OLIVER'S ILLUMINATIONS

A Child's Guide To American Empire

Written and Illustrated

by

Rick Hill

2010

copyright

PART ONE 

 

1.
   I dreamed I was at the edge of the sea. Heavy clouds shut out the sun and tossed a few showers in the distance. I walked toward a group of people standing at the end of a pier looking into the water below. I moved through the crowd of men and women, young and old. There was no railing. I balanced nervously with the shifting crowd and looked down. Women rolled in the water. Their glassy eyes stared deep into mine as their serpentine hair waved around their faces. There was a bad taste in my mouth. I turned away and walked back. When I cleared the crowd, cries of alarm stopped me in my tracks. Dark forms rose out of the water. The people rushed at me. I saw a large brick building on a hill and ran for it. I pounded on the door and bolted past the woman who opened it. I ran through rooms full of people, dining rooms, cocktail parties, boardrooms, dinner parties, saunas. I bolted up a grand stairway and into an empty bedroom with a window that looked onto a balcony. As I lifted the window, the screams of the dying echoed in the rooms below.   I awoke to the sound of rotten fruit falling on the floor. My eyes snapped open. The screech of an angry wasp’s nest made me sit straight up. I stumbled out of bed to the drunken moans around a piano bar after midnight. I wandered toward them in the darkness full of curiosity and fear. They grasped at me. They grabbed hold of me.

2.
    I shuffled out of the bedroom. My legs seemed unsteady, my balance tricky. I moved awkwardly through a dark hallway hung with dim landscapes and gloomy portraits and into another room. The furniture seemed huge. The chairs and tables dwarfed me. My feet caught on the rug. I glanced down at them. They were tiny, like the feet of a child. My limbs and fingers were small and pudgy. I was wearing some sort of overalls.

   The moaning danced around me in the darkness like bats. It wavered in volume and tone like a radio searching for a signal. I had to turn on a light. I peered into the shadows looking for a lamp. There was nothing. I searched the walls looking for a switch. Then something caught my eye. I could just make out a light switch high above me. The ruckus dimmed and swelled. Its source seemed to move in the darkness, now in a corner, now next to me, now trailing away. I clambered onto a chair. My legs swung in the air. A chill went up my spine as imaginary hands reached out and grabbed at me. I pulled myself up on the cushion and balanced on an arm.    

   The moans rushed toward me. I reached for the light again. They doubled in volume. My arms were covered with goose bumps. My fingers found the switch. One more stretch balancing on the arm on tiptoes and I had it. I heard it snap as I pushed it up. I collapsed into the chair. I was blinded as the room was flooded with light.

  

4.
   I felt sick. I clamped my hands over my mouth. I stood speechless in the chair staring at this crappy animation hopping and jiggling, croaking and squeaking, twitching and stomping. The monkey bounced up and down in mindless ecstasy. He stared into the empty cup and turned it over and over. He leaned down to the tramp. He moved his quivering face next to hers. His thin lips puckered. The tramp's mouth exploded into a lascivious open-mouthed grin. Her tongue poured out over her teeth and flapped in the air. She bashed her fists on the keyboard again and again. She threw her arms over her head, lifted her legs in the air and wiggled all four limbs like snakes. A gurgling cackle crawled out from the depths of her soul. The thug spun in circles. His arms stretched out and flapped frantically like a fly caught in a spider's web. His broad ass swayed and bobbed. He threw his head back and bellowed at the ceiling.

   They mooed like lovesick cows. They screeched like a startled flock of crows. Then all at once they pressed their wobbly heads close together. They were no longer vomiting noise individually. They let loose a long, low growl. It was as deep and coarse as a Mongolian throat song and got lower and lower until they sounded like idling Harleys. The rumble went up my spine and into my brain where it boiled and belched until I could stand it no longer.
   “Stop it!”, I screamed. “Stop it right now!”

  

5.
   They were jolted out of their trance and the caterwauling came to a halt. The tramp's arched fingers were suspended over the piano keys. Her necklace stomped still. Her curdled yellow eyes narrowed. She snarled. The thug stopped in mid twirl, arms outstretched, fingers shaking. His thick neck pulled his head back up slowly like a crane righting an overturned bus. His empty eyes searched the room. The monkey put down his cup and stood up. His lips pulled back exposing his horrible teeth. His eyes uncrossed. His tail lifted straight in the air. A long, slow fart escaped his ass. The three of them turned and stared at me like rats in a kitchen. I felt very much afraid. I could smell their stale sweat. I could feel the sweat running down my face. The tramp let loose an angry hiss. The thug joined in with a low growl that sputtered and popped and shook his cheeks. A high-pitched whine beamed from the monkey.

   Then I got angry. How dare these assholes threaten me? I gathered my courage, pulled myself up, pointed towards the door and ordered them out.

 

6.
   That was a mistake. The creatures rushed forward in a mob, their legs clattering like a tarantula. They leapt on the back of the chair and looked down at me with ravenous grins on their faces. I tried to put on a strong front but my shoulders hunched and my knees weakened. My resolve bled out of me and shrank away. I began to shake.

