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Tom returned home to devour himself in literature. Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, James Joyce, local writers printed in Fort Worth Star, plays by Bogasian, in which he took careful notice of each work, great authors he committed to memory. He memorized various passages from The Bard and even took notice of a book his father gave him, A Documentary History of the United States by Richard Heffner. Study, study, study. It’s all he could do while waiting for either his big break or his first published book. He decided to write naturally. It just spilled out of him. Short stories about suburban towns like Euless and Fort Worth’s outskirts like Arlington, which was the most populated city. He studied Law, Science, Geography, Language, German, Linguistics, Computer literacy, psychology, works of Sigmund Freud From Dora. He couldn’t get enough. He was smart to save all his text books from college. John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Ode to the West Wind, Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, Anna Petrovna Buina and other Romantic Lyrics. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin: The Queen of Spades and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He even began smoking to keep up with all the words at night. His lungs started to get at him, and he woke up at nights puking up green slime. This made he turn in a one hundred in eighty degree. Instead of choking down cheap cigarette smoke from the nearby 7-11, he decided to run. He took up jogging. Six miles a day. He went cold turkey with the tobacco craze and began to clear his system out. Six miles a day. He even thought about joining a marathon. The Cow Town.

So why the thievery. Why did he steal in the past. Why was he going to hit the Milan Gallery and take the Head Of Mary. He had not yet. It was only an idea. The thought of having such a priceless figure from a religious sector of the world, kept him up at nights. He stopped by the gallery during the afternoons while looking for work and gazed in at the vault and visited with the international artist Rome Milan. Rome talked with him about selling his work and others, “On big exhibit nights, which happen twice a month, you can sell a forty thousand dollar piece and make a four percent commission.” He flipped through the formulas do find the right might equation to figure the profit. If he sold one paining for forty thousand he’d make: first take point four and multiply it into forty. Forty thousand. Forty times four is one hundred and sixty. He’d make, “Sixteen thousand dollars off a four percent commission.” The lady in the hall of the Milan Gallery was still playing away. They had lost their Russian pupil at TCU. Perhaps he was too busy to play in the hall fulltime. If he sold one painting for forty thousand dollars, multiply by point four and you get, 16,000. That beat risking imprisonment over a five finger discount of the head of Mary.

He needed to get out of his Mother’s house. This would help him develop character. Or as the Germanic tribe says, KARAKTER. The only way out of the house and away from the Minyard pig machine, was money. Hence, he needed a good job.

When Tom stepped on the bus he could still feel the fat on his face from the prior evening of overdoing it at the dinner table. His step father just couldn’t get away eating alone. It was holy to starve. Not even to be polite. He was a guest at the house but he still didn’t want to eat alone. It is not good for the kidneys to eat alone. Eating alone is the worst thing for someone. Thou shall not do such a thing according to the good book.

He drug his the tip of his middle fingers down his nasal lines on his face attempting to smooth off what was not meant to be there. Too many hotdogs, and extra chili sauce on him. He had committed a moral sin by taking in too much. He wanted too much of the world and now he was wearing his sin on his face. In chub.

His stomach was in knots as the six bus reached downtown. He always took number six home and back. Everyone once and awhile he mistakenly hit the four bus and have to walk the extra three blocks where it left off a mile from his home. His daily ritual was efficient for his lifestyle as an artist. First, he run by the gym and suite up for two hours or so of working out, then he apply at the nearby restaurants. There were over a hundred restaurants in the extent of Fort Worth. After every corner there was a Italian, Burger joint or Americana café where they served the most watery burgers, thick, crusty golden fries and the largest plates of spaghetti in meatballs in the south. Tom’s real father, James, was nearly broke. He had opened a wine store off the trucker highway leading out of Fort Worth and toward West or Dallas. The highway was very populated but it was mostly used for travel or industrial trucks. He needed better advertised to pull people out of the outskirts of Fort Worth and onto the Jacksboro which lead out of town. The liquor store most likely to appealed to outsiders or to people who traveled to Fort Worth, to Dallas or toward Denton, which was north of Town. Hence, it was a place for the more shady side of Fort Worth, near Billy Bobs and the saloons. Most likely it was water ground for Alcoholics and restaurant owners, and club owners, that needed a venture on a wine or beer run for parties. Tom never saw his father. He was once a very rich man but had somehow lost it all. His old refinery business, (refined precious metals) had burned down to a freak fire. Every since then, his father was slowly losing money. It wasn’t long until he lost it all. Now, Tom was looking at the colder side of the world. He walked with tense shoulders, and weary positioned head. Only God was going to get him out of this one. The Life, the theatre world and show-business had left him near penniless. He thought about continuing his education and seeking the life of a professor. Only God would grant such a beautiful life, even though is wasn’t too financially rewarding it promised him a chance to profess his knowledge.

Burnett’s choices were near limited. He could finish up his MFA at a nearby college, seek a life in education or run West and hope to be discovered on the silver screen. So far he had tried all three. It was hard bouncing from one path to the next. It looked like education was the only promising path. Life of a being discovered was far too shaky and did not promise a guarantee. Tom was basically shaking in his boots, even though his last pair were wore out working on the highways near Long Beach for committed a crime that was beyond his control. He was convicted for False Charity, for soliciting business. Tom thought he was working for the Police and Sheriff support fund, but in actuality he was working for a bunch of two bit criminals in the business district in Los Angeles. This time he would only work for worthy corporation, places that had license to operate as a place of business.

He was scared Minyard, was so envious he take his own life until he arrived at major success. Why else would of Minyard lost forty pounds. Why would he walk around the house with his shirt off exposing his ripped muscular body. Why would he act jealous and hot headed around Tom. Minyard became a deadly obstacle. He was close to his mother and was an alley, but in the same time he was out to prove something to Tom. What? Why would his stepfather try so hard? What was he trying to do enter an Iron Man contest. He walked ten miles a day. For who? For what? He was once a hefty individual and Tom’s mother still appreciated him just the way he was. Why would he do such a thing? Was he failing Tom?

Tom was starting to fear for his own life. Was his stepfather setting him up? Trying to outdo him to win the love of his own mother? For the love of God, that was his mother he was wanting to take from him? He had to offer him something great for that exchange. A financially secure life, perhaps. That would be the trade off. If Tom could find independence and a woman of his own, he would trade with his step father. My mother for a life of my own. My mother for a beautiful women, good job and independence. Sure why not? Go ahead walk yourself to death, get lean, feel good, take my mother, but you best help me find Independence.

Tom was being tortured at home. Thirty was too old to be left alone. He come home after a long walk to the zoo and back, and his step dad and mother would back out of the driveway with a neighborhood friend to eat a nearby restaurant, and he’d walk up to the neighbor’s truck and then, his step father would back off, leaving him standing alone in the front lawn. Perhaps, it was good thing. A parental move. He needed to be alone, to find independence. Maybe, his step father was trying to help him. Perhaps, he was being too paranoid over the situation. Too cautious. Too weary. He needed to be alone to find her. Somewhere she existed for him. It was God’s plan. He was being tested at home. What decisions would he make to better improve his life. What did God need him to do? “Are y’all going to church?” He asked. His mother rolled down the truck window. The neighbor, a retired principal in the local district by the name of Mr. Sharp, was in the back, his step father drove his pickup. Rumor had it Mr. Sharp was on the sweet side of life. He was into literature and art and was on the tail end of his life of his career, now in retirement. On the other hand, Mr. Sharp always dressed with prestige, and could carry one a charming conversation. He was once a considerate and respectful principal. Tom had weird thoughts. Was Mr. Sharp Gay. He talked like he was gay. Was Minyard, Gay? And if he was Gay what the hell was he doing with his Mother. Was his bi-sexaul, doing his mother and the principal. And if so, why? What did Minyard want to go with Mr. Sharp out to eat. Maybe he was just a friend. Tom was becoming to crazy over it all. He had no friends himself, he was not a long shot from being a hermit, nearly antisocial. If it wasn’t for his Mother, Ann, and Minyard, and the occasional visitor, Mr. Sharp, he’d be completely and utterly isolated.

Home life in the evenings were hell. The night was composed of a series of fighting matches in the back bedroom, were Mom and Step Dad slept. It was not between the couple but rather the five dogs that slept there. Lady, the mutt (cross between Shepard and Rock Riler), Hilde, the Dalmatian, Harly, a calm, black long hair mix with the frame of a black lab, Holly, a lap dog, the meanest of the pack and last, Charlette the house cocker spaniel. The Dalmatain, Hilde, Harly and Charlete never fought. The fighters were Holly and Hilde. They were always biting at each other. Mom would try to separate the feuding dogs and catch a bleed on the end of her finger or on the hand. The dogs kept fighting regardless of the series of “ No, no’s” “No’s” didn’t always work with the pack. Then, when the dogs where calmed they’d be awakened and trampled through the house, following one by one, in a long, organized militant trail, with their tongues hanging out like fools, swinging side to side sniffing the air and the dust on the floor in hopes of one last evening treat. Then, they would be released to “Time to tee tee” as Minyard surrogated the word urinate so repugnantly and nasally unfashionable and crude. “Tee, tee,” he called it, and then, after ten minutes of pissing in the back yard and slurping up more water in prep for the next Tee Tee, trampled back in to the back room to be pet by the two aging owners, or growl at the tension between Hilde and Holly, the lap dog, and the others would clean themselves to slumber.

Months had passed on the inside.

“I’m so proud of you. So proud.” It echoed in the back of Roberto’s head as the racing prisoner fly past half way on fire. “Soooo proud.” Then, it cut off. He didn’t know why his inner voice was speaking to him again, especially during the riot. He was delusional, scared out of his wits on fire.

Then, a green bill blew in the prison cell, soaking with water. He picked it up and began to read, “J 27683286 A. and to the right of Washington’s had the numbers flared in green letters J 2768326 A. The United States of America.” A barrel full of flaming sparks rolled passed the prison cell bars, the bars that kept him from leaving the scene. And what a scene it was. Fire, flames, hollering, roaring like wild beasts. He couldn’t see any of it but he could hear every cracked voice and every intonation of pain. The men were beating one another with sticks and barrels and many were bathed in blood and grit from warring. A government, a new government inside the prison was slowly forming. The last he heard, Jackson had leaked to him about the inside news. He told him some mass murderer from death row was released into the mainstream halls of the prison. Stalking bars to bars, hunting for traders, making people take his side or else. He would go to prisoners trapped in cell, some of the guards were kept in broom closet or even, in solitary confinement. If anyone betrayed him they were locked up in solitary. The Old One was forceful with his way and held many against their wills, forced them to eat their foods and talk like him, in a very thick, hick accent. and interview them face to face, and make them give up their wills to him. Rumor had it he had his ways. The entire prison cell had be overtaken by the revolt. The revolution on the inside had begun. He was walking with the others, talking and communicate. “They call him Nick.” Jackson informed him. “Nick what?” “Saint Nick.” “What does he look like.” “Got a tattoo under his left ear, and a really wrinkly forehead, his a little older than the rest. Some call him Old Man. Oh, and he has the number one tattooed on his chest over his heart, a one like a dollar bill has a one with the spider web looking thing. Weird guy. He can take anyone. He’s slowly taking guard by guard. His got the white collars working the computers to close all the main gates, also, rumor has it he has guards held hostage in the main office room, near the kitchen hall.” Jackson was gone in a flash. Roberto was shaken in his boot. “HE don’t like fancy people or people with a sharp tongue.” That was the rumor about the Old Man, or The One, Nick.

“His eyes are fierce green, and he is rippled in muscle. Tall guy with a thick graying beard and rough tongue. Rumor has it he is fast. Real fast. Fast with his hands, and his feet. Knows how to fight with super speed. Puts people in choke holds. Sucks the life out of them.”

Jackson vanished in the shadows again.

Riots usually are sparked by anger or maddened people neglected of necessity. “Prison food here sucks anyway. They want better treatment. They want better food. Not just hot dogs and stale rolls. There angry with the meds, and the lack of attention, and lack of job training and help to get out. The prisoners feel as if they are being slowly drained of life.” “They are.” Roberto said. “That is why they are prisoners.”

