An Atavistic Freak Out, Episode Three
by Leon Manna
The following story is a work of fiction.
No solutions anywhere. What do the people want? None of them ever knew the answer to this question. It echoes and echoes through tunnels and telephone wires until it reaches the ground beneath me, when I hear it in my head like sirens. I hear it everywhere I go, the wheeze of the gears moving in The Machine. It comes out of PA systems. TVs in pawn shops, radio stations and car engines as people road rage, LTE waves and police scanners, dispatch grumbling my description.
It's so loud you'd almost think for a second that it was Mother Earth herself breathing. But no! To everyone's horror, that's not who it is. Everyone who can hear it anyway. Most people that cross my blurry line-of-sight through my counterfeit Ray-Bans can't. It's important to listen. You know when it's close. Pig can be made into bacon. Maybe...
I slept for 25 hours in a shipping crate, this scene playing in my head over and over again, with no sign of any break from a lasting fever dream. What is the sun anyway? I was too afraid to go outside. I felt I had to disappear for a while before I operated again.
The things that got me through this tough 25 hours was 432 Hz music, back issues of 2600, and drawing. Scribbled notes, mountains, trees... I have no idea what it all meant. Maybe it didn't mean anything at all.
One drawing that kept appearing on my pages was a rough sketch of Sawtooth's front entrance. It had a big sign that said, "SAWTOOTH NATIONAL BANK" with a picture of a marlin on it. To me, Sawtooth felt like a supernatural being, something so powerful that I couldn't even see the true gravity of my actions. It was like I had messed with a higher power. My wax wings melted in the desert heat.
Boom boom boom! And then chuckling outside my crate.
Jesus! They're gangstalking me! They must have turned to harassment... And that's what happens in this country, a wretched cesspool of evil and greed, so terribly hideous that I can't even bring myself to stop looking at it! A free market scam, yet it's the only option we have! We can't become comrades, can we!? And socialism? That doesn't help the rich! But no, I have to pay to stay alive, and feel sorry for those who live in debt just to keep going, buy shit online, wages garnished by ten percent, repeat the cycle... Even the "free market" will f*ck someone, no, many people over! What else would you expect me to do than steal from them! Wouldn't you? This terrible madness... At this rate, we're all going backwards no matter where we are. I abruptly stood up in the crate, knocking my desk to the side and throwing my coat hangers onto the floor as I searched for my pistol. What the hell? Why not go out in style, right? Right!?
In reality, it was nothing more than four teenagers who were drunk. Someone cracked a really funny pun that was so ridiculously hysterical that one of them had to stand up and slam his fists on a shipping crate, a violent physical reaction to something they wouldn't even smile at ten years in the future. And you know, looking back on my years as a kid, I'm sure it was exactly that funny. Pointing a gun at them isn't. They must think I'm one of those people their parents told them about. The police visit the crate the next day to find it completely empty. The smell of bleach on the inside burned their nose hairs to a crisp.
It had been roughly two awful days since the incident back at Sawtooth, and I managed to get away with it... I think. I see Khir's face when I close my eyes, remembering when I threw that paper at him, and cringe internally as I relive that awful speech on TV, the number I did on my bike during that race, and his surreal attempt to take the law into his own hands.
I also know that my time in Arizona is up. I started getting nasty looks from locals all around. It seemed that I was gaining an unwanted and quite dangerous reputation, and they've realized the true extent to which I am an outsider. Rumors circulate like smog, covering the city. That's how it was in high school, and it doesn't seem like much has changed. But they all seemed to know I had the .22 tucked in my waistband. Some of them had bigger calibers and better shots, or more heads, but they just didn't want the trouble. They'd rather not go to the hospital for a nonfatal gunshot wound and kill some freak in the process.
I walked half a mile to Aryana's apartment. When I got inside, I told her I was leaving. "I'm gonna get out of AZ. I'm sorry, I really am. If you want to come with me you can. I'm going to South Carolina." I looked at my shoes. I couldn't make eye contact.
She didn't even look up from her game. She just said, "Yeah, sure." Lovely.
They prepare to zoom across state lines, skipping toll gates and swerving between lanes in a desperate but half-hearted attempt to go out with a bang. Had I ever left in the first place? A long time ago I was in a town called Hiker, South Dakota, roughly 277 miles from my birthplace of Minneapolis. I was having a drink with an old friend, not even old enough to do so, when I cracked a joke that I would commit a crime in every state. All these years later, there's only 15 states left that I haven't gotten to yet. He never left South Dakota. I am ashamed that I'm not ashamed.
