. Don’t think I don’t know what you and your friends are up to. You’re all gonna die.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you think I don’t know?”

“What do you think you know?”

“I got to know a lot of guys when they brought me here.”

“Who?”

“The Perchevney Bratva.”

“You’ve told me so many fucking stories about how you got here, who keeps you, what’s true. What! You play mind games like the best of us.”

“My girlfriend and I were hired to let a couple bankers work us up two nights ago. When I told you I was studying. I was being fucked by two Wall Street guys, swapping my friend and I for hours. These marks are from them, not my fake ass paperwork husband. Not my generous boyfriend Sergey.”

 

He wonders what if any of the story is real.

 

“The Wall Street guys were fucked out their minds. They were going at us for hours. Taking long breaks to do coke and talk about shit they own.”

He has been asleep because she keep feeding him booze. He wakes up sometimes and knows his role, but then goes to sleep and forgets what is about to go down.

“They know you and the so-called resistance are going to attack the exchange on 17 September. In two days. They know that you’re all going to try and take over the whole district and provoke a state of emergency. They know. The cops know. The National Guard know. The FBI know. The Bureau of Homeland security knows. Breria, knows. They are going to lure you all into those narrow streets and spaces. They’re going to wait one day. They’re going to kill every single one of you with gas. Now you tell me. What horse am I betting on? My fat American husband. My Russian accountant boyfriend washing money at the biggest hotel in midtown? My boss, the Israeli pimp who pays me one grand every night I take a Wall Street guy, a banker or celebrity out to dinner? Or you? The bipolar ambulance man, who has less than 400 in the bank, is on the Department of Homeland Security tertiary kill list, can’t buy me a new life, and can’t save me. All you have is happy noble Amerikanski ideals and some poems. You probably shouldn’t see me again.”

He knows she’s right about at least what’s in his account.

 

“I can get us out of this city, I can take you away from this life,” Sebastian says, “I…”

“You are going to tell me you love me?” she asks him.

He doesn’t respond, that word means nothing anyway in English.

“You better not even fucking dare.”

“I’ll give you my life and I kill anyone who is hurting you. I’ll bury your husband, your boyfriend and your handler. I’ll bury Breria[22] himself.”

She kisses him hard. Fuck it, she thinks he’ll probably be dead in a couple of days.

 

And that was how she began to suspect that he truly was the man she’d dreamed about as a younger girl with the powers she was born with, from a line of old souled sorceresses; and she of course recorded the entire conversation on her smart phone recorder as evidence for her handlers, well we all have them really.

 

Shortly they could cross this very, very loose and erratic cannon off their growing shorter list. He was so fucking out there, he was not to be allowed to walk off the map this time.

 

“I know a little inn at the boardwalks end with mirrors on the ceiling,” she whispers to him, “I have to sleep at home tonight but he’s not gonna come home tomorrow. You can’t save my soul or fix my life, but you can do what you want to my body, if I like it.” Now that was a value proposition, if he had ever heard one. Because he believed in his heart, that sometimes things were like Russian literature and sometimes they were like American movies, but if you fucked a woman good enough and hard enough she would love you. I think that may have been listening to lots of music from the Caribbean, culturally speaking.

 

He couldn’t always trust his mind, but as a gambling man with another man’s woman periodically, he trusted his fuck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T h i r t y SIX, Manhattan Beach

 

“The Mirrors on the Ceiling”

 

 

The following evening came and he was hard for her. In spiritual and conventionally phallic ways too. He sits there on the Boardwalk looking at the crashing waves and the red parachute drop Eifel Tower of Brooklyn lit up neon to the east, the parasol drop with no parachutes anymore.

 

Dasha Andreavna arrives in the cold of night, met him as the usual place on the boardwalk, the outside bar at Tatiana Blues.

 

One astounding thing about her was the variety of looks she wore upon her face. The way she carried her out worldly self, as well as her firm control of her surroundings via her deliberate metamorphosis from often carefree nymph to a severe and serious instructor of social etiquette and use of language. This perhaps this was the result of being born into the tender firm and earthly body of a non-aging and busty school girl, while her memory of events could trace its analysis across four centuries of wax and waning hardship were she ever to stop drinking. Her analogue disposition was that of vast kindness, but she resorted lately to various manipulations. It was the temperament best suited for dealing with savages and bonobos alike. For she was not descended from monkeys and her soul was not like any other he’d encountered.

 

They walk briskly toward the Sheepshead Bay district, which looks madly like a destitute and run down bit of Tel Aviv, he always thinks so. Little second and third rate jazz clubs, micro mansions and the dirty black green boat canal pits. They get a glass of wine at the Anyway Café.

 

Stepping out to share a Newport, she kisses him hard. They get one more round then proceed up the road to the Lighthouse Inn. Where you can smoke in the rooms and there are mirrors on the ceilings.

 

He kisses her hard before she even closes the motel door behind her. He thrusts her against the wall clutching her tight and he smells like some cheap but ok cologne. She likes his taste. She can smell on him the desire to fuck her good and hard. He’s tender until he drinks a little, or gets her ass in his palm.

She pulls him in and tells him, “You miss me a lot then?”

He always misses her now.

She’s all he thinks about. Her big blue eyes. Her stunning baby face. Her devil smile. How she fits in his arms. How he hopes he barely fits in all of her tight little spaces. He longs to suck on her big perfect breasts.

He hangs her coat and she grabs his ass.

He carries her over to the bed. All he can think about is how tight she is every single time he enters her pussy, how hard she kisses him, how much he thinks he loves her, and just how long she can take his cock. He’s insatiable. And she can fuck him for days he’s sure.

It’s interesting to think such things about a woman you’ve only just kissed. He’s had three weeks of dreams about it. About what it would be like to have her.

The motel room has off white walls, poor lighting and smells like scented candles mixed with the lingering of cigarette smoke. There are indeed mirrors on the ceiling and walls. But it’s better than the ones before, the gypsy tents and beach blankets. It was just under $100 US for the room, almost half what was in his account. Enough to buy breakfast and take the train home, but she insists on a three hour room.

 

In the room is a new red desk and queen sized brown wooden bed with posts. Nothings on the desk. He lays her on the bed and kisses her hard again. They make out and she rubs his big cock through his jeans wanting to taste it. Wanting to suck him off twice. She’s wearing a short skirt and red lace panties; a black short skirt and tank top which makes her thick pale tits look quite perfect. He’s already rock hard thinking about taking her. He rubs on her breasts.

He wants to rip off her panties and fuck her brutally until she screams. He wants to take off his belt and put it around her neck and fuck her over the red desk until his hot cum fills her pussy. She’s so prim and perfect. She’s young and luscious and graceful. He wants to put her on her knees.

“Slow down,” she whispers anticipating his hungry lust, “we have all forever. Take your time baby make me a few times cum and extra hard. Seduce me.”

He starts rubbing her pussy with his fingers while she sucks his thumb. He likes her to take him all the way down her throat to gag on big cock. He’s looking up a voodoo spell to double himself so she can suck him while his twin fucks her on her knees from behind. She’s not sure if she can take two of him. It’s hard to slow him down. He just imagines always the tightness of when he enters. Like she’s fucking for the first time. That tight. What an illusion. That tasty and pure. Once he’s in thrusting all he can think about is pleasing her. He loves her amazing pussy. Its taste and its shape and its fit. She always shudders when he goes in. He wants to fill her with hot cum and break her in. He wants to fuck her hard and everywhere, put her legs on his shoulders and ram his cock as far as it will go make her beg him for to empty load after load inside her…

“Slow baby slow” she whispers.

He breathes deep. His mind can’t stop running ahead.

“I’m going to suck your cock dry tonight baby,” she whispers in Russian, “I’m going lick that cock and stroke it so well. But first you gotta play with me right.”

He has no idea what the fuck she is or isn’t saying.

She takes his index finger and shows him how she’ll suck him. He’s beside her. Takes her panties down and puts a finger in her pussy. So amazingly tight. He rubs her up and down and wants her to be his baby forever. He wants to please her so well that she can’t even remember the faces of other men. Men like her pimp or her husband. He can’t think of anything but her all day at work. She sends him pictures sometimes in her lingerie and asks him to tell her what he’ll do when they get to the hotel.

 

Since she started class she only fucks two or three men a day.

He plays with her gently rubbing her pussy. Whispers in her ear, “I’m gonna love you hard tonight.” She moans and say, “Please, please.” But hopes he is gentle. Then throws that away since men are not gentle.

 

Her shirt is still on and she’s rubbing is cock thorough his jeans. He licks down her leg and rolls up the shirt. He grabs her thighs and licks and licks and licks. She moans and tells him again what she’ll do on her knees. He’s got one finger in her working back and forth, can barely fit a second. He looks up and she’s her happy moaning face.

When it seems like she is about to cum, which is charade for she can cum on demand, he whole body contorting in ecstasy; he pick her up and pushes her over the red table.

 

“You’re gonna take my cock everywhere.” Did he think it or say it?

Men say that shit all the time, but they don’t always try it.

 

She looks like a sexy little foreign school girl when she wants to or sometimes like a grown ass woman of the night. She can also be anything else, but always beautiful and dignified and pure at heart for him. He wants her to be his boss outside. He wants to be her servant and student he knows she’s wise beyond her years by a hundred. But in their inner rooms of that Sheepshead Bay motel he wants her to let him break her in as his for now. He wants to tie her wild ways and fuck her so ferociously that she cannot remember another man but him.

He wouldn’t be the first of last to try.

He lifts her skirt and guides his thick cock inside her. He moans, she’s incredible to taste and even more so to ride. He big pale breast are in his mouth one by one. He likes her to keep sucking his big fingers while he tries to go slowly back and forth pushing deeper.

 

“I’m going to try and break you,” she says. So you’re calmer.

And then for the next few hours she tries.

 

She’s bent over the desk now with her panties in her mouth and can she feel herself convulsing as his penis rams up her cumming for the third time in three hours.

Was that real or was that witchcraft?

In the candle light in the mirror besides the bed and one the ceiling. She wants to civilize him. Make him her serf. For sex and beverages. Can he be taught? Where did she learn to fuck like that?  For an agitation propaganda officer he’s quite good. He finally slowly pushes deeper and takes her hands. He begins going faster one last time. “I’m gonna fuck that tight ass baby. I’m gonna you have you beg for my dick for days,” he mutters in Ivory.

“Fuck me harder you dirty Jew,” she yells at him in Russian.

 

But she loves to beg him. Beg him to serve her. Beg him to make her cum again. She likes him to treat her like the goddess she is. He begins pumping faster. And cums in her. Lying there awhile then he bathes her. Washes all the blood and cum off them both. And they pass out eventually before dawn, on the springy motel bed.

 

Dead men get a last wish in every great culture she thinks, should she let herself out and go home, that would prudent. No, that would hurt him she things with mercy.

 

Now that she owned him, I guess she could help him finally die.

 

 

 

 

 

 

T h i r t y SEVEN, East Hampton

 

“Drunk Drowning”

 

 

After we made whatever we made, love or hateful ravishing fuck, well I did not see her or hear from her for several weeks and retreated into dark depression. I traveled out of the City on the Long Island Rail road to my family dacha, then became quite drunk.

