Nuren Licht Chapter 1

My alarm clock hits the ground and busts at 6:02am. This means my roommate is frustrated with the sound of it going off for the hundredth time. Of course that’s a slight exaggeration. This happens periodically and in intervals; during the hours of 5:00am and 6:00am, Monday through Saturday when I work. I’ve even taken time out of my busy day to totally modify the fucking thing and turn it into a borderline miniature tank. The loud crackling pitch coming from my open window this morning tells me that the makeshift armor I made didn’t break the alarm’s fall. Usually you could take the clock to the window and let it drop a solid twenty-two feet until it landed safely on the concrete below. The alarm clock if not completely unharmed still functioning properly with all special features intact including the noises jolting from the speakers making ears bleed and hearts skip beats. How do I know this? I know this because every morning I’ll have to retrieve it in my underwear, rain or shine, sleet or snow.
As I sort through the remains of my clock, the bits spared by the road, I realized how ineffective super glue and layers of aluminum are. I wondered just how many airplane prototypes were smashed before the Wright Brothers finally got their shit together; how many monkeys NASA had killed during unofficial launches to the moon. How much time would one have to spend just for a single successful innovation? Finally I just took the wreckage inside for a more thorough look with my roommate, my sleep deprived roommate Darren. Darren is a coffee fiend best suited in the morning with a fresh cup, an addict going cold turkey day by day, morning by morning. Things have been different around the place ever since the feds started rationing out caffeine stamps at one hundred credits a stamp each week. On the average wages we earn only someone of celebrity status could afford morning coffee or a soda after work. Hell, not even sugar for my iced tea is affordable anymore. I’m pretty sure that life under these conditions is beginning to weaken my natural abilities and stunt my mental growth. Typical physical daily tasks are now just huge tedious chores that I think belong to machines. Eventually human beings will start to breakdown. Organs fail and crumple up as parts shrivel and collapse.
The mind, especially the cynic mind needs its medication every now and then, some stimulation if you will to ease the pain of living day to day, night to night. I can’t keep going to work like this everyday though. Darren and I savor our cereal as the Native Americans would savor the ever sacred buffalo that once grazed the Great Plains. It may sound funny but this unhealthy routine can’t keep going like this much longer, we’ve both recognized that fact. Each day spent here is as costly to the human spirit as gasoline drinking is to the liver or pancreas. It’s only a matter of time now before the shit hits the fan and our neighbors kill us in cold blood for breakfast or caffeine stamps. If we don’t do something about our situation soon it might be me killing Darren for some caffeine stamps. It’s times like these when I empathize with the people living during prohibitions reign on the citizens of the 1930s. So many good people unjustly imprisoned; all those liters of liquor wasted sliding down rusty old drainpipes, evaporating out in the streets. And of course it should go without saying that a social epidemic or moral panic continues to fuel the flames of this hellish injustice oven.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t leave my fucking apartment without being stared down by some self-important prick wanting to turn me in to the authorities to turn a profit. This behavior is unwarranted, unnecessary and running rampart lately, not even just in this part of the world, it’s everywhere all the time. It can be stressful knowing that anyone could turn you in or kill you over something as simple as caffeine. Survival relies on keeping a low profile and upholding a clean reputation alone. Behind paranoia’s poison door is a cold emotionless sociopath lurking in the shadows preying viciously on clumsy neighbors. Watchdogs without anything left to complete on their daily schedule.

