_                                   | \                                   |  \                                   | | \                            __     | |\ \             __      _____________       _/_/     | | \ \          _/_/     _____________     |  ___________     _/_/       | |  \ \       _/_/       ___________  |     | |              _/_/_____    | |   > >    _/_/_____               | |     | |             /________/    | |  / /    /________/               | |     | |                           | | / /                              | |     | |                           | |/ /                               | |     | |                           | | /                                | |     | |                           |  /                                 | |     | |                           |_/                                  | |     | |                                                                | |     | |      c   o   m   m   u   n   i   c   a   t   i   o   n   s     | |     | |________________________________________________________________| |     |____________________________________________________________________|  ...presents...                  One Wrong Move                                                         by The Deth Vegetable                      >>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<<                        -cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-  ____       _     ____       _       ____       _     ____       _       ____ |____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|     Adam was at the end of his rope... literally.  He had one end tied to thebig toe of his right foot, the other tied to the trigger of a twelve-gauge.The gun was propped up by the barrel in his hands, the stock between the toesof his left foot.  A sure-fire technique, or so he was told.  Looking down thebarrel made the gun look larger than life, distorted, as if it were a tunnel hecould crawl into.  If only he could.  Perhaps hide in there long enough toregroup, decide to go on, not pull the trigger.  The cool black space beckoned.'Sorry, not good enough.'  The blast was more inviting, the one flash ofexperience he could count on to be definitive.  No bullshit.  Pure, simple,real.     He reviewed his preparations for this moment.  'Let's see...'  Getting ridof his possessions proved to be much more work than he ever imagined.  Thefurniture came with the apartment and would have to stay.  'So far so good.'But the rest was a messy business.  All the battered utensils in the kitchen:the pots, pans, plates, silverware... 'Why is there so much?'  He lived alone,never had any guests.  'Incredible how life got cluttered with so many deadthings.'     The books and records were the hardest to part with.  They took so long tocollect.  Years of scavenging through dirty old milk crates at flea markets,bargaining with the old couples who made a point of fighting for every pennythey could get.  All the journeys to Cambridge, the only place within hundredsof miles he could find anything even remotely off beat, beyond the local tastefor Madonna and insipid romance novels.  'The trials of being something like anindividual.  Now these things have to make their way back to the cultural genepool, recycled.'  Once they were all packed up, he thought they took on thebulky appearance of Sisyphus' rock, a weight that burned millions of calorieswhen it had to be carried down to Goodwill.  At least his body would be lighterfor the poor buggers who'd have to carry it out, box it up, and bury it.  Hewould even have done that by himself, if he could.     Goodwill took anything and everything.  After the books and records, Adamwent on to bring them all his clothing, kitchen equipment, and even his bike.He was reassured to know that at least his things, the pursuit of which hadslowly killed him, would bring some life to others, rather than filling thewallets of people with wallets already full.     But then there was the business with the manuscripts, songs, master tapes,paintings.  He thought of all those years of his life going nowhere, yetcreating such a mass of material.  'It seems endless.'  All he could rememberwere long periods of boredom, drinking in front of a TV.  Yet somewhere alongthe line he must have broken away from the jobs, the shopping, the cleaning,the sleeping, the love-making, and found a few moments of brilliance.  'Whereare they now?'     He mailed all his master tapes to the record companies he had worked for.All unreleased material.  They had stolen all his work anyway.  Sure, he had acontract.  Worthless words.  For years they kept sending statements showingsales figured of so many thousand copies sold, but no profit.  Yet the companywas issuing paychecks to the executive, his secretary, the guy who packed theboxes, the people who pressed the records, even the guy who swept their floorsgot a paycheck.  Everyone but Adam got paychecks.  He wondered if maybe heshould have gotten a job sweeping their floors.  'Oh well... water under thebridge.'  Except he was in that water, drowning.     He mailed all his manuscripts to various publishers who had rejected themin the past.  No return envelope.  The post office loves him during those days.He had given them most of what he had left in his bank account.  He'd neverseen the clerks so friendly, snapping to attention with, "Good morning, Adam!"and "Beautiful day, isn't it."  He was giving them all a new sense of jobsecurity.  Or did they secretly relish the thought of him checking out of thisovercrowded hotel called life, he wondered.  It would mean more room for themall, more jobs, more money circulating.  They smelled blood and liked it.  