 

Strong Island, oh how your beaches become more cared for and more picturesque, the farther from the dark masses we go! Unmitigated, crisp dunes of unsoiled sand.

 

I have been out of the hospital for just under a black two months. I have been trying to put my life back together, as elegantly as possible under these shall we say, conditions. There have been some real complications, I am pushing through them best I can. Keeping my body moving, though my soul has been sold and my heart cut out, and my grand beliefs, well they are gone.

I am having great trouble separating the fakeness of my idealistic inventions, my creative proclivities from the objective real. What is in fact really happening, has happened in the papers of record, and on Instagram too! My imaginations must be totally divorced from what did in fact occur. Her lips taste different from in a dream or when rendered in my latest technicolored naughty painting. I am still hurting. Perhaps I will hurt forever, over that one woman that makes all the others pale in comparison. I shall die trying to explain myself to strangers and confidants alike.  All of the time I am hurting, it’s not ever her fault. She is so flawless! She has never mislead me. Others perhaps she has destroyed or driven to madness, but I was like that when she met me in the wild days and cruel nights preceding the coming Great Revolt of 2012, perhaps it would not come that soon. Which happened? Or did it really happen? Perhaps it was all a bleak, hopeless dream.

 

You can’t make someone love you. You can try, but it will basically kill you, and maybe you don’t care. I don’t, didn’t. I won’t!

 

I now am wandering around like a listless zombie, a mechanical man with no heart and no soul and no sense of any purpose. None at all. Defeated, again. I mumble her name to the extinguished red moon crescent sliver, I warble in public, I tell mobs her name in grim poetical.

And worse, I am alone again. Which to a social creature like I, is a torture in itself. I have no more friends. Somewhere in what was once Brooklyn, well either there or in the Wild West Indies, or back in Mother Africa is my best friend Mickhi Dbrisk, the others are all dead or have completely denounced me as a mad man who squandered his gifts.

Being alone with the kind of thoughts I think, it is really quite brutal. Daria, who once told me I am the smartest man she has ever met, she said I must be so lonely. So unhappy all the time. She once asked if my face had lost the muscle memory for smiles.

Perhaps not quite literally or figuratively, politically or even of the life style of fight and nightery speaking “alone”; but alone then in the only way it matters to me, for after all that war and all that trouble. She is not with me, she is unimpressed with where I had spent my nights and years. She is unmoved by what I did or didn’t do in the war, in the Brooklyn nights, in Palestine and Haiti. She never cared and she never will, and it doesn’t make her love me more or less what I did in her name, to stay with her. It’s the past, she barely remembers any of it. The power of right-right now, we are in the future and the fire on the mountain, well those were tiny print words.

 

I stand on the beach, with my aging parents and we are drinking indigently. All of us still standing.

 

I wear a white pin striped dinner jacket, white linen pants and a soft white multibutton Barcelona cotton hippy shirt, my brother had once given me. My dark brown hair is slicked back with some cheap grease, now made hard and I look Italian. Or so some say. But I haven’t eaten any fucking pasta in many years, Piezan.

The waves crash big before us, we sit in the white wood pavilion on Main Beach, East Hampton drinking these date rape Margaritas that no one had over the years bothered to tell my father tasted like real shit, and got you angry an drunk, and made you say and do stupid things when Basque white wine, or Prosecco could have kept it much classier.

There are these big red signs saying “DANGER! NO SWIMMING.” As well as some local cops and some lingering life guards, seated near and on a sand buggy. There are picnicking civilians everywhere, it’s just half after 5. The big waves are all that remained of Tropical Storm Germaine, that the media told us would completely ruin the Labor Day Weekend.            With or without the storm, the weekend was a total wash anyway.

What year was this again? What time was even ever now? 2011 I suppose, but who cares. Really whose calendar was important? Just keep showing up for work is all they asked. No one remembered the war years anyway, especially not these soft Hamptonites, these Citified citiots, these liberal plump Jews. What? Not even half patriots! What had even happened in the Middle East, what had happened in Haiti; it was just some vague sad day dream. Bloody really only for foreign brown faces you’d never meet. Though the papers say we are sheltering 12,000 Syrians, that’s good of us. What also of the ashes of the Brooklyn Soviet, trampled under the iron heel of our government? Had the Labor Day rising four years ago even occurred as I remembered it and wrote it down? What of all my dear dead friends? Where were they buried? The only things left to prove I had even been there, that it was even real! Had I even done those things in those deserts and ghettos and mountains; a paramedic card in my pocket, the edges singed from when I tried to burn it and Daria had stopped once me. Also, burns on the bilat of both my hands, from when she couldn’t.

And I still do dream of Ms. Daria Andreavna, when I so still even dream. Nothing is left of my original vision. Nothing has survived the Great War, or wars still to come. The Labor Day Uprising has been forgotten, all its principle leaders were lined up and shot. The Brooklyn Ghetto which we once called the Brooklyn Soviet, it is rubble. The development vultures are circling the ash piles and pilings and smoldered wrecks of our greatest hopes.

 

Avram Adon, my father the plump aging 75 year old dentist look very tired. And Barbara Josephina, my sorcerous mother she sips the poisonous confection and looks into the sea.

 

Talk now turns to medical school. We were notified by mail that while I was interned in the hospital camps, being corrected in thought, I had been accepted to St. George’s Medical school in Grenada. This would be a fine way to stay out of trouble and maybe secure my life, the parents thought. I did too. For I was tired, and no one; not the doctors, the parents, the lovers or the remaining comrades trusted my mind anymore. So smart, and so squandered.

All these sycophants that once drank my fine and ate my feasts and feted at my fetes, they smiled like clowns and listened to my speeches! Now where were any of them? Dbrisk is probably in hiding in Brooklyn, what’s left of the central ghetto. Andrew Lesce is renting a small apartment in the Isle of Man, he was not very involved in the rising at all. Erin is under house arrest in Queens, and the others are all gone.

My mind is collapsing, I cannot say yet why.

I have no more tears left. Not even for my face. Why are so many of my closest dead and I am cursed to be alive! The hospital camps took me, when I came out it was all over.

The waves crash and explode their foam and rip back out to the sea. They still evidently cannot predict the weather in this futuristic future of smart phones and devices. Where the oligarch David Rockefeller just had his 7^th heart transplant.

 

My parents are talking about something, that I cannot even hear and I remember the terrible great tease of seeing Daria again on the roof, years after I lost track of her in the carnage and tumult of the revolution, well that was less than two months ago I found her, I remember us running into that Bulger Tavern and signing away our souls, and…no it wasn’t real. It was all just in some revolutionary soap opera I wrote mourning her. In the real world though, I ran into Ms. Daria on the roof, and I spent the last two months with her, traveling the three states without ever using our papers, and dancing and dining and reading her my novels, the memoirs about the war years and the poems I wrote in her name. And then, then she broke it all off again. For my sake, she claims.

“I cannot love you as you love me, nothing has changed…you are killing yourself again.”

“Well, I feel the ocean telling me to swim,” I say.

I disrobed my white finery down to my under garments. I told my father, “Tell her that I loved her.” “I won’t,” he replied into his drink. And then I took off running down the beach into the bluest blackest crashingest surf, hoping the mighty ocean would just carry me away, knowing I wouldn’t die this way, knowing that I would float back to the beach eventually. I just didn’t care about my body anymore, about anything really. She came back, and she was gone. I had thought I would never see her again, and then she came back! Perhaps just one week after I got out the camps! I never thought I’d see her again, that she’d marry a doctor or end up in a comfort camp, or die from too much partying.

I cannot make her love me, I cannot ever be good enough for her, and she stays with me only out of art and pity. She doesn’t even remember our tumultuous life together and apart during the revolt! She remembers only what suits her, and I am a broken man, that, well, razpizdai! I don’t give a fuck anymore. Into the sea.

And the black waters over take me, if there are shouts from the crowded beach I hear them not at all. Perhaps I will really die this time. In this world I have no special luck or powers. Perhaps I will leave my body and wake up in the mountains, wake up where I’m supposed to me, wake up and love myself again. Or die for nothing, as my parents watch helplessly from the beach.

 

Well anyway my mother knows how much training I have. Splash I go, and really, no one is coming in after me with how huge these waves are.

 

The black blue ocean enters my insides and rips me out to sea. Before I go unconscious after a three story wave breaks over me, I see her on the beach shaking her head. Judging me harshly for my wanton disregard. My utter selfishness! The rip tides suck me down and out into the brine.

 

As the rough and frigid waters overtook me, no, I saw no white light of god, I saw my feral Slavic goddess. Mocking me? Rooting for me boldly? I could no longer actually tell. For a cold and flowing liquid salt deluge would perhaps soon inundate my trachea.

 

As I drowned myself in those waves I saw the future! I never see white light, I see a taste of things to come, it was suddenly the year 2016, five years ahead and we had survived each other and become an unofficial couple. I lived then in this cute loft in the Central Brooklyn ghetto and there she was, no more suffering or needing. Having. It was incredible, I was so happy. Well such are dead dreams.

 

 

Dasha Andreavna, should I call you that in public, cheapen you a little with banal Americanization, maybe I should try. But, still I’ll never forget you, and I dear suggest you will always call me by my real name. No cutesterisms, subterfuges or ethno vernaculars!

 

I will tell you what beautiful nakedness looks like! Jesus of Christ she’s lying there in my bed and my eyes lock with hers, it’s so hot. The ghetto loft, the rolling of inbound and outbound trains rumble like the waves that last killed me. It is all like a dusk time dream, her blond hair lioness mane on my pillows, her buxom defiance and he eyes. Well her tits her tits and her eyes, for I am man. And the sweat rolls off us both, the loft is a bake box. I just cooked her paella, we put away almost whole bottle of 1,000 Stories, there’s proverbial blood on my lips, “Recite me one of Adelina’s poems!” A most curious and un-intimate request, as there are over 99 poems written to the tune of her being. And only maybe six for the woman that I loved after she vanished into another man’s arms, and I into grim two year exile in the provinces. The cold empty provinces, with angry white peasants, where it snowed for two years, “I want to hear your best poem for her!”

The wine took places each time that were nearly loving. Drugs and electronic dance music would kill everything every time, she was not trying hard. She was not trying ever to be in this space, this life we lived in the foothills of the city. Nearly starving in the shadow of plenty.

She lies there, not mine or anyone’s. Half naked in my bed. I am no longer even paid in occasional kisses, I am paid in time, for since the night we met, the night she almost killed us, the second nights we met, oh three years ago maybe; she passed to me a little note after sleeping in my arms for two nights in a forest, in the badlands of warehouse district; he note said, “Sad that it will end.”

 

And it had ended many, many times before. There is music that plays in my head and I hum to it, to focus. To bring myself back from the clouds, from the war effort, from the targets, from the evil we fight; I hum and I rush back into my body. “Reset,” she whispers. Whenever she notices me do that, she loves only mind, if she loves even that.

 

“You are the smartest man I know, you’ll figure out what to do,” she once said, she is the one who later convinced him to go into exile to acquire the resources for his, shall we say doomed campaign of insurgency.

