Tsunami with a Smile

Every time I open the door to my apartment building, I pray to get to my apartment door safely.

Living in a big city at only twenty-years-old all by myself, with no close friends or family around for thousands of miles, puts me a little on edge.

You’d think that once I got inside my building, things would be better than the street. Usually, it is, but there are some neighbors that have been here for centuries, it seems, smoking cigarettes in their ratty old nightgowns, hacking up a lung and staring you down as you walk by. The woman has a tuft of thinning brown hair on the top of her head and the man is so pale you can see blue spots at his temples. They are obviously on drugs of some sort. Meth, crack, pain pills. It’s anyone’s guess these days.

Miami is a safe haven for drug addicts; a city built off the cocaine industry. There are drugs everywhere, clubs everywhere. High-energy dance music, festivals, raves, people partying on the beach.

Living in South Beach, the concentration of people on drugs condenses to a pulsating throng of wackos.

The man and woman, as wretched-looking as they seemed, never tried to grab at me.

The worst was when I would somehow get caught between a lovers’ spat in the lobby. And by lovers, I mean pimp and ho. They would always try to recruit me, using various praise-and-scare tactics. Having just moved here and no one to watch my back, I try to avoid interactions like these at all costs; like avoiding eye contact, walking with purpose, or pretending I don’t speak English.

There was one time this dude with dreads stepped in on my behalf, and averted the attention of the strung-out hooker who was ready to beat me into submission. He grabbed my shoulders and turned me in towards him, almost like a brotherly hug. The hooker retreated with her pimp and they went hunting for new prey.

“Whoa, you’re that girl, uh, no way,” the dude with dreads doubled back in surprise, looking me keenly in the eyes.

“What?” I was bewildered, studying the guy, trying to remember if I should know him from somewhere…

“You’re the girl, you’re the girl,” he covered his mouth and was pointing at me, looking over his shoulder and then back at me.

All of a sudden, a tall, dark, handsome figure appeared from the shadows.

“The girl from the dream?” he asked in a deep voice.

“Yeah! Yeah!” the dude with dreads kept pointing at me, his blue eyes popping out of his head.

I thought it was just another cat call and was ready to activate my flight response at a moment’s notice.

The tall, dark figure shook his head and said, “Nah, I don’t buy it. You predicted this would happen. You know she lives here. You probably see this type a’ thing every day.”

“No! No! I’ve never seen you before, ha-have I?” he looked straight at me, pleading.

I scrunched up my nose to scrutinize him even closer, his sudden vulnerability getting the best of me, and played into this game.

“Honestly, like, I don’t think so,” I admitted finally. He just seemed like every other generic hippie white dude with dreads and beads in his hair. It figures he would be attracted to the beaches and party lifestyle, too. The beach attracts all kinds of people. It’s fucking beautiful.

The two men looked at each other as the dude with dreads sighed in relief, like it meant something deep.

I shook my head at them, “What dream?”

He looked back at me and paused.

His friend spoke up in turn and said, “He says he can predict the future.”

“What?” I laughed at them and started to leave.

“No! No. It’s crazy. I’m not crazy. But my dreams, I been having. I see things. I saw you here last night, wearing that,” he pointed to my shorts that had frayed edges.

I looked down, bewildered, and saw the hello kitty patch on the left pocket, sparkling and pink and staring up at us through haunted, beady eyes.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Tripping balls, I assume? Seeing cats?”

“Whoa,” he exclaimed. “You trip on shrooms, too? Let me know if you need any…”

I laughed and glanced shyly at the tall, dark figure, trying to get a better look at his face to determine if he was cute enough to fuck.

I could feel myself blushing so I decided to stick around and see what these guys were like.

“I’m good… for now,” I told them, laughing.  

“You smoke that ganja? We got some of that…”

I paused, thought about it, smiled, and shrugged in agreement.

*

That day, I smoked a blunt with Roscoe and Tim out back in the courtyard.

“There’s more to it,” dude with dreads said to me after passing the blunt. “In the dream, they stole you away. Bottom bitch there knocked you out and they carried you to their car.”

He shook his head as he remembered and furrowed his eyebrows. When he looked up at me again, there were tears in his eyes. It gave me fucking goosebumps.

