Decades

My Last Night Part 2

            This gray tunnel is more than a library of life. These foggy walls contain more than just life on earth. They contain everything. This is the Library of the Universe. This tunnel is just one hallway in the endless archives of the Universe.

I am motionless in space with no time. The parking lot slowly sharpens back into my perception and I notice that the mushroom cloud is now fully formed. Red, black, and orange are mixing in the bulbous fabric of the smoke cloud. It looks illusory and the whole scene has a trancelike quality to it. I feel surreal and dreamlike.

The thought of God comes to mind. I wasn’t brought up very religiously and that is due to the communists ruling the country for fifty years and suppressing religions. Nevertheless, I did have an idea of God and I did believe there was something out there that created us and watched over us but without too many details beyond that. My friends and I discussed God and it usually ended with a philosophical conundrum. If God created everything then who created him? Who created God’s creator and where were they exactly located before creating everything? The discussions ended when our brains started hurting and realizing that there is no final answer to be gained.

I do not feel God in this moment. I might die along with everybody that is around me and God doesn’t seem to be trying to stop any of it. If God was watching over us, why did he even let one bomb fall? I’ve done bad things and I was hateful but I don’t think that fitting punishment is to be blown up.

I never killed anybody. I never seriously maimed or hurt anybody. I didn’t fight in the wars and I didn’t start the wars. I am not a politician or military personnel. I am just a powerless young human being caught up in the middle of many awful things: wars, economic sanctions, corruption, crime, despotic dictatorship, ethnic cleansing, separatists, terrorists...

I am about to become a casualty over something I had no say over or input. My life is about to become collateral damage in a war between a corrupt government headed by Dictator Freeman and a Military Alliance. The worst thing is I do not like either because neither side is considering the little man in the equation. The ordinary person’s life is left to chance.

Governments are intrinsically destructive entities because anything that has power will always wield it with unwarranted force. One just needs to look at history to be convinced of this. History is a series of wars, conflicts, executions, and abuses of individual and human rights. History is a nightmare that only certain individuals and groups, not governments, have tried to shake us awake from it. History is a series of chances. If few key events played out differently, I wouldn’t be standing immobile and gazing at the mushroom cloud right now. I feel alone while looking at it. I feel utterly alone and abandoned. The government is not here to protect us and the Military Alliance is dropping bombs. No one is really on our side.

The Alliance claims to be against the government and not the citizens. It is only trying to help us by weakening the regime of the Despotic Dictator. The audacity of such a claim becomes ludicrous as they decide to show their support by dropping bombs on us. No one is there for us.

God is not doing anything because he is not there either. God has no eyes or ears and doesn’t wield a magic wand that controls everything. It’s not God or karma that brought all of this upon us and God can’t take it way; it’s us and only us.

Our choices, our missed opportunities created this. We created this, people like us created it. We contributed to it, we allowed it, we stood by, we said little, we did nothing. History is repeating itself while we are still in its grasps, asleep and not aware of the nightmare we are co-creating, not aware of the possibility of dreams.

If I die here tonight, my death will not bring more justice to the world, if anything it will decrease it, it won’t right any wrongs and it won’t bring anybody back. Death of powerless people will not bring any balance to the world and it won’t achieve any equilibrium in the geopolitical spheres.

I remember Helena, my elusive Helen of Troy with her beautiful blond locks. I daydreamed about kissing her so many times and now I might not kiss anything but death. I want to put my face in her locks and inhale her essence entirely.

I feel like I’m receding. Maybe I’m already dead and death is being trapped in the last moment of your life. Maybe I’m dead and I’m dreaming about the last moment of my life. Life might already be over and soon some other dreams will formulate. Maybe all of it was but a dream. That would explain why there was so much madness in the world because dreams tend to be nuts and make no sense. I am too young to be considered an irredeemable sinner by Christians or anybody else but I do not think heaven is waiting for me. The only place that I know of that can be heavenly is right here and I’m about to be blown out of it.

How did it come to this, how is this being allowed to happen? Who should be held responsible if I am killed tonight? I would put so many people on trial and in jail for what’s happening tonight. I clench my teeth as my mind starts to flame.

I hope that all the Nazis, who invaded and shattered the old order by butchering the country, are now burning in the eternal inferno of hell. Curse the Communists who saw this disorder as an opportunity to seize power at the end of the war. Curse the Communist Dictator for keeping the country in a delusion for 35 years, hiding and suppressing the historical animosity of the various ethnicities under the ridiculous banner of brotherhood and unity. Curse all the different nationalities for being gullible sheep and allowing themselves to magnify the differences between each other instead of the similarities. I’m sick of the separatists for thinking that all of life’s problems are solved once a certain part of the country can break away and become independent. Curse all the nationalists for believing that their particular nation is superior and that it is their duty to exterminate and expel other nationalities. I’m sick of all the war profiteers and criminals who feed on the misery of war to gain material wealth, those filthy leeches. I’m sick of all the media and journalists for spreading propaganda, hatred and fear; good job on being objective and impartial you scumbags. I’m sick of all the bureaucrats for they are the nuts, screws, and bolts of a dictatorship. Curse the police and the army for blindly obeying a Despotic dictator and protecting his corrupt government and state. Curse all the paramilitaries and the militias whose sole purpose was to kill innocent people including women and children. Curse the terrorists who think they are heroes and that killing and kidnapping civilians would make some sort of a point, well it doesn't because you’re still murderers no matter what your cause is. Curse the western powers for arrogantly meddling in the affairs of my country and getting involved militarily in a place where the last thing needed was more military. I despise all the people that actually casted their vote for the President Freeman even after it was well known that the elections were rigged. You could’ve saved yourself a trip to the voting booth because he would have won regardless you dumbasses. Curse the main man, the Despot himself, for being an opportunistic sleazebag, with his ever-shifting roles. A man, who started as a communist apparatchik and banker, then became a nationalistic socialist, then an undisputed authoritarian. All those were masks that he wore to conceal the fact that he was just an ordinary crook who robbed and impoverished his own people. Cure all the domestic and foreign presidents, prime ministers, politicians, diplomats, generals, captains, and soldiers, they all equally participated in the madness and the result of that madness is about to literally blow up in my face. May a plague fall upon all of them. I hope they all go to hell.

I think that covers almost everybody or am I missing somebody? Am I to blame for any of this? Maybe I should go to hell myself. Maybe I will if the next bomb falls where I’m standing. I’ll probably run into Marshal Joseph there drinking and smoking Cuban cigars with the Devil. Just as I think that, the image of Marshal Joseph starts to crystallize on the screen in front of me. He’s another short and stocky dictator.