Bombing a False Narrative

The mind can be a war zone

How can I fight a war that’s buried somewhere a thousand miles away inside my mind? The face looks toward us but I’m forced to whisper there’s no binding theme. Commander, the eyes are open and not responsible for their actions. We’re lost in my own house and the tank is broken, useless, kaput, and redundant. Yesterday is gone but still very suggestible.

Our unit of four stands by the sleeping metal turtle like four trees holding up the sky: Nixon Cruel, Talent Knox, the Commander, and myself. Fading CAUTION tape thicker than a black widow’s web surrounds us while Talent Knox thinks his legs have become broccoli. We all know he’s psychotic but lawyers argue he’s not insane. The face notices our wounded thoughts and I cough like someone watching a movie they didn’t pick.

One moment it’s out of our hands and the next thing we know we’re saving a lizard from the mouth of a cat and labeling it divine intervention. Divinity lacks consistency so get inside the delusion and blow it up. Because life is a dance for the cat and lizard while the dog continues to sleep. And this sleeping dog finds its identity as it gets older too but don’t shoot me for it.

The Commander slices the yellow web with a machete like a necessary step to advance a plot with no binding theme. Nixon Cruel worries about leaving the tank behind. It enjoys absolutely no place where we’re going, I mention and then add the comment, maybe in another scenario when the eyes aren’t open and the face is looking elsewhere but not here and not now. The solution to my basic napkin math reads - Am I willing to unravel an empire to turn this war around?

The house lights are broken and these involuntary products of mental life feel contradictory alongside each other: mosquitos covered in tree bark, a female mime named Canibia with blonde hair and a Spanish outfit, an inflated slice of pizza topped with snippets of a credit card, and faith in the king. Implausible, I’m forced to whisper but it sets the occasion. Talent Knox bites at imaginary water that would fail as a proper adhesive, God willing. We follow the Commander who follows the mime who ditches the framework.

In my opinion, governments are founded upon opinions. A politician wouldn’t get very far unless they embodied the opinions that humans valued enough to vote for. Interested and disinterested voters make a choice between what is right and what is right. And conflict flourishes when they discuss who the choice is right for.

This war is creative thievery but not every member of a community will view things the same way. When it’s inside the mind, moments are harder to understand. Canibia pulls us through a desolate area with a FOR SALE sign hammered into the water-logged soil. The Commander barks the statement, intellectual property is hypothetically not even here yet! The face blinks and an emerald horse appears to our left then fades away before I understand the moment. I experience a negative ramification for looking at the jeweled animal when I step on the Commander’s shoe like a clumsy cat dancing with a lizard.

We’re not fighting for how it used to be, I tell Nixon Cruel. He laughs and doesn’t reply. Does he know something that I don’t? We approach the stomach of a laundromat and Talent Knox recoils in horror. Creatures not of this world spin around inside washers and dryers like articles of human clothing. They look like brains with abstract faces. The water offends our nostrils with the smell of social glue and Canibia holds a turtle in a way that could damage a psyche.

Wars are about winning battles but also winning the words of those battles. About making fires but also putting them out. The brain is like a fire that continues to burn even when we sleep. It shares our frustration, anger, and resentment when we’re haunted by the past. However, it sees opportunity and not dead people.

Shovels sprout from the ground in a whimsical fashion. I’m unsure if the Commander’s smile is good, bad, or indifferent but we take the shovels and leave Canibia behind. Could something be missing? Nixon Cruel’s index finger scratches the trigger of his revolver. His aimless expression searches for a lost thought or an intrinsic character flaw. Some people can complain forever, he declares to himself while the face continues to watch. Talent Knox carries his shovel like a dog having puppies. His face is half-asleep and half-starved yet still in a state of moral purity.

“At least you have an insider,” the face says to me. “Do you really think you’re the only human fighting a war that’s buried somewhere a thousand miles away inside their mind?”

© 2017 Gaston Villanueva

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Reviews

Rana

It has the slightest touch of dark, was interesting to wonder what element of the mind each character represented, the face could be the conscious fore and "forced to whisper" perhaps by the neural circuitry, that pun on redundant, these lines, "Yesterday is gone but still very suggestible" -a literary phrasing of the misinformation effect, "involuntary products of mental life" -clever phrasing, the part where consequence springs from wondering about the consequence, i wonder why they tickle wonder, the laundromat mental machinery for processing things, and "His face is half-asleep and half-starved yet still in a state of moral purity." -a warm picture. All with spots of mystery in the starry space.