This story originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review 11 (Winter 2024). Cover by Laura-Fair Schulz,
THE IDIOT’S slow death march was on course; cigarettes, weed, and whiskey were on course. No doctor’s visits and no dentists were on course.
“I’m going to die like a worker bee. Look at us! These people who suffered genocide are now committing genocide! How fucked up are we? Fucking fascist what’s-his-name. Yahoo! Look at us!” It closed its eyes and took a deep breath.
“Humans are the worst,” it said calmly.
“We are the stupidest species!” The Idiot kept saying. That was its excuse for acting recklessly.
At some point, I had to say something:
“WE, you and me, are the stupidest! You and me. Actually … you know what? Just you! YOU and people like you. Not the species. There are lots of bright, creative, and brilliant people in our species. Lots of great minds. Lots of wonderful people. Lots of funny people who bring us joy. Lots of people full of love for life, full of love for other people, lots of kind, compassionate, generous people. Not all of us are stupid assholes! Stupid you, not the species! YOU chose to be stupid! YOU are the stupidest!”
It didn’t say anything. Stared at the floor. Nodded its head ever so slightly.
***
THE IDIOT was browsing the online news about the latest disastrous policies the Republicans were cooking.
Holiday season’s ad jingles were back. The TV was on mute during commercials. Lots of happy people were on the screen. Couples in a park, happily chatting with people at a picnic, laughing; company ad people smile-talking; visibly pained people hardly able to get off their chairs in the opening shots transformed into people cheerfully conversing at a back yard BBQ party. Beer commercials. Perfume commercials. Jewelry commercials. The former smoker woman with a hole in her throat came on for twenty seconds.
“Have you seen this?” The Idiot screamed. “This asshole … Look at this … This Minnesota state senator is blaming global warming on Trans people. Right! This TEENY TINY portion of the human population, he says, is causing god’s wrath! So, Merciful God is going to wipe out 99 percent of the species. Bullied, isolated kids just wanting to live their lives in peace are causing all the fucking problems! Can you believe this shit?”
The Idiot closed its eyes and calmly said, “I think I must pay this man a visit. He is not going to like it!”
Anupam Roy, Land Guards (2023)
***
THE IDIOT was ‘softening’ Elton Tusk, it claimed. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“This one’s special. I have to get in his head a few times, whisper nice things so he’s more receptive to my voice. Then, I hit him with a few shameful scenes he’s been in. Not too shameful. You know ... Like stupid things we do and when we remember ‘em, we feel guilty for a second, then we move on. But then, when he’s all softened up, that’s when I go in with the heavy stuff. This guy’s pulled a lot of fucked up shit. Wrecked a lot of good people.”
The Idiot was explaining its process.
“See … it’s one thing when you know what you’ve done and it’s all in your head. That? That you can block. You come up with rock solid policing systems for those thoughts. But when somebody else tells you what you did and how fucked up you are? That you can’t walk away from. Well … most people can’t. I’m betting this guy can’t. You know why? He’s a recluse! That means he can’t take what others may say to his face. See?” The Idiot said, clapped and laughed out loud.
The Idiot was whispering sweet lies to Elton Tusk in his dream state while the big attack was simmering on low.
***
I WAS not on the course I had imagined. I was on a course I was driven to.
I had to figure out what was happening. What with The Idiot and its prayers, their effects, or not-effects, or whatever the hell was going on.
Elton Tusk, the target of The Idiot’s next prayer event. The Idiot had said I would see.
“He lives an hour from here. That is … if you are driving a car at just above speed limit. But, for you … what? Five minutes?” The Idiot said.
That was correct.
I had thought about it. I had. About what I could do. How I could be integrated, so I could see the madness from inside. Record, study and analyze empirical observations.
“You can go and see,” The Idiot said. “Three in the morning. See for yourself. No need to wait for the news. You can be a front-row witness to the drama. And it is DRAMA!” The Idiot said with a magician’s two-hand move when they say the second part of: “Now you see it! Now you don’t!”
“This one’s special. I’m sending a message to Elon. It will take a while for the shoe to drop. He won’t get the message right away. He’ll get it, though. He’ll get it.”
***
IT TOOK me five minutes to get to the destination; just before three in the morning. The front ‘yard’ was all lit up, all five acres of it; large enough for a ten-thousand-dollar monthly water bill. Japanese maples, Norway maples, red maples, sycamores, giant Oaks, willow trees, mulberries. Rows and rows of roses, lilacs, begonias, Wood lilies, orange lilies, Tiger lilies, Easter lilies, Madonna lilies, hibiscuses, peonies, hydrangea, birds of paradise. A fifty-by-fifty-yard Italian style hedge maze with a five-tier water fountain at its center, twenty feet tall. All lit up.
