They walked me down a long hallway. It seemed longer in my head. It had a familiar tone… the stoic, concrete floor, the blue painted steel walls, the washing of flourescence from the long lights- I was in jail. The hallway seemed longer than any hallway I’d ever walked down. Then again… They always seemed long. My hands were shackled in front of me and my ankles clanked in the leg irons that shuffled with every shortened step I took. I was no stranger to correctional facilities, but what made this particular hallway walk especially dubious and terrifying was the fact That I did not even remember being read my rights, much less even booked in or given a phone call. As a matter of fact, I did not even recognize the facility. This was not Harris county. To add to the surmounting terror I was feeling, I was not aware of why I was there. I have been (mostly)clean, I thought. I have not committed a crime in at least a year. I went to sleep in my bed last night after a long days work. Why had I been awoken by these agents with flashing badges, bright lights and shimmering handcuffs? What had I done?
Finally, after what felt to be hours, they brought me into one of those small rooms with the two way mirrors and steel interrogation tables, and sat me down. There were two men with me. One was a very common looking younger man wearing a very standard looking police uniform that, judging from the fresh crease on his pants and the freshly polished shimmer that came off of his night stick handle, did not look like it had seen a day in the streets. The other man was in plain clothes, though they were a little strange for a cop. He wore a kind of shabby, gray sportcoat that looked like it had dog hair on it. His shoes were scuffed, his face unshaven, bags under the eyes, and his wrinkly pants looked a size too big. It did not add up. There was no way this guy was a DA or a detective of any sort. These observations, in addition to my very coherent recollection of going to bed the prior evening in my own bed in my own apartment. No goddamn idea how I ended up in this shithole…
I sat at the table, hands and feet still shackled. The two men paced back and forth across the small room, eyes fixated on me and my nervous movements.
“So what’ll it be, asshole?” The plainclothed officer barked as he smacked his palm down on the steel table. ” You probably don’t know what the fuck is happening to you right now and I don’t have time to fuckin’ explain, but you gotta tell us what the fuck you’ve been doing. Know what I mean?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” I spat out. “I don’t know how I even-”
“listen kid,” the younger, uniformed officer cut me off. “Let me tell you a couple things.” This cop had a more reasonable tone about him. Age old ‘good cop bad cop’ crap. “We know everything, we’ve kept tabs on you this whole time. We got you nailed down. You don’t know how we got ahold of all this dirty laundry, but it stinks. it stinks like fuckin’ shit my friend. And if we can get you to put down an honest deposition, we can get everything we need and you might walk outta here with your head still attached.” He glanced at his surly faced partner, “I get it, you did what you had to do. It’s a terrible world. A vile, stinking fuckin’ place. A fuckin’ legion of gut sacks fucking this beautiful world raw and leaving nothing to be spared.” He clapped his hand on my shoulder and leaned in closer. He had an odd wildness in his eyes, at least for a cop. “Just… talk to us so we know all the details”
“Fuckin reasonin’ with this fuckin animal, Donny, what the fuck?!” the shabby clothed man’s ruined, alcoholic face started to turn red. “I told you what we needed to do to get a word outta this guy. You know how these fuckin’ people are. He’ll sell you a line of crap and be laughing about it all night in the tank with all the other scumbags. You know this shit ‘aint gonna work if we don’t press this fuckin’ guy’s button.”
The surly partner seemed to have a personal problem with me. As if we’d met somewhere before and I fucked his wife. “Listen, cocksucker. You’re going to tell us everything you know. Because we know everything already. Ya dig it? Thing is… We need you to tell it all to us with brutal honesty, or it ‘aint gonna work. There’s an option B and..”
“We’re not gonna resort to option B.” The younger officer interrupted flatly, his arms folded in front of him, intently staring at the foul looking man hunched over me.
