,,ggddY"""Ybbgg,, subversive literature ,agd888b,_ "Y8, ___`""Ybga, for subverted people! ,gdP""88888888baa,.""8b "888g, / ,dP" ]888888888P' "Y `888Yb, ,dP" ,88888888P" db, "8P"""" Installment 249 of... ,8" ,888888888b, d8" db. dP b. ,8' d88888888888,88 d$$$s. dP `8, - -- -THE NEO-COMINTERN ,8' 8888888888888" dP$$$$$s. dP 8. d' I8888888888P" dP `T$$$$$$dP `.d$$b. .d$$b. .d$$b..s$s 8 `8"88P""Y8P' dP `T$$$$P d$$$P dP' `$ dP' T$ dP' `TP' `T$ 8 Y 8[ _ " dP `T$P d$$$P dP dP dP dP dP dP 8 "Y8d8b dP dP :$ .$ $b. .dP dP dP dP 8 `"".dP dP `T$$P' `T$$P' dP dP dP Y, ,,odnd88b, ,b `8, ,d8888888baaa ,8' ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE- -- - `8, 888888888888' ,8' `8a "8888888888I a8' Writers: `Yba `Y8888888P' adP' BMC "Yba `888888P' adY" `"Yba, d8888P" ,adP"' `"Y8baa, ,d888P,ad8P"' - - - - -``""YYba8888P""''===================------- -- - - - - August 3, 2003 INSTALLMENT 249 BMC, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - FEATURED IN THIS INSTALLMENT: The Election - BMC - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - EDITOR'S NOTE - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Greetings! This editor's note is a personal message from your friend and editor, aka myself. I would just like to clearly state, for the record, that The Neo-Comintern is in no way linked to the abstract concept of "insanity." Though it is true that some of our writers suffer from mental/emotional problems, this zine is not a platform for pro-insanity propaganda. Most of us are able to lead regular and full lives. Likewise, this should not be taken as an indication that we are anti-insanity either. The simple fact is that insanity as a concept exists and that we are in no way affiliated with or opposed to it and that The Neo-Comintern Online Magazine will not become a forum on insanity at any point in the future, either near or distant. It should also be noted that since we are not in direct opposition to insanity, so the possibility also exists that upcoming issues will feature references to insanity, insane writers, and/or theme issues dedicated to the concept of insanity. Some of us lead normal lives, more or less. - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - The Election - BMC - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - Smith burst through the door at the back of the room, followed closely by a hard draft of winter wind and an airborne current of crystalline snow. His coat was only zipped up halfway. One of his pantlegs hung over his boot and the other was caught up at the top of the boot. Under his dress shirt, his tee was on inside out. His face was reddened and tight from the cold. The crowd cheered wildly, oblivious to his entrance. People bumped their plastic glasses against each other in a cheer; hands were shaken and backs were patted. A couple of rotund children near the front joined hands and began to perform an impromptu jive dance around and through the crowd. Coloured lights flashed around in the dark. Smith realized that the celebration had already begun as he looked at the hundreds of warm faces mingling and swirling in the large rented hall. Smith fixed his pantleg and handed his coat to the coatcheck attendant. "What happened?" he asked, grimacing at the attendant who had obviously just smoked up, with the smell of dope on his body and brown stains on his thumb and forefinger. "Heh. Somebody just won the election. Smith or something? I didn't hear it very well. Sorry." Smith, who had been distracted until this point, suddenly grew alert. "Smith won the election?" he thought. "I won the election?" He looked down at his pantleg to make sure that he had loosened it from the top of his boot. He had. He turned toward the crowd, waited until his ticket from the coatcheck attendant was in his palm, and made his way into the party that he now realized was a celebration of his victory. Smith made his way past the dancing children, who had now circled from the front of the room to the back. They smelled of alcohol. Someone had obviously been buying shooters for the little bastards. Smith shook his head at the thought of such irresponsibility, but his disgust eventually subsided. He walked on, looking around for his running-mates and other cohorts, but nobody looked familiar to him. Smith made his way to the front of the room to give a victory speech. As he walked, he hid the limp caused by a bruise he received earlier in the day. He looked at the people and their little plastic cups of alcohol, all socially lubed and ready to rant about anything. Smith wished he had a drink in hand too; luckily, he'd already had a few before he got there. He considered alcohol the best part of social interaction, and the only thing that made these things bearable. Letting his mind wander, he stopped concentrating on his walk for a moment and nearly stumbled, but he believed that he had recovered before anyone noticed. Smith recognized a familiar face about two feet away that had been making eye contact with him for seconds now. It was Herbert. "Smith!" said Herbert. "You old dog! Fancy seeing you here!" Herbert was the last person Smith wanted to