FAO TGRR: Some Prophecy That Nobody Wants to Hear.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I think it's supposed to be Coyote?

Nope. 

I think it's supposed to be nast.

Sure as fuck isn't me, and the realization that it might be nast makes me deeply sad.

Can't really remember, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure it's not me. It doesn't really feel like me.
Besides, I'm not particularly smart, and have the political savvy of a land snail.

Talking about different parts of the OP, I think.

[Nast]

I think it's supposed to be Coyote?

Nope. 

I think it's supposed to be nast.

Sure as fuck isn't me, and the realization that it might be nast makes me deeply sad.

Can't really remember, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure it's not me. It doesn't really feel like me.
Besides, I'm not particularly smart, and have the political savvy of a land snail.

Talking about different parts of the OP, I think.

Oh, now I see. Well then gosh, I hope it's not me.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I think it's supposed to be Coyote?

Nope. 

I think it's supposed to be nast.

Sure as fuck isn't me, and the realization that it might be nast makes me deeply sad.

Can't really remember, to be honest.

I'm pretty sure it's not me. It doesn't really feel like me.
Besides, I'm not particularly smart, and have the political savvy of a land snail.

Talking about different parts of the OP, I think.

Oh, now I see. Well then gosh, I hope it's not me.

Well, there's no point to prophecy if you can't benefit from it, right?  Don't join the military.

I mean, if it was you.  This was written a while ago, and I was massively fucked up chemically & mentally, so I really have no idea who it was.  But so far, 3 of the things I wrote have come true, though I have to say I don't actually believe in prophecy, and even if I did, the Gods would find a better avatar than a bottle of cheap liquor and a handful of benzos.

 

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Somethings to possibly consider.

Whoever it is may not yet live on the West Coast (for some reason Semaj is jumping to mind).

It is also possible that it's some spag we haven't met yet.

Or it could be a miss, entirely.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Somethings to possibly consider.

Whoever it is may not yet live on the West Coast (for some reason Semaj is jumping to mind).

It is also possible that it's some spag we haven't met yet.

Or it could be a miss, entirely.

Or it could be a combination of bad wiring, pills, and booze.

Don't take it too seriously, right?  Barstools hurt.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Somethings to possibly consider.

Whoever it is may not yet live on the West Coast (for some reason Semaj is jumping to mind).

It is also possible that it's some spag we haven't met yet.

Or it could be a miss, entirely.

Or it could be a combination of bad wiring, pills, and booze.

Don't take it too seriously, right?  Barstools hurt.

Naturally. It's why I included the possibility of a miss.

But speculating is inevitable at times.

[East Coast Hustle]

Could have been Felix, I forgot about him because he's abandoned us and that makes me sad.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Could have been Felix, I forgot about him because he's abandoned us and that makes me sad.

He's just been back.  I asked him where he'd gone, and he wrote a rant about not being able to rant.

As if you have to be able to rant to be here or something.

[East Coast Hustle]

The bolt carrier slides forward and back, and the noise is as big as the world, and in front of you there's a pink mist and an overpowering smell of shit.  The sound is indescribable, as your enemies that are still alive try to outshout the ones that have discovered the hard way that their ambush has gone very, very wrong because you just barely had time to turn The Hog around...

...Then you wake up, and it's not 1991, it's 19 years later, and she's wearing a white sun dress and a Johnny Walker smile, and the static in her eyes doesn't bug you, because her presence cracks the world and blocks the horrible, horrible glare of the sun and lets the light in for a moment.  The whole city behaves itself for a few days, because it's her, and The City isn't going to embarrass itself when she's here.  You can just look at her and know that's she's going to be just as cool at 50 and 60 and 70 as she is at 39, and you think for just a second that maybe this is the kind of person that legends grow around when times get bad, because she's so Goddamn beautiful that she burns your eyes...

It's fucking cold, and your heated suit isn't really helping much, as your altimeter spins crazily around, down through 30,000 feet and 20,000 feet and more, and you can't see a fucking thing and the wind is howling, but you're totally weightless even with 105 pounds of gear, and just for a moment you feel like a God, and you dread that moment when you have to pop your chute and your time in a frigid heaven must come to an end...

...But you're actually in a bar in Boston, and he's swilling beer across from you with that ridiculous yet glorious mustache, and you're looking at him and knowing that somewhere inside, he thinks of himself as a sellout, because he turned into a suit, but that's really not right, is it?  No, he's a fucking renaissance man, he knows business and he knows rock n roll, and he's wise enough to know that there's a difference between being good and being successful, and he's making the bills and making the universe pay on Saturday Night.  And one day he and his lady are going to have a HUGE goddamn fight, but it's going to be okay, because as mad as he is, he's going to smile a bit and tell her he loves her, instead of lashing out...

...And you're running screaming for daylight after a bad gig in a doll factory, and the Captain keeps telling you to shut up shut up it's over Goddammit, and you keep screaming because you can't think when you scream and why were they making dolls down there anyway?