“Shut the FUCK UP Donny!” bits of spit from his mouth landed on my face as he shouted over me at his partner. “You’re gonna learn a thing or two about ‘protocol’ and real fuckin’ life.” He struck me in the mouth. He hit me so hard that I flew from my chair, face first into the floor, unable to break my fall due to my restraints. He then perched over me and punched me in the face, choking me with his swollen, meaty hands. “This fucking operation requires a full confession. You know how these fuckin’ beaureaucrats require full documentation. These liberals really get on my fuckin’ nerves, ya know?!” he continued his ranting, “They love to act like they aren’t out here harvestin’ these worthless ex- con shitbags and scoopin’ out their brains and turning them into secret weapons. Ya know??We gotta do what we gotta do to win and those fuckin’ womanish billionaires in office are trying to fight the enemy with one hand shoved up their fuckin’ slits. make me sick, they do. You share the goddamn spoils of the world with the biggest despots in the world, yet stand there on your big fucking soapbox.” he spat on the ground at my feet. “Fuck you. I will not apologize for serving my country. ” He looked me in the eye. “Alright son. Here’s the deal. We have to get a full confession of your life’s terrible deeds. We’re giving your failed life a second chance. We come from another dimension. We have mastered technology that your version of earth has only begun to scratch the surface. Space colonization, dimensional travel, et cetera. Ya hearin’ me junior??” He smacked me playfully across the back of the head. “We’re gonna put some plugs into ya and inject some some growth hormones. You’ll also be fitted with cybernetic devices that will make you an absolute killing machine for uncle sam. Your brain will be nullified, of course. Don’t worry, you’ll lose all interest in becoming angry or sad or happy, and you won’t be able to use your dick anymore. Safety protocols, eh? haha” he issued a raspy chuckle behind his nefarious, grinning teeth. “So, here it is.” He continued. You’re going to fucking tell us what we want to know so we know that we’re not going to be dragging a decent family man back to our dimension. Ya know?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” I retorted. “I left work last night, had a pint over at Jimmy’s and I went home and went to bed!” I was beyond confused at this point, what the fuck did these pigs want from me? This is fucked, I thought. I’m raising as much cain as possible until I get to talk with a lawyer. I don’t care if that fat piece of shit hits me again.
“I wan’t to speak to a fucking lawyer.” I snarled at the vile man standing over me. “I’ve been in this room for like 3 fuckin’ hours I don’t even know where I am. Did you cocksuckers set me up? Did you fucking peice of fuckin’ shit cops slip somethin in my drink at the bar or some shit? Are you gonna feed me to some fuckin’ reptillians in area 51? What the fuck? Is this some kinda extrodinary rendition? Like how the government used to grab people “suspected” of terrorism and throw bags on their head and shred all their documents? You guys gonna waterboard me and ask me if I’ve ever been to Afghanistan?? Color me crazy because this futurist whatever bullshit isn’t exactly making sense. What the fuck is this? Some kinda secret experiment or something?! Tell me something or I swear to god I’m gonna cuss the fuck out of you and spit in your fucking pig faces until you kill me, put me in the hole, or let me walk out of here because YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT!” I lurched forward and my face began to turn red. “YOU DON’T KNOW A GODDAMN FUCKING THING! LET ME SEE ONE MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF EVIDENCE PIG.” I spit on the ground and drew a deep breath, calming my nerves a bit. I was suprised I had not been struck again. “Guess those infowars people were right about a few things. Fuck, man. Just get this over with. Goddamnit. This is really how I fuckin’ die?” I muttered to myself.
“You remember when you were six years old?” The younger, uniformed man started.”The little girl? That was our first test of our technology. We’re not from here, my friend.” He looked at me for a moment, it almost seemed like he was being sympathetic. “We’re from another dimension. One right on top of this one. Same planet, some variations. One of which being our field priorities. Scientific research is one of our planets’ greatest pursuits. They’ve even got a space program in Bosnia. Your dimensions’ nations seem to favor economic expansion and military operations. Anyway… we are with the Western Council’s division of interdimensional control. Up until very recently, Our division could only observe phenomena occuring in a parallel dimension. We’ve been experimenting advanced mind and thought control techniques and their potential to engender supersonic reflexes and senses in a human being. We have discovered that certain, would you say, ‘superhuman qualities exist in those who have chemical ‘imbalances’ as your doctors would say. These imbalances, coupled with trauma, both physical and mental, can be enthralled with our medicine and training, and that person with these exceptional qualities can be potentially used as a weapon against enemies of the free world. I know this is alot to take in. But we need you to talk about the things you’ve felt. The things you’ve experienced. We need you to relive those tense, emotional moments and those confusing attacks that you’ve been having. So far, you are the only person we’ve found who isn’t dead, close to dead, locked behind layers of steel, or they are so wall-eyed and crazy that our methods would have been lost on them.”