The entire prison was alive with pollution of crackling flames, from the fires lit here and there. Piles of trash burned down the hall. Roberto could smell the ash and paper crinkle in the heat. A shadow, a noisy shadow, formed before him in small cuts to the rhythm of a strumming guitar on the wall adjacent to his cell. Roberto became hypnotized by the snaky dance the fire threw against the concrete stone that lay on the other side of the bars. Heat was slowly crawling toward him, dancing from fiery paper to paper, flaming chunks of wood and pieces of mattress crawling toward his cell. All Roberto could do was write. As the flames grew thicker in chaos, he simply typed away on the old Underwood. Telling the story of Tom Burnet and his adventure with the head of Mary from Pietta.

He sat the old dollar bill next to the typewriter and began to commit to memory it’s design and it’s meaning. Is this freedom. Is this the cost of life? This is what got me in here. The need of this. Damn this old green waste of paper. Then, he read silently, almost calming himself into a hypnotic state, “Federal Reserve Note. The United States of America. This note is legal tender fro all debts public and private. Washington D.C. 10 One. One Dollar. The United States of America. In God We Trust. Of the United states. Annute Coepits. Hovus Ordo Seclorum. The great seal.” And then he stared at the small eighteen printed in a kind green under the shadow of the one and whispered to himself. “Annuit Coepts.” Lost in thought wondering what the Latin meant.

Then, at times, during all the screaming and confusion, Roberto figured he had it lucky. He was starving after all. He had not been released from the cell since the revolt began. Locked in. No way out.

But it was better than freedom in a way. He wasn’t force to leave a life of shame, in some small town laced with Taco Bell’s and Subways here and there, cornered to sit at home alone, who knows why, bad genetics, bad connections with the opposite sex, forced to stay at home and rap his mouth around a Turkey sub and be offered Patch Adams to play on his cheap pawn shop VCR, alone, no girl, no lady, no women, nothing, just him and a bottle of Coralba Sodium free from Italy and a lonely tomato and lettuce with turkey and ketchup. Alone, with his story, his ideas locked in a prison.

It was okay to be sorrowful and guilty. It was okay to be wrong, and to know that he might be forgiven. Mistakes were a part of life. He felt like one. At one time in his life, Roberto hated the world and was very angry with God. He was tempted and failed. He kept falling, and falling until he woke up one morning, walked to the YMCA and returned home to give in to his Step Father, fight over something trite like a boiled rotisserie chicken, rum dumb ditty and green beans, Minyard had kicked him out and own his own. The next thing he knew he was at a Chicago Grill downtown near his home, making phone calls, long distance phone calls to every one of his friend to find shelter from the streets. Hence, he was on the street, alone, and only one friend on the way. This was a few months after his first hold up.

“Why is it called hold up?” He asked T. Brown. Brown was his friend from Dallas, Texas, that lived alone, with his cat, gold fish and a string of books by the author who wrote with titles like The Red Badge of Courage. Brown didn’t know the answer. Tom figured it had something to do with holding up time, or, “Holding up your hands over your head.” It was some restaurant lounger, or cousin to the cook, hanging about answering various questions to Roberto. This was before his arrest.

Tom decided to go in for the kill. Snatch the head of Maria from the Milan Gallery. He planned it for a Sunday afternoon exhibit. It would be busy. Very busy. A movie star from Hollywood, Jane Seymour was showing up to show her twenty thousand dollar a paintings. Rome was showing them for her, and preparing a big sale. Tom lost the security guard job and decided to stake out the joint the previous Sunday for the Seymour hit. He walk in with the bag, and head straight to the back in uniform. Next, he walk into the vault, removing the ropes and stash the head in his large, hiking backpack and dart out. One, two, three. Simple as that. No sweat.

That day, he rented a room in the nearby Worthington Hotel in Down Town. He purchased a pair of binoculars at the pawn shop and ordered two large pizzas. It would be an all day hunt. He’d scope out the joint, checking and counting how many spectator showed to view Rome’s, Henrietta’s and Jane’s work. Jane would not be there on stake out day. She’d show next week. Tom multiplied the turn out double fold, hence, he added twice as many to the assumed Seymour event. Since she was a movie star he figured the place would be back. He picked up a Entertainment Weekly and read a small column about Seymour’s paintings. It claimed she was the next big artist in her field, something like Vincent Vangough, or Picasso. Her work usually encompassed a single figure, human that seemed to be lonely and slightly disfigured, or ill developed. Her work was sad, but slightly uplifted with a eerie charm. Tom took a break. His back was cracking do to the fact that he stiffed up looking through the binoculars and all. He was soar between the shoulder blades into the lumber region and even his ass was aching. He was pooped. The pizza man arrived on time, 2:39 PM. The gallery occupied around twenty or so people. No signs of Seymour stuff looking to customer attractive. She wasn’t as popular as Rome and Beck’s ingenious sculpture of naked bodies making up faces. She was mostly in the gallery due to her name as a film actress. Hell, she worked with Christopher Reeves in that film about time travel. What was it called. Ding. Ding. It was the pizza man. Damn. Already.

“Be seventeen ninety nine even.” “Thanks. You take ATM right.” Tom gave him his Chase card and tipped the Italian man with a trimmed goatee and floppy red hat, eighty bucks. Then, ran down the hall and picked up a few sodas, one Coke and one Diet Coke. He had to watch the figure. Later, he set up camp at the window, piercing through the binoculars and checking out how crowded the gallery got. Solid Gold head. Head of Mary. Man if I possessed that I’d. . .I’d. . .what the hell would I do with the head of Mary. Where would I put it. How would I sale it. Tom didn’t even want it for the money. He wasn’t going to trade it in. He was going to melt it down, or tuck it away in the corner of the earth someplace, hide if from the world. For some reason, and he didn’t know why, perhaps it was the same intention the nut had when he chipped Michael Angelo’s sculpture of Mary holding Jesus. That was where it came from. He wouldn’t harm the head, but simply possess it, hid it from mankind. Something that perfect, that simple and holy, and graceful was not right to look at. It was a masterpiece like Mona Lisa or the Angelo’s David. It said something to him. The first time he gazed at her solid gold head, perfectly round, smooth, with her eyes looking downward. He could imagine Jesus laying in her arms. She was silent, no tears, series, not overtaken, but accepted and mature about his death. It was the head of Mary in gold form. Holy. It was like capturing the arch of the covenant or the holy grail.

He could see a couple gazing at it around one of the Ballet painting by a Czech painter. Tom forgot the painter’s name, but he did beautiful sensuous paintings of Ballet dancers in real to life poses. He was a man of verisimilitude and concentration in dictating the art of a ballerina at rest or play. The couple stared in at the vault. There eyes were wide, faces aglow, fixated in a calm trance with little Mona Lisa smiles. It was as if they saw something that was not meant to be seen, or experienced. Another couple joined behind them. A gold glint nearly spewed off their faces as the head pulled them into the vault. This one is going to be a tough snatch, Tom thought and lowered the binocular and sank his teeth around a double layered mozzarella with extra thick crust, pepperoni, sausage and every vegetable topping known to mankind. He swooshed down the Diet Coke and turned the TV set on in the hotel room. Tom took one last peek out over the twentieth floor, and sipped up the last of the corn syrup and high concentrated fructose. CNN blared something about the Sistine Chapel. Yep. Just as he suspected. God was in on this one. It wasn’t a coincidence that CNN was blaring a piece on the Catholic Church in Roma, Italy.

Spoil was lonely. The snow had piled up and against the side of Hairison house like the slow rising of the ocean during the ice age. His time was of the cold. Spoil was raised in the north, and later in his life he decided his parent, Hank and Hilary Spoil, moved to the town of Heat, far south of Cold. Spoil’s fondest memory was swimming in the town’s water tower on hot summer days. He hook up with friends, Kiel, and Winston. They head out to discover that the water tower in heat was almost always dry. “Dried up again Spoil.” Winston blurted with a half lit cherry from a cigar in his mouth. He’d still his father’s cigar’s and pretend to be a sergeant. He’d take a few puffs and try to share it with us, “Hell no man. I don’t want that shit. Too heavy. I smoke Marlboro.” Hank flared up his nostrils when he got scared. He thought Winston was going to make him smoke it.

Spoil missed his friends and the town of heat. Cold town didn’t offer much. There was barely even a movie theatre, more less a shopping mall or a good place to eat. No fancy restaurants in this town, like Big City, or Fast Lanes West of Cold Town.

What you pay for is what you get. There is no way out of that fact of life. You reap what you so. Roberto knew this, Tom lived by this motto, even though he made the mistake in his youth that certain things, like courteous phones in hotel lobbies or airports, broken bits of cookie crumbs in the sample bin at grocery stores, chocolate mints up at the front at the restaurant’s cash registers, tortilla chips and hot sauce before a Mexican meal, a news magazine behind the seat in coach or first class on an airliner, the green paper at news stands, buy one get one free on packs of Marlboro lights, candy during Halloween, Put Put golf pencils, (the kind without the eraser), words on paper and Education in Europe. On the other hand, Mr. Spoil knew that nothing was for free. Even though one could not pay cash, or check, for these items and services they still had to pay with another form of payment, e.i., with their body, mind, and in some cases with their spirit.

The small room Mr. Spoil occupied was becoming more and more homey as the days passed. Spoil routine, getting up before the crack of done, taking out the trash, mixing up some pancake mix, frying up a cake or two for breakfast, reading the morning cartoons, gardening and then, heading out to town to shovel snow and shuffle about with his new friend, Ted Rogers and his Husky with one blue and one brown eye, Matty, became as familiar and set in his heart as the back of his hand. Ted and his four legged partner were stuck together by the hip nearly. Ted had thick Coldian accents and smoked American Spirit Ultra Lights, “I’m trying to quit as soon as I get over this girl that dumped me last year.” “How old you now Ted.” “I’ve retired. In my mid fifties.” “Why did she leave ya?” Spoil asked heaving a two pound scoop of icy snow and dirty, blond slush. “She died.” He answered kicking a block of blackened frozen from a ice clump of toward the side of the road. The snow turned a slight yellowy tar color and at times it looked as if someone had urinated in it, or dumped yellow dye over the top of the piles along the main road into town. They usually cleared away snow amounting before gas stations and convenient stores, tow truck, offices and other places of business. Most of the yellowing was caused by pollutions from cars and weathering from nature, mix of dirt, dust and carbon monoxide altered it’s original pure white state. That’s what Spoil assumed. “Figured someone pissed in this, huh Ted?” Ted wiped his brow and stared up at the azure doom that hovered over his and the towns head, awaiting the release the next icy flood snow flakes.

