The Struggling Man

By James Hauenstein

  Finally, I've been waiting for this day to come for a very, very long time.

  I'm feeling, after today, everything is going to be alright.

  It's going to be a weight off of my shoulders once I tell you what I know about this gravely important matter that's effecting us all.

  After you hear what I have to say, you'll be itching like crazy to leave this place and tell the World what you've just heard.

  It's been a long time coming, but I'm glad today has finally arrived.

  In fact, I never really thought it would ever happen.

  So I'm ill prepared as far as having my facts in chronological order or a speech laid out, ready to go.

  I don't really know where to begin?

  I'll tell you this though. Back when I was in school, maybe in seventh or eighth grade I think, that's when I first became aware that my life and the lives of my friends were being drastically manipulated.

  At the time, I felt it was our government pulling the strings on us.

  The news of the day was filled with stories about the CIA giving LSD to civilians during the nineteen sixties without their knowledge.

  They wanted to see if they could control the population with mind alternating drugs.

  So I figure, if they did it once, what's from stopping them from doing it again with all the new synthetic concocted drugs being sold on the streets today?

  Yes, I still believe the United States Government is behind it.

  Even at that age I knew I had to do something about what was happening to me or I would end up dead.

  The first step I took was going back into school and looking for my homeroom teacher.

  I was at school at the time I had my epiphany.

  Myself and some of the other boys were playing kickball on the playground at recess time. All of a sudden this inexplicable rush of adrenaline hits my mind and my body. I knew things and saw things with such clarity at that very moment, I'll never forget the feeling of euphoria I had from it.

  It wasn't only me either, the other kids who were playing felt it too!

  We all started playing ball like it was an Olympic event and we were Olympic athletes.

  Students, Faculty, and even Maintenance personnel started gathering around to watch our performance.

  People cheered and clapped after every play. With the crowd eventually dividing itself between the two teams, rooting for one side or the other.

  This happened during a lunchtime recess too. It all took place in less than thirty minutes.

  After the bell rang, signaling everyone it was time to go back into class, that's when I sought out my teacher.

  She must have saw something in the way I looked because she took me out into the hall to hear what I had to say in private.

  I told my Teacher what I already knew or thought I already knew at the time.

  I can't remember her name, the teacher's that is, but I can remember how she reacted to me.

  With violence.

  She hit me in the back of my head hard, several times, while telling me that I should never repeat a word to anyone what I had just told her.

  It had such a dark brooding impression, of what my life was going to be like, after I was physically assaulted by this woman.

  If someone in authority like that can beat a child almost senseless, what other type of authority figure is out there in the World abusing his or her position in life to wreak havoc upon the innocent?

  Were Government Official's involved in it too?

  Of course they were. You all were.

  We were an experiment, grouped together for observation purposes only. I imagine by Scientist who worked for you guys. Got paid by you. Then probably claimed that their preliminary findings guaranteed success!

  OK, whoever was making the decisions at the time might have said; why not go ahead and do some test on a bunch of children in a small rural town grade school.

  Who is going to take notice?

  The Government?

  It's the Government doing the experimenting!

  And who does the check and balances of the Government?

  I can't think of no-other explanation for the treatment I'd received by my teacher other than a corrupt government was field testing us for some reason illegally.

  It can’t be simply bitterness by a cranky old Nun at a Catholic School who didn't like kids.

  I stand by, I know, it was the Federal Government.

  You've probably heard stories about Catholic Schools and the Nuns who taught class there, right?

  I bet you thought they were exaggerated? Stories made up by students to ruin a Church's reputation?

  Nuns beating on kids if they make the slightest mistake or did something wrong in class?

  No one in their right mind would hit a child just for a spelling error. Would they?

  Well, you would be wrong.

  Those stories? They are all true.

  You want to see?

  I have the emotional and physical scars to prove it.

  Soon after I realized that something was happening to me, I got the feeling that I was being watched all the time. I assume by the CIA.

  That teacher of mine, who beat me? I figured she was probably working for them as a consultant or maybe some kind of recruiter for their manipulation experiments.

  So here I am, in the prime of my youth, where I should be spending my days thinking about playing baseball with my friends and getting enough courage up to talk to girls, and what do I have to do?