“What?” I egged him on, looking sidelong at tall, dark, handsome dude and noting his firm pecks under his muscle shirt. His thick, smooth, muscular arms extended towards me as I passed him the blunt and our hands met for just a moment, making my heart skip a beat.

“They would’ve sold you,” dude with dreads said sorrowfully.

“No way,” I protested. “That wouldn’t happen.”

But I got a nasty, nagging feeling deep in my gut, and suddenly felt nauseous. At the time, I attributed it to the blunt, thinking it was laced with some hippie-shit.

But a thought had struck me that I couldn’t shake: I have been relying on dumb luck to get me through life up until this point.

Slightly offended and suddenly turned off by the whole thing, I turned to leave. I got sick of tall, dark, and handsome dude being so silent and dude with dreads being so overly-spiritual that I left the two of them without so much as a goodbye, and stormed off back to my apartment.   

*

That week, I saw on the news that very same pimp and ho couple from my complex had been arrested for kidnapping a fifteen-year-old girl. My heart dropped into my stomach as I listened to the report of their involvement in a dangerous underage sex trafficking ring, apparently operating right under my nose.

What kind of sorcery? I thought as I scurried to the lobby in search of dreads.

I found him smoking a cigarette in the corner. He put it out as I approached.

His eyes were like portals to the universe, pupils dilated like big black holes surrounded by slivers of silver-blue.

“I’m on a hallucinatory experience,” he waved his hand in a trance as I stood next to him. “I can see with every facet of nature, every fiber of being, the force fields around us, only show us truth. Truth and pain; they operate in unison.”

He began doing a sort of tai chi where he was miming the air around him with each word he said, engulfed in a world visible only to himself. I held steady and studied the subject before me, intrigued with his insight.

“But how did you know? How could you even…” I started demanding answers from him.

He shook his head at me and furrowed his brows over deep, saddened eyes, “It’s obvious. The facts are all there.” He pointed passionately into the abyss. “They’re all right there, if people would just take the time to look.”

I paused for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. He wasn’t creeping me out, but there was something major going on, like some kind of revelation or monumental experience happening.

“They’re in jail now,” I relayed to him after some silence.

“Glad they caught them,” he motioned his arms in circles, still not looking at me.

I looked around for tall, dark, and handsome dude but there was no sign of such a figure lurking in the shadows.

“Where’s your friend?” I asked bluntly because, well, fuck it.

“On his way to Montana,” he replied, equally as blunt.

I just stood there, stunned.

“I dreamt last night, that a commie-zombie apocalypse would happen after a virus forced the government to shut down the economy and vaccines were mandated onto everyone but the elite. He’s gone to join the new resistance.”

“The resistance?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, like, is this French revolution?

“It’s coming,” he said, staring straight ahead, arms straight down by his sides, bracing for impact.

I tried desperately to see what he saw and craned my neck around. “What is?”

“A tidal wave,” he stated flatly. Then he looked straight at me with those creepy, black eyes and put words into my soul that I will never forget. “Only those who’ve built Arks will survive.”

It didn’t make sense back then, but now that the apocalypse is upon us, I often wonder who will survive and who will thrive?

In all the histories of all the world, what countries have thrived after following orders from their government “in the name of public good” to impose new restrictions, mandate new regulations, and enforce said regulations by use of militia on its people?

The passage of time is a makeshift paradigm, indeed. You don’t just create zombies from perfectly functioning human beings overnight. There is a rhythm and a method, an ebb and flow, a push and then a pull back, to the madness that the Satanists bestow upon us.

Our own sins guide us, our own hypocrisies blind us, when we try to seek an authority to rule over our lives, when we give up our freedom of independence and body sovereignty to those who want to enslave us and depopulate the masses.

This is the flaw in human nature, this is the flaw that will make our species fall; giving up control for a little more security, because that security is promised by crooks under false pretenses. They smile in our faces and promise us the world, then turn around and spend our money to kill millions of innocent children and people, all while stuffing their pockets with the tears of our stolen liberties.

Will we ever learn or are we doomed to fall for The Socialist Lie, time and time again?

The good news is that extinction is the rule, survival is the exception. Looks like Earth will win the war over humans after all.