Stealth Brigade

I looked at the particle in my hand. The last strand of evidence , the reminder of the inevitable, the symbol of hope and birth and secrets. I acquired it on a mystic adventure, but I never really left B.C. It sounds so weird to people. So weird that the story died in the '90's; to bizarre to believe, to traumatizing to remember.

Holding it reminded me of an unbearable moment, but more bearable now: I was surrounded mud, trees, thick black berry bushes that veiled a recluse house. My leg was gashed open and I was in pain, but I thought i saw a fence. I reached for it to pull myself up, hoping that beyond the barrier was some kind of freedom from the bugs, thorns and unsettling panic I was feeling; I pulled at the dry, woody object and out popped a rib bone. A human rib bone. I had to check to be sure. I don't know why I wasn't more freaked out; maybe I was freaked out inside, maybe it was a relief to see something other than a freshly dead corpse, maybe I was relieved that they were dead instead of alive. I pushed back the bushes to a perfectly preserved skeleton. On it was a gold, heart shaped locket. I did what I usually did back then, I took it.

It was the '90's; the onslaught of chaos had started. First it came in surreptitiously, then it came in with a vengeance. It started in the smaller communities until the recipe was perfected. The first step was gossip. Small gossip that entertained people until it bloomed to bigger gossip. Anything. Who thought what of who, who stole what, who was a pedophile and who sold dirty cocaine. It blew up, it just erupted. People were watching each other, infiltrating each other, getting fired from jobs based on assumptions. The community distrust had already been bad; between the grow ops and the misinformed police who trusted the Ted Bundys' that sidled up to them rather than the distressed women with a history of bad boyfriends. Most people referred to cops as just bringing in a gun to the situation. Between the paranoia and the feeling of no protection, pretty soon everyone had a gun in their house anyways. For the range, unless things got ugly. I'm not sure how I got dragged into that shit but I got caught up in it, thinking guns were cool and bad people were safe.

The unemployment rates rose as did the drug use; that's when our suspicious hero showed up, Zedwin. The man with the money, the colourful stories and the big, employable ideas. He knew how to save money, make money, and spend money to make more money. Zedwin handed out odd jobs (and I mean odd) to mothers and fathers for surprising amounts of cash. Seemingly harmless jobs, like to give him a lift, buy some toilet paper, make a pot delivery. Maybe his requests were a bit weird but they seemed so harmless. And Zedwin, with his three degrees from god knows where, including in psychology, the most dangerous B.A. of them all (you will soon see why).

People were quick to trust him. It used to be a trusting community and here he was, level-headed, above the drama, helping them out with their bills and, pretty soon, their problems. Zedwin explained the characteristics of a thief, what the best treatment for a psychopathic teenager was, how to tell a liar and how to identify a rapist. Most of hat he said would surprise you, the opposite of intuition (which might be a delusional quality anyways, in times like these). He always seemed to pop up in a time of need, had the answer to the neighbours dilemma, busy creating much needed benevolent community projects. Zedwin got straight up mystical about his knowledge; he knew where to find people, what herbs to make the anxiety go away, how to cure illness with the mind. It sounds insane now and I'm not sure what drove some of us to believe him. Was it the stress of spying on people, being spied on, the constant financial stress or the consistent use of mushrooms? Some of us started to believe weird stuff. I hate to admit that I fell into that delusional thinking, but at one point Catholicism and prayer were community stables so that lightens my shame a bit.

Every effing word, and if not, you were hit up with ostracization, confusion, people asking you outlandish questions. Too many cars driving by your small town house, stink eye from the cashier and just a generally crappy mood. You became hounded with small nuisances and mildly dangerous confrontations. You became the bad guy, all because you voiced a concern like maybe Zedwin is lying, maybe Zedwin is wrong. The naysayers just gave up. There was few affordable areas in the province to move too, many people were very stuck.

I wasn't aware of it, but the situation now strikes me as the formation of a cult. A mirage of a friendly, family oriented town taken over by your local, overly qualified saboteur.

Other people moved into their little town, a group of fun but hard up people. Being hard up ourselves, we accepted them with open arms. Zedwin had done this before. This was project 8 (my lucky number, infinity) He acted like his new group of people starting over were his friends, another charitable act, providing some guidance to adults who hadn't had the benefit of the doubt before. That's what we thought anyways.