“How do you like living with Hairison?” Ted asked sitting the snow plow shovel down on the tiny cliff of snow overhanging a shadow stretching toward the other side of the shoulder of the road. “It’s okay. His daughter moved in. She’s just out of surgery.” “What was wrong with her.” Spoil took a bit of time before answering. He peered into a ray of the sun and then spat out, “It’s a little private. She didn’t want it spreading around town.” “So you like living there, right?” “Yeah. Its okay.” A moment arrived. A chill lifted a few hairs on the back of Spoil’s neck. “I don’t feel like me when I am there.” “Why not?” “Not my house. Not my food, or place of life. I feel like someone else.” “You pay for what you get.” Ted said adjusting the snow shovel against the tiny cliff of ice and snow. “What do you mean by that?” “I don’t’ know. Just said it. Guess we got two more hours of this shoveling shit until we had’ back to town for burgers. Sonic sound good?” “Yep. I don’t care, a burger is a burger.” Spoil gazed up at the sun as it slowly maneuvered behind a dark gray snow cloud far in the distant snow sprinkled sky. A shadow cast down upon the two men and the sleeping dog. “Ole Matty is tired huh?” “Yeah.” Ted returned. “Still on the poetry?” “Yep. You bet.” “Hows it doing.” “Well, good. I sent a new poem in a few weeks ago. Same place that offered me puplication. Their still interested.” He noticed he said pupli instead of public- for publication. To be publicized is for the public to read the material that the author has printed. Hence, public. “That’s great. You’re the next famous writer in this small town. Cold town hasn’t spawned any poets yet.” “Thanks.” Spoil took a moment to register his thoughts, yawned and cleaned his front teeth with his tongue. “I know why I write now.” “You do?” Ted hinted he wanted him to continue with the explanation with a raise of his left eyebrow. Ted looked like a hungry vampire, spooky, with wide eyes and a curious position with his head. Almost leaned in like a tiger to his prey and to suck the answer right out of him, “I’m angry. The worse of all sins. Angry as hell. Angry at friends from Junior High and old girlfriends that I can barely recall their names. Angry at the grocery store for not having my brand of cereal, or not getting my way in life. In the most dangerous direction of my anger is with Him.” He pointed up toward the passing clouds above. “I’m angry at our Father.” “Why?” “Cause I felt skipped over. I guess I felt neglected.” “Why. You seem pretty normal to me.” “Exactly. Normal. Who wants to be ordinary. I don’t. Never did. But every knew me as that. Normal Mr. Spoil and his normal way. Every day, average Joe. Mr. Spoil, one of the many nobodies of the world.” Spoil got up and stretched his arms side to side like Samson once did when cracking the great columns that once held him after Delilah betrayed him. “We find reasons to accept ourselves as second best, or third best, or fourth, or tenth, or hundredth or three thousand and hundredth and so on. We let the mistakes pile up in our lives. The times when we turn back, fear God, and go home and settle in for second best. I’m second best and I hate it. I never won anything in life. Why is that?” “I don’t know. Maybe God wants you to have what we all have?” “What. What do I have. I own nothing. I live in someone else’s house. I eat what they give me to eat. They chose for me. Life is about the choosing. That is what makes it worthwhile. I can never go on a vacation. I can never drive up to the store and pick out a outfit to wear for an evening that I never can afford to go on. I’m looking to be. . .well, no homeless. I never amounted to anything. And now, all I have are these poems that might or might not get published.” “But you’re a storyteller. You have a gift. That’s more than most of us.” “Yep. A poor poet and getting poorer. I got to change. All my life I wanted to get discovered and published like Ginsberg, or Dylan Thomas, or Frost. You know. Live the life. Like Hemingway. Sip coffee at some café in Paris and find inspiration from gazing at paintings in the Louvre. Or visit Italy and walk the cliffs of Ireland. Feel free to travel any weekend I chose.” Ted gave him a little frown and nearly shamed him. “At least get paid for what I do. I’m nearly sixty years old and I shovel shit for a living.” “Hey. You got a warm bed to sleep in.” “It’s not MY bed. It’s not even my pillow.” “God had nothing. Christ gave up all his material, and his followers too, gave up what they owned to follow his word.” “But I never got to taste the riches of the world.” “Liar. Everyone had a taste or two. You live in the most gifted country, the most blessed land of all lands and here you are complaining cause. . .” “Cause I don’t have enough money to fall back on, or retire.” “But you got those words. Those words cost something. You’ll get published Spoil. Don’t worry about it. It’ll work out and when it does you’ll understand it’s been all worthwhile. Giving it all up will make sense one day.” “I’m standing here shivering in the ice cold, and you say this is worth the words I come up with to fit into some poetry magazine for rich ass holes to ponder over and use as conversation pieces.” “One day Spoil you’ll give it all up. The lucky ones have less to leave on. It all piles up to nothing anyway.” Spoil picked up the snow shovel and began to clear off the road. “once someone told me God shows you his love with the pain you feel. You believe that.” “God does work in mysterious ways.”

One truth of nature and man. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Mr. Spoil knew this. It was his weakness to women. Ann knew this. She had won Mr. Spoil over. The holidays were approaching with God Speeds. Seven days till Christmas and today was the seventh day of the countdown. Ann had baked three pumpkin pies, two pecan and a special sweet snack made of sugar stirred butter with chocolate coated, walnuts and saltine crackers. The turkey was still slowly heating to a plumb juicy finish tucked away in the back of the new oven Mr. Hairison had picked up several months beforehand. The special sweet snack was Ann’s new invention. She bake them up for the doctors in the ER room and store them in the mini fridges in the break tan and blue break room for the nurses and doctors. It was cheap and easy to make. Sometimes she gave them to her patience, of coarse if the doctor approved. She never did anything without the doctors signature. She mostly handed it out to patience that were on release or headed back home. “Special taste huh.” Mr. Spoil looked up with a pair of two rose healthy cheeks and crisp smile, “Salty and Sweet. Best cracker I’ve ever had.” She didn’t have a name for it but she could describe the ingredients. “Haven’t named them yet.” Said Ann. “Once Again, Ann, sweet as can be.” Spoil said leaning over the glossy table mat to munch down another chocolate covered buttery saltine. “Never had these chocolate crackers before. You must be a genius Ann. A culinary’s gift of the world.” Ann dusted her hands on her Red Robin apron covered in holly imprints and light brush strokes of wall paper green. “Lower in fat. The crust is heavy in most snacks, this crust is light. It’s salty and sugary with a light crust.” “Well, I don’t know if this belly can swell any more. Worked many years to get it at the size it’s currently ate’.” Ann cracked a warm smile as she walked over to the table top to light up another Angel candle decorated with gold trim and gold silver ribbons.

The flame on the candle flared up, the cold air made it rise higher toward the ceiling, the flame seemed to large for the small wax candle purchased at the local Dollar Store. Mr. Hairison let it burn through the night until morning came. The candle flame dimly lit the kitchen. Spoil was tucked away in this bed snoring with his journal labeled Poetry on the cover laying on his large, round belly. Hairison was conked out on his side drooling onto his pillow dreaming of his new snow plow machine that he may purchase at the local Sam’s outlet hardware store. And the last person, the daughter, Ann had passed out next to a half full bottle of Crown Royal, sleeping as silent as a mouse, nibbling at the air dreaming of a tall dark handsome soldier that had just returned from war, lonely, and desperate for affection. The dream was set on a cruise liner far out in the pacific near the Hawaiian islands.

No one was in the kitchen. A blue glow sipped in the kitchen window. The moon, whatever it’s size and shape was masked behind a puffy snow colored cloud that glowed coin silver with a silver lining. The lawn grass was thickly covered in snow and ice. A blue haze was landing on the front lawn, from somewhere in the heart of Old Man winter. He had painted a perfect picture for any passerby.

The kitchen was a Kodak scene. There were four cards on the round table near the sink, the one Spoil ate his cereal on in the morning. It held three presents wrapped three kinds of wrapping paper: one neon blue, candy cane red and green labeled Dad, the other labeled Mr. Spoil, it had green and white with strips and one blue and gold.

The candle flame flickered with a lonely charm, performing it’s dutiful dance alone with no one to see. Inviting an elf or even Santa, to peak in but with disappointment. Mr. Spoil had ate all the cookies Ann left out with a glass of milk.

Everyone snored as the night covered them to a deep sleep.

The kitchen was now filled with a golden yellow light sparked by single Christmas candle that Ann had set up for Saint Nick.

The candle, still alone and dancing, lit the scene with a perfect, melodic tone. Everything was in place and tuned to it’s most finite state. On the wall, opposite of the kitchen table the Christmas candle, with an golden angel imprinted on the side projected a fleet of mysterious figures that jangled about the kitchen cabinets, window shutters, refrigerator, back door, ceiling and every part of the kitchen including the kitchen sink itself. The candle spawned a unforgettable flickering upon the wall that topped any Christmas parade or New Years Eve Firework display on any main street in any big city across the state lines. If only they could see how beautiful it was. Sleep had taken them far under. The sight was present but unseen.

Tiny shadowy stick figures danced in a various of geometric outlines across the kitchen and the window overlooking the front blue lit lawn. The scattering troupe of wavy lines produced by the shadow dancing men currently carving into the wall performed a peculiar allegro paced ballet twists in turn and jumped throughout the room. It was as if the Nut Cracker had arrived, in shadows on the walls of Mr. Hairison’s kitchen, or the sprites in Midsummer Night’s Dream had gathered to whisper and plan for the festive dinner approaching Spoil, Hairison and his daughter Ann. In wavy lines, curving into tree branches in which scrapped against the wall, swaying back and fro to the rhythm of butterfly wings, the candle commanded it’s shadow puppets to the sound of thousands of dripping tapering spikes that clung with dear life, melting toward oblivion, clinging with existence to the underline edges of the trim that surrounded the small ice covered cottages spreading blocks apart into the hilly streets of main street. The flickering and dancing flame continued until it reached the bottom of the wick to snuff out as the digital clock on top of the refrigerator clicked to 12:00AM. Then, the shadows fell silent and still and the blue light spilled into he kitchen. Christmas was approaching in four days. The first day of winter had arrived. The only ornament missing in this holiday scene of Cold Town was the warm and gentle voice of young cheery carolers, which were now far off, away from this chilling weather, singing in a warmer, more pleasantly populated suburban town, with healthy voices asking for wishes and demands like carolers so skillfully do, singing door to door, visiting the chain of identical houses, and the next chain, and the next, and the next, caroling a message to the heavens, singing to the world “Gloria.” Then, a neighborhood made from plywood and cement arrives and on the front porches of the string of beautiful pink houses, as the song goes, of this Luke Warm town not too far from Balmy County which is near perfect weather, like the spring time tropics, of Climate City, which is where Mr. Spoil was headed off to in his slumbering, deep unconsciousness and the dead of the winter sleep of little old Cold Town.

Nick wasn’t going to get caught alive this time. He had set up camp in the cafeteria, breaking all the locks to the lunch and dinner freezers and preparing meals for his followers. The prison food usually consisted of sausage links, mash potatoes, green beans, various beans, macronni, dinner rolls and greens for salads. The death row freezers usually had the same foods but the last meal selections were fanciers with items such as shrimp scampi, a variety of fish dishes, steaks, casseroles, and fancy deserts like ice cream, brownies and apple cobbler. Food wasn’t the highest priority in a place were man was punished for ungodly and sinful acts. Food was dished out in smaller portions to the revolutionaries due to the fact that no new meals would be provided unless the outside authority responded cooperatively. The new message to the police force awaiting over the fence line was to send better foods, stuff like pizza, steaks, hamburgers and beer. Also, Nick wanted a gas generator to run more power and other supplies consisting of stereo system with music written by Johnny Cash. Also, he had a long list of medical supplies and other necessities like cigarettes, toilette paper and fancy dish ware, most likely just to piss them off. He also asked for a DVD player along with lengthy list of films staring Arnold Swarzenegger including Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer and the string of militant combat films. Nick was a Swarzenegger fan and he had the biceps to prove it.

Later, that night Nick wrote a second message, including lists, with other movie titles with DVD director cut selections, and sent it out to authorities with a beaten but alive hostage. The note was typed up on laser printer paper found in the main office. It was sparkled with splatters of blood and pinned on the hostage’s guard shirt. The guard was beaten with Billy Clubs and handcuffed. Nick didn’t hurt him too badly. He only had him beat for a few minutes so the police would understand he was somewhat civilized even though he was dead series.

