Twenty years have passed and a lot of water flew under the bridges, but it somehow happened again. The living room, the quiet anger, the death of Morten. “He was so young” thought Rasmussen, in a craze. The writer felt hyperventilation was going to get the better of him. His breath lost its steady rhythm and his mind was running amok. The living room in front of him was gaining a life of its own. When he blinked, John saw the past and the present on top of each other, like the pictures of a flip book.
“HOWDY, SON” heard Rasmussen, coming from nowhere in particular.
He turned around and saw his father on the couch. That wasn’t precisely his father, not the one he hated so much, but what he saw on the couch represented his father and he couldn’t tell exactly what was odd about him. It’s like he wasn’t completely alive, like a puppet master controlled him.
“WHAT IS IT JOHNNY? BEING A PUSSY LEFTIST AGAIN? CAN’T SUPPORT THE WORK OF YOUR OLD MAN I SEE.”
“You’re not…you’re not my father, you’re not Henry Rasmussen” said John, while trying to approach the couch where his old man sat.
“OH, YOU THINK? You weren’t signing the same song back in the days son. Not when you got arrested for bombing the governor’s mailbox. Remember that one?”
“Yeah, you left me to rot in jail for a week” said John.
“Didn’t ya learned ya lesson?”
“What are ya talking about?”
John, through his nauseas and dizziness, realized that his father’s accent wasn’t the stable. Whoever was talking to him through his father couldn’t keep the Midwestern slang properly.
“Man…who are you?” asked John.
“I’m your daddy John”.
“No you’re not” answered the writer with a germ of confidence. “You’re a guy that can’t imitate a Midwestern accent to save his own life. Are you a dramatic art school reject or something?”
Odd silence. Before the great adventure of “The Righteous” started eight years before, when John was mingling with the indifferent crowds of the art world, he had learned to recognize the different type of silences. This one was easy to recognize. He called it the struck-a-nerve.
“What are you doing in my compound then Ed Wood?” asked John.
“Liiisten to meeee.”
“No, I won’t listen, just fuckin’ leave.”
John grabbed the impostor by the sleeve and tried to pull him up. For only result, the heavy mannequin crashed to the floor with a sinister laugh.
“You can kill my body, but you can kill my soooooooooooooooouuuul” said the stranger in between two other burst of laughter. “Should we talk about Morten now?”
John stumbled his way back into the compounds, main hallway and down the stairs in a blind panic. Family was a subject that he didn’t allow anybody to touch. From the moment he moved to the State of New York to the moment of his isolated reclusion in Glenn Falls, no one had known about them. “The Chosen” knew, of course. They knew everything about him and made clear that they were in command. Drugs were still going strong to John’s brain – affecting his judgment – but something was clear to him, the intruder had to be within “The Chosen”.
While John’s perceptions were affected, his house looked to him like a labyrinth with somber and hostile jokes hidden at every dead end. He sat down against a wall and closed his eyes. Colors were dancing within his eyelids. The world was shifting inside out. Somewhere in his protection facility, John heard the phone ring. He debated the question for a moment, but he got up, fighting the blood rushes to his head. A ringing phone had that nagging sound that demanded to be answered. On his way to the kitchen phone, John surprised himself thinking he would never do that if he felt right. He hesitated again and picked up without saying anything.
“Are you ready for what’s coming John?” said the voice. There was no fake in him anymore, he was Asian.
“Ready for what?”
“I’m just getting warmed up John. You’re going to love what I have in store for you.”
“What do you want? Money? I have money, if it can make you get the fuck out of here.”
“Oh I’m well paid thank you…and I kind of love it here. It’s free, cozy and I can look at you. You should connect to the internet Johnny. There’s a surprise for you, I don’t think you’ll have any hard time finding it” said the intruder.
“Listen to me motherfucker…I…I don’t know what you filled me up with, but it’s going to wear out. And when it’s going to wear out. I’m going to go bonkers on you. You better be well hidden because “The Chosen” are coming.
John hung up the phone. He missed the base the first time and the telephone went sprawling across the counter. The second time, he slammed the receiver in so hard that the base emitted a loud crack. John got to his writing room near the kitchen in order to check the internet like the strange told him. In Google, he typed CNN.
WRITER JOHN RASMUSSEN DIED
The title made his heart stop, figuratively. He clicked on the link to the article and found out pictures of him, unconscious, next to his writing couch. His eyes were opened and his face was bathing in a puddle of drool. John remembered the moment he woke up. He had no idea how much time had passed since then, but his drugged stupor had only been growing since then. The article contained a statement from “The Chosen”:
Today we are mourning. Today we are mourning a brother, a comrade in arms and our voice. John Rasmussen was an insightful spirit and one of the great writers of the 21st century. We will hold a private ceremony for our brotherhood, but after that we will give his body to the Apostolic Church like he had wanted us to. The Chosen will make sure that the works of John Rasmussen will be forever remembered and will give the world the tools to understand his philosophy.
We remain,
The Chosen
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