   “Look at the pretty little boy, so pink and plump!”, wheezed the tramp. “Hello, little one. Would you like some candy?” The corners of her mouth were plugged with expanding and contracting webs of yellow saliva. Her hair seemed frozen, never moving as her head wagged like a signal at a railroad crossing. “I like you, little one. You’re so cute. Will you be my friend?”
   The stink of formaldehyde billowed from the thug’s mouth. His eyes squinted with delight behind the thick, greasy lenses of his glasses. His fat fingers clutched the chair. “Soft and round.”, he gurgled, his lips curling and flapping around his broken teeth. “Juicy and tender. I could pan fry him with a little lemon and butter. I could roast him slowly over hickory wood. I could pull off his arms and legs. I could twist off his head. I could -”
   “Pretty boy!”, the monkey chattered as he jittered and jerked. A string of drool slipped between his teeth, hung in the air swaying back and forth then dropped on my head. “Pretty boy! Pretty boy! Pretty boy!” His eyes crossed and focused over and over as his concentration ebbed and flowed. He slowly lowered his clammy face down to me. His skin boiled. Suddenly a filthy paw crowned with cracked, gray claws shot toward my face.

 

7.
   I woke up terrified. My eyes darted around the room. A sickly light peed through the window. I let out a yell and waved my arms. I jumped up from the couch and scared the hell out of Birdie who had been sleeping next to me. He shot straight up in the air and came close to hitting the ceiling. When he fluttered down and landed on the arm of the couch, there was a scowl on his face. I clutched the couch and stared straight ahead as the dream rolled around in my head. It had been more horrible than ever. Each time it got worse, more vivid, more real. I was dripping with sweat. The sweat turned cold. I grabbed my arms and shivered. The room came into focus. It was small and claustrophobic. The windows overlooking the city seemed blurred and cheap like scratched Plexiglas. It was as though the dream had infected reality. I ran my fingers through my hair, and they caught in it. My clothes stuck to me. I itched all over. My head pounded. I felt like I was going through some sort of withdrawal.

   Birdie was staring at me with wide eyes. “Come on back home. It was just a dream. You’re alright now.”, he said in a calm voice heavy with concern.
   Slowly the empty flatness of the sounds of nightmares began to fade. Their carnival ride images began to flicker out. My pounding heart calmed. I was breathing easier.

 

8.
    I was back in my apartment and reality. The sun had set and a new moon hung over the City. Birdie saw that I was coming out of the dream and was relieved. Then he was pissed off. I had to calm him down. I had to calm myself down. I told him the dream.
    He breathed a heavy sigh. “You’re so obsessed with that monkey, you’re dreaming about it again, aren’t you? George Bush is a wind-up toy bumping against the furniture in the oval office. He’s scarier than Howdy Doody with a chain saw. That thug Cheney is Regent and his strings are pulled by corporate America. They say he sings tunelessly at the top of his lungs when he’s sitting on the can. My God, that’s something straight out of Suetonius. And the tramp? How did Condoleezza slither her way into your nightmare? I get a headache just thinking about her winy, mousy voice and those watery eyes of hers trying to cover up a temperament that would as soon plant a knife in your back as serve you a cup of coffee.” He paused for a moment, reflecting. “I have to admit though, they’re quite a triumvirate: idiot evil, insane evil and smarmy evil. And what about you being a little boy? Were you innocence in the face of evil? What’s with the women rolling in the water and the dark forms slaughtering rooms full of victims? Ah, the subconscious, it's a feast for the conscious. None the less, you are wasting your time sweating bullets over all this.” If he had a finger, he would be waving it at me. I could see a frown under his feathers. “Now come on, take a deep breath and fix yourself a drink.”

9.
   His expression warmed. He offered me a winning smile. “What the hell are you going to do about it anyway? Everyone is pissing and moaning but nothing is being done. Why don’t you take the night off and relax? Try that new place, Le Soleil. There are bars, cabarets, galleries, shops all under one roof on the fifth floor. Lose yourself in the crowd. Fill your mind with the nothing of now.”

   I decided to take his advice. As I dressed in front of my mirror, I studied the carved sea creatures swimming around the frame. They were looking back at me that night as though they wanted to tell me something, warn me about something. I brooded over Birdie’s words. Insane evil I could understand. Insanity cancels morality. Smarmy evil works. Smarmy people are manipulators. But an evil idiot, that was truly frightening.
   Birdie continued his concerned admonition while perching on my head. “What’s with the recurring nightmares? Are you yearning for the good old Weimar days? Everything was just peachy under Clinton wasn’t it?”, he continued, his voice dry with disgust. “Free Trade, the end of big government as we know it, NAFTA, GATT and the Dotcom bubble, a blow job away from handing Medicare and Social Security over to Wall Street - if ever there was an example of ‘if you can’t beat’ em, join ‘em’, Bill Clinton was it. Tired of those pesky regulations that held Wall Street in check since the Great Depression? Tired of paying those spoiled American workers a living wage? No problem. Bill, your friend in the White House will fix things for you just fine. And you’re worried about Dubya? The rot beneath this canker is bottomless, do you hear? Go out and get drunk and bring me back a bottle!”
  

 

  

10.
   The night was sultry. The streets were busy. I fell into the seething swarm of humanity and reflected. We were at war. We were at two wars. Young Americans were dying and being mutilated every day. They spent fifteen months in hell without a break only to be sent back over and over again but there was no draft, no pictures of home coming coffins, no more than sixty seconds of war on the fifteen-minute nightly news so who cares? And what were people on the home front doing? Buying houses, lots and lots of houses. Are you down and out, unemployed with a lousy credit record and on the verge of bankruptcy? Who cares? A million-dollar loan on a fifty-dollar house will make you feel better. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the latest Hollywood scandal, the Christmas sale on talking stuffed animals, the Rapture.

