Thursday, September 13, 2007

The Beach

Third post is a charm. This is my third post of the evening. I also posted a drawing and a short story tonight.

The beach as a storm front moves in. The photo was shot with a Kodak 800 series digital camera.

The Lake House


This was an early attempt at drawing something with water in the sceen. it also uses simple shading techniques. It is a raw drawing, but one that I have always appreciated.

Fifteen

It’s not as if I woke up one morning and said, “I think I will the kill the president.” I would be crazy if that were the case, but I am not crazy. I am a cleaner. I did not choose the life of a cleaner; I was born into it.

I have the ability to see the creatures for what they are and over time, I learned of their purpose here, as well as mine. They look human. They smell human. They act human in every way. Only, I can see them for what they are.

I am not the first cleaner in history and this president will not be the first killed by a cleaner. Garfield, Lincoln, Kennedy, both John and Ted, and William McKinley were all victims of cleaners. Reagan’s would be assassin was not a cleaner. He was simply loony.

No cleaner in history has ever shared his or her knowledge before this. I am sharing now, because I believe that the people of the world need to know the truth. The truth is this. Aliens have not only lived among us for years, but they are the reason we are here.

To put it in simple terms, we are their little science experiment. We did not crawl from the seas, evolve into monkeys and then suddenly one day walk upright. No, they have been involved in our lives since the beginning. They have been guiding our actions, directing our future and dictating our lives since day one. I am here to stop them and to set the human race free.

I do not have a God Complex. Nor do I believe I am a savior of any type. I am the antivirus to rid the world of a plague. I am the antidote to their poison. I am the cure for what ails the world. I am simply the cleaner.

I am sitting in a room on the top floor of the Ambassador Hotel. Across the street, people are slaving away preparing for a campaign rally for Allen Corbin’s reelection. I have been following Corbin’s movements for years, planning and waiting for the right time to clean him.

With less well-known targets, I do not have to be as careful. Crimes happen every day, which help me to cover my tracks. With a target as publicly known, as It is, I have to be extra cautious. I do not wish to follow in the footsteps of Booth or Guiteau. I want to continue with my life’s work.

Even if the government caught or killed me, my job would pass to the next cleaner. It is the way of things; the way things have always been. But I want to continue. I want to fulfill my destiny. I must clean the world of the last of them.

In fifteen minutes, It will take the stage. Fifteen seconds after that and It will be dead. I am more than prepared and have some time on my hands. I thought I would take a this time to explain a little about the life of a cleaner. This is for your understanding. See, you are not the next cleaner ad therefore don’t have the capacity to understand this life.

A cleaner’s life is a life of fear, suspicion and self-induced solitude designed to protect mind and soul from being corrupted. I was born this way, which I said I didn’t wake up one morning and decide to do this.

My fear of everyone is a real fear. My species, the few remaining pure-bloods left, is just as much my enemy as the creatures are. In the eyes of everyone, my job is murder according to the laws. Because of this legalistic, albeit blind, view of the world, no amount of explanation will justify what I do to the rest of the world. I would show them the proof, but only I can see it. Can you see the conundrum?

My suspicion of everyone is real as well. You see, it can take a while for the true nature of one of them to present itself. I had a friend once in grade school, literally once. Joe was my best friend for six months. Then one day, on the playground, Joe fell off the monkey bars.

That was when I saw Joe for what he was. When Joe’s arm broke, I saw it. I saw the translucent being under his skin come through. The creature radiated in the pale-pea-green color. I wasn’t until six years later that I cleaned Joe. I was sixteen.

Joe’s broken arm on the playground set my vow of solitude in concrete. I have not known the joys of love or the heartbreak of loss. I have not since experience the warmth of friendship since. A cleaner’s existence is a lonely existence, but it is a fulfilling life nonetheless. I have no regrets and would not change a thing.

They come in all shapes and sizes. They are men, women and children and rarely even some animals. I know what you are thinking and I will tell you that although cleaning a child was difficult at first, it is just like any other job when it was done. The next one was easier as was the next and the next. It helped when I learned to not think of them as children at all but to think of them for what they truly are.

They are everywhere and their population is growing at an accelerated rate. The are a parasite. They have increasingly consumed the resources of this planet and are the primary cause of global warning. Why do you think the government still denies global warming is happening?

They come from a solar system that lies on the outer rim of the galaxy known as NGC 6118. NGC 6118 lays in the Serpens constellation, which is the snake constellation. NGC 6118 is one of the hardest galaxies to view from earth, making it easy to conceal their home planet’s existence, even with today’s next-generation telescopic advancements.

Their purpose for making us and placing us here is similar to the reasons we use lab animals. We are here because they needed to know if this planet was inhabitable. Research has shown that they tried similar experiments on Mars, but failed in every attempt due to Mars’s climate as a result of it’s distanced from the Sun. That factor alone accelerated the greenhouse effect on Mars and the species inability to adapt rapidly cause the species to die off when the planet did. If you want to know the what future lays ahead for Earth, look to Mars for the answer.

After Mars they bioengineered a more adaptable species, us, to inhabit this planet. This is how humans came into being. The one thing they failed to account for was our ability to adapt. This adaptation, not evolution, enabled us to mutate from their original design and developed free will. With free will came the need for freedom. This need for freedom complicated their plans.

Their race is similar to our race a few ways. They have been expanding and populating planets for millions of years. Our race has been living on the moon for over ten years now, not quite planet colonization, but you can see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The one thing that sets our species apart from the rest and prevents them from enslaving us is our free will.

Although they have the technology to destroy our species, in doing so, they would destroy the planet’s ability to support life. This planet is an important location in the universe for them. Our galaxy put them within easy reach of hundreds of other galaxies each with a few planetary systems like ours.

Instead of destroying Earth, they are matriculating here slowly using a form of molecular fusion. They fuse a human subject with one of their own. The human subject acts as a host for the alien, like a shell. Once the fusion has taken place, every ounce of human life in the subject is gone forever.

In the old days of cleaning, the cleaners never actually destroyed the creature hosted by the shell. Destroying the host only forced the creature to return to a rendezvous point for pick up and redeployment. Today’s cleaning is efficient and gets the job done. Ince clean they never return.

With advances in technology, building my cleaning weapon takes less than an hour and costs less than holographic display device. It uses a form of reverse-polarity cold fusion with a particle accelerator that starts and accelerates the growth of cancer. Cancer is one of the few Earth-based diseases they are susceptible to. It takes only 15 seconds from start to clean.

I have two minutes remaining.

I can see them now. Secret Service as they call themselves. They are not all that secret. How many people actually carry pulse-plasma rifles and wear suits, ties and dark sunglasses moonless night?
I minute remaining. I must go and finish some last minutes preparations. If you a reading this, it means that I died honorably. It means it is your turn. Do not mourn me. You are the cleaner.