One day till Christmas had arrived. Tom was smashed with the festivities down town. There was a light parade a mile long, something rare for the town of Worth. Also, there were Christmas lights decorated on every corner. Even the bank building was outlined in green and red. At the end of the parade Santa slowly rolled passed on a float composed of Styrofoam and cottony, fluffy puff. Tom didn’t know the name of the white snow material that was used for the mock of Santa’s hut and sleigh but he called it cottony, fluffy puff. He only had a couple of thousand in the bank and hotel fair was rocketing. He had a few days before hitting the Milan Gallery. It was closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas. He didn’t have anyone to go to for Christmas day. No lover. No mother or father. No real family They were far off, North celebrating by themselves in North Maine, not too far from Canada. His Grandfather had passed away years ago and his siblings had moved to the outskirts of town and he didn’t want to become encumber them with the weight of his sins. He was an evil man now, or at least he thought of himself as evil. Thievery is not a good life. It is not an occupation that you learn well in school or even in College. You can’t take Thievery 101. It is a trade that is picked up in the black market from Gypsies or other thieves that have mastered the skill. If, Tom wanted to he could make a few hundred dollars during the season merely poising as a homeless man. It was one of his favorite tricks. All you had to do was walk on your heels and take tiny steps and mumble. All he had to do was buy some thrifty clothes at a thrift store, dirty them up and walk around on the side walk with a snotty nose and looked confused. He saw this one man walk on his heels and count backwards, a complete nut. He tried it one season at a airport and made a good two hundred even. All he did was balance on his heels and shake his head as if he had cerebral palsy or another debilitating disease that would catch the hearts of the good. It was low but it paid the hotel bill for the night. All he did all day, was go without food and walk on his heel muttering nonsense, counting help focus his thoughts and even get him really lost in his actions. He’d mix up numbers and pause and grunt like monkey, bounce on his heel, wipe his runny nose, grunt some more, and finally, open his hand and money would arrive. Right in his palm. A twenty. Sometimes a fifty. He mostly scored fives and hand full of dollar bills, but nevertheless, the money arrived. By the end of the holiday season he had enough dough to put him up for the week, not too mention a light grocery bill. Tom decided not to stoop so low this holiday. His last hit was a bank he had cracked open with a tribe of thieves up north in the big city. They climbed through a ventilation shaft and right into the outer side of the vault. The thieves, at the time, calling themselves rookies at the business, popped the vault with mild explosives, putty high-tech stuff used in the military during Desert Storm. Some thief named Tarry had copped it under the black market on some other gig while out of the county in Iran, or in the slums black market sections of Kuwait, back when the terrorist spied on our guys and handed out black market drugs, LSD, pot, smack, cocaine, and other illegal items, such as weaponry, bomb making devices and plans to make bombs, as roomer had it. The climb through the ventilation took a few hours alone. It was a smart, quick and sweet gig. All five thieves, just like all five senses, all had a separate job to do. Sarge was in charge of the sixth sense, he knew when the heat came and went. Some say he was psychic, those that knew him well, knew he carried a mobile broad band radio unit, FM/AM and P.I.G.M. (to our small thief click, that meant police officer radio frequency) in his inner jacket hidden pocket, hooked the earpiece in his ear unawares to everyone and everyone unawares to him and listened to the fuzz make house calls and other cat burglar attempts in the city district and even further areas. Some say he had they puppy earpiece hooked up to the world wide web, and could tell us what F-15 eagles where doing over in Iraq, or by a nearby Air Force base. Sarge was the legend around here and everyone worshipped his every dexterous attempt to create a larger mythic Greek God status of cat burglary on the block. Sarge was beyond a pro, hell some had it he was MP before his Desert Storm job was caught off by special intelligentsia back in the early 90’s and before he turned on the political types, the balled, fat heads as he called them, and fell from the eagle and lay in the shadow of it’s massive wing. Sarge’s entire team, that cold and miserable Manhattan night, had to lube up with axel grease to squeeze through and flop out of the shaft, to skillfully land, in a New York Minute, like the catty cats they were, before the eight inch vault door.

No one was hurt. The explosive clay putty barely made a sound. It was loud, but not to an extreme degree, the decibel was not powerful enough to be heard on the street far below. No one could really pick up on it since it was in the big city and activated at four in the morning. The main thief, the head man, Wes, or Sarge, due to his Sergeant background and mythical status, was trained in the military; special forces unit, high up, no one talks about his past, in the Army and nearly became a lifer but decided to quit the services, plus he was caught red handed, literally red handed, after he assaulted an officer in a bar over a gambling bet, and rumor had it the fat skull he cracked had called his mother, “A Jewish whore,” and fell into crime, after he was sentence jail time, of a year, for assaulting a officer of the law, undercover he was, that night getting drunk after a Marijuana bust, the entire house was literally laced with pot, the walls, the ventilation units, everything, and finally Wes Sarge, was released, for “Good Behavior and well, . . .” plus his purple hearts had shorten his stay at the Texas Prison; Huntsville. Sarge earned his name for escaping three times, heading up to a nearby guard bar, getting drunk and breaking back in to Huntsville, while the guards were unaware, but recognized him at roll call, due to the fact he had picked their wallets and bought them a few drinks, and hell, shot the shit with a few, before the next day, “That was you. My god. Inform the warden. I was having drinks with this Son of a wise cracker last night.” The warden was damn impressed, “Whats your name Sergeant.” “Wes. But the boys have to call me Sarge.” “Like the sergeant.” Wam. The warden hit the floor cold after Sarge layed him out with a twist of the torso and an elbow to the cheekbone. Jijitsu style. “No after my last name. Sarge. Mr. Wes Sarge to you.” Meaning said he hated the military for getting busted his first time back from Iraw, at customs. Afterwards, after he layed the warden out cold with one swing, Wes, went by the nickname Sarge. “That’s what they called my Peepaw. And he was meaner than black shit, and a son of a sailor man.” Sarge was a big man with a downward snout nose. Some called him Weevil, instead of Wes, and rumour had it he liked that name, due to the fact he could vanish from a Texas Prison, and grease through the shit pipes, like that of the Curculiionoidea, the weevils, that are destructive to the preciousness of the earth and so was Wes “Weevil” Sarge, the meanest and smartest cat burgler in Manhattan. Mostly muscle, Sarge is. He taught Tom everything he knew. He was from the big city so he had a lot of practice at using his snout to dig up from the vaults that held the precious metals of the city. Tom made his fortune mulling. He was the sneakiest heroin mule in Mexico, he wasn’t Mexican, but rumor around town, was that he could eat over seven balloons of black tar, and three large Enchiladas, with sour cream and chives but no red peppers and no green sauce. Green sauce gave him the runs. . And the last thing a mule wants is the farts. Especially when the farts could be intoxicating, literally.

The team, Sarge and his three buds, like a gritty, earthy platoon of weevils, Nick, Mr. Jane, The Eyes, (good with scopes from Germany, laser devices and excellent with deactivating security cameras) and Phil, The Touch, rolled out of the back, or slide through the ventilation system with two million hard cash. He was in charge for planning the escapes and the break-ins. It was his idea to go through the ventilation system, rumor had he nearly possessed a PHD in architectural design from NYU.

The total from Sarges team. Two million cold cash was the underground rumor. They rolled the bank bills into cylinder shapes, rapped it up in long translucent tubes made custom from plastic rubber covered, PVC pipe, lubricated with axel grease, or ivory dish washing soap, and hooked at end with fine horse hair rope, greased with the same combo, around each tube’s end, pulling it through, one by one in a paced rhythm tube at time. The ivory soap was only used if they ran out of axel grease, and plus it was a good agent to clean up with. Each tube was no longer than three feet in length. About one meter, for Phil. He went by the metric system in measurements. Phil leaved in England most of his teenage years, hence, the educational background and wise ass mouth. “Hey, when we get home, this shit would be slippery enough to couple with a playboy and call to Phone Babes.” Phil said, as Sarge covered his mouth with a handful of axel grease. “Shove it.” Sarge said wiping the rest of the grease off using Phil lips as a makeshift towel. They were dry and big enough to do so. Phil had a ethnic background. No body could tell where he was from. Romor had it he was bi racial and mix of well, all the breeds, including Vietnamese, Native American, and Cuban. But that was just the word around town. Who know what he was. He looked like a fat prince with inflated lips. They decided to call the special tubes “Meters.” They had used this crafty technique on three bank hits beforehand. It went well. No leaks, and well, the media didn’t figure out who did. Before every hit, the Ears, Rusty Cambells, would set up, from his office, a pipe gig, for plumbing, or city water department, routine flush outs. This meant the sewage systems had to be re-piped. Rusty never left his office, or chair, and was given thirty seven percent. He was very good in math, and never got chipped out of any of the winnings. Rusty used his mouth to get us in the backdoors, and through the vents, and was well, connected to media, to prevent any leaks or to persuade any journalist from catching on to the “piping truth” of the hit. The idea for naming it a single Meter came from when Sarge was just a teenager, pick-pocketing and busting parking meters open with sledge hammers. It really didn’t have to do with the size of the loaded pipe or its worth. Every pipe was over a grand in cold cash.

About the meter.

Each parking meter on the street, back in the golden days of pick pocketing and beer running snack bars, if busted open, the parking meter, could hold up to hundred dollars or so of coined money. Because of the street name for ‘parking meter’, for putting money in the meter, they tagged each cylinder as, “A Meter”. Stealing hundred dollar bills, each “meter”, or hollowed out cylinder, a meter long, could hold up to a thousand dollars in cold cash. Hence, each meter was around or over a grand.

Each cylinder looked very similar to a cylinder used in pvc pipe; when installing plumbing, but it was translucent, so each thief would know exactly which pipe was packed full of hundred dollar bills and which where not. Plus the light weight plastic pipes, if greased, ran smoothly through the ventilation shaft. The pipes where not very thick, and light weight, each pipe was a perfect vehicle for transporting the money in a swift manner. Each pipe, worth a thousand dollars in bills, were pulled through on a pulley system carrying filled pipes and returning empty pipes. It was like a subway system, only instead of people, the pipes held money. It took over a hundred pipes exiting from lobby and into the ventilator shaft and meeting the thieves on the other side, in the adjacent lobby, where the exterior glass, overlooking the street below, was cut out and the alarm deactivated. Coming and going, the pipes slowly filling with rolled bills, carrying the poor thieves into and up the latter of success. The bank was on the thirtieth floor of a huge skyscraper overlooking Central Park. Sarge’s team used a window cleaner unit to pulley up thirty floors until they reached the Bank One Level. Sarge used window cutter to chisel in, the entire team, dressed in swat gear, climbed in without hesitation or a hint of doubt that they would escape Scot-free, without the trace of a scratch and Sarge’s team did it. The hit was completed with full successful. It was a fool proof plan according to Sarge and his men. Tom figured he’d join them, sense, Sarge was once with the military and all. They were also equipped with infrared goggles and small head sets connected to mini-satellites for quick and clear communication. Clarity was a must on this hit. These guys were top notch professional out to hit a long lasting treasure. Two million in hard cold cash.

