Laura Fair-Schulz, Empathy with Medusa (2023).
THE TRIO from HR informed The Idiot to go to their office.
In there, they fired The Idiot.
The Idiot knew why. It had started talking union with other drivers and field technicians who drilled the wells and collected the samples.
What The Idiot didn’t know at the time of those talks: One of the field technicians was a relative of the company owners. He informed the owners. The owners hired a private investigator to look into The Idiot’s past. The investigator dug up the police report from the time The Idiot vandalized its old boss’s home and gym locker with dog shit. “In your job application, you failed to mention your arrest.”
“But they dropped the charges …” The Idiot was protesting.
“Not the issue. Doesn’t matter,” the woman of the trio was the speaker; the two men did their staring routine in the same white shirts, blue suits, and red ties they were wearing before.
“We don’t feel comfortable having you here. We don’t know what you will do … like … out of rage at somebody who cut you off. Or leave dog shit at somebody’s front door.”
“Oh! That … But …”
“Yeah, that! Pick up your last paycheck from Margaret at the main office. That’s it.”
The trio stood up, turned their chairs clockwise in unison, and walked out of the room in single file, the speaker leading, the staring Dobermans following.
***
“SO … LOOK, no judgment, but … you’re religious now?” I asked gently. “Like, really. I mean … you think like if you pray for something to God, or to whatever, it will happen? I’m just asking. Really. That’s all. Maybe you’re onto something, maybe it actually happens.”
“I’m not religious. I don’t pray to God, or some invisible thing. My prayer is not begging to some imaginary thing. Like, God, if it even exists, has nothing better to do in this universe of billions of galaxies. To God, if it exists, we’re like atoms. We’re like tiny floating bunches of energy packets, as inconsequential to God as for us watching leaves fall off the trees in autumn. We just THINK God exists, and it’s all powerful, all present and watching us all the fucking time, and seeing everything we do, and gives a fuck about us. We’re just delusional.”
“Ok, ok, I get it. Don’t get all worked up. Well, then what are you doing?”
“Look, if you know how, what you can do in a meditative state, is direct energy towards a particular target with a particular intension behind the force of that energy on impact. THAT’s what I’m doing. There’s a method to it. There is a science to it.”
Definitely delusional. Good luck to it, I thought. Whatever. Pray and pray all you want.
***
AT SOME point, though, I had to stop and think: Was it all a series of unrelated coincidences?
The evening news was on. For the third day running, a mysterious series of deaths of Republican lawmakers had occurred.
The anchors were reporting the numbers for the day: 4. Three Republican lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives, one from the U.S. Senate (from Alabama, Kentucky, Idaho, and Florida). Four had died in sleep the day before (two U.S. Representatives from Mississippi, one from Colorado, and one Senator from Kansas), and two the day before that (U.S. Representatives from W. Virginia and Mississippi). All while asleep. All dead by heart attacks.
The coverage switched to a field reporter in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC.
The Idiot turned the TV off.
It looked concerned, frowning thoughtfully.
Went to the fridge, got a bottle of beer. Came back to the couch, sat there with the TV off. Lit a cigarette.
“Q will be issuing statements. Those two windbags, Blowbert and Margorie Yellowback, will issue statements about the deep state,” The Idiot was saying. “It can turn into a shitshow. I have to slow down. Recalibrate.”
***
WAS THE Idiot really causing all those deaths-while-asleep?
These were DEATHS-while-asleep. Not pain and anguish while asleep, the thing The Idiot had been praying for.
At some point, though, the number of coincidences changes things. Too many deaths-while-asleep become something of a different nature.
That did not mean The Idiot’s prayers were being answered though.
There was something going on. It had to be something else.
The Idiot was convinced that it was causing those deaths. But, in unplanned fashion, resulting in unforeseen effects. It was thinking it had not foreseen that invading them in their dream state and bombarding them with shame, insults, mega-guilt and driving up their heart rate would, could, induce heart attacks.
It had wished and prayed to induce a guilt-ridden walking person, remorsefully bereft of the will to do anything previously engaged in, to walk about feebly wishing they could do something to undo things they’d done in the past, undo things they had done in cruelty. The Idiot had wished for words of confession. It had not prayed for them to die. It had prayed for them to become a bunch of demoralized walking dead.
***
THE BEDROOM was a portal.
The Idiot had ... well, at least it seemed at the time ... it had stumbled on a channel to another dimension. But only when praying on the bed in the bedroom.
Nobody ever died when The Idiot prayed in the living room on the couch, or on the saffron colored large floor pillow, with candles and incense burning. Nobody ever publicly announced shame, either, for what they had done to the poor, the working people, or to the Black people.
They were dying when the prayers were launched from the bedroom. By experimenting with the location of the prayer routine, The Idiot had discovered the specific location where it could ride the frequency of the mental waves.