   Birdie was right. Nobody was doing anything. Everyone was throwing up their hands. What could we do? They were just laughing at us. They were bankrupting the country and shoving the heel of their boot on our necks. Every phone call made, every email sent, every web site visited was recorded and nobody seemed to give a rat’s ass. ‘I don’t care if they tap my phone. I have nothing to hide.’ Get high on their radar screen and you’re on the no-fly list. Get higher and you might just disappear. And torture? Yawn. Habeas Corpus? What’s that?
   Two little dogs yapping hysterically at each other dampened my mood even further.

11.
   I found Le Soleil and took in the fancy sign, the red carpet, the doormen holding open etched glass doors for me and only me. The logo was a stylized sun with a histrionic look on its face. Its eyes and mouth were wide open as if someone had yanked it out of the nineteen fifties and dropped it down right here in the year of our lord, 2006. I looked into its astonished mug and sighed. Weren’t we supposed to be shopping and shopping and filling our empty little lives with cheap, slave labor garbage? The great majority of us were barely scrapping by but no worry, the ruling class has given us the interest only loan, a tabloid press and the mega store.

   Ah, the mega store, that great, gray morgue. If ever there was my hell on earth it would be wandering the bottom of a giant, soul sucking cave like an ant numbed at the sight of row after towering row of identical detritus as you fill an enormous cart with the empty shells of things, corpses of merchandise all wrapped in miles and miles of plastic.
   And now they give us this, this cabaret where life is beautiful, with all the trappings of an exclusive club to make us feel like rich celebrities while we charge, charge, charge our way to heaven. What the hell? I was obsessing impotently on my fate that was completely out of my hands. I was a fly bumping against the window not knowing if I wanted in or out. I needed to be around other little people. I needed to be around a double scotch on the rocks. The doormen pulled the doors open wider. The elevator across the lobby beckoned: Le Soleil, fifth floor. I stepped in and pushed the button.

12.
   The elevator doors opened and I stepped out. I looked across the lobby to the grand mall only to find that Le Soleil was closing early! The lustrous displays under drooping palms were disappearing behind closing doors.

   What kind of tease was this? I had caved in. I had given up. I had thrown myself into the sordid pit of cheap thrills and bitter denial. Now a wall of shoppers marched toward me, their Xanax glazed eyes looking right through me as they clutched their shopping bags full of plastic dreams. I had dragged myself in from bleak reality and offered myself up to the great American sideshow and I get this.
   The mob pushed amoeba like past me, pulsing and throbbing into the elevator, Ritalin addled children and more yapping dogs in tow. They had their fill. They were satisfied. They were somebody now, each and every one. Their credit cards glowed stiff and hot in their purses and wallets. They had strutted and swaggered their way through the halls of the American raison d’etre. They had purchased fabulous things, as colorful and bright as they were utterly and totally useless, wondrous things that would line their cupboards and fill their garages and last hundreds of years. They glanced at me from the corners of their eyes as they passed me, marching proudly in their glittering couture from far off exotic places like China and India and Indonesia and Haiti and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. I was a pitiful thing, really who had come too late only to have the doors of power and beauty and all that is good close in my face.

13.
   The elevator filled to capacity. The mob stared back at me like fish in an aquarium, not so powerful now, not so graced with the majesty of important shoppers, but they were happy, their children were stoned, and the dogs were having fun with each other as dogs will do, screwing away in front of God and everyone.

   What a marvelous menagerie of bright colors and blank faces they were, a peaceable kingdom where lambs lay down with sheep. It took so little to make the middle class happy. All we really needed was a cheeseburger and fries, church on Sunday and a 45 under our pillow.
   A little monster, her paw in her mother’s hand stared hatefully at me. She was the one who was supposed to be looking down at me. She saw the cynicism hiding behind my bland expression as only a child could. Rage burned in her eyes. Who was I to judge her? She lived in the greatest country in the world. She would have had me crucified in a New York minute if she could. She had a rose in her hand, a gift no doubt from some quivering saleslady in the foundations department or from some haughty maitre d’ staring at the ceiling with a handful of menus rammed up his ass. She stuck out her tongue and threw the rose at me. The mother quickly replaced it with some sort of high fructose lollypop bomb. The elevator doors closed, a welcome curtain on a pathetic Everyman Tale. God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. My mind filled with listless applause.

14.
   I looked down at the flower laying at my feet. Hallelujah, a free rose. Look on the bright side, I thought. I had something to go home with, something pretty and alive, if only for a day or so. I snapped off the stem, slid the rose into my lapel and called the elevator.

   When the doors opened, I was surprised to see it was full again. The occupants were dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns, three important looking men with important looking dates all with cocktails in hand and definitely a cut above the last bunch. The irony pissed me off. I came to this dump yearning for the support of the unwashed masses only to receive their dismissive disdain. They had rebuffed my advances and left me standing alone. So I grumbled and whined and tried to make the best of it. Then the real people make an appearance, God’s chosen, on their way upward to a party in the heavens. They had made a stop to taunt me, to point at the monkey in the cage and laugh.
   The largest one, about three-hundred and-fifty pounds large clutching a woman with hair piled higher than her attitude motioned me in. I was stunned. ‘Once bitten.’ , I thought for a moment but only for a moment. They were all quiet, half smiling at me with open expressions. The elevator doors started to close and the man slid a Fratelli wingtip out to stop them. He smiled warmly, extended a hand and waved me in again. I smiled back. It didn’t look like a trap. What were they going to do, offer me up for sacrifice, throw the peasant into the volcano? The second act had promise.

