Frank Lister has left the building.
It has been rumored that in 1985, a boy near the age of 11 suffered a massive heart attack while playing the arcade video game
Berzerk. His medical history was free of heart defect, free of malfunction, free of even the slightest indication of weakness. In fact, the Sisters considered the boy, the picture of health in all aspects of his life. His body was healthy. His mind had been free of defect as well. He was the perfect student, the perfect servant of the higher power, and the perfect tutor at the school. He was the perfect orphan. The boy had been abandoned by his parents as an infant and was left at the gates of the Sisters of Mercy of our Lady of the Highway convent in the middle of the night in 1974. Although it sounds like a scene from a novel or a movie and seems completely unbelievable, it was entirely true. BELIEVE ME. In fact, to add to the unlikely similarities from a movie, the boy, it is rumored, when brought into the convent, smiled and pointed to the image of the mother Mary, etched into the stained glass window looming behind the altar of the chapel. As the rain subsided on that evening, the boy began his new life in typical movie fashion, an orphan dropped off at a convent on a stormy rainy night to be raised by nuns. On this day, it seemed, that fate would be neither creative nor original but instead as plain as white bread.
For the next 11 years, the boy served. He served the will of the Sisters. He served the will of the church. He served the will of a higher power. He was told that the higher power had blessed him with the goodness of the Sisters. He was told that the higher power had blessed him with the goodness of the church. He was told that the higher power had blessed him with a malleability of spirit, which allowed the church to mold him like a clay pot into the vessel that the higher power wanted him to be. He was also told never to question the higher power, never to curse the name of the higher power and to never, ever, under any circumstances, do anything without thinking about the consequences and how anything he does will most likely disappoint the higher power as we are all dark inside. He was told to ALWAYS obey the call of the higher power regardless of what that call details. So for nearly 11 years, he laid himself bare and plain. His mind was as blank as a piece of standard A0 size 32lb Cotton Fiber paper. His mind was as white as the sand at Jervis Bay in Australia (known as the whitest beach sand in the world). He was as dry as a fresh 3M sponge taken straight from the package (it should be noted that sponges when used for cleaning are the harborers if bacteria and fungus). In digression, he was under the complete control of a higher power, waiting to be instructed what to do or think or feel. For nearly 11 years, this was his purpose in the universe. A beacon for the higher power to convey its message.
On the eve of his 11th year, the boy was sent to town to procure eggs. The Sisters had informed him that the higher power requested that they be bathed in egg yolk (for what purpose he did not know but also did not question as that was one of the cardinal rules that could never be broken). So the boy set out by foot to the local market to purchase 108 cartons of a dozen eggs. His task would be difficult as the road was treacherous and filled with many temptations and dangers, as the Sisters had repeatedly informed him before putting him to bed each evening. “Beware of the world and all of its evils and darkness. The citizens beyond these walls know nothing of goodness and are pure evil. Never succumb to the perils of the carnal world. And also in closing, look down on anyone who does not believe in the higher power or does not serve with the passion and fever of your Sisters. For these citizens are abominations to life.”, they would say to him as they strapped him into his white hosiptal bed. This last statement had begin to trouble the boy in his older years, as he was always under the impression that Love, above all else, was what the universe required of him. Yet, he would heed these calls of his Sisters and obey without question. So off he went on his journey, small plastic bag in hand.
Again, in typical storybook fashion, the boy met a man on the road. He was sitting in a recliner next to the highway. Odd as it was to him that a recliner was placed next to the highway and that a man was sitting in it, the boy understood it to be a sign from the higher power that this man and this recliner were part of the challenge of the day. This recliner was a message. So the boy, approached the man and asked of him, “How can you help me acquire the eggs?” The man in the recliner, how appeared to be out of his mind (it will later become clear to the boy after, (how should I put it?) a broadening of his own experiences, that the man was in fact drunk after having consumed 2 bottles of barley wine that morning. Regardless, at the time the boy thought little of this incapacitation of the man in the reclining chair and asked him again, “How can you assist me in acquiring the eggs that the higher power has requested my fair caregivers bathe in? OR Should I assume that you do not believe in the will of the higher power and are an abomination of life?” The man, looking the boy of nearly 11 years, square in the eye and said, “Son, I think you have it all wrong. Let me explain to you how this works.”
The man reached out, and like the priests of the church had, touched the boy on the forehead (what you were thinking because they were priests that I was going to imply something inappropriate?) he touched the boy on the forehead and shone a light directly into the mind of the young boy. At that moment, seemingly lasting for hours but in actuality only consisting of a brief uncountable moment of time, the boy had a shift in his mind. He no longer felt as though anything was in control. Chaos flooded his mind like a tsunami. All of his thoughts, that he was completely unaware of their existence due to the suppression system that was put into place as an infant as this was a sign of disbelief in the will of the higher power, filled every available cavern of his mind, even so much, according to the man in the recliner after being interviewed by Police, that they began to spill out of his ears. Yes, you heard me right, as unbelievable as it sounds, the boy had thoughts coming out of his ears. BELIEVE ME. This sudden wave of thoughts and ideas and realizations that life is not controlled by an unseen force that one fears the wrath of, in turn causing one to never make a decision in the fear of angering the power resulting in eternal damnation; BUT by oneself was almost too much for the boy to handle. At that moment he understood the power that his own mind possessed. He was in complete control over everything that he encountered. For once in his life he felt as though he had an amazing power. He was no longer a vessel, he the potter who was creating the vessel. He was the craftsman at the wheel. He was the controller of thoughts and ideas. He was, in his own words, a higher power.
As the paramedics cleaned themselves up from the bath of saliva, urine and egg yolk that was dripping from the ceiling underneath the Berzerk arcade game in the back of the convenience store, the Sisters looked on in sheer and utter disbelief. “How could our precious son be so unwise as to fall to the evils of the world? How could this secular devil’s den of bells and buttons seduce him so as to abandon all that he feared and loved? How could he have spent our money to play this abomination, score a very high 15 million points, throw all of the eggs that he had purchased for us up into the air landing and sticking to the ceiling and then ultimately die? Where do you think our change is from the $100 bill that we gave him?”
As the paramedics put the sheet over, what they thought was my body but was actually no body, I walked past the Sisters, $100 bill in hand, and went about living my life, never to be heard from again but always remembered as the guy who, on THAT day, in the back of that convenience store in Eustis Alabama, got the high score of Berzerk and then died. Axel Randcastle. Born 1974. Dead 1985 of a sudden heart attack while playing the video game Berzerk. My tombstone for all to see for eternity. And today, sitting at Frank Lister’s desk (who has been absent for more than a week now with no trace of his whereabouts), in Philadelphia Pa on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, while no one is here in his office, except for him, Frank Lister is about to smear blood on the wall of the bathroom. Or at least that is what people are going to read.
Truely,
Ted, the Electric (as I like to be called).
