Part one...
Sometimes the things that save us are the same things that destroy us. Often the converse is also true
Religion...belief in a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. War...harmed hostilities, especially between nations; conflict.
Barbeque...a common misspelling of barbecue...meal cooked over open fire, often out of doors.
Part 1: The Vestigial book of Judah
Can’t believe in you
Rosemary and Joshua Woods were Botanists. They had three boys: Jujuba, Judah, John. I was with my mother one evening after Sunday night mass. Jen was there. She insisted her name wasn’t Juniper. But it was Juniper, like the tree.
When we went to church, I could almost hear my mom praying for god to make it better down here. She would pray to Mary and all the saints for our sinning hearts. I hope he got her letter. My brothers turned away from religion...off to college and the military to bring death with new diseases and guns. “You’re the images of God,” she would tell us.
Jujuba goes by the name Joe. He found a way to reduce the price of beer in New Mexico. He has never needed to write a letter to god. He plays god making diseases and curing them. Father, Son and the Holy Ghost...help my family. They seem not to believe in you, God.
The truth is that John maybe the most normal of us. Well, he’s a psychiatrist in Detroit. He and Joe broke mom’s heart when they told her they didn’t believe in God.
Jen is coming I want to surprise her with my writing after a year.
UNTITLED
My Dad died several months ago. He was a pure man; real salt of the earth and the demons took him. Joshua Woods was seventy-two; the coroner’s report said he died in his sleep of natural causes.
I know it was the demons. My mother cried for several days. I stayed in a sort of daze. They painted him to look as though he were alive. His veins and bowels were drained of matter and a plug inserted into the anus. Formaldehyde injected. His body placed gently into a mahogany casket.
My mom was certain that dad and St Matthias were smiling upon the ceremony in Downey. The priest looked very ghoulish...l used to know all the priests by first name. Since I stopped attending mass I see them for what they really are: demons, minions of Satan.
Joe and John were social butterflies...they eulogized him and carried the casket. I couldn’t get close to it. It was the work of the devil. Being in the church was some sort of miracle. God works in mysterious ways, they say. The ceremony revolved around the resurrection. If only they knew what the resurrection was. Time stops when Jen is around...
She is the miracle I need. I see the light of god in her eyes. I know it is not false; this is how we will defeat Satan. We will cast Satan out of this hell and we will create heaven on earth. Truth and Love will defeat the lies of Satan.
Jen and my mom are coming, and I’ve just started this journal.
Mom and John think writing this journal will help me deal with my father’s death. I titled it untitled thinking I could add a title later. It just dawned on me that the title “Untitled” is still a title. I just got into this religion called Gnosticism. One of the tenants is that through sex I become enlightened like Jesus. I plan to put the light of god into Jen tonight. This whole thing is just a passing point in my catharsis since dad died.
John prescribed me some meds today. He thinks that I’m depressed and my thoughts are telling of Schizophrenia. I think he’s the one who’s crazy. I know that I’m not god. I am just the eyes of god. People are how God experiences the universe.
My brothers are staying in town for a couple of weeks. John convinced Joe to come visit. Apparently, he needs special military clearance to come visit since the accident in New Mexico. His girlfriend is very beautiful. Scientists, they work on viruses for the military. I’m not telling John another single thought out of my head.
Jen is coming down the hall. She’s singing it means she wants sex.
John loves Barbeque. He lives in Houston, now, before it was Detroit. I liked it better when he was in Detroit. He was far enough away that he did not meddle in the family affairs. Today we are going to grill some pork chops and burgers.
Joe has always had the greatest green eyes but today in the light of the barbeque, the shone like emeralds. Joe recently met with the President. Joe Says ol’ Bill is quite the diplomat and host. Victoire, I think she’s French or something, but it may be hard not to cry out her name in mid-coitus. It is such a beautiful name and her voice like an angel. I should delete this before Jen reads what I think of my brother’s girlfriend. I caught my brothers in mid-sentence talking about a new virus. Joe seemed very excited and squeezed Victoire’s hand a little too hard. I saw a skin irritation on Joe’s wrist. Mom pays no attention to what I say; neither does any of my family.
I took John to the airport today, good riddance. I don’t think I’ll continue the medicine John gave me, quack.
I tried to explain today how the same President has been running the country of the past 200 years. They don’t get it. Over five thousand years ago, I created the world and shortly thereafter Satan killed me the first time. It’s so simple...rational even. Why can’t people understand it? I’m God, the creator of everything. It’s just that Satan somehow has more power than I do, and I can’t regain control of this world.
