Samsara for the Big Man - A Satirical Short Story
Dying hurts every time, but after you die 100 times you get used to it, by whatever means of end. I’ve been swallowed up, I’ve exploded, I’ve been drowned and ripped apart and bled and each instance I’ve felt the fear and helplessness you get from the worst kind of nightmares, only when I wake up and it's a new hellish dream beginning again. It is the same fear, slightly rearranged, but the same. That moment of death is pathetic, it is often boring and uneventful. It is the living; the living requires an acceptance of this cyclical death. It is the waiting for a death worse than the last, and a yearning for a final death that exceeds the limits of my sensorial imagination, the one where the game gives up.
There have been literal lifetimes for me to remember every moment of my existence, with every rebirth recalling passionately the same internal monologue and memories as the lives prior. My consciousness has reached a state where it is impossible for me to forget anything. These are unhindered memories, carried over lives and stacked in a mental log. I’ve spent lifetimes thinking about it: our consciousness started as human infants, magic birthed in a human vessel, and since then, beyond transcendence into new life, through some miraculous power—a hiding power, a cowardly power—this consciousness never quits.
Dying over and over again is like falling asleep, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, but it hurts, and when you’re awoken in some new body you’re automatically accustomed to the horrifying surroundings or the absent details. For some reason it is innate looking through non-human eyes and processing with non-human brain. It is the nature of living anew.
The first life is the hardest to give up. My first was long and beyond rich. It is the one in a 100. The other 99—impending in nature, habitual, nutritional, these lives—I’m sure of, are but experiences designed to torture. It took me a couple go-arounds to accept that every fresh life would shortly pass, and in the next I would fancy something newly insatiable and disgusting, like blood or shit or little fucking grey pellets. Long ago I used to enjoy fillet mignon and little martinis with olives skewered by silver toothpicks.
I am the same man, Janes Duzenwurth, but I am not physically him. In a cycle of new forms, a name has become pointless to own and only hurts that soul that remains.
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June 19, it was a sickeningly beautiful night to receive the worst news of my human life. It was almost Greganthony's birthday. An orange moon hung behind the Florida cypress and I was sitting comfortably in my study staring at my wall, relishing in my pictures and my artwork, and carefully digesting my oxycodone. Everything fell so fast. Duncan brought me a letter sent from my consigliere, Rudolf Topfer—a punctual man who orchestrated my family’s internal operations. This letter was sent from the false identity of Maria Krasmist, a fictional book publicist who sent spam mail marketing some imaginary work. In the mix of the publicist’s fake letters was a real one sent to a business PO box under another false identity: B. Dobby—a pseudonym for Janes Duzenwurth. If it was a Krasmist card it was bad news. I shared a glass of Louie with Duncan and then sent him away to be alone with my warning of death.
Topfer’s letter explained that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized a $3,500,000 shipment of cocaine—my cocaine—and that I should flee the country, taking only myself while I still had the chance. Topfer’s rundown was generous in detail. The Feds had more than a simple seizure; they had word from poor men who were willing to bargain. All it took was my name to be given up, and they could connect the dots. Topfer said that overnight they would compile a report card, grabbing everything from my father’s hospital records in Lübeck, receipts for Greganthony’s cricket lessons, records of philanthropic donations to the NSM, and now private transactions made out to startup Chinese pharmaceutical firms. I had accumulated RICO charges out the wazoo, and by the time I got around to reading the letter, the FBI had to have zeroed in on my property. Those boys were fast. They had my phones tapped. They had the internet bugged. I could feel their scopes on my neck and sense a wave of surveillance sweeping the windows and doors. I sat still with the letter delicately pinched between two fingers, thinking, any sudden movement or inkling of a tip and they’d swarm like dogs. They had me penned in.
At the end of the letter, Topfer signed in Deutsch—Schönen Urlaub!—vacation; it was a coded, end-all-be-all phrase for “I’m going away, see you in the afterlife”. Topfer had to have killed himself—not an ideal ending, but a loyal one. He’d go out knowing Duzenwurth secrets; the hits I ordered, the countless exchanges of drugs and weapons, my scandals with people who didn’t come around anymore and why. Topfer was an extension of myself, though not by blood, he was a Duzenwurth. A trusted human record. This letter was confirmation that those things would be erased, but also, a vital warning to me.
After hours of shaky rumination, I realized the FBI was in no apparent rush. I thought about it: I had guards and now an advantage in knowing the circumstances, albeit, days late. It would come down to the birthday party. They would slip in with the guests, blending their seedy faces among children and estranged company. It was an obvious ploy, and what was I to do?