15.
   I stepped in. Everyone had a rose in their lapel and I passed muster. It seemed more than a little strange that a rose could make up the difference between my rags and their riches, but they looked like a happy group. You can’t turn down a well-dressed person with a drink in their hand. One of them pushed the button for the eleventh floor. A party on the eleventh floor? Why not? The elevator doors closed.  The crowd gathered around me smiling and chortling. They shook my hand and patted me on the back. A woman with huge breasts touched my hair. “What a nice-looking young man.”

   I gave her a winning smile. Maybe something was going to come of this evening after all. What a remarkable coincidence. A tossed rose gets me into an exclusive party. My spirits lifted. I offered smiles all around and introduced myself. “What’s the party about?”, I asked.
   A young man with apple cheeks took a gulp out of his drink. “We’re going to give the man upstairs a present!”
   One woman’s hair looked like a pile of figs. She squinted at me through thick glasses. “You’ll make him happy!”
   I’ll be damned, I thought. Rich people with a sense of humor. This was going to be fun, a chance to meet the elite, nibble on caviar, sip the best scotch. If there were drugs, they would be the finest drugs. I might even take one home or better yet be taken home by one of them.
   I caught a glance of the two dogs from the previous crowd screwing away in a corner. One of them looked me right in the eye.

  

16.
    When the doors opened, there was no eleventh floor. I was standing in front of a mock Crucifixion with the pathetic trio from my nightmare back with a vengeance. It was a dirty miracle floating in space. The monkey coyly posed on the cross with a vapid smirk on his face and his cup balanced over his head. The tramp played the virgin kneeling in mugged agony looking up at the cross and the monkey’s crotch. The thug was a sentry leering and drooling though crumbling teeth as he lasciviously clutched an assault rifle with one hand and luridly stroked the cross with the other. It was a party alright and I was the guest of honor. 

   This was a trap and these assholes weren’t kidding. The elevator doors had opened onto a dream, an ugly, familiar dream. The crowd screamed in ecstasy at the disgusting sight. They raised their hands with joy. They were pilgrims at the end of their long voyage staring into the face of the savior. Power and wealth threw up their arms in supplication to power and wealth. I backed into the elevator. 

   I looked around at the wild-eyed crowd frothing and foaming in almost sexual abandon. I tried to reach the elevator panel in vain. I turned around and looked for a way out. There was nothing but the obscene sideshow. I focused on one of the idiots who was staring mouth open and empty headed. A full drink was hanging precariously from his fingers. I instinctively reached for it, grabbed and downed it. Oh my God, brandy and coke!

  

17.
   The crowd forced me out of the elevator. Gagging on the brandy and coke, I stumbled over the dogs who seemed blind to the repulsive scene in front of them. We lurched toward the cross. I spun around and tried to run back into the elevator but the men grabbed me. The women jumped around us squealing and hooting and tearing off their clothes. Frocks and purses, blouses and bras flew around me. The monkey dropped down from his perch and danced frantically with the thug and the tramp.

   Holy shit, I thought, was I in for some sort of sadomasochistic orgy? I pulled and shoved and swung at the men but they were too much for me. The big one grabbed my legs, the other two each arm. They lifted me onto their shoulders.
   One of them leaned close. “We’ll reap great rewards for this gift.”, He whispered.
   I couldn’t believe what was happening. This looked less like an orgy and more like a sacrifice. “What the hell are you doing?”, I screamed.
   “To the wall!”, they all chanted. “To the wall!”
    The cartoon jackasses on the hill screamed their response. “USA! USA! USA!”

18.
   The idiots were all naked now. They stripped me and pushed me up against some kind of wooden yoke on a wall. Below me a jungle stretched to dark mountains beyond. They forced my arms up to the yoke and tied them with leather straps. The whole thing looked like some sort of trite Hollywood set. They started dancing like Josephine Baker and chanting “Dub Ya! Dub Ya! Dub Ya!” It was a Berchtesgarten Bierfest, a Crawford Ranch barbecue. I kicked and struggled and spat at them, then my eyes focused and I looked down. It must have been fifty feet to the floor of the forest. OK, I thought. It’s a dream, a pizza and late night movie. This was so ridiculous I would have burst out laughing if I weren’t scared shitless.

   The trees in the jungle below started bobbing and flailing. An ungodly roar echoed out of the jungle. I struggled and slammed against the wooden yoke. This was not going to happen. I was not going to be the victim of these insane idiots. I didn’t care how unreal the whole thing was, it wasn’t going to get any worse. I was going to escape. I was going to throw all these rich, naked jerks off the wall. I was going to find a gun and blow the head off whatever the hell was in that God damned jungle below me.

19.
   The morons fell to the ground in terrified reverence. Their naked butts quivered and shook. What the hell was I going to do? I ordered myself to wake up. I twisted and turned trying to make myself fall out of bed. I yelled at the top of my lungs. I reached down to the bottom of my guts and let out a burst of energy. Nothing. I was strapped to a wooden yoke surrounded by a bunch of cooing, moaning halfwit shit for brains and hanging above a jungle that was about to eject God knows what with the real possibility that I wasn’t dreaming just beginning to dawn on me.

