The Hidden Ranks - A Darling and Mio story

    Darling, traveled under her nom de guerre, wearing the occasional disguise – wigs and glasses. Lifted shoes and invented limps. She was both investigating and investigated. Though not yet defenestrated, the threat was always there. Persistent pursuit. It was adrenaline action without rush. Always professional. Always the cause.

    She carried memos where digital traffic was routinely intercepted. Whispered secrets where phone calls could be overheard. Passed notes in the back of class, backstage, and dead drops out front. They’d given her an implanted electrolarynx to disguise her voice and quiet thumbnail cameras. They’d given her passwords and encryption authentications. But she could not do it alone.

    Milo too, serving in an army without a gun, within the hidden ranks. Constantly pushing back with ink and film and precision knives against despotic force. Unlawful, maybe. But they would not be brought under the power. They would not be enslaved by chaos or corruption. They would not be held in bondage by fascist atrocities or soldiers in the church.

    There were cops on the street and in the air to maintain the deregulated status quo – twenty-four seven drone surveillance. Masked blacked out forces operating with impunity. Between the streetlights, between the taboo, the dangerous, the risky and the public square. Everywhere. There were dead friends too. Murdered and long dead men and women with names unspoken unlisted, dirtied with painful memories. Teenage boys stabbed in jail. Women beaten to death by sidewalk police. Broken down, despised and ostracized by political forces forever beyond their reach.

    But not without a fight. They’d sworn true faith and allegiance to justice, and to love if not to law.

    She saw reflections in the mirror, in the pupils of strangers’ eyes. Reflections in late-night television. The weight and cruelty of the everwatching eye. Flickering screens and shifting positions. Emotion laid low, beneath layers of self-control. Passion suspect beneath purpose.

    House and home. Children. What could not be protected had to be put aside. He had plans. She had opportunities. None of it mattered. Their marriage now, their only safeguard. They’d sacrificed everything but one another.

The Darling and Milo stories: 
1 - Everything’s Back to Normal
2 - One Life and One More
3 - Milo Remembers
4 - Milo Wonders 

Milo Wonders

     This is the fourth installment of what is becoming a series. I like these character, Milo and Darling. I'm curious what will happen to them. 

Milo Wonders

    Milo sat at his drafting table, work lamp off, magnifying loupe put away in its case. Evening was coming and Darling wasn’t home. He wasn’t worried, not just yet. A loving marriage that had earned his trust. Repenting. Forgiving. Never enemies. Trust. Their marriage in this thirty years war had survived.

    Survived her travel, twenty-five thousand, forty-thousand miles, he’d lost count. Survived illness, and bitterness ongoing. Seasick, airsick Fear. Survived apartment fires. Survived dangerous mobs and riots in the streets.

    And through it all she was keeping the record, writing the report through the regular rhythms of bitter conflict and escalating violence – in the city and the nation beyond. The assaults, black and blue, and unlucky blows.

    He checked his watch and went to the kitchen. He’d start the potatoes and wait.

    “My thoughts have been and will be formed and pass away. I know the dust and dwelling place. I know the frailty of this flesh. Every tombstone. And there are times and there are places – still dwelling, being, living now. Thoughts going. Thoughts drift. I wonder. My struggles before, blood, trouble, and trials of love, and strength, and sorrow when the world comes to an end. My thoughts to the very last will be written.”

    Now the sky was dark and blackout conditions in force. Curtains drawn and lamps down low. Dinner dishes for one cleaned and put away. Her portion waiting in the fridge. He checked his watch.

    “I am a man, well pleased. I am a man of conscience, unashamed. But I’m having a hard time finding my thoughts. My mind. Do you think it strange? Do I love and serve? Am I distracted?”

    He imagined not murderers and thieves, but busybodies and gossips. There was the danger. Evildoers. Purloined letters. The private correspondence of critics. Damaging interoffice memos circulated, copied, and passed on by Darling to her handlers. Undermining the State Press – writing the free press, underground. He imagined fiery hell burning away. The fiery judgment of a living hell. The godly and the free suffer persecution. But fire and water purify.

    He checked his watch. “Fire can save us, yeah? Purify? I hope.”

    Hours later, one in the morning, she came through the door. Returning home, she fell into his arms, burning with fever. Ill. One hundred degrees. One hundred one. He rushed her to bed.

    “Can we live a thousand years like this, Darling?”

