Political fiction is body horror
Your Local Government Is Run by Malignant Monsters
Approach politicians at your own risk
The following was written by the Shibboleth regular contributor known as Amaya.
Yes, City Councilman Eric is his real name. I left out his last name to protect you while reading this, lest you picture his face and find you can’t go on.
I visited my local courthouse every day for two weeks. Consequently, I found part of my personality atrophying. I wondered if the cold stones that make up the building somehow erode the impressionable egos inside.
You know, I didn’t hear music in that building once, not a single time in two entire weeks? Inside it always felt as if a bell had been rung and you were waiting for its tone to die. The air thickened in my ears.
Believe it or not readers, you would find this courthouse absolutely alive with silence.
City Councilman Eric is the focus here, though. I’m positive he gestated in the pouches and cavernous tube of a golf bag and flopped directly out of its orifice onto a meticulously mowed lawn.
Swaddled in shirts with the collars popped, weaned on gin and tonics, he breezed through his essay plagiarizing years and arrived at the courthouse to scoff and sneer. It’s the oldest story in the bible.
As is most likely obvious now, my two weeks there resulted in knowing exactly as much about local politics and civic infrastructure as the over-cologned cretins there know.
I observed no less than 953 meetings. Mindless doodles, swirls, squares turned into wonky 3-D cubes, fields of dots pretending at patterns, reminders to pick up kale at the store, and slash marks like knife wounds filled up my notebooks.
With the help of a quick vape or a quip to exercise their sexual harassment skills, the city councilmen read the signs and fates and decided on something stupid with no basis in modern living.
City Councilman Eric presided over the sludge. My vantage point was always a safe distance away, removed from the festering cloud, although I did drink the free coffee and even had a doughnut. Purge me of this cancer before I start saying, “Well actually” and talking about how someone has to make the hard decisions.
It was no secret I was there to observe without a goal. Anything I knew after going, I knew before arriving. Except one thing.
City Councilman Eric leaned on desk after desk. He stared at his own hands like he’d recently realized they existed. It was fortuitous because it helped me notice an odd motion on the back of his head.
His hair fluttered. Wisps and threads of it lifted at the center of all that salt-and-pepper shag. There was a familiar rhythm to the motion. I focused and saw.
City Councilman Eric has a living eyeball on the back of his head. It sees the knives sparkling in all his friends’ hands. It watched as I left on my last day, when I farted in the lobby and kicked the door open.
Does that eye sleep? Will it live when he finally dies at his mistress’s house? Can it scowl as he shits and how often does it watch as some person he wronged walks away?
Stay at City Councilman Eric’s front. I didn’t see a second mouth to go with this eye. We should all assume its there, though. Most likely the rest of our local government all have extra eyes and mouths hidden all over their bodies as well.