   Suddenly I felt something land on me. I turned to find those damned dogs were trying to chew me loose. They jumped on the wooden yoke and gnawed at the leather straps around my wrists. They snarled and growled. Their hackles bristled. Another roar blasted below. One of them looked me in the eyes and said, “It’s not the monkey, you moron.”

20.
   The monkey was back and thirty feet tall. It burst out of the jungle with eyes ablaze. Its creamy, white skin flapped and jiggled. Its gaping maw was full of broken yellow teeth. It stunk of cheap beer, cheap cologne and hairspray. It was Fay Ray time. It was naked, should have stayed home, lefty, commie, pinko for lunch time.

   The jungle shook and the monkey lurched. A huge, sweaty paw reached for my head just as I felt the bonds around my wrists fall free. I turned to run but before I could, the dogs grabbed my hands and lifted me into the air. “You have much to learn.”, said one.
   The monkey reached for my ankles but it was too late. I looked back over my shoulder to see the prostrate sycophants pulling themselves to their feet. The angry looks on their faces were replaced by abject terror. The monkey turned on them and pounced.
   We drifted high above the cartoon horror. The blood curdling screams faded away. A volcano loomed on the horizon. A shimmering sea stretched under a brilliant orange sunset. I looked up at the dogs clinging to my wrists. They were determined, saying nothing as they looked into the distance. This is a hell of a ride, I thought. Wow, flying dogs. Not bad.

21.
   As we flew into the clouds leaving my nightmare behind, one of the dogs said, “It’s time to put things in perspective. All of this pestilence didn’t burst its ugly boil overnight. It’s been festering for a long time.”

   The clouds parted over a desert. The dogs dropped me in front of some god-awful sphinx wannabe wearing an oversized pair of horn-rimmed glasses. “Let’s start with the Doctor. It’s been at the center of every power grab since Rockefeller put a leash on Nixon and handed it to him. This is the only Nobel Peace Prize laureate that’s wanted by the authorities all over the world. It’s wanted by the French for it's role in Operation Condor, by the Spanish and the Chileans for the CIA coup in Chile and by the Indonesians for the Indonesian genocide yet it’s worshiped as the grand Pooh-Bah of corporate global dominance. It wanders through the halls of power stinking of stale flesh and sulfur: The Bilderberg Group, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, The International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Hoover Institution. It's words come slowly for the true believers as it ponders how many more it can drag with it to hell.”

22.
   “This toad never goes away. It just gets more and more poisonous with age.”, said the other dog, shaking its head. “It’s responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands and the oppression of millions yet it has been elevated to avatar, to a great and mysterious Sphinx that gazes down on a bloody reign of tyranny. It is more aging, withered spider than Sphinx. It squats on its mountaintop waiting for the princes of Empire to climb up and pay homage. When they come, the frigid plutocrats are sucked even drier until they drift to the spider’s feet like dead leaves.” He waved at a carved inscription below the Sphinx. “Here’s a proud quote from decades ago when it first crawled onto the stage: ‘Who controls the food supply controls people, who controls the energy can control whole continents, who controls money can control the world.’ You see, this megalomania is not new at all. Whether it is a valley with a couple of tribes, a transcontinental empire, or one little blue world, someone always and everywhere wants to control it, twist it, squeeze it rape it into an agonized ecstasy of domination and death.”

   Suddenly the huge pile of stones began to quiver and come alive right in front of us. It raised itself up and glared down at us. A growl emanated from its throat. Its claws scraped the sand at our feet. The lesson was cut short.

23.
   Wonderful. A stone sphinx animates into a giant man lion like a genie out of the sand. I couldn’t believe it. But the sand under my bare feet felt real. The sun on my bare ass felt real, and I was backing away from another thug, this one forty feet tall and pissed off, with a couple of flying dogs who apparently forgot how to fly.

   “Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor!”, it bellowed.
    “What the hell?”, I said as I looked up at it.
    “For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for America, it is just beyond the horizon!”, shouted the Sphinx.
    “This thing is a bore.”, I whispered to the dogs.
    “Nobody will ever win the war of the sexes. There is too much fraternizing with the enemy!”
    “This thing bombed the hell out of Cambodia in secret. The result was civil war and genocide.”, said a dog.
    “This thing will bore you with platitudes then snap off your head.”, said the other dog. “Run!”
    It rushed at us. We ran into a thicket of tall reeds. If we could keep far enough ahead of it, we might lose it before it crushed us under its huge paws. As we dashed through the undergrowth, it stomped right behind us smashing and scattering the vegetation. “We must distinguish morality from moralizing!”, it boomed.
   I threw my hands over my ears. “This thing is going to make me puke!”

 

  

24.
   We raced through the reeds ducking and dodging the butt ugly beast until we stumbled upon a riverbank. I pushed the reeds aside and found a very large, very ugly baby floating in a basket. “My God! What the hell is this freak doing here?”, I asked out loud. Cracked yellow teeth jutted out of its mouth. It swayed and bounced as the current rocked and bobbed it against the shore. It looked back at me with hungry eyes. A sneer crossed its face. It let loose the low growl of an angry cat. “I think you are somewhere where you do not belong.”

   “It speaks!”, I blurted. “Is this how religion is going to elbow its way into this hallucination?”
   The dogs stared at it in astonishment. “Doesn’t religion elbow its way into everything?”, muttered one.
   The baby’s voice was deep and menacing. “Three heretics standing before me without the good sense to bow down before a Prophet. Three savages who will never see the light of God and are about to be sent back to hell from whence they came. You look tasty. Have you any last words”?
   With an angry fifty-ton lion on our tails, I had to do something quick before we were all stomped into the mud. Then it came to me. There was only one thing to do.

