A Maltopia

Alvin Toffler, in his book, "Future Shock," explored how the rapidly changing culture can pass some by. Those who cannot adjust or even grasp the changes around them can experience confusion and isolation. While his book hinted at the elderly being most prone to this "future" shock, the rapidity of change, seen now as logarithmic and not arithmetic, has been continually lowering the bar, that is, the age at which future shock seems to seep in.

I am no exception.

Sometimes I wonder if I've been transported to the Bizarro World, where everything is backwards. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. The future I find terrifying, because it's a bus that has no seat for me. I'm riding, just hanging out through one of its windows as we go, potholes and all.

Where did my Abby go? I need to be with her, to protect her, in this world as it has become. I fear such a world in which my Abby has been lost, all on her own. She disappeared and none of her friends have been any help. Last, I return to my parents' home to see if they've had any contact with her.

My mother seemed to have done just fine dovetailing into this twisted version of the world I've found myself in. Now she calls herself Ol’ lady Ebe. There was no maternity left in her.

I walked in to greet her. She was sitting all by herself under the wall map, a new world—the current one—where North was South and Anarctica was the North Pole. Now its equatorial zones were obscured in part by the cloud of smoke she had produced from the cigarette in her hand. Air quality over the southern hemisphere, too, was not good. She had polluted the whole planet that hung over her head while polluting the whole scene in the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen. Her face was no mean contender, either. Madonna and Ugly.

All this meant that my frequent companion, doom, was goosing me. I once again had moved down the turbulent, fast-flowing river of non-recognition of the world.

“Where’s Abby?” I asked her, as she exhaled another plume. In our journey together, Abby and I had separated at some fork in the road, literally and figuratively, and I knew only moving on would allow me to find her. But where? When I did, I would revise a long-quaint and obsolete custom called apology.

"Where's Abby?"

“Who?” Ol' Lady Ebe feebly cooed, almost teasingly.

“Abby! Abby! You know who!”

“No son, I really fuckin’ don’t and I really fuckin’ don’t care."

"Oh, I'm your son again?"

"Stop boistering at me with heave-threats, you little connipshit,” she said matter-of-factly, putting out her cigarette on the sofa, “or I’ll have to have your goddamn father kill you like he did the others. It would make no difference to me. And I’m not just flintin’ my ass-flare, suckerrhoid.”

“Trouble here?” Mr. Ebe said, strolling in, drink in hand.

"Like the others?" I blurted.

“Son?" summoned my mother, "Tell your spermer here how you’ve been up my ass, not that it makes any difference to me.”

“Son, now, I’ve warned you,” he told me. He took a swig and then continued. “Not that it would make any difference, but haven’t we had really I-don’t-care just about enough justifiable homicides in this shit-assive family already?”

“No, Papa,” Ol' Lady Ebe cried, lighting up another cigarette as she did. “Him,” she went on, “the last fuckin’ one—he wants to fuckin’ go and make us stark-rave so we’ll finish him off so we can be fuckin’ childless finally."

"And again," Mr. Ebe chimed in.

"And that would be just guttural fine with me. The little asshole—he’s so shitty and hateful sometimes. It’s enough to make you feel prickless, where I persist already, and it just megacreates my pisser even more.” As she sucked on the cigarette, I sucked it up for harmony’s sake. Blessed are...

“Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad." They were confused. Apology was not just quaint to them, but quite unknown. "I’ll do better.”

When in Rome. Or is it Remus now?

“You sure will, you ingrate lambastard, not that I really care,” he said. “Such a fine young man you raised,” he said to his wife resentfully. Swaying, he walked over to a small table that held just a decanter and some ice. “Now where’s your usual gun, wretch?” he asked me as he freshened up his drink.

“What gun?” I asked.

“Your birthday gun, dick-dock—the one I gave to you when Mom pooped you out—’cause it was the same gun that taught your crema-scrote big brother his big lesson, eh, Mom?”

“—Tellin’ me, spermer,” Ol’ Lady Ebe responded with nostalgia. “And his sister, right? So justifiable.”

“Heh, heh,” Ol’ Man Ebe laughed, “we crank ’em in...”

“...an’ we crank ’em out,” his wife finished, and then they shared a family laugh. "Honor killings."

"Yeah," the old man whispered for effect, "it was an honor to kill 'em." They both laughed.

Actually, I had almost forgotten about the gun I had on me, like most everybody in this world had to have. I say almost because no one can truly ignore a hard piece of iron pressed by a belt against one’s flesh. I figured the world was just trying to tell me something, so I kept it in my belt, callous notwithstanding.

I did, however, come to forget my gun's purpose, its mission: to fire bullets through people. This made me wonder why dear old Dad, my spermer, needed mine.

“Why do you need my gun?” I asked him. “What are you going to do? It does make a difference to me,” I added...in that family way.

“You see, Papa!” Ol' Lady Ebe shouted. “You see how insolent the little vomiteer is. Not that I care, because I could care less. But you see?”

“Come on, son, you turd-lot McBreath, you know I need your gun so Mom can cover me while I beat the banshee-screachin' piss out of you. And it really shouldn’t matter to you a single, stinkin’ secretive.”

“I don’t know where we fuckin’ went wrong with shitsickle here,” the old woman said. “And I really don’t give a glitchcock.”

This foster home just wasn’t working out. I ran, banging through the front door.

I ran and ran. A Bodily Fluids Recovery truck was just pulling off, a strangely colored malodorous stain on the cement below to remember it by. The spot, covered by a layer of dead flies, generated wisps of colored vapor into the summer air.

“If you leave this house,” ol’ man Ebe shouted, “don’t bother dry-humping back! I wouldn’t care if you never fuckin’ came back, you fumping squich-tit!”

This wasn't surprising in such a world the way it's gotten—a father disowning a son—and out of anger.

Not to mention being labeled a squich-tit. A fumping one at that! And I got off easy. What about the others? Siblings? Justifiable homicides? First I'd heard of those.

It’s funny how when even the senseless becomes acceptable, it becomes justifiable.

Can't wait till tomorrow.