Preservation – Alexander Kattke
December 5, 2020
“But every time an artist dies young like Kurt Cobain or whatever there’s always the people ‘It’s so sad, he had so much more to give.’ How do you know? Maybe he was out of shit? How do you know? He’s gone. He got all the money, he did all the drugs, he fucked all your holes and that’s the American dream and when you’re done with that you go ‘Oh that’s why they call it a dream, it’s bullshit and I’m still empty.’” Doug Stanhope.
I haven’t eaten in days and stare past my monitor, focusing on shadows cast on the walls. A tinny voice reverberates from the monitor “I am going to fuck a bear and that’s not a euphemism! I am going off into the woods and find me a black bear or grizzly and I am going to fuck it!” Audience laughing “Because that’s how I’ll be remembered. I won’t win a Nobel Peace Prize or become president. But god dammit, I’ll go down in history as the first person who raped a bear and lived to tell the tale!” I continue staring into the shadows and cannot sleep. By the afternoon I drive to the store to buy a garden hose with some duct tape and look for a nice secluded place. My phone vibrates but I ignore it, taking it out only later once I found an abandoned drive-In. I park my car and stare out onto the destroyed formerly white screen for hours more before taping the hose to my car’s tailpipe. The other end of the hose I tape inside with an ajar window that I taped over. I turn on my car and wait, about five minutes in I decide to take a photo of myself in black and white mode with no caption and send it out to my family shortly before it goes black. What a beautiful photo it was.
…
“Thou Shall Not Suffer A Witch To Live.” Exodus 22:18
The grime has settled and I take the time to remove it before continuing. Before big proclamations comes nascent cleanliness clashing with the filth around me. Dying insects and scurrying of rats in the walls. Electricity and internet without running water. Such contradictions. Like the sewers beneath cities. Vital and foul. Yet home to treasures such as lost jewelry and discarded lovers.
“I don’t want to be forgotten.”
After all I’ve created, I look down upon it and cringe. I’d rather die being an unknown than a known failure.
…
I stare up at the summit and have gone blind. I see the means for my ascension. I am a mountain climber charting new lands. My target is set. A family. It is a worthy challenge to dismantle a bloodline. I scoured social media looking for family reunions until I found a happening at a YMCA for the Ginsbergs. My preparation concluded, I had made up my mind and began the assault. I enter the building, staff looked at me in shock as I entered the large gymnasium. I raised my armaments to the sky and fired to get their attention.
…
“You create terrible things to ward off evil.” A line told to me by a friend. This is a lie. In the cold indifference that I welcome, each strike-thru by the pen overseen by approving automatons of my invention. My ego strokes me on that I am creating a grand work: I am the architect of a temple only I can use. To others it is a monument of trash. Refuse packaged in cheap bright papers and golden ribbons. Obvious philosophy: the body is a temple but such constructions can collapse, are buried, and are forgotten. And what is the temple then but a relic to a dead god by future civilizations? I reject this. I am not a temple. I choose to be a weapon.
I step into the fires
and I am taken
…
The time has come to end this worthlessness. To end sloth and worry. To become no longer harmless but cruel. In this action I will find a purpose by rummaging through click-bait articles of important people looking for a bastion and finding nothing. The famous are only temporary. Too easily replaced. I instead focus on those with the most control. The Billionaire. The Man. The god. The head of empires. My mark upon this planet (zeitgeist) will be questioned as an act of justice or karmic pull as the weak overcome the strong. I resolve that my action will ultimately be a temporary stop-gap for the elites and will result in no change at all. But to attempt such a task is worth living for. For that I will be remembered by and through my victim. Following easy to find tutorials I was able to harvest a fine amount of nitroglycerin. With that I have constructed a shrapnel bomb with an approximate two-second fuse. I 2nd guess myself and make it a one-second fuse, factoring the time to light and throw it. Time passes and I am at a rally for the Billionaire. He speaks in terms of insipidus platitudes as I hide the shrapnel bomb close to my chest under a light windbreaker. After the speech he is escorted off, adoring fans attempt to get his picture and autograph. I steer my way to the front, within spitting distance, light the bomb and toss it at their feet. Landing right next to the expensive shoes. Screams. Confusion. Blood. The fuse was less than a second. My arms are presumptively outstretched awaiting arrest. My ears ring and I can’t hear anything. Their security team opens fire on me and the last thing I see is their body being rolled away from me as nothing but a bloody pile of what was once the almighty.