I looked at both of my captors with a blank expression, but my mind shook with extreme disquietude. What the fuck, I thought to myself. This is beyond absurd. Something out of the Twilight zone or an Asimov novel. I didn’t believe it. I believed that I had been taken by some kind of professionals, either employed by the feds or someone very rich. Mercinaries, maybe…. but why are they after me? Either way, they needed to hear a deposition about my personal life, for whatever reason, or I would never make it to the next phase of whatever hell they had planned for me next. Either way. I most likely would have never left that interrogation room had I not given them something. I figured that I would die soon, so I began with a very honest deposition.
“I always just tried to stay outta people’s way,” I started. ” I just wanted to be left alone.” I told them about growing up in South Chicago in a large family of hard-working, hard living, salt of the earth Irish Catholics. I told them about the formative years of my life, when my siblings, our cousins, aunts, uncles, Godmothers and Godfathers were a source of (seemingly) everlasting security and safety. I spoke at great length about what they taught me about family and loyalty, about how “blood runs even thicker when it sticks together.” They told me about my grandparents who had come here on a coffin ship naught but two generations ago and about how my family worked themselves to the bone to create a good life for the children of Clan Barret. My father taught me that a man, if he has nothing else, will always have his word and that it was of much importance not to sully that word with or cowardly actions. I told him about how we all used to play horrendous but well intentioned games with each other, and how they were always comically violent and absurd. (games like “bank robbery” “death penalty executioner” “gang wars” “zombie attack” etc…) It was an endless fountain of carefree youth and blissful ignorance.
I continued on through my adolescence, where the dark days began. I talked about how my mother left my 6 siblings and not long after my youngest sister, Mary Ann, was born. I talked about how dad started drinking heavily, started to lose hours at work, how I had to get my first job at 14. How I started hustling on the side. Selling little bags of dope at the laundromat, mostly, but there were plenty of B and E’s, shoplifting, a couple arsons, and a host of various scamming techniques which I did not go into much detail about. (not gonna let these pig fucks know the game, you know?) My first arrest was at 16, a little late by the neighborhoods’ standards. Got into an argument with a junkie over something trivial, and I punched the guy in the eyeball once or twice. I ended up having a knife drawn by the time the police pulled up so the cocksuckers tried to charge me with assault with a deadly weapon. I never touched the guy with it, and I was a (white) kid, so I ended up with a disorderly conduct charge.
By the time I was 19, I had racked up a few more misdemeanors, as well as a real nice smack habit. I hustled, dealt, ducked, dived, and stole my way through a 200 dollar a day habit. I had been through a lot, no doubt, but I had made many decisions on my own volition that I simply could not just put off on my parents or the city I grew up in. I was a product of both poor circumstance and a (tragic) indifference to common morality. It was around this time in my life that the attacks began.