 

“Bring me back to my home,” she orders him. Many tortures had and would befall Sebastian Adonaev; but nothing was exactly the level of excruciating hurt bringing her back, over and over and again dark or daylight to her keeper and maintainer.

 

T h i r t y EIGHT, Flushing Ave

 

“Valera Says”

 

There they were in the People’s Television, Brooklyn Bureau studio. In a grim warehouse off Flushing Avenue. There was Nicholas Mapfre and Justinian Tomas, the mike was hot the camera was rolling and they were filming. Four rebels a table reading a statement. Tiputti Capois, leader of the detachments in Haiti actually has only one default calm emotion of everything being ok. Alongside Chechen gun man Valera Adonaev he looks dark as hell. Mickhi Dbrisk the Jamaican gangster cut all his dreads off after the Battle of Brownsville. The fourth testimonian, well he’s a burly St. Lucian Rastafarian named Malcolm.

 

Well, the camera was rolling. They took turn to read, swapped at every paragraph.

 

Valera:

 

There are eight basic and immediate things you are being asked to do in the North, which is to say the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The primary OECD beneficiaries of the global system supply chain, otherwise known as the Core. While civil liberty protections are supposedly the most advanced, so are the mechanism of the surveillance state, intelligence services and sophistication of torture.

 

Dbrisk:

 

First, take off your safety pin. Stop wearing anything or saying anything that could get you reported to the secret police. The USA has 17 known agencies to keep track of you. Get out of the habit of reporting your thoughts and location to Social Media. Please begin consciously avoiding your purchase or collection of subversive materials like books or attending meetings and events that will get you noticed as opposed to the regime. You are being recorded at every demonstration you attend.

 

Malcolm:

 

Second. Take out your cell phone and remove the battery. Practice this drill as often as possible. If you cannot remove the battery of the Apple phone, that is because it was designed that way. Turn it off and practice placing it in another room. That is a listening and tracking device that is being used to monitor you. Utilize the time that the phone is off or in another room to make love to your husband or wife, cook a meal and or engage in discourse with your friends about what is to be done in this state of emergency.

 

 

            Tiputti:

 

Third. You are being asked to begin auditing your time. In that much of your northern life is lived vicariously through electronic devices. You are being asked to count the minutes and hours you spend on television, movies, social media, sports you’re not playing and sex you’re not having. After that audit we encourage your realignment to real physical activity, real emotional engagement and real learning. Real time with friends and family. Then audit your new mood.

He said all that with a smooth Haitian accent.

 

Valera:

 

Fourth. You are being asked to purchase a dark grey, blue or tan uniform and place on the right arm the flag of your country and on the left arm your rank if you have one, such as teacher, lawyer, paramedic or engineer. You are to put your last name on the right breast. Now you are wearing a uniform. And if or when you are captured you will be entitled to Geneva accord protections and not simply be executed or disappeared into indefinite detention as a terrorist. You are now a uniformed combatant and a patriot, welcome to the army of the resistance. As frightening as it may be that you will possibly killed or captured, there are very strong odds you will survive and history will absolve you. As you are now actively resisting a holocaust, make no mistake about the unprecedented atrocity being carried out.

 

Dbrisk then says:

 

Fifth, you are being asked to prepare hiding places in your homes for undocumented people and movement activists. They can be complex such as flash walls in attics basements or floors. They can be stocked with provisions and bedding. They can accommodate one person or perhaps a whole family. Be prepared mentally to risk the lives and freedom of yourself and your family to hide fellow human beings slated for arrest or deportation. Drill and coordinate moving people from cities to rural areas and familiarize yourself with the surveillance capabilities of your district. There are cameras virtually everywhere.

 

Brother Malcom then says:

 

Sixth, you are being asked to boycott the following products, designer electronic devices. Chocolate. Beef. Coffee. Oil. Pornography. Shrimp. Textiles made outside of USA or Europe. We can start with those. It is not important what specific brand. You need to remove your personal buying power from those specific product and commodity lines. They are all tied directly to the full exploitation of fellow humans at home and abroad.

 

Tiputti again:

 

Seventh, you are being asked to acquire one firearm for each member of your household. You are to begin drilling in its use and to keep a stockpile of non-lethal ammunition adequate for the defense of your building. As the political right had done for decades, you and your friends should begin regularly and discretely exercising your second amendment right. If you are a practitioner of nonviolence you are asked to buy bulletproof vests for your neighbor that will be willing to face the police forces, military and National Guard with a firearm that had no lethal rounds in it. You may also nonviolently contribute to bail and equipment bond funds. You could also nonviolently help build the smuggling tunnels and compartments to hide people in the sanctuary cities.

 

Valera says:

 

Eighth, for any major escalation in the state of emergency or atrocities being committed by our police forces or military, you are being asked to help knock out power generating facilities in your city, paralyze public transit to obstruct the work week and obstruct trucking operations on major roadways. All resistance activities are to cause maximum economic disruption at minimal loss of life at all costs. You ought to plan to accomplish that with no loss of human life if possible.

 

You will likely be arrested shortly after your involvement in a raid or operation. While the resistance will not dictate to you what constitutes a justification for an armed action, surely if you open the paper or read objective reports, an atrocity is occurring every hour of every single day. Insofar as you affiliate yourself at heart or in deed with the resistance in the North, it is really up to the consensus of your own community and companions to dictate what actions you will take. Suffice to say at this juncture you will only be able to rely on the resources of you and your band, we can contribute only in solidarity or attempts at liberation if you are caught. Which you will be. Remember that of all the rights we wage this war for, the right to life is the only one we can never take away from our enemies. But we are no longer school children and surely the enemy kills with indiscriminate impunity.

 

Justinian flips off the camera. He’s an active Uhuru member, it seems a little crazy to record anyone talking like this, but the leadership ordered the tape to be made. Nicholas Mapfre worries as usual about going to jail prematurely.

 

“How the fuck are we going to distribute a track that hot?” Ryder Haske, the less political primary business partner of Nicholas Mapfre asks.

“I have no idea,” Nicholas replies.

 

 

T h i r t y NINE, Brighton Beach

 

“Accosted”

 

Boom! A bomb goes off in midtown Manhattan, several dozen are maimed or killed. The rebels and Federals both blame each other. There are checkpoints everywhere and more National Guard troops being shipped in.

 

On 16 September the clock counts, ticks, trickles down. The various demonstrations are growing in size across the city stoked by the mismanagement and brutality of the National Guard and local police forces in Brooklyn, the barricade line on Atlantic and Flatbush seems to be holding.

 

Heavy street fighting has so far been concentrated in the South Bronx and Eastern Brooklyn, but the city is rising. Brooklyn and Bronx Cantons have been declared in the two besieged rebel zones. A General Strike has been declared and few have gone to work for over a week since this all heated up anyway.

 

The Fire Switch station has been guiding residents how to fortify their blocs, knock out walls and basements for mobile firing positions, how to build phosphorous grenades and Molotov cocktails, playing the right song when your block association needs to flip city buses and turn them into barricades.

 

There is a no fly zone over all of Brooklyn and the Bronx, although the government has all the helimonsters and drones in needs fueling in Jersey. The entire city of Newark is in hands of the rebels.

 

A flying fortress[23] is fueling up in the skies above Staten Island, that’s no good. You can’t fight a flying fortress with bold ideas or even long guns.

 

There is no Federal control in most of the outlying city boroughs except Staten Island where the National Guard is staging. Police officers and soldiers are being ambushed and killed all over Brooklyn and the Bronx, Queens has been more quiet, but is barricaded up tight; most important players are the Latin Kings (newly political again), the Haan Mafia, the Bangladeshi trade union federation BRAC and the prolific Polish Press.

 

 

Sebastian Adonaev and Dasha Andreavna wander around the District Financial, which appears all but empty. Sebastian calls his old friend Lt. Moishe Klein to make sure where and how to cross the line back into Brooklyn later at night fall.

 

He took her black bleeding heart painting to be framed by the one armed Egyptian Musa the fantastic framer. He took her to a small Cuban restaurant near the South Street seaport for late lunch and then his bank account said over drawn, so she paid with her husband’s black Amex, he notices the name on the card says Sergey.

That seems unstrategic.

He’s wearing a blue pin stripe suit and looks handsome for a nearly broke dead guy. They wander around the narrow streets of the district both knowing from different sources what is coming down hard tomorrow. The Federal Government and Director Breria intend to crack down on this rebellion fast and hard.

 

Eventually Sebastian calls a Mexican Express car service. They are highly skilled it seems at crossing the lines. She drags him into the long perilous journey quite easily, yanks him with a kiss into the cab. They make out for a while, and then she demands a poem. He takes one out of his satchel. He reads it for a while until it’s clear she is pretending to be asleep.

 

Grim sureality sets in further. The cab goes through the lines back home for her, towards the Brighton Ghetto again via the Battery Tunnel the only passage still open, the Arab driver asks them if they want to fool around back there ‘people do all the time, it’s like I’m not ever here’; the shmuck says. What do you even say to that? They don’t even react, it’s banal to react to savages. Dasha wakes to gives him evil eyes.

 

The driver, Sebastian and Daria all need to present papers on either side of the tunnel which leads to nearly a three hour crossing between boroughs.

 

The radio announced that a Hurricane called Sandy would break ground the very next day. But you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows as they say. Which is to say whenever there is serious warning of inclement whether there is about to be a crackdown or a full blown red purge.

 

That’s what Breria announced on the Telescreens today that soon the seditious rebellion would be crushed.

 

The cab had to stop at a two story rubble, barb wire, bus barricade across Atlantic Avenue. The Orthodox Ivoryish militia and several Jamaican and Haitian sets of the Bloods were stopping all traffic from moving south of the Barclays, where rebel government was still in session. The hideous iron stadium, home to the Brooklyn Nets Basketball team was now the central rallying point for the General Assembly of Brooklyn Canton; the congregation of rebel factions and popular committees.

 

After clearing the Atlantic lines, they cut along the park from rebel territory to Ivory controlled zones in District Midwood. Only because Adonaev had once lived on Avenue H and Ocean, only because he encountered a man he knew well Lt. Moishe Klein; were they allowed on foot to disembark. The Jews, Haitians and Jamaicans had set up defensive lines on Ave. H.

 

“What a looker,” says Lt. Klein in Yiddish, “I’d hit that tookas for weeks.” Moishe and Sebastian exchange a few words, the chubby Orthodox Jew used to be his FDNY Lt. in the South Bronx back in 2008.

 

“A big storm is going to hit tomorrow,” Moishe mentions, “Insane world.”

 

Once they clear the tertiary barricade wall on the Ocean Avenue Bridge, past the Avenue H bar lev defense lines staffed by hundreds of orthodox Ivoryish watchmen called the Shomriim, the Yid secret police army, as well as Garveyites and newly converted Crip and Blood sets; well they board the Q train toward Stillwell Ave.

 

The towers on Banner Avenue and Brighton 6^th, the Soviet style high rises put up in the Russian quarter in 1988 to absorb the million plus Ivory, claiming to be Ivoryish and Ivoryish-ish refugees that took boats and planes, but mostly planes to New York City in the years that the Soviet Union collapsed; those concrete towers looks like purgatory on a bad day. The rains that used to be early snows were hitting them hard. Nothing worse that cold, wet New York rains.