Once the coffee shop downtown closed the feds issued warrants to arrest anyone on the government list of “dangerous persons of questionable interest”. There is no window that cannot be smashed, no door unable to be knocked down, nor wall that cannot be torn down by these fascist crusaders. Every mind working within the party had been long since stripped of independent thoughts. They come marching like zombies hungry for blood and fresh flesh to devour. To make a long story short we don’t go to that place anymore. With caffeine outlawed, a shortage of stamps, and two hundred thousand arrests and countless others executed in the name of morality a cup of java seems out of the question, which it is entirely.
In the years following the collapse of imperialist Germany the Nazis herded together as many Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and any other “undesirables” from neighboring countries as many as twenty-five thousand were slaughtered mercilessly in 1939 alone. One day you could be found at a breakfast table, the next day, the next day, and then suddenly you would be dragged away from your world during the night sent off to a special facility. Gestapo forces would bark at everyone keeping paranoia and disarray the norm in the small population they had in their grasp. The smaller the population the easier it is to control and manipulate; a sandbox to play in. Life: a miserable blur for the prole majority, a privileged sacred rite for the wealthy minority, neither gets to chug the stein of happiness, they can only get small sips.
The bitter cold of the winter months is finally coming to a close as the rain sprays everything outdoors, people included. As I watch the drops trickle down my reflection from the window in front of me I can recall seeing cars parked down the street exploding, and stepping over charred bodies trying to get to the bus stop. Everything is government operated and public transportation is our only means of transport. While I was passing a familiar corpse littered block a part of the bible I had once studied crossed my mind. In the dust of my imagination was the line from the book of Psalms chapter twenty-three verse four flashing the words, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for You are with me…” it was then that I felt completely alone, and it was a cloudy, rainy, sorrow ridden day for everyone.
I watch a crowded centre in my father’s arms seeing my first hats and suits. This was a moment ace occasion with families and friends gathered together in a small park. We flew kites, the wind blowing across everyone that day: the adults talking, children playing, and animals barking and chirping alike. This day entirely parallel from the other filled with laughter and love. It was another unforgettable day, unlike the previous one. And for a time, it was good.
Living in a world of disarray your whole life you never really notice all the beautiful subtleties of average life. You slowly turn almost mechanical being bent only on meeting the daily quota. A noisy machine without any individual purpose, logic or reason marching in masses. The flowers growing along the sidewalk leading up to a tall government building seem a little brighter than usual today. What’s the occasion? Why do I notice them when nobody else seems to? Has this always been the case or is this another strange new development? Oh how the human imagination can wonder into unknowns. Looking down at my feet are dead daises. I press my shoe across their crumpled frame, wore from the feet of others. I am brought to another question. When is a person officially declared dead? Better yet, does the family call the shots?
The walls of glass to my right are shiny and glamorous with perfect reflections of the environment around it. I’ve never been able to fully appreciate this until now. I see that even the physics around us can be attractive just as much as the presence of another person. The feelings of euphoria splattered out of an iced cold sprinkler on a hot summer day. Or the first glass of ice tea poured into ones mouth after a long afternoon of studying and performing tasks. Never very physically demanding, just your typical rough day. Not that you would be interested. Dear reader I can sense your interest waning, I really can.
Let us jump over to my first stop on the bus that day. The experience I had on the Amtrak that night, or the subtle feeling in my stomach after lunch that afternoon. Focusing my eyes directly into the sun I felt insignificant in comparison. My whole being ached at the thought of how small I am in the grand scheme of things and how they are to play out. I started in on how much I like sleeping. I realized that my best moments are when I’m asleep. I don’t have responsibilities anymore; there is no more will to fight the daily routine. I can be at peace with myself and everyone else. We just wake up when the sun says to rise, and then fall when the moon is in the sky clocking out the sun. We although it’s not as obvious, are machines like my alarm clock only more advanced. That’s what we tell ourselves at least; in reality we are just as broken as my alarm clock is in on my kitchen table.
After work I’m alone walking down the street after the bus reaches its last stop. That’s where I get off to go home. The apartment lights can be seen almost a mile away from the government buildings and abandoned gas-stations. In times of social chaos armed guards are posted watching everything from dawn through dusk. These guys are all professionally trained psychopaths in combat attire who do nothing all day except walk the perimeter and take shots at turning civilians into casualties mentioned in underground newspapers. This breed of watchdog feeds only on the blood of the innocent, they aren’t as threatening to me but I wouldn’t want to hang out with them.
In the third grade I bought a box turtle from a shop downtown. It stayed in a box cramped up eating old lettuce sitting in its own waste for five days before running away. Generally, or stereotypically turtles are portrayed as slow moving no ambitious thoughts crossed its mind. In fables and cartoons they are always seen standing in the sun staring off into space.
Sometimes I wonder how much like my old turtle I am. I imagine that the city I’m living in is just like the box I put my pet in. I never seem to escape and can’t shake the feeling that I’m starting to drown in my own feces. Maybe we aren’t so different from box turtles after all.
But is there anything outside the box? How tall are the cardboard walls? Are they really cardboard? Is old lettuce the only source of food? There is one thing I am certain of, and that’s if I stay here I will never know. Every coffee cup an empty cup, each park vacant, and fortune cookie is left completely blank without white paper inside. Is this it?
Back to where I was with Darren and the alarm clock. Obviously it will never work again in all those little mechanical pieces. There was a knock at the door this morning; our postman thought he could put the pieces back together only to watch him punch a dent in our kitchen table out of frustration. Finally I went to work, Darren staggered off to wherever he spends the day and both of us totally forgot the incident. Sometimes you just have to let things go no matter how hard you dwell on them. I guess I’ll go buy a real working alarm clock or start getting more self-reliant. That’s a good one.