And his name isn't important, he's one of us, after all.  He's just a kid, really, on the West coast, and his life is going to be short but fucking glorious (though you'd never know it by looking at him), and everyone that knows him will brag about knowing him, and nobody will believe them, because who the fuck would believe you knew a regular Audie Murphy?

But that's not important now.  You're lying outside the gate bunker in OP 3-2, and your stomach is awash in blood.  You feel cold as fuck even though it's 117F outside, and then the medic comes over and shoots you with a morphine stick and he's laughing.  He's laughing and saying that you must have a golden ass, white boy, 'cause I've cut myself worse shaving.  You giggle a bit, and you're relieved because you thought you were really hurt, the pain was fucking HUGE before he stuck you, but why are the rotors on the helicopter moving so slowly?

And he's a big bastard, right, and he smokes cheap cigars, and he thinks he's reached the top of his trade, but he's really going to go much higher.  And when IT happens, well, he's the luckiest bastard of us all, because he never even knows what hit him, a middle age man at the absolute pinnacle of his career.  Luckiest bastard you ever saw.

And at some point it occurs to you that you can't remember much between 1991 and 1993.  In fact, it kind of hurts to think about it.

But he's WAY bigger in person, he's a paranoid freak, and if the girls ever waited long enough to realize that there's no harm in him, he'd have to peel them off with a spatula.  He's the last man in America that remembers what real honor is, and he's got a core of decency that really shocks you, because you were pretty sure that guys like him haven't existed since before world war I.  He's going to live through The Incident, and when he's finally brought down, he'll have a revolver in one hand and a big fucking knife in the other, and the remaining asswipes will know they fought a man, and never realize that his friends got away, or were even there in the first place.  For decades after the Unpleasantness, people who knew him will remember The Monastery as one of those special places, sort of like San Fran in '65, they only happen once a generation, and they never, ever last.

And you're getting old now, your soldiering days are long past, and the doctors don't know what's wrong with your nervous system.  Everything's closing down, one system at a time, and you've started hearing voices...Best not to let the ladies in your life know how bad it's gotten.  Every dog has its day, and it's a wise man that knows when his day is past.  Uncle Bill understood that, now THERE was a fucking HERO.

You hated the bastard until you met him, and now you can't convince the other admins that he's really an okay guy.  He really should cut back on the weed, though, it'd make his life easier, especially marriage-wise.  He won't ever accomplish much, but his kids will miss him terribly when he's gone, and it might occur to you that maybe that's the best accomplishment of all...

You woke up too soon, right?  They were busy shoving your guts back in through that big hole in your stomach and they didn't put you under deep enough and you woke up and you screamed and screamed and screamed and they finally had to hit you a few times to get the cone over your face again and then the world spiraled away and you woke up with a scar you'll have forever and the memory of a bad dream.

She's a damn good woman, and she plugs away through work and ill health and obnoxious in-laws, and things aren't looking much better healthwise, but she'll see her dad again, and for a little while she'll be that little girl again, that nice little girl that never imagined how complicated things can be when you don't push back, when you don't get your fists in front of your dignity.  But that's okay, because it's daddy, and he's home.

You really fucked up, didn't you?  Yeah, you spent most of your adult life as a soldier or a criminal (and maybe something worse, but it's so hard to remember), and violence is fucking NORMAL to you, and now you're getting old and sick and you hear voices and it turns out that the Old West ended in 1881, you fucking moron.  You've spent your whole fucking life trying to live 100 years behind, and there just isn't ROOM for you, in this world of Bluetooths and Ipods and backscatter technology.  You're a fucking fossil, and that voice you hear is Jiminy fucking Cockroach, and he's here to tell you what time it is.  It's the future, you sap, and it's not the future you expected, and there's no place in it for you.

And finally we come to The Kid.  He hates being thought of as The Kid, because he's probably the smartest person he knows, certainly the smartest person you've ever met, online or IRL.  But he's an anachronism, he'd have been a fucking GIANT in 1912, but it's not 1912, and the sordid British city that's imprisoned him will never really let him go, and you feel bad because he's the little brother you always wished you had, and there's no future for him in this horrible, horrible future in which he found himself.  And even though he's half your age, you wish you had half his brains or his political savvy, and you desperately hope he'll make peace with the fact that brains and education were yesterday, and this is today.  Still, when it's all said and done, you're proud to have known him, even if only over the internet.

So let's face facts.  You're getting old and you're getting ill, and you had a fun life, but you didn't lead a particularly GOOD life, did you?  No, no, you were a very bad monkey, and Jiminy Cockroach gets a little louder every day, telling you what you should have done, that you shouldn't have wimped out when they were tormenting that Gay kid in 1986, that you maybe should have shot Bradley before That Awful Thing happened in '91, and that all the adrenaline in the world can't replace what you took away.  Pray, get down on your knees and PRAY that there's no vengeful Old Testament God, because, Brother, do you have some answering to do.

Or Kill Me.

Bump.

Re-reading this made me throw up in my mouth a little, and somehow I mean that as a compliment to the OP. Still the best thing ever posted here.