So we walked another half mile to a car rental agency. I put on a pair of (fake) Ray-Bans. Tan dress pants and a white shirt. No tie. Briefcase, leather, totally empty. It has a plastic area where you can switch out various logos. This one said "OffShore," which was (at the time) a major oil rig. The shameless naming never sat right with me.
Hank Bill Waters, a sysadmin for an oil rig off the coast of Alaska, walked into FastTravel Car Rental. This time, Hank actually does exist. Well, he did exist. I forgot about that. He passed away recently when he fell 50 feet off of the oil rig into the choppy ocean below. A really horrible death to die, poor fella. He wasn't exactly a great guy though. A body was recovered, but it could take months for the information about his death to be processed by government entities such as the Social Security Administration. His death hasn't been effectively registered yet, giving me a window to assume his identity. After everything, I was left with a new driver's license, Social Security card, and birth certificate. He looked similar to me, and was born around the same time I was. As for how I did it, this one is a secret, but essentially I "lost" all my forms of identification. I just had to "prove" that I was Hank. When I walked out of the DMV, Hank existed again. I brought a dead man back to life. Beautiful, ain't it? I'm more powerful than god! It's a strange feeling to be someone else. For me, and maybe this is my mind scrambled from the past, it doesn't feel like I'm impersonating them. I am them. To tell a lie you have to partially believe it yourself. But there's a fine line that you can eventually cross into delusions, when you really do believe the lies you tell.
This time, Hank wasn't in the mood for methoxetamine. It left him disorganized and incoherent. He decided on 100 microgram pellets of ALD-52, a chemical analog of LSD. Something clicked in me, a gear shifted. I called my therapist to ask about NA groups. Yes, I have a therapist.
The orange sunshine fell down on my face. It seemed that I suddenly understood everything that was worth understanding, and that anything not worth that much could be forgotten. I felt like a superior genetic outlier who was given too much knowledge in life combined with a horrific and quite dangerous ability to put it to use. I was shot up to heaven, then cast back down from the most blinding light in only an instant, a changed man, there and gone. I felt warm vibrations as I got closer and closer to my getaway, vibrations I can't quite explain. They were orange. Energy was collecting in my skull, an insurance policy enforcing that I make no mistakes and get everything done. This is the time, do it now.
Hank went up to the only employee, and started casually talking with her. For the life of me I can't remember her name. Hank asked to rent a sedan, and they went over options before settling on a car. Synthetic confidence floated out of his head and into the air around them. She liked the things he said, but it wasn't Hank talking. Hank was merely a spectator, as someone else's voice came out of his mouth. Someone who, no matter where he was or what he was up to, knew exactly what he was doing. This someone had taken the wheel to get us there as fast as possible.
Hank passes his ID to the clerk. Fake IDs can be made with an ID printer and the right template. I just Photoshop'ed my face onto it and printed it. She holds it up, and then looks at him. It was a look of consideration, only lasting a few seconds. Hank realized she wasn't an idiot. She knew. They probably all know.
She passed the ID back and smiled. Hank understood. It was a genuine smile for communication. It shook him because he knew for a fact that she knew. He giggled nervously. Then she said, "Enjoy the car!"
Five minutes and 35 seconds later, a private investigator burst into FastTravel Car Rental and walked up to the clerk. He asked her, talking very fast, if she had just seen a man in tan pants rent a car.
"I did," the clerk replied, pretending to do paperwork so she wouldn't have to make eye contact with him. She made copies of documents for this exact purpose and was just writing random shit on them. Arizona is a pool of creeps, festering under the sun and freezing over at night, to wake from the dead the next morning and do it all again.
"He's still in the lot right?" There was urgency in his voice.
"No, he just left."
"What was his name?" He turned red and a vein popped out in his forehead.
"Hank. I can't disclose anything else."
He bolted out the door and, on the way out, a .22 shell fell out of his coat. The clerk smiled, picked it up, and put it in her pocket, thinking about the young man who just walked in. To him, she was just another person who got played. Someone else got in the passenger seat.
Just like Liz, the clerk was one of us. We're everywhere, on every block, every street corner, every bar, every restaurant, yet it's not like you would know. Face to face with me? You'd look into my bloodshot eyes and think I was one of them. Undoubtedly so.