Topfer’s letter would keep me upstairs while the preparations for Greganthony's big celebration unfolded. From the top of the marble stairs, I made a final appearance to my family, but sour I stood watching as Tiz and the butlers occupied themselves, hanging violet streamers with deliberate intent. Greganthony sat on the floor with one of the maids. The scene made me sick; Tiz was a dumb bitch and it was to be a dumb party. From the balcony I protested these feelings to my brainless wife, telling her inconspicuously how we couldn’t throw a party. I told her I wasn’t well and kept the FBI out of it. The idea of me going away would only get her off. I spat and yelled and danced around the truth. I told her the party would be the biggest mistake of our lives—her life. My wife ignored my failed exhortation, reciprocating only but a cracked grin that crept across her wrinkled lips. For well over a decade, she looked at me like some old joke that was incapable of ever being funny again. Tiz cared for the boy and only the boy; the party would happen. I screamed at her to tell the guests I was sick and not home. She couldn’t bear a nod. The skag disgusted me, she smelled like a wet rug, and when she cracked that grin it said enough and I went to pack my go-bag—a small duffel filled with $15,000 in cash, a collared shirt, pants, a straight razor, a neck brace, wax teeth, a bottle of Bleu de Chanel, gloves, a cyanide pill, fishing line, a can of Starkist and a whole lemon.
I gave it to Duncan to hide in the horse stable out back and I told him to tell Tiz she can go fuck herself.
Tiz’s insolence knocked some sense into me; the FBI's surprise raid could actually backfire. As easy it is for them to sneak in, it would be just as easy for me to slip out. The chance of it brought me some comfort. I retreated to my bedroom with a loaded .32 and thought up ways to escape. Beyond the cypress and at the far end of my 200-acre property was a little scout flyer that I would reach by horse. Then, I’d fly off to The Boot and dig in. Somewhere thick and damp, there was sanctuary.
◆◆◆
Despite Topfer’s warning, I was killed, and since then, the 99 lives I’ve experienced have all been short lived and painful.
I’ve seen a multitude of afterlifes. Rebirth has to do with energy. What we radiate spreads outward, and once our bodies die, we’re relocated to a new vessel, one that holds our fleeting remainder of soul. You must understand; our energy fluctuates throughout life, it sees the ups and downs, reacts accordingly, but eventually diminishes, not disappearing but dwindling down. It is an organizational process of relocating the soul. We are attached to this single lifeline of unique energy, mine called Janes, and it is my name, but it is diminishing, and I will give it up eventually.
Something cursed us with awareness and emotion, I’ll argue, even reaching the cynical and depraved. Something voids us of revelation. Something laughs at me. It's unexplainable why this is the way it is. You cannot call this life when it is death over and over again, completely alone, solo-dolo—me, myself and I each time.
Religious persons cope with obtuse guesses. Nihilists wouldn’t care what I have to say. We got one shot at being human, and boy, my shot was straight, powerful. It was a gift and I would give anything to go back to living—really living.
◆◆◆
Drugrunning had been a seamless operation for years, rarely were there complications. Throughout the 80s and 90s and for a good, good while in the Y2K, we ran along the Gulf coast like champs. Cocaine disguised as ice-salt got snuck through the Mexican border, flown out of Texas and airdropped in a New Orleans bayou. If it’s summertime, it’s bags of fertilizer—doesn't matter. Then it’s boated from Nola to this little tourist spot called Panama Place located on the panhandle of Florida. The fishing boats are unloaded at an abandoned shipping yard where landscaping trucks pick up the stuff and make drops around the sunshine state and parts of Georgia. With all the exchanges, it had always been impossible to track, at least until it came to that last stint.
It may sound like an impossible feat, but once you run the course a few times and learn to monitor your steps, you develop a procedure and over time, you’ve worked out the kinks; it's practical work. Any idiot with balls could do it, but you need good drivers. These were grunts, paid a couple grand a piece, the same wages we’d been paying everyone since we started outsourcing the labor to Creoles. There had never been a problem, ever, except for this time.
In his letter Topfer explained when these guys crossed the gulf, they were immediately flagged by the coast guard. Now, we’ve always had the boats rigged to blow in case of a bust, but rumor must have made its way around the breakroom, and someone must’ve known about the plastic explosive underneath the hull, got spooked, and deactivated the bomb before Topfer’s guys caught wind from shore. There’s a good chance they were trying to steal the blow. Instead of going down like good boys, someone got hot and they started shooting at the guard until they ran out of bullets and cried their way into surrender, effectively turning my family over without hesitation. In succession, those fools killed my business, Topfer, and me.