You'd think telepathy would help you feel safe, that if you knew what people were thinking, you would know how to help them, see their problems, see their real opinion of you. I don't think knowing what they were thinking would have helped me, I don't think talking to them would have provided any insight, I don't think there were many ways to know. Being forgiving on criminal histories, I don't know how anyone would know. They didn't show it on their faces, it probably wasn't noted in their heads, Why they would seek comfort and accolades from their future victims, It just makes it easier, I guess.

We, myself a few others and the new people that Zedwin brought in, were on the dock. Sitting the edge of the day known as twilight. I was uncomfortable but I had pervasive social anxiety. I thought the others were serene, but they hated me. I don't like my drunk self and I can't stand how I was coming off as. I quit drinking because of it. I don't remember what I was talking about but they hated it. Bad people. I was probably talking about bad people. I was going through an issue at the time (as most of us were) and my drunk self often talked about bad people. Flagrant, drunk me getting pissed at the douchebags for the world who got away with it. Me getting grosser by the beer until I was a sobbing mess around these newcomers (very suppressed people). They hated me and I have no self perception. There is no word uncomfortable enough for how I feel about this now. Oh, if only we had Uber. Zedwin, you cheap shit! As one of the the lesser wise souls who don't know what to do about the drunk city moron sobbing at the edge of the dock, they offered me a herb, in what I thought was an act of console. I've never heard of this Brazilian herb before or since. And drunk me does not say no often enough, so I said yes.

What they showed me next blew my mind. I sat here for three minutes before the lake water began to move, twisting upwards as if it was dripping to the sky, with vortexes in between, growing deeper and bigger until they were pools of tumultuous currents. The drips grew into ginormous lollipops with petals of water shooting out of them. One of the hooded sidekicks stretched until they were 14 feet tall. From twenty feet away, their arms shot out and rung me by my neck. I couldn't breathe, my body weight was powerless. The other sidekick slowly flew to the sky, then dive bombed me. I don't know why they didn't kill me, they certainly showed me that they could. But I'm alive today, even though I know it doesn't mean shit.

I woke up in a basement. It was dark with scanty bit of morning light peering through mostly boarded up windows. I saw piles and piles of paper, some microscopes and some of those glass things for blood samples. A science lab. I noticed a short, black leather binder. I leafed through it. In it were short documents of files on the town locals. Their names, their weights, personality traits, things like INFP and the bottom like said GENETICS: X. That's what was on most of them, but three of them, I'll never say who, it said GENETICS: ENHANCED. It was time to go.

I crept up the to the top floor, no sounds. I opened the door to a massacre. Six dead bodies, the six people who, as I describe it, hunted me, lying there. The seventh body was Zedwin, in the hall way. I'm pretty sure they were all shot to death, I'm pretty sure they were all dead but at this point I wasn't going to check. I left through the back door, didn't really matter though, it was not a well maintained house and all sides were thick with terrain. I trudged through which is how I got to the beginning of my story. Where I found my locket.

After they were gone, the gossip dissipated, the anger and fear winded down and people started opening up, talking and being forthcoming again. Recuperating. Recovering. Communicating eventually, which is how it was all sorted out. That Zedwin had been planting the rumours and setting people up. That there were other towns who knew him and had a trail of missing children and young adults. His degrees weren't real, but he was well read in WW2, psychology and biology, particularly familiar with genetic mutations. I think we put together what the plan was in the months after. There are always questions.

The questions bothered me for along time. Who was the person on to Zedwin and the newcomers? Who saved me? Why had people followed him? What was his super power? SUPER POWERS? I had to give up on the answers and find other coping methods. I understand why people wouldn't want to come out. It's never safe.

This locket, it helps me. It's a physical symbol of how I cope. How much unrecognized trauma there is, how many lost people, how many secret pains people carry. I want to send out the message: I know your out there! I recognize your pain! I don't want you to feel alone! A person who went through alot of tragedy saved many people's lives that day, unsung hero is now my favourite term. Some people died who had gone through the same trauma and I feel for them too. I also want to say, hey control freak, I know your out to destroy people, and I will step up when I see you, I will not cower, but I can't and refuse to lose myself in paranoia again. It's a difficult balance, this life, with two sides, and in between it is secrets.