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I’d soon shoot the surveillance gang with the self-correcting Laser sight on my sniper

 

rifle. Little der Fuehrers always began the disruptions; those loud cracks on my walls, all

 

made by my opponents, mind rapers. Trust me on this. Paranoia is so passé, so boring.

 

To undermine the surveillance gang’s power, I sang. Due to the accelerated rate of

 

Darwinian adoption, my memory had rapidly improved. I sang Verdi arias as I made

 

dinner, vacuumed apartment, relaxed in rocking chair, changed bed sheets, rode the

 

stationary bicycle, had sex with girlfriends, masturbated, washed dishes, cooked, shat,

 

pissed. My vocal range was as endless as the criminals’ tactics to run me out of town.

 

What brought the surveillance on? Russell must’ve snitched me out. I might’ve told

 

him too much. Now his allegiance swung to the opposition. His role: park outside my

 

house and talk on the smartphone. He knew I sat looking out the window, searching for

 

loopholes, perforations in the surveillance keepers’ schemes. Paranoia played no part

 

because I’m reacting to something as real as the words you now read.

 

Erecting a wall of separation between them and me, I steeped my cognitive activity

 

in the tiny fonts of box scores, scrutinizing them so ardently, focused and deep, that

 

those yappers couldn’t breach my mental razor-wired barrier. That included baseball,

 

basketball, football, and hockey. Baseball had sixteen categories for each player. I traced

 

my finger across players’ stats, turning numbers and percentages into their real-time

 

performances, visualizing through numbers their on-field reality. This blocked out the

 

pursuers (surveillers) for a long time, longer if I wanted to scrutinize more games.

 

Seasonal, like migrant workers (also under surveillance and harassed), I segued to the

 

other three sports.

 

I bought Plan B, a skateboard with pop and durability, a high-end brand. Three

 

skateboarders pop and scraped their boards’ end, grinding their boards’ backs on my

 

cement driveway. I grabbed the AR15 and was about to sacrifice those three boarders to

 

skateboard heaven where champion Australian skater Shane Cross was. His death

 

occurred when a motorcycle hit and killed him. Wouldn’t it be great if motorcyclists and

 

skateboarders declared war on one another? Motorcyclists terrorized me, pipes louder

 

than black metal bands, revving their machines daily in front of my house in the name

 

of surveillance.

 

I sat on a kitchen chair and placed Plan B at my feet horizontally, moving swiftly side

 

to side, popped some Methedrine and sipped beer, deciding what curse I could lay on

 

those skaters. Working myself into a trance, the faces of the three skaters appeared before

 

me, bloodied, gashed, sliced, slashed, and obviously dead. I saw the them in the

 

gutter; I had spayed their noise. Their threat vanquished was a morale boost for me.

 

Surveillance operators’ digital entry into my house saw fierce conviction in my eyes

 

and backed off. My psychosis/AR 15 combo out maneuvered them, at least for now.

 

Stopping them from attacking my castle, my drawbridges often down: on the toilet or

 

pissing, cooking, reading, going to sleep, morning shower and dressing. I bought a

 

wireless headset. Sometimes singing Verdi proved useless. The transition now smooth, I

 

slept on my back wearing the headset.

 

After morning ablutions, I turned on the computer, and listened to whatever struck my

 

fancy on Spotify. Record producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound decades ago used a

 

great echo chamber. This new headset destroyed my echoic memory, that ability to

 

recapture sound immediately after hearing it. The headset silenced them. Other

 

times, exercising twenty minutes on the stationary bicycle, wearing the headset I heard

 

nothing but very, very fast workout beats. Whatever worked, I used. I’m pragmatic and

 

don’t indulge in things mystical. In fact, paranoia had a peculiar occult flavor, so I

 

trashed it along with the skaters’ din.

 

Next day, the surveillance yappers spoke to me. Yes, voices. Even if they said, “Happy

 

Birthday, Evan,” their audio-phobia bombarded my walls with hateful words. It swept

 

through my castle’s walls. Medieval fortresses hadn’t enough stone to increase

 

protection. Either did this house. Don’t I deserve good voices? Shut your yap traps, I’d

 

said loud and clear uncountable times.

 

“OR ELSE,” I said.

 

 

 

 

BIO:  I like slow baseball games, red beans and quinoa, nightmares, fast flowing rivers,

Ravi Shankar, death metal, Tom Waits, wet mornings, nostalgia, rooming houses,

cold nights, docks, The Moby Dick Cosmic Ocean, lists, mania, and dry wines.

 

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