◆◆◆
Now imagine nothing: darkness, intangible space. You’re there with your thoughts in the black void—no physical body, no sight—and for a long, long while, maybe for years on end you think “Oh shit. There’s nothing. I’m dead and there’s really nothing” only that's not it, and after waiting however long you feel this hot sensation growing around you. This humming arrives, like a spaceship, echoing louder as you’re taken ahold of and engulfed—like being swallowed up by a fiery bag—and everything around you is fizzing and breaking down and the pain is immense while you’re ripped apart and pressed into something inconceivable and far bigger than you. There is no way to scream as this weight takes a hold of you over and over again in a repetitive cycle of phagocytosis—yes that's it—until a bright light appears and you’re transported somewhere else.
For a moment you think it's God’s doing and God has gifted you sight again. You find yourself under the sun and there is the breeze and familiar sounds of nature like birds and passing cars and for a moment you resort back to sanity—“what took you so long?”—but you realize you’re eating something, and you're eating and eating and you don’t know what you’re eating but you can't stop because it feels right and tastes delicious. It fills your gob and you eat and eat and before you know it you pop and explode into bloody bits, and maybe it happens again or worse you go back to that dark place. You flip-flop between existential planes. Soon it clicks and you start to really taste your food. It’s flesh, it’s meat, or maybe you’re on the bad end of it and you're eating the animal’s colon and there's shit but you don't care because it’s a race to see who can eat the most, like supper with siblings and you can’t get enough of the stuff. You’re a maggot, writhing and squirming, nodding, slowly inhaling curdled tissue within a swarm, eating and popping when full, things turning dark, back to light and repeating it again and again and again.
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June 23, the party guests arrived and my property shook with music and laughter. I got bad that day; I knew it was almost time. My patience was wavering. I kept away from the window. For days all I did was try to sleep, but it was futile when death was so imminent. In those final days my paranoia ruled my world. There was no surrender. It was a gunfight whether I wanted it or not. Surrendering would get me a life sentence and the greatest humiliation from forfeiting Duzenwurth pride. I laid in bed, in and out of a daze, waiting for the party crashers to reach me. Someone coming upstairs was the only cue I had, otherwise nobody should’ve known I was there.
As a final line of defense, Duncan sat on a folding chair posted by the barricaded double doors, reading and occasionally helping himself to a cigarette. He had perfect timing, finishing both his book and pack of reds simultaneously when someone let off a firm rapping against the door. There was no need to confirm the visitor. Duncan looked at me. He reached for his gun but was beaten by a flurry of 9mm bullets that pelted his body, knocking him to the floor. His meaty carcass jammed their entrance giving me time to leap from the window and freefall into some hedges down below. Chaos ensued. Partygoers and armed men spilled into the backyard in all directions as gunfire erupted inside and out on the lawn. I was correct; the mania helped me scramble to the horse stables. In the mass of fleeing people, a band of birthday clowns with machine pistols searched for me, but by then I had hopped on Greganthony’s horse and took off into the woods. On my ride out, I spotted a man crouching by the barn—just someone, could’ve been anyone—so with my .32 I blew his face off.
The horse screeched through the trees and was making a sizable gap between me and the gunfire. There was no saddle and my balls, supported only by jammy pants, rocked and ached as the beast galloped a zig-zag path somewhere to my helicopter. All I could’ve done was try; Greganthony’s horse was shot in an open stretch where guns in ambush waited for my arrival. They shot the beast's ass and I was bucked off, falling face first into the cold dirt. They circled me and I cracked off some of my own. The horse screamed and thrusted its legs back, slamming its hooves into the back of my head.
This was the one death that didn’t hurt.
◆◆◆
And then that darkness came—the pressure, the looping terror, the eating. It took what felt like years before I was something other than darkness or maggotry.
It was refreshing for about five seconds until the smell of chicken shit hit my beak. Painted on the metal wall in bold lettering was the tell all: Tyson. I became something else—a broiler, a new life’s purpose of being rotisserie chicken. Despite the circumstances, it was a break from the cycle of horror I’d been experiencing. Animal instincts kicked in as I bobbed my head aimlessly with the other birds. We shuffle around. We peck.
Pecking at grain never gets old and when it does one of the workers snatches me, hangs me upside down and slits my throat, and everytime I’ll count the seconds while the blood dribbles down and coats my beady eyes. Sometimes I’m still alive when I’m moved to the vat of boiling water. By now, it is no surprise, I reawaken, and each time I'm thankful to not be back in the mystifying darkness, but among the broilers for the slaughtering process to begin again. It’s a practical death. Each time I come back I think about that darkness and that nothingness and that pain of being swallowed and how incomparable it is to that of the grain, the conveyor belts and iron shackles.
I would rather spend eternity a chicken, mostly, because it beats being nothing.