25.
   Mug the thug with Moses. The Sphinx had found us. It paused for a moment as if trying to decide whether to tear us to pieces or swallow us whole. It made its mind up quickly and came at us. I bent down and grabbed the wiggling little monster in the basket.

   “Take your hands off me you dirty, naked, subhuman piece of shit!“, it screamed, its eyes wide with terror.
   It snapped at my wrists as I lifted it in the air and over my head. I threw it at the thug with all my strength. The imperious little thug made an excellent projectile. It smashed the sphinx’s specs to pieces and bounced off into the undergrowth.
   The Doctor was stopped in its tracks. It roared with rage exposing a nasty collection of orange, spade like teeth. It raised a claw studded paw to its face, winced in pain then violently shook its head and whipped off the broken glasses. Its other paw pounded a cloud of sand in front of me. Its tail sheered the river reeds in every direction. Another deafening roar exploded in the air.
   The dogs jumped into the empty basket. I followed them into the river, grabbing on to the basket and pushing off just as the mud caked prophet came skittering out of the reeds on all fours like an angry lizard. It stopped short at the water line. We left the howling horror and its furious little sidekick stomping impotently on the shore.

  

26.

   I threw an arm over the edge of the basket to steer it as I swam away from the riverbank as fast as I could. I glanced over my shoulder at the pair of dirtbags scowling on the shore.
   “Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision!", the sphinx bellowed.
   I rolled my eyes and thought of those giant paws stomping around me, and that huge mouthful of horrible teeth, and that little mouthful of horrible teeth. I imagined the two of them diving into the water or suddenly taking flight and drowning all three of us. When I realized that they weren’t going to follow us I sighed with relief. The water was warm and relaxing. I clung to the basket as the current took hold of us and swept us away.
   The dogs seemed nonchalant, almost playful. They bounced excitedly back and forth in the basket with their tongues hanging out and their ears and tails in the air.
   I was amazed at their insouciance and more than a little peeved. “Listen,”, I said as I looked up at them. “I really appreciate you saving me from that monkey back on the eleventh floor, but I’m not really interested in this Alice and Wonderland from hell meets The Thief of Bagdad on acid. And what’s with all the bad teeth? It seems like you’re taking me from the frying pan into the fire. I’m up for a history lesson or any kind of lesson you want to give me but isn’t there some way to do so without getting me killed?”

27.
   The dogs dismissed my whining and introduced themselves as Pat and Nanette. They informed me that from now on I would be addressed as Oliver.
    “Hey, you made it, didn’t your Oliver?”, asked Pat. “It was a hell of a ride. Where’s the thrill, kid? Where’s the adrenaline?”
    “Get into the basket, Oliver,”, barked Nanette “and use the baby’s blanket to make yourself decent.”
    I did as I was told begrudgingly and a little bit sheepishly. As I climbed into the basket and folded the blanket around me, I pushed the curtain of cynicism aside a bit and began to marvel at what I had just experienced. The vision of a giant stone lion rearing up over me made me shiver. Its dim-witted platitudes amazed me. Remembering the threatening adult voice emanating from a child no matter how ugly made me sick. The fact that I had actually used it as a weapon made me smile. I looked around for the first time and marveled at the wide, blue river. A school of fish gathered around us, and some leapt from the water. A forest of dunes lined the riverbank. An ethereal mosque framed by minarets quivered in the wavering light on a hill above. The silent desert stretched to the horizon.

   “And stay on your toes.”, continued Nanette sternly. “You have embarked on a journey that will change your life and, should you manage to live through it, the lives of your fellow countrymen.”

28.

   “Should I manage to live through it?”, I sputtered, collapsing back into the basket. I suddenly realized that for some strange reason even though a couple of huge monsters in a matter of a few minutes had done their best to snuff me out, it had never occurred to me that I had almost been killed.
   “You’re going to die someday anyway. We all are.”, reasoned Nanette as she hopped on to my chest. “The journey is the lesson, and we have no more control over it than you do.”
   “The sooner you make adversity a friend in life, the better.”, waxed Pat. He batted at the fish as they jumped in the air. “If not, someday you’ll find you will have little time left to make up for the time you have wasted.”
   “Do you know what makes us older, Oliver?”, asked Nanette. “When we stop being surprised and challenged at what life throws at us and get angry and scared instead. We go from ‘Now what am I going to do?’ to ‘What am I going to do now?’. We don’t really run out of options. We just stop looking for them.”
   Great. I almost get squashed like a bug then I’m told to get used to it and now I get a lecture. I dropped my arms over the sides of the basket and let my hands trail in the water as fish jumped around me. My head fell back and I looked up at the drifting clouds. I was irritated. I was spent. The wonder was on hold, the cynicism was back and the river was moving faster now as mountainous terrain replaced the serenity of the desert.

29.

