FROM THYME GONE BY - ONE HATE FILLED OPUS

"We can't keep living like this! Its not viable, the facts are undeniable. Wondering these streets in the search for something that isn't there, picking up loose change that doesn't exist. Looking in shop windows during the arrival of moonlight. The wind is biting me, its leaving teeth marks. Look at that homeless blind tramp trying to find his bus fare, should we help him out?"

"Excuse me Sir! Do you need any help?"

"Mhpf, mhpf, ffmh..." *Strange incoherent psychobabble*

"He seems deaf as well as blind. What the hell is he doing?"

"He's looking for his bus fare, but it must have fallen on the floor and rolled down a drain. Should we give him some change?"

"Nah, let's steal his walking stick!"

"Give us the stick old man! Give it!"

*Old man starts crying, tears streaming down his face and then he speaks*

"What did we do to deserve this? To be condemned in this town? Tell me!"

"Why don't you just leave this town? Just go home!"

"I can't, they wont let me leave!"

"Who wont let you leave?"

"The women! Up there!"

*We tried to look up before he stopped us*

"DON'T! They'll see you! They are up there, perched on that roof, with their sniper rifles, watching, waiting, observing, we are their experiments. They take turns, shifts, when one needs to sleep, but you try stepping over the border to leave this town and you'll end up with a bullet hole in your Nike cap and that will be your final night cap!"

"You're senile old man! There is nobody up there on the roof!"

"Hey! Is there anybody up there? Hello?"

*No answer*

"See old man, its just your mind playing tricks on you!"

"Are you sure you haven't been on the LSD dude?"

"I'm not crazy, its true, its all bloody true! You try to leave this town and you wont know what hit you, well you will... a sniper bullet. This town is magnetic, you try to leave and it pulls you back, you can't leave, nobody can, you're part of the experiment."

"We'll just wait until morning and when it becomes daylight, this place will be full of people!"

"You don't understand boy! You really don't! Its not going to become daylight and no matter how much time passes, it is going to remain dark and wherever we walk, the guns that those women are holding are going to be following our every move, we are just condemned hobos, if hobos weren't condemned already, we certainly are now!"

"This is fucking crazy, you cannot be serious!"

"Shut up John McEnroe! Okay, we need to think of a good plan, can they hear us?"

"Of course they can hear us, they have listening devices positioned around the town, they pick up our every word, they know we are talking about this right now, but for some reason they are allowing it to happen, maybe they know we are sitting ducks anyway!"

"I'm not a sitting duck, I'm a standing human. You evil bitches! C'mon! Take your best shot at me if you think you're good enough! Fuck you!"

*No answer, whoever was on the roof was not taking the bait*

"This is fucked up man, I'm cold and hungry and I'm walking out of here, this is all a big joke, none of it is real, its impossible, there is nobody up there on that roof!"

"Go ahead! Walk past that bus stop line right there and you'll feel like you were put in front of the firing squad, trust me! Nobody leaves, you would be the 12th person that has attempted to escape and unsurprisingly failed!"

"What happened to the other 11 people?"

"They were riddled with bullets, peppered, annihilated, like a piece of cheese. Some of them prayed, but instead of dying holy men and women, they just died as holes."

"So let's get this nonsense clear, it doesn't go daylight here and there are psychotic female snipers on the roof denying people the permission to leave? You really expect me and my friend to believe that fucking story!"

"I believe him man!"

"You're just as crazy as he is! How is it even possible?"

"You should listen to your friend, he's talking sense and knows that if he wants to keep his life intact, he will not walk across that fucking borderline. You want to leave, go ahead, but you'll be nothing but dead meat!"

"What the fuck is this place? Area 51?"

"Nope... Now who's crazy, this is the place you grew up in boy! This place was 100% safe for the entire duration of your life... That was until tonight, this one night, the place that you trusted has decided to become your worst nightmare. But that is reality, a person can spend so much time in one place, have an affinity for it and yet still, it can become their death bed, their ultimate nightmare come true!"

"How do you know all this shit? Are you really blind or deaf?"

"Yes I'm really blind and deaf."

"Ahh, but how can you hear us talk, and how can you see the sniper gang on the roof?"

"Gut feeling!"

"So your gut feeling is giving you life in your ear drums? That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

"Stupid? Young lads like yourself, your generation is the stupid one. You like to think you know everything and yet you know nothing, about anything, if you did, you wouldn't be in this town, you'd be up in the world, you'd be a writer, an animator, a musician. If you had the balls, you'd take the bull by the horns and not have allowed yourselves to be consumed by this fucked up town!"

"You're creeping me out old man!"

"Have you ever seen a rainbow at night boy?"

"What? No I haven't! You cannot have a rainbow at night!"

"So you've never laid eyes upon a firework?"

