Welcome To Hellville - Part 6 By Rich Mills

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Alan relaxed back from the machine and letting his head flop backwards, closed his eyes, and stared into the void at the back of his eyelids. Opening his eyes and raising his head back up to its correct position, he panned the room. Two demijohns of home made wine, one heavily stripped and now almost bare looking cannabis plant, waste paper bins made out of waste paper (an ecologically sound business plan that came to nothing), a few month's copies of heavily supplemented weekend newspapers, and one gross of Good News Bibles.

He frowned and snorted, shaking his mane he realised the foolishness of that purchase. He'd had the idea of signing them and trying to sell them door-to-door or outside the local Holiness Hall as the Sunday school was chucking out. The bible symbolised corruption in all its forms, from the embossed white plastic son of God image on the cover, to the word processor-purified text on the chlorine bleached recycled paper. And all edited by anybody and nobody over time, copyright 1999. Not even a 21st Century edition, not even of these times. What a waste of money that was, thought Alan.

On top of the box of bibles a blue file bulged with newspaper clippings. Alan reached over and flicked the file open. An avalanche of recent news history poured onto the floor, sliding over each other like a net full of near dead fish released onto a rolling deck. A live one flicked and fluttered at his feet, he grabbed at it in hope of breathing new life into the old news. The headline, Second Gumming, he said out-loud. It was a story from America about a guy who claimed to be Jesus Christ.

No real originality in that, but the guy really seemed convinced of himself. He was a New York City Street Vendor, and had been arrested for not having an up-to-date vendor's licence. When the police brought him in, they found that he was carrying twenty signed copies of the New Testament.

In interview with the police he freely admitted he had signed all the books, although he accepted he hadn't written the New Testament, he thought that seeing how the ideas and principles within it were attributed to him it was his right if anyone's to make money from selling them. His time in the confessional media spotlight didn't stop there. When the story got out, the news hounds got on his scent, and he became a minor media ripple in New York, settling for his own cable slot on Channel 667.

For one hour each week, he now rants across the air-waves, claiming he is a vampire initiated into immortal limbo while nailed to the cross. Satan in the guise of a Centurion, fell at his feet and began to gorge on his paternal power. After what seemed an eternity of self-abusive blood letting later, the Modern Media Messiah claims his thousand year reign is now at an end. Here we come to the headline's punch-line, as the Son of God has no teeth, no fangs with which to tear into his little lambs, and to top it off he's a thousand years out in his calculations.

He claims it was all the work of the C.I.A or some such covert intelligence agency who oil the cogs of the evil power monger's pan-global corporate machinery. They kidnapped him in an alien space-craft, smashed his teeth in with a hammer, planted a bug up his arse, and dumped him in a crop circle that half a dozen drunk design students were trampling into place.

Next to the article was a picture of the latest new Messiah, wearing a T-shirt which bore his new Millennium logo, and slogan. The logo was of a vertical band, surrounded by a circular band, which was itself circled by three arrows all pointing anti-clockwise. It reminded Alan of a universal symbol from a washing machine, or some such household electrical appliance. Symbolising pull/push on/off and turn to set washing cycle! That's what Alan saw in the symbol, not a symbol of a new Age, for a new generation. Then again...

Underneath his new merchandised brand label, the catch all slogan said Sins Washed Here. No points for originality, but a 5.9 for artistic impression. Alan threw the article back in with all the other snippets of would be truth, and drove his hand into the pile for another one.

Continued Welcome To Hellville - Part 7 By Rich Mills.. Next Page

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