  I have to start taking life real seriously, really quick, if I want to stay alive.

  Life isn't like the movies. I didn't see Batman or Superman coming to my rescue anytime soon.

  So it was up to me to find the answers I needed.

  You know, I haven't told a single person about it in over thirty years until today.

  I have never told a living soul since my teacher.

  I knew if I did, you guys would bring me in. Give me something to swallow or do some kind of lobotomy to my brain so I would go crazy.

  Afterwards, I would be acting all crazy and the like. So you guys could make sure you were in the clear and no one would believe a word I say.

  I've seen enough television to know what would happen to me if I was deemed insane by a Court of Law.

  I have tried to tell people a couple of times. Then my paranoia would rescue me.

  People will talk, I would tell myself. Hoping to kill my overwhelming urge to spill my guts to the press, or talking to a neighbor about it.

  I knew if I did, they would gossip about me. To their friends, their families, and to the authorities after listening to me.

  I would be carted away, going into a hospital for the criminally insane, or I would disappear from the streets all together.

  Of course, coming from the mouth of a grade school student, if I had told someone back then, their initial reaction would be that of skepticism for a kid who made up stories.

  The subject matter was too taboo for anyone to take seriously at that time. Only Science Fiction Writers believed in the possibility of it happening.

  My favorite author often wrote about it and believed it to be true.

  After skepticism, people might think that I was dangerous. A nut case.

  They would be afraid of me. Their children would be afraid of me.

  Maybe their paranoia would manifest itself to the point where someone felt it was necessary to silence me for good.

  Do the work done for the CIA without them even knowing they were doing it.

  Problem solved for you guys.

  They were scared of me. Sure.

  Really, deep down, they were frightened from the information I was dishing out.

  They did seem to reject the truth all the time. Sadly, believing that the idea was preposterous. That I made it up.

  Over the years I became so obsessed with finding out the truth that it cost me my job, my wife, and everything I had. I ended up here in LA living on the streets.

  On skid-row I wound up being known as, "CaP KiD." I thought it meant that I was targeted by one of the street gangs and they would eventually send someone out to put a cap in me.

  You know. A cap, or bullet?

  I found out about five years after getting the moniker that it meant, Crazy as Philip K. Dick.

  Who knew the street gangs of LA were so highly educated?

  To the Cops and Social Workers on the streets I was known as the "Alien Representative of the United Stars of Planetoids."

  They said my motto was, "My madness, soon we will all be able to enjoy the benefits of it too!"

  All of this mockery because I tried to save their life and the lives of their families.

  By my mid-thirties, I was considered completely insane by everyone.

  People I knew since grade school now closed their doors in my face.

  My colleagues, were I once worked, no longer took my calls.

  The wife, that I once thought was my soul mate, was only too happy to have me declared incompetent so she wouldn't have to split our estate evenly with me.

  She took everything.

  I am now branded as a lunatic to these people.

  To everyone.

  Since more and more people have become afraid of me, here in LA and back home in Blythe. I had to come to you guys for help. I know I was arrested for making threats against the President's life. If I was arrested by local Police, I wouldn't be able to talk to you guys.

  The people who, who did this to me.

  You owe me.

  An FBI speaks up for the first time.

  "Why now?"

  "Why come looking to the Agency for help?"

  I see no other choice for my x-friends or associates, but for them to get together and have me killed!

  They don’t want to know the truth. To hear the truth!

  I know I've written and said some nasty things about the Government when I was working as a reporter for that online watchdog group, Patriot News. That this particular branch of Security was responsible for a lot of atrocities at home and abroad. But now that I've explained it to you, you can see that I have a perfectly good explanation of why I did it.

  OK, the concept is so simple it's an act of genius. Yet, overwhelmingly mind boggling with its diabolical intent.

  When people heard about it, they literally struck out at me in anger.

  Oh, wait. What I said earlier, about not telling anyone?

  I guess I did try to tell a couple of people. I did try to keep my mouth shut for those thirty years. But it must have slipped my mind that I talked?

  Who knows?

  After I talked to some of them though, somehow, they would think it was my fault. Believing I was the cause behind the threat to our way of life and to their own existence.