The day Darren and I moved into the small apartment our landlord began holding boxing matches on the roof for a fee. With the money he collected he started purchasing ramps and helmets. From there he started buying liquor and various uppers and downers. The landlord was very popular and much like Darren rarely expressed himself. The Friday night we moved in, the landlord who I am not at liberty to name decided it would be a good idea to ramp a motorcycle from his roof to the post office across the street. Fortunately he made it there in one piece. Unfortunately once he and his bike hit the concrete below, tragedy struck; his spinal-cord had been severed severely after letting of his handlebars for a nice seven-foot drop. It was rumored that while they were operating on him both the power and backup generator failed; in the darkness of the room our friend came alive for an instant. After we put an end to the rumor and Darren put an end to the neighbor lady’s flower shop down the street with a Molotov, it was agreed that our days as road warriors, surgeons, and showmen were officially over.
As they came to a close Darren declared his alcoholic behaviors, knock on wood? Just like anything Darren spends his paycheck on every week it too started to diminish steadily. Just a month after Darren went from “I’m never drinking again!” To, “Well I could probably down a 5th, if I wanted to.” All the way to “Just one more drink…” followed by incoherent babbling. When the police first started “performing maintenance checks” on the building (the feds took over the property before the landlord was even in the ground, those dogs!) Darren pulled out his “emergency stash” and gulped it down and answered the door. Being a pro he could keep himself together just enough to talk to the police but as he shut the door he busted his ass loud enough to make the police hounds yelp.


As I hear screams in the car ahead of me, glass shattering all around, the only thing I can really focus on is the jingle for a local insurance retailer. I can recall old times with friends long past by and even what number to call for insurance. No matter how many times I see crowds being over taken by gas masked government employees with flamethrowers I can always rest assure that premium insurance is right around the corner, just a phone call away, open from 9am until 10pm weekdays and nights, not including weekends. I bet the people ahead wish they had premium insurance right about now. I wonder what’s for supper tonight. I hope it’s something baked, and crunches with every morsel. Something freshly sliced in clear packaging with a scent strong enough to make the neighbors envious.
We now interrupt this fancy dinner party with lead bullets, flamethrowers, and overpaid half retarded government employees twice as tall as everyone else and armed to the teeth with everything from teargas to fifty caliber machine gun rounds. The walls around the restaurant are made entirely of plywood, asbestos, and dry wall. A boot made of any rubber with enough force put behind it could knock this son-of-a-bitch down in seconds. At first the rules of the world seem unchangeable and sometimes unbearable. At first you can’t even imagine living in fear like this but after awhile you stop caring about everything. Apathy is the key here in this part of life. The people around me are nothing really; they don’t care about me, as I care about them.
Machines have replaced most labor jobs making any kind of production government only establishments. The only time you would see a private owned business is when you have federal money loaning it to people. The only evil things that come from business are those who really own everything: the government. The labor system was more or less little people running big machinery; without hardly any payment whatsoever. The only time money is exchanged is when a federal bank loans to a peasant with a broken dream. It is bleak; it is untimely but its reality.
The money spent housing the prisoners (well caffeinated mind you) came from the pockets of taxpayers or better known as “federal cattle” because the only way you could actually fund a place big enough to fit a few hundred million people. Any person or persons (federal cattle included) would be labeled as a “terrorist” if a link between them and the government was reached anybody could be incarcerated in the walls of the towers on the outskirts of town. A satellite was launched into space with the intent to orbit the planet. The taxpayers paid for it so that any person deemed a terrorist could be executed efficiently. Before an execution a terrorist would be strapped down to a chair with few articles of clothing. Two guards neither armed would secure the leather belts so that the executionee could not escape. As soon as this happened the executioner would pull a lever down until the satellite in space reached its position letting loose a giant ray beam. It would only be a matter of seconds before the executionee would be fried, brains and organs lurching in all directions painting the walls around. As soon as the beam hit the second time the pieces of the victim were vaporized entirely. No mess, efficient, inexpensive and guilt free!
Dealing with a vicious crowd was a totally different thing. You could send armed policemen with riot gear; it would cost you too much. You could gather up enough tanks to shell the crowded streets but you would end up burning the expensive buildings down. Of course the choice is painfully obvious at this point dear reader. There are few probabilities and it has been narrowed down. Without any moral base the government chooses the most convenient inexpensive decision. We know which one wins here, right?
I’m stirring a glass of hot tea and I notice my mind beginning to drift slowly. I start remembering a dream I once had when I came home from work. I felt the whole building around me start trembling. I could hear the knocks at the door as everything started getting louder and louder. In a crescendo I notice that bulldozers are pushing away different sections of the building. I feel nothing and I can’t help but enjoy this last cup of tea before I depart from this world. This horribly disappointing prison that I can only escape to whenever I’m asleep. I know you have an imagination, it’s hiding from everyone, and there are things that I know that I regret knowing. I can’t see you, touch you, hear you but yet I know you’re there next to me. It happens sometimes on the Amtrak. It happens late at night on the couch in front of the TV screen. There is just a floating feeling in the pit of my stomach. I think of you and your relation to me in this mixed up world. I finally understand how you will always be distant; with that I drink this cup to you and my whole body jerks to the beat of a different tune. I guess Grandpa was right when he said…
“Unter den Blinden ist der Einäugige der König!”

