Truly, I say to you: I do not know if I am alive. I thought that I was a spirit but now I think I am a body, entombed in a suit so large that I shuffle within it when I breathe. I am confusion made flesh. Look upon my face, if I have one, and despair.
I do not know if I have a face.
I did, once, it was young and handsome and devoid of a lifetime of sin scratched upon it, before the weight of all that I have done strained my skin and my sinew and my bones such that even in my moments of rapturous joy, my visage was held captive by it, and I look now like I am contemptuous of all things.
But I am only contemptuous of most things.
And here I look upon my unblemished face, here I sit opposite my youthful self with all the vigour I can’t recall ever having and I wish to warn that young man not to start down this road, not to do the things I have done, not to forge myself into this wrought, suffering statue, this evil totem to itself, but I cannot, for I have no agency in these recollections, no power within whatever purgatory I find myself to reshape the current of my life. Surely this is my death. Surely this is the way a vengeful, just God punishes me for my distance from him, and as I attempt to find peace in the certitude of my suffering, allow the righteousness of the ceaseless pain no doubt bound for me to give me a measure of comfort, I hear a Voice say no, Mitchell, you are not done, I am not ready to hurt you yet.
Are you God, or the Devil, I ask?
The Voice answers: Does it matter?
No, sir, I suppose it does not.
All those years ago, did I make a deal with you on that benighted crossroad, sir? Or did you need something from me? Was the bargain struck not for my pillage of my country, as I have long thought, but for this moment?
The Voice doesn’t answer.
Once, I stood in Congress, at that podium I despise, announcing retirement to my hated foes: I had always imagined a moment of clarity, I said, and when that clarity was upon me, I would know that my great works had been done, the pain previously unimaginable inflicted as best I could do, and it would be time for me to step aside, to allow some other sadist to claim my seat, to maim the populace, main freedom, maim Democracy.
These words left my mouth and then all was light, all was blinding brightness, my victory complete, none who stood in my way able to stop me, none able to see the shape of my great game, most unwilling even to admit that a game was being played. Again and again and again my opponents took me at my word, took my sneering obtrusiveness as theatrics for the camera, contenting themselves with the notion that I was at heart a fairer man, a more reasonable man, a better man than I appeared in public, and on the record.
I was none of those things, and now I was only seeping flesh.
As the light caressed me my sole regret was that I was unable to say goodbye to my wife a final time, but solace I found in the surety that I will see her again soon enough, because she is not that much younger than me.
My heart beat and beat and beat no more and all my senses left me, but then the Voice joined me and informed me of my toil. But how long was I nothing? How long was I nowhere in the world before my unexpected revival? And how do I know that any of it is real? How do I know I am not but a dream imagining purpose before the arrival of the dawn, and oblivion?
The Voice tells me that when I am called upon my in my travails I will know, that I will understand my final purpose, and that I must do the work.
I ask the Voice what happens if I do not, and it does not answer. The silence stirs fears in my soul that I have never before had the misfortune to experience. I do not like this fear. I do not like this Voice.
All at once I am in my office again, in my chair, in my body, in my calamitous suit. My wife holds my hand and here I look at the clock and see that what were eons to me were only thirty minutes to the world, and my wife looks now upon me with truest relief, and my staff smiles down as they stand above me and they tell me I am okay, thank god, thank god, thank god.
I have not the breath to tell them that I am not okay but rather the puppet of some malevolent impossibility, that I fear not for the state of this frame but my eternity, but as I struggle to find that animation it is months later and I am in my home at my kitchen table and I am working to eat my morning repast of one slice of toast with creamed oats spread upon it, and the television tells me that Donald Trump has died of causes yet unknown and I realize that my purpose is at hand: to atone for a small portion of the sin I have unleashed on the world, I must expose the end of his.
This has been a chapter from my book, America is Dead! – The Incredible Murder of Donald Trump. If you enjoyed it, please go here to read more of it — for free! — and if you really liked it, send it to someone you think might enjoy it.
This is also available as a podcast: just search for ‘America is Dead’ on your podcast app of choice.
Disclaimer: This is a work of satire, and as such is not making factual claims about the activity or behaviours of the people featured within.
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