  Please, you need to protect me. I will tell you anything you want know.

  Listen. What I'm about to tell you is so improbable, that seeing the evidence with your own eyes, still doesn't convince your mind that it's real.

  It's real though. And it's going on right now around the World as we speak.

  Historians might like it? It explains a lot about our history as a race since the day we split off as a separate species from the Neanderthals.

  I'm a little confused about one thing though.

  Why hasn't anyone figured this out before me?

   I'm just now at a point in my life where I am really in tune to everything going on inside my head.

  The information I'm going to give you? It will have such a profound effect on your psyche and anyone you tell psyche too.

  If you tell anyone.

  Once this information gets out, it will change how future generations live out their lives!

  Let’s begin with the Monsters. Since they are the source of almost all the problems in our World.

  All of us, as children, had vivid imaginations. At one time or another, we could almost feel the same amount of pain inside of us, when we saw how much pain another person was in.

  Imagination is important to these monsters. As you will see.

  Well at night, when we dream, it's usually about some of our experiences that we have accumulated over the years.

  They could be about the information we had gathered in that particular day. It could be about the future and what we think it will look like. Or it could be a dream of lost love where your emotional range runs wild in our subconscious.

  Your dreams are a mixed bag of jumbled up letters. Running in a confusing order of importance. Except our subconscious sees it as getting the most bang for your buck.

  Our subconscious picks the order of our dreams by what emotion it feels it needs to be work on at that very moment.

  By us having these internal reveries playing all the time inside our minds, filled with the emotional roller coaster ride of having five senses, an alien parasite found the human race too good to be true.

  When we're asleep, our psyche is playing out our dreams as if we were experiencing them fully for the first time.

  The alien parasite, dormant until it finds a host with emotional baggage, invades that mind, revealing in the experience. It feels and feeds off of our dreams and emotions.

  They have been here with us now for thousands of years. Leading us this way and that. So we would become the dominate species on Earth. Improving our lives while we improve our minds, which improves the emotions and dreams we feed them.

  Some of us worked out what was happening to our life as children. Believing danger lurked around every corner when we were alone.

  As we grew older, we were taught that there are no Monsters. That those voices you hear inside your head, is actually your consciousness speaking to itself. Inside your brain.

  Keeping your mind occupied while awake. Dreaming while your asleep.

  If a person speaks out loud what his consciousness is telling him or her, that person is deemed insane.

  If we only say it to ourselves, inside our brains, then we are normal?

  But everything you were told when you were young has been a lie. Those are Monsters who speak to us inside our minds.

  They're alive. A separate mind inside our own.

  Monsters, who live inside our brains.

  They are the ones speaking as your consciousness, as if they were a part of you all along.

  They have no physical presences to speak of. They are a life form of pure energy.

  Yet, they need to feed or their energy dwindles losing all the gained emotions they stole from their last victim.

  So they feed on us.

  Eating up all your thoughts and memories.

  Devouring the internal struggles one has, as in angst, uncertainty, or self-doubt.

  Filling up on the emotional roller-coaster ride that we spew out on a daily basis.

  Grabbing and holding onto to our inner self.

  Munching away at our heart's creativity if you become an artist.

  Swallowing up ambition from your mind if you're the type who must strive for reachable and unreachable goals in life.

  These Monster don't eat away at you hoping you'll die. They prefer us to live a long life. They constantly gain more energy from you as long as your alive.

  If you die, they must find a new host to occupy quickly or lose all the inherited dreams and emotions the dead host had given him.

  Oh, I'm sorry. You're trying to ask me something?

  Oh? You need a short break? You want to speak to your colleague outside this room? You'll be right back?

  OK. OK. I can wait.

  Locking the room once he steps out, a name-less, tag-less psychiatrist looks to the arresting FBI Agent and says, "He is definitely suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia. Believing Nuns are working for the CIA and giving out drugs to children in their lunches. It’s a classic example."

  The FBI Officer laughs a couple of times, then says seriously, "Yeah, right? Everyone knows we put it in the water.”

This is,

I Wrote This In Honor Of One Of The Greatest Writers Of All Time,

Philip K. Dick,

And,

“Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.”
- Jim Butcher, -

That is my story and I am sticking to it!

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