It’s maddening they want the whoremonger to come back to town to evaluate my behavior. Strangely, Juniper sings wildly when I’m like this. So out of my head that all I can do is type. My mind dances between the Earth as I see it and the Eden it once was.
Jen told me once that she knew she liked me form the start. This is how women work, she says. I’m paraphrasing of course but really, women one way or another figure out they will fuck a man in the first hour of knowing him. It seemed senseless at the time but there we were fucking in the girls’ showers of her High School.
That is how we got Ruth.
The children are hoping for a heart attack
The human-interest stories...Rosemary Eve Woods May 5, 1937-June 12, 2009...is what the obituary would read but for now everyone thinks she is visiting John in Detroit. John is a hard man to reach being a Psychiatrist and all. I scratch at my nose.
I counted the devils on the match as I lit a cigarette. I took up smoking when dad died and since mom died, I smoke twice as much. Jen hates it. But she loves barbeque. A “Grade A” cannibal she is becoming. We went jogging to today after I read the morning scores. We saw a wino; I wanted to tear his heart out. It would have been a cheap shot. But I could have feed it to the dog.
Stupidity, this guy could lift himself out of the gutter, but he has fallen into the bottle. Those guys are worse than crack whores.
Truth is stranger than fiction...pictures to shock.
The streets are filled with conspiring demons.
My brothers were hoping that mom would die the way dad did. Natural causes...a heart attack in her sleep. But this was not the way god would have it. I need to set out some rodent traps today.
Homicide...l like to think of it as euthanasia. I slid a knife into her left lung. I snuck up behind her as though I were going to kiss her on the cheek, which I did. The lung collapsed, and I let her body down. I cradled her until she suffocated. She had been getting to curious and I overheard her on the phone with John.
My whole existence is flawed
“This will bring you closer to god,” my father said to me as a child. We went hunting for the first time when I was five. By thirteen, I knew how to gut and bone a deer in the field. It was better than sex. Killing is far better than sex...
My dad would often say. “Son, we fucked that buck good.” He was a funny man making jokes about hunting. One day I killed a pregnant doe. It was a sort of accident...she knew I was there. I was upwind of her she could smell me. She let me...she let me violate her. Somehow, I felt that I desecrated Mother Nature. The same sort of feeling I got when Jen and I fucked for the first time at prom.
Bob and I go hunting, once and a while. He got me a new Gloc the other week. What really brought me closer to god was when Jen and I fucked after prom. She liked it sort of violent. “Fuck me like an animal,” she said to me. She says it often still. It was a popular song at that time. Jen still loves that song. Now that mom is visiting Joe, Jen can stay here with me. You let me violate you, Jen.
Church is a desecration when god does not live there. Men of god bring the word of the American Satan, the only Satan. She brings me closer to being...god. Satan is tormenting god in this hell. I have to find a way out. I must learn to defile the demons. In high school, she said sex brought her closer to god like that one song...but I am god, she has always been near me.
I disconnected the house phone and changed my cell phone, after work today. I don’t want Joe to know what I did with the demon that replaced our mother. Joe was fond of the demon. She let me do this...l used an ice pick under the arm...right into the lung.
I collapsed the lung, so she could not make a sound. I gave her my hate. She tried to make me think I was someone else...l am god.
“This brings you closer to god,” the demon mother told me as we went to church. I will never give up my absence of faith. I called her a liar when I was twelve and my father laughed. Killing helped me get away from myself. Hunting helped me get away from myself.
Slob
God is good. Fuck, Fuck. Fuck. I told Jen the other day that mom went to visit my brother in Detroit. Her skeleton has been dissolving in vinegar for a week now. It’s all soft and pliable. As a kid, my dad and I dissolved the turkey bones from thanksgiving in a pail of vinegar. She doesn’t realize that we’ve been eating mom for the last couple of days. Yeah, yeah god is great.
The demons look me in the eyes. A cold stare, darkly their eyes tell me the plans for my demise. In the life of the deity, he must die in hell. What if god was one of us...he is, and they kill him. Jen’s brother and I went shooting. He got me into guns. Like my brother, he is an advocate of the second amendment. They say my name to my face. It mocks me.
I take the bus to work now that my car broke down and I haven’t the money to fix it. I can’t get money from my mom...she never trusted me with her pin number. I think the Asians were laughing at me on the bus. I’m such a slob that I spilled coffee on my shirt. I’m such a slob. Bob, Jen’s brother, was extra curious when mom went to Joe’s house. I feed Bob some mom-burgers the other day. I could hardly stop myself from laughing and spitting my sandwich all over him. I’m such a slob. If god were one of you, he’d eat his mother.
