Chapter 17: Protest 3

'Bout every 2 weeks or so I look into the mirror, smile, and say: Mike, you're just plain nuts!


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CHAPTER 17
And what is that? Samantha asked, nodding with encouragement. The helicopter lowered a bit in the sky, now joined by another. The two policemen edged closer, about ten feet away. The rest of the protestors now silent and lounging about. The Mayor smiled like a little boy who's discovered a buried treasure in his sandbox. He turned his head and scanned the crowd then lifted his gaze and scanned the grey and rainy horizon above their heads. Central to all the issues represented here, he said, is the issue of the lizards. The lizards are controlling this freak show we commonly call 'Reality'.
A few protestors opened umbrellas. Others sought protection beneath the old, tall spruces lining the Park Blocks. Most though, just hung around talking in small groups standing or reclining on grass or blankets. A third helicopter joined the other two. A scraggly middle-aged man ran from beneath a tree to the middle of the clearing, pointing two trembling index fingers at the sky.
Butta . . . butta . . . butta, he shouted out to the helicopters. Taka . . . taka . . . taka. He repeated these noises over and over, running around in small staggered circles. Everyone else, including the police ignored the man.
Samantha stood before the Mayor with her mouth open and twitching like a fish. Gilbert thought to himself, fuck! fuck! fuck! why did you have to mention the lizards? Peggy's gonna think I'm crazy by association. Gilbert looked demoralizingly down at the damp grass and kicked at it. I should just make up some excuse and leave, he thought. He reached for a cigarette.
Peggy just looked at the Mayor with sympathetic amusement, running her fingers through her ponytail, lighting a smoke, then turning to Gilbert and lighting his. The Mayor proudly cast a superior glance at the two cops then turned to Peggy. “You're probably thinking I'm nuts right now, don't ya?” The Mayor smiled toothily, a black speck affixed to his left incisor. Gilbert hummed a Bach funeral dirge to himself, pounding at the grass with the back of his foot, indenting the soggy earth, expecting the worst.
Peggy smiled. “Well, no,” she said. “Much of what you say resonates with my own thoughts concerning the inherent absurdities of this civilization. I've never heard of anyone blaming lizards though, so I'm curious. In what way are the lizards responsible?” Gilbert inhaled from his cigarette, exchanged a look with the Mayor, nodded, and gave him a cigarette which Peggy lit.
“Well, ladies,” the Mayor said, nodding to Samantha who had turned her microphone off. “Gilbert’s nervously puffing away because he knows what I’m going to say. In fact, he’s gobbled up the books I’ve given him on the topic.”
Fuck, thought Gilbert.
“I’ll put it this way: in examining the mythological material from all over the world one is struck by a plethora of references to lizards or reptiles, or bipedal reptilians playing a central role in mankind’s origins and/or evolution. There are accounts of reptilians donning human form in order to carry out secret agendas. From all over the planet people have reported seeing human beings, usually occupying leadership positions, shapeshift into
alien, reptilian form. These shapeshifters have been seen and written of throughout human history in every culture.”
Chanting in the background, getting louder. Samantha scratched her scalp. Peggy kept her eyes fixed on the Mayor. Gilbert blew smoke at his own feet. To Gilbert’s chagrin, the Mayor continued.
“The more I explored this ostensibly kooky path of study, the more sense it all started to make.”
Fuck, Gilbert thought. Suddenly it sounds ridiculous. Goodbye, Peggy.
The Mayor continued. “Secret societies like the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Skull and Bones, and the Priory of Scion to name just a few have made use of reptilian imagery and symbolism in their texts, art and rituals.” The Mayor took a drag and exhaled. The wind whipped his hair into a wild halo about his face.
“Ok, Mayor,” Peggy said. “You’ve obviously read things I haven’t. What your saying makes as much sense as anything else.”
It does? Gilbert thought. Thankyou, God.
“Please go on,” Peggy said.
The two cops were chatting up some hot African American tail. Giggling, their black riot helmets jiggled about like bobble-head dolls. Five helicopters circled overhead as dozens of disheveled protestors shuffled into the park, their eyes darting and haunted.
“We also have the example of the Emerald Tablets of Thoth,” the Mayor said.
Fuck, Gilbert thought. Unsubstantiated reference.
“They were discovered in 1925 beneath a Mayan temple,” the Mayor said, beaming. “They’re twenty thousand years old and refer to spaces and planes unknown to man, within which the reptilian beings live and manipulate the affairs of humankind. Similarly, in present times, Credo Mutwa, the official historian of the Zulu nation, speaks of serpent-like beings controlling the universe from just outside the vibrational range of our five-sense reality.”
Spit flew from the Mayor’s lips. He wiped his mouth and continued. “And shit, there’s all kinds of consistent accounts, told by secret society attendees of initiation rituals that mention priests turning into lizards before their eyes.”
The Mayor looked into the sky and blew smoke at a passing pigeon. A chant rang out from a new group of about fifty individuals that had congregated south of the Mayor’s entourage. “Get a fuckin’ job!” was the chant.
“Fuck them,” Peggy said, then shouted, “shut your fuckin’ mouth!” Soon others joined in, even Samantha, whose microphone was still off. And back and forth the taunting continued.
“Get a fuckin’ job!”
“Shut your fuckin’ mouth!”
And so on till the Shut Your Fuckin’ Mouth crowd triumphed, and the anti-protestors actually shut their fuckin’ mouths. The Mayor wagged his finger at the retreating hecklers, and said. “That’s the sheeple, folks. Blindly following the comfortable path. Nose to ass, nose to ass, bleating downstream. Never thinking. Never resisting. Dead fish who never lived.”
“Nice,” Peggy said. “Despite the mixed metaphor.” Samantha jiggled her earpiece.