"Everything is what it is because WE SAY it is what it is. Are you following me boy? Everything has a name and place, and why does it have a name and place? Because protocol is a means of evolution, it is the most important means of communication. I could say to you, "look behind you!" but you wouldn't understand me and more importantly, you wouldn't look behind yourself and therefore you would be dead meat!"

"What is your point old man?"

"My point is only this. You can make a difference with words. A difference boy, do you understand me? Words can save your life, and can make the difference between being stuck in this town looking for spare pennies on the floor, or sitting in a Spanish villa overlooking the ocean. You can change your life, you didn't need to be here, but now you are. What is your ambition boy?"

"I want to become a writer, an author, that is my dream, but I'm not good enough to do it, I lack the education, I never went to University to do a writing degree, I'm lazy, I'm letting it go, its beyond me, I'm intimidated, scared of failure, scared of being judged, they will judge me, they will say I am not good enough and I am afraid of persistence, I am weak and I've allowed this to happen, I've allowed myself to fail and now it haunts me... It really does!"

"And what about you boy? What is your ambition?"

"I don't have a dream, I just want to escape from this damn town!"

"Rage is never the answer my friend, anger is an instinctive reaction, which doesn't make it the best decision in a situation like this, you need to learn the art of intelligence, take your time, only fools rush in with all guns blazing. Snipers are patient people, they take their time, female snipers are twice as patient, they aren't going to instinctively kill us unless we do something instinctively stupid!"

"So what's the plan? How are we getting out of here?"

*Laughs*

"We can't get out of here, there is no possible way out! None. They have every angle covered."

"Holy shit! How about we just try reasoning with them?"

"We can't reason with them, they are determined to make us pay, for fucking up our own lives, they are in essence, teaching us a lesson. If a rat is stupid enough to walk into a rat trap for a piece of cheese, its the rat's own stupid fault!"

"Yeah, but rats don't have large brains, maybe they don't sense danger like we do!"

"Ahh, but you guys didn't sense danger did you? When you walked into this town, you didn't see the threat of female snipers on the roof, just like the rat doesn't see the bigger picture of the rat trap, that's the whole purpose of a trap, you're not meant to see it, but its there, waiting..."

"Why would they do this to us!?!?!?"

"Because we fucked up our lives."

"So what? Why do they give a shit that we messed up OUR lives? What has it got to do with them? Why do they care so much?"

"They care because we DON'T care. Why are we so protective of our lives all of a sudden? We let every day pass and didn't do anything about it, we allowed ourselves to grow that little bit older and kept putting off the desire to do something with our lives. Those snipers are perplexed that we don't care about our own wellbeing and health, they have guns pointed at our heads because they want us to care."

"You're going all Tobin Bell on us now..."

"Shut up boy, this is not about morals and teaching people a lesson, this is about you teaching yourself morals and lessons."

"Sorry, that doesn't make sense..."

"Stop interrupting! It does make sense, they have guns pointed at our heads, not because they want us to appreciate our lives, but simply because they want to stop it happening. They want to eradicate failure, in its entirety. Failure makes them sick, do you have any idea who they work for?"

"No, who do they work for?"

*Old man smiles in a creepy fashion*

"Well! They work for God of course!"

"Now you've done it old man! you've gone overboard, you're fucking nuttier than squirrel turds! Yeah right, God would really have a bunch of psychotic snipers working for him wouldn't he?"

"Not only that, but God doesn't even exist!"

"He does exist! His name is Moses Rothschild."

"What the fuck? Who the hell is Moses Rothschild? Is he the guy who found the ten commandments?"

"No, he WROTE the ten commandments."

"C'mon that's bullshit, everybody knows that Moses didn't have a surname!"

"He officially didn't have a surname and he was given those commandments by God on Mount Sinai!"

"Now who is crazy boy! You really believe that an entity came from nowhere and gave him a list of commandments, no witnesses, nothing. It is impossible because the real truth is that Moses did have a surname and he wrote those commandments himself, he effectively played God."

"And those snipers are working for him? A man that died many many years ago?"

"Correct, well technically they are working for his children, who are now technically grown-ups."

"Why would someone so powerful come to a small town like this and hunt us? We are small fish, they don't need to kill us!"

"Ahh, but we're not small fish, we think we are, but we're not, we are in fact more powerful than we think, but that has to end sometime and it ends tonight in this miserable cold town, when you finally accept our reality, all this, our situation, its all real, none of it crazy. So once you believe that we really do have the power, we can set about the task of harnessing it!"

"Harnessing our power? How?"

"By accepting this hard to digest situation, as our reality, our fact. This is happening, as impossible as it may seem, you have to realise, human beings are equally sized fish, we have as much power and right as anyone, only we haven't harnessed that power. The ironic thing is that it pisses them off that we are so stupid, just like the animal trainers get pissed off in the circus when the animals don't learn quick enough. But tonight, we're going to learn a lot, about ourselves... Tonight, the animals are going to make their owners learn tricks."

To be continued......