I’m sure Bob is a demon and thus Jen. Soon Bob will eat his own flesh and blood. But right now, I’m just a stranger on a bus being laughed at by Chinese people. I think they clean houses. When I get home, I’ll call the Pope in Rome and listen to the Rolling Stones.You can find me in between.
All the lights are on and I’m the only one home. Someone must really save me from myself. Jen and I made love last night after we ate the prime cuts off mom’s body. Until her dying day, she will think that we ate pork. She’ll be home in about an hour and that will be more than enough time for me to finish taking all the meat and organs off the body. I’ll feed the dogs the heart and intestines. Help me. Help me.
Take me from this hell. We sat on the balcony and ate under the stars. Jen was so elated with mom’s absence that she began to sing. Like an angel, she transported me out of this place. I want her with me forever but I’m god and she will die. Mom will be within me forever. Perhaps Jen should be food for god. Someone please save me from myself. It’s just as well. Nothing is what it seems. We began to dance as she got home from work. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata played as we held each other. Almost verbally, I cried for her to save me, but she knows her angel’s work...she places her finger to my lips to shut me up. Tonight we feast, and tomorrow Bob would come over for the big game and burgers. That guy gives me the creeps. She believes my deceit with her true heart. Soon it will be a farewell to his arms. Take me from this hell.
I’ve deceived her for too long... She can sing me one last song, another day. I’ll have to get her out of the house...save me, save me. I’ll take Bob hunting. He has a GPS they will have to find him.
The other demons will find evidence and see god in his true form. Satan will curse me once more.
She was like a star in the heavens when we met. Our ten-year reunion has just passed. St. Matthias Catholic high school, well she went there. I went to Downey High. St. Matthias is a girl’s Catholic school. I saw her standing there outside of the church one Sunday. For weeks I had been watching her, it seems she had been watching me too. All alone that day I left my mother and went to talk to you. Save me from myself, you were saying with your eyes. Or were you saying take me from this hell.
We danced out under the stars. We kissed, and I could taste the remnants of mom on her lips. The rosemary and thyme accented the natural taste the grill brought out. I needed very little salt to season this cut of meat. Help me, won’t you.
I waked home from work as usual. I could swear the demons were following me. Satan’s spoke through the music in the store. The subliminal messages are growing louder. I haven’t been driving my car. Every car has GPS and they know where I am going. I hardly leave the house since mom went to visit John. It’s silly that she would leave me alone after dad died just nine months ago. John says I’m mentally fragile and supervision is needed but I guess that is what Jen is for. Sing me sing me...
My thoughts are becoming more clear. Seeing into the ether is easy for me, now. Rain fell yesterday, I could see the blood mixed in. The innocent humans killed by Satan in this eternal hell where I will find myself again after the minions kill me for the amusement of Bill Clinton, Satan. This computer is being monitored and I need to unplug it from the internet. She came out for some air. Jen was singing outside of the Church one night. I asked her out next week. She goes out for air when the incense burners are used during advent. Christmastime is always magical. God must have answered my prayers that night. But does god pray to himself...wouldn’t that be masturbation.
She seems to dance among the stars all alone. This night will be the last night we make love. Nothing is what it seems. Earlier, she said I gave her the creeps before I shoved a knife in her neck. I deceived her for too long. Save me from myself. American Dream
God is an American...l’m sitting in my basement with a gun in my mouth. The problem isn’t that god is an American. I am god. The U.S. controlling the world isn’t the problem. The problem is this is hell and Satan sits in the White House. Every four years the same Satan is elected. The problem is that no one can see it or if they do, they are demons themselves. Satan has always ruled hell. I’m afraid of the world.
My girlfriend was a demon. Vinegar dissolves the calcium in bones. I’m afraid of the demons. The demons are Americans...and I’m an incarnation of god. No one sees this world for what it is...hell. I exorcised her. I took her flesh as if it were bread and blood as if it were wine. The demons will be coming for me soon. I really wanted a coke and some fries not her blood and thighs. First my mom and now her...l afraid I can’t help it. The taste has become too powerful. I am the next American Jesus. The last one was Martin Luther King Jr. Look what happened to him. I’m afraid of Americans.
They began talking to me when I was thirteen. The television and radio screamed for god to come out of hiding. The cruel thing is that I created this hell where the death of god redeems the world, hell. I stopped listening to the car radio as it grew louder. My girlfriend grew disturbed. I told her my mom went to visit my brother, Joe. Joe is a plumber in Detroit. Joe got me into guns...he’s patriotic and firmly believes in the Second Amendment of the Constitution...of the United States of American. I’m Afraid of Americans. The demons will murder me. I’m afraid I can’t help it.
