Merry Christmas, Mr. Lorenz (Part I)

“I can’t even beat off alone anymore,” thought Bill Lorenz. He tossed and turned in bed, flipping over and noticing a fellow inmate, Sappy, staring gleefully at him. “That’s enough,” Bill finally said.

He threw off the covers, climbed out of bed, and started banging on his cell door. “Guard!” he yelled.

“Bill, what do you want at this hour?” the guard asked as he was rubbing his eyes. “We’re all trying to sleep around here.”

“Sorry to disturb you PRINCESS,” Bill replied, “but I demand to speak with Dr. Effington.”

“You know she doesn’t come in until 8:30.”

“Call her in!”

“I’d be happy to call in Dr. Effington, Mr. Lorenz. What’s the emergency?”

“I’m unhappy about having a cell mate.”

“But that’s hardly an emergency.”

“It is when you haven’t slept in two days! How can I get re-educated when I can’t get a good night’s rest?!”

“Bill, as you know, you were given a cell mate to help you with your anti-social behavior. If you are having trouble sleeping, we can provide you with medication. Otherwise you will have to wait for Dr. Effington to approve removing your cell mate.”

“I’m not taking those damn sleeping pills! When you see Dr. Effington, tell her that I demand to see her right away!”

“Will do, Mr. Lorenz.”

Bill turned around and noticed Sappy still staring at him. “Keep smiling Sappy,” Bill said, “one day I’ll kick those teeth in.”

***

“Sappy’s a goddamn rapist!” Bill said to Dr. Effington, “why did you send him to my cell?”

Dr. Effington sat in her chair while she sipped on tea. There was no desk to separate the two. No guards. It was just the two of them sitting alone in a small, intimate room.

“His name’s not ‘Sappy’,” she replied, “It’s Jeffrey Rohmer. He has a history of not recognizing personal boundaries and we paired him with you because you are recognized as having a more aggressive personality. From you, he might learn consequences from crossing boundaries. From him, you might learn how to deal with difficult people. You both suffer from antisocial behavior. We had hoped that this would be a learning experience.”

“Sappy is a criminal! I’m not!” Bill stated, “I’m a political prisoner!”

“You engaged in activity that resulted in the deaths of several people. That is criminal behavior in every jurisdiction.”

“I had the right to preserve my ideals!”

“Be that as it may, after you were found guilty, you declined the other forms of treatment for reintegration into society. So you were sent here where you will learn how to live in society. This is how the system works.”

“I oppose the system. It’s brainwashing!”

“The aim of the Revolution was to create a more fairer society. That included changes to the justice and incarceration systems. If you play by the rules, you will be fully reintegrated with a clean slate.”

“Fuck you. The Revolution was bullshit. A difference of opinion is not criminal!”

“I’m not here to argue history and politics, Mr. Lorenz. My aim is to rehabilitate you, no matter how long it takes. Because of the Revolution and the new governing regime, I have all the resources to do it.”

“I take that as a threat.”

Dr. Effington finished her tea and lowered the cup to her lap. “Mr. Lorenz, if sharing a cell with Mr. Rohmer is too difficult, we can have him removed,” she said. “Now that that matter is settled, I would like to continue with your therapy.”

“Not today,” Bill replied, “you’ll have to find someone else to brainwash.”

Effington shook her head. “Very well,” she said, “please let the guards know if you need any reading materials. This need not be a painful experience for you, Bill.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Bill replied, “but you can stick that offer up your ass.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

“dr. sí” part vi

“This is science gone haywire,” J. Robert Oppenheimer said. “I should have never agreed to help Dr. Sí.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” I said to him. “We’ll get you out of here and back to your own time.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he replied.

“Sure it does. It’s science! Anything is possible.”

“We can’t just go ‘back in time’. Doing so would violate all sorts of Newton’s laws. When the quantum field is generated, the individual is transported to an alternate timeline. The laws of physics remain the same and the outcomes in these timelines might be similar to our own, but it’s not the same timeline. Am I making sense?”

“Nope,” I replied. “But we’ll get you as close to your timeline as humanly possible.”

“Forget it,” Oppenheimer replied. “Our best option is to disarm the weapon to prevent this from happening again.”

“How do we do that?”

“There’s a special property in the element of gold that penetrates through space and time. If the gold is removed from the nano chambers, the weapon would be powerless.”

“Sounds like a plan Bob.” I looked over to Mr. Ree. “Do you think the Kill Squad will alter course and find us?”

“I doubt it,” Mr. Ree said. “I don’t even know where we’re at.”

“We’re at the bottom of a dormant volcano,” Oppenheimer said. “They’ll never find us.”

“Shit,” I said. “Then we have to take matters into our own hands. We just need an opportunity.”

Angelika then peered through the opening of our cell door. “James,” she said, “just hold tight, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

“Angelika,” I replied, “I thought you were with Dr. Sí.”

She then reached her hand through the opening to touch my own. “Dr. Sí is no friend of the Ionian Liberation Front. He’s no friend of peace and justice. I don’t want this technology to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Get us out of here and we’ll destroy it,” I said.

“No! Think about it James. With this weapon, we can right all the wrongs. We can undo our violent past and create a better future.”

“I don’t know Angelika.”

“Please, I’ll get you out of here. But let me have the weapon.”

I thought for a second and agreed to her terms. Then she grasped my hand tightly.

“What’s your wife’s name?” she asked.

“Miriam”

“She’s a lucky woman. Perhaps in another time….”

She let go of my hand and closed the opening. I heard some rustling outside, then a few gunshots. After a few moments, the cell door blasted open.

Angelika walked across the rubble wearing a skintight leather suit and holding a Heckler & Koch M27.

“Alright boys,” she said. “Let’s blow the top off this volcano.”

So what if Randy’s been a public menace his whole life?

Look y’all.

So what if Randy “exposed” himself to an undercover cop or frequented massage parlors “owned” by known sex traffickers or “threatened” to shoot up a Home Depot or sold drugs outside of “middle schools”?

This is America. And in America we have this thing called free speech.

Ever heard of it?

But anywho, some of y’all make me sick. You keep saying that it “serves him right” that he’s been denied bail due to “being a flight risk pending an investigation into sexual relations with a minor and the disappearance of several women dating back to the 1990s” by the “Los Angeles Police Department”.

Do any of y’all have a heart?

I met Randy while hitchhiking on I-10 in 1992. He told me “Get in kid, I have something to show ya”. We pulled off into an abandoned rest stop and he told me there was “precious cargo” in the trunk of this Pontiac Firebird. He handed me the keys and told me to meet with a “Carlos” in Phoenix. He also handed me a Ruger 22 and told me to “get rid of the evidence”.

I met with Randy two days later in Barstow and I crashed on his couch. Then he gave me $1500 and said “you’re alright kid”.

So when I was down on my luck, Randy gave me a chance. He put clothes on my back and a roof over my head. Sure he came home drunk some nights and took liberties with my penis. Sure I cried about it every night. And sure it gave me a crippling methadone addiction. But come on! Every man has sucked off their best fried, right?

Randy is a good man.

So despite the numerous victims in the wake of his crimes and misdeeds, Randy deserves your sympathy. Stop being a heartless bastard.

Now as the Los Angeles County DA offers me full immunity in exchange for testimony, stop being a snowflake by moaning about “justice for the victims” and think of poor ol Randy sitting there in county jail. No man deserves that fate.