They were, for all explanatory purposes, much like the common panic attack that occurs in one with the double tailed dragon of depression and anxiety. Shortness of breath, frantic heart rate, inability to feel a stillness of any sort, shaking hands, dizziness. There was something subtle, yet distinct about these attacks, however. For one, they started late in life, and the onset of these attacks came suddenly one day as I was nodded on the couch, far from the condition of a person who experiences anxiety attacks. Secondly, these attacks seemed to jolt up and down my central nervous system. My hands and wrists would contort and my neck would tighten in a very uncomfortable and visibly noticeble fashion. It was as if a switch had been flipped and my body had been taken over. Thirdly, and most disturbingly, I was flooded with anger and violence during these attacks. shocking imagery of those around me laying in bloody heaps, vivid scenes of myself being viewed in the third person, bludgeoning my compatriots to death with various objects. I felt much shame over them. A theif and a liar and a scam artists, perhaps. But I wasn’t some fuckin’ nut. Plus, the people in these terrible visions were my friends and family. The whole ordeal did not seem natural at all. I did what I thought I would never do. After about 5 good years on the spike I quit. Not wanting to inevitably relapse as soon as the dope sickness set in, I began an aggressive shoplifting spree. I just kept getting high and making attempts on things that would surely get me caught. I actually made it quite a while with this “Plan.” I actually increased the amount of Heroin I was using because of all the high value merchandise I was stealing. Instead of getting caught, as intended, I would either get away in my friend’s car or simply outrun the men who were chasing me. That “Junk Time” that Borroughs talks about seems a bit faster in the 21st century…. Must have been my penchant for a good speedball…
After talking about how much I used to love Heroin for several more minutes, the fat, disgusting cop threatened to “bust me in my other face,” If I didn’t move it along. whatever that meant. After quickly saying how I’d finally gotten my wish after OD’ing in a McDonalds bathroom with several packs on me. I continued on to talk about how the attacks did not subside, and in fact, almost seemed to have gotten worse. I learned how to cope with them by developing a mild, functional alcoholism. I spoke of my Job as a short order line cook for a little roadhouse outside of town. How my life had taken on some stability and become rather mundane, to say the least. I went into the lonliness I felt and the isolation caused by not being able to relate to most aspects of a civilized world. I was not good at it to begin with, much less under the duress of these panic attacks that I have been having for the past decade. I went to my job every night. If I got off early enough, I went to the other bar around the corner and drank a few whiskeys. I did not talk to the people I didn’t need to talk to, I didn’t go places I wasn’t needed, and I didn’t involve myself in business that did not concern me. I resigned myself to the fact that I could live like this for the next twenty or thirty years, or however long it took for me to die.
I continued staring at the floor as I finished winding my sad, peasant’s tale, both officers standing with their arms folded. The fat, ugly man was wearing a satisfied smirk on the corners of his mouth. The younger man had a different kind of expression. He almost looked nervous.
“Well, I guess that’s that. ” the fat man said. He produced a very strange device from his pants pocket. It was about the size of an average smartphone, but it had a bizzare , polygonal shape. There were many buttons on the interface, as well as what seemed to be a trigger resting on the cop’s fat finger. It had a small screen that was flashing letters in a strange language across it. The man squeezed the trigger and said something into the face of the strange remote device.
“Y’hag hoag set bhoush eogratch amaan. HA!” he laughed. surely this interdimensional traveling pig was up for a promotion. “Y’hag maun goi ruptkot ai sura ai mordal ai af hoag maskuutchen piente’! HAHAHA”
The fat man got off the phone after several more boisterous exchanges. “We’ve got your deposition recorded. You qualify for the program. I gotta say, my man. You are one sad sack of shit! That PTSD is going to prevent any kinda mental backpedaling in those inception modules. Thank God and your country. We have finally found use for the undesireables!” His belly shook as he howled with laughter. He was such a large, disgusting man. His great belly stretched and shook up and down as he continued to revel in his filthy deeds. “Alright, cheif. Let’s get you moving. Mahsoi sen Marhutahhhh” He bellowed as he continued his laughter.
Just then, the younger officer, who had been silent for some time, pulled his service pistol from it’s holster and shot the fat cop through the back of the head. The bullet exploded out of his forehead and spewed blood, brain matter and chunks of blood on my clothes and face. He stumbled forward and collapsed into the large american flagpole-the only ornament in the stoic, concrete interrogation room. The flag and the officer crumbled together in a bloody heap on the floor as the younger officer put his pistol back into it’s holster.
“C’mon. This room is soundproof but they’ll start looking in here as soon as we walk out. I know that robocop shit sounded fun, but there are still some good people left in our world. You’re being recruited into our resistence. I’m not a cop, never have been. Whole bloodline’s fought for the Axe against the rule of the trans-pacific global council. There’s gonna be some adjustments you’ll have to make. I’m sure you have thousands of questions. I have answers. But first we need to get out of this cop shop. The council also has several ops outside the station dressed as bums. ” He unhooked my cuffs and wiped the brain matter from my face. “have to handle them. If we make it through all that, well, you know… hold up stand behind me after I boot this…” He gave the interrogation room door a swift boot, definitely learned that one in some kind of academy. He quickly dispatched the startled officer outside the door with three bullets in the chest. Must be some good hollow points in that gun, I noted. “you know,” he shrugged, “you’ll know. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
The Night Watch 