The .22 wasn't going to make it. I never even wanted the thing. It would be stupid to try to bring a firearm across the country with me and certainly not through an airport, so I walked into a pawn shop.
A man with long white hair and a tie-dye bandanna was sitting at the counter. I haven't been around that long, but based on old photographs I'd seen of a very different time, he looked like he was still wrapped up, or maybe even stuck in a religious era of psychedelic drugs and CIA mind control experiments. And he did not look like a man who knew about dangerous weapons.
He looked at me, eyes red. "What's up brother?"
"I'd like to sell this .45 caliber pistol." I put the tiny gun on the table.
"Let me check the computer, so I can know the price."
After a moment of waiting, he looked at me. "I'll do 400. You got any ammo?"
"No," I said, as .22 rounds jangled in my pocket. Couldn't let him get his hands on those, he'll know he got sandbagged. I walked out with 150 dollars more than I paid for the gun. I'll miss you, Arizona. You were always good to me.
Before we got on the plane, I ate another ALD-52 pellet. Sitting in the gate with my arm around Ary, we talked about our hundredth new life in Charleston. Aryana decided she wanted an ALD-52 pellet as well. She ate it, and we waited for our gate to board. I realized that she had never even taken mushrooms before and she was about to be launched into a 12 hour trip. My heart sank as I imagined the classic LSD Freakout some people have. How would she cope with literally being launched into the sky and dropped off in an air strip in a place she'd never even been to before? I didn't tell her about it though; that would make it more likely to happen in some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. I had left most of my analogs in the desert, so all I had now was ten ALD-52 pellets. I just threw it in the bottom of my bag, hoping the TSA wouldn't find it. They didn't, because the TSA never finds anything except for conditioner bottles that are too big. My hair was a frizzy mess for days after.
While we're on the topic, I'll briefly go into analogs. Basically, all of the obscure drugs mentioned in this story are technically legal. A chemical analog is a compound which is very close in structure to another one, but is also different enough in one aspect or another that sets them apart from each other. So ALD-52 is a chemical analog of LSD, meaning it's similar in structure but still a different chemical. Keep in mind, I'm no chemist and this is just my best attempt at explaining it. Because it's not technically LSD, it's also technically legal in the U.S. It's labeled "not for human consumption" on the bag. I'm not technically breaking the law. The technicalities of it are very, very complicated.
Everything went smoothly until we sat down on the plane. As we got into our seats, the ALD-52 had taken hold of both of us. I looked over at her. She had turned into a drawing, and her pupils were as big as dinner plates. Her afro became a cloud, bouncing ever so slightly in a way I wouldn't have noticed if I was sober. I saw lightning strikes and rain falling down from the cloud. A 1990s anime rendering of someone I knew very well.
Then the flight attendant started talking.
"Alright everybody, we have a bumpy flight today so keep your arms and legs inside the ride!"
The entire plane was silent, except for hysterical laughter coming from a couple in the 23rd row. They were laughing so hard you'd think someone told them a joke so ridiculously funny it started a nuclear war and destroyed humanity. The flight attendant giggled, and attempted to continue, but the laughter didn't stop.
"Sir, please be quiet so I can finish. Thank you." I bit my thumb to stop myself from laughing.
"Drinks are free, and we'll come around twice to serve them."
More laughter from row 23. I'm not sure why we were laughing, there wasn't even a joke involved.
"In the event of a crash-"
"Make it stop, I can't laugh anymore, please, it hurts!" This was followed by even more laughter.
Frustrated, she shouted, "Sir if you don't stop laughing we will kick you off the plane."
We managed to shut up, and the laughter phase of the ALD-52 passed. The plane took off, and I could feel the air beneath. Aryana stared straight ahead the entire flight, which was roughly five hours. She didn't say a single word, or turn on a movie. Straight silence, no movement, no bathroom breaks, nothing. She completely ignored the flight attendant when asked if she wanted anything to drink.
I spent most of the flight trying to write short stories to keep my mind occupied, but what I read the next day was unintelligible. It was a mixture of gibberish, made up words, and incoherent run-on sentences, completely useless. We stumbled off the plane, with another six or so hours to go before the drug wore off.
Leon: "Hello?"
Atty: "I'm sure you already knew I was going to say this, but someone at my partner firm in Miami is gonna take my place."
Leon: "Who?"
Atty: "Lenny."
Leon: "The paralegal? Please, I'm begging you, please no. He's an insufferable jackass."