Tom was still living off the Meter hit. He was only back up on the run, so he was cut a easy hundred thousand. It lasted him only two years. He traveled on the money and used it to see the world, and he developed a expensive prescription drug problem. He got into mental drugs, like Zoloft, various anti-anxiety medication and even spent a few thousand on narcotics for relaxation like Xanex and valium. He put most of his money in stocks. Pepscoe and toilette paper. Tom figured every had to shit, and toilette paper was not a bad stock. He heard from one broker that mutual funds was not a bad bet. Tom threw away three thousand alone in that category. The stock market was so shaky after the eleventh that he lost most of it. It was nearly like black Tuesday for many high stock brokerage types. He decided to lock the rest of the money on a International bank, in a safe deposit box, on an island in Jamaica. He saved around ten thousand and decided not to get access to it unless he arrived in person. Tom did not allow himself to touch any of it, no ATM card, no checks and no way to reach the money from long distance. That way, if he ran out later on, he could simply fly off to Jamaica and spend the ten thousand any way he like, and get some crappy job and eventual retire. He never believed he could blow nine hundred thousand dollars in two years. But he did it. Many of the other thieves that heard about this two year spending spread called him a genius of his own kind. A pure genius. No one in his right mind could spend that much money. No one in his right mind. But Tom was far out of control. In one weekend he flew off to Vegas to gamble away over a hundred thousand dollars on the roulette table. And never did he once bet on black, nor the number seven. It was odd. It was as if Tom didn’t want the money. It was as if he hated money. Despised it. It made him sick to his stomach. He liked to struggle. Part of him liked to work. But he was far too rich now. Far too filthy now, to work. He didn’t have to lift wallets any more, or shop lift. Now, all he had to do, was fly around the world to different tropical islands, drink, buy whores, settle in a hot whirl pool, drink tropical rum, and buy expensive French and Italian diners. He was getting fat of his own success and the success was from being a thief. How could an evil of the world make someone a success. He felt ashamed of himself. One morning he awoke on some Virgin Island. He didn’t even know the name. “Who the hell am I?” He asked the mirror. “You’re a thief, Tom. A evil thief. And your going to burn in hell for this. Your killing her. Your killing her. Give it up.” One morning, after a long walk along the beach, he went up to his room and took a bubble bath. Something about his skin didn’t feel right, he no longer felt good. His eyes ached, his head throbbed, his soul was leaking out his ear. Something inside of him said he’s lose it all. Everything he had thieved from the world. He stood before the mirror and stared at his body, his chest and his shoulders, his arms and neck. He had bought a membership next to the hotel, plus the spa, he was staying in top rate Hilton, Tom looked down at his sculpted body and realized he had stole that as well. “You pay for what you get.” It wasn’t him. It was someone else. He had stole someone else’s body, someone else’s life, someone else’s ideas and was living like a king, but not the kind his God had chose for him, but a king that only existed in his mind, only existed on paper, only existed at this moment. Really, Tom was a homeless guy, really begging on the street, really walking on his heels, with real snot running down his chin, really begging for his life. Then, he turned away. “God what have I done.” Don’t stop now. The voice said. If you stop now, I’ll take more than your riches away. I’ll take everything you got. “Everything.” Tom screamed at the mirror. “Everything?” Everything. Don’t stop now, or I’ll take everything you got. More than money. I’ll take it all. Tonight would be his last night at the Worthington. His next plan would to shack up at a motel on the outskirts of town. He take a cab in a few days before New Years, and walk around town, until he was ready to hit the Milan Gallery. He change appearances at a back conference room at the downtown hotel. Dress up in his normal security guard outfit that the Milan gave him, to guard the precious painting and the head of Mary from the Pieta. It would be the most evil hit of all, and the most worthy. He had second thoughts about it, and figured God would prevent him from lifting it. But his belief was shaky, especially after his mind was made up. He pretended a thick rain cloud, would cover his actions from God, even though God wasn’t proud of his sinful ways. He decided to hit the Gallery around nine pacific time, when the exhibit was most populated with onlookers. He would dress up in the security outfit Milan provided him to guard, in a back conference room, walk around town, eat a light dinner, he always ate light before a hit, most likely he order some chips at a Mexican restaurant near the gallery, so he could case the joint. He snack on the chips and sip on a water. He kept his mind clear before taking a place in public, plus, he was doing it before everyone, if the other guard caught on that he wasn’t the guard for the night he would be busted and the plan would foil. He had to be sly. He had one advantage. It was purely an inside Job. He’d wait until he had the guts to make the hit and felt the heat of his back, and then, move in with the bag, walk directly to the vault, acting as if he was in charge, trip the alarm, simply buy shutting it off, he had the code because he use to look up each night, lift the head, place it in the bag, and hail a cab and off to Love Field with a one way fair to the distant tropics. In the mirror again he fell deep into his eyes, “Don’t worry guy. Your inventive. The world is riding on it’s own fate.” He dressed into the security guard outfit, buttoning each button and saying to himself, “Your inventive. Your okay. This world is riding on it’s own fate.” He didn’t know what it meant, but it was poetic, and it made since in some world, no matter the dimension, or reality. Somewhere, between the pages, the words fit, and the logic arrived. The thief was stealing away with more than a plan, more than the head of Mary, more than the debt of the devil. He was stealing away with an invention. An idea. Something that may change the world. He was trying to steal something holy, for the sake he didn’t understand. He was lifting something that would help him gain nothing, nor would it advance him in anyway. He was free floating again, struggling, picking up ends, fitting bits together without a clue or without a cause. Tom Burnette was falling, falling, falling, rebelling, not just against logic, but against the intention of a thief. Rebellion. This thief was just about to lose it, and for once, in a long time, it felt right, even though it was wrong. REVOLT. It felt good, even though it was evil. Tom finished up the second to the last button and fastened the utility belt. He stared at himself in the mirror and gave himself a wink. “You get him kid.” Reeeebeliooon. He always called upon the child in him before a hit. If he thought of himself as a kid, it worked better.

Tom was too smart for himself. He never shared his screwy ideas about the beginning of the universe and how the Big Bang was missing components and how ylem and it’s inner parts composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons and how the universe was very hot, and cold, and how their existed another particle, outside of the initial high density of what was before the bang, and if that was the right track, what if something was before the big bang, this entity that existed before the inflation and how this missing particle reacted with the original sphere which was the seed of the beginning of time. He never shared what the missing particle was with anyone, hardly himself to be honest. the one that rebelled from the ultimate force and created what man now calls, music. The rhythms, of life, all motion was part of it’s plan. All things, that were still, where one with the good force, the initial, the originator of what we called creation and now, motion, or the movement, the objects in motion, were the rebels of the goodness, the stillness, the oneness, of what many call God Almighty. God was the beginning and He will be the end. The alpha and the Omega. The initial force, the sphere, the starter of the Big Bang, understood the explosion, and planed it’s freedom and it’s never ending motion. Only at times, does the motion cease and the way of life returns in it’s purest form, they way It was before existence, holds truth in it’s utter stillness and calm nothingness. Now, we suffer in it’s motion, in it’s unending dance with confusion and the enmity of complete, wholeness and order.

This was one of the reason’s for his thievery. He didn’t fully understand, so he took what he felt would make him complete and one.

And in this desire, in this wish to be whole, he broke apart into many and fell from grace.

The hit was finalized in his mind. “Walk right in, remove the head, stuff it in the bag and walk right out, hail a cab and head to the airport. Whatever you do Tom Burnet, don’t look back.” Tom checked his eyes in the mirror one last time, checked his watch which read 8:46 AM and downed two twenty five milligram, orange tablets of Zoloft and exited the bathroom and down the hall to the elevators to prepare for the biggest robbery the town of Worth had never seen.

Who care what the poem meant. Who care if it made sense or not. That wasn’t the point. Mr. Spoil had gone far in the world and now he was going to get farther. Now with his words. The life of a gardener, the life of a snow plow’er wasn’t doing it for him. He wanted more. Greed made him write the poetic verse. Greed made him send to Greed made him embarrassing. Greed made him shameful. Spoil wasn’t a genetic gift to womankind. Nor was a gift to any artist walking the streets of SOHO. Spoil was a fat slob. Wasting the sight of man. Wasting aesthetic pleasure of the body. He was a fool. A half fool, with a maggot’s body. The only hope for him now was to get on some type of medication and give in. Settle down in some lonely apartment away from the care of Ann and Hairison. Hell, most likely he ruined their Christmas by eating up their food and asking for their care. He didn’t know what a guest’s limit were. Hairison would go out and buy a loaf of Wonder Bread and Spoil would eat half the loaf and leave a few slices for Ann and Hairison. He was too big of a pig to be unsuccessful. Soon, Hairison would get tired of his greedy pig nature and boot his ass out on the streets of Cold Town. Soon, Hairison would begin asking for rent. No. He’ll never ask for rent, Spoil thought. Hairison is the nicest guy on the block. He took me in for the love of God. He kept me from going homeless. Hairison wouldn’t do that. Not to me.

Spoil was from a hard part of Heat town. He lived alone, in a small pad on the far end of town, near the movies. He worked there as a projectionist and even made a living projecting the motion picture onto a silver screen. Spoil made a swell life in Heat town. After the movie house shut down, he moved North to Cold Town to live with his cousin, Red. After his cousin, Red, died of an overdose of Heroin, he was left in the cold near Main Street Cold Town. There was shelter there and he was going to stay there overnight, until the barber Hairison offered him a position as a gardener. He met Hairison after getting his hair cut at the local barber in Cold Town.

The black sky, filled with a string of stars, floating above Hairison’s place, on top of purple and pink clouds illuminating from a crescent moon that hid far above the approaching dark ocean blues of the night sky skimming under. Around the puffy purples and pinks a light azure rain tore down in thick drops.

“Why don’t you stay at my place and work in town shuffling snow. They are in need of a plower this year and we can pay ya, seven to ten an hour. Sound good?”

Spoil agreed that it would work out. “I’ll even help ya with rent.” It gave Hairison more reason to live. Caring for another makes life richer and worthwhile. Also, it gave Spoil reason to give his needy self to another. They were helping each other out. Hairison provided Spoil with shelter and Spoil read his poetry and kept him good company, ate his food with him and shared coffee and laughs at nights on lonely Saturdays when the sound of the cold December rain could wear tears in a man’s eyes.

Spoil could easily destroy a poem or trip up an idea just by doubting his confidence of success. He wasn’t as pure as most men, and most poets usually dedicate a slice of their time to trouble. He was current on the theories of the beginning of time. A few philosophers that he had a chance to watch on channel 13, on Hairison’s mini television that was giving to Hairison several years back, revealed an explanation of the order and structure of the universe known as the String Theory. The string theory suggested that the universe was composed of eleven dimensions. Each dimension was connected through an order of strings. These dimensions could exist as close as particles exist inside an atom. Hence, the strings were surrounding our dimension and linking dimensions to other dimension that scientist had not yet witnessed of today’s times. Most of the dimensions were closer than we suspected and in many cases overlapped our current existence. The big bang theory was attached to the string theory just as the inflammation theory and others theory explaining the beginning of time. There existed five theories and some scientist with a name that sounded like Wieden, or Wietten, suggested that each of the five theories were the same theory explained in a different manner. All five theories were compared to a cello player performing before five different mirrors reflecting the same theory over five different directions. The string theory advised new thinkers that worm holes and even jumping from dimension to dimension was actually possible. It was supposedly proved with logical math, and the math was supposed to work out beautifully. Hence, the dimension that Spoil lived in now, was actually connected to other dimensions. This explains the names of the rabbits and the correlation with Jackson, Roberto and Chuck. Perhaps, Jackson was a rabbit in Spoil’s world, but in his world he was a prisoner learning literature on the internet in his prison cell. Perhaps, Chuck was a prison guard in Huntsilve but also, existing as a rabbit caged in Mr. Hairison’s back yard. There was a connection between Hairison’s caged rabbits and the prisoners in Roberto’s world. After all, Tom Burnet had created Spoil, just as Roberto had created Tom Burnet. Each world was connected by it’s creator.

Spoil no longer desired to steal car radio’s, purses and various valuables from the interior of cars in the neighborhood. He no longer broke into garages and lifted tools and metals containing silvers. He quit that life. Now it was about thieving words. Now, he looked forward to a long walk to the local library, which was no larger than a small room. It was settled in the south part of Cold Town near the Fire Station , graveyard and storage units. Not far from the Fancy Tanning saloon and the pizzeria with supposedly authentically tasting pizza with Italian recipes. He decided to check out various books containing information about poetry. There was a little bit of knowledge in that room of books kept near the storage units. The room was about the size of a large bedroom. It had a screen door, a small information desk, no larger than a teacher’s desk and a few book shelves with a large amount of old fiction from authors like Charles Dickens, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickenson, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Hardy. They had playwrights too. Everything from William Shakespeare and Marlowe, to Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and a healthy anthology of Samuel Becket’s work, including the book Watt. He decided to check out a few plays by Samuel Becket and some How To Write Poetry Books, which he decided to turn in as he passed the book drop. There was no one way to write poetry, Samuel Becket, T.S. Elliot and Walt Whitman proved that there were no laws to verse or prose. That day, was long. It was a Sunday, so everything was quit, peaceful and calm. The wind’s hardly ever picked up and Spoil had much time to contemplate his next move. He pondered over the idea of heading south back to the town of Heat. It might work out there, if he ran into his old friend, Bleu. Bleu was his buddy that got him turned on to poetry and even shared a few poetry reading with him in Bigger City. They drove over forty miles, for one poetry reading, that was supposed to of invited a few famous authors. Only one showed. His name was Ink Pen. It was his pen name. He wrote over thirty books in his lifetime and published every one of them. His poetry was simple and direct and very rarely did he impress his readers with fancy verse or complex syntax attached to high vocabulary. He claimed to write poetry because, “It freed him up from the complexities of the world.” Ink Pen, had a long chin, wide eyebrows and a bushy beard that reminded Spoil of Moses. Many called him Moses as a nick name, because of his hairy beard. Rumor had it, he was nearly as rich as Donald Trump, due to the fact, that his favorite hobby was the stock market. He was a man that was not ashamed of admitting to the necessity of money and the desire of it. He agreed with George Barnard Shaw, “The evils of the world are brought on by the lack of money. Not the root of it.” He claimed in one of his poems entitled Green Blood. He knew that the only thing a man needed in this world, to live comfortably, was dough. “Money not only makes the world go around, but it gets you laid.” He was right. Without money, there was no way, any of us, poet, writer or any type of artist, was getting any. No money, no honey. That was the lay with Mr. Pen. Ink had it down. He knew what the ladies desired. So, he got on the stock market and made a killing, then, to ride out his wealth, he got hooked on words, verse and eventually started to read at nearby poetry readings. He was known to show up in a limo, dressed in a tuxedo, smoking European cigars, or some expensive pipe and tobacco he purchased in Czech Republic and hand out pastries he bought in Paris. He was a jolly man full of guffaws, and long stories about New York and the Stock Exchange. “Always put money in Home Depot and Coca cola. You can’t go wrong with Coke. Americans will always buy houses, fix em up and drink Coke while their doing it. Coke and Home Depot. Can’t go wrong with betting on those stocks.”