 

Planned Ghetto Camp Alpha was here in the Brighton zone and Planned Ghetto Camp Bravo was in Star City, a much more controlled environment between utterly lawless East New York, the Belt Parkway highway system, a swamp and a river.

 

He’s seen pictures of her house. The place is white and low lit and clean and god only knows; is anything about her life real. There are no books except the ones he’s given her. He’s been in the lobby and there the sureality of the whole affair ends, each night for four weeks timeless.

 

“Once last hard kiss,” she says and lays it on him and they turn the corner to arrive at the departure point of the 44 Banner Ave lobby. It’s a long hard kiss.

 

But tonight something was different. There are nine imposing Slavic man in grey and black suits waiting in her lobby. They aren’t smiling, they aren’t taking any prisoners except the two they planned to take. Eight sets of muscle fall on them and grapple them both to the ground. They resist as best they can, but it happens rather quickly. One of them back hands her in the face. Then hits her in the stomach and she doubles over and is brought the ground.

 

A boot stamps on Sebastian’s chest and he feels something rip inside him, hopefully not a kidney. They hit him with electricity somehow.

 

The last thing Sebastian Adon sees before electrified black asps crack against him and he falls to the ground stunned is the grinning baby face of Dmitry Khulushin, his old nemesis.

 

The ruthless Shtarkers quickly zip them up into body bags and carry them out to the running black bullet proof armored Escalades.

 

“Stop taking my serfs without paying” and then Dmitry punches Sebastian in the face and knocks out his three front teeth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F o r t y, Brighton Beach

 

“Torture at the Foxy Cabaret Club”

 

Sebastian wakes up somewhere. He was walking on the Tel Aviv boardwalk, running into all these old friends. Everyone was going ok. He was heading back to his wife and kids.

 

Blat! Dasha where are you? What have they done to you now?
And when he woke up a slave in the salt mines he had to invent other realities. As the brutal separation was too great.

He struck the walls of Potosi over and over again. He plotted away. His escape his mutiny his raising of an army and marching out to whatever city she was now held in. Burn down the entire empire city by city if he had room to do so. In darkness ten thousand captives struck the walls of the abyss, shattered away and tunneling. In some of their lands they had been warriors and kings. Others were simple men. Emptied lands that no longer existed.

 

The captives were of many tribes and many tongues. Most of not all were not white, for this was not the work of white men, mining salt and tunneling, but race was actually a distraction. He learned that in political theory class at University, when he was a young man. What year was this? What country, whose epoch was this?

Crack.

The pitiful sledgehammer strikes into bleak nothingness, ten thousand tunneling souls, and their families held in the neighboring townships in case they mutiny or do not make quota. They send us deep into the mines each day and await us to cart our dead out at dusk. Cart out our dead and the salt they use for batteries.

They ripped us from our lives as people, killed in us everything we knew about our cultures. Our religions. They reduced us to their zombies, their walking dead, something more broken than a slave. A hostage.

 

But there was hope, Avinadav would come back! Solomon would sing to us again, we would rebuild the temple, this was all prophesy, this was all real!

 

CRACK! My big yet flimsily hammer chips the wall.

            All my bloody day dreams were a speck! Yes, they were nothing and I was powerless to do anything but break rock.

My mind went deep into time, I was so many places at once, I was again with her. So many times before, and again god willing again in the sweet hereafter, in the worlds to come. What year was this? CRACK. What country am I slaving in?

My world is one of torment, I have lost everything. Every single thing. I have been made less than a number. I don’t even know what year it is. I would put out my own eyes, I would refuse the gift of air, but, but, but; I will bide my time, I will escape, I will find, but her real name is now lost to me, or was there even an inner most name, something for the even more cute.

I will get out of this wretched salt mine! I will kill my captors! I will raise and army, and March on the gentry who put me out like this, separated me from my true love. Will I?

In this life or the next. If you believe in such things.

 

The strange things I see when I am badly tortured!

 

And then he wakes up upside down in a body cage. He’s fixed up on leg manacles conjoined to the ceiling. He’s chained up in some dungeon, in some sub-basement Bratva torture center, maybe. It’s not a large chamber; just enough space to hang upside down toothless and naked from the ceiling. He chemically sedated, that he can feel. There is a black X tattooed over his heart and small black tattoo marks indicating placement of chest tubes and central lines. Like this is going to be a really fucking drawn out ordeal. The light is off. They are probably not even going to ask him any questions, for he knows how to indomitably lie. Most ominous in that there is a king sized bed and small stage and a boiler furnace below him. Evidently the plan to make him watch a protracted rape and then burn him alive. That’s how these things go. Paramedic save thyself.

 

He wiggles a little, cold and bloody in the darkness.

 

The difficulty with Mr. Dmitry Khulushin Koch is that is he is a genius but also a cruel and most sadistic animal. So whatever torture he has in mind will be protracted. The last time I saw you I burned down your home with you parents inside of it, thinks Adon. Was that a real memory? This was a most timeless beef.

Do I do things like that?

Hanging upside down above a low burning gas furnace, in the low to no light of this rape room, Sebastian Adon reflects on his feelings.

Did Dasha set him up? They are going to torture him very badly and there is nothing that is pleasant about that, but he would feel very guilty if he had gotten her roped in without cause. He thinks he loves her. Well whatever that means. Loved her in another life? He has these memories of seeing this all exactly before. Of forty men raping his wife? His brand new lover? Forty men raping her until she could never look in the mirror again. Then they slit her throat and covered him in her blood, lit him on fire while they desecrate her corpse.

 

New Romans, I think.

 

The past and present are fluid things. And he knows they are not interested in anything but his pain and humiliation. Her total degradation is their policy towards those with the chosen blood line. All the blood is going to my head.

White lights come on and they strobe. Yep, they’re going to rape the hell of us and burn us alive for sport or Roman ritual. Forty men in animal masks and red robes enter the room and they’re carrying Dasha in white bath robe bound and in manacles struggling like she’s aware of how this Cult performs its sacrifices. They bind her to the king sized alter.

Filthy fucking non-believers after a taste of the blood and body of their Christ.

And I’ll tell you, I don’t pray a lot like I used to. Even moments just like this where a lot of the pieces line up and you realize that they took so goddamn much from you and your people. Here I am upside down and helpless while they defile this woman I love, I love? Yes, I love because she is one of the Tzadikk ha Dror candidates; the potential candidates for our generation’s messiah.

 

 “Let’s fuck this little busty bitch to death! Then we cook their bodies and eat their essence!” yells Dmitry Khulushin unmasked dropping is pants to penetrate. He starts fingering then fucking her. She’s gagged, I’m gagged. The strobe lights are flashing, some horrible screeching dub step is playing. There are men hitting me with electric batons. Dmitry is raping Dasha while punching her in the face.

 

One of these goons flicks on the low burner and I begin to slow cook.

 

They have this all set up for their sick fun, I am rotated to be barbequed and held feet over flame. I can feel the searing of toes. I can’t scream out were I inclined. I smell the cooking of my own flesh and it sticks to you forever that smell.

I think the worst part about a rape room is that you realize they just plan to make others suffer at your expense until you do what they want. But Dmitry Khulushin is a vampire; he’s a demon and he just loves his work.

 

He begins hitting her in the face as he fucks her. Getting off on her helplessness and mine. The humiliation of seeing those your love suffer. I know it well.

 

And then suddenly Dmitry, or really the flimsy husk holding him, has an enormous hole in his chest. And then his head ruptures and bursts brains all over the place. And his blood and guts fly out all over her naked mid-raped body.

 

Gunfire erupts, louder than the movies.

 

Because Haitian gangster, part time paramedic Watson Entwissle in a brown leather jacket and submachine gun has raided the ceremony with brown haired pixy Adelina Blazhennaya and she has put a powerful spell on everyone. As is his way Watson and a twelve person crew in flicker masks and Uzis are preparing to unload live rounds on every single hostile they see in a red robe.  Kill every single person in that bloody cult ordered Emma Solomon. And burn that white church to the ground.  And Adelina was only using majik. They had gunned their way into the bowls of this enormous white church in the heart of Coney Island; yet another Catholic front for the work of these murderous devils. They had encounter minimal resistance, so as she took point and pushed open the doors to the sacrifice;

 

“Davai,” she exclaimed. And with a small motion of her wrist, Dmitry’s heart exploded in his chest mid fuck, then she snap her fingers and his head blows off spraying blood everywhere. And before Watson Entwissle, the Mullato Haitian and his fellow rebel gunman for the Z.O.B. can open their fire; forty devil rapist heads pop off. And forty dead cult members along with the latest husk of Dmitry Khulusin fall dead on the ground in crumbled bleeding piles. As if it were just that easy to dispatch evil.

 

Adelina pushes the latest body of the ancient devil Dmitry K. off the despoiled and now covered in blood pale busty body of Dasha Andreavna. She unlocks Dasha’s manacles and hands her a bathrobe to wipe herself and then tosses her a grey multiform. They will have to fight their way out of Bratva controlled Coney Island, best you believe.

 

The two women say nothing, not even hello or thank you. They know they are in competition for a lot more than the time, gun, sword or pen of Sebastian Adonaev. They are two of the most powerful candidates left alive.

 

Watson turns off the flesh roasting fire and cuts Sebastian down, and he gets a hug and a thank you, and he can barely walk from the fire to feet. Sebastian has full thick ness burns to both his feet. They had flipped him vertical to cook and cook he did.

 

“Thanks for the nearly perfect timing frère,” Sebastian says in Haitian Creole. Although Dmitry raped and black eyed his buxom candidate lover and they cooked his feet until he can’t walk thanks to the third degree. Other than that the timing, was nearly perfect.

 

They leave the ‘White Church’ in flames and all the ghouls headless like it is Paris 1789 all over again. With Sebastian on a stretcher they load up into three ambulances and take off for District Midwood, because even in this near lawless state of emergency you can’t just burn a big white church in Brooklyn with no reactions.

 

There are almost no cars on the roadway, a curfew was called on the radio. Which make is easier for the government drones to light up the convoy with air to surface missiles. And the missiles blow this ambulance convoy right off the parkway.

 

Around Avenue U hellfire rockets take out the first of the three ambulances in the convoy. The third shortly after. Dasha and Sebastian are in the middle of the convoy. She grabs the side arm off one of the rebel fighters and shoots him point blank in the chest. She sucker punches Adelina as hard as she can, and she goes down. And tires to put a round in Watson, but the gun jams. So she picks him up with her mind and throws him out of the back of the crashed ambulance. She tells Sebastian, “be cool, this is not a fruitful rescue party.” She tucks in note in Adeline’s bandoleer for later, explaining herself a little why she’s struck a candidate and country woman. “Sorry” is all it mostly says.

 

And she pressure strikes Watson in such an ancient way with four fingers, vasovagal and he goes out too.

 

She knows Sebastian can barely walk. So she throws him over her shoulder, like she was taught in the Black Cats Unit 669, when she trained under the mountain of a man Mikhail Abner Kreminizer back in day; and she hauls his ass across the parkway before the drones can make their second pass for pick offs. She has no cash, no documents, no weapons, just was recently raped, but her mind and the extraction point at the Tavern is nearly 24 clicks north, across the barricade lines and down a three kilometer tunnel.