see. "I hate you," thought Smith as hard as he could. "Get out of my way and let me give this speech and get out of here." "So!" said Herbert, "how long you been here?" "About one minute," Smith replied. "I'm just going up to give this speech now." "Speech? What?" Herbert looked confused. "You're not going... I mean, you didn't think? I.. uhh... Smith, you know that you lost, right? You came in second place. I'm sorry, old chap." "Shoot the messenger," thought Smith, but his common sense responded thusly: "It would be bad for publicity." He was driven by public responsibility, coming here on a night like this. He surely couldn't walk out on the people who campaigned for him. "Are you sure?" asked Smith, blood draining from his head as he felt the onset of another full-scale anxiety attack. "Yeah," said Herbert, "you lost." "Well then why is everybody cheering and celebrating?" asked Smith, who at this point was becoming too confused and disoriented to play it straight anymore. "Because," Herbert answered, "you've been a real let-down lately. In truth, we'd rather have an opposition member in than you. We'd rather work with some prick that we can openly hate than some guy who we have to pretend to like day after day. You know how it is." Smith stared at Herbert's grinning face, and thought of nothing but how much he wanted to kill the man, how he wanted to use the knife he left at home to stab him in the neck, in the face, to cut his cheeks right through to the tongue inside his mouth, to split his nose in half, to stab through his eye sockets and burst those jaundiced grapes, plunging deeper and deeper until his blade dug brain and the hilt of the knife was stopped only by Herbert's brow. Smith looked down at his pantleg and noticed that it was hung up on the edge of his boot. This was a sign of trouble. He glared at Herbert through slitted, twitching eyes and clenched teeth, "What did you just say to me, you dirty motherfucker?" Herbert opened his eyes wide in an antagonistic expression of mock fear, then stopped and laughed loudly at Smith. As he did this, he looked at Smith's hand and saw a drop of blood fall onto the floor. "Listen, Smith, I was just kidding. You won the election, you old dog, you won it! Heh heh!" As Smith stared, unresponsive, Herbert's pupils bloomed fear again, but this time it was real. Smith thought about his knife, and about how in the absence of it he would have to be satisfied to bite through Herbert's throat, or to stomp him repeatedly in the spine with his boot heel. Suddenly, Smith realized that it had all been a joke and that Herbert hadn't meant what he said. He still had the respect of his colleagues, he had still won the election, he still had his grip. Smith smiled ferociously at Herbert. "So I won the election then?" he asked. "Yeah, yeah. You won. Congratulations." Smith extended his hand, his handshake leaving a small smear in Herbert's palm. "By the way, Smith," Herbert asked, "where are the wife and kids tonight?" Smith grinned sharply. "Everything is going to be all right." Then he nodded to Herbert and began to make his way to the podium. Smith fused his mind, preparing to deliver an announcement of the greatest cuts to public spending in provincial history. Two people stood in his path, facing each other and talking passionately. Smith would have nothing to do with this impediment. He quickly pushed his way through them, spilling one's drink and causing the other to stumble backwards. Onward Smith walked, pushing people to and fro, grunting silently as he moved toward the podium, the ruckus he created absorbed by the density of the crowd and generally ignored, except by those he shoved. "Now you know what you have to do, Smith," he told himself. "Go up there and deliver the news." He saw no other familiar faces on the way to the podium, but he wasn't looking for them anymore. When he turned around, Herbert's face had disappeared from the crowd too. Smith looked at the crowd and readied himself to speak, but nobody paid attention. They were too engaged by the music, the drinks, and each other's company. Smith began to flail his arms wildly, and, as he did this, people near the front stopped talking to each other and looked up at him. The children continued dancing about the room, and people in the middle and at the back were unaware of Smith's presence. "Hey!" yelled Smith. "Listen!" A few more people looked up. From the opposite side of the room, the coatcheck attendant bellowed, "Can't hear you back here!" Enough was enough. Smith kicked the amplifier switch on and put the microphone right up to it. The screeching feedback loop alerted the crowd, and in a second they were all looking at him. So he'd finally gotten their attention. He pulled the mic away from the amp, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak. It was at this moment that he realized he hadn't prepared a speech, so he cracked his knuckles and tried to stammer his way through. "Ahem," he began, "On behalf of myself, the party, um, and everybody who voted for me, I would like to thank everyone who voted for me - and I hope that all of you voted for