Although most people wouldn’t notice it Darren has a dark seductive quality that usually stays dormant until fully awakened. At an early age Darren developed a sense of isolation that was released once his interests became pyrotechnics. Of course we never tried to combat these tendencies at all. In fact we sort of brought it on in our own convenience. We would push him to his limit once we were old enough to take pipe bombs to all the major highways. This of course earning us the attention of the highway patrol officers. Once his first arrest Darren was convicted of driving without a license, with three minors with him, on a large public highway, the pipe bomb charges never came through, neither were any of the murders revealed to the public. How do I know this? I know this because these “acts of terrorism” are almost always staged by federal agents. This keeps the population frightened and in control. Support your state troopers!
During your whole existence you could step over nine hundred billion times and still never go anywhere. You could sit and stare for almost as much at a wall and you still wouldn’t go anywhere. It’s the same pattern it always was. You can't win, not matter how hard you try, no matter how much struggle you put into it at the end of the day you're just like a firefly crawling against the inside of a slippery glass jar.
The sun is setting as an elderly man sits waiting for a train that will never reach its intended destination. I sit still in time awaiting a moment that will never arrive too. There is not a day that doesn’t go by where I feel like exploding. I have no reason to exist, I wasn’t, I was, I am, I won’t be and I do not care. As a little mechanical device not fit for mass production I sit for an eternity burning up in the atmosphere for nothing. Ask me what school of thought and I will assure you that I am just a nihilist. Nothing more; nothing less.
I hear a loud screech pierce my ears with clarity waking me up from my near slumber. I notice the old man smiling deep. We both board the train I headed to the plant but I’m just curious as to where my old friend maybe heading to. My mind starts to drift more and I find myself staring directly at a clock with Norman Rockwell style print on it. I can see the number twelve has been worn from time as all things eventually do.
I’m zoning out now thinking of a girl. Thinking of early school days and school field trips. Thinking of car lots filled with things I know I will never actually purchase. Glowing street signs of a town I once resided in haunt my mind and then as my bizarre mental trace reaches a halt I hear an unfamiliar voice say,“Son are you lost?”

This old lady who lived in big manor on Williamsburg Avenue took me in and hide me from the police on several occasions while the coffee shop was busted. It was that kind woman returning to me. HEY WHERE DO YA THINK YOU’RE GOIN’!? The rains didn’t subside. The last people to see the sun got radiation poisoning. The first monkey shot into space suffered the same fate ultimately.

The police were on my trail again. I explained to the trooper with the pistol pointed at my face that I was helping this “poor elder with her bike.” She played along. I GUESS I’LL BELIEVE IT. BUT IF I CATCH YOU AGAIN IT’S JAIL TIME! As the lady walked the bike I followed her home. I had nothing better to do.

We drank hot tea. We played cards. She told me stories about her friends and pets and cats and young and the old and how injustice is the name of the game anymore. it was all boring. Later I came to find out that I had been drugged. It was too late and I could barely move.