   The river narrowed and we drifted into a deep canyon. The acrobatic school of fish followed us. The river ran faster now, and the rickety basket ran very low in the water. The dogs seemed oblivious. “You should enjoy the adventure which, after all has got off to a pretty good start with you mugging the Doctor and all. That’s a moment you should treasure, young man!”, marveled Nannette. “With that kind of quick thinking, you’ll go a long way.”
   “Quick thinking?”, I asked. “What quick thinking? Things have gotten so out of control that I forgot that I was dreaming, or if I was dreaming. I have had dreams when I knew I was dreaming before, dreams that were so real I would wake up wondering when I was going to wake up, long dreams with adventure and a complicated plot, but never all at once. Maybe I’m not dreaming. Maybe someone slipped me some acid.”
   “You’re not dreaming and you’re not on drugs.”, sighed Pat as he leaned out of the basket snapping at the fish and causing it to ride even lower.
   “But I was dreaming about Monkey Boy and Zombie Thug and Snake Lady, and I woke up. Then on the eleventh floor they were back!”, I said exasperated.
   “Shit happens!”, Pat proclaimed. “So now you’re in a world with angry Sphinxes and talking dogs. Did you ever think you would be in a world where your country tortures people, where a thousand years of Habeus Corpus is thrown out with the bath water?”
   “Your point is well taken.”, I admitted.

  

30.
   I gazed up at the canyon walls stretching into an infinite blue sky above us. My God, if I was dreaming, I hope I never forget this, and if I wasn’t, God help me. And yet now, right now, why worry about it? I had just lived through a sixty-foot monkey attack, a huge pile of stones that made Groucho Marx look handsome and a brandy and coke. It seemed like only moments before I had been crest fallen that some soul sucking mall had closed its doors in my face. So maybe my life is in danger in this bizarre hallucination. I could have been shot dead in the streets in the hallucination I just left. There was no frustration now, no impotence. I wasn’t cramming my head with rants and raves about how everything had gone to hell and there was nothing I could do about it. What kind of life is that? It’s a stunted life, a foul, ingrown life. Now I was slowly drifting down a bottomless lapis lazuli river. I should enjoy this moment of peace. I began to feel as though a great weight was peeling off me. Sheer cadmium yellow cliffs towered above me. The dogs lay peacefully by my side. I smiled.

   But the feeling of relief was short lived. The water was splashing all around me. Dozens of fish were hurling themselves into the air. The water began to churn. A dark shape slid beneath us. The school of fish leapt into the air in unison.  I followed the shadow in the water as it turned and came back toward us. 
   “What the hell was that?”, I whispered to the dogs in a panic.
    “Don’t move an inch.”, Nanette hissed. 

    The black form moved under us again. It was enormous. We held our breath.                                              

31.
    With a sudden surge, a huge crocodile, his back covered with dazzling green scales, his jaws spread wide exposing rows of teeth and a giant crimson tongue sprang like a leopard out of the water beneath us. We were jammed into the bottom of the basket then thrown out of it altogether as it flew into the air. I sailed past a thrashing tail. I saw myself spinning out of control, arms and legs akimbo and the dogs tumbling with me while dozens of fish flew around me like hail.

32.

   By some miracle we landed on the monster’s head. He floated quietly in the river as we clutched at his slippery scales and held on for dear life fearing the worst. His beachball sized eyes rolled back and looked at us. His terrible mouth seemed to work its way into a smile. He spoke. “I have been listening to you and I am pleased.”
   “That’s wonderful.”, I choked. “Just great.”
   “You have put one over on the Doctor, that rancid sack of shit.”, he hissed.
   “He broke its glasses!”, panted Nanette.
   “He called it a bore to its face!”, added Pat breathlessly.
   “Why are deadly evil men so often deadly boring?”, wondered the leviathan.
   “Because they are petty and small?”, I ventured.
   The beast surged forward. “What is your name?”, he demanded.
   “I am Oliver.”, I responded. “And these are my friends, Pat and Nanette.”
   “You’ll do.”, snapped the crocodile.
   We rode through the dancing waves too scared to think what might become of us. The canyon soon gave way to a rugged plain. The riverbanks were lined with ancient ruins. The behemoth’s tale propelled us toward the shore. When we were safe on land, we rolled off his back onto the sand. He reared up on his hind legs and introduced himself.

33.
    "I am Raymond and I am going to tell you about a camp, an American training camp that the Doctor has been very much involved with, a camp that has been turning out dictators, torturers and murderers for over sixty years. The Spanish American War introduced your country to Empire and you never looked back. In 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine warped a protective policy towards the nations of Latin America into one of domination. After the Nazis had impressed some powerful Latin Americans, the United States decided it needed more than proclamations to protect its ‘Back Yard’. The School of the Americas was established in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946. The sons of the Latin American Oligarchy were offered an education in an elite boarding school to introduce them to the American way, and I’m not talking about baseball. For decades, graduates replete with manuals on torture, assassination, blackmail and extortion have done their Alma Mater proud by keeping the rich powerful and America in control. In 2001 it was moved to Fort Benning and renamed The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Cute, no?”

   The dogs seemed absolutely delighted by this saurian fabulist. They danced and pranced around his feet waving their arms. I thought it best to follow suit, so I twirled my arms above my head for as long as my dignity allowed. The crocodile grinned at my embarrassment.