Atty: "You know who's an insufferable jackass? You. You're an idiot. You may very well be the smartest stupid person I know. Or maybe you're the stupidest smart person I know... I wouldn't even be representing you if you didn't feed my alcoholism. And he's an attorney now. You know what else? He's exactly like me, and if you don't want his legal advice, good luck finding another lawyer exactly like me."
Leon: "You fucking ass..."
Phone call ends
Lenny Cruz, a high functioning junk addict, is now my attorney. He is exactly like my prior attorney, except instead of alcohol he does some kind of opiate. This could start a nasty cycle, because if I get caught with that he'll be representing me in court, and I'll have to bribe him with more junk to continue. The only exception was that every now and then I could enjoy some analogs with my prior attorney and forget about everything, something I can't do with Lenny. I tried doing some ALD-52 with him to break the ice, but he went crazy when it kicked in, shouting maniacally at me about the FBI, God, subpoenas, my prior attorney, and how terrible my writing was. He said I was brainless, and that it was "a goddamn miracle the magazine accepts my third grade level writing."
Later that day, we cut through some palmettos to a nearby beach and went swimming. This seemed to calm him down for a bit, until he told me he saw a sea monster and started thrashing wildly in the water. Three seconds later, I saw a little bit of watery feces float to the top. It was picked up by a wave, and immediately splashed on a five-year-old. I dragged him out, still convulsing violently, and a fist landed right into my sternum. I ended up leaving him on the beach.
But he's smart, and a spectacular liar. I'll just have to put up with it. When I retaliated about the comment towards my writing level, I told him to try and write a better story. I read what he wrote and almost called Goldstein to tell him I was done and I had someone better for him.
It's a fucking shame when the biggest jackass you ever run into is also smarter than you. To be fair, if I met me I'd probably think I was the biggest jackass I've ever run into. Hank Bill Waters, watching down from heaven, agrees.
I knew the PI was following me. I know everything.
There was no investigation. It was an elaborate (and rather clandestine) harassment campaign mixed with a hope I would physically react and he'd have a reason to shoot me. I wish he would. Am I scared? No! Never! The angels always told me to Be Not Afraid. Blackmail put an end to this heebie-jeebie bullshit.
It turns out I'm being followed by a firm called Josephson and Smith. The investigator assigned to my case is a balding 36-year-old named John Capper. He has literally followed me across the country. I respect the dedication.
I bought John Capper's SSN on the deep web, along with a scan of his driver's license. You can buy anybody's SSN on the deep web, but thankfully it also had a DL scan. That's pure luck, but it did cost 15 dollars. I broke into his email afterwards. They were running an SMTP server called Haraka. The version was 2.8.8, which was vulnerable to a remote code execution exploit. This is no dig at the devs of Haraka, because it isn't their fault. The issue was the firm's refusal to update Haraka, leaving it open to vulnerabilities that have long since been patched. And, like always, it worked. Why? Because I always win.
I logged into John Capper's email. Nobody was alerted that I logged in due to literally no 2FA. Déjà vu? It was logged by Haraka, but Ii removed the entry from the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the entry in the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the entry of me removing the entry in the logs, as well as the entry of me removing the... Focus!
John Capper's inbox was a mess. It was full of emails informing him his free trial had ended, emails telling him that his bank account is 4000 dollars in negative balance, emails about him closing said account, and thousands upon thousands of spam emails. Dang, there's so many single women in his area! (Click the link to meet them now!!!)
Here's a list of things I could have used to blackmail him:
- He's having an affair.
- He's hired multiple escorts.
- He's been embezzling company money.
- He's cashed multiple bad checks.
- He has murdered someone.
I decided to use all of them.
I made a copy of all of the incriminating emails, and then included them as attachments. In addition to having his literal identity and driver's license, I also told him that I wouldn't hesitate to send it all to the police if I even suspected that he's still following me. I wrote him a little poem too:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Your firm's OPSEC
Is a pile of doo dooRoses are red
Violets are violet
If you don't f*ck off
I'm gonna get violent
So stupid, but it was funny at the time.
I installed a rootkit for later access to the SMTP server. There is a script running on the server that constantly checks if the incriminating emails are deleted. If they are, it recovers them and places them back in the inbox. Once the email is recovered, a system-wide function hook I placed hides it, so they won't actually be able to tell that it's been recovered. I had to megadose Adderall in order to do this. Stuff like this was never my specialty.
