"Hate Speech"
The Starbucks in front of the Mardon Hotel was full as
unusual. Across the street from the
patio’s café was Clinton Park, filled with its own flock of patrons. An unkept vagrant man was waving a hand-painted
sign that read “We’ve all been Left Behind!” The homeless man paced back and
forth the length of the coffee shop’s patio.
His shouting of prophetic warnings went unnoticed. The man’s ragged appearance was as invisible
as the very trees in the park about him.
Every other day the Dallas Police would redirect the wild man to another
location, less populated, but always in sight of their drones overhead. Today felt different and his rantings more
animated. Not everyone ignored him, as
the screaming prophet caught the glance of a man in black following him.
Sitting at a patio-table
beside the guard rail closest to the pacing Prophet were two men finishing up
their meeting. His friend’s twitching
upper lip was offended by the prophet’s unbathed odor. It was not as easily ignored as his background
shouting.
“Repent you Sinners!
Stop taking the fact that you are still alive for granted!” His continued yelling
cut the quiet of the spring day. “Eat and Drink all you want, but even you
can’t ignore that the world has changed!”
Suddenly the man flung
his sign behind him and dashed across the street. Dodging a trolley car’s
ringing bell he reached up and began clinging to the rail-wall of the patio. His white-knuckle grip was wide spread as his
face pressed through the bars before the two men at the table. He shouted to the man in black, “Will you be
a martyr with me, brother? I see the
truth in your eyes. You know who The
Anti-Christ is, and soon he’ll show himself to the world!”
About that time
three Police drones overhead sounded their alarms just as two armed officers
tackled the Prophet to the ground beating him unconscious. The Police State’s tolerance was not so
tolerant.
The man in black calmly
asked his friend, “What do you think him?”
The older man with
the offended nose, “Him?”
“Yeah.” They both watched as the Police carried the
limp figure away in cuffs.
“He’s just another nut,
why?” His boss smirked.
“Anti-Christ?” The man in the black wool coat seemed
puzzled.
Shaking his head the
Executive shot back, “Take a number: Ronald Reagan, Bush, Obama, and Trump.”
“…and?”
“-and what? They were all wrong?”
“Ah, so…,” Began the
younger man.
“So? There’s no such
a thing, just another corrupt bogey-man for the masses to be afraid of, and
controlled.” His boss was growing
irritated with the topic.
Changing its
direction, the man in the black top-hat sighed, “Okay. What about ‘The Rapture’, three years ago?”
The older man in his
sixties had had enough, “Really? We’re going there: Alien abduction, CIA, 9-11,
Secret Ops. Who knows, and who cares! People come up missing all the time, Brycin.”
Brycin could not let
it go, “But, the people, Jean?”
Standing up to
leave, Jean reminded his best reporter, “Look.
Just finish the expose on Steven and the Underground.”
Looking back at his
blond Starbuck’s waitress, Brycin dismissively replied, “Sure. I’m waiting on my contact.”
Jean smiled at the
seated man in black, “Red hair, five two, a hundred fifteen pounds; that one?
Brycin nodded, “Well,
her too.”
Jean added as he
hailed for a taxi, “Just ask her out, man.
I want something on my desk this time tomorrow. Deadlines have meaning, Brycin.”
..