me!" He waited for the crowd to laugh, but they did not. Some of them looked confused, others looked annoyed, and still others looked frightened. "Well it's been a good campaign and I'm glad to have had your support, and... I realize that I promised no cuts to public spending, but now... the contingency that I ran for... I must..." Now Smith wished that he wasn't drunk. He had no idea what he was saying, and couldn't even finish his sentence. He felt a moment of dizziness and looked down at the ground, rubbing his eyes. When he looked up again he saw that every face was staring intently up at him, some with gouged eyes, some with blood streaming down their foreheads, some with the skin flayed away from their faces, and some with broken necks. Their horrific disfigurations and accusatory glares made him choke vomit up into his mouth, but he quickly gulped it down again so that none of the victims could see his guilt. Then, as loud as one can without actually making any sound, Smith screamed. The empty cry echoed through the Wernicke area of his brain, and resonated through the hollow, lonely, shell of his conscience. As he tried to suppress the self-incrimination, he looked to the dancing children, now stripped and gutted on the floor, their eyes penetrating him like a blood-drenched blade. The entire room could see what was inside of him - they knew his wounds - and now their fingers prodded and tore at every gaping, dripping hole, understanding everything, even the things that Smith had tried so hard to deny to himself. It was useless for him to try to hide his blood, his wounds, his crimes. "I did it!" Smith yelled. "Please, I did it, I'm sorry! Have mercy on me! Show me mercy!" He fell to his knees in a disheveled state of groveling. "I did it, and I'm sorry!" There was silence. Smith looked down at the crowd again. The ghouls had reverted back to human form. He knew that he had to escape, to flee from them. Someone turned the room's lights on and Smith was unable to adjust to the sudden brightness. As he made his way from the stage, barely able to walk, he fell left and right into the wraiths that were disguised as normal, frightened people. As he fell side to side, he felt them grasp at him, doubtless in an attempt to steal his soul. As Smith mustered what bravery he could, he began to shout, to try to ward these spirits off. "None of you! None of you can kill me!" he screamed. "I will not be murdered! I will not be vanquished!" Suddenly he felt his hands bound together and something pulling him backward. As he struggled to get away, he felt himself being hit in the ribs and the back of the head repeatedly. He went unconscious. When Smith awoke, he found himself at home. The familiar setting was a comfort, but fear was still his ruling sensibility. He rose from the bloody living room carpet and closed his eyes, trying to convince himself that it was all a dream. Of course it was, he remembered. The election wasn't for another... hour?! In a hurry, he showered, turned the dishwasher on, hopped in the car, and sped off to the grocery store to buy some carpet shampoo and a box of garbage bags. - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - The Neo-Comintern Magazine / Online Magazine is seeking submissions. Unpublished stories and articles of an unusual, experimental, or anti-capitalist nature are wanted. Contributors are encouraged to submit works incorporating any or all of the following: Musings, Delvings into Philosophy, Flights of Fancy, Freefall Selections, and Tales of General Mirth. The more creative and astray from the norm, the better. For examples of typical Neo-Comintern writing, see our website at . Submissions of 25-4000 words are wanted; the average article length is approximately 200-1000 words. Send submissions via email attachment to , or through ICQ to #29981964. Contributors will receive copies of the most recent print issue of The Neo-Comintern; works of any length and type will be considered for publication in The Neo-Comintern Online Magazine and/or The Neo-Comintern Magazine. - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - ___________________________________________________ | THE COMINTERN IS AVAILABLE ON THE FOLLOWING BBSES | |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | TWILIGHT ZONE (905) 432-7667 | | BRING ON THE NIGHT (306) 373-4218 | | CLUB PARADISE (306) 978-2542 | | THE GATEWAY THROUGH TIME (306) 373-9778 | |___________________________________________________| | Website at: http://www.neo-comintern.com | | Questions? Comments? Submissions? | | Email BMC at bmc@neo-comintern.com | |___________________________________________________| | The Current Text Scene : http://www.textscene.com | |___________________________________________________| - - - - -- -------===========================------- -- - - - - copyright 2003 by #249-08/03/03 the neo-comintern All content is property of The Neo-Comintern. You may redistribute this document, although no fee can be charged and the content must not be altered or modified in any way. Unauthorized use of any part of this document is prohibited. All rights reserved. Made in Canada.