1 - Everything’s Back to Normal
2 - One Life and One More
3 - Milo Remembers

No Revelation, No Knowledge

    This is a companion piece to The MAGA Glossolalia, built from the same scaffold — 1 Corinthians 14, the same Paul passage about tongues and intelligibility and the failure of speech to communicate — but they're doing completely opposite things with it.

    The MAGA Glossolalia was extroverted and performative. The speaker was loud, certain, facing a crowd, wielding language as domination. His tongue was a weapon. The unintelligibility was a feature — meaning hidden from the intellectuals, the barbarians getting barbarous tongues. The speaker had all the best words and didn't care that they communicate nothing because communication was never the point. Power was.

    This piece is the not that.

    The same diagnosis, one delivered as exposure, one as confession. The same theology. Different rooms.

No Revelation, No Knowledge 

    “I love you.”

    These are words easily spoken. These are words easy to understand. These are words spoken white-knuckle into the air.

    “I do. I will.”

    We speak by revelation –the things we do not know. A model of the Christian faith and maturity through marriage, sex, and children.

    We speak by knowledge – in romantic statements, most curious and long out of love. Obstinate and distant.

    We speak by prophecy – more frightful than hell, captured by solitude, the net of eternal damnation.

    We speak by words of instruction – Brutally honest. Lights off, frigid and fearful. Increasingly distant. The seemingly impossible and the least likely to succeed.

    Speak in a tongue, any tongue, any language and speak to God but never to me. Disconnected from reality. And not to other people because nobody understands anything anymore. Preaching the entire Bible but the meaning is hidden. Frustrated and afraid. Defeated. I needed help but didn’t know how to ask.

    I love you, please.

    Maybe she knows she’s giving a half-truth and doesn’t care. Maybe she’s too lazy to look deeper, to investigate. What she’s heard confirms what she already believes, so she won’t bother to look. Maybe she’s as lost as me. Either way, stop dressing up like a grieving widow and speak to me, please.

    Flute or lyre or trumpet – it’s all the same note without a melody. I do not understand the meaning of the sounds you are making. All of our conversations are like this - no sound doctrine, no meaningful discussion. A drone or a dirge unsung forever.

    No revelation.

    No knowledge.

    No prophecy.

    No doctrine.

    My heart derives no comfort from ten thousand words in this unknown tongue.

Real Christian Men, Real Christian Marriage – Another Troll Conversation

    He was there again. On my porch, waiting for me when I got home from work. “Can I come in for a bit, Carter?” he asked with that smug grin he always has when he comes over. It had been a long day in the hot sun. I wanted to say no. I wanted him to just go away, but I’ve committed to this exercise, and I mean to honor it. I sighed...

    “Sure, why not?” I said as I opened the door and let him in. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m still sweaty and gross.” I gave him a glass of water and invited him to sit on the couch while I went into the bathroom, took off my shirt and began to clean up with a washcloth.

    “Havin’ a bit of a whore’s bath, are you Carter?”

    I rolled my eyes. It was too hot for this. “What can I do for you, Gunner?”

    “Carter, you know I’m concerned about you. You’ve been on my mind, and I’ve been thinking about your condition. You’re on, what is it, your third marriage?”

    I tossed the washcloth into the sink and came back out to the living room. It’s true. He was right. I’ve been married twice before, and I don’t mind talking about it. I am what I am. Mistakes and warts and all – but he was taking a lot of liberties here. “Yes, Gunner. That is correct.”

    “Was it just a string of bad luck there, Carter? I’m kidding. I’m kidding. But seriously, are you going to do something different with this one to make it last?”

    “You’re walking a fine line here, Gunner...”

    “I’m just telling you the things you need to know. You need to learn how to lead as a husband. Be the head, not the tail. You’ve probably been beaten down by the feminists. Real Christian men know how to satisfy their wives. And evangelical men have the lowest reported rates of domestic abuse among any group in the United States. Real Christian men, Carter.”

    “I don’t know where you got your statistics,” I said. “Maybe they’re true. Maybe they’re not. Maybe the lowest reported rate of abuse is not actually the lowest. I don’t know. But are you sure that’s the way you want to go, Gunner? Are you sure that’s the argument you want to make? I’ve seen your arrest record, you know. It’s in the public records. We don’t have to go down that road if you don’t want to. I’m giving you the opportunity to start over.”