It was only a little like when changing stations on a shortwave radio, going up and down the dial, you pick up a CB communication between two people. You happened to dial into their radio frequency and there you are, listening to a conversation over a line they think is private.
For The Idiot, it was a line to a channel to another dimension. But it was different from a CB conversation picked up accidentally. The Idiot was actually initiating the conversation, and a rightwing politician or judge was on the receiving end. It was a one-monologue, really. The other side could not get out of it. It was in their head.
The one-way conversations were, to The Idiot, having effects. With unforeseen consequences.
But what was the real explanation? The real physical, empirical explanation?
Had they built this neighborhood on an Indian burial ground? Was the bedroom on top of a great man’s grave? And this great man’s spirit was rising, using The Idiot as a conduit to take revenge of his own?
That was a possibility. As good as The Idiot’s prayers having unforeseen consequences.
***
THE ONLY good thing was that we were on talking terms. We were having conversations. No sarcastic jokes. Did have insults occasionally, going both ways.
“OK. You don’t buy it. I get it,” The Idiot said. “No problem. OK, look. How about this? I tell you a name you’ve never heard of. OK? I’ll tell you a name you’ve never heard. EVER. You game?”
“OK,” I said. ‘What the hell!’ I thought.
“OK, you ever heard of Elton Tusk?”
“You mean, Elon Musk?” The Idiot was mixing up names, I thought.
“No. No ... Look! Don’t do that! Elton Tusk is the puppet-master who’s got his hands up Elon Musk’s ass, dictating what Elon says, does, what he THINKS!”
“Soooooo ... OK. I’ll go along. This Elton guy is like ... what? Like some sort of a secret father-figure, mentor like. OK. So? What about him?”
“By Wednesday ... it’ll probably take a couple of tries, but ... OK, let’s say by Friday this week, or thereabouts ... it doesn’t matter, you WILL read about him in the news. They’ll be reporting that he died while asleep. He’ll be remembered as a reclusive billionaire who made his billions bilking government contracts for building engines for NASA, and who survived more than a few dozen court battles involving IRA and FBI investigations into his finances, as well as sexual assault charges. He is survived by a current wife, three former wives, five siblings, eight children, seventeen grandchildren. The lawyers representing Elton Tusk’s family have stated that his final will’s veracity will be examined.”
“So, you’re into intentional killing now?”
“No. I’m into inducing extreme pain and shame. What the pain and shame cause is up to the level of guilt they produce on the subject, which depends on the amount of dirty shit they have pulled. From what I’ve read about this Elton, he has tons to feel deeply ashamed about. The guilt level index determines where the subject reaches the line of wishing to die. Like, a real and genuine wish to not be on this earth anymore. From the guilt they are experiencing. At that point of genuine wish for dying, people either take their own lives, or their heart is pumping too hard. Ripe for a heart attack.”
The Idiot was being theatrical. Whatever. OK. Let it dream, I thought.
“OK. We’ll see,” I said.
The Idiot filled the bowl. The room was full of that oily, sweet smell of sativa that can make you think a wildfire was nearby if you could forget you just smoked a bowl.
“I think I am onto something,” The Idiot said, and took another hit, held it, then blew out a huge plume of smoke. Coughed furiously.
“Sure,” I said. I went along. Building rapport. I showed empathy. “Sure. You may have something there. We’ll see, though. We’ll see.”
“We will indeed, brother. We will indeed.”
The Idiot had not called me ‘brother’ for a long time. A very long time. It sounded comforting yet disturbing.
Another plume of white, pungent smoke engulfed the tiny living room.
Evening rush-hour traffic was passing by the house in force. An ambulance passed, its pitch at 3,166 Hz approaching, fading to 2,850 Hz after passing the house. Then a fire truck, with E-tone horns blaring continuously. It took two minutes before their noise subsided.
Above the 42-inch flat screen TV, Van Gough’s painting of his room was visible through the mist.
***
LAKE MEAD had reached 27 percent of what it used to be. That was being reported on the evening news.
Skeletons were emerging from the disappearing lake. Six so far, the news anchor was reporting.
“The last body to emerge, when the lake dries up, may be the remains of the last human on earth,” The Idiot was saying.
“Other skeletons will emerge. Chemical skeletons. Toxic fumes carrying heavy metal particles. Toxic salts dissolving into the air’s moisture, a lot more of that now, traveling miles around, spreading toxins,” The Idiot was saying.
“How many murder mystery writers are getting to work on a story about one of those skeletons?” The Idiot was wondering. “How many unsolved cases will the local district attorney reopen? How many bodies are missing girls and women from the Shoshone and Paiute tribes?”
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This story originally appeared in Locust Review 10 (2023). Cover by Anupam Roy.