Allthe resources would be divided among fewer consumers.     The paintings were something else.  He would let no one take them.  Hepicked a blazing day of sun, donned a beret, and with his painting tied to hisback, made his way to the nearest cemetery.  It was a few weeks after MemorialDay, and the flowers on the graves were long dead, crumbling to dust.  Most ofAdam's paintings were portraits, so he walked around looking at the grave-stones, checking names, dates, ages at which people died, and matched hismental image of the deceased with one of his portraits.  Then he placed thepainting on the grave.  The richer corpses had monuments, so he could lean thepaintings against these, standing them upright.  When he finished, the cemeterylooked like a gallery.  He saw the gods smile and knew it was good.  'Dust todust, pigment to pigment, soul to soul.'  He took off his beret, bowed, andleft.     When he returned to his apartment, now empty but for the furniture, hecracked a beer.  All that running around made him thirsty.  After a couple ofbrews he got the urge to write, maybe leave a final note.  'To whom?  Sayingwhat?'  There was no paper, no pens.  'Oh well, concentrate on the otherthing.'  He was ready.  But what about the apartment?  There could be no loop-holes, no mistakes.  The pilot lights to the stove and furnace were off. Windows closed, doors locked.  The gas valves, water valves, and circuitbreakers were turned off, dead.     It was a little past noon.  'Good choice.'  Everyone was at work... thosewho had it... everyone but him.  No witnesses.  All was in place, at peace.'Alone with the gods lurking within the gun.'  Perhaps they would be kinderthan the ones he had faced for the last thirty-three years.  Gods besieged himdaily.  Battles against bills, worries, fears, failures at all the pursuits hethought others made sport of and won.  Well, now he would give himself todifferent gods.     Those ugly gods had one last chance to come out of their hiding places.Perhaps they would finally explain why the things he worked so hard at turnedto shit.  Tell him why he lost so many jobs.  Where were the gods, that fatefulday, when the boss, with his fat, well-paid face told him there was "no moreroom on the payroll" for him?  "The economy has hit us all," he said.  Funny,he showed no signs of its brutality.  He had a house, paid for, fancy lunchesevery day, all the trimmings of a man who made money from others' work."This is no reflection on the quality of your work," he said.  Well, wasn'tthat a relief!  After ten years of faithful, hard-working, productive service,he was being dumped into a world, a market that had no more use for what hedid.  All those late nights at the office, for what?  The early mornings onthe job site, dealing with shifty, cigar-smoking contractors, for what?  To bedumped like a falling stock?  So Adam hung his head and took what the boss hadto give: nothing.  "Thanks," he said, and shuffled off to the unemploymentline.  One-time professionals, now losers, trying to keep from looking at eachother as they made their way toward their consolation prize.  The parade ofsinners.  But what was their sin?  They had done what they were told.  They hadgone through the prescribed training, performed the tasks requested by theirbosses, and this was their reward.  To be looked upon as lepers, outcasts ofthe tribe of workaholics.  The claim processors looked dazed as the paradeapproached.  The leper colony avoided any eye contact among themselves, theone place they might have found some understanding.  The doomed found simpleways to avoid further doom.  Looks _do_ kill.     Suddenly the neighborhood dogs went into one of their tantrums, a fit ofbarking.  Adam imagined their teeth slashing flesh... human, animal.  Anintruder, perhaps, caught in someone's yard.  The dogs knew how to work it.Pretend to work for a human, protect his house, the wife, the barbecue.  Allthe while waiting, eating his food, laughing behind his back.  Their day hadcome.     As the barking subsided, he noticed the sweat forming on his face,dripping from his nose, his eyebrows, his chin, everywhere.  Even his earsseemed to be sweating.  His shirt was saturated, his hands slimy.  'Will thebarrel slip?  Better put it in the mouth.'  Then the itching began, from theskull, working its way down, covering his entire body.  Ignore it.  He couldnot move, would not.  There was only one last move his limbs would ever make.He concentrated on that.  His toe, with one twitch, would do the dirty workthat the rest of his being was never able to do.  Just one twitch.  Simplicityitself.  He imagined himself the genius inventing the gun.  How many times didthe thing blow-up in his face before he got it right?  Or did he get it rightthe first time?  It was truly a miraculous thing....     Then the phone rang.  (He forgot to disconnect it!)  His reflexes didtheir thing.  The rope did its thing.  The trigger did its thing.  The godsdid theirs. _______  __________________________________________________________________/ _   _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842| ((___)) |Cool Beans!..........510/THE-COOL|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362| [ x x ] |Ripco................312/528-5020|Moody Loners w/Guns.415/221-8608|  \   /  |The Works............617/861-8976|Finitopia...........916/673-8412|  (' ')  |Lunatic Labs.........213/655-0691|ftp - ftp.eff.org in pub/cud/cdc|   (U)   |==================================================================|  .ooM   |Copr. 1993 cDc communications by The Deth Vegetable  01/01/93-#201|\_______/|All Rights Drooled Away.                 SIX GLORIOUS YEARS of cDc|
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