Spoil went home after the library with Ink Pen on his mind. What a man. What a luxurious life he must of lived in New York as a millioniar. What would that be like. To have that type of cash. To be that damn rich. Shit, you be able to do anything. Wake up whenever you wanted. Fly off to some exotic island. See as many beautiful women as possible. Wow. Having that much would be heaven on earth. That would make a man evil. Spoil thought. And fame. Everyone knows who Ink Pen is. He is a world renowned poet. His face is on the magazine of every poetry magazine and his knew play hit it big on Broadway. Imagine that. To walk around New York city with the finest cloths a man can buy, and buy up the tastiest, delicate cousins dished up by the most skilled chefs of all the world. To be entertained by the greatest performer in the finest theatres of Broadway. I could be in Paris tomorrow talking with famous poets and other writers, that were once like me, stuck in a small cold town, with one barber shop, one grocery store, with one type of yogurt, one type of apples, one type of everything nearly. The only thing at my grocery store that has variety is the breads which are made by Mrs. Bairdes bread, Wonder and Harvest Farms. Its so bland here. Wow. To be like Ink Pen. I have the power to do that. All I need to conquer this poverty that I exist in is this pen. Spoil pulled out his round stic Bic Pen he bought at the Local Piggly Wiggly Mart. With this pen, I could rule my own world. Write my own rules. Write my own world that is and all in poetry. That’s it. HE sounded as if he was selling himself an idea. An idea about the future, that he could believe in. An idea that would change his frame of mind about his miserable, petty little life in Cold Town. Now, he was going to get out. He didn’t need to steal anything anymore. All that fast cash amounted only to food, and when he could afford it, rent. Now, it made him poorer. He was living with some stranger that he didn’t really trust and he was starting to become grumpier and grumpier everyday. He was tired of not being able to pick out his food at the grocer store, even though there wasn’t that much of a variety to chose from he still wanted to chose. And Spoil missed the freedom to shop, and to decide when it was time to shop, or decide what type of cereal he wanted to eat in the morning, and what he wanted to eat through out the day, or drink, or where to go, and to have reasons to get there. Days flew by, and he felt like a prisoner, on the end of a rope, being tugged along, and told when to open his mouth and when to swallow. This life wasn’t his life any longer, someone else was living it for him. He wasn’t telling the story, Hairison was. I shouldn’t be this way. My life shouldn’t be this stiff.

Spoil had lost his power to choose. He was no longer in control. Now, Hairison purchased his food. He never was asked for a list. Ann just brought food home, and she cooked the meals and when dinner was ready Spoil was informed that he was ready to eat, and he ate what was before him or he didn’t eat at all. He had hit rock bottom. When life becomes this controlled, one begins to understand the life of a prisoner.

Spoil couldn’t choose anymore and once a person freedom of choice has been taken away from them, then their freedom is no longer present in their life. Where was the freedom? Liberty had crawled under the rug and stock her smelly bottom of control in the air. He was getting bored with Mr. Hairison. Ann was growing on him, but she was headed back to the hospital in Big Town to finish up her interment and study to make it as an LVN. Spoil was planning on leaving if Hairison remained grumpy and controlling. But he figured Hairison wasn’t doing this on purpose. He was naturally this way. Men are naturally greedy. It is the one worst and most common problem of the world. Greed, was the reason why he wanted to control Spoil. Hairison didn’t mean to be a dictator, it was just in his nature to hurt him. Pleasure and pain became his associations with Hairison. The love in their relationship was fading and the only thing he could look forward to know, was one of Mr. Hairison’s daughter baked brownies, or a gallon of milk that Hairison may bring home, or to dip into his grape nuts, or to go on ride with him to town. Spoil had something on his mind he wanted to get across to Hairison. “I want to go now.” He would practice it in the mirror. “I am leaving. I’am to old to walk the streets but I don’t care. I have become nothing living over you and I want to become a famous poet, so I’m headed to Big Town to read my from my journal. I don’t care if it kills me Mr. Hairison.” Of coarse now he wasn’t talking to Hairison but rather to his reflection in the mirror. It took practice. No it didn’t take practice. That was a lie. He was lying to himself. Spoil was stalling for time. He knew the walk to big town would nearly kill him. First, he had to. . .first he had to. . .he didn’t know what he had to do first. He could steal his keys, but that would get him in more trouble, even jail time, possible time in the penitentiary. Life was becoming more and more stale. But if he got away, he would really understand the words, he would really understand the meaning of this limited but limitless life. Maybe that is what God wants me to be. A wanderer. A person on the streets, selling his words to passer-bys. Perhaps, I should leave without telling him. If I let him go, maybe he’ll give me a ride to the airport. If I make it to the airport, I could bum money until I save up for a flight out of here. But I am merely running from my problems if I do that. Spoil couldn’t make up his mind. But I can’t stay trapped up in this attic, or could I. I could die here, alone. I could have a heart attack, alone, with out love, with out the security of another’s arms. I could just wither here with my useless poetry, and Hairison could just move away and leave my ass here. I’ll be alone. Surely Ann won’t take care of me. She is too busy with the hospital and the restaurant and her dream of making it to LVN. I got to get away somewhere. Anywhere. Then, a troubled smile lifted across Spoil’s flabby face. He sat the tooth brush down, next to the small puddle of water that leaked off his hand, as he turned the facet off. The truth brush crashed over and sent the paste sliding off on the vertical wall of the transition of the bathroom sink. He was beat. All this wishing to leave Hairison places had driven him into a messy ball of anxiety and pressed tension. He was constantly wishing to leave, but going nowhere. He was Go Go (Estragon) and Di Di, (Vladimir) and his poetry reminded him of Lucky or the raving cries from Lucky’s fat keeper the Pot Head, P o z z o. There was nothing in Big Town but endless paved side walk leading to the same thing, the same attic, the same loft, the same small room, with another empty journal, with perhaps, a new idea, to change something that most likely will change anyway. He wanted to be part of the game by going to Big Town, but he was just as great in Cold Town, alone, with his words in his tiny journal, caressed by his small hands.

Spoil was going to steal his liberty back by writing a poem that would fly him to the Big City. That was his only chance out of this dull misery of monotonous snow plowing, sitting around the house snacking toward death, reading the paper and listening to Hairison complain about his rusty razors at the shop. Ann was leaving in the next few days. She was headed back to the Big City to complete her nurse training.

“Well, Dad. I hate that I have to leave by Sunday. It was nice staying. I can’t wait to return and get started at the Hospital.” Hairison was currently bent over, scratching his ass, and exploring through the refrigerator. “Did you get mayo when you were up at Piggly Wiggly?” Hairison asked. There wasn’t a moment that went by that Hairison wasn’t asking her for a condiment, or some type of bread she had forgot at the corner store. “No. I forgot the mayo. Oh. Do you want me to drive back in town to pick some up?” Hairison shook his hand at her implying that she didn’t have to drive back. Then, he walked over to her, with a half made sandwich in his hand, kissed her on the cheek and said, “I’ll miss ya too honey.” It was almost as if they were husband and wife. “How long is your guest going to stay.” Spoil wasn’t in the room when all this was going on. He could here every word, every foot step and smack of the lips. “I don’t know. I guess as long as he is a help around the house, and as long as he starts paying the grocery bill.” Spoil’s eyebrows raised. Now he was a paying customer. “Shoot. I got to pay for food now.” “Do you make him pay rent?” “Not yet.” Hairison informed her. “I not that cruel. He is just an old drifter. He’d be homeless if we didn’t take him in. He’s good help around the house though. And his gardening work is near professional. Plus, the town says they haven’t had a better snow plow man in the last decade, since Burt died of colon failure.” “Burt’s colon failed.” “Yep. Ten years back. Doctors couldn’t save em.” “What was wrong with his colon.” “It just failed him. They tried to repair it, but they couldn’t save him.” “What happened to Burt’s colon again. Was it cancer?” The conversation was getting repetitive about Burt’s ass. What do I care about Burt’s ass. I don’t know Burt, more or less his ass. So he had colon failure, big deal, you know how many people’s colon’s fail a day. Spoil was getting bitter about the colon talk. Spoil leaned over and spied out the window. No one was coming or going. No car. Not even a sign of car. Not even the slightest hint of civilization out there in the snowy lawn. The stars sprouted up and scattered throughout the blackened sky. It was as if a the universes largest salt shaker had sprinkled the opaque sky with glowing speckles of silvery salt, “So it was cancer. It sounds like your talking about Colon Cancer.” Still on the colon, Spoil raised an eyebrow at there nagging about the dead fried Burt. “Was it Burt Johnson, or Burt Swan.” “Burt Swan who else.” “You sure it wasn’t Burt Johnson?” Ann replied. “Burt Johnson died of Testicle problems.” As if Hairison really knew any way. “What was wrong with his testicles?” “I don’t know, one of them grew too large and busted.” “His testicle busted.” “Or it fell off.” “Testicles don’t fall off Dad.” Ann said in an angry voice. “You don’t know do you?” “Burt Swan died of Colon failure, Burt Johnson died of Testicle Cancer, I believe.” A quite moment filled the room. Spoil could feel his chest rise up and down, and his breathing became a little more labored. He was getting excited. He wanted to know if it was testicle cancer. “It wasn’t testicle cancer. I remember now. Jenny told me.” “You knew his wife?” Hairison said with a horse voice. They where actually yelling over the nonsense. “YES, I KNEW HIS WIFE.” Ann said. “I was close to the Johnsons.” “How close.” “I was dating their oldest son and nearly married him. His father died years back, of heart failure.” “Heart failure. It wasn’t heart failure. It was testicle cancer.” “It was his heart. His son told me.” “He was embarrassed. It was the testicles.” “Heart.” “Testicles.” They began chanting back and forth like two fencer’s stabbing at each others vitals. “Heart.” Ann commanded. Hairison winced back on fire. “TESTICLES.” “Heart.” She insisted. “TESTICLES.” He roared. “HEART” She insisted again. “TESTICLES.” “HEART.” “TESTICLES.” “HEART.” “TESTICLES.” Hairison took a large breath. His belly swelled the size of a over pumped up beach ball. “TESTICLES. THE MAN DIED CAUSE HIS BALLS FAILED HIM.” “His heart failed him.” “Balls.” “heart.” They continued on like two school children harping on one another at the back of the school bus. Finally laughter filled the kitchen. Ann was guffawing so loud she nearly fell to her knees. Hairison overlapped her with hacking chuckles and sneering side aching giggles. began to laugh at their childish behavior. Spoil covered his mouth too. He was so embarrassed for them. Why would anyone value other’s death so much. They were clawing at each other like cats. “Forget it Dad. I don’t care how he died.” “You don’t” Hairison said with tears in his eyes. “No. I don’t.” She walked over to him. “It could have been his balls or his heart. It doesn’t matter. As long as your still here with me. Lets not fight. Lets be friends again Dad.” “Well, you act like you know everything.” “Well I don’t Dad.” She hugged her father and took him out on the front porch. “Cigarette break.” She said in a low, care free easy flowing voice. She was lose again and ready to attend the holidays. They sat on the swing chair that Dad had sat up two days back for the New Years party. “In two days it will be New Years. You know Christmas just flew by. I barely even remember it.” Spoil could here the squeaking admit from the hinges of the new swing set. “You like you Christmas present.” She referred to the swing set with her elbow. Her father put his arm around her and gazed up at the milky way. Above winking back at them was a large gathering of a family of sparkling angels floating in the endless night sky.

Spoil floated off to sleep, hearing Ann and Hairison’s voices echo back and forth at each other, “Testicles, testicles, testicles.” “Heart, heart, heart.” A bizarre but small smile flipped up on his snoring face. “Testicles, testicles, testicles,” “Heart, heart, heart.” The swing set fell still as Ann dozed off onto her Father’s strong shoulder. He put his arm around his daughter and his eyes began to water. This was Hairison’s best Christmas since Mrs. Hairison was alive.

