For Your Eyes Only

The year is 2020. The world has gone to hell in so many ways I can't even see the bottom of the handbasket it came in. We have a new President everyone loves, yet this pandemic is forcing us to all become the shadows of our former selves. We now have a new social score that determines whether we can get loans, order food, or even rent an Uber. This new hierarchy is becoming the complete path to my undoing. I chose the life of a journalist in a new world where journalistic integrity is a thing of the past, which is everything I learned to fight against. My name is Elliot Larkin, and if you're a victim of the social war we have going on, you're probably thinking I'm the worst person ever. Well, you'd probably be right, but you don't know my side of the story. I'm here today to explain my side, of the well-known (#canceled story of the century). You probably won't care what I have to say at this point, but this is my last chance to get it all out of my system before I cease to exist. Let me take you back to the beginning.

I was in the last year of my journalism degree. "I've now made it to the big time," or so I thought. I got my dream job at the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I jumped headfirst into my first assignment: Jack Dorsey himself a local boy making it big and coming back to his beloved city to clean it up. It was a great start to what I thought would be a lifetime of social justice for all. My next few stories focused on at-risk youth, and how to solve the great homeless debate down by the old railroad tracks. I wanted to be a crusader and help the world. I thought I was doing the right thing. I finally got the lead of my career by interviewing an illustrious member of QAnon. I thought I was going to finally get to the bottom of "pizza gate" and I would finally have my John Grisham Street Lawyer moment. This is only, my favorite book, by the way. If you have a few hours to read it, "#NIKE, and "just do it." Ok, Ok, back to the interview. As I was sitting there with this man in a ski mask I'm thinking here we go. The air of secrecy was captivating. We met in an abandoned building downtown on Washington Street. The old facades of those buildings make you dream of a time when mobsters were running the streets, and secret doors lead you to a speakeasy where flapper girls were dancing and laughing. The cigarette girls walk by with their box of cigarettes and ask if you want to be happy. Then she'd say, "Well go lucky then." I have to admit I'd buy every box if that happened to me, and I can't stand smoking. Advertising is everything. I need to remember that in my writing from now on. Oh wait, where were we? Sorry, these old buildings always do that to me. Anyway, as I was asking him all the important questions I needed for my story, the rain outside starts dripping on my coat from the crack in the ceiling. Honestly, I think it caused me to be distracted and not perform to the best of my abilities. He was visibly irritated at my lack of interest and asked me if I wanted to make a difference in this world, or not. Gosh, what a loaded question that was. "Um, Yes! Of course, I do, "I said." He said get back to me in 10 yrs if any of us are even still alive, and he got up and disappeared like a comic book vigilante. The only thing he was missing was the cape.

I woke up the next day to a blaring light seeping in through a crack in my room-darkening shades. I thought to myself, I need to remember to use the hanger trick next time. Then I heard a knock at the door that would change my life forever. If only I could find a DeLorean and travel back in time, I would. I went to the door of my crummy apartment on the south side hoping it wasn't someone trying to convert me to Mormonism yet again. I'm not sure how I got on their list but, "PLEASE PLEASE TAKE ME OFF." Sorry, It's just very hard explaining my deep moral compass to religious people. I'm not religious at all, but I do believe in a higher power, and every time I tell them this, they just see (cha-ching another one down). Ugh NO! Luckily it was not a Mormon. It was a shady-looking man in his mid-40s, He said, "Are you, Elliot Larkin?" As I said yes, he placed a brown bag in my hands and took off. I looked down at the brown bag that said, "You're welcome" on it in bold black sharpie. As I opened the bag I pulled out a super fancy black moleskin journal, the kind I only dreamt about. It was my goal to have an entire collection of my notes all nicely stacked in matching notebooks with volume numbers written on them, so when I died everyone would think what a beautiful dark mind he must have had. The kind of journal that establishes you as a "real writer," not the discounted back-to-school notebooks I've reduced myself to, thanks entirely to my permanent student loan debt. The kind of journals that Hemmingway must have written in. I gushed over the pristine ruled pages full of names and notes and the matching moleskin bookmark down to the cryptic paper boat engraved on the cover that sent me right back to my love of IT. One of the best works ever. The movie only future propelled it into my mind forever, and no, not the complete garbage remake they made this year, but that's beside the point, I know. It also had the words, "For your eyes only" engraved on it in the most appropriate italicized script font. I was blown away at the commitment someone took in sending this to me, but what is it? As I looked back in the bag to see if I had missed something else to go along with the book I noticed a white envelope laying on the floor. It must have fallen out of the notebook when I was flipping through the pages. I opened the letter to find the answer to a much-needed break in my life. The letter said, "I'll give you 20,000 dollars if you will tell the stories of the 10 people in this book exactly as I have told it. I want all of their sick dirty lies exposed for all to see." Wow, ok. What could I do with 20,000 dollars? Nobel Peace Prize here I come.

I blew through the list, story after story until I got to the last name. This last name would not only cement my undoing, but ruin my life as I knew it then, forever. Her name was Stephanie Summer Vaughn. She was a 13 yr old narcissist who was the scum of the earth and the beginning of the end for 2020. Or so the "Little Black Book" said. I had seen her name in a couple of headlines here and there, she was some sort of bunny-hugging climate change guru. They're pumping them out younger and younger these days. Supposedly, she planned to raise awareness for global warming due to her parents naming her to change the world. She went by Stephy, and said her middle name was Summer because her parents fell in love on a summer day. She said her father fell in love with her mother that day because of the way the sun would shine through her blonde hair and highlight the amber tones of her eyes. She then would go on to her doomsday nonsense about how the sun will die one day, and we are only going to make it happen faster by our hedonistic ways. She was named after the sun on that day and in her lies the sun's love. If we didn't stop the path we were going down, she would die soon, and then she would shout, "Don't you think I'm too young to die?" and then she would bust a blood pack in her chest it would splatter and she would fall. I mean, looking at it from a journalistic side, it was admirable, but completely unrealistic. Even I wouldn't want to write about her. It should feel wrong to exploit a child in that way, but again, this is 2020. No, the story I was to write was about how her real father was the Golden State Killer and how her mom was raped while her boyfriend at the time was tied up so he could watch, and then his throat was slit in front of her. And how her mom then moved on with the next chump she could find so she didn't have a rapist baby. Her mom had made up this summer love story to make her daughter a cash cow as most LA moms do. It was just sick to me, but I wrote it; going against my moral compass, eating me from inside. What would happen to that poor girl if I exposed her mom for the sick liar she was? It's your last story just write it, I told myself. So I did.

Four days later it was in every newspaper in the country and on every channel. The girl was ruined. "Lust killing Spawn Should Save Her Herself Before She Saves The World" Is what the latest headline said. This poor girl ended up killing herself a week later. She was found hanging from her bedroom closet with the cord from her lava lamp wrapped around her neck. The photo was awful. Then just a few days after that I received my $20,000 in cash in my mailbox. It was blood money now. I felt disgusting. Was it all my fault? She should have just told her daughter the truth right? Who knows, but after this, my name was now in all the headlines: "Elliot Larkin for wanted murder." I have not been brought up on any formal charges as of yet, but I didn't wait around to find out either. I am now sitting at a small beach table in Venezuela sipping a stiff Jack and Coke waiting for the fog to lift.

Until Next Time

Elliot Larkin