And the fail-safe is called a Dead Man's Switch. Every night I disable an email and text message from automatically being forwarded to law enforcement, and if I don't disable it, he goes to jail. I made him aware of this, and he knows I can't disable it if I'm dead. I got the idea from a TV show.
The murder probably did it for him. I don't think he cares in the slightest about his wife, and I don't think he cares that he's hired escorts either. He could have probably gotten off of an embezzlement charge, and the bad checks wouldn't have done much as they were all under 100 dollars. But the murder? There was overwhelming evidence proving that he did it. He knew he couldn't get off of that either because his work pistol was the gun used in the murder. It's a revolver chambered in .38 Special, so no shells were found at the crime scene and he literally pulled the bullet out of the corpse. Despite this, the coroner concluded that it was, in fact, a .38 Special that killed him. He admitted to doing this in an email to a coworker, which pretty much defeated the purpose of removing the projectile. His cellphone was on at the time of the crime, and cell tower data would place him in that exact area. Imagine killing someone and leaving your phone on.
That was the last I'd heard of him. As far as I'm concerned, he stopped following me. But who hired him? It wasn't Sawtooth, as they had already made their money back, and probably didn't care anymore. Khir? He didn't know my real name.
So I logged into John Capper's email again. xa2w25@a1fg.ru hired him to follow me in an email, providing him with my real name. In the email chain, there was a routing and account number coming from the person hiring him. This must have been how they paid for the whole thing, but it still seemed weird to me. It didn't really make any sense.
The numbers were associated with the People's Bank of Rhode Island. I singled out a naive 18-year-old employee and sent him an email offering 8000 dollars for the name associated with the account. There goes 8000 bucks. Being 18-years-old, he accepted the offer. And he emailed me back saying it was my ex-girlfriend May.
She does disability fraud. She pretended to have a serious back injury in order to collect thousands of dollars in disability checks and prescription painkillers, which she sold on the side. Professionals have standards, and mine are far above stealing money from disability programs. But I shouldn't pretend to be that different from her... She admitted to doing this over text, email, phone calls, and in person. I gathered all the proof and called her, telling her that if she hires another PI, I would report her for disability fraud.
She started screaming and crying, calling me a terrible person, threatening to kill both of us while we were sleeping, and that she only sent the PI to harass me because I broke up with her, which happened over a year ago. When she (somehow) found out I was leaving, she went crazy. In addition to the PI, she also gave my information to a bunch of debt collectors reporting false debts. I still don't know how she did that. I've tried and tried, but I can't figure it out.
When you have a debt you don't pay, the first thing that happens is that it is sent to a collections agency. These are the people who will start a campaign to get you to pay off the debt. This happens in the form of letters and phone calls. No, they can't show up to your house and intimidate you. That's just in the movies. Your credit score will also go down, sometimes very significantly. For small debts, you can kinda just not pay it and they will eventually give up. You'll just have bad credit for a long time.
Bigger debts aren't like that. They will call you day and night. They will call you when you wake up and they will call you as you fall asleep. They will fill your mailbox to the brim. They will sell your debt to other debt collectors. But what if you don't pick up the calls, throw out the letters, and just ignore it?
Eventually, the people you owe may decide to sue you. You will be subpoenaed to appear in court. They don't have debtors' prison in the U.S., so you won't go to the slammer for not showing up unless you committed a crime. However, if you don't appear, you automatically lose the case. Then your wages are garnished by up to 25 percent. More often, it's less than 25 percent, but 25 percent is the federal maximum. You may also have your house or car repossessed. Pretty degrading.
I told them that I was unaware of these accounts and demanded all communication continue in writing. They sent letters to a P.O. box for two weeks before they realized that the debts were false and that she had tricked them. I didn't open any of the letters, just gave them to Lenny, who used them to start his campfires.
That's how I even got into a relationship with May. She did the same things I did, and it came back to bite me. Bonnie and Clyde? That's what we thought it was. Turns out we were two small-time crooks, and nothing more than that. I knew she was insane too, but went in anyway. My friends warned me this would happen, and I didn't listen. I believe that's called Karma.
I sat down in the apartment and opened a new shipment of my beloved analogs. I had a few blotters and was reading the first story in 2600 (that I stole from an unattended magazine stand) when I heard violent knocking on the front door.
Is it the police? Is it his ex-girlfriend? Is it Batman? Find out next time on An Atavistic Freakout by Leon Manna.
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