Spoil snored as his face twitched and he flipped over to his side and took in a larger breath. His breaths increased triple in size and his heart rate slightly sped up and pattered. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he began twitching around like a mouse with his tail caught in a rodent trap. “Testicles.” “Heart.” The voices repeated in his head over and over again. He had never had such a strange and interesting dream in his entire life as devout snoozing fool.

This beat the old days when Spoil had to survive washing windows at the local drugstore. And it beat the time he once had to wax, spray, clean and dry fancy cars at the neighborhood carwash, or push a lawn mower in the summer to make rent. He was a young Spintrius selling his fresh body to older women, impressing them by raking their lawns, scrubbing out their bathtubs or rearranging the interior of their garages. He sold to them what they did not have, nice bodes. Fat ladies would hire him to do their windows, or walk their dogs, or plan their flower beds full of flowery exotic blooming botanicals, or deliver their morning newspapers, or for the really older ladies losing their eye sight, read the papers to them, and that is how he got hooked on words, and began playing with verse and eventually mastering the art of poetry. Words became his friends, and his only escape. He was a suppressed Spintrius and tired of ending up sleeping with these older ladies, in their late thirties, past their prime, tired of their fatty husbands and slow uneducated brains. He had education, his mother was a school teacher and taught him well. Plus, he took some college in his time. A few classes in politics and a heavy load covering World Masterpieces from the Norton Anthology and even a few science classes to help him understand the world better.

Mr. Spoil curled up with his army green sleepy bag he had bought long ago from the Army and Navy Store. The one he had before that was a loaner from a sheriff he had run across years back, when he was hiking from Heat to Cold. He left one morning and decided that the town of Heat had nothing for him. The little voice in his head told him that he shouldn’t. Your too old. You’ll never make it. He was too old too. Life was creeping on him. One could see it’s wear and tear across his face, embedded in wrinkles, thick, deep lines and wilting hair. His eyes no longer radiated with the intense brightness they had once did years before, when he was in his prime. Now, Spoil was close to his gray sixties. Three more years and he would slowly land on the number sixty. Sixty years old. How dreadful that number was to him. That was the year one retired and laid back from work, and meditated on the meaning of their lives and the worth of the end, and eventually they come to accept the end.

Spoil listened to the Hairison’s brand new cuckoo clock tick and twist, tap and tock and thump through the heavy drowsiness of the night. He compared the thumping of the cuckoo to his own rhythm of his heart. Ticking away toward the last tock to end it’s precious and only time.

The train passed. Very rarely did it come by. It was roaring at full blast. Screaming away like a made child. Spitting sparks and scrapes from it’s steal sides like a mad bull charging full ahead, no doubt of mind, no fear, far from slowing, or ceasing in gaining speed, frightening by the blasting from a thunder strike, and never, ever, no matter what happened, to look back. Straight ahead it dominated time and space, never once stumbling or hesitating from taking it’s existence before it’s iron laid path. A thick, hard, rambling steal bull with enraging hatred toward any object that stood before the rails, the train commanded ahead. Raaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh. It hissed and hollered as it banged away over and over again, until it’s entire spine connected by a hundred and three railway cars, clicking and clanking by with lightning speed. Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh. Its ghostly cry set fire to the ears of Spoil. He duct under the sleeping bag, at first, shying away like a frightened little boy, alone, naïve, scared of the monster that tempted him to look at the window. The monster that once may have hid under his bed. The monster that made him check the closet, keep the doors locked, and kept his toy box sealed shut. It was the voice of this very monster he engagingly, alluringly and awesomely feared for as long as he was taught such beasts existed. He was never for sure, not hundred and one percent sure that monster did not exist. They could exist. It was possible. God was possible wasn’t He. Christ ascended to heaven didn’t he. Why wouldn’t a monster be possible. A man, entitling himself as the Creator of the Earth and Heavens, Lord of mankind, King of all Kings, claimed he was the Messiah, and walked on water, and preached the Word of God and died for our sins, once existed, now didn’t he. A man that conquered death, healed the sick and cast demons from the possessed, resurrected the dead, and even went to hell only to return and pass on His word. He was our creator and sent His only begotten son to die for our sins on the cross. And He, God, was in our form, a man, to die, for us. That was possible now wasn’t it. Why wasn’t a simple monster possible too. Spoil was sure it wasn’t the train. It was something more. Snow flakes tapped on the window. For one second, it sounded like a thousand little hands scrapping on the glass. A thousand little hands, from the little children lost in the wind. It was the children lost in the window. The lost boys flying through the night, casting their little shadows across icy fields below sparkling from the light of the pale moon. It was a collection of beast hovering past, as big as a train, as mighty and fast. Spoil had to see. He had to see quick. Quickly as he could he sat up to catch a glimpse of the passing noise.

It was the train. Nothing more. The last five railway cars clicked by. The last car read Sante Fe. It was a train headed south, most likely emptied of cattle from Heat Town. Heat Town was famous for their cattle drives of the past. The town still raised and sent out beef from it’s pasture. Loaded on a hundred cars for the industrialized towns that consumed it like wild, hungry carnivores. It was over hundred railway cars, emptied, most likely of beef, and wheat and possibly barely. All those mouths to feed, all those hungry children thirsting after life, longing to grow. Someone had to feed the North. It was southern cars. Cars from hands that invented the notions of hospitality. The north wasn’t as greedy as the south. No place was as greedy as Big City. Big City was one of the oldest towns in the north, full of business men, sky scrappers, subway systems, manmade forests in the center of the concrete mountains, sidewalks that never ended and a army of greedy executives out to reinvent the wheel, over and over again, for the all mighty dollar. The almighty green. Millions upon millions of empty railway cars headed back to the south to refill and fuel a city composed of pure greed and a bottomless pit of hunger and disease. No of this will ever end. Spoil thought. The hunger goes on and on. More and more die every day. Man or animal, someone or something has to pay for all this slaughter. Somewhere down the rail road, passing each wooden tie, he could hear the last car hiss into the cold dark wind, into the thick black night and even under the sleeping bag he could hear the rattle of loose bones, the babyish whines and cut off hollers of the dieing cattle, and surprisingly enough, sharply smell the traces of the carcasses, leftovers of the beefy feed, the rank of the hides and the spirit of the dead.

Roberto was a big eater. He had the largest appetite in the prison but rarely exercised it. He rarely ever fulfilled such a bottomless hunger. He never got the chance to. Didn’t have the time. The most he could eat in thirty minutes was a plate full of what the cafeteria servants served. Plus he didn’t have time to eat that much. Thirty minutes was his limit. That was the time allotted to prisoners in that particular sector. “Eat as much as you can in as little time possible.” That was the motto in the cafeteria in the state prison. Now that the revolt had ended all authority he decided he take longer meal breaks and eat more while he did it. The cell’s where reopened. Nick had established freedom among all the other prisoner. He, Jackson and Chuck had the privilege to explore any part of the prison they felt suited to visit. The cafeteria was open twenty four seven and food was dished out in however large of the quantity desired. The value of the food had improved since Nick demanded more attention and better meals for his new people, as he called them. The New People were no longer treated as prisoners but rather treated like any other citizen. They deserved better water, food, clothing, and since shelter had been established, better entertainment. “After water, food, clothing, sex and shelter are achieved the next thing a person needs is a good movie, or some form of entertainment. Once all your needs are met, nothing more to do, but read, watch TV or go to the movies.” Jackson told Roberto. “What about work.” Roberto asked Jackson. “That’s why were in here. We didn’t work out right. If we all had good jobs we wouldn’t had to steal, kill or plumage to be in here.” “Good word.” Roberto congratulated Jackson for using more weighty vocabulary. “Nothing makes sense unless you work. Work makes the mind think in an orderly fashion.” Chuck announced. “Hell, I’m in here, and I was working while I got trapped in this shit. Now, my job has made me a fulltime prisoner.” “You should have been one anyway, Chuck.” Roberto informed him. “I didn’t plead guilty in the court of law, why should I be trapped now.” “Talk to Nick about that.” Jackson said. Luckily, Roberto provided Chuck with an extra uniform he had tucked away for a rainy day. He had copped it from laundry in order to sleep in it. Luckily, Roberto was anal about what he slept in. He kept an extra pair of yellow overalls. The extra uniform was Roberto’s makeshift pajamas. He hated to sleep in his prison uniform and have to wake up smelly the next day. If it wasn’t for that extra prison uniform most likely Chuck would have been executed by one of Nick’s people. The hallways were pretty much emptied. Most of the prisoners had gathered in the cafeteria or on the TV halls. The TV halls were where the prisoners gathered to play cards, free lift with weights or watched programs on TV. The life of a prisoner was pretty bland. It began with a duty, like cafeteria duty, laundry duty, or working in the basement factory, refining metals and what not. Also, they had a choice to take some time to read or study online in the computer rooms that were sat up near the TV hall. This was only a privilege, and one had to be on best behavior to win time to use the computers.

“Hell, I would of went homeless if I didn’t get caught stealing.” Jackson informed Chuck and Roberto that if it wasn’t for his rape conviction he would, “Been freezing oud on da street. Shee dat bitch deserved id anyway. It was her reason I’d loss my job and was begging Grandma for dough. I was starving and she wouldn’t let me in. So I broke the glass to her front bedroom, crawled in to look for her purse, she came out of the bathroom with a towel on her head, and only a towel on her head. I was crazed and on a hit of acid while I decided to do her. I had screwed her over hundred times before, why not screw er again. So I did and the court didn’t like that. I told the jury we had made love for years and years. Hell, she was fixin to be my next wife. She just didn’t want me fucking her at the time, but hell, when you go hungry and your on drugs, you get kinda horny. So I did her in. Afterwards she called the pigs on me and they busted me. Freakin bitch.” “So, now your doing time for her, just cause you couldn’t wait for her permission.” “A women’s got the right to protect her body.” Roberto informed him. “She’s got the right to say No. And when she says no she means no.” “That’s what no means no means.” Chuck said. “Yeah but she had said yeah before.” “Well, what happened in the past is what happened in the past.” Chuck said again. “True.” Roberto agreed. “A women has the right to make the final decision.” “Your entering her, she’s not entering you.” Chuck announced in a matter to fact manner. “I guess I screwed up.” “You damn right you screwed up. Now your in prison. Rape is a very series crime.” “Crime against humanity.” Roberto said. A silent moment filled the room. Jackson began to shake a little and even his face had turned red. It looked as if it was going to split open and rip apart. He was about to bust. It was only a matter of seconds until he was going to burst into tears. “You know what you did was wrong.” Roberto said interrupting him from continuing with the graphic story. “Yes.” Jackson agreed with him. A moment of clarity washed over his face and his eyes grew clear and widened a bit. “Yes. I knew it was wrong. She was screaming and kicking her legs. It was the hardest. . .” A knot formed in Jackson’s face and a steaming burning crick arrived in his throat. Tears began to role down his face. A realization had entered the room. “. . .thing I ever tried to do. And I don’t know why I did it.” “Cause if felt good.” Roberto said. “That’s why we are all in her. We wanted to feel better.” “Well, it gets cold out, you go hungry and you don’t want to be cold or hungry anymore. You want. . .” His bottom lipped began to tremble uncontrollably, “You wanna be warm.” Chuck said. “Its more than that. Its more than being warm or filling up your belly. It’s deeper than that. Anyone can do that. Anyone can eat till there full, or find a warm place to sleep. I wanted more than that. I wanted her to look at me. To hug me. I wanted. . .I wanted. . .“to be loved. You want to be loved.” Roberto finished it for him. “Yeah. I guess that’s it. I wanted to be love.” Jackson repeated him. His voice seemed to echo down the hall. “You think Nick wants to be loved.” Roberto continued. “Maybe.” Just then a scream lingered down the hall. Someone sounded as if they were being beaten with a stick. Most likely it was Nick’s gang pounding on some guard, or some prisoner that challenged him and his orders.

