Rebel Without A Cause

Rebel Without a Cause
They asked if I was ready to die. It wouldn’t have mattered if I were. I was through living. “Martyrs live forever. Justice died with the dinosaurs.” I write these proverbs on the wall in soap. At least the janitor is enlightened. They said I was a rebel without a cause. Oxymoron’s have died with the martyrs. No one gets them but me. They don’t even know my name.
I take short strangled shuffles down the hall as my glass-faced parade followed. What if I was to trip on this final procession? Head over heels into oblivion. That was the way I lived, why not be the way I die? My steps grow louder.
Was it wrong to be anxious? Was it strange to wonder in those final steps whether the afterlife would live up to the hype? I say to my beefy-handed escort, “seventeen chimpanzees are still unaccounted for. They’re probably living in an apartment somewhere writing Shakespeare.” He doesn’t get it. My footfalls are thunder.
They asked me if I had any last words. I told them my name was Jack. They didn’t believe me. I didn’t care. My feet are silent.
I felt the alcohol rub on my skin in the crook of my elbow. Some imbecile gets a nitroglycerin enema and I get a prick on the arm, the easy death of sinners. This is the way Brutus must have died.
10…
We have liftoff. Deaths march commencing. I say I changed my mind. My name isn’t really Jack. They still don’t believe me. I still don’t care. Everyone said I was such a bright boy. They don’t say that anymore.
9…
They asked me why I did it and I told them because I was a rebel without a cause. Maple syrup still covers most of downtown. Most explosives contain the oxygen they need for burning in the chemical. This allows burning to occur much more quickly. Nitroglycerin, for example, makes quite a quick boom. The carbon and hydrogen combine with oxygen, and the nitrogen is liberated. Picture a life size science project volcano. I was liberated.
8…
Jane Goodall once said, “I sometimes think that the chimps are expressing a feeling of awe, which must be very similar to that experience by early people when they worshipped things they didn't understand.” That’s why I freed the monkeys. They had to learn to understand. We could teach them the ways of monotony. Nobody gets it.
7…
Living is a blur while death lasts an eternity. What does that tell you about our priorities? First course of my government ordained cocktail. Sodium thiopental. Four hundred thousand shmucks die a year smoking. Was arson really considered relevant if I was saving lives? They said it was. Gandhi would burn down a tobacco plant. Intravenous unconsciousness feels unnatural. Fading lights tell me its time to go.
6…
I won’t hear the rest of the countdown. Pancuronium will stop the muscles before death marches to five. Potassium chloride will enter at three stopping my heart. Painless purgatory is nothing less than bliss. This is the way Brutus must have died.
I have just enough time to remember. Then I can dream…
Nirvana came to me in a used car commercial. Whatever Jack says goes no matter what your credit. Jack wants your business. Stupid commercial. Jack could say the sky was green. Hitler would say any artist who paints the sky green should be sterilized. Jack was a liar. But then I began to wonder what if whatever Jack said really did go. Jack could be a god. That was when I became Jack.
Later that week I played my first hand at my new dogma. It was reported that three hundred pounds of raw beef ended up outside the local vegetarian diner. I thought it was closer to four. A week later there weren’t anymore handicap parking spaces in a ten-mile radius. Building demolitions were performed hours earlier than scheduled. Mayor Hartley was caught with his pants down as a Port-A-John toppled with loose screws. I was flawless. I was the realist who blew up the world.
Jack became a god.
This was freedom. This was living. Anarchy was an idea for the naive. This was different. This was real. My addiction became an eight-fold path to total control. I was inches away from being totally free from order. Ritual patterns of a monotonous metropolis. Oxymoron’s have died with the martyrs. Whatever Jack says goes. And I’ll be damned if the sky isn’t green…


…Reveries are always cut short. I knew freedom. For that I was condemned. There are always vices for our virtues. My feet are silent now. Death must have marched to three as I became wrapped in Atlas’s final mercy. An envelope of peaceful emptiness dropped from his shoulders. Right into the arms of bliss. This is the way Brutus must have died.