 

34.
   Then Raymond’s mood took a turn for the worse. He sat down and covered his eyes. Tears began to roll down his snout. He pulled a huge book out of nowhere and opened it. Its loose pages, each one inscribed with the name of a Latin American country fell from its binding and rained down on us. “There is hardly a country in Latin America that hasn’t had its government overthrown, its resources handed over to multinational corporations, its citizens abused. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how some of you Americans are shocked, shocked that the CIA is torturing people. Well, guess what? You’ve been torturing people for some time now. Shall I tell you about the torture manual? The Kubark Manual first appeared in Vietnam in 1963. It was synthesized into the Human Resource Exploitation Manual in Central America in 1983. What diseased mind came up with that horrific little euphemism? Makes you want to puke. The CIA declassified part of it in 1997. In one part, it is carefully noted that approval from Headquarters is necessary when inflicting bodily harm with medical, chemical or electrical methods. Can you imagine what was not declassified? One thing the CIA learned in the twenty years between the first manual and its second edition is that psychological torture is more effective than physical torture and the threat of physical torture is the most effective of all. Toss a few severed body parts into the victim’s cell et voila! Your Congress reigned in the CIA in the 1990s but after 9/11, it became a free for all. When the curtain was pulled back and the world saw Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

35.
   In a rage, Raymond raised up on his haunches high above us. He stomped the ground and pounded it with his tail. We sat down before him in humbled awe. We were school children and our master was caught up in his lesson.

   “You must do something about this state sponsored terrorism!” He lowered his enormous snout down to our quivering little faces framed with strained smiles. “Is this the America you love and cherish?” He marched up and down before us on his hind legs, his front legs waving in the air, his tail thrashing. “What does this say about your country that its citizens are oblivious to this abomination? How can you lead the war against terror if you are terrorists yourselves? You run a school that teaches torture! You invade and conquer a country and torture its people in secret and not so secret prisons around the world! How can you let this rancid scar continue to stain the face of Liberty? You must not let this stand!”, he blasted as he pounded his hand with his fist. The ruined columns and crumbling palaces echoed with his outrage. The somber expression on the silent statues mirrored his condemnation. He turned his head to the sky and roared.

36.
   Then he burst out laughing at the very idea of anyone doing anything about it. “Hardly anyone in America even knows about The School of the Americas!”, he guffawed. “Have you ever even heard of it? We have created an American school of assassins that has been terrorizing South America for half a century! Have you ever even heard of it? A few grunts who carried out the torture at Abu Ghraib went to prison and their superiors who ordered it went free! People have been held and tortured for years without ever being charged with anything in Guantanamo and God knows where else! What is this, the second inquisition? And nobody puts a stop to it!”

   I was taken aback. I had been so swept up by this furious sermon that I was on the verge of tears. He howled with laughter. He threw himself to the ground and it shook under our feet.
   Pat flattened his ears and backed away “What’s with this goon?”
   Nanette’s tail was between her legs. “I don’t think he’s wrapped too tight.” 
   I picked them both up.

37.
   This little charade really irked me. All that huffing and puffing, all that strutting and snorting reminded me of the trio from my earlier nightmare. I’d been strung along and then laughed at. If ‘Oliver’ was going to enjoy this adventure, then ‘Oliver’ wasn’t going to put up with any crap. Screw this lizard, I thought as I headed for the ruins with Pat and Nanette in my arms.

   Raymond wasn’t too happy seeing ‘Oliver’ walk off in a snit. “I was serious, Oliver. I get angry at this horror, angry that you don't see it, angry that you won't when it's turned on you. Sometimes it’s better to release your frustrations through laughter. I wouldn’t get on your high horse if I were you. You are here to learn these things and it’s never going to be easy. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
   “I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with, loony tunes!”, barked Nanette over my shoulder.
   “Ever think of taking that show on the road?”, sneered Pat. “Try jumping up and down on one foot next time.”
   As I walked into the crumbling edifice I started to calm down. After all, that lizard could have eaten us back on the river. Maybe he’s just lonely. Maybe I was too hard on him.
   Pat and Nanette seemed to be of like mind. “I feel bad I said that to the big guy.”, admitted Nanette.
   Pat hung his head. “He might be a bit screwy but his heart is in the right place.”
   I stopped in my tracks. “I think we owe him an apology.”

 

38.
   Suddenly an ominous pounding rumbled in the distance. I held the dogs close, instinctively bracing for the worst. It was a rolling thunder that grew louder by the second. The sound exploded on us as I spun on my heels. A cloud of stinking dust blew in our faces.

   Two harpies swathed in blue linen with muskets waving over their heads charged toward us on nasty, red eyed camels. The camel’s heads flew at us, their mouths gaping and full of rotten teeth.         
   “Infidel!”, the hags screeched. “Heretic! Defiler of Moses! We have found you and you are undone!”   A miasma of self-righteousness choked us. The lunatic fire of fanaticism blinded us.
   “Holy shit!”, cried Pat. “What the hell is this?”
   “For God’s sake, Oliver, run!”, screamed Nanette.
    The dogs jumped from my arms. “Oh, Christ.”, I said as I looked up helplessly at my rushing, unstoppable fate.

39.
   We were swallowed by the dust. For an instant we stood frozen and blinded with fear. Then they reached down and grabbed all three of us. “We will take you to the Sultan for beheading!” Their eyes glowed red. Their stained teeth clamped tight on the camel’s reins. “Blasphemers must be burned alive!”

   One had me by the wrist and swung me around like a doll. “Heretics must be flayed alive! Those who would break the laws of God must be buried alive!”
   The other had both dogs by their tails. “Death by torture to all who do not bow down to the will of God! It is written!”
   “Let go of me, you assholes!”, I yelled. “I’ll have you stretched out in the sun to fry! I’ll have you hung by your heels over an ant’s nest!”
   The dogs snarled and clawed and bit but for all our bravado, we were as helpless as children.
   The goons jabbed the camels with the butts of their rifles. The camel’s heads swung wildly. They let loose an explosive, bellowing groan and we were off, speeding to some unspeakable end.