    There was a long pause while he glared at me. “I was a different man then. And she’s forgiven me.”

    “I’m sure she has, Gunner. She’s a better woman than you deserve.”

    “You’re soft, Carter. If you don’t get it, you must be gay or retarded.”

    “Now see – there must have been a dozen other ways you could have made your argument, but you went straight to ableist and homophobic slurs.”

    “I didn’t call you a fag, so what’s your point?”

    “Cruelty is the point, isn’t it, Gunner?”

    “Truth hurts, Carter. Can’t help if it offends you.”

    I stared at him. Silent. Just waiting for whatever would come out of his mouth next.

    “I don’t want to hear it. We’re not talking about this. I swear, you’re so frustrating, Carter. How dare you? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Coward! Fool! Who do you think you are? You’re not God. You’re just a man. And not much of a man. You do the cooking. You do the laundry. Don’t you? You’re not an impressive man. You’re not a godly man in any way. You’ve got no dignity. You’ve got no masculinity. Shut up, little boy. Grow up. Maybe one day you’ll know what it means to have a godly marriage. Shame on you for saying you’re a Christian. You won’t submit to spiritual authority. I’m here, I come here for your own good, Carter. And you’re just too stupid to receive it.”

    I stared at him in continued silence for a few seconds and then offered him another glass of water. He launched himself from the couch and stormed out of the house.

    I’m sure I’ll see him again sooner or later.

The Conversations: 

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)
Toward Sodom - (a halfhearted seventh conversation)
Millions of Years of Death (the eighth conversation)
Truth with Untruth (the ninth conversation)
Bulls, Dogs, and Villains (the tenth conversation)
The Righteous Forsaken (the eleventh conversation)
A Sabbath Garden (conversation number twelve)
Doesn't Doctrine Mean Anything to You? (conversation thirteen)

The MAGA Glossolalia

    This is a companion piece to No Revelation, No Knowledge, built from the same scaffold — 1 Corinthians 14, the same Paul passage about tongues and intelligibility and the failure of speech to communicate — but they're doing completely opposite things with it.

    No Revelation, No Knowledge is introverted and devastated. The speaker is alone with one person who has stopped listening. The tongue is a failure. The unintelligibility is a wound — meaning hidden from the one person in the world it needs to reach, the simplest possible words spoken into the same silence as ten thousand unknown ones.

    They share the same diagnosis, one delivered as exposure, one as confession. The same theology. Different rooms.   

The MAGA Glossolalia

 I know what you’re hearing. People are saying that there are many forms of activity and there are, so much going on, our country is hot. This is a great time. Our country is hot. I hate to say it, but I will. A year ago, a year and a half ago, two years ago, the last administration, we were a dead country. But there are many forms of activity. And many gifts, right? Tremendous gifts. Gifts no one has ever seen before. The gift of utterance expressing wisdom. Wisdom. I know wisdom. So wise. The gift of tongues, different tongues, all kinds of, you know, English, and Russian, and Chinese, and Iranian, all kinds of languages. And the interpretation of tongues. We have people who can translate them all. So good. So great.

    And, and listen. I, if the trumpet sounds – you know the trumpet, sound a call which is unrecognizable, who will be ready for the attack. You saw that in China just recently. You saw that in Venezuela. You saw that right now in Iran. Everything’s gone. Their Navy’s gone. Air Force – gone. And we are speaking their language. Barbarous tongues for barbarians. Inarticulate heathens.

    And you know, in the world, you’ve got the hypocrisy of the vocal. The liberal left and the fake-news media, they’re all saying stuff about me. Terrible stuff. Just terrible. They look you in the face and lie. Just straight up lie. So when the transgressors are come to the full they’ll get theirs. Look me in the face. I’m fierce. And maybe you can understand their dark sentences.

    But not them. They won’t understand. The so-called intellectuals don’t understand, I mean I speak it plain. I tell you what it is. The truth. And they don’t get it. They can’t, they just can’t comprehend. Other people, the meaning is hidden.

    No revelation. No knowledge. No prophecy. No instruction.

    You’re not strangers. You’re Americans. We’re not just raving. If I have to use strange words, then I’ll speak with strange words to this nation. The tongue of mystery. I have all the best words. Now there are some really brilliant people here today. I’m maybe slightly more brilliant. But don’t feel guilty about it. You should never feel guilty about success. You don’t need to repent here. These are words spoken with no interpretation.