Once awake I heard screaming people. Then silence. Then more screaming. The old lady started toward me.

She wore that sickly smile on her face like a fur coat on the red carpet. That pseudo-grim look gave me cancer looking at it. How many days would I stay chained up in this room reeking of burned hair and flesh. The old woman would return to devour my flesh if I didn't do something quickly. The noises of my frantically moving chains had summoned her the way I planned. I never heard such haunting noises as I struggled to pin her down. Her wailing became gargles. Her body limp as I snatched the pockets for the key. Unlocking myself I rushed out the door getting a familiar whiff of gasoline. This was how you become an arsonist. This is when I found the cans of gas piled up in the closet by the door. The Andrews Sisters were the evening’s soundtrack the whole time I burned the woman down with her half eaten corpses and torture chamber house.. The Williamsburg Avenue Cannibal was brought down. She fought right down to the last gargle and kick. The police squad arrived.

I heard the dogs barking as I slid down the pipes of the house from the third story. The firefighters made the flames larger and larger. As I made my way home via boat, then foot again, then bike, and as I approached the apartments I laid the bike down and walked to the upper part of Myro-Estates. I banged on the door and Darren with coffee in hand asked me how my day was.

I never actually slept that night. No police dogs or their hominid counterparts. The sky from black to baby blue. The silence to chirping. For a split second I was relieved of the paranoia and pain swept up in the moment watching my window. It was beautiful and for a split second sweet freedom from existence so it seemed.

You find yourself day to day in the hamster cage you call your "life" spinning in your wheel, shitting, eating and sleeping. When you live next to a refinery you feel vulnerable. Your hamster cage gets a little smaller each day and it shakes, rumbles, shakes again without stopping in a perpetual motion. I was eating breakfast when I noticed something in the corner of my eye. It was a car crash in my peripheral vision. The passenger in the back of the baby blue Sedan died on impact, broken collar bone, broken jaws, dead at age twelve, according to the papers. It was rare to see this story get coverage as the fascist state mainly focused on criminals smuggling drugs being executed for their crimes or "the war".

Darren was gone to work. It was my day off. I didn't accomplish much of anything. My depression caught the best of me. The clouds were gray like the sky only in a different shade. The factories were especially loud today. Television dreams always were fake. The old time leave it to beaver image of the squeaky clean American family now reduced to shattered bits of what we all had. The year I think is 2042 or maybe 2052. The curfew is Midnight-Six A.M. for everyone in the region. This is so the watchdogs can mingle with the government and exchange information. Internet connections are a thing of the past for us peasants. We can only communicate by means of face-to-face communication (the best kind) or telephones. Cellphones are only issued to government workers.

If you ask government officials what America's future is they would say that "Utopia is right around the corner."

Ask a peasant and they'll ask you in reply, "What America?"

A flag waves above the tallest building in Metro City. Gasoline completely too expensive for the poor workers, the peasants without will to fight. In 2027 there was an uprising. Freedom was right around the corner for about an hour. Then came the gas rains and the flames. It made things worse killing well over a few hundred thousand. The death toll was said to be one million though I don't believe it.

Suddenly the windows shattered with eardrum piercing screeches from a megaphone letting out pure feedback.

"Nuren Licht!" Knocking at the doors. Pounding rather than knocks ensued. Barks from the police dogs.

"Hey wake up! Nuren, wake up!"

I came to my senses quickly. It was all a nightmare. "Darren! Jesus Christ I fucking had the scariest dream, I was being arrested!"

Darren gave me his last few caffeine tablets. I took them and we went outside, I told him the details of the dream.

Our landlord, Howard, listened closely from behind us through the broken main door to the complex. Howard a balding middle-aged man with a light French accent could be a threat. We kept our voices down. They were so low that from Howard's distance the only thing audible were murmurs and occasional laughs. Then Darren checking out his surroundings began to light up a cigar he bought at work. Darren unloaded cargo off of ships on the river docks. He met a Spanish guy named Pedro otherwise called "Chico" in underground circles. He traded him the cigar for some caffeine tablets. Chico was pleased. So was Darren. Tobacco had been illegal for years though it was impossible to count the days and years as people generally stopped recording dates. There wasn't a calendar anymore. There wasn't aconstitution or bill of rights. Human rights was just a dream. America, oh how the mighty have fallen.