The building was all lit up too. Three-story Spanish colonial, white stucco with Pacific blue trims, terra-cotta clay roof tiles. In the middle of a twenty-acre lot.
The mansion had to be more than twenty thousand square feet, with five wings; it took up two acres. In the backyard, a giant infinity pool overlooking downtown L.A., a jacuzzi big enough for a football team, an industrial-size outdoor kitchen that could feed two hundred people, thirty-two-seat table made of rough-cut red wood with an eight-inch-thick top, three brick fireplaces, eight open firepits, two pizza ovens, and more trees and flowerbeds than in a Vegas resort.
Nobody could see me. I whizzed through the entrance foyer, up to the second floor, then to the top floor. Couldn’t find him there. Back to the second floor. Whizzed through every room until I found the master bedroom.
***
THERE HE was. Elton Tusk. The man who animated Elon Musk. Looked like a beached whale on its side, under fluffy blankets.
Sleeping alone. He was snoring heavily. The bed was huge. One of those bigger-than-king-size beds with four posts, curtains, two hundred pillows, the works. It was like a scene from a British period drama about a nasty king.
The snoring stopped. He started mumbling words that ran into each other. Sounded like fast finance speak. Shares to buy, shares to sell, stocks going up, going down, bad test results, FDA approval rejected, shares tanking.
The Idiot had written a note, put it in an envelope, had sealed the envelope with candle wax, imprinted the wax with a turtle stamp, and put it in the safe. It would be taken out after my visit to Elton Tusk, it had said.
I was watching Elton muttering on about stocks, but I was wondering what The Idiot had written in the note, and why it was to be opened after I returned. What was up with all the theatrics?
Elton’s breathing was getting erratic, he was breathing in harder, exhaling harder.
“You can’t say that,” Elton said out loud. He then repeated it. “You can’t say that.” His breathing still erratic.
“What?” he said. “Oh no, you can’t say that?”
He was breathing in short breaths now. “Music? Repeat with music?”
He started singing. “[G] Got kicked off of Noah’s ark!” He stopped. “No I didn’t!” Elton protested. “I AM the ark!”
The breathing got faster and more erratic.
“OK! Okaaaaaaaaay” he said in
resignation.
“I’ll repeat. Here …” He started singing again, “[G] All of my friends … are not dead or in [D7] jaaaaaaail. Through … through Rock? [G] Through rock and through stone … The [C] dark wind still [G] moans … Sweet revenge, [D7] sweet revenge, [C] without [G] fail!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Elton shouted. “Don’t show that! Oh, oh, oh, but that was not ... That … no, not that. That was not ... She was … No. Oh no …!”
Elton’s breathing raced up. He was breathing hard and fast with open mouth, as if emerging from under water after five minutes.
In between taking rapid breaths, in rapid staccato, he kept saying ‘no’. It was with a tone of indignant authority, as if rejecting an abominable accusation. “No! No! No! No …”
I was there as an observer. I had no power to wake him up.
He started rolling back and forth on the bed. Threw off the blankets. His arms flailing, bouncing off the bed. After a few back-and-forth rolls on the bed, he started pounding his chest with his right fist. He was pinned in by some internal struggle.
“Five, six, seven, eight.” He kept pounding, “nine, ten, eleven, twelve …”
Then, one final pound.
He stopped.
The breathing calmed down. He breathed in and out at normal rate. Five, six, seven, eight breaths. He calmed down. No more snoring. No more agitated movements. No more movements.
He stopped breathing.
I stayed there for a long time.
His breathing didn’t come back.
***
Next morning news: Elton Tusk, benefactor and mentor to Elon Musk was dead. Died in sleep. His mistress had found him in the morning. “He must have died in peace,” she was telling the reporters, weeping, distraught.
The Idiot hit the mute button and walked over to the safe. It took out the envelope, broke the seal, opened the envelope, and held up the note.
“Go on, read it,” said The Idiot.
I did. “John Prine: Sweet Revenge,” the note said.
I felt stunned. If I had knees, they would’ve buckled. I would have dropped to the floor. I was speechless.
“C’mon. You know!” The Idiot said. “What did you hear him sing before he died? ‘[G] Got kicked off of Noah’s ark’, right?”
The Idiot was singing, “[G] Take it back, take it back; [D] Oh no, you can’t say that; [G] All of my friends are not dead, or in [D7] jaaaaaaaail’. You know ...”
I knew.
“See? I don’t just talk to them now. I can now get them to say things! You heard him, right?”
I did hear him.
I was in shock.
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