My mother has three full bathrooms in her house. I the basement I keep a metal tub. Six weeks is as long as it takes to dissolve a human skeleton in a tub of vinegar. Flushing or pouring the remains is the next step. Keeping hot water running as you do this helps dilute the solution. I don’t need anyone to help me...l afraid I can’t help it. I need to get some Coke from the store today.
In hell, no one needs any one the demons just get off hurting those who cannot see. They are coming for me. The demons and I only hear subliminal messages: “God is an American”. History is not what you think...there was not conquest of a new world this is all just a fabrication. The dark lord masks his playing field. Suffering is the joke...l need a new joke. War and birth are Satan’s oldest jokes. Humans are conned into dying for a god that doesn’t control the world. There is no heaven...this is hell. A hedonistic deplorable place and I created it. I was the architect of Eden and Adam was my creation to fill such a place. Eve was his companion, but Satan came into the garden and bastardized it. After the first child was born...that was the knowledge. I was as enlightened as my creation they created. I came unto them as a stranger.
Delighted in the birth of the first daughter of Adam, we named her Lucy. She was a fussy child, but the twin Lucifer was quiet and sweet. I should have been suspicious of the quiet one. They grew, and I created such things a genetic diversity. Death came to those later ones, but Satan tempted his father and mother and a war raged between the first family. When Lucifer killed the sleeping sister and other brothers, I cursed him. But he eventually took over the world. Hell lives in Eden and has since I created the humans. Death is natural, but I created these beings to know of life and thus death. That was the tree of life. Satan’s cruel joke is that when he ate of both trees he became the god of illusions. With knowledge comes power. If he has knowledge from the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, he can control everything. I’m afraid. Simple creation, procreation co-habitation were my delusions. The illusion is not seeing those who cannot die. Death is a reality...wars and murders are a result of a carrying capacity in hell. For a time, there were very little wars. But the lion has never slept beside a sheep. The sheep rest within the lion. I’m afraid I can’t help it.
Just for today, I’ll tuck this gun in my back pocket and go get my Coke. Anyway, I cannot die...my curse was to create beings, so they could replace me and kill me, only to find out I can’t die. Rebirth is my curse. I created the world in six days and on the seventh, Satan plunged a knife into my neck bathing the green grass of Eden in blood. Only a minute later I gave birth to myself. Climbing out of my wound as a child, I saw his smiling face as he broke my neck with his foot. Several weeks of this took a strain on him and he changed his game. I’m afraid of the world.
Appendix...small outgrowth of tissue attached to the large intestine, subsidiary matter at the end of the book, extra stuff to be cut out.
Satan sits smiling in the White House. President Clinton is the figurehead this time around. My dad had this house built on Cheyenne Street. One of the only houses in Southern California built with a basement. The only house I know of that has a stainless-steel bathtub dissolving the skeletons of my loved ones. Bob will drown on the remains of my mother and his sister.
Like the adoring brother, he filed a missing person’s report. One problem is that she is far closer to Bob than he believes. “This is some good burger”, he commented one afternoon. I seasoned it with some rosemary. I drained the tub and placed the goop into 10-gallon plastic jugs. I took them over to his house a couple of days ago. He is so grief stricken that he did not notice the jugs. He hasn’t mowed the lawn in weeks. I’ve been keeping up appearances. He says that I’m strong and the police will find the fucker who took little Juniper away.
I marinated the last of Jen for Bob. It was a special marinade and steak sauce. Key ingredient: Vicodin. As soon as he’s out, I’ll pour the slop down his throat and write the suicide note for him. I’ve been practicing his handwriting for years. He’ll drown in the remnants of my mom and girlfriend’s skeletons.
God hates gluttons.
Dear Editor,
My name is Ruth Woods. In all of the filth, my father has sent You, has he spoke of his eleven-year-old daughter, what sort of brine or marinate did he prepare for me? No, he did not. He had picked out the wine even. It was a white wine...you published this ‘work’ he sends from prison with no regard to the feelings of his victims. Judah Woods is a very sick man. My father is insane and sits in a mental ward for the rest of his life.
The past seven years have been trying for me. I wish to put this as far behind me as possible, but I feel that the reader of this filth will see my father as a man who fought the forces of Satan. Most rational people can see the only evil at work was my father when he killed my family. I am currently appealing the court’s decision, so Judah Woods can be found guilty and receive the death penalty for his crimes.
The bluest sky will never seem quite right without my mother. My mother had the bluest eyes and it pains me to look into the mirror because mine are hazel, a lasting reminder of my relationship to Judah Woods.
Ruth Woods, Rosemary’s granddaughter.
