_______________________________________________________________________________ _ _ _ _ ((___)) ((___)) [ x x ] cDc communications [ x x ] \ / presents... \ / (` ') (` ') (U) (U) Twisted Reality by Necrovore >>> A CULT Publication......1988 <<< -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc- _______________________________________________________________________________ This is a story that I did originally for a journal in my English class. It is so original that I just had to write it up in a file for all to enjoy. It basically deals with a period of Earth's history in the near future (say 20 years from now) and how unfair reality can be. All characters in this story are fictional. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental (and probably a product of your deranged mind). =============================================================================== It was a misty night as Cleophus Jackson walked home from work. Cleophus was a janitor at the nearby RJR Tobacco Plant and he enjoyed his job. He was very fortunate because now he could smoke for free. This may seem unimportant but a cigarette habit can cost between $300 and $600 a year, money which could be spent on food, shelter, or medical aid. Cleophus' family was poor and the fact that he could smoke for free was a boon to their budget. On this night the moon loomed above, bathing the industrial streets in a very eerie, yellowish light. It had rained that day and the air smelled of paper mills and their byproducts. Cleophus was by no means an evil man. Quite to the contrary, he was a good man willing to stick his neck on the line for a fellow Amerikan. About two blocks from his small home in "the Gardens" he walked by the local fast-market. He found that when he turned to wave at the proprietor that the store was being held up by two junkies. Being the good man that he was, Cleophus ran inside to try to save the owner, a friend of his. Even though Cleophus was a good man he was quite naive. One of the two heroin addicts levelled a sawed-off shotgun at him and let loose. Cleophus hit the ground amidst a rain of blood, tissue, and bone fragments. Seconds later, the other junkie shot the owner in the head with a .38 special. What a lovely scene. The junkies made off with $21 dollars from the cash register and ran off. About two weeks later they both died from overdoses of bad heroin. But back to the present. A passerby saw the carnage and called the police. About 20 minutes later, the police arrived and called for an ambulance. It took the ambulance about ten minutes to get to the scene. It had been speeding all the way, lights a-flashing and sirens a-wailing. The two cops showed the two paramedics to the bodies and left them to do their work. One of the cops, new to the ranks of the blue, retched in an alleyway and the other, a tough sonuvabitch, jeered at him. A few minutes later, the paramedics left the fast-market with Cleophus on a stretcher and his friend, the store owner, in a glistening black body bag. The two cops did help the 'medics to load the bodies into the ambulance. The ambulance then roared off into the night, sirens waking sleeping people, lights illuminating the streets ravaged by the rain ever-present grime. The two policemen left for doughnuts. Minutes later the ambulance pulled into the emergency ward of Forsyth County Hospital and screeched to a halt as two attendants ran to help the two 'medics unload the bodies and haul them into the emergency ward. The store proprietor was quite dead, a tunnel through his cranial passages. Cleophus, though, was alive, albeit barely. Most of his midsection had been blasted into oblivion by the shotgun wound. As the doctors laid his body on the cold metal of the examination table, one of the assistants sat down at a nearby computer terminal and started pressing the keys in rapid succession. Another of the assistants started to rummage through his pockets for some sort of identifi- cation. He soon found Cleophus' wallet and looked inside. He pulled out the drivers license and began reading off the information. The assistant at the computer terminal continued typing... Forsyth Patient Identification revision 2.5x Enter name: JACKSON, CLEOPHUS searching... Jackson, Cleophus Age 42 Black Male 1532 Shaden Street, Winston-Salem, NC 27109 Financial Status: negl (insufficient funds) More (Y/n): N "He can't afford it," said the assistant at the terminal. "All right then," said a doctor that was in the room, "Take him to the bay." The two assistants lifted Cleophus' body off the table without care and casually tossed him onto a nearby gurney. It was about this time that Cleophus died. The gurney was then loaded into a nearby truck. The truck was filled with bodies all inside body bags. One of the assistants took a bag from a stack of them, unzipped it, and put Cleophus' lifeless body into it. The bag was the added to the uniform pile of other body bags in the truck. Shortly thereafter, one of the assistants closed up the truck, climbed into the cab and cranked up the engine. With a rumble, the truck slowly pulled out from the hospital and started down the highway. About twenty miles out of town, it turned off on Exit 32A and then down a small, paved road. At last the truck stopped in front of a gate. The gate was connected to a tall, chain-link fence, topped with brutal strands of barbed wire. A sign on the gate was marked: WARNING! HIGH VOLTAGE! A small post stood on the right side of the road, about five feet from the gate. It had a small slot and a sign on it read: Please insert ID card. The driver inserted a small plastic card. There was a noticeable hum as the gate slid to the side. The truck's engine rumbled once more as the driver pulled the truck into the fenced-off compound. Once in, the gate slid closed again, the hum reminding him of an army of stampeding cockroaches. He pulled the truck around the side of a large quonset hut to a loading dock. Once he stopped, he cut off the engine and stepped out of the truck. By this time it was about four in the morning. The moon was well below the tree line but its glinting beams still shone through the entangled branches. He walked around to the rear and climbed up on the concrete loading dock and unlatched the truck's door. The sound of metal grating upon metal filled the air as the door swung upwards. He then climbed in and took ahold of one of the body bags. Is it a surprise that it was Cleophus'? He slung the body over his shoulder and sauntered into the interior of the large quonset hut. Inside the floor was of stained concrete. The huge metal building was but one room. Its center was a huge pit that reached down fifty feet into the bowels of the earth. It was filled with body bags, most of them ripped open. The air that filled his nostrils was a rancid mixture of formaldahyde and the sickeningly sweet stench of decaying flesh. He tossed the body of Cleophus into the pit and turned around to go get the rest of the bodies. Nearby, a large rat scurried by, on its way to a feast.... =============================================================================== This file kind of makes a protest to the fact that most hospitals today (yes, even today) give inferior care to poor people just because they don't have the funds to pay the full bill. Do you think this is fair? Put yourself in good ol' Cleophus' shoes (even if they are beaten up a little). Cleophus was, deep down, better than most Amerikan citizens. Yet he gets absolutely no treatment at all. That's what you get for being a hero in the late '80s, and probably for the rest of our corrupt civilization. _______________________________________________________________________________ Behavior Modification.....806/793-9462 The Dead Zone.............214/522-5321 Demon Roach Underground...806/794-4362 Dragonfire Private........609/424-2606 Question Authority........715/341-6516 Pure Nihilism.............517/337-7319 Tequila Willy's...........209/526-3194 The Metal AE..............201/879-6668 =============================================================================== (c)1988 cDc communications by Necrovore 12/31/88-97 All Rights Worth Shit