Homeless Story of J, Part 10

This is a work of fiction. The author does not endorse it.


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To believe that I have done something important by becoming homeless, in a fit of outrage, is almost ludicrous.

Yes, it was my choice. How could I challenge the Configuration when caught up in its daily rush of work-bound formicae?

Only werewolf-ants can toil and drudge, insipid in their conformist lies, during the week, and then break out to party on Saturday night.  What a shattered mind:  the werewolf ant.  A slave to conformity one moment, liberated in dithyrambs the next.  What is this terrible insanity?

If the dithyrambs of the werewolf-ants were honest, instead of just another way to hide, I could accept their choice of insanities.  I would understand.

Does the compromise of the werewolf-ant render them an escapee or an inmate? If an angel came down out of some hidden paradise, would said angel damn such a motive?

For a while, the dual existence of the werewolf-ant gnawed on me, It was fascinating in its intolerable cowardice. Its milquetoast guile. The destructive ways of humankind sicken these specialized ants, and they express that in their own destructive ferocity, when not quivering away their time away under an anemic smile.

Me, I have a kind of freedom. The benefits and curses and ghosts. I watch the formicae, and can claim with some justice that I am not one of them. My worry now is that my open rebellion against the Configuration has turned me into .... ?

“To fight the Empire is to be infected by its derangement”--Dick

I know I am infected. It was perhaps inevitable.

Sister Aloysius: “In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from god.”

I have stepped away. I compromise as much as the formicae. Whatever it takes to eat.

I am constantly chiggered by doubt.  Should I steal?   The free meal and warm bed of the defeated is within easy reach: all it would take is some petty crime.

I have not felt another human's touch in so long.  Years.  If I was arrested, at least I would feel the touch of another human being.  However brief.  A tiny scrap of warmth.  A little scrap of touch is invaluable when you dwell in a deep space void of the lonesome.

Have you ever awakened with the chill dew of morning coating your skin?  It is to be dressed in the tears of the dead.

I have become its grotesque counterpoint of the Configuration. Or, more simply, just another victim.

J