 

She has to get this man to her latest employer Sasho Alexandre Perchevney, bring him fully alive to the Mehanata Social Club so they can sit out this sure to be disastrous first phase of the American uprising alive and get the hell out this reality before it implodes. Either she has to carry him through the sewer and subway tunnels or listen to yet another disgusting cab driver make degrading comments all the way back to Manhattan.

 

F o r t y ONE, Financial District

 

“The Curfew”

 

They cannot allow a civil disturbance to go on for too long or it begins to spread. The great unwashed mob of peasants temporarily lose their fear. You need to break their will to rise before the cancer metathesizes.

 

Cold fall winds rush through the steel canyons of the district Financial as two opposing armies of wildly disproportionate means mass for street combat. You can shortly after smell the burning petrol bombs. See the signs of smoke.

 

On 17 September over 144,000 mobilized demonstrators and over 10,000 cops, who knows where the popular papers got those numbers, battle across the tight & narrow ravines of the District Financial with bottle rockets, gas bombs and by mid-day were exchanging gun fire. The trade unions and socialists called in reinforcements around noon and soon the whole district was then awash in tear gas and broken glass and Taser fire and then quite live fire and protesters being beaten bloody in front of the stock exchange and the Deutsche Bank, something hit the mainstream prole feed media about a bomb going off in the Stock Exchange, and then, the TVs all switched to sports, commercials and giggling tits.

 

The rising on the anniversary of the occupation a year ago suppressed and the attempted recapture of Zuccotti Park was under way.

 

A national General Strike was declared in relation to the State of Emergency called for by the Anonymous and newly christened ‘Résistance Alliance’. It was observed only in L.A., Oakland, Detroit, and Chicago and partially in Boston, D.C. and Miami but then the internet went blank at 14:00. And the TV news babble junkied out misinformation, prole feed.

 

So then no one knew who has fighting where, resisting where, what was even happening. And so things then got a lot more violent than anyone had anticipated. Purge orders were issued by dreaded Director Breria of the Department of Homeland Security. Amidst a media and internet black out martial law had been declared. The District financial was surrounded. The Occupiers and unionists and students and innumerous others well over by then 600,000 demonstrators had over run most of the district and barricaded them streets leading into it.

 

The New York Stock Exchange was set ablaze around 22:00. A massive General Assembly held in Battery Park called for a full blown national revolution. But this revolt had already been well underway in the Bronx and Brooklyn since September 1^st.

 

But, most of the country didn’t even know what was happening yet. The Department of Homeland Security activated FEMA, the White Power Militias and the National Guard. Then, just after midnight; sweet repression arrived in numbers.

 

The Special Security Services, the NYPD, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and the rightist Patriotic Militias moved in; they gassed or shot virtually everyone. By the next day, there were corpses all over the streets, blood all over the trading floors and god only knows how many movement people were dead. No one knew. Almost nobody made it out of the district alive. But the Battle of Brownsville had not been decided yet. The South Bronx was still there.

 

Seventeen days from the initial rising at the Labor Day Parade the U.S. government had massacred over 50,000 activists and leftists, no one knew human many for sure; thousands of students and their supporters all but disappeared in the weeks to come. FEMA and the DHS under the strict leadership of Director Breria fanned out across the country and slaughtered 500,000 plus rebels and supporters, students and people they happened to know. It was as if these 500,000 persons had never even been. Or was it 50,000? 5,000? Or had there just been a storm and a flood. Called Super Storm Sandy?

 

And by the time in early November they finally cleared the streets, the waters had resided and most of the left and progressive opposition was gone. As if they had fought and planned and died for nothing and their countrymen had never even peeled away from the television tuned to sports or tits or adverting.

 

The General Assembly at Hostos and Barclays had eventually been shut down. The resistance now driven underground almost everywhere.

 

But, Sebastian Adonaev and most of his comrades did not die in the purge, the historically hidden democide regularly committed by states! He survived because he and Dasha were ambushed by her sponsor and her husband’s friends in the lobby of her building which resided on 44 Banner Avenue.

 

And the comrades of Adon, his dearest friends; many of them survived the next 48 hours by fighting their way out of the district financial as it was overwhelmed by flame and gas; they shot their way out and managed to escape to the borough of Brooklyn via the old tunnels, guided by mole people and Oleg Megved and Mikhail Mastrovitch the Ivorite special operations agents sent to rescue them.

 

And it was young, wispy Adelina Blazhennaya that rescued Dasha and Adon, much to her better judgment; for it was not meant to be that leftists would lead the Great Revolt; it would come from the renewed consciousness of human kind, not old ideas or even new ones. But while Adon and men like Mickhi Dbrisk, Watson Entwissle and Michael Goldbar Allamby would all have great and upcoming roles to play; it was women keeping them all alive with pistols and magic the nights of 17th, 18th and 19th September well until early November when the U.S. Federal Government carried out Operation Garden Plot 2 to murder almost every single important rebel in the country in one stomp of the iron heel. All those years between 1968 and the present or permissive, liberal unabashed freedom of expression, by they were taking names and faces down for when it was time, for when the opposition to empire grew about 2,000 men in any group, the soft cage hardened and there was blood murder in the streets.

 

As so many were fleeing the carnage of revolutionary war and repression in lower Manhattan; Dasha Andreavna with Sebastian Adonaev in a grey body bag was hiking in, heading straight to the Mehanata Social Club dragging him over her shoulder in a body bag, until a Green a cab finally showed up to attempt a final tunnel run, up the mountain and into the bowels of the City. He’d fallen for her, she’d fallen for him and if they died they could at this point die together.

 

F o r t y TWO, Financial District

 

“The Fall”

 

 

If we could go back in time by only about a month in objective time.

 

Blast the damn heat, for my brow drips. For in New York it gets so hot in the late of August, a swelter box most people of any means flee to their dachas in Strong Island to avoid!

 

Dawn is now rising, breaking and expanding on the roof of the low roof of ancient print house converted at some time in the past hundred years to a seventeen story cooperative. District Financial and with the last manic burst of energy being expended by one of our antagonistic protagonists, Sebastian Vasyli Adon, over a huge bottle of illegally imported Basque white wine, tells old danger tales to those who will and can still listen.

It is the second to last weekend of August and soon summer will end.

Bottle uncorked and the debacle of his oratory may now unfold.

A fake gold watch dangles off his left wrist as he enunciates his wild tale with his hands, although it is known he is only one half a Yid. Covering his dark brown hair cut short for summer is a brown beret newsy cap, called a skally cap, if you were a rude boy from the two tone army like he was. It’s very 1943[24]. So very neo-hipster or proletarian-chic!

Behold the faces of off duty urban partisans and gypsies who refuse the gift of sleep!

On the 17th Story roof deck of the old converted print house on 140 Nassau Street, slim and enthusiastic Europeans Amelia Monteleone and Victoria Christiana Lynch Contreras snap off photos and clink glasses bantering on care free flirtations and intoxications.

Amelia takes off all her clothing for green money, she’s a dancer she tells her parents back in the Cayman Islands by way of Italy and France. In another life she’ll hopefully take up photography or become a police spy, which pays a little less but has more dignity.

Raphael Ernesto Lynch Contreras, a Peruvian revolutionist is baby faced with flowing black hair with but a couple salt and pepper streaks is the husband of Victoria. He sits with his dear friend Sebastian and a ravishingly beautiful Russian dvotchka named Dasha and attempts a boozy mediation as the two evil eye each other viciously across a low wooden table.

She has big beautiful crazy person eyes the color of the Caspian Sea. Adon’s soulful orbs are auburn hazel slowly becoming green with sleep deprivation progressing.

The stare down is punctuated by accusations of impropriety.

The two are both “aspiring paramedics”. Ernesto is their introducer and is a frivolous and womanizing artist tamed as of lately by his marriage to Victoria.

Adon is in school to push away death with needles and relative high voltages. Dasha is partially knowledgeable on how to pour away sadness and sometimes temper internal evils with liquid poison and that which she doesn’t know how to mix she bluffs, knowing men are staring at her eyes, amongst other things.

He a brunette normally clad in a dark brown leather jacket and brown skally cap beret. Tonight he is in a white linen suit with his hair cut short. It’s a vaguely irregular look for him that he hasn’t pulled out in some time.

The reason he is dressed like that is because prior to his arrival at the Mehanata Social Club he had been at an all-inclusive White Party, a river cruise of wild Latin salsa based gallivanting circumventing the Isle of Man.

Dasha is a siren to which many men have smashed there ships with a proverbially loaded firearm called her fearsome wits to survive and the belligerencies that pour from her mouth when intoxicated. She captures much attention anytime she steps in the room and onto a dance floor. Her style is quite Postsoviet in its cut and colors. There is well put together sashay and flurry to her movements to be sure. And she has an unnerving look, a cross between a size up and seductive stare, a dismissive dart of her eyes to cut men down.

An affectionate rendering of Daria is Dasha, and this is what Sebastian has been calling her all night. They had been introduced several months before, but both had been too drunk to remember. They both are regulars but he more on Saturday and she more on Friday, but without rhyme or reason despite being regulars for over three years, they had rarely crossed paths before.

Dasha is a stunning high octane mix of wild blonde partisan with her azure silver eyes darting between warfare and wanting; and the bright eyed curiosity of a child in a large affluent glass and steel playground. She is wrapped in a tight to the curves light brown leather jacket. She is never cold on the outside.

They are locked in scowling death match of heavy unguardedly hostile words and also a few thinly veiled threats.

He said “don’t smoke in my father’s house,” so she smoked in his father’s house, so he had to yank the fucking smoke out her pouty lips and talk harshly about throwing her out in a cab back to Brighton. Then he “classlessly” handed her forty bucks for that cab, even though it’s really a fifty to sixty to seventy dollar ride, and more if you tip. Which is against all Russian cultural context, to tip a chornay driver.

To which she debased him as a useless man living off his parent’s wealth. And said never in her life had she been so offended by the callous, pompous behavior or an American dog such as himself.

“Less than a dog!” she proclaims.

To show he wasn’t a push over to bombshell, star lit scarlet that no one probably ever said no to he did all that, also because he’d been drinking a lot. And he’s not always the gentleman that he presumes himself to be. Letting any person show such appalling disrespect was cheapening. Men make up all kinds of stories about the motives of beautiful women. Her light up was belligerent and far beyond any international definition of respecting the host. And that’s pretty much how she rolls. Over anyone she feels like.

And yet because she is stunning and pouty and her heels take too long for her to fasten, in effort of perestroika he’s asked he to stay and ten they all ended up on the roof to catch the sun rise.

Now he’s telling a dangerously insensitive story. And she is again beyond appalled.

Sebastian Adon removes his cap and says,

“The job, and operation; call it whatever you want; involves calling on high end prostitutes whose numbers one acquires in the association of men of your former Soviet back ground, mostly at the Banya.”

Banya is Russian for bathhouse. In the past few years Sebastian has been bathing with Russians regularly to wash increasingly dirty hands from stakes that keep mounting and knock around work that just keeps coming.