Nick order in the Cafeteria was totally spawned for totalitarianism. He sat at one of guard balcony in a lunchroom chair decorated with tinsel and other various colorful cloth, mostly in gold colors and dark browns, to look similar to a Medieval thrown. Most of the other prisoner laughed at it, but they were never caught chuckling before the master Nick. One had to address him as “The Great One Nick” Or, “Master Nick.” No one ever just called him Nick, unless they were but pals with him. Jackson, Chuck and Roberto decided to check out his set up at the cafeteria. The place was basically trashed, covered in spoiling food, old coke cans, beer cans (not much of that, due to the fact it was entering the prison from the service of the SWAT team and other hostage specialist camped outside the prison walls) His eyes were completely dilated. Most likely he was abusing a substance. Jackson guess, “Coke, Speed or Pot.” Most likely it wasn’t marijuana, that was the hardest drug to get into the prisons, mostly because it was the drug of choice among most inmates. The second most popular drug was prescription pills for sleeping, downers and various feel good drugs like heroin, cocaine, and or crystal meth. Nick had four security guards tied to the chain-link fence once used to separate the front food line from the body of the cafeteria. It was used to close off the kitchen area after food was to be served, if it was the usual condition which it was far from being at the present moment due to the madness of Nick. Nick had the security guards nicely tied to the fence with a dog chain, most likely used for the drug dogs (German shepherds)and their ankles tied with chord. Occasionally Nick would nurse the guards beer, or water ever other hour. The guards eyes looked drained of life and their bodies hung limp against the chains. If it wasn’t for the chords and dog chains bonding them to the chain link, they’d be knocked out on their ass, or laying face down. It looked as if they had been beaten with ax handles, lead pipes or other blunt objects found in the utility basement near the underground factory for refinement of metals for license plates.

The new year had arrived. 2004 was here. The electric blinking ball touched down in Time Square on the cheap television set in Tom’s motel room 2b. Tom was all alone. No women to wrap their hands around him. No lady to kiss, or whisper “I love you honey” in his ear. Nothing, no one, zilch, nill, null, nothing. And in the motel on the outskirts of Worth, he sat staring at the tube with a half lit cigarette smoking away between his index finder and middle finger. A cigarette wasting away to burn him, awake him, lift him once again into existence. An image itched at him. Something called to him from deep within. It cried for him to get back into the game, to stop watching the pointless tube and focus in on life. To become one with reality, kick in and get the job done, like a real man, or thief, or whatever the hell he was supposed to be, and do whatever the hell he was supposed to do, or be. Someone commanded him to wake up, being God, or the devil, or some unknown force in the distant galaxy, something wanted him to exist and take action. The old head of Mary appeared in his head again. The old head of Mary from Pieta, alone like him, in a vault of his own mind, tucked away, captured, and readied to be his. His for the first time. It would soon rest in his black backpack that once held the literature of the world. The literature he would study. The masterpieces of our time. He would snatch it and tuck it away in his black back pack, all his, without anyone else’s touch, gaze or desire. No one would be able to look at that particular bust again. Not a soul. Only Tom Burnet. But it wasn’t the bust of Mary he needed. It was someone far above a statue, far above an image, far above this useless world, this useless waste of a place. It was God. He needed God’s faith, not the stature at all. Or would the head of Mary make a difference. He didn’t care any longer. Now, he only cared about snatching it and keeping it far from the eyes. Nothing that beautiful and that whole should be able to be looked upon. Not any longer. He was going to take it to the distant island, far away, cast it into the ocean, for no one to see but the fishes below the sea.

Roberto had his flings in his time. Women and he did not mix any better than water and oil. He had very bad luck with gals. One time, after college, after he returned from his studies at the college in New York, he was accepted to a prestigious leftist college for the extreme liberals of the states. He studied performing arts there, but always wanted to be a writer. He had charming looks and a decent body, much more than the average overweight, overworked American, so performing the story was much easier for him then sitting down at a typewriter, or cramping his forearms trying to execute a story in freehand. Performing was more exciting than chaining your wrists to a typewriter for the sake of the publics intellect. In performance, as well as dance and theatre arts, the performer is active, living before the reader, or the audience per se, and he or she is far more alive and thirsty for life, than any cooped up writer trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again, with more or less the same vocabulary, minus the genius of Faulkner, or the creative ingenious mysteries and original rhythms of the master storyteller Edgar Allan Poe, the most literary professor extensively and satanically screwing young students entering graduate school and trying to make way into the world more or less barely begin a future career in the arts. No one is more jealous of an artist than a professor of literature, creative writing, performance, poetry, dance, or art or any other type of fine arts. On the other hand, no one is more supportive and proud of artist than a professor of literature, creative writing, poetry, dance, or any type of expression or, art, or any other type of fine arts. Yes, this happened to Roberto, before prison, before the first book, before he became a worldly success and icon of the literature. He became a devout envious student of the masterpieces of the world. He hated the fact that Faulkner’s vocabulary, memory of the Civil War and other facts and Poe’s grip on horrific patterns of rhythm and the nature of terror, it made him cringe that these writers, so devoutly internal and in a way that was unexplained and almost evil. It was insanely unreal that any of these writers did it all on their own. But we see that as true. We take it as so, that Faulkner and Poe wrote each word, invented each character and twist and fact or fiction, it all, every comma and period, in Faulkner’s case no period, he never read a writer so prolific and in touch with syntax and the flow of a story and the free association, and prolific use of verse and prose and far beyond the stream of conscious, it was almost more pure and godly and more biblically than the deepest and richest section of the bible, this was Faulkner a man with a mind like no others, he was far beyond the storyteller, he was a story himself, unfolding a mystery of time, nature and the patterns of man and thought, he had unlocked a sense of storytelling that was more impressive than the nuclear bomb. Yes, Faulkner almost had Poe beat. Poe was known to use poetic license, but Faulkner forged his and invented a new shade of what most think of as poetic or musical. It was as if blood had arisen from the pages and the story had formed before the reader, live in flesh, thought and speech.

Yes, Roberto was envious of writers like these. Writers with so much power and beauty. Writers that could dig up the bones of the story and slowly rebuild the dead into the flesh and perfection God had, perhaps during a minute second of his creation meant for them ever be, but somehow decided it shouldn’t last. Not forever. That is what Roberto wanted. Forever. A desire that can not be escaped nor denied, nor completely understood. He wanted to last forever and this was the most impossible dream that any man could dream.

Morning rose on Cold Town. The train rushed by ticking away again and again at the same old train like rhythm. Roaring and cutting away at the track sparks flew to the sides. The train had to make a slight turn near Hairison’s house. Only slight enough to cook up a few sparks. “Sounds like Rain.” Spoil said under his breath as he stretched to the morning dawn hanging out the window over the distant rooftops of the cold, icy town. Snow had covered everything in a frosty, sparkling white. All the rooftops looked like icing on the top of a wedding cake, glistening and mouthwatering. Spoil was thirsty due to the deep sleep winter had slung on him. Hairison and Ann had not awaken yet. He didn’t smell the morning coffee, nor did he hear them chatting, or the sound of the microwave beeping, or the toaster unloading fresh waffles, or the aroma of eggs, donuts or hot oatmeal, butter and jelly. They were still snoozing away under a thick mound of sleep. It most be dawn. Spoil thought. Usually their up an hour after dawn, to get the paper and fed the pet rabbits in the back yard, or the front porch cat, whatever it’s name was.

That morning Spoil wondered out in the front lawn in a nearly half conscious state. His eyes drooped down as he stepped off the front porch and headed past the fumitory plants tucked away and blooming in the front garden. The sleep had overcame him. He was barely in reality, barely in the morning sun, a barely clothed in the approaching light of day. Spoil slid in a half step and regained balance and once of consciousness but, but he was not fully awake, not fully there, not fully. The icy air puckered his bare nibbles and his buttocks clenched in little spasms. He turned around to face the house and ponder over his exact location. Was he home now, a boy, wondering around in the front yard looking for Smokey, that ol’ mutt, that big collie, pure brown as earth fur and wide bid dog eyes, and a fluffy, flag style tail that waved proudly behind him exhibiting his happy canine state. No, Smokey wasn’t around. No were to be found. Lost like he was. Naked, standing bare naked in Hairison’s front yard awaiting for the day to hit his eyes again. Spoil was still asleep, in a deep state of somnambulism. His ramble, the somnambulated shuffle, humped him off the front porch and into the stingy ice cold slush that held it’s particular frozen constitution in the midst of the old front garden and the front section of the lawn. He was slowly scooting, step by step to the mailbox, awaiting the sun rays to spray over the tips of the pointy rooftops leering on the skyline and across the front street leading to town. Cold Town was currently being sprinkled with a slight snow slurry. Thousand of angelic crystals fell upon the front lawn in an ever changing dance that had no pattern, no timing, no sense of direction, or any fixed pace, but never ending, nor hesitation. The snow, almost angry now, just kept falling, almost breathing a cool breath, hurrying upon the ground like the falling, billowing shrouds of snowy ice that already rested on top of the, once emerald green lawn. A snow covering what was once envy with life and jealous with cumbrous endless growth of nature, constantly being trimmed by lawn mowers of the summer, in that heat of July, when Hairison once sat on the old wood bench with his daughter on his lap, and a tall plastic clear glass of lemonade, and warming to his her laughs. Laughing at the changing swing of the rusty earth colored leaves, Leaf by leaf, twirling and spinning in a crazed and almost dizzy flurry, falling, falling to summer green ground, now covered in a frosty cake of white cold.

It was a year ago when Tom joined up with Sarge’s team for a second fortune. This time Tom missed out on the healthy portion of the meat.

Tom had met up with a group he had shared the adventure with robbing the bank in the Big City. It was Sarge’s team. Now, the group had changed up a little bit from there first excursion back in the day of the Bank One days, when they lifted the two million from the vault. Mr. Jane was a ball headed dude with the mentality of a field grunt. He had a little experience in the marines and was once a point man for recon. He even climbed his way up to sniper, so he had steady hands. Steady hands were hard to come by in these days where pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs, that half the country was on. Mr. Jane didn’t touch antidepressants or illegal street drugs that gave the user the shakes, like cocaine, angel dust, black tar, meth, speed, crystal, heroine, or even weed, He was free from the feel good mentality and had his head on straight. The gang was back together again, and only a year after the initial hit. Mr. Jane composed a plan to knock off an art gallery in the heart of Soho. It was an exhibit passing through works by Jackson Pollock, Van Goghs, and even had a few Salvador Dalis. The entire hit would leave them with over five billion in art work. They hold the items in the black market to latter sell to collectors shopping in the underground. Mr. Jane wanted to do the hit for practice and because the exhibit had a cheap alarm installed with Home Depot parts. It would take under an hour to pull it off and they pay off the helpers, two thousand each in cold cash. They weren’t hitting a joint that was heavily secured with real security, nor where they threatened, or risking incarceration. It was worth the try, Tom thought. Tom met up with Sarge, Mr. Jane, and Nick. Wes, or Sarge passed over a large cigar he had been puffing on for few moments. “I think the art hit is brilliant. Will run off with a fortune.” Nick was a hefty man, with a thick beard and a thin set of bifocals. He talked in a rusty voice and usually had a ounce or two of liquor on his breath. Mr. Jane had long legs, muscled body, with a chisel chin and bushy eyebrows and for some unknown reason he stuttered and coughed while in conversation. The coughing was more sparked by a nervous reaction rather than he hacking up real phlegm. Mr. Jane was called Mr. Jane because of the sweet smelling cigarettes he loved to smoke. They were the type of cigarettes that left your mouth dry and aching for a snack, or some nutrition. Mr. Jane was the smartest of the gang, he was almost as intelligent as Burnet. The last man was Phil. Phil once was a jazz musician and had a college education, most likely he stole. He was the youngest and quickest of the group. He was born into crime, his father was a street hustler and his father before him. Phil was raised in the south section of Brooklyn and spent some time in Los Angeles. Believe it or not he had a non regional accent and used the language of an educated doctor. The team hooked up at abandoned coffee bar called The Shelter. The Shelter was a place young poets would hang out to do a read, or trade work over cup of Joe and smoke. It was a round room, with bent bay window covered in curtains. The tables were all round and their was a old stove in the center for hit. On the south side of the room stood a small stage with a few special for spotlighting. Before the microphone rose a small music stand for written text or poetry. The entire joint was designed for reading poetry and serving coffee. ON the north side of the café was a U-shape bar with a cappuccino ma