He loves the way music sounds in Russian. Though he knows under three dozen phrases and cannot even read Cyrillic.

She watches his words take form with her big predatory eyes.

They peer right into you, and they are not always as happy as the smile she plasters on so regularly for photos. That is acquired art in itself. Either they are blue or they are grey or they are silver when sleep deprived, but they are not the eyes of a spectator.

She participates actively in all she observes.

Maybe not rules men try and make or overly hard work though.

“So shortly after they arrive and give you some fictitious cover, you take a coat and as they walk in and settle on a price that will involve no bit of touching at all. Then, you tell them that they’re being filmed and recorded, but that you’re not a cop, agent or a Mossadnik or who-ever dangerous, you’re not there to entrap for absolutely anything. You tell them you’re an abolitionist”

Puff, puff passes along this ill-conceived venture.

“You tell them to call down to the pimp’s driver, and say your John is layered out like Charlie Sheen.”

“Tiger-blooded,” notes Raphael Ernesto.

“Then you make tea. You tell them a story, a personal tale about why you are not a dog or a pig, and how you came to hate this line of work because you had loved someone forced into it. You convince them to take and perhaps disseminate to other persons a number to arrest traffickers and pimps, also to get trafficked and victimized people the resources they need to escape. They get half the job cash for nothing but a number and a way out. They get a number on a card, you ask them to put it in their phone. Eventually, the poor soul either will pass the number or report it directly to the pimps, but you force a violent hand and spread the knowledge that there is in fact a networked way to escape slavery. It’s cheaper and more effective than lobbying or political routes, we must go directly to the slaves and assure them there is safe way out. The next stage then is to get our operatives into brothels to feign cardiac arrest and call ambulances and firemen in as reinforcements.”

Her jaw drops.

“They would kill you just for that,” she spits out.

“For bullshit man! For a lot less than bull shit. A number! I spit on your American number. For insulting low grade bullshit that changes nothing. You will die, they will kill those dear to you, and nothing at all will be fixed about anything, not one woman will walk free” retorts Dasha in all of the glory of women few if anyone has ever said no to.

So, he predetermines.

Not a debutante, not a true New Russian. All the regality of being born all Slavic, but outside the great dividing highway that loops the capital separating the have everything’s from the have nothings or have only little something’s. Being born so radiantly beautiful and tough and Russian after the triumph of Capitalism has left her charming and capable of fighting. But she is far from Russia with love, rootless and floating in glittery fairy tales that don’t expel the hardships of her new country.

“I am not afraid to die for a thing I believe in sweetness, I am not afraid to try and save only one life at the cost of all my American privileges” he flatly retorts.

“He has such American beliefs!” She mocks.

Ernesto always has applauded his radical specifications and foreign adventures over the past three years they’ve known each other and well before. He’s done his trench time, Ernesto. He can recognize a latent revolutionist, from a sleeping one, from a broken man reborn as a hero.  Palestine, Egypt, Haiti, the worst of Europe too and the street battles to occupy the District last fall that went so bloody poorly playing out in split skulls and tear gas all over national television.

“I guess you’ve never had to work for anything completely or work to keep something you fought hard for, so you give away most easily. Your life seems so easily offered, to take if you ask me,” she snaps at his bait.

“Hey, lady, you are insulting to my dear friend and our gracious host,” sternly interjects Raphael Ernesto, “This man, you have no idea what he’s been through to back up these words.”

His mind, his name, his face.

His mind flutters something about heroics under siege in land place called Haiti. His face; vague recollection of doing his job over and over again in bad situations.

A few many baton cracks in the Gulliver. I few to many months in cells.

He’s given lots and lots of militant speeches but never done a very violent action with his hands. Like, Ernesto had to in Peru.

His name? Sebastian is only one of his names He’s piloted an ambulance for the Fire Department for three years in all the city’s worst districts. He has traversed the Levant as Zachariah trying to free slaves and end occupation, the American occupation of Israel and the Israeli Oligarchy’s occupation of Palestine. Vasa, he’s dissident poet.

He’s told people of their human rights over and over, until not over, and over again. He delivered a baby once, helped do it many more times!

She could care less. Bold wild statements don’t get first impression credential checking.

She was appalled by the rude cigarette yank and further appalled by his cynical bourgeoisie story about call girls passing itself off as completely vain and stupidly incompetent activism.

She offers to kill him.

He obliges her. Thinks she’s bluffing.

I’ll kill this over privileged American hypocrite too, maybe she thinks. A civic duty to my new country and old country too. Mostly, she maintains a mighty level of the not giving of a shit. She’s also on an off day. She only remembers every other night out when she drinks. The rest of them a blur black haze punctuated with irregular black and blue marks.

“From falling down stairs.”

If she kills him, the tragedy, as far as a memory, will belong to no one.

Ernesto implores her to be more, “Suave, Suave”. To be more calm and “Tranquillo.” The famous Peruvian revolutionist now a New York low key digital disk jockey cannot even barely modulate Sebastian’s posturing and Dasha’s swaggerous, murderous taunting.

Now they’re waving invisible pistols at each other’s’ faces like wild Middle Easterners. They fuel a veritable bonfire of ego and prideful feuding.

Ernesto urges Victoria and Lia Monte to intercede but they are taking lots and lots of pictures and have seen Dasha make a properly rude scene before, of things when men, “get smart”.

“When men get smart with me I cut them apart,” she lives by that.

The job of any and all men as far as she is concerned is please her by makings sure her drink is never empty and that life is a series of taken care of attractions, to make her life more easy. He has failed at both in his utter self-serving arrogance.

“So you’re gonna kill me or just threaten on about it?” says Sebastian secretly hoping she might actually kill him. He hasn’t felt so alive anyway since the last girl ripped his heart out with a dagger in a long game of masochistic sex coupled with co-dependent longing.

There was nothing healthy about his love life lately.

Even the use of the word bids a mind of shame for perpetually having to beg back affections from those he’s thought he’d die with or for.  A year ago his previous partner finally cut him off and the struggle, the paramedical one and human rights one and abolitionist one, all firmly linked; that struggle itself has overwhelmed him lately with his purported role, his Icarus sky walled expectations, his place in the chain of command remaining unclear. Truly only the existential problems of an overly privileged first world revolutionist, as Yelizaveta used to declaim. His last six months have been a black hole of studies on how to beat back death with drugs and electricity. There is also a lofty, high risk plot underfoot to smuggle himself and small team into Aleppo to train Syrian Free Army combat medics. But what faction! There are over forty groups of fighters there. All predict a poor end to such a venture, but the same neigh Sayers neighed the same on Haiti.

When he sleeps he barely dreams, when he dreams its nightmares about the city of Port-au-Prince or about the last woman he was foolish enough to cry love for whose name was Yelizaveta Perechenova. Who left him eventually for a young physics student and with the declarations of his madness by her mother were the nails in the coffin of their two years of life together.

Something like that.

A veritable blur of a broken dreams to lay down his irrational struggle and pursue medicine, choose life over vain pretenses as a prelude to inglorious martyrdom. His life has taken a turn for the worst now several times “believing in things”. “Being a hopelessly real romantic.”

His studies are narrower now.

He is enrolled in a one year paramedic upgrade program. He had though to jump country, apply for work abroad. He was ordered to hold post in the city and keep working. Lt. Moishe Klein, the orthodox Ivoryish lieutenant on the grave yard shift of Station 31 Cumberland outpost, a sympathizer of the resistance arranged his hasty enrollment in the paramedic academy of Methodist Hospital on Kings Highway.

Or perhaps better focused on saving the individual life here and there; not the world in its totality. Which no one asked of him or expected that he deliver on.

His weekends are soaked in vodka and with wine, sometimes one poured in the other. And the booze keeps his eyes closed to certain things. And now he’s drunk now again. Acting poorly in the company of a Russian woman, yet again.

Kill me for the sake of it, he hopes. It’s what the world would surely not mind all too much. Drunken thinking of an angry man who’s been hit in the head a few times.

“So you’re gonna kill me or just threaten on about it?”

“Absofuckinglutely,” she says.

And then before drunken Ernesto who is now very, very drunken, and also very, very tired, after spinning all night can talk them down they’re up a ladder up to the 18^th story, more of a top, Easterly deck on the 17^th story roof with a deep and deadly edge of death into an 18th floor down plummet with the Geary Building looking out, a million cubicles of an upper class aquarium. Like a Sorcerer’s tower of steel rising up to the East at them by proximity of less than three times an alley way.

A great setting for a hastily arranged assisted suicide.

They’re now boxing. Dasha is properly in boxing school. She strikes at him hard then harder. Die you fucking Amerikanski, you damn wasted one, she thinks.

Ernesto and Lia and Victoria who are always so very stylish, now have stopped their art making over white wine and look up with some very now real concern. Not a bird or a plane could have killed him so far. Not spy agencies or police forces with much bigger better threatening fish to fry.  A beautiful woman might get close enough.

“You don’t want to live here forever?” she taunts him.

Their boxing and taunting has them perilously near the edge to the pit.

The roof deck is a glamorous lit up garden trip into the sweet hereafter where one might fall dead on to the front porch of New York’s highest high rise residential where the rent is now 40,000 American a month on the month before.

The pit is just a dead drop, it’s a Fire code ordinance for building in late 19^th century, a ventilation shaft for the 19 real story print house now a new riche-intelligentsia-queer-Ivoryish coop on the districts northern most edge.

She is striking hammer sickle hits and he is just taking her hits and then, then it comes.

“Hit me to kill me! Just knock me into that fucking pit and make a good inglorious end to it all,” he swagger demands in bellow.

The most beautiful woman he has ever seen is just a side story in his own mind to his own tragedy. She cocks back and doesn’t blink.

Dasha hits him with one big shove and he tumble crumbles backwards into the abyss.

Kill me he beckons and then, she tries so really kill him.

 

As he plummets back, he grabs out and yanks her with him in a tumble off the very ledge of the roof, plummeting to a certain death in the alley way below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

E P I L O G U E

 

 

 

I know you were raised not to think so, because of the deliberate lies written in the Bible Saul wrote in Rome, but you don’t only get one life to live, oh no! There many more to come. This adventure is not even close to over.

 

What was real, and what was in the brutalized minds of our antagonistic protagonists, well that is remaining to be seen, we have three more acts to go!

 

The failed September 17^th, the second stage of the Labor Day Rising and subsequent major atrocities perpetrated in the Financial District and around the country were concluded militarily after just three days. Most of the remaining national rag tag resistance forces were wiped out by the third week after. Except for some little very hard pockets in the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn, most organized forces escaped to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. It was rumored a small army was still functioning in the hills of Western Massachusetts lead my Commander Hali Vik and her Cambodians, though that was hard to believe.

 

The Rebellion of 17^th September was crushed largely with a merciless fleet of white peasant soldiers, high technology and also flying robots. Very few people made it out of the District Financial alive though, all of the surviving political leadership were lined up and shot.

 

Mara Fitzduff, Fenian rebel fled to Ireland. Trickovitch, Allamby and Dbrisk went completely underground and eventually managed to reach Jamaica where Dbrisk had many family and friends.

 

Blood and shattered bodies were in the streets for years passed off as “gang violence operations” and “anti-terrorism raids”.

 

The Stock Exchange didn’t open for a week later. A super storm hit the city right before Halloween, right on schedule and washed all the filth, failure and evidence of purge and war crime away. It sent most of the Russian quarter under the black brine of still water. They later found Dasha’s physical body in the Stillwell Station, over dosed on god knows what, raver drugs. Cold and dead. Rumor had it at Mehanata that she’d left late one night with Sebastian, last anyone had seen them.

 

Another dead foreign hooker, the Cops were unconcerned about it statistically speaking.

 

Sebastian had turned up in the Bell House[25], loony as fuck a day later. Totally mind fucked. Got discharged, allegedly. He was unintelligible when Rafael and Victoria went to visit him. Somehow all he knew was that Dasha was dead. A normal Bell House stint is three weeks easy, but then, the wire said Sebastian was also dead. Two shots to the head and dumped down that very same ally abyss where he and Dasha had almost died.  But, now. They were both confirmed to be quite dead.

 

In a real way, in a two funerals way. Not a crack wander fore walk through the minds of tragic Hebrew prophets, old unfortunate souls. No, they were just Brooklyn dead.

As the “Super Storm” tore apart the city.

Amnesia and the weather began setting in.

As if there had never been an uprising at all. In early September, just a Black Lives Matter “mass looting”, and anti-terrorist police action against the Anarchists and Commys of Re-Occupy Wall Street. On the 17^th, some anarchist occupying bullshit circus, the media said so over and over and over again, then put on Friends re-runs and Football. There’s never been a massacre in America, well maybe the Indians. But, they had it coming. It’s a real free country after all. The act of forgetting set in by November.

 

Never had there been Sebastian and Dasha in the end of summer, or at all.

Their funerals of course were very separate, but held on the same day because gentiles sit out on death display a little, but Ivories go right in the ground.

 

“They’re with Jesus now,” says Victoria gripping her husband’s hand. But didn’t she mean Maya Solomon? It’s not like anyone has the science to clone husks and falsify suicides. It’s not like there are little robots called Nanobots that can take control of the mind, or anything dangerous in the New York tap water. It’s not like 911 was an inside job coordinated by the CIA, ISI, Mossad and acronyms you’ve never heard of. Never forget!

 

Her husband is more an old school Catholic than she is a new school Protestant. But the irony here, in a statement like that, is that if Jesus was now reincarnated and returned to us via a hidden dual bloodline as both a Haitian revolutionary general and also a Sephardic Warrior goddess; and heaven was to brought to an island archipelago in the Caribbean then the story is evidently going to be harder to explain, and the plot will thicken like blood. Because the interesting thing about an idea whose time has come, when supported by old souls; killing the messengers will never silence the planned intention of their words.

 

“They sure as fuck aren’t with Jesus,” Raphael mutters.

 

The last thing Sebastian heard before his soul left his body after two gun shots was: ‘put them in the memory vats and torture them again and again, and again and again.’

 

Even in the black despair of brutal torture, you try not lose your dreams, lose your hope or your soul or your inner monologue. The magic was suddenly gone. What had he put in his mouth? A woman, or the barrel of a gun?!

 

He wakes up on the cold concrete floor of tiny, white light cell.

Of all the thoughts, of what was real and what was mental illness and or torture; where is she, baby what they have done to us!

 

But, he pines for Dasha! No matter what they dangle in front of him, no matter how many times they gut his will. He doesn’t shut the fuck up about Dasha, his Goldy, making art all over town like a little Mayakovski in a cell. He makes claims to their 5,000 years of courtship and tragic separation. He weaves yarns, he tells the moon and invokes the wrath of Voorhees[26]. He stole her from a husband, a boyfriend and a pimp! Doesn’t his heart belong to Dasha Andreavna? Certain Adelina would late accuse him of this cardinal sin. Adelina who lectures on literature and new age thinking. Adelina who is patient and devoted and kind to animals, as well as chornay children. Daria can’t tell Noires one from another, barely likes being around too many honestly calls them subhuman. Basketball monkeys who rhyme about cooking coke into crack, and such. Adelina served with the resistance in Haiti, DR and Cuba. Well yes, he loves them both completely differently and made them pretty similar offers.

 

‘Is he really married to anyone but the game,’ Commander Michael Goldbar Allamby once asked? Michael Goldbar Allamby was, and will probably always be the Chief-Financial-Officer for the ever growing portfolios of the Banshee Otriad, also known as the Brooklyn Bath and Rifle Club, the Brooklyn Otriad, the Adon Otriad, the Cult of Adon in the New York Post. The 99^th Battalion after and during the “Battle of Brownsville”. The very formation the oligarchy is utterly determined to annihilate before they manage to pass off to humanity the “secrets of the Jews”.

 

A series of closing flash backs.

 

“We’ve known each other so long brother. I seen you cry. I seen you beg your G-d to die, I’ve seen you fete with women no one but me even knows how you afford. I love your wife though, Adelina is the very best woman you ever set eyes on,” that was something many of the men agreed to by General Allamby put into a toast.

 

“What happens next?” Mara asks Trickovitch on an encrypted line over the Ocean.

“They say he’s dead, but he aint’ dead.”

“Well where the hell is he, but in the shallow grave that bitch helped dig him?” Mara asks.

 

“He’s in the future.”

 

“I’m tired of his reckless bullshit. The uprising was obliterated, we lost everything. Tens of thousands are dead and many more are in prison. Anyone that’s still alive is completely underground. It was all for nothing,” she repeats her Fenian dower drawl. She’s actually dry drunk.

“He’s lost his mind, but he’s gonna find it in Act 2.”

“Well what about us? What about the movement in the mean time?”

“This was never about one woman or man. We’re gonna take a little time to breath, we’re gonna reorganize the surviving troops. You’re gonna travel to Jerusalem and ask Heval Kaveh Tabatabie for more money, more guns, more time.”

 

“What are you boys gonna do in Brooklyn?”

“We’re gonna do what we trained to do. Hide in plain sight in those funny little hats. Conduct agitation propaganda via the underground press. Blow the bridges, take some hostages, and make this City impossible to govern.”

 

She says nothing, so Trickovitch continues.

 

“It would be nice to believe that G-d, or spirits, or brilliant, fearless also reincarnating heroic leaders were directing us. That we had stolen unstoppable weapons that we could use to knock out their flying robots or counter their nuclear armada; that the secrets of a 5773 year old ancient people were able to knock down city walls like Jericho or bring plagues against the oligarchs like in old Egypt. That the full power of African magic and Voudoun would be like the force. That any of the Great Hegemons were financing us; Russia, China, Cuba or Iran even. That we had secret bases all over the world; which we had the popular support of our own people, that we were even united by the fire of a uniform ideology! But, as you know none of those things are close to true. In fact all of them are false. Adon is in some detention camp being tortured. He may have been tricked into his capture by that woman, he might not have been, but he is certainly no longer in any capacity to be leading anything, if leading is what he was even doing before. By my best estimate we have just under forty women and men left alive and free inside the greater New York area who survived the purge. There are many thousands more down in Jamaica and Haiti, lightly armed and poorly organized, if even organizable. So, you tell the handlers to tell the World Zionist Congress, to tell the Baha’i, and then tell the Knesset in Exile; and tell the Congra Gel[27] we need more time. You tell them that the Z.O.B. is still mostly alive; most of its leadership is not in custody and we will begin planning a second uprising, this time in the borough of Brooklyn.”

 

A drunk Mara Fitzduff, is rarely quiet Mara Fitzduff. But it had been a bad year.

 

“I’ll make sure they know,” and she put down the satellite phone. Didn’t say good night, or good luck these were implicit pleasantries that didn’t need to be said anymore. Getting from Dublin to Jerusalem in those days was going to be a real, real hassle.

 

It was interesting though. That night was the very first night they even questioned the possibility that they’d have to do it all on their own, without grand plans, central leadership or encouragement of any kind. But the makings of a revolution are not founded on acts of faith, but instead banal, grinding rituals of perseverance.

 

The belief that night will break into day; that the howls of death and misery will soon be over. And in the light of day we will wake up in the future. How weak are we and how strong is the enemy!? Are we really but ten women and men, is the whole underground just a pitiful illusion? A demented vision in the head of one man, who is now gone? The entire resistance is therefore floating on hope alone, as it has for all of human existence. That night, was the night that we all had to take a deep breath, pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.

We were scattered, atrocities were happening all over the country, all over the world. We didn’t know who was alive, who was dead, who was in the camps. All we knew those of us that were left was that we had to stay alive, keep moving keep organizing and take the message back to the people.

 

 

 

***

 

           

            Sebastian Adonaev awakes in a smart cell.

 

 

It is not our intention that we should compose such an indictment of the Oligarchy that our reader throws down the manuscript and declares him or herself a revolutionist, for cruel experiences of this world and living in it breed more revolutionaries daily then our pens can expend on poetic syllables.

 

Instead we wished to put to paper an ethical argument that condemns our oppressors, clearly states their means of oppressive control and thus allows the reader to take what actions thou wilt to participate in the abolition of our collective slavery. We posit like others before us that the system in which we live is exploitative to all within; top and below. We declare that the World System and the Oligarchic Collectives that operate it are but agents of a vast killing machine; sentencing us all to toil ceaselessly; suffer long and die early while they glut themselves on ill acquired wealth.

 

With that indictment we ask the reader a Talmudic question; ‘a sane person in an insane world is what?’ And there by a conscious person in a sleeping world has what duty? And furthermore, if the readers cannot be moved by the humble words of this theorist narrator, be moved then by atrocities that are carried out daily paid for in the taxes levied from the sweat of your work and the blood of your fellow humans.

 

We remind you as have others before me, it is not a mere revolution we are fighting. It is battle for the survival of our species and is still an open question of who will win, for this is a very old war began long before us and will end long after we are gone. But, far more specifically by what conduct, what actions are appropriate in the face of such a holocaust to ensure that there is still a just and equitable world for our children and grandchildren to inherit.

 

The victory of the resistance movement is question of consciousness. The victory of the Oligarchy is a death sentence for all.

 

My name is Sebastian Valera Adonaev. I do believe some of that to still be the name I was born with, but now I have multiple names. In the dead of winter, seven years into the Great Revolt; I was captured along with my gun slinging Haitian partner Watson Entwissle after a firefight in the icy heart of Moscow. We were taken three parts-alive by the Russian Federal Security Bureau and then turned over to their inner most secret police for a most highly spirited interrogation.

 

They ripped out poor Watson’s eyes; then broke most of my ribs as then beat us both for many days and soon I was pissing out blood!

 

I will begin by saying that no matter what “changes” or revisions may occur in depiction of my narration that the world changed forever in a very specific way on the 1^st of September 2011. Of course in the constellation of dates there cannot be one discovered moment of alteration total; but instead linkages of great historic movements; migrations toward our human evolution out of darkness and barbarity and inequality; into our natural way.

 

How does one chart such movements; such milestones when they are but realized memes? Realized intuitions that came that pass as world events based on total boldness.

 

I have not the arrogance to claim a high rank in the revolution. Or the audacity to claim that my role was of some significant aspect for I was but a staff sergeant in vast chain of command were the ranks of war to be applied to the ranks of those who fight for peace. I will have you the conscientious readers to know that I am a poet. Yes a poet; once who delights in making words tell stories; who if left to my own devices would have been happy as a small farmer and passionate lover of my wife and the word; had not the violence swept upon my lands.

 

Did you know that when the Oligarchy[28] cannot conquer a rebellion they conquer its narrative? Did you know that the truth is not ever truly known except by those who saw a thing with their own eyes? How did it begin? Who was the leadership? What were the demands! These are oligarch questions because the small man or woman; the humble ones; those who submit themselves to a higher power and therefore love life; the children of the believers; we do not beg a political context for the world; one is thrust upon us.

 

Later on when I was asked or should I say interrogated with beatings, drugs and electricity why I joined the “Great Revolt” and became one its so-called “leaders” they asked me many times to declare the moment when I embraced these “zealous beliefs” or by what life event wedded my totality to this cause. They pestered me with these questions though throughout the events I had played no part except as a member of a small medical detachment putting our meager resources to good use.

 

They, they being the agents of the Oligarchy referred me to a poem published in one of the newspapers of the underground press I had submitted. It was only once piece of the “evidence” against me, but they claimed my role larger than I ever knew it to be.

 

I am able to say that I understand the world differently because my memory is longer; because I read books about the past, because I enjoy reading and because as a poet, a sensitive soul I delight in writing down my base human ideas and sharing them; making common cause with other suffering souls.

 

They would beat us many times and make us many offers. It was fortunate the resistance wiped away my mind so I could betray only myself. In addition, that Watson Entwissle is an Haitian and therefore impossible to break.

 

They always beat me and referred me back to these poems. Poems they claimed were “proof” of my highest-level rebel involvement. The uprising had not at that time fully spread to the Russian Federation or the People’s Republic of China. But, I remembered nothing, well almost nothing well. I did remember several things throughout the brutal interrogations that in a way sustained me through their inflicted brutality. Were these things real or imagined, implanted or devised I have no idea for I know neither science nor high level magic.

I know that there is a secret sleeper organization called the Z.O.B. that is at war with those in total power called The Oligarchy that control the world system core. I know that no one knows what those three letters stands for nor are they originally in English. I know that agents of that Oligarchy raped and brutally murdered my wife while pregnant with my child; they burned my city, they killed my family and my friends, my friends of friends and even former lovers and then there were no ideas or beliefs I needed to then learn to fuel my un-ending resistance after those most hideous events. There after I then breathed in the smoke monster, drank only on blood and nourishing hate.

Finally, I know that an uprising began in a place called Haiti and that it continues to this very day despite major quarantine and most disastrous set back. I know that on January 1^st 1959; that the same revolution spread to the nation of Cuba[29] and has been entrenched there sense were illiteracy has been irradiated and people live longer than in the United American States. And things come in threes, all things; for on 1^st January 2012 that long quarantined revolt fought on the fringes of the developing word erupted on the streets of Port-Au-Prince and spread like wild fire worldwide.  I know that I am entitled to certain protections under the Geneva Accords I will not receive as a uniformed combat Pararescueman, shield 2952 of the 99^th Airborne Detachment from Brooklyn Soviet, epicenter of the latest phase in our latest and most glorious uprising.

They then beat me for many more weeks. They ripped out my finger nails and drugged me into nightmarish worlds of grisly torture. They called me terrorist as though it were my surname. They demanded I tell them “who are my true leadership”, “where is Emma Solomon?” “Where is Avinadav DeBuitléir?” They have nothing to gain because I know nothing but what I have already told you. I am a poet who makes silly rhyming poems to bed young women.

You murdered my entire family, I periodically think inside me self.

Therefore, I joined the rebel alliance as uniformed Pararescueman 2952 of the 99^th Airborne Detachment, known also as the Fighting 99^th. It was we who helped retake Port Au Prince briefly in 2009. It was we who took back Jerusalem in 66, 112, and again in 1210ce.

And such was the only thing still etched in my mind under vast torture. Periodically I wondered if I could hear Watson screaming, but it is against the code of the Haitian gentleman to break under torture and I doubted therefore the screaming was coming from him.

In another life. Before knowledge of their atrocities sent me to first to Cuba; then to Haiti and Syria where I saw with my own eyes the fullness of genocide the Oligarchy was capable of. Before I read my Ocalan and my Orwell, my Marx, my Zinn, of course my Emmanuel Wallerstien, and Chomsky; peppered in with my Mayakovsky, my Bell Hooks, my Emma Goldman, some Rist, the great Kropotkin and many, many others. So many books and not enough life times!

Those doomed idealists and wandering; those seculars; those unrepentant exile Ivories. I was living on a kibbutz in the land of American occupied Israel writing small poems, laying out my first novel, working the land; laying sprinkler drip lines, making small art and being very much in love.

 

They refer me to some poem that supposedly appeared in something called the “Banshee News Service” several months ago. Of course I deny anything they claim I am party too. Banshee isn’t that a ghost, I ask. And a truncheon strikes my jaw.

All I see now is her oy smile, beaming at me by the desolate Brighton boardwalk, there was so much hope that day that we could both leave this grim foreign city and a bleak serf’s life.

 

            Who or what, how now, why is my Dasha?

Dorogaia (dear one) I have failed you, where are you now! What have I again done!!

 

After reading me this trifle wearing both a hideous and vaguely comical mask; one my interrogators then smashes my face with a truncheon again. And such was the only evidence they ever presented me with. A stupid, non-rhyming poem. A ridiculous, minuscule Partizan Song.

Written in Gamatria (Secret Ivory Code)[30], ah ha; you’d have to know what that is pig!

In another life I wrote a boat load of little poems. Interestingly enough, or perhaps commonly my mind retreats into itself to escape the shame or torture and also the unending pain of total human sympathy. My memories it seems are crafted devices, walls of data to waylay my opponents and thus shelter my closest friends and associates. What for are then these ridiculous poems? I call them but a masochistic hobby horse. Though they are not all without some talented intent, they serve me no good, not once or ever.

I wrote them all to four various Russian women. Though that cannot be used to say that all four women were properly loved, or that I loved each with equal rigor. Poetry, song and art itself are manifestations yet they are not equal and they are not all backed up with the same stuff, the same longing, the same level of doing of deeds after words.

It should be clear that though I slept in and beside these four women over a period of some six years; I did only love one truly in a humane way. And only she loved me.

Now they’re yelling something in Russian and I pretend as though I do not speak it not at all. But how could I not for all and every of my strangest loves taught me my greatest lessons in that language.

 

They are demanding all these pieces of myself I cannot even hope to deliver. These interrogators and also those four women. Though I took more than I probably gave.

 

It seems they are less interested in the recently murdered guard colonel my Haitian partner and I played the part of recent highway men to gun down dispatch. Less interested in our baser affiliations. It seems that the strong arm of the Russian Oligarchy is most concerned with a brief end of summer liaison that happened seven years prior with a young buxom émigré from the little city of Penza whose name was Daria Andreavna Skorobogatova who for some time I called Dasha, or Dashutka to be even more sweet.  Do not ask me to quantify my love and longing for I cannot.

 

I cannot tell these torturers what names I have invented, or under what puzzling circumstances came upon me when I shed the privileges of my imagined identity and lesser American aristocracy, to make new friends in the Russian quarter, placing myself hopefully in the arms of sweet humanity.

 

 

 

And that was the end of the first act.

 

 

[1] An Unlimited Operation classically means coordinating mass withdrawals of cash from ATM machines via hacked bank access codes, in this case it is a play on internal monologue words referring to accessing lots of hacked people, and sleepers all over the east coast programmed prior, namely Sebastian Adon.

[2] It was not so much that revolutionaries need new names, it was that a process of transformations occur in the half-life of a revolutionary, which symbolically and practically take on new names.

[3] A Ghost Shirt organization is a skeleton crew carrying out agitation propaganda bluffing its strength and actually quite miniscule forces. Ghost Shirt organizations are either carrying out a false flag for a larger, organized intelligence service or are acting out of scarcity and desperation.

[4] The Catholic time of giving up things to mourn the death of Jesus.

[5] The Old Spirits of Africa and Siberia. Also called the Lwa, not to be confused with Greco-Roman Pagan ‘Gods’.

[6] A tool of advanced parapsychology to construct dream worlds and then enter them and influence the mind of the target/ subject.

[7] A dance mostly from Jamaica and Trinidad where a woman backs it up and grinds her bumper all over a man’s business.

[8] Capital of Communist Vietnam, Cuba, China, Vietnam and Laos are the only four countries with a governing Communist Party, although really only Laos and Cuba are socialist countries economically speaking effective 2017.

[9] Angola fought a global proxy war on its territory that went on from 1975-2000, during this proxy war the Apartheid Regime of South Africa was defeated by the armed forces of Cuba in 1981.

[10] A dance of the Afro-Caribbeans.

[11] The two million plus person carnival which is about to trigger the Uprising, also called the Labor Day Parade, or the West Indian Day Parade.

[12] Gangster, or gangsta, or Shatah can mean many things but generally it means a tough guy character affiliated with some form of organized crime. In the case of Mickhi Dbrisk, he was a made man in the Jamaican Mafia, but relinquished his earning power to join the resistance and take on leadership of the Banshee Otriad, and subsequently the Z.O.B.

[13] This is the rowdy all night pregame party to the parade which normally claims the lives via gun murder of 5 to 10 people.

[14] A cell is tight, decentralized unit of 8-12 persons carrying out clandestine terror or guerrilla operations behind enemy lines usually in an urban environment.

[15] 3 million estimated person capital of Republic of Haiti.

[16] A psychiatric torture facility on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

[17] Known for their acumen with moto vehicles, racing them and modifying them. Guyana is on the east coast of northern South America across from Trinidad. Guyana has been a long time base for resistance forces before and after the CIA massacre of the People’s Temple Agricultural Project training base as a “cult” in 1978.

[18] A good pistol according to Nicholai Trickovitch, Chief Logistics Officer of the Z.O.B. is either the Glock 19, the S&W 5946 or the Sig Sauer P226 DAO, as these are the three fire arms the NYPD carry.

[19] The KGB’s successors are the secret police agency FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation) and the espionage agency SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service).

[20] Created by two Greek priests to teach the Russians the bible.

[21] Pro-Communist Russians, as opposed to White Russians which supported the Czar.

[22] Much feared head of the Bureau of Homeland Security, known for his personal rape and debauchery and atrocities against accused subversives.

[23] An enormous unmanned flying bomber and rocket drone the size of a football stadium loaded with autonomous Ariel drones.

[24] The year of the April 17^th Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazidom.

[25] A slang phrase for Bellevue Health and Hygiene Center for psychiatric reprograming.

[26] Top level Russian mafia heads.

[27] The People’s Congress based in the Qandil Mountains of Northern Iraq.

[28] The hyper-organized collectives of hyper elites in each nation presiding over the World System economy and political process imposing their will on humankind and reducing us to slavery.

[29] World’s last functional Communist nation.

[30] Hebrew letters taking on rising mathematical values which the Jews study in